In reply to Sirius B's message of 19 May 2026:

I gave up on Labour when Michael Foot turned up on Remembrance Day in Jeans & Anorak.

I lasted a lot longer but gave up when Blair took us into a war in Iraq, justifying it with lies.

Children deserve to be safe, protected, and nurtured. They do not deserve surveillance,

The blogger conveniently does not address how without any surveillance children will be kept, "Safe, protected, and nurtured." The question I would pose is, why all the fuss about this when our data is already being harvested en-mass by the big tech companies? I see very little kick back on that which has far fewer safeguards than anything proposed by our government.

Because your government can and will use any information on you against you.

In reply to Jord's message of 9 Jun 2026:

Because your government can and will use any information on you against you.

Personally, I am far more worried about Meta, Google, et al using the information or allowing others to use it, either by design or otherwise. Interestingly, I have just completed a YouGov survey on this very topic.

There is always a danger that we get the worst of both worlds with a ban requiring age verification that is totally ineffective so the government gets the information and the teenagers still get unfettered access to the apps and both government and big tech having access to all their data

This is what the UK spyware proposal means.

There must be government spyware on every mobile device. It shall watch everything that happens, including always watching the screen, looking for things the government disapproves of. When anything is flagged by the software as something the government doesn't like, the software must block it from being sent or displayed (in realtime).

The user of the device must not be able to shut this watching and blocking off. The only way to shut it off would be to ask the government or its proxies to do so for you, at their discretion. Therefore the whole device must be locked down. Administrator rights and the decision of what software or operating system to run or not to run must be taken from the owner/user and handed to the government and its proxies.

Apple and Google are themselves working hard to lock down the devices they are involved in to shut out competition and establish a duopoly. The UK government says it is "working closely" with Apple and Google and currently they synchronise and coordinate their communication on this subject.

The UK government is now proposing to mandate what would otherwise be illegal anti-competitive practices.

Because that's what this means: "Britain will become the first country in the world where it is impossible for children to take, share or view naked pictures on their devices."
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-plans-to-stop-children-taking-sharing-or-viewing-nude-images

It isn't about the safety of children, it's about the government's control over you.

The greatest trick governments ever pulled was convincing people that freedom and privacy are obstacles to safety.

What we are witnessing is not child protection. It is the construction of a surveillance architecture that will eventually monitor, profile, categorize and control every aspect of our digital lives. Today it is age verification and content scanning, tomorrow it is digital identity, then financial monitoring, then behavioural scoring, then access to services conditioned on compliance.

The destination is not difficult to see. It is a technocratic system where every interaction is tracked, every transaction recorded, every opinion assessed and every citizen reduced to a data profile managed by governments and corporations working hand in hand. A form of digital neo feudalism where a small unelected class controls the platforms, the infrastructure, the money and ultimately the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.

The argument that only criminals should fear surveillance is as absurd as saying only criminals need freedom of speech. Privacy is not evidence of wrongdoing, it is the foundation of human dignity, individual sovereignty and genuine liberty. The UK government is asking citizens to accept the presumption of guilt simply to communicate online. To prove who they are, verify their age and allow their devices to inspect their content before they can participate in modern society.

History teaches us that every power granted to the state eventually expands beyond its initial mandate. The technology introduced to detect one form of content today will be used to police entirely different forms of expression tomorrow. The choice before us is not between privacy and child protection, it is between preserving a free society, or constructing the infrastructure of a digital prison that will further enslave us.

https://x.com/LauraAboli_X/status/2064242432376492044

I await more detail. Legislation takes time and it often changes as it goes through different stages. I know in Australia, (according to media reports here) the social media ban for under 16's is largely ineffective as they mostly find ways around it. I suspect that might happen here too, rendering the legislation ineffective.

Are debates over this issue happening in the EU too? I find it hard to believe this is only a hot topic in English language countries.

I know some in the Middle East and elsewhere just shut the whole of the internet down for their citizens from time to time.

Edit: I don't agree with your conclusions, or even your interpretation of the proposed legislation, but will try and keep quiet till the legislation is more detailed.

Are debates over this issue happening in the EU too?

Yes, the EU wants to have Chat Control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat_Control and are of course looking into making X forbidden.

I wouldn't forbid X but did delete my account when Musk took over.

That's your choice, I keep mine on as our national news is burying a lot of news they deem unworthy. They've for instance not uttered a word about Henry Nowak, or that little thingy that happened in Belfast last night. All they do is tell us again and again that Israel is a bad country and that they are constantly attacking the countries surrounding it, instead of saying that terrorists in those countries attack first and that Israel reacts. And of course every attack on Hamas is told as a sob story.

