Paul Kennedy

Journalists who interview other journalists about technology related legislation that threatens everyone’s right to digital privacy are going to get bitten in the ass when they realise that they, their whistleblowers and confidential sources will be forced to verify their real identities before they can communicate privately. The British government is trying to outlaw online anonymity under the false pretext of child safety. None of this has anything to do with protecting children. I advised John Carr and the British government in 2012 during the first parliamentary inquiry into online child safety. He was the biggest lobbyist behind this agenda, yet he doesn’t know the first thing about the legislation he advocated. I’ve been an expert in online child safety, content classification and moderation since 1996. I don’t know anyone else who started that early and went on to spend decades founding open standards and advising governments and organisations including IWF, CEOP, NCMEC and the US DOJ on child exploitation technology and techniques. I’m one of the two people who invented the very concept of classifying and labeling user accounts online. As politicians like to say, let me be clear. Not a single politician or child safety advocate I’ve encountered is interested in protecting children. I’m 99.9% confident their real objective is to use child safety as an excuse to force compulsory identity verification on entire populations. This is the opinion of every technical expert you’ll find. More than 25 countries now claim child safety is a top priority, judging by their legislative proposals, daily announcements and media coverage. Yet they continue to push identity verification instead of educating parents about the effective parental controls already built into smartphones. People are already censoring themselves for fear of being investigated, arrested or banned for expressing their opinions in the UK. Compulsory identity verification will make that worse because everything people read, write and share online, and everyone they communicate with, will be linked to their real identities. When you get banned, your real name gets blacklisted. You won’t be able to create a new account under a different email address. What more does the government have to do before journalists start interviewing technical experts who can explain the consequences and properly inform the public? If compulsory identity checks on services like eBay and Vinted aren’t already making journalists’ skin crawl, where exactly do they draw the line?