Starmer is hell-bent on destroying your right to a private life
Within months, anyone with a smartphone could be subjected to state-mandated surveillance
Sir Keir Starmer is about to turn your smartphone into a government surveillance device with access to all your private messages in real time.
This is the terrifying endpoint for the Online Safety Act (OSA), legislation that serves as a weapon against British citizens that was passed by the Tories, and is now being enriched by Labour.
Section 121 of this Orwellian Act grants Ofcom the power to compel messaging platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage to deploy “accredited technology” for scanning messages sent with end-to-end encryption. Officially, it’s targeted at child sexual exploitation and abuse material and terrorism content.
Who could object to stopping these most heinous crimes? But make no mistake: this is “client-side scanning”. Messages will be analysed on your device, before encryption, meaning true end-to-end privacy evaporates. Every text, photo, or voice note you send 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.
This is unprecedented territory for the UK. This is the latest escalation in a years-long war on encryption from the Tory and Labour governments. Apple recently withdrew its Advanced Data Protection feature for UK users rather than comply with government demands that would have allowed the state a backdoor into iCloud backups. The company made clear it would not build backdoors or scanning tools that compromise security for everyone. Signal and WhatsApp have issued similar warnings: they’d rather exit the UK market than betray their users’ privacy.
Yet Starmer’s administration presses on with the determination of an authoritarian regime. The slippery slope is obvious. It starts with the unimpeachable – protecting children and countering terrorism – but mission creep is inevitable. We’ve already seen how “harmful” content on public platforms leads to police knocking on doors for tweets, memes, or opinions deemed offensive. Now imagine that scrutiny extended to private chats: a heated family argument, a joke between friends, a political rant shared in confidence. What the state labels “harmful” today – misinformation, “hate speech,” or dissent – will tomorrow justify scanning your WhatsApp group or Signal thread.
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