Scrap the Online Safety Bill!
Steve Grimes • 26 January 2023
News & Social Media / Post
Steve Grimes explains why this pernicious bill should be stopped altogether.
Without free speech, we would live in a world under repression. Nevertheless, we are moving in this direction.
The UK Independence Party considers the Conservative government’s proposed Online Safety Bill to be extremely hazardous and a serious threat to freedom of speech. Strangely; this Bill closely resembles legislation under development in the undemocratic EU and it could become law as soon as spring 2023. The Bill started life as a way to protect children but it has mutated into a huge control machinery, which, in its current form, smacks of state sponsored surveillance and a serious constraint on the right to self-expression.
The Online Safety Bill will facilitate state-backed surveillance of all private communications on-line and it will include the widest and most powerful surveillance laws ever proposed in any Western democracy. No on-line communication in the UK would ever again be secure or private. This is hugely unacceptable to the UK Independence Party.
While there is much in the Bill that might be useful in confronting illegal and harmful on-line content, the UK Independence Party believes it goes too far. The bill would make end-to-end encrypted platforms like WhatsApp scan all photos against a database. This would mean de-facto government surveillance and a snooper’s charter, which would be no different to legalised telephone tapping affecting everyone (not just suspected criminals).
The UK Independence Party rejects the Online Safety Bill in its current form. We do not want our freedom of speech monitored by or controlled by big tech companies. This shocking Bill is not acceptable. Our party would scrap it and start again.
It is not just the Conservatives; Labour is in it too. They have made clear they would make things even worse if they get into government by banning VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), which would put the UK in the same bad company as China, North Korea and Russia.
Clearly voting for the legacy establishment parties is a way to place your freedoms at serious risk.
The UK Independence Party Digital Economy and Technology policy is very clear on our position:
- An open internet is essential to encourage individualism. It must function as a free market of ideas, goods, and services, with minimal interference and unproductive regulation.
- We aim to prevent social media providers restricting free expression or suspending people for “wrong-think”. This is a form of censorship, and we will direct such action (only if warranted) to be authorised exclusively by relevant lawful governmental authorities.
- We oppose any ban on end-to-end encryption. We will make secure communications an inviolable right.
- We strongly endorse social media as a huge driver of personal expression and a means to expand political participation for people who have had no voice in the past.
If you share our concerns, please consider supporting the UK Independence Party’s campaign to scrap the online safety bill.
Steve Grimes
UK Independence Party - Spokesman for Business, Trade and Foreign Affairs
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