The war on privacy and encryption goes on. This time in the UK. Under the “Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill”, lawmakers now want client-side scanning on every phone and tablet.
The lawmakers write: “Any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device.”
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Once again, they use “what about the children”, this time to install state spyware that would continuously scan every action on a phone or tablet and watch everything that is shown on the screen. This will effectively ban end-to-end encrypted communication and open source operating systems like GrapheneOS and forbid that people have administrator rights on their own devices.
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RE: https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/115747292179816100
Nearly every single “think of the children” problem that a law tries to solve would be actually solved (and significantly more effectively at that) with better parenting; and that could be accomplished with easier access to education for parents and children, more subsidies, resources, and tax breaks for those in need, and a public education campaign to encourage higher education and access of publicly-available resources on parents.
Plus some better method of education parents and teachers on the latest tech trends and shit that kids are doing; maybe creating a “technical educator” role in school districts who is in charge of keeping educators and parents informed of the current landscape. Perhaps that could also be a burden placed on the tech companies themselves to have actually useful parental control and learning tools, along with stricter regulation on platforms not properly handling known abusers. Roblox is a terrible offender on that last point.
If the politicians supporting these laws actually cared about children, they would instead enact some radical-left solution like paying teachers fair wages for the work they do and giving more resources to schools. That would be the number one way to set future generations up for success, but that’s probably communism or something.
