🆔The Labour Government is threatening ID checks for the internet
Our director @silkiecarlo speaks to the BBC what plans for child-locked devices really mean for our internet privacy and freedom⤵️
The details about the Tate brothers in this @newyorker profile are as sick as anything you will ever read. They are rapists, pornographers, traffickers - and heroes to the "conservative" MAGA movement
https://t.co/Zv2l52b9Id
Record bank profits on both sides of the Atlantic.
Record bonus pay outs in the City.
Meanwhile 1 in 5 people in the UK report skipping meals to make ends meet.
Senior bank execs might be immune from the cost of living crisis - millions of hard working people aren’t so lucky.
⚠️ When anonymity is gone, so is safety for the people who need it most.
The more platforms that require ID, the greater the risk that ordinary people’s IDs and biometrics will fall into the wrong hands.
Use our speedy tool to write to your MP⤵️
https://t.co/8TBWFeVxNB
🚨 BREAKING: Keir Starmer threatens mandatory ID checks to use mobile phones
"Protecting children online is vital, but these are outrageous plans that will fail to address the underlying causes of online harm. This will only result in population-wide ID checks for all of us to use our phones, tablets and laptops.
"Put simply, the Labour Government is threatening ID checks for the internet. No one in a democracy should need to show their passport just to get online.
"These plans would replace efforts for meaningful tech and parental responsibility with performative, authoritarian government control that children can easily circumvent by accessing adult-registered devices. However, for the UK's 50 million adults using the internet, this backdoor digital ID requirement would invoke the death of anonymity and internet privacy.
"The Government's plan very likely means that unless you submit to intrusive identity checks when setting up your phone or computer, there will be a chokehold on your software and internet access leaving you with a child-locked device. Planned restrictions on messaging, streaming and browsing raise the potential of spyware in our pockets that will be exploited for other purposes before long.
"The Government mandating that all phones in Britain require ID and surveillance software is a crossing of the Rubicon that would make the UK one of the most authoritarian internet regimes in the world. This extreme technological censorship requires rigorous public and parliamentary scrutiny that is currently totally missing" - Silkie Carlo | @silkiecarlo
Signal is 100% right.
The greatest trick governments ever pulled was convincing people that freedom and privacy are obstacles to safety.
What we are witnessing is not child protection. It is the construction of a surveillance architecture that will eventually monitor, profile, categorize and control every aspect of our digital lives.
Today it is age verification and content scanning, tomorrow it is digital identity, then financial monitoring, then behavioural scoring, then access to services conditioned on compliance.
The destination is not difficult to see. It is a technocratic system where every interaction is tracked, every transaction recorded, every opinion assessed and every citizen reduced to a data profile managed by governments and corporations working hand in hand.
A form of digital neo feudalism where a small unelected class controls the platforms, the infrastructure, the money and ultimately the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
The argument that only criminals should fear surveillance is as absurd as saying only criminals need freedom of speech. Privacy is not evidence of wrongdoing, it is the foundation of human dignity, individual sovereignty and genuine liberty.
The UK government is asking citizens to accept the presumption of guilt simply to communicate online. To prove who they are, verify their age and allow their devices to inspect their content before they can participate in modern society.
History teaches us that every power granted to the state eventually expands beyond its initial mandate. The technology introduced to detect one form of content today will be used to police entirely different forms of expression tomorrow.
The choice before us is not between privacy and child protection, it is between preserving a free society, or constructing the infrastructure of a digital prison that will further enslave us.
Nationwide building society doubles CEO’s pay to £4.7m.
Workers got 3.8% rise.
Members denied a binding vote on exec pay.
A member prevented from standing for board election by insiders.
Has Nationwide become a private fiefdom?
Need governance reforms
https://t.co/W9ixXOmTXn
For the past 9 months, I've been investigating Andrew Tate's empire of sexual exploitation — drawing on thousands of private messages and sealed court files, as well as interviews with the Tates, their associates & more than a dozen alleged victims. Here's what I found: https://t.co/q1L65EVG1O
No, Mr. President. The 2020 election that you lost was not "rigged" or "dirty," handing out $1.776 billion to violent insurrectionists is not a "good idea" & reporters who ask questions about your bogus claims are not "crooked."
