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Samizdata quote of the day – Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK’s latest threat to privacyOur statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. – Signal official statement June 8th, 2026 |
 20 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK’s latest threat to privacyLeave a Reply |
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The distance between a phone configured like this and George Orwell’s telescreen is very small. The phone having the advantage that, unlike a telescreen, it is literally on your person at all times. The real danger to children? Living in a totalitarian, authoritarian society where the government knows and tracks everything you say or do, and can cut you off at the knees as soon as you get out of line.
It seems particularly ironic that the government that ignored massive amounts of evidence of systemic child trafficking, sexual exploitations of under age girls, and horrendous amounts of brutal rape, has the audacity to want to check if I have naughty pictures on my phone.
These people are monsters and good on Signal for standing up. I hope, like 4Chan, they are in a position to tell the UK to fuck off.
Good post Fraser Orr.
but “a totalitarian, authoritarian society where the government knows and tracks everything you say or do, and can cut you off at the knees as soon as you get out of line.” and “ignored massive amounts of evidence of systemic child trafficking, sexual exploitations of under age girls, and horrendous amounts of brutal rape,…”
And your hope is someone can tell them to “fuck off”? My hope would be that 10,000 UK government officials would be deleted with prejudice! Stood up in public, their crimes read out loud and then “deleted”. And of course I mean deleted from social media and only in Minecraft! And our friends in the UK only have that option, no other options for deletions.
Just wondering what y’all are going to do about it.
Subotai Bahadur
Probably sweet Fanny Asams
Ah, but the government only wants all *children’s* phones to be incapable of having piccies of nudity. But they are insisting Apple and Google do this, so what are they going to do, break into the Samsung factory?
Appropriate that this post appears on samizdat(a).
This is a very old trick – much older than computers.
300 years ago Prime Minister Walpole showed a play to the House of Commons – it was a dreadful play, celebrating rape, murder and so on – and the House of Commons agreed that plays must be censored. What they did not know was that Walpole was the person who commissioned the play – he did not give a damn about “the children” seeing rape and murder, the whole thing was an excuse for political censorship.
What the government of the United Kingdom (and most other nations) want is for the only information on the world children get to be from the far-left education system and “mainstream media” (the endless lies of the BBC and so on), and they are using porn as an excuse for this political censorship.
As an aside I know of specific cases (which I cannot detail for commercial and privacy reasons) where employees improperly accessed customer details on a large customer database to find out information on specific customers.
While the business took special measures to make this tougher there is no way to prevent a determined person from finding out these details – because if the details can be digitally stored they can be digitally accessed.
So guarantees of ‘privacy’ while scanning digital devices are worthless.
Some years ago I was in an IT project doing hardware and software refresh for GP practices. It was impossible for us to not be able to access live patient data, as the entire point of the system was accessing live system data, and in order to install the systems we needed god-level access to the system, so it was impossible to prevent us accessing live patient data, and we needed to access live patient data to ensure the updated system worked.
Even though we could, we didn’t access actual real human patients’ data, we had a dozen or so test patients in the system who would go through dummy medical procedures. Michael Mouse was on Warfarin, Annette Curtain had bipolar disorder – couldn’t pull herself together. ayethenkyu
And as a final test, we asked an actual medic to log in with their login details and asked them to do some test patient lookup processes.
“every device scanned” – in the United States this would violate the Forth Amendment on searches of private property without a warrant with probable cause (although the 4th Amendment is often violated).
Britain has no constitution (“we have an unwritten constitution” – indeed like the elves at the bottom of your garden, and the dragon who lives under your bed) – so the government can do anything it feels like doing, as long as it chants some slogan “it is for the children!” or other.
Yes, it is really about crushing dissent – this is modern Britain, of-course that is what is really about.
@jgh
Some years ago I was in an IT project doing hardware and software refresh for GP practices. It was impossible for us to not be able to access live patient data,
When I left the UK to move to the USA I went to my doctor and asked for my medical records so that I could take them with me and pass them on to my new American doctor. He refused and told me that NHS records were the property of the government and I was not allowed to see them.
To state the bleedin’ obvious, vote for the only party with a realistic chance of winning who unequivocally opposed this… And that would be Reform
When I worked for several years in Spain and Gibraltar, I was able to get medical records from the NHS to share with doctors in Spain and Gibraltar. This was in the early 2010s. Wasn’t an issue for me.
