Message scanning breaks end-to-end encryption, which puts everyone’s privacy and security at risk.

Practice Safe Text

The Online Safety Act includes mass surveillance powers under the spy clause. Ofcom can require messaging providers to scan everyone’s private chats for ‘illicit’ content.

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This introduces a backdoor that would make people vulnerable to hacking and abuses of their private information without any control over who gets access.

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Some providers of end-to-end encrypted messaging services, such as Signal and WhatsApp, have said they will withdraw their service from the UK, rather than undermine security if Ofcom decides to make use of these powers.

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A Threat to Privacy and Security

Message scanning powers are more suited to an authoritarian regime, not a democracy. It could harm journalists, and whistle-blowers, as well as parents, domestic violence victims and children who want to keep their communications secure from online predators and stalkers.

The Online Safety Act

Over 75% of adults in the UK use WhatsApp alone. Forcing companies to scan private messages would mean 24/7 mass surveillance of every smartphone in the country checking for matches against all of our content. The wide-ranging Ministerial powers in the Act mean that a future government could decide to scan for other kinds of content – such as political content – without proper Parliamentary scrutiny.

Government and law enforcement could force companies to scan your private messages for illicit content without judicial oversight, not unlike in surveillance societies like China. If we accept the principle of mass surveillance of our private messages, it opens the door to creeping authoritarianism.

The Investigatory Powers Act

The Investigatory Powers Act introduced powers that could force tech companies to apply to the Home Office before introducing updates that improve the security and privacy of their products. The Home Office could then serve notices preventing the updates from being applied.

These powers have recently been used to demand that Apple put a backdoor in its encrypted services, resulting in the advanced data protection tools being withdrawn from the UK entirely – sign our petition to save encryption (see below).