UK Lawmakers Push to Mandate Surveillance Tracking on All Smartphones for ‘Child Safety’
by Frank Bergman
Privacy advocates are sounding the alarm over the most sweeping attempt at digital control ever proposed in a Western democracy, as UK lawmakers advance plans to roll out an unprecedented public monitoring program under the guise of “protecting children’s well-being.”
A new set of amendments quietly slipped into the United Kingdom’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would force nearly all smartphones and tablets sold in the country to come preloaded with tamper-proof government-mandated surveillance software.
Under the legislation, the monitoring cannot be removed, disabled, or opted out of.
The proposals appear under a deceptively benign section titled “Action to promote the well-being of children by combating child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”
But the text reveals an unprecedented expansion of state power over private devices.
The amendment requires that any “relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device.”
In other words, the only way such a system can function is by scanning every single photo, video, livestream, and file on a user’s device, continuously, in the background, without consent.
Manufacturers, importers, and distributors would be legally required to ensure all internet-connected smartphones and tablets comply.
Enforcement would occur “as if the CSAM requirement was a security requirement for the purposes of Part 1 of the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022.”
In other words, this is client-side scanning on a national scale.
This government-mandated surveillance apparatus will be built into the operating system of every single personal device used by the general public.
A System That Must Scan Everything