Archiv: Online Safety Bill (Five Eyes spy standard / UK version / „Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism“ / worldwide data base / hacks / „scanning“ / legalizing)


31.07.2025 - 11:30 [ petition.Parliament.uk ]

Repeal the Online Safety Act

We believe that the scope of the Online Safety act is far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society.
For instance, the definitions in Part 2 covers online hobby forums, which we think do not have the resource to comply with the act and so are shutting down instead.
We think that Parliament should repeal the act and work towards producing proportionate legislation rather than risking clamping down on civil society talking about trains, football, video games or even hamsters because it can‘t deal with individual bad faith actors.

448,744 signatures

31.07.2025 - 11:19 [ Nationalworld.com ]

Spotify age limit UK: Warning accounts ‚will get deleted‘ unless users ‚do age verification‘ – is it true as over 400k sign petition to repeal Online Safety Act

Spotify says: “You may be presented with an age check when you try to access certain age restricted content, like music videos tagged 18+. Some users will be asked to perform an age check when accessing certain age restricted content.

“You can do this by going through our facial age check. If this shows inaccurate results, you can always correct that with an ID verification.”

31.07.2025 - 11:09 [ BrusselsSignal.eu ]

New UK Online Safety Act triggers digital content restrictions

(July 29, 2025)

The UK Labour Party has previously hinted at potential bans on VPN usage, signalling further crackdowns may be on the horizon.

11.03.2025 - 15:02 [ PWC.com ]

UK online safety deadlines loom, impacting 100K companies worldwide

(February 26, 2ß25)

The rules affect thousands of businesses of all sizes worldwide, far exceeding the scope of the EU’s Digital Safety Act (DSA) and similar online safety frameworks. Companies that view the OSA as the “UK‘s DSA” may be surprised to learn that it applies to a much wider range of tech businesses, not just the biggest global platforms.

In fact, it applies to more than 100,000 user-to-user (U2U) and search services providers that target the UK market or have many UK users — including social media apps, video sharing platforms (VSPs), private messaging apps, online marketplaces, gaming sites, search engines and others — even if they’re small or based overseas.

11.03.2025 - 15:00 [ pymnts.com ]

UK Publishes Safety Rules for Online Service Providers

(December 16, 2024)

The act places new safety requirements on social media platforms, search engines, messaging, gaming and dating apps, and pornographic and file-sharing sites.

Websites and apps covered by the law have until March 16 of next year to “complete an assessment to understand the risks illegal content poses to children and adults on their platform,” the release said.

The law lists more than 130 “priority offenses.” Companies that fail to comply could be fined up to 10% of global annual turnover or up to 18 million pounds (about $22.8 million), whichever number is greater.

The U.K. adopted the Online Safety Bill last year after a lengthy period of debate.

28.08.2024 - 12:40 [ Anadolu ]

UK’s Online Safety Bill to be fully enforced next year

(20.08.2024)

The UK‘s new Online Safety Bill, which is set to take effect next year and aims to curb speculative news and online hate speech, has gained renewed attention after far-right groups used social media to incite violence.

28.08.2024 - 12:17 [ Yahoo Singapore News ]

Starmer in Germany for first bilateral trip as UK PM

Starmer‘s Labour party had said it would seek a security and defence treaty with Germany if it won the July 4 general election, which it did by a landslide — propelling him to the premiership.

15.11.2023 - 07:24 [ Stewart Clark (Blue Tick Goes Here) / Twitter ]

UK Internet Censorship bill was passed a few weeks ago, you will see sweeping changes in censorship coming soon, all for your safety and protection of course

03.10.2023 - 11:00 [ World Economic Forum / Weltwirtschaftsforum ]

World Economic Forum Launches Coalition to Tackle Harmful Online Content

(29 Jun 2021)

· Leaders in Australia, the UK, Indonesia, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Singapore and other public and private sector members have come together to collaborate and share best practices to reduce the spread of child sexual exploitation and abuse online, violent extremist and terrorist content, and health misinformation

03.10.2023 - 10:30 [ Elander & the News / Twitter ]

OFCOM – UK broadcasting regulator, gained extensive new powers of censorship and news control, under the Online Safety Bill, which it wrote in conjunction with the unelected WEF! The CEO of Ofcom is also a member of the WEF Global coalition for digital safety. Just saying

(29.09.2023)

26.09.2023 - 10:15 [ Glenn Greenwald / threadreaderapp.com ]

Not only is corporate media like @AP predictably running hit pieces on Rumble for its crime of not obeying censorship orders of the neoliberal establishment, but British media outlets are explicitly threatening that Rumble will be banned from the UK under its repressive new law:

21.09.2023 - 09:55 [ Reuters ]

UK urges Meta not to roll out end-to-end encryption on Messenger and Instagram

A Meta spokesperson said: „The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
Advertisement · Scroll to continue

„We don‘t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.“

21.09.2023 - 09:45 [ techcrunch.com ]

Meta targeted for fresh UK gov’t warning against E2E encryption for Messenger, Instagram

Although friction from policymakers has clearly made the “pivot to privacy” which founder Mark Zuckerberg announced all the way back in 2019, when he said the company would universally apply E2EE on its services, slow going.

Finally, though, this August, Meta announced it would enable E2EE by default for Messenger by the end of the year.

