Private communication is a basic, universal right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption.
End-to-end encryption ensures that governments, tech companies, social media platforms, and other groups cannot view or access our private messages, the pictures we share with family and friends, or our bank account details. This is a universal right, and one that is a particularly vital protection for the most vulnerable in society—such as children or human rights defenders who rely on private messaging to do their jobs in hostile environments.
TELL the house of lords to protect encryption in the online safety bill
The UK Parliament is moving forward with its Online Safety Bill, which would undermine encryption. Clause 110 mandates that websites and apps must proactively prevent harmful content from appearing on messaging services. That’s going to lead to universal scanning of all user content, all the time. It’s not compatible with encryption, or our right to privacy.
Over the past several years, UK government officials have expressed concerns that online services have not been doing enough to tackle illegal content, particularly child sexual abuse material (also called CSAM). At the same time, we’ve seen a number of proposals brought forward by governments that want to scan user-to-user communications for criminal content: the U.S. Congress tried to create backdoors to encryption through the EARN IT Act, and the This article has been indexed from Deeplinks
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