My government is now actively importing Palestinians. What could possibly go wrong, you'd say. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Both the Belfast story and the Nowak one are getting a lot of coverage here on BBC and other outlets of the left and right. I have always felt the bias in different media outlets is far more about what news they cover and what they leave out than in what they actually say about different stories.

https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-wants-message-scanning-on-phones

Sold to the public as a shield for children, it’s behaving more like a crowbar, and the government has now found the wall it most wants to lever open, which is the inside of your phone.

The giveaway is that the government isn’t inventing any of this. It’s ordering a louder remix of tracks the tech giants already cut.

Apple switched on device-level age checks for UK users earlier this year and now runs two relevant systems. Its Web Content Filter bars adult websites across Safari and every other browser. Its Communication Safety feature rifles through AirDrop, FaceTime, Messages, and Photos for nudity and blurs whatever it catches.

Google shipped its own version, branded Sensitive Content Warnings, which paws through Google Messages doing the same chore. According to The Times, ministers want all of it fused together and cranked up.

A program clever enough to recognize a naked body in any image, message, or video stream is more than a modest little nudity detector. It’s a general-purpose content scanner pointed at one target this year and swivelable toward any other the next, a flyer for the wrong march, a banned book, a face the Home Office has taken against.

Retargeting it won’t require a new law, a vote, or a podium. It’ll take a software update you never agreed to and almost certainly won’t be told about. The nudity ban is the foot in the door and doors have a habit of staying open once a government’s boot is wedged inside.

When Apple turned on age verification in March, roughly 35 million UK iPhone users restarted their phones and learned they now had to prove they were adults to keep using devices they already owned.

Today, UK government announced a ban from sometime next year on social media for under 16's. Does this make the scanning on phones redundant?

You mean the scanning of the phone for nudes and other things the government doesn't want you to have? No, that's separate and will still be implemented this year. The ban for under 16s is a ban for everyone, until you identify yourself.

In reply to Jord's message of 16 Jun 2026:

You mean the scanning of the phone for nudes and other things the government doesn't want you to have? No, that's separate and will still be implemented this year. The ban for under 16s is a ban for everyone, until you identify yourself.

Though given the number of statements by our current government that have later been retracted or changed out of all recognition, I am not betting on any of it.

I'm just wondering about this one:

The second more insidious one is happening much sooner. This one is the 'nudity detection' feature and this one operates on device level. It will require every adult to show a form of ID in order to operate their phones and tablets without restrictions/monitoring.

Doesn't that require an OS update? So what if you stick to your old phone that doesn't get OS updates anymore, will it no longer be serviced by ISPs and masts? I wonder how they want to force that.

The voluntary deadlines to tech companies to implement this is around early September this year.

If Apple, Google and others don’t implement device-level monitoring by then, the government has said it will bring forward legislation to make it mandatory.

Which may mean you're all to buy new phones and devices with the shit built-in? In that case, 1984 has arrived.

There are TWO bans on under 16's access to social media in the UK. The first is at the app level and this comes into play next year. It will require selected social media apps to prompt for age verification when accessing them.

And "selected" means all but BlueSky apparently, because when you herd kids onto one platform, it's impossible that the hunters will be there too.

Wonder how that works with LiniageOS? It may slip under the radar.

In reply to Jord's message of 16 Jun 2026:

In that case, 1984 has arrived.

Don't forget that handy builtin GPS. The infamous "THEY" will know exactly where your phone, and probably you, is/are at all times.

I've always been taught not to give my ID to online stores and other places, as when they're hacked your identification data is in the wind. But now you're supposed to trust the government with it? Can you post it with a watermark on top? I know of some payment apps that require email, photos of ID, photos of an official document showing your full name and address, your bank account and all without watermarks, and my reaction is always: uh. No. Noper the nope nope. Red flag for ID theft.

Some people are looking into the English case with Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 protects the right to private and family life, while Article 10 guarantees the right to freedom of expressions. The European Court of Human Rights requires that both rights be given equal respect, and courts must balance them on a case-by-case basis.

Some people are looking into the English case with Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 protects the right to private and family life, while Article 10 guarantees the right to freedom of expressions. The European Court of Human Rights requires that both rights be given equal respect, and courts must balance them on a case-by-case basis.

Interesting that the more right wing parties here while against these measures also want to take us out of the European convention on human rights.