UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail Leaders of social media companies could face up to two years in jail if they repeatedly fail to protect children from harmful content online, under the latest amendments said to have been added to the UK's Online Safety Bill. Under the proposed rules, technology executives could be held criminally liable for violating statutes …
Or, if the bill passes, rebels representing *****tone and Stocksbridge.
Thoughts and prayers for the MP for Scunthorpe.
And it will make it even trickier for some men to find the MP for Clitheroe, in the definitely-not-a-euphemism Ribble Valley.
"the threat of criminal prosecutions could deter investment and drive companies to leave the country"
Go run while you can. Sooner or later, every decent country will have such rules, at which point you'll be forced to be hosted in some island haven that will be blocked, so good luck serving your wares to the few who live on the same island.
I am sick of seeing major companies get barely a slap on the wrist when they don't respect the rules, then threaten to up and leave when the rules get tightened.
Go host yourselves in China. Ask Ma what he thinks about that.
> There's almost no chance of it being used against Facebook.
Sadly you are probably right
but currently fines are having no effect on the industry, it is almost like the opening sequence of Porridge
Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court, and it is now my duty to pass sentence. You are an habitual criminal, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard, and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner.
These companies view fines as an operating expense. It is cheaper to pay the fines than to tackle the problem. Of course ultimately there may be no way to tackle some of the problems with user generated content but that's another topic.
Currently the management of these companies effectively don't have anything to lose personally - hey the company will pay the fine and I'll get double bonus because it was cheaper to pay the fine.
How else do can the companies be incentivised to behave themselves if fines don't work?
"It's more about stopping Steve down the road from opening an online forum where he could expose wrongdoings of the government."
Read the detail of the proposal again. We're talking here about a pretty narrow set of circumstances that no court of law would ever consider to cover what you're talking about. Or can you not read it because you tinfoil hat has slipped over your eyes?
>>Read the detail of the proposal again. We're talking here about a pretty narrow set of circumstances that no court of law would ever consider to cover what you're talking about.
I'm unclear from what you say as to why you seem to imply that Steve down the road has nothing to worry about. If Steve has opened an online forum then he is absolutely 100% within the scope of the legislation. And to parrot your statement, go read the legislation and it's very clear in taht regard.
Whether he may find himself in court will then be wholly dependent on what takes place in that forum. Yes, if it's all about wrongdoings of government then he's probably going to be OK. But if other matters start to be discussed, he might not sleep so well at night.
While the current proposal doesn't cover that. it's a foot in the door, thin end of the wedge etc. I trust this current shower of bar strewards about as far as i could throw the queen mary. But you still get an upvote for pointing out that the circumstances are narrow. AT THE MOMENT
Wait, I don't get it. I was thinking you were in favor of this kind of rules, but then in the last lin you brought up China as an apparent negative example. But these rules make the West more like China (where ostensibly "anti-pornography" laws are regularly used to quash dissent). Now I'm not sure what you mean. We should all be more like China, so that major companies have nowhere to hide? Not sure that position will be popular.
It's good that company executives are personally liable for the operations of their company. I'm a bit conflicted that its being introduced into legislation that is deeply flawed for other reasons (I support the supposed aims but I doubt these aims can be achieved)
Much better to introduce this sort of personal liability to a host of other company wrongdoings eg large scale environmental pollution
I like the idea of execs facing time as a result of their decisions (A Company, although a legal entity, doesn't make decisions; it's the execs of the company that do). Now could we maybe extend that to all of the other illegal things they keep doing without any comeback? Maybe GDPR should be extended to make execs personally liable for any company failings...
The main problem with financial penalties for corporations is the guilty parties in the board room are not penalised at all. The fine will be paid by "the company" and recouped either by increasing prices to the customer or reducing or stopping pay increases to staff and if the fine is really big as a last resort, reducing stock dividends.
The directors however will still get their full remuneration with all the usual bonuses and generous pension contributions.