Various Parliamentary groups have dragged the heads of software companies into ‘hearings’ for years. The common factor seems to be that MPs who know nothing about technology, including what’s possible, have totally impractical demands they wish to impose on those technology companies.
My fondest wish is that the tech company bosses say, ‘OK, yeah. You know what? We’re just going to remove our services from you country. And the landing page for users in your country will explain exactly why.’ Imagine if X, Facebook, etc. made a co-ordinated response.
PST: the problem with that solution is that it will be the presence of X or FB or other social media that makes it possible for people to band together and share info and change things.
I think THAT would be the preferred outcome for the PTB. Wipe out all samizdat! This censorship program is just second-best.
Fraser, based on certain experiences getting info out of local governments, your doctor may have been blowing you off simply because he didn’t want to do the paperwork.
Perry – Reform must guard against being institutionally captured.
For example, both North Northants and West Northants Unitary Authorities (both supposedly controlled by the Reform Party) have spent very large sums of money on new signs on the roads – with their name and logo on them, and have gone along with the “Youth Parliament” stuff as well. Reform party voters did not want this – no voters wanted this, this is all from the officials and “experts”.
In national government the pressure to go along with the officials and “experts” would not be less than it is local government – it would be more, the pressure would be worse.
“Do you not care about THE CHILDREN minister?”
I must point out that the new road signs have no useful information on them – just the name of the local authority (“welcome to….”) and the logos.
It is a corporate branding exercise, straight from the officials and experts.
Ditto youth parliaments (where an “election” with 600 votes, out of hundreds of thousand of people, is supposed to be democracy) citizen juries (with their predetermined conclusions) and all the rest of it.
It is depressing to see the Reform Party caught in the same trap that the Conservative Party was caught in.
“It is POLICY Paul” – but when did we discuss this policy, why are we fallowing it? “It is POLICY Paul” being then repeated – as if repeating the same thing was supposed to be an argument.
The “leaders” of councils, and national governments, supposedly controlled by Conservatives – following “POLICY” which they did not make, policies that were really made by (international) officials and “experts”.
Paul,
It is not dissimilar here. Those “Welcome to…” and “We thank you for driving carefully” annoy me a lot. They annoy me a lot for a number of reasons. You are quite correct that they are mere “branding” (Note the driving carefully ones don’t actually show the speed limit! But the councils put ’em up whilst not mending the roads. They also have been very lax around where I live at trimming vegetation which means the road signs that do carry useful info are frequently obscured. My council is Labour (recently, used to be Tory since the days of Disraeli and Gladstone). I suspect it will go Reform. Anyway. They keep on putting up useless signs to say how great they are. This happened under the Tories as well. Actually they were arguably worse because Cheshire East is a newish thing. And a lot was spent on “rebranding” our glorious New Atlantis. But it gets worse. I’m a Quaker Warden and the Meeting House is up an obscure back lane (which has a road surface that would be shameful in Mogadishu). There used to be a sign to point out where we are from the main road. Now some wazzack a few years back knocked down the lamp post the sign was on. I have the sign in my porch (long story – quite darkly amusing). Cheshire East have refused to rehang it. I can’t because I’m not allowed to do such things. They did replace the lamp post.
So… What’s a guy to do? Well… We had a massive drop off in bookings with COVID (we had all sorts in: yoga, a choir*, a blues band, mother and toddler groups, an art group and all sorts). We are just getting back in numbers over the past year or so. Now that is partly down to me. I designed posters and flyers. distributed them. And all of them have a QR code on them. It takes you straight to our location on Google Maps! It was also my idea to put up signage next to the building saying we’re for hire. Because the Quakers don’t proselytise to a level that could be seen as arrogance lots of folks don’t know what they are or think they’re peculiar sect like the Amish. I have been asked why I’m not wearing a hat with a buckle on it. I’m not even a Quaker. I’m not even religious! I answer phones, clean toilets, direct car-parking and run the show. Well, my wife and I do.
*The choir leaving us wasn’t down to COVID – one of them broke an ankle on our terrible lane so they sort somewhere else.
People’s Front of Judea or Judean People’s Front? 😉
Honestly, the Amish aren’t all that terribly peculiar in relation to the Quakers. Anabaptists without phones versus Anabaptists with phones.