To: Chloe Smith, Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
cc: Tom Tugendhat, Minister of State for Security, Home Office Paul Scully, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Dear Ms Smith,
We are over 80 national and international civil society organisations, academics and cyberexperts. We represent a wide range of perspectives including digital human rights and technology.
We are writing to you to raise our concerns about the serious threat to the security of private and encrypted messaging posed by the UK's proposed Online Safety Bill (OSB).
The Online Safety Bill is a
deeply troubling legislative proposal. If passed in its present form, the UK could become the first liberal democracy to require the routine scanning of people's private chat messages, including chats that are secured by end-to-end encryption. As over 40
million UK citizens and 2 billion people worldwide rely on these services, this poses a significant risk to the security of digital communication services not only in the UK, but also internationally.
End-to-end encryption ensures
the security of communications for everyone on a network. It is designed so that no-one, including the platform provider, can read or alter the messages. The confidentiality between sender and recipient is completely preserved. That's why the United
Nations, several human rights groups, and anti-human trafficking organisations alike have emphasised that encryption is a vital human rights tool.
In order to comply with the Online Safety Bill, platform providers would have to
break that protection either by removing it or by developing work-arounds. Any form of work-around risks compromising the security of the messaging platform, creating back-doors, and other dangerous ways and means for malicious actors and hostile states
to corrupt the system. This would put all users in danger.
The UK government has indicated its intention for providers to use a technology that would scan chats on people's phone and devices -- known as client-side scanning. The
UK government's assertion that client-side scanning will not compromise the privacy of messages contradicts the significant evidence of cyber-security experts around the world. This software intercepts chat messages before they are encrypted, and as the
user is uploading their images or text, and therefore confidentiality of messages cannot be guaranteed. It would most likely breach human rights law in the UK and internationally.
Serious concerns have also been raised about
similar provisions in the EU's proposed Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, which an independent expert study warns is in contradiction to human rights rules. French, Irish and Austrian parliamentarians have all also warned of severe threats to human rights
and of undermining encryption.
Moreover, the scanning software would have to be pre-installed on people's phones, without their permission or full awareness of the severe privacy and security implications. The underlying databases
can be corrupted by hostile actors, meaning that individual phones would become vulnerable to attack. The breadth of the measures proposed in the Online Safety Bill -- which would infringe the rights to privacy to the same extent for the internet's
majority of legitimate law-abiding users as it would for potential criminals -- means that the measures cannot be considered either necessary or proportionate.
The inconvenient truth is that it is not possible to scan messages for
bad things without infringing on the privacy of lawful messages. It is not possible to create a backdoor that only works for good people and that cannot be exploited by bad people.
Privacy and free expression rights are vital for
all citizens everywhere, in every country, to do their jobs, raise their voices, and hold power to account without arbitrary intrusion, persecution or repression. End-to-end encryption provides vital security that allows them to do that without arbitrary
interference. People in conflict zones who rely on secure encrypted communications to be able to speak safely to friends and family as well as for national security. Journalists around the world who rely on the confidential channels of encrypted chat,
can communicate to sources and upload their stories in safety.
Children, too, need these rights, as emphasised by UNICEF based on the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Child safety and privacy are not mutually exclusive;
they are mutually reinforcing. Indeed, children are less safe without encrypted communications, as they equally rely on secure digital experiences free from their data being harvested or conversations intercepted. Online content scanning alone cannot
hope to fish out the serious cases of exploitation, which require a whole-of-society approach. The UK government must invest in education, judicial reform, social services, law enforcement and other critical resources to prevent abuse before it can reach
the point of online dissemination, thereby prioritising harm prevention over retrospective scanning.
As an international community, we are deeply concerned that the UK will become the weak link in the global system. The security
risk will not be confined within UK borders. It is difficult to envisage how such a destructive step for the security of billions of users could be justified.
The UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has said that the UK will maintain
freedom, peace and security around the world. With that in mind, we urge you to ensure that end-to-end encrypted services will be removed from the scope of the Bill and that the privacy of people's confidential communications will be upheld.
Signed,
Access Now, ARTICLE 19: Global Campaign for Free Expression, Asociatia pentru Tehnologie Ui Internet (ApTI), Associação Portuguesa para a Promoção da Segurança da Informação (AP2SI), Association for
Progressive Communications (APC), Big Brother Watch, Centre for Democracy and Technology, Chaos Computer Club (CCC), Citizen D / Drzavljan D, Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), Community NeHUBs Africa,
cyberstorm.mu, Defend Digital Me, CASM at Demos, Digitalcourage, Digitale Gesellschaft, DNS Africa Media and Communications, Electronic Frontier Finland, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Electronic Frontier Norway, Epicenter.works, European Center
for Not-for-Profit Law, European Digital Rights (EDRi), European Sex Workers Rights Association (ESWA), Fair Vote, Fight for the Future, Foundation for Information Policy Research, Fundación Cibervoluntarios, Global Partners Digital, Granitt, Hermes
Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights, Homo Digitalis, Ikigai Innovation Initiative, Internet Society, Interpeer gUG, ISOC Brazil -- Brazilian Chapter of the Internet Society, ISOC Ghana, ISOC India Hyderabad Chapter, ISOC Venezuela, IT-Pol,
JCA-Net (Japan), Kijiji Yeetu, La Quadrature du Net, Liberty, McEvedys Solicitors and Attorneys Ltd, Open Rights Group, OpenMedia, OPTF, Privacy and Access Council of Canada, Privacy International, Ranking Digital Rights, Statewatch, SUPERRR Lab, Tech
for Good Asia, UBUNTEAM, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK
Professor Paul Bernal, Nicholas Bohm, Dr Duncan Campbell, Alan Cox, Ray Corrigan, Professor Angela Daly, Dr Erin Ferguson, Wendy M. Grossman, Dr Edina Harbinja, Dr Julian
Huppert, Steve Karmeinsky, Dr Konstantinos Komaitis, Professor Douwe Korff, Petr Kucera, Mark A. Lane, Christian de Larrinaga, Mark Lizar, Dr Brenda McPhail, Alec Muffett, Riana Pferfferkorn, Simon Phipps, Dr Birgit Schippers, Peter Wells, Professor Alan
Woodward