Corporation fines should be paid by the board personally, perhaps by raiding their over-stuffed pension fund first then by fining the board in person, seizing assets if necessary followed by prison time if they don't have adequate funds.
Yes,. this needs to be extended to other deliberate lawbreaking. (H&S is a really extreme situation actually, as it can put the directors in prison in theory, even if they personally were merely negligent, not deliberately evil , as they often are in other situations where a fine is handed down)
We should extend it to make banking execs criminally liable for tanking the economy.But Rishi would never do something that would land him and his former colleagues in prison
Goldman Sach's country leader has other priorities. But we do really need a mechanism to hold those directly responsible for tanking the economy to account. I suggest a couple of modest proposals-
1) MP's pay and benefits are performance related. We should not reward failure(s). So simply base MP's pay on inflation. That's currently running at 10.5%, and obviously greatly harms the entire UK. So pay should be set based on an RPI- formula, so pay is reduced by 10.5% quarterly until inflation is down to 2%. Or preferably lower.
2) Failure to achieve inflation targets, or consistently missing targets is obviously gross negligence, and misconduct in public office. So offenders should be stripped of their pay, benefits and pensions, and jailed for a minimum of 10 years.
3) MPs should set up a commission to investigate price inflation, and whether that's justifiable or simple profiteering. Some elements, eg the 'Renewables' lobby are obvious candidates for fraud investigations and charges given the gap between claims, ie "It's cheap" and the reality we see on our energy bills. This would also help MPs achieve their inflation targets.
But I think this is as unlikely as successful prosecutions of big tech execs. Their users create the content, not the execs. Plus legislation already exists. So if one of the big tech titans has child pornography on any of their systems, public or private, they could already be prosecuted as possession of CP is a strict liability offence. So at the very least they could test the legal waters by bring charges against corporate officers under existing law.
Personally I’d be happy if they paid all their taxes and didn’t keep using tricks to keep the profits offshore. I suggested one lunchtime with some colleagues that large firms should have to explain the reason why if they had huge sales they made no or very little profit. Can’t remember which company it was in the news for this at the time but we all agreed they were just moving the money away from where it was earned.
I also said executives should have their renum eration cut by a percentage when they break the rules. Also said they should fine companies by turnover not profit. They have now done that (global turnover no less) with the ICO which I approve of and applaud. Good luck with getting a US executive extradited from the USA though.
LOL they barely prosecute those who do breach it, and then reduce fines when they plead poverty.
https://dataprivacymanager.net/ico-reduces-british-airways-gdpr-fine-to-20-million-for-2018-data-breach/
They should have linked it to 10% profits over 20 years…. Not reduced it to around 15% of the original punative fine. BA must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
They're even counting saying nice things about channel migrants as harmful. (But only in video form, for now at least)
No, big bosses will avoid jail with use of brown envelopes.
It's about preventing people from starting independent social networks.
The goal is only to have a few big players on the market that government can easily control and threat everyone else with jail.
WEF says that "misinformation" is the biggest threat to the society (they mean themselves), so this is part of the effort to keep flow of information under control.
He is a WEF "information warrior". They have thousands of these monitoring different forums. Their latest script is that anything negative about WEF is apparently antisemitic.
This is a classic manipulation technique (anchoring) as they want to associate people criticising and exposing WEF with things that are frowned upon and that way silence their voice.
I have no experience with the WEF, but I have been called anti-semite on many occasions for my criticism of the Israeli right wing government.
Indeed, when I was living in Tel Aviv, both myself and my Israeli Jewish girlfriend at the time received such accusations!
And of course, Rachel Riley from "Countdown" (UK TV show) has smeared Corbyn for his support for the Palestinians.
And Americans protesting the Israeli government get it all the time, even being banned by law from daring to support Palestinians (so much for free speech / land of the free) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in_the_United_States
It seems to be a thing!
Miriam Cates said thusly: "...the strictest sanctions need to apply for harming children..."
