I cannot recall a more disgusting article being published in a mainstream newspaper than this one written by His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology:
Farage is siding with disgusting internet predators – Peter Kyle
Last year, Nicholas Hawkes sent photos of his erect penis to a 15-year-old girl. It’s sadly too common an occurrence, making victims feel exploited, disgusted and unsafe.
But in this case there were consequences. A month later, Hawkes was convicted under the new offence of cyber-flashing created by the Online Safety Act – the first person to be convicted.
So when Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, boasts about his plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, it makes my blood boil.
Repealing the law would benefit men like Hawkes, a registered sex offender, and other disgusting predators who contact children and groom them online.
[…]
But as well as blocking disturbing and upsetting images and messages from children’s feeds, it [the Online Safety Act] also makes huge changes to the online environment children inhabit.
For the first time, it gives social media platforms an obligation to proactively keep children safe. It forces them to detect and remove horrific child sexual abuse material, which has shamefully lurked on the internet, barely hidden from those sick enough to seek it out.
[…]
And these are not just warm words – it’s a regime with teeth. If companies don’t follow the law, then Ofcom, our independent regulator, has the power to fine them up to 10 per cent of their global turnover.
For the most serious of offences, allowing child sexual abuse to run riot on a platform could even see someone criminalised. Plus it gives our police forces new offences to go after online criminals.
I cannot understand how anyone can be against these measures. How could anyone question our duty to keep children safe online – particularly when it comes to child sexual abuse content and from online grooming?
“Why do you hang back from punishing the traitors, comrade? Is it because you are one of them?” Demagogues have used that line for centuries.
An interesting and silly game Labour are playing here.
Anyone with a memory and who isn’t a total partisan shill remembers numerous occasions Labour have helped paedos and other sexual criminals.
There’s the links of Labour figures to the Paedophile Information Exchange.
There’s Peter Tatchell advocating lowering age of consent to 14.
Fat slob Tom Watson was completely taken in by the fantastical BS of a convicted paedo.
And so on……
The OSA also bans “hate speech”. Will that mean that pointing out the “grooming gangs” were overwhelmingly Muslim is illegal?
Probably at least loosely relevant.
Plamus,
I had seeen that elsewhere. Given the number of victims the police would have to have been at least complicit. At least.
FWIW, there is a petition to repeal the OSA here. I’ve signed but I’m also getting a VPN. Everyone should do both.
Imagine, if you will, that somehow Facebook or Twitter or Apple somehow was judged to be taking inadequate precautions by the bunch of ignorant morons who run Ofcom. It is run by Melanie Dawes who is to all intents and purposes Humphrey Appleby in a tweed skirt. She is, after all, well qualified for the job having been a civil servant all her life after graduating Oxbridge with a PhD in economics. And then spent her whole career in the DoT or the Treasury. One could not imagine a better preparation for judging when content is appropriate or inappropriate. Or she would be good at it if she didn’t need her secretary to tell her that “fire-fox” is a browser not a kinky porn star.
Imagine that Ofcom decides to fine one of these fine organizations 10% of their global turnover, for offending some piddling little agency in a country with less than 1% of the world’s population? I doubt they’d pay the fine, and they sure as hell would leave.
And let me tell you, Starmer has endured many shocks to his beleaguered little government, but no government, anywhere, at any time could survived the blowback from taking away Instagram and Pinterest from five million teenage girls. (I am the father of one, so, ask-me-how-I-know.)
Of course, it is all bullshit. The purpose is not to hit the likes of Apple or Google or Facebook. They already spend a great deal of money addressing inappropriate content. It is to go after regular folks, expressing controversial opinions, it is about enabling the police and security services to have unfettered access to our data, it is about “prosecutorial discretion” used to punish those who have done nothing wrong except displease the government.
What arrogance, dare I say, what colonialism, for the British government to think that their reach can span the whole internet. What utter technical incompetence to think that these ideas are going to be effective. What shame to think that their censorship regime puts the Russian one to shame.
CSAM will not be reduced one iota from this. It will just go underground using the many technologies available to do this, and so it will most likely to be HARDER not easier for the police to track down the truly vile people who do this to children. As usual, this big nasty bill will do exactly the opposite of what it promised, and effectively do what wasn’t promised but was intended — namely empowering the state and growing its budgets.