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The British government partially overseas chinese in australia data abandoned a key and highly controversial measure in its online safety bill, the Online Safety Bill, on Wednesday, September 6. Currently undergoing third reading in the House of Lords of the British Parliament, the bill includes a series of measures to protect minors, including requiring messaging operators to proactively scan their users' messages for child pornography.
However, this detection is technically impossible for messaging services secured by so-called "end-to-end" encryption. This makes a message unreadable, except for its sender and recipient: even the messaging operator cannot access its content. All major messaging applications, such as WhatsApp or Signal, use this technology, validated and recommended by the overwhelming majority of IT security experts, to protect their users from hacking and surveillance tools.
A senior Conservative member of the House of Lords, Stephen Parkinson, finally announced on Wednesday that the British regulator, the Office of Communications (or Ofcom), would only apply this provision "when [automatic detections] are technically feasible and meet the minimum criteria for detecting child pornography content" . A delay in the form of a renunciation: the technical feasibility of this tool has been, since the beginning of the debates, a point highly contested by the majority of experts.
Read also: In the United Kingdom, encrypted messaging services fear future control of online content.
"A welcome clarification"
Messaging operators had strongly protested against the bill, estimating in April, in an open letter signed in particular by the chief executive officers (CEOs) of WhatsApp, Signal and Wire, "that no company, government or individual should have the power to read your personal messages" , showing their determination to continue "to defend encryption technology". WhatsApp had threatened to withdraw from the British market altogether if the law were adopted as it stood.
“This is not a victory, but it is not a defeat either , ” said Meredith Whitaker , CEO of Signal, who regrets that at this stage the text of the bill does not reflect more clearly this change of position. “Is this all we wanted? No, but it is a welcome clarification, and it opens the door to a change in the text of the bill in the final stages of the debates.” “WhatsApp will never sabotage its encryption and will remain vigilant against all threats targeting it , ” added Will Whitcart , CEO of the messaging service.