This is more of the same from our law makers:
- No budget for enforcement
- Make someone else responsible (in this case online service providers)
- Pass a law which demands "age verification" ... when absolutely no one knows how this can be 100% enforced
- ....or even 1% enforced!!
....but, of course, our law makers are "doing something".......
I would think it patently obvious where all of this will end up, and that is with most UK internet users employing VPNs most of the time, with the VPN end-point in somewhere like Norway or Switzerland. Content snooping has largely gone already with the widespread adoption of SSL, but metadata of which sites a person visits is still useful to the security services. However, if the UK government insists on trying to censor anything and everything they can get their grubby little mitts on, VPNs will become commonplace and even the metadata information will be lost to the security services.
Where teenagers trying to look at porn is concerned, the problem is even worse since there are quite a number of "free" Chinese web VPNs which allow for free browsing, but which front for the Chinese security services and for numerous other black hat organisations. Such websites are a notorious source of malware alongside their own snooping.
All in all, "Think of the Children" used to backdoor censorship is not going to work or do anything other than persuade the common man that the government is really very silly and best worked around if at all possible.
This post has been deleted by its author
Right, so as it's common knowledge that Twitter and Facebook are full of the sort of toxicity that this bill is meant to criminalise, it will be inevitable that the home secretary must therefore, applying the new law, have to request the extradition of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk from the USA within weeks of it passing in order to stand trial and be locked up.
Which would presumably receive a very interesting response from our allies. Of course they'd never dare actually apply the law they're making such a big song and dance about right now in this way, especially as they are highly dependent on these companies for spreading misinformation political campaigning.
It's a pity they didn't think of this in respect of Data Protection, the penalties for infingements of which are merely "regulatory". Vastly more people suffer from corporate abuses of privacy than from those this bill addresses, but nobody in authority seems particularly interested.
especially for Heathrow as all social media execs now book their trips to/from/around europe to avoid landing in the UK.
More seriously, it wont be the 'metatwitter' CEO that will be jailed as he'll be able to afford an army of lawyers and issue appeal after appeal even if convicted.
It will be the people running much smaller 'social media' outfits that will fall into this law.
And most importantly, the age verification system* , it will become the most hackable target in the entire internet ,even more so than the pentagon's UFO section.
Not for the credit card information, but the names and addresses of the people using it.
"Ahhh have I reached the office of Sir Talbot bottomly, minister of defence affairs, am I speaking to Sir Talbot? I am.. good ... I have information you've been using the age verification system... and only people looking at dodgy porn site use that .. right.... make sure you speak out about not sending any more stuff to the Ukraine and we'll forget this call...... and if you dont do it... well the tabloid newspapers will love this sort of thing 'request for verification from www.poodles_in_lace.com' so we all good about that... goodbye... nice to talk to you"
*and bypassed by 12 year old Jonny stealing his dad's credit card....
Just ban all children from social media.
Not doable? nor is checking all user generated content. One way around this (yes it does have problems to and you can all content is age restricted until it is checked and classified and all children have to be registered. Children only get to see content that is age classified of their age group. Everything they do is reported to their parent.
No one get to see content that has not been checked!
Parents it is your job to protect your children, the internet is not going to do it for you, nor is it a good baby sitter any more that that creepy person down the road!
You would not encourage you children to run around with sharp objects but some allow their children to run around the internet as if it just full of kittens (and even they have claws).
> Just ban all children from social media.
This is the way. Social media is not only a gateway into all sorts of toxic content and an attention-destroying dopamine pumping device, but it's a global psychological experiment on homo sapiens that we didn't realise we were signing up for, with the consequences on society and our brains still unravelling.
But it can't be done by parents. Has to be baked into the apps - need verifiable ID to register and occasionally re-authenticate.
Won't happen though. We'll just get the token hand-waving and virtue signalling whenever something bad happens and the occasional unenforcable/impractical bill going through.
