UK Houses of Parliament
An unenforceable and entirely politically-motivated law that could have seen Apple iMessages and WhatsApp withdraw from the UK has been watered down to a face-saving compromise.
The UK’s calamitous decision to leave the European Union has left it with a raft of systemic problems that now include its school buildings being unsafe, but its politicians have attempted to divert attention by talking up an absurd Online Safety Bill. If it had passed in its original form, it would have required Apple and other firms to effectively shut down the end-to-end encryption that is needed for privacy.
Apple denounced the plans and threatened to pull both iMessages and FaceTime from the UK if it became law. WhatsApp then followed suit.
Today the law has its final debate in Parliament, but ahead of that, the Financial Times says that regulator Ofcom will introduce a new clause that effectively ends it. The law will most likely pass the debate, but it will be rendered powerless.
Originally, it said that companies like Apple would be required to allow the UK government to scan and monitor any phone, ostensibly in order to search for child abuse images. Now it still says that, but with a significant climb-down.
“A notice [to companies such as Apple] can only be issued,” says Ofcom’s amending statement, “where technically feasible and where technology has been accredited as meeting minimum standards of accuracy in detecting only child sexual abuse and exploitation content.”
No such technology exists today, nor is it feasible that there will ever be a system that only allows the good guys to break end-to-end encryption.
So the law is dead, iMessages, FaceTime and WhatsApp will continue unaffected, but the UK government can still get a news cycle in which it claims to have come down hard on Big Tech.
