The UK's Online Safety Act Ushers in a 1984 State

On July 25, the UK rolled out its Online Safety Act (OSA). A petition to repeal the Act is growing to almost half a million signatures as VPN use surges 1,400% to circumnavigate its new age verification checks. Why is a law intended to make the internet a safer place for children so controversial?

Unlike the name suggests, the OSA is merely a springboard for more expansive, intrusive, and powerful surveillance laws that would make George Orwell blush.

Restricting Internet Access Opens the Door to Future Abuse

Under OSA, sites and platforms which host certain state-defined “harmful” content, such as pornography, are mandated by law to conduct age verification checks to ensure every user is at least 18 years old. These checks could require the user to upload a copy of their government issued ID, submit to a facial recognition scan, or provide credit card information.

The Act is also written in such a way that it could allow the government to eventually compel end-to-end message encryption apps, like WhatsApp and Signal, to break their own encryption and allow the UK government to monitor and search peoples’ private messages and chats under the guise of scanning for illegal content.

While OSA is marketed as a sort of ‘common sense’ law to protect minors on the internet, its broad drafting and lack of robust definitions will lead to a clear abuse of power. Specifically, the Act lays out a four-part test to determine whether someone is guilty of committing a “false communication”:

1. the person sends a message (see section 182),
2. the message conveys information that the person knows to be false,
3. at the time of sending it, the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, and
4. the person has no reasonable excuse for sending the message.

Since terms like: “knows to be false,” “intended,” “non-trivial,” and “harm,” are loosely defined (if at all), the UK government has effectively written itself a blank check to unilaterally determine what is an offense, and what is not. That doesn’t bode well for the average internet user, or for their right to privacy.

“Saving the Children” is An Excuse to Expand Government Control

The UK government has quickly moved to use the OSA to monitor activity well beyond age verification for porn sites. According to gov.uk, illegal content and activity that is banned from public viewing now includes, “racially or religiously aggravated public order offences,” and “illegal immigration and people smuggling.” Despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s promise to ‘tread more lightly’ on citizens’ lives and rights, police squads have now been formed in accordance with this new law to track ‘anti-migrant’ online posts critical of the current migrant crisis overwhelming the UK. Multiple reports have confirmed that any posts, clips, or articles discussing recent anti-migration protests are quickly censored and scrubbed from the UK internet.

Even Wikipedia isn’t safe from government overreach, as the public encyclopedia will likely be labeled a “high-risk” site for hosting ‘problemantic’ political articles. Under OSA, thousands of Wikipedia volunteers will likely be compelled to submit ID verification to the government, exposing them to privacy and safety risks.

What was first a bill pitched as a way to protect youth from dangerous online content has inevitably morphed into yet another excuse for the government to violate our right to privacy. 

These Surveillance Laws are Spreading. Kiss Privacy Goodbye

Unfortunately for internet users, the UK’s new surveillance state isn’t confined to the British Isles. The EU is set to follow, as it is taking steps to implement an EU-wide age verification system across the entire continent by the end of 2026. Australia is also flirting with this new anti-privacy policy, hoping to also introduce face technology and ID checks. Much like the empty promises heard from the UK, Jenny Duxbury, digital policy director of Digi, an industry body working with Australia’s eSafety commissioner stated: “These codes introduce safeguards for specific use cases, not a blanket requirement for identity verification across the internet.” If history has taught us anything, it is that government-made promises are meant to be broken.

America may soon follow. The Kids Online Safety Act, a bipartisan bill unanimously advanced out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce last year, is one step closer to becoming national law. This bill purports to take steps to improve the mental health impact of social media on American children by heavily regulating internet companies and apps by altering their default privacy and security settings to shield minors from potentially harmful content. Sounds familiar?

The steady creep towards 1984-style authoritarianism is nothing new. China has been implementing artificial intelligence and other technology to completely deanonymize its populace through cell phone-based facial recognition software for years now. The question remains: Will the West decide to protect its citizens’ right to privacy, or will it risk becoming more like China, for the sake of “safety?”