Online Safety Bill Policy Hub
The Online Safety Act Policy Hub is a place to find out more about the issues affecting end-to-end encryption and freedom of expression online.
ORG’s Analysis, Blogs and Letters to Government
References
Legal Opinion
| Graham Smith | Mapping the Online Safety Bill |
| Graham Smith | Online Harms and the Legality Principle |
| Graham Smith | Harm Version 3 |
| Gavin Millar QC | Why the Online Safety Bill threatens free speech |
| Gavin Millar QC | Written Evidence 2021 |
| Dan Squires KC | Opinion on prior restraint provisions within the Online Safety Bill |
Content Moderation
Monitoring private messages / the encryption debate
Age Assurance
| Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) | Information Commissioner’s opinion: Age Assurance for the Children’s Code 14 October 20 |
| ISP Review | Gov Confirms Second Try at UK Internet Age Verification System |
| International Association of Privacy Professionals | Age verification and data protection: Far more difficult than it looks |
| eSafety Commissioner – Australia | Age verification – eSafety Commissioner – Targeted Consultation Thematic Analysis of age verrification submissions |
| Abhilash Nair, Cansu Caglar (EU Consent project) | Age Verification and Child Protection: An Overview of the Legal Landscape |
Legislative Documents
The Story So Far
Online Safety Bill: Triple shield or triple surveillance?
Update on the Parliamentary amendments The Online Safety Bill is back in Parliament.Continuing the campaign against the Online Safety Bill
This week the Online Safety Bill came back to Parliament.Global encryption coalition warns of Online Safety Bill dangers
70 organizations, cyber security experts, and elected officials sign open letter expressing dangers of Online Safety Bill On 24 November, seventy civil society organizations, companies, elected officials, and cybersecurity experts, including Global Encryption Coalition members, published an open letter to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak highlighting their concerns with the threat that the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Bill poses to end-to-end encryption.Can our new Prime Minister be trusted with free speech and privacy?
As Liz Truss flies to Balmoral tomorrow to meet the Queen, who will ask her to form a government, what can we expect for our free speech and privacy rights?Could debate on immigration be suppressed?
A little bombshell, hidden deep within the gargantuan piece of legislation that is the Online Safety Bill, could have the effect of suppressing public debate around immigration.The Online Safety Bill puts a spy in your pocket
The deployment of client-side scanning on private messaging systems was trailed in a research paper published by the technical directors of GCHQ and the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC).Online Safety made dangerous
From the government press release, and without seeing the text of the Bill, there are already things we can say about the Online Safety Bill.The Online Safety Bill: punishing victims
The government has today announced two new regressive and unworkable additions to the Online Safety Bill.More Information
29 June, 2022
Submission to Parliament on Online Safety Bill
SUBMISSION TO PARLIAMENT Addressing automated, arbitrary, algorithmic censorship in the Online Safety BillJune 2022
Contents
About Open Rights Group 2
Addressing automated, arbitrary algorithmic censorship 2
Our concerns and recommendations 2
Summary 3
Automated censorship and arbitrary restrictions 4
Content moderation systems 5
Arbitrary restrictions 6
Why prevent has a special meaning (prior restraint) 9
Hands, face, age-gate 9
Ministerial powers to interfere with speech 10
Chat controls, to do lists and the spy in the your pocket 11
User Dis- Empowerment 13
Rights for online speech 13
Procedural safeguards and effective remedies 15
User experiences of restrictive content moderation measures 15
Procedural safeguards against arbitrary take-downs 16
About Open Rights Group
Open Rights Group (ORG) is the leading UK-based digital campaigning organisation.
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10 June, 2022
Open Letter to the DCMS – 10 June 2022
The Rt Hon Nadine Dorries MP,
Secretary of State,
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport,
10 June 2022
Dear Secretary of State,
During the last Queen’s Speech, the Government announced the introduction of a Data Reform Bill, which will replace the United Kingdom’s existing data protection laws.
Find Out More
27 April, 2022
Online Safety Bill Second Reading briefing
ORG analysis and highlights concerning the Online Safety Bill and its adverse impact on human rights and the free internet
About Open Rights Group
Open Rights Group (ORG) is the leading UK-based digital campaigning organisation.
Find Out More