"Online Safety Bill Undermines Privacy Online, Say UK's Top Cyber Security Experts"
Scientists from the UK's National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction, and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) urge government and parliament to consider independent scientific evaluation before passing the Online Safety Bill that could inadvertently enable surveillance technologies and undermine online security. The Online Safety Bill's provision on scanning messages exchanged via apps such as WhatsApp and Signal is the subject of heated debate due to its potential to have far-reaching consequences for human rights. With end-to-end encryption (E2EE), no third parties, including service providers like WhatsApp and Signal, can read messages as they travel from senders to recipients. According to the independent evaluation, although the tools do not propose to weaken or break the E2EE protocol, the confidentiality of the E2EE service users' communications cannot be ensured if content intended to be sent privately within the E2EE service is monitored pre-encryption. This article continues to discuss cybersecurity experts highlighting the "alarming misunderstandings and misconceptions" about the proposed Online Safety Bill.