Verifiable ID the question is how this is done without invading someone's right to privacy, maybe instead a none trackable "I an adult card" rather than I am Joe bloggs 27, address at 69 letsby avenue.
The "protect the children" cry is often raised not to save the children but to see what everyone else is doing?
Edit: As for something getting done mostly seems to be "thoughts and prays", which is only going to be useful if God(ess) takes direct action. (Joke may be climate change is their answer), Icon it is raining :o
Instead of spending $$$ on legislation, lawyers, complex tech, here is a proposal for paper-based tokens sold at retail shops and relatively minor tech cost. In detail:
1. Internet to stay free and uncensored.
2. Age tokens to be anonymous and not reusable. If you are visually over 18 years old, nobody asks for your ID in a shop to buy one.
3. For simplicity of usage, age scratch cards could verify at OS account level or browser level.
4. Responsibility will be shifted towards parents to make sure their children use CHILD ACCOUNTS or accounts not verified for age. If you don't have children, there is no problem or inconvenience. The assumption is that most people use iOS, Android, Windows etc. It is very unlikely for children to use exotic OS.
5. The only responsibility of content provider is to mark content as CHILD SAFE or SAFE FOR ALL. Else considered unsafe. Age gradations are possible.
6. Only CHILD SAFE content will be served to children through whitelists on OS or browser levels. Maybe even at Internet-protocol level labels to avoid maintenance of large whitelists.
7. Illegal reselling of tokens is possible, like any item, but it is orders of magnitude smaller in scale. Tracking/prosecution is possible by token card numbers.
8. The idea is not to 100% protect against adult or shocking content, but to reduce the scale of access, to say 99.8%. Some curious teenagers may find a way around, but this has always been so. Younger children are unlikely to be much interested - and they are the target to protect.
9. Anonymity is somewhat kept (your internet provider knows which sites you visit anyway, but not which specific content).
10. The cards can be sold with minimal price to compensate the tech implementation and maintenance.
11. This whole topic and related tech to protect children will be closed once and forever.
12. Internet platforms will be able to easily verify users' age, if necessary. The age tokens are not meant for identification, but a fast confirmation: "I am an adult. Do not filter my content by any means".
13. Tech companies will save billions on censoring content. Small companies will benefit most. Money will flow to innovation instead.
14. Political and dictatorial censorship will be hard to justify by the goal of "protecting children". So free speech will benefit.
Ok, well, I promise you that I have read this completely through three times and am still none the wiser about what you are proposing. A physical paper-based token which is sold in all good newsagents, (and quite a few bad ones too), and it does what? Does it has a code which you enter and allows you to access 'adult' websites, or any site which has any content that is not child-appropriate?
Is that right - and please do correct me if I've misunderstood your point. Because, I'm sorry that's just not how the internet works. How do you enforce each site conforming to your rules, ISPs are ordered to block those that don't? Unfortunately, somewhere around a quarter of a million new websites are set up EACH DAY - that's a hell of a lot of extra staff they'll need to ensure compliance, happy with your monthly broadband bill going up tenfold at least to pay for it are you?
And I have a couple of other queries, you talk about CHILD SAFE sites, who decides what is CHILD-SAFE, will that be YOU, you personally decide what large numbers of people are allowed to access or not. Look I understand that naively some people might think it's obvious and easy, the latest Teletubbies show (is that still a thing BTW) is obviously fine, whereas sluts-getting-fisted.com almost certainly isn't? However between those two extremes, there is a massive range of sites, where their suitability for children is open to interpretation.
Secondly, what do you mean by a 'child' is that anyone under 18 (well in the UK, not sure what the legal definition is in the US or other countries). Because if it is then there is a massive difference between what might be appropriate, and indeed useful and helpful for a 16 or 17 year old, is radically different to that appropriate for an 8 year old - personally, I'd really want a 15, 16, 17 year old to have full access to sex education websites and those offering contraception advice etc and know that they can do this discretely and privately. Your proposal sounds as if this wouldn't be possible unless these were also available to everyone under 18, no? Of course in an ideal world, it wouldn't be necessary because said 15-17 year old would be able to have a frank and 'adult' discussion about it with their parents - well; news flash, we don't actually live in an ideal world!
