U.K.'s Online Censorship Bill Causes Far More Harm Than It Attempts To Prevent

With the U.K.'s Conservative Party closing in on deciding who will inherit the mess left by Boris Johnson's tenure as prime minister, that country's governing apparatus will soon get back to the important business of intruding into people's lives.

At the top of the to-do list is the long-coming Online Safety Bill which, as has become traditional for legislation, does nothing that its title suggests. In fact, those who offend the government with their online speech or efforts to protect privacy may soon be a lot less safe.

"If the Online Safety Bill passes, the U.K. government will be able to directly silence user speech, and even imprison those who publish messages that it doesn't like," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Joe Mullin cautioned last week. "The bill empowers the UK's Office of Communications (OFCOM) to levy heavy fines or even block access to sites that offend people. We said last year that those powers raise serious concerns about freedom of expression. Since then, the bill has been amended, and it's gotten worse."