Tag: united kingdom

The Online Safety Bill gives the UK government unprecedented power to determine “harmful” content

The UK’s latest attempt to clamp down on free speech online, the 225 page Online Safety Bill, will give sweeping new censorship powers to the UK’s Secretary of State and its communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), if passed.

It gives the UK Culture Secretary the power to decide on and designate “priority content that is harmful.”

Once the Secretary of State has designated this content, social media platforms and search engines that fall under the scope of the bill’s regulations have to “use proportionate systems and processes” to prevent children from encountering this priority content.

These platforms are also required to specify in their terms of service how they’ll tackle priority content that’s deemed to be “harmful to adults” and apply these measures consistently.

Additionally, the Culture Secretary gets the power to decide the user number and feature thresholds that determine whether a company falls under the scope of these requirements to remove and tackle priority content.

Collectively, these provisions give the Culture Secretary unprecedentedly broad powers to not only choose the types of speech that is allowed but to also set the rules around which platforms have to censor content.

Under the bill, Ofcom will be granted the power to issue harsh punishments to platforms that fail to meet the Secretary’s censorship demands.

These punishments include applying for court orders that restrict access to platforms in the UK and fining platforms up to £18 million ($23.78 million) or 10% of their revenue (whichever is higher).

In another authoritarian turn, if Ofcom decides that a platform is failing to comply with any aspect of the Online Safety Bill, it can also demand information from the platform via an “information notice” and require the platform to name a senior manager who can be fined or imprisoned for up to two years if they’re found guilty of failing to comply with the requirements.

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Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan Sexually Assaulted 15-Year-Old Boy at Party, Court Hears

Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan has been accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy at a party in 2008, a court has heard.

Imran Ahmad Khan, 48, who was elected to represent Wakefield in 2019, is currently on trial after being charged with molesting a 15-year-old boy. The Tory MP has denied the charges levied against him in the “strongest terms“.

On Wednesday, the court heard that during a 2008 birthday party in Staffordshire, Khan had asked an 18-year-old if he was a “true Scotsman” before lifting his kilt and later allegedly sexually assaulted the teen’s 15-year-old brother.

The prosecutor in the case, Sean Larkin QC, told the court per The Telegraph: “Khan then lifted up the kilt with both hands and lunged at him so that he thought he was going to grab him,” explaining that the teenager “felt very different” about Khan’s actions compared to other experience of people trying to lift his kilt.”

Jurors heard that Khan was invited to the party by a friend of a friend and was told that he could stay over by the family, who placed him in the same room as the 18-year-old and his 15-year-old brother.

The court was told that the 15-year-old heard Khan’s “breathing was getting quite heavy” as he sexually assaulted him.

“When [the complainant] went to bed, Mr Khan stood by that top bunk, reached in and touched his legs, reaching for, or actually touching, his groin. We suggest either way it was sexual assault. He pushed him away but he kept going, and when it would not stop he fled,” the prosecutor said.

The alleged victim — who remains anonymous per British law — was said to have been “distraught” and reported the incident to police, telling officers that Khan had told him to “show me some porn” and said that he was a “good-looking boy”.

At the time, the boy did not want to take the allegations further, however, once Mr Khan began to campaign for the House of Commons, he rose the complaint with the police again.

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UK to launch new digital ID technology next month as part of nationwide digital ID push

The UK government is pushing ahead with its nationwide digital ID plans, despite half of the responses to its public consultation on digital identity opposing the idea.

On April 6, 2022, new digital identity document verification technology (IDVT) that enables data sharing between public bodies and businesses for the purpose of identity verification will be introduced. It will be made available to UK employers, landlords, and letting agents who can use it to digitally carry out pre-employment criminal record checks, right to work checks, and right to rent checks.

The introduction of this digital IDVT is part of the government’s far-reaching digital ID plans which were announced in March. The government has framed these digital ID plans as a way for UK citizens to “easily and quickly prove their identity using digital methods instead of having to rely on traditional physical documents.”

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British Professor Faces Government “Crackdown” For Questioning Ukraine War Narrative

A professor at the University of Edinburgh is facing trial by media and a government “crackdown,” merely because he shared an article questioning the narrative behind the bombing of a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

Professor Tim Hayward is currently being cancelled by the mob because he shared an article by left-wing news outlet Grayzone which suggested the theater bombing, blamed on Russia, may actually have been carried out by Ukrainian ‘Azov’ fighters.

The incident was immediately exploited by NATO powers to justify more military support for Ukraine and led to Joe Biden calling Vladimir Putin a “war criminal”.

However, the Neo-Nazi unit is accused of using civilians as human shields inside the building before blowing it up as Russian forces entered Mariupol.

Russia denies attacking the building, which was seemingly of no strategic importance, and no footage exists of the building being blown up.

Merely for highlighting these inconsistencies, Hayward was savagely attacked, accused of spreading Russian disinformation in a Times article and called a “useful idiot for President Putin’s atrocities” by Tory MP Robert Halfon.

The professor was also targeted by Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, who said universities that challenged the official narrative would be investigated and professors punished.

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This Is the End of Free Speech Online

The internet has changed radically in the past decade or so. Where social-media giants once boasted about being ‘the free speech wing of the free speech party’, in recent years, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms have become increasingly censorious, cracking down on dissenting views and offensive speech. Big Tech has relished this role as the unofficial arbiter of acceptable thought. But while the likes of Facebook may have severely wounded free speech online, it could be the UK government that deals the killer blow.

This week the long-awaited Online Safety Bill was published, which aims to make the UK the ‘safest place to be online in the world’ – in other words, the country with the most strictly regulated and censored internet of any liberal democracy. This mammoth piece of legislation was five years in the making, and those five years show. The bill is vast in scope, and terrifying in its implications for free speech.

