Former minister Jess Phillips has publicly called for device-level spyware on Britons’ phones that poses serious privacy risks. Commenting on the potential use of device-level scanning, Jack Coulson, head of advocacy, said:
“The proposal to put experimental AI spyware on the population’s phones to blur suspect images is no serious way to tackle child sexual abuse. It is soft on criminals and hard on millions of innocent people. Nationwide spyware would seriously undermine the privacy of the British public, treating us all with suspicion while doing nothing to bring child abusers to justice.
“AI software would be forced onto our phones and computers, scanning and potentially censoring our photos, videos and messages. False positives would be inevitable, potentially censoring innocent family photos and, worse, allowing private images to be processed by tech companies to train commercial AI models.
“We would also be seriously concerned about this mass scanning technology being repurposed for wider surveillance in the future.
“Effective child protection requires a stronger criminal justice response. Yet police are already overwhelmed by reports of child sexual abuse, while the NCA has rightly raised concerns that eight in ten offenders convicted of possessing child abuse images avoid prison.
“Genuine child protection requires well-resourced, targeted policing and robust enforcement of the law, not the scanning of every phone in Britain.”
- Spokespeople are available for interview. Please direct enquiries or requests for interviews to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk or 07730439257
BBC – Former minister calls for phone tech to block live-streamed child sex abuse