Rainy Sundays

There's a lot being said about the UK's Online Safety Act.  Labour Party leadership reckon it's an essential step in safeguarding children online.  Others say it does nothing of the sort and is either clueless or despicably cynical.  For the love of god, won't someone think about the children?  And specifically, about what this act is doing for them?

The internet has long been something of a frontier; questionably policed, feebly enforced; anonymity has made a wild wild west of the world wide web.  For decades that's been a thorn in the side of authorities the world over for reasons both good and bad.  It's difficult to enforce copyright, it's damn near impossible to enforce culpability without government-agency-level sleuthing.  It's the best defence of whistle blowers, and the most effective bastion of the freedom of speech.  With the OSA, the UK Government intends to put something of an end to that.  Hear me out.

Ostensibly the protectorate of the OSA is British children - readily available pornography ruining the childhood of our kids and turning them into misogynists, sexual objects and sexual objectifiers.  That might not be wrong, there's some pretty unpleasant stuff about.  If everyone has to prove their age to see such smut, the logic follows, children will be free to enjoy their innocence and the reins of education will be handed safely back to parents.

But this brings me to one of the most frustrating parts of this whole debacle; more than shielding the eyes of babes, Secretary of State Peter Kyle insists that this legislation will prevent child porn - when of all its effects this one is maybe the most demonstrably untrue, and tips the hand of the entire scheme.

So why is this not the case?

• This legislation depends on prosecuting servers that transgress age verification laws.  Purveyors of child porn do not, by definition, follow the law.  They're already in trouble for much worse things should they be discovered, so they're hardly likely to be afraid of the OSA.
• Because of VPNs and other such gizmos, these measures are utterly trivially bypassed.  In fact while I'm not certain of the exact procedure for loading child porn I'd be incredulous if they weren't using such basic safety measures already when I could (but won't) name at least a half dozen non-techie people I personally know who use them to watch overseas sports.
• These points aside, the OSA's stated purpose is to stop underage viewers loading adult material.  It does NOT stop users over legal age loading illegal material of underage users.  Except in that they have, by the design of the system, identified themselves to the system, and in this the true purpose of the OSA is illustrated - it is not to protect children, but instead to force users to link online identity with physical identity.

While the risks and benefits of online anonymity have been argued since the technology was conceived, it has to be said that I have no respect for an ostensibly democratic authority trying to snuff it out covertly, and the incompetent execution inspires no confidence in their ability to police such data.

I thoroughly believe that children should be protected.  It might well be that better management of adult material is necessary.  But, and I say it sadly as a Labour voter, once again the UK Government has demonstrated that it's an extremely rare thing that any public figure citing the welfare of children actually has children's welfare on their mind - and using it as a veil to inexpertly push unpopular policy does far more harm to the cause than good.

- RG