Government threatens law forcing tech firms to block children sharing nude images

The UK will force Apple and Google to prevent children taking or sharing explicit images on smartphones if the companies do not act voluntarily, the government announced. The BBC reports the threat of new legislation follows concern that existing child safety measures are insufficient. The Financial Times says the move targets tech giants specifically, while the Mirror reports firms are being "threatened" with legal compulsion.

The Guardian reports the measure would require operating system providers to block explicit content at the device level - before it reaches an app or a network. The proposal assumes the technology exists to distinguish a nude image from a non-nude one in real time, on the device, without a human reviewing it. It also assumes that capacity can be built into phones without creating a general-purpose scanning system that reads everything a child photographs or receives.

The principle cuts two ways. A parent wants a child protected from exploitation and from making a permanent mistake. A citizen wants the state unable to read private communications, and wants technology that cannot be repurposed. The question is whether the thing being proposed is narrow enough to do the first without enabling the second. If the device can scan for one category of image, it can scan for any category of image - and the categories, once written into law, tend to grow.

The test: whether the legislation, if it arrives, specifies the technical standard in enough detail that an independent engineer can verify the system does only what it claims. If it does not, this is a scanning mandate with a permission structure built in.