The U.K. Parliament is close to passing the Online Safety Bill, which threatens global privacy by allowing backdoors into messaging services, compromising end-to-end encryption. Despite objections, no amendments were accepted. The bill also includes content filtering and surveillance measures. There’s still a chance for lawmakers to protect privacy with an amendment preserving encryption. A recent survey shows the majority of U.K. citizens want strong privacy on messaging apps.
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Several players have said they’ll exit the UK rather than exit encryption.
Apple: https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/apple-threatens-to-pull-imessage-from-uk-iphones-rather-than-weaken-its-security/ar-AA1e8kgo
WhatsApp: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/08/whatsapp-could-disappear-uk-over-privacy-concerns-ministers-told
rightly so.
I’d assume any worldwide player couldn’t be caught in compliance with this, as long as alternatives exist that don’t.
This might have been enough to push EU people away from WhatsApp for example.