Responding to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement on introducing mandatory ID checks to use mobile phones, Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch said:
“Protecting children online is vital, but these are outrageous plans that will fail to address the underlying causes of online harm. This will only result in population-wide ID checks for all of us to use our phones, tablets and laptops.
“Put simply, the Labour Government is threatening ID checks for the internet. No one in a democracy should need to show their passport just to get online.
“These plans would replace efforts for meaningful tech and parental responsibility with performative, authoritarian government control that children can easily circumvent by accessing adult-registered devices. However, for the UK’s 50 million adults using the internet, this backdoor digital ID requirement would invoke the death of anonymity and internet privacy.
“The Government’s plan very likely means that unless you submit to intrusive identity checks when setting up your phone or computer, there will be a chokehold on your software and internet access leaving you with a child-locked device. Planned restrictions on messaging, streaming and browsing raise the potential of spyware in our pockets that will be exploited for other purposes before long.
“The Government mandating that all phones in Britain require ID and surveillance software is a crossing of the Rubicon that would make the UK one of the most authoritarian internet regimes in the world. This extreme technological censorship requires rigorous public and parliamentary scrutiny that is currently totally missing”
ENDS.
Notes
- Spokespeople are available for interview. Please direct enquiries or requests for interviews to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk or 07730439257
- Big Brother Watch has written to Apple to raise concerns about its new operating system ID requirements, widely thought to pre-empt the Government’s move towards population-wide ID requirements for devices.
- Coverage of original announcement
- Read Big Brother Watch’s report on digital ID, Checkpoint Britain: The dangers of digital ID and why privacy must be protected and our ongoing campaign