Most significant is the ‘duty of care’ the bill imposes on social-media firms. Tech platforms will be legally required to prevent users from seeing both illegal content and ‘legal but harmful content’.

What actually constitutes ‘harmful content’ has yet to be revealed. If the Online Harms White Paper (published in 2020) is any guide, then this is likely to include content which might cause psychological harm, disinformation and trolling or harassment. Of course, all of these ‘harms’ are subjective. ‘Trolling’ can extend from playful banter to persistent harassment. Which views tech firms consider to be ‘disinformation’ has less to do with lies and truth than political expediency.

Once this list of harms is approved by parliament, the culture secretary will have the power to add more categories of harm, and firms will be required to report new ‘emerging harms’ to Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator. So we should expect the bill’s censorious remit to expand over time.

Firms which fail to comply with the new duty-of-care requirements, or are obstructive or provide false information to Ofcom, can be fined up to 10 per cent of their annual worldwide revenue, and platform executives can be sentenced to up to two years in jail. These severe penalties have allowed UK culture secretary Nadine Dorries to claim that she is taking on Big Tech, and that she is holding Silicon Valley firms ‘accountable’. But it is not Big Tech firms that suffer when free speech is curtailed online. Indeed, they have already demonstrated their indifference to free speech.

After all, it is not Facebook, Twitter or Google that produce the ‘harmful’ content the government wants to eliminate. It is us, the users of social media, the deplorable, unruly citizens, who are saying things that our political masters would rather we did not say. It is our ability to express ourselves that will be curtailed by this legislation, not theirs. And this is why this bill is so troubling.

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UK Online Safety Bill, that will censor some “legal but harmful” content, presented to Parliament

The Online Safety Bill, the most far-reaching online censorship law to ever be proposed in the UK, has been presented to Parliament.

UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Secretary of State Nadine Dorries, said her aim with the bill was to “make the internet, in the UK, the safest place in the world for children and vulnerable young people to go online.”

However, as with many bills that are positioned as a way to keep children safe, this Online Safety Bill contains sweeping speech restrictions that will affect all UK internet users.

The bill requires Big Tech companies to take action against “priority legal but harmful” content which will be decided by the government. The DCMS Secretary of State has the power to add more categories of priority legal but harmful content via secondary legislation in the future.

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British MP Calls Scale of COVID-19 Vaccine Damage a ‘Nightmare’

A veteran MP believes that tens of thousands have been severely adversely affected by COVID-19 vaccines in the UK and is calling on the government for more support.

“The public is going to catch on in the end,” Sir Christopher Chope told The Epoch Times.

“All the harms that have been caused and the fact that there are a whole lot of people out there who did the right thing and now, contrary to their expectation, are not receiving the help from the government that they believed they were to receive. That’s where I am in this,” he said.

The Conservative MP believes that tens of thousands have been adversely affected by vaccines. He said that the debate is not about all those who have benefited from vaccination, he firmly believes in them. But it’s about those who were vaccinated but then, as a result, suffered death, serious injury, or other life-changing adverse consequences.

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Whilst you’ve been distracted by Russia’s Invasion, the UK Gov. released a Report confirming the Fully Vaccinated now account for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 Deaths in England

The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms deaths are rising dramatically among the triple vaccinated population whilst declining steadily among the not-vaccinated population in England.

With the most recent figures showing the fully vaccinated accounted for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over the past month; and the triple vaccinated accounted for 4 in every 5 of them.

These are dark days for the citizens of Ukraine, but if you were to watch mainstream news or read a mainstream newspaper you could be forgiven for thinking the plight of the Ukrainians is currently the only event taking place in the world.

The Russian invasion is being aired in an endless 24/7 loop via BBC News and Sky News, with not a word about Covid-19 to be heard, despite airing nothing but propaganda and lies on the pandemic for the past two years.

It’s times like these that you ought to watch what bad news is being quietly published in the background in the hope that it won’t receive much attention, because there’s nothing better than an international crisis to distract the public from what’s going on at home.

With that being said, let’s take a look at what the UK Government have “quietly” published in the past week in regards to the Covid-19 situation in England.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publish a weekly Covid-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report, the most recent of which was published Thursday 24th Feb 22, and it can be viewed here.

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Diversity Training Tells Teachers That Kids Aren’t ‘Racially Innocent’

A number of teachers in the UK have been told that children as young as seven years old are not ‘racially innocent’ during mandatory diversity training.

During classes described as “Racial Literacy 101” sessions, a number of UK-based teachers have been told that kids as young as seven should not be thought of as “racially innocent”.

Brighton and Hove City Council — which has since been accused of “indoctrinating” children —  has said that the classes are “required for all staff” in schools.

According to an exposé by The Telegraph, 300 teachers have undertaken the training so far, which will supposedly inform “specific racial literacy-focused lessons” for school kids.

In documents seen by the publication, the course includes reference to “covert white supremacy” — which is partially defined during the course as denying white privilege — and also claims that young children are often seen as “racially innocent” despite supposed “ample evidence” showing that this is not the case.

“Between the ages of three and five, children learn to attach value to skin colour; white at the top of the hierarchy and black at the bottom,” The Telegraph reports one of the course documents as claiming.

The UK paper also reports that the consultant giving the session described Christianity as influencing the slave trade, and that they claimed that society obsesses over the muscle size of black sportsmen, but not those of their white rivals.

Also noted is that the city council is advertising a “race adviser” job with an advertised salary of £50,000 to £55,000 pro rata for two and a half days a week.

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