Starmer has issued a three-month ultimatum for major technology firms to implement client-side scanning; so that all content on all digital devices sold or used in the UK can be scanned using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning.
Client-side scanning is a surveillance technique that analyses content on a user’s device before encryption. And, if the Government succeeds, it marks the end of online privacy – for everyone.
Signal has issued a statement on the UK government’s demand. “This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all,” Signal says.
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In March, we published an article about all Apple and Android digital devices sold in California having age verification embedded from the beginning of next year, according to a new law. It is claimed that this law is to protect children online. But it will not.
“This law could spread beyond California due to the so-called ‘California effect’, under which rules adopted in the largest technology market in the United States often become national standards,” The Daily Economy wrote.
Age verification is spreading worldwide. It is a Trojan horse for limiting access to content that they do not wish the public to see. We need to look no further than what the UK government is doing worldwide under the pretence of keeping children safe online.
In July 2025, provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023 (“OSA”) were enacted, introducing age verification checks for online content. Using these new rules, just a week after they were implemented, a variety of content unrelated to children’s safety was already being censored.
“British people are being forced by the state to verify their age and hand over personal information to view political news about their own country. It is the sort of thing for which British diplomats would castigate third-world or tyrannical governments, but there seems to be little awareness of the danger of this law among our own governing class,” The Critic said in the week after the new rules began.
And The Daily Sceptic noted other posts that were quietly disappearing, criticising the OSA as a “censor’s charter” that silences dissent and erodes free speech through overzealous content removal.
Related: Privacy will be under unprecedented attack in 2026, Computer Weekly, 6 January 2026
Now, the UK government is using the Act to implement pre-emptive scanning of digital communications, which requires platforms to use automated systems to scan every message, image and post before it is delivered or viewed.
“Services that allow user interaction, including messaging apps, forums and search engines, must now monitor communications at scale to ensure that prohibited content is automatically filtered or suppressed before users can even encounter it,” Reclaim the Net said.
This is client-side scanning (“CSS”), a surveillance technique that analyses content on a user’s device before delivery and encryption, allowing third parties (like law enforcement or service providers) to detect objectionable material while the data is still in plain text.
CCS has been provided in the Online Safety Act from its inception. As The Constitution Society noted in March 2025 a few days before the OSA came into force, “In addition to facilitating client-side scanning [in Clause 122], it is also creating a new ‘false communication offence’ under s179(1) – this time addressing what may and may not be said in public, in addition to what is permissible in private.”
Clause 122 in the draft Bill, which was passing through Parliament at the time, became Section 121 in the OSA.
In the video below, Cyber Waffle explained more. He began by reading an article published by The Telegraph on 13 January 2026 titled ‘Starmer is hell-bent on destroying your right to a private life’.
“Section 121 of this Orwellian act grants Ofcom the power to compel messaging apps … to deploy ‘accredited technology’ for messages sent with end-to-end encryption … make no mistake, this is ‘client-side scanning’,” Cyber Waffle said, reading from The Telegraph’s article.
The article continued, “Messages will be analysed on your device, before encryption, meaning true end-to-end privacy evaporates. Every text, photo or voice note could be inspected in real-time – not just flagged ones, but all of them.
“Lord Hanson of Flint, who is steering this awful mission, recently confirmed the Government expects Ofcom to exercise these powers swiftly, in fact he ‘set a date of April 2026’. That’s when Ofcom will finalise guidance and minimum standards for the technology, paving the way for mandatory deployment. The clock is ticking. Within months, your private conversations will likely be subject to real-time state-mandated surveillance.”
Lord Hanson of Flint is getting his way.
Speaking at London Tech Week on Monday, Keir Starmer issued a three-month ultimatum to major technology firms, including Apple and Google, requiring them to implement device-level controls that detect and block sexually explicit images on smartphones and tablets used by children.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood threatened, “Tech companies have a moral duty to act, by making it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images. If they don’t, we will legislate.”
How do they determine which devices are used by children or when a child is using the device? Age verification or “age assurance” software? Digital ID verification? When they say children are getting around those, what’s next? Biometrics, such as facial recognition or iris scans?
Signal has issued the statement below in response to Stamer’s announcement, stating what to most of us is obvious, “[it] will not safeguard children. It endangers us all, whilst strengthening Apple, Google and Microsoft’s market dominance and their control over our most personal information.”
Surveillance Is Not Safety: A statement on the UK’s latest threat to privacy
By Signal, 8 June 2026
Children deserve to be safe, protected and nurtured. They do not deserve surveillance, funding cuts and cover-ups. Children also deserve their human right to privacy, as does everyone. The UK governmentʼs demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning, will not safeguard children. It endangers us all, whilst strengthening Apple, Google and Microsoft’s market dominance and their control over our most personal information.
Forcing all UK residents to prove their age and/or have all their content scanned, simply to exercise their fundamental right to communicate, is a perilous proposition. We know that mass surveillance and censorship capabilities, however sincere-sounding the promises of those who initiate them are, never remain narrowly scoped. Once created, they will be expanded, forming a dangerous tool that will be wielded both in the UK and abroad to censor and surveil whatever they might consider “threatsˮ or “harmful content.ˮ
Promises that this system will only run on-device are cold comfort. Wherever it runs, including the “cameraˮ itself once it is in place on UK devices – its scope will be defined by the whims and proscriptions of the government to detect nudity today and political speech tomorrow. We know from history that once in place, there will be an inevitable authoritarian expansion of the kind of content and people these technologies will be expected to surveil. We also know such tools will be leveraged to automatically report people to government authorities. We have already seen law enforcement agencies ask for similar widely-scoped powers which are ripe for exploitation in an increasingly tenuous political landscape.
This proposal will not keep children safe. Child safety looks like well-funded education, robust social services and meaningful guardrails on the very AI technologies and platforms the current government is eagerly courting.[1] What the UK government wants instead is invisible surveillance infrastructure, switched on by default and potentially rushed into law under cynical pretexts. All of this with scant care for the actual needs of the children they claim to be protecting or the horrifying and far-ranging consequences that will ensue in practice.
[[1] Note from The Exposé: There’s no doubt that children’s online safety is being used as a ruse for centralised digital control over all. However, if we set that aside for a moment and focus on child safety: instead of the Government making laws to take over the role of parents, parents should take responsibility for monitoring and supervising what their children are doing and who they are doing it with, both online and offline. If the state is allowed to become the parent, there will come a time when parents will lose their children to the state.]
Featured image: Starmer gives tech companies ultimatum over children sending naked images, Independent, 8 June 2026
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