You are a president, not a dictator. Act like it.
Apple and Google have been given until September to install software that blocks explicit images on children’s mobile phones or face legislation enforcing its requirement.
Keir Starmer said tech companies must activate nudity-detection algorithms or other technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to prevent users taking photos or sharing images of genitalia unless they are verified as adults.
If they don't comply within three months, legislation will be brought forward requiring the protection to be added to all phones and tablets sold in UK.
https://t.co/bp6d5MCjww
What a JOKE!! I don’t have children and now will pay the price?! Parents and corporations are liable, not ME. Pathetic @UKLabour hope you lose all next elections @Keir_Starmer needs to get out now
🚨 BREAKING: Keir Starmer threatens mandatory ID checks to use mobile phones
"Protecting children online is vital, but these are outrageous plans that will fail to address the underlying causes of online harm. This will only result in population-wide ID checks for all of us to use our phones, tablets and laptops.
"Put simply, the Labour Government is threatening ID checks for the internet. No one in a democracy should need to show their passport just to get online.
"These plans would replace efforts for meaningful tech and parental responsibility with performative, authoritarian government control that children can easily circumvent by accessing adult-registered devices. However, for the UK's 50 million adults using the internet, this backdoor digital ID requirement would invoke the death of anonymity and internet privacy.
"The Government's plan very likely means that unless you submit to intrusive identity checks when setting up your phone or computer, there will be a chokehold on your software and internet access leaving you with a child-locked device. Planned restrictions on messaging, streaming and browsing raise the potential of spyware in our pockets that will be exploited for other purposes before long.
"The Government mandating that all phones in Britain require ID and surveillance software is a crossing of the Rubicon that would make the UK one of the most authoritarian internet regimes in the world. This extreme technological censorship requires rigorous public and parliamentary scrutiny that is currently totally missing" - Silkie Carlo | @silkiecarlo
THEY ARE BASTARDS!
We just got an email sent to MSE. The spelling was awful, and it was quite tough to understand. Lower down, the writer later explained she was 78 and her disability had stopped her being able to spell. So perhaps it is a stroke, or something similar.
I've tidied it and summarised below, changing some identifying details. In a nutshell, it was this...
"I invested, Martin, with Quotum when you first announced it on TV. What an opportunity for me to buy my own flat. My manager there passed me through to a nice man who asked me for £350 more. He showed me it was growing. I did what he told me to do."
She then goes on to explain how she really wanted her flat and she gave more and more money. And she has nothing left to help with her disability.
I'm honestly in tears typing this. These types of scam ads have now been going on for a decade. I have spent my career trying to help people with their finances. It feels visceral to get this, and to feel that this reputation has been perverted by criminals to steal from someone who is clearly so vulnerable leaves me feeling nauseous.
So many people, both vulnerable and not, lose money and see their lives and wellbeing destroyed. It's now seven years since I sued Facebook. And yet still nothing is being done.
Big tech makes £3bn a year from these scammers. We have a law in place to make them responsible for these ads they're paid to publish, yet it isn't implemented. How many more of these do I have to receive - and far worse, how many more people have to go through this?
This is relentless. It is wrong. Government has to take action! I wrote to the PM just two weeks ago on this very issue. I've not heard back yet.
(We are, of course, going to try and point her in the right direction to get help, but that will be stressful for her too)
Are you hearing this Labour MPs? Your government has the power to stop this. To take failing water companies into special administration and permanent PUBLIC OWNERSHIP instead of letting them ignore statutory duties while continuing on a licence which gives them 25 YEARS NOTICE
@CatHobbs@SJG99 I live in Whitstable and nothing has been coming out of our taps for over a week. I'm 84 and deemed vulnerable. A few deliveries of water in plastic bottles have been dumped in front of our house in hot sun. Nobody even rings the door bell to tell us they are there.