The UK's Most Unpopular Government on Record Just Went All-In On Digital Surveillance, Censorship and Control | naked capitalism

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What could possibly go wrong?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer appears to be on borrowed time. Barely two years into his first term, he is the most unpopular prime minister on record — indeed he had already earned that dubious distinction by the end of his first year in office. More than 100 backbench members of parliament (MPs) have called for him to quit in recent weeks.

Last Thursday, his defence secretary resigned, becoming the seventh senior minister to abandon ship in recent months and the 21st since the government was formed just two years ago.

Starmer himself will not resign though he is likely to face a leadership challenge in the coming weeks or months. If the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, wins the Makerfield by-election on June 18, he will become an MP, thereby becoming eligible to challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership and the premiership of the UK.

Despite all this, Starmer is no lame duck. He still has a huge parliamentary majority backing him up, albeit begrudgingly. And he is using that majority to push through policies that will grant his government, and future governments, including possibly one led by Nigel Farage, unprecedented digital surveillance and control powers, much as we warned would happen in July 2024:

Like his mentor, Blair, Starmer has clear technocratic sensibilities. On his return from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos in January, he was asked on a news podcast to choose between Davos or Westminster. Without hesitation, he answered: Davos. There, he said, you “actually engage with people that you can see working with in the future.” Westminster, by contrast, is just a “shouting place”.

“So let us ask – you have to choose between Davos & Westminster?”

Keir Starmer – “Davos” pic.twitter.com/NMIEEFUWBf

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) June 12, 2024

The World Economic Forum, of course, has done more than just about any other organisation to push the development and roll out of digital identity systems, especially since signing its strategic partnership with the UN in 2019.

Taking a Bludgeon to End-to-End Encryption

In a speech at London Tech Week last week, Starmer gave tech companies operating in the UK an ultimatum: introduce device controls that prevent children from sending and receiving explicit images, or the government will bring forward legislation making it mandatory to do so in just three months’ time.

The UK aspires to be the first country in the world to stop children taking, sharing, or viewing naked pictures on their devices. To do that, it is calling on companies to perform what is called client-side scanning on all their under-16 customers — a controversial practice we previously discussed in our article on the EU’s proposed Chat Control law, "The EU’s Latest Plan to Stifle Online Privacy Is Terrifying".

If tech firms buckle under the pressure or Starmer carries through on his threat, assuming he’s still in office in three months’ time. every child’s messages and images will be pre-inspected while every adult will be required to show a form of ID in order to operate their phones and tablets without restrictions or monitoring. As far as I understand it, the proposed system will happen on-device at the operating system level, meaning VPNs will offer no respite.

The technology that enables client-side scanning already exists today. As the Indian tech analyst Anish Moonka notes on Twitter, if it came into widespread use, it would essentially drive a nail through the coffin of end-to-end encryption, the technology that prevents third parties from accessing data transferred from one endpoint to another, as is the government’s clear goal:

Apple built this exact tool in 2021. Within weeks, security researchers showed it could flag innocent people’s content. Apple killed it 16 months later. The UK just gave tech companies...