This might well be a controversial position but I have two daughters, they are now 21 and 16, but when they got to an age of wanting and expecting internet access, I deliberately didn't even try to implement any sort of filtering, basically on the grounds that I do this sort of stuff for a living and am painfully aware of how useless it all it, especially if you except it to be a stand-in for parental responsibility.
What I did do, is tell both of them that if they browse the internet freely then they absolutely will at some point stumble on something that they find disturbing or worrying or dangerous. But when they do, either regard it as the fantasy it is, or, even better, tell me or their Mum and show us what they found. And we will absolutely NOT be judgemental, or be angry, or take their iPads away etc. What we will do is honestly explain the reality of what they have found, discuss it openly, and just say, maybe be a little more circumspect in what you browse for in the future.
And you know what, they've both turned out to be perfectly well-rounded and rational human beings, and I'm fairly certain that they have both watched porn or stumbled upon it, and that's fine - because I would like to think that they have been given the tools to work out for themselves what is reality and what is just some fantasy which only really exists in the imagination of a porn company's director.
Now I'm not saying that this model will work perfectly for everyone - but thinking that some 'big brother', one size fits all, technological solution will work is complete rubbish.
What I can fairly confidently predict is that this legislation will have some limited successes which will be touted as a 'great success in protecting our children' by those advocating it. In reality it will do next to nothing to stop 'children' seeing stuff that you would rather they don't.
However it will absolutely be abused* and used (wrongly, but technically legally) to stifle annoying opponents off whoever is in power at the time. Some police officers (and it is probably a small minority) 'abuse' their positions and power - as we know all, too well from a very recent Court case, local authority staff, abuse their self-believed importance. Golden rule - via you give a group of people certain rights and powers over others, and a small subset of them ABSOLUTELY WILL abuse it, it's simply human nature!
* anyone remember the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act? What were MPs told who were worried about the details, 'no this will only be used to act against the worse terrorists and those who threaten the state', and it gets passed. And some years later we found that the interpretation is so loose that it was used to legally spy on people putting their bins out on the wrong day!
>> A physical paper-based token ... and it does what?
-----> Verifies that you are an adult. Only this.
>> Does it have a code which you enter and allows you to access 'adult' websites, or any site which has any content that is not child-appropriate?
-----> The code allows you to view the whole Internet, any type of content. Both safe and unsafe.
>> How do you enforce each site conforming to your rules?
-----> All web-sites are initially blacklisted by default. But you can access them ALL with your adult card. You do not have to verify with each site. My hope is this could be done on operating system level for all major operating systems.
>> ISPs are ordered to block those that don't?
-----> No. ISPs will do nothing. This is not their core business.
>> A million new websites are set up EACH DAY. That's a hell of a lot of extra staff they'll need to ensure compliance.
-----> No, they do not need any staff to comply. Web-sites do not need to comply at all. They will be available to ALL ADULTS (verified with cards). It is ONLY if they are to serve children, then yes, they must comply, and pass censorship.
>> Who decides what is CHILD-SAFE?
-----> The censors can be both private companies and government bodies. For example Apple already censors apps in its App Store. Apple is self-certified to serve apps to children, so to say. Alternatively PARENTS could whitelist sites for their children. Parent communities could be setup to curate content for their children.
>> There is a massive difference between what might be appropriate ... for a 16 year old ... and 8 year old.
-----> You can give a "free pass" to your teenagers. Register them as adults. It is fully your responsibility - not the government. And you cannot blame anyone. Nor the government should be able to blame you as a parent. Alternatively, when one day there is age gradation for web-resources, the system could become more granular.
