The United Kingdom recently passed the online safety bill.

It's a massive law that's been in the works for years.

It does a lot, including things such as requiring age verification, that we've criticized in the context of American law on recent episodes of the show.

Today, we're going to focus on one of the most pernicious aspects of the online safety bill, the threat it poses to encryption.

One British government official has said that,

thanks to the online safety bill,

the UK is on its way to becoming the safest place in the world to be online.

But as my guest today notes, that title, Online Safety Bill, is actually a

misnomer for the ages. This is the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Corbyn Balthold.

Page Collings is a senior speech and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

She is written extensively on the online safety bill, including in a recent article at The Daily Beast,

crackdowns on encrypted messaging don't help the children.

In that article, she warns that the online safety bill

is likely to, quote, lead to universal scanning

of all user content.

All users text messages, images, and videos would be checked and monitored before being posted, unquote.

Paige, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me on.

So let's start with the obvious, you know, drill down on encryption.

Why is it important?

And I think you do a great job of explaining this in the work I've read of yours.

You know, why is it a civil rights issue?

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