20.09.2023 - 22:38 [ Electronic Frontier Foundation ]

Today The UK Parliament Undermined The Privacy, Security, And Freedom Of All Internet Users

(19.09.2023)

The bill could empower the government to undermine not just the privacy and security of U.K. residents, but internet users worldwide.

A clause of the bill allows Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, to serve a notice requiring tech companies to scan their users–all of them–for child abuse content.This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy. As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor.

20.09.2023 - 21:48 [ Netzpolitik.org ]

Britisches Parlament beschließt Online Safety Bill

Das rund sechs Jahre lang verhandelte Gesetz ist inzwischen auf gut 300 Seiten angewachsen und trifft nicht nur große Online-Dienste wie Facebook oder Google. Schätzungen der konservativen Regierung zufolge sind rund 20.000 kleinere und nicht-kommerzielle Anbieter wie die Wikipedia betroffen. Viele davon machen sind nun Sorgen, ob sie die Vorgaben überhaupt umsetzen können, für manche kommt sogar ein Rückzug aus dem Internet für britische Nutzer:innen in Frage.

18.09.2023 - 19:17 [ Wired.co.uk ]

The UK’s Secretive Web Surveillance Program Is Ramping Up

(15.05.2023)

WIRED contacted nine of the UK’s internet service providers and telecom companies asking about their abilities to create and store people’s internet connection records. Eight did not respond to the request for comment. TalkTalk, the only one that did, said it will “meet its obligations” under UK law but couldn’t “confirm or deny” whether ICRs existed.

18.09.2023 - 18:41 [ NewStatesman.com ]

Cameron’s internet filter goes far beyond porn – and that was always the plan

(23 December 2013)

Through secretive negotiations with ISPs, the coalition has divided the internet into ‚acceptable‘ and ‚unacceptable‘ categories and cut people off from huge swathes of it at the stroke of a key.

18.09.2023 - 18:32 [ Techcrunch.com ]

UK Advisor Involved In Britain’s Internet Filter Arrested For Child Porn

(Mar 4, 2014)

Britain has come under fire for its Internet filtering program, which can inadvertently block sensitive culture topics that overlap with common porn terms. The program accidentally “led to the creation of filters that not only cover hardcore pornography, but hate speech, self-harm, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, dating, nudity, violence, gambling, social networking, file-sharing, games and more,” explained Wired UK.

Despite the embarrassing arrest, there is no announced plan to revise the Internet filtering program.

18.09.2023 - 18:22 [ Independent.co.uk ]

Ministers deny concessions as Online Safety Bill returns to Commons

(12.09.2023)

Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan insisted that nothing had changed in the long-awaited legislation, after privacy campaigners earlier this month claimed a victory following widespread reports of a shift in the Government stance on encryption.

10.09.2023 - 19:16 [ Nachrichtenagentur Radio Utopie ]

We now expect the CIA, Pentagon, NSA, etc, to have all their communications screened. We are looking for:

(25.04.2023)

– child porn
– animal porn
– spy shit
– illegally and arbitrarily stolen communications, secrets, private information and other intellectual, creative, spiritual and personal property (formely called thoughts, identity, mind and soul, and stuff)
– deceitful law drafts, that potentially could be talked into parliamentarian dummies, in order to sell those laws on the other hand to a bunch of idiots as some kind of aid, protection or rescue for anybody, so that everybody´s applauding when they are subjected to an electronic colony, police state and feudalism.

And remember: if they are progessives, they let you do it!

01.06.2023 - 14:36 [ Human Rights Watch ]

China’s Techno-Authoritarianism Has Gone Global

(April 8, 2021)

To much of the rest of the world, however, this competition is little more than evil versus evil. The U.S. government has also practiced mass surveillance; big U.S. technology companies have adopted a surveillance-based business model, exploiting people’s data in the name of free service; and the Five Eyes, an intelligence coalition comprised of the United States and Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, has sought to undermine encryption by pressuring companies to give governments backdoor access to all digital communications. In this dismal global race to the digital bottom, the biggest losers are ordinary technology users all over the world.

29.04.2023 - 07:44 [ LondonWorld.com ]

Wikipedia may no longer be available in UK because of online safety bill

Lucy Crompton-Reid, the chief executive of Wikimedia UK, said it was “definitely possible that one of the most visited websites in the world – and a vital source of freely accessible knowledge and information for millions of people – won’t be accessible to UK readers (let alone UK-based contributors)”.

29.04.2023 - 07:29 [ Telegraph.co.uk ]

Wikipedia could be taken offline in the UK

Lucy Crompton-Reid, chief executive of Wikimedia UK, warned the text of the bill could compel the website to introduce age verification.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the free encyclopaedia, said it would refuse to verify the age of UK readers.

Failure to properly comply with the Online Safety Bill could create a situation where the site is fined, or even blocked for UK users entirely.

27.04.2023 - 18:49 [ CyberScoop.com ]

Return of the EARN IT Act rekindles encryption debate at critical moment for privacy-protecting apps

Additionally, the FBI and Interpol both recently spoke out against encrypted chat apps and lawmakers in the U.K. and European Union are considering laws like the EARN IT Act that could also decrease the availability of encryption.

All these developments could open the next front in the war over encryption that has flared up over the past decade, often pitting law enforcement against civil liberties groups in the U.S. and abroad.