The main advantages of age tokens is making adults aware and responsible. The cards can include detailed HOW-TO and WHY. Because majority of adults are non-technical and have no clue how to setup current parental controls. Instead, by buying and enabling access, they will take full responsibility for their children. No politicians can be blamed after that.
There have been some great suggestions that, rather than having children be thrown into the wilds at birth, they could be looked after by specific adults. In addition to providing food (since many children lack the wherewithal to go hunting or get a job, especially infants), these adults could also be made responsible for controlling what content children are exposed to.
I believe this has actually been trialled in some more progressive countries.
Do the UK think they are the world police like the US?
Try this on Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Facebook they'll all tell you to "Go fuck a duck, we're based in the US, you're laws don't apply to us. If you want them to, we'll move all our data centres out of the UK and Ireland. You'll now have to move all your tenants to the US servers if you wish to continue to use them. Then we can suck up all your data with our Patriot Act."
Its as stupid and Starmer wanted to make shotgun ownership more difficult now. Doesn't matter that the guns crooks use are fucking illegally acquired, just make it more difficult for law abiding citizens. Much like my knife I use for work I'd like to always carry. Its useful, is 3" all legal but because it has the safety locking feature, I can't fucking carry it. Doesn't matter that knifes used in crime are fucking kitchen knifes as they are cheap and disposable.
The law has been created by fucking idiots that don't understand how the Internet works. They are the ones screaming on the IT Crowd when Jen showed them the black box Internet. VPNs will avoid most of this shit. It will affect local bloggers and independent journalists. Hosting companies may decide they can't risk hosting UK sites anymore and so on and so on. Tories are fucking tits.
Oh, is that classed as hate speech? The Register best get ready then.
Oh and will Nadine Dorries be pulled up? Most of her Tweets wouldn't pass this shitty bill.
Its all done to silence those against the Tories. Much like the new shitty ID required to vote. I tried signing up to test it. The government do no checks the photo is the person who is signing up. It goes to the location elections department. They can't possibly check the photo is the person they say they are. We also have the fact photos have to specifically be a certain fucking size. Our old friend doesn't even have a smart phone, how's he gonna sign up for that? This also stops homeless people voting, how are they going to get access to a PC to do the upload and take a passport style photo? We also have Muslim voters, who are in their right to wear their religious dress when voting. However, the polling stations (and understand local election departments already have a hard time at election time as it is), they now have to setup a private area so they can ask the Muslim lady to show her face for ID purposes. This could cause a lot more Muslims not to vote. It was ALWAYS, clearly, a Trump style ploy to stop people voting because the Tories know they'll lose the next election.
The fact David Carrick got away with what he did for years and still got promoted. And now the police watchdog "Won't be doing any internal investigation" in case it reveals the MASSIVE failings of the police. Means this bill is even more of a joke.
Look up the Shana Grice case. She was being stalked by her ex for months and reported to the police several times. They eventually fined her for "Wasting police time" at which point the ex finally murdered her. Goes to show, Sussex police have always been useless cunts, just look up the case of Dominic O'Brien now in prison
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18208133.sussex-police-inspector-spared-jail-attempting-publish-obscene-material/
This online bill is a complete joke.
While this may sound good in theory, it's likely to do more harm than good in practice. Let me explain:
"...successfully proposed amendments that would see tech executives face up to two years in jail for consistently failing to comply with the bill's rules"
It's easy to see how an exec fails to cooperate with requests. It's not so easy to see what it means to consistently fail to comply with the rules when the rules require proactive engagement. Fear of prosecution is going to see more content taken down than is necessary, which is bad. If you're "thinking of the children", then think of their right to access content that is not harmful.
It is very, very difficult to come up with an effective framework for criminal sanctions here.
Getting rid of all those dangerous foreign Web 2.0 social media services. No doubt all to be replaced by 'world-beating' domestic alternatives, such as www.FriendsReunited.rip. Wikipedia has been corrupting the British people with facts and information on MPs' past misbheaviour for too long. The Long March back to Prestel begins here.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
