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Lawmakers to consider 19 bills for childproofing the internet
Can you judge the heat of a moral panic by the number of bills purporting to solve it? […] lawmakers have moved on from sex trafficking to social media—from Craigslist and Backpage to Instagram, TikTok, and Roblox. So here we are, with a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on 19 different kids-and-tech bills scheduled
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(unverified image) The compulsory Indian spyware app indicates why governments hate secure encrypted messenger applications
Messaging like WhatsApp/Signal is outside of the scope of Android (etc) permissions, so access cannot be granted to spy on such content; messages at rest MAY be protected from surveillance by use of split keys provided by the service (e.g. Messenger) It also explains why RCS is so popular with Government because it is a
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Australia Government: “OVER THERE, LOOK, LOOK, CAPITALISTS, IT IS NOT US OPPRESSING OUR CHILDREN! PLEASE LOOK AT THE CAPITALISTS!”
No humility from the Australian government regarding being sued by their own children, and continuing to push the perspective that platforms serve users rather than users use platforms, wherever they may be hosted: Social media ban: Australia won’t be intimidated by tech firms, minister tells BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnv2z059745o
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India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app | Reuters | WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Also, how utterly different from what the UK wishes to achieve with the near obligatory BritCard Digital ID card app, of course. India’s telecoms ministry has privately asked smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app that cannot be deleted, a government order showed, a move likely to antagonise Apple
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Starmer’s digital ID cards are the last thing Britain needs
The benefits of BritCard accrue not to us, but to the state: a unifying ID which bureaucrats can use to oversee our lives, linking all the parts together. But it is not fulfilling an unmet need. There is no market failure in digital identity services in 2025. The UK’s private sector identity market is thriving.
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The UK Has It Wrong on Digital ID. Here’s Why | Electronic Frontier Foundation
…digital ID leaves vulnerable and marginalized people not only out of the debate and ultimately out of the society that these governments want to build. We remain concerned about the potential for digital identification to exacerbate existing social inequalities, particularly for those with reduced access to digital services or people seeking asylum. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/uk-has-it-wrong-digital-id-heres-why
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UK Parliament, 2009: “Bad Language: The Use and Abuse of Official Language”
This is a fun official read: Sir Richard said: “The evidence must be that this discontentment built up and this behaviour was such as could not go on.” In English, this would be translated as: “People were being quite outrageous and had to stop.” https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmpubadm/17/17.pdf
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Jolyon Maugham’s “GoodLawProject” bang the drum calling for for localised censorship on a globalised internet, not realising nor caring about the impact
This is how you kill privacy & anonymity, and disenfranchise the weak, people; do you not ALSO care about that, JM?
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Mullvad” “An important victory – but we still need to stop Chat Control”
From the outset, Chat Control was a proposal that aimed to introduce mass surveillance. That ambition is clearly still present … among many of the member states in the Council. [It] failed to introduce mass surveillance but has succeeded in paving the way for new attempts Long tweet. Full version: The Council of Ministers in
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