Mass Surveillance

The Online Safety Bill Campaign Hub is a place for members of the public, campaigners, politicians and experts to take action, and find out more about the issues around the Online Safety Bill.

The deployment of client-side scanning on private messaging systems was trailed in a recent research paper published by the technical directors of GCHQ and the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC).

The Online Safety Bill requires ALL online speech to be monitored for “harmful content”, including your private conversations with friends and family.

In 2013, following Edward Snowden’s disclosure of information about major national mass surveillance programmes, the Open Rights Group teamed up with Privacy International, English PEN, and Dr Constanze Kurz, a German computer scientist, to mount a legal challenge against the UK Government’s mass surveillance of the internet.

In January 2018, the Court of Appeal delivered judgment in a case regarding the Government’s “Snooper’s Charter” provisions, found in the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014, and in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.