Messaging application company Signal is calling out the United Kingdom over its plans to implement age verification that the government says will “protect” children.
As part of a new policy that would ban social media for those in the U.K. under 16 years old, the government has also announced plans to force companies to infiltrate the phone libraries of every youngster — and soon every person within its jurisdiction who fails to upload ID.
‘Children deserve to be safe, protected, and nurtured. They do not deserve surveillance.’
Such is the shocking scope and speed of the latest amendment to the country’s Online Safety Act. Just last week, embattled and unpopular Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced content detection and blocking would only be turned by age verification check, a process that in practice requires universal ID submission and/or face scanning in order to use your phone in an ordinary fashion.
An official government website details that the sitting Labour Party plans to force “Big Tech companies like Apple and Google” to activate built-in features or implement technical solutions to “detect and block nude images for children.”
This must take effect within the next three months for smartphones and tablets, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.
To implement these changes — which the government said would “prevent predators” from exploiting victims — anyone refusing to submit to the ID system would be unable to “take, share, or view nude content.”
Civil rights advocates and privacy-forward apps responded with outrage, warning that the measures would begin a rapid process of total national registry and surveillance.
Representatives from the Signal app responded by threatening to withdraw entirely from the U.K. market unless major changes are made.
“Children deserve to be safe, protected, and nurtured. They do not deserve surveillance,” Signal said in a press release.
“The U.K. government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning, will not safeguard children. It endangers us all,” they added.
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After describing the U.K. government’s demand as a dystopian phone scanning operation, the company then warned such policies would lead to the government wielding its powers as a method of censorship and surveillance under the guise of what officials might consider to be “threats” or “harmful content.”
“Wherever it runs, including the ‘camera’ itself once it is in place on U.K. devices — its scope will be defined by the whims and proscriptions of the government to detect nudity today and political speech tomorrow,” Signal warned.
Of course, social media companies came at the policy change from a different angle, saying that pushing teens off their platforms would only lead to less safety.
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Thomas Trutschel/Photothek/Getty Images
“Blanket bans push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services,” a YouTube spokesperson told CNBC.
A Meta spokesperson told the outlet that bans risk isolating teenagers from online communities and information, which would send them to unregulated alternatives.
Other restrictions in the U.K. include blocking livestream and communication with strangers for those under 16 and a consideration for online curfews overnight.
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