An alarming shift has been taking place within the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party over the last few months. Spearheaded by MPs such as Munira Wilson, Danny Chambers, and, most alarmingly for me, Vikki Slade, we are apparently now back to advocating for a ban on social media for children and supporting a ban on images depicting nudity being stored on their devices.
I am very worried that the Party has not thought about how this could plausibly be implemented. I fear that once this dam breaks, once we move past a “think of the children” argument over a moral panic, then the same software which this policy requires will be able to be reused for surveillance and censorship. I worry that we are unknowingly advocating for the implementation of the sort of intrusion usually reserved for times of war, not to mention encroaching on Article 8 of the ECHR.
Article 8 of the ECHR is the famous right to privacy, which is the idea that people have the right to live their lives free from unreasonable and unnecessary intrusion from others, including the state. Government mandated spyware would very much fall into breach of that. This policy would require all phones to have specialist software which scans every outgoing or incoming image for signs of nudity. Client-Side Scanning essentially turns the user’s own device into a state informant. It breaks end-to-end encryption by scanning the image before it is encrypted, creating a permanent backdoor that can easily be repurposed for political censorship or surveillance. This is highly problematic. It is also very possible, and cannot be dismissed, that this image scanning software could be further weaponised to censor other things which are currently legal, such as same sex relationships and intimacy.
I personally feel that Article 8 extends to under 18s. Indeed, this is what the UN says, under Article 16 of the UNCRC. Children and teenagers aren’t stupid; they are developing citizens with a right to autonomy, and they will easily find ways around this (as we have already seen in Australia). Production of indecent imagery of children is illegal for very good reason, as it is morally reprehensible, and you’ll never see me advocate for that to be permitted. But my concern here is… what’s next? What’s to say that this same software is then used to enforce conformity by restricting what can and cannot be said online, regardless of whether the user is an adult or not? Why does this command such support when multiple (1,2,3) children’s charities have said it’s a bad idea?
We should be treating this with the same vigorous opposition we have always had to mandatory identification cards. We would say that the State opening and reading private letters or emails is wrong and an invasion of privacy, so why are we suddenly so in favour of surveillance of other forms of communication? It feels deeply hypocritical and against our pro-privacy values. The Liberal Democrats proudly opposed the Investigatory Powers Bill in 2016, so I dearly want to know what on earth has changed, and why we are now advocating for and supporting this dystopian and Orwellian approach to keeping children safe. We should not be trying to replace ordinary parental responsibility with intrusive state oversight and surveillance. Children need to be kept safe, but they have rights too, and that includes a right to privacy.
To echo the words of a great man: “I am a Liberal, and I am against this sort of thing.”
* Tara Foster is a LibDem campaigner from Southampton. She sits on the LGBT+ LibDems Executive as an Ordinary Member and is a prominent member of the Radical Association.
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4 Comments
“An alarming shift …… supporting a ban on images depicting nudity being stored on their devices.”
Has the author not heard of girls sharing pictures with boys who then share with their friends ? of boys and girls tricked in to sharing pictures which are then used to blackmail them ?
Ironically the first article that she links to saying : ” multiple (children’s charities have said it’s a bad idea?” actually says the opposite :
“Roxy Longworth, author and founder of Behind Our Screens, said: “I told myself, back in 2021, that if I went public with what happened to me and it stopped one life from being ruined, then it was worth it, but the more I campaigned the angrier I became.
“Every child needs to be protected from platforms who for far too long have been allowed to turn a blind eye to the damage being done to them. This announcement makes me hopeful that there won’t be kids sat in their room feeling the same pressure and shame that consumed my teenage years.”
Likewise, Chris Sherwood, chief exec at the NSPCC, said: “Every day these protections are not in place, more children will continue to face devastating harm in the online world. That’s why we strongly support the government’s decision to make it mandatory for these companies to block inappropriate material at device level. This marks a major step forward in our fight against online child sexual abuse.”
https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/06/09/signal-uks-child-nude-block-threat-wont-protect-children/5252761
Agreed. We are far too smart as a party to abandon our liberal values to pretend that social media and photo bans will be effective. The method by which we would have to allow EVERYONE’s phones to be searched for EVERY photo, as well as making people provide things like biometrics to Thiel backed companies like Persona is the main reason we should be opposing these authoritarian measures. We should also look at Spain and even the uk where earlier bans are a resounding failure. We can and should make social media companies contol their algorithms and we can and should make phone companies and parents and schools better police the age at which kids get phones without child safe features but were making huge security mistakes here and we will be judged harshly when the hacks and spying that’s inevitable comes to light.
Hi Simon
“Has the author not heard of girls sharing pictures with boys who then share with their friends ? of boys and girls tricked in to sharing pictures which are then used to blackmail them ?”
Both of these examples are already covered in law and are illegal. They do not require a massive invasion of privacy to deal with, and schools already have a robust system to deal with it. I make clear in the article that this is illegal for very good reason.
With regard to client-side image scanning, the danger of mission creep are real, but I have other concerns. One is whether this is truly a practical and effective measure. The Goverment says that this should be implemented on *all* devices, new and existing, within 3 months. This won’t happen, because while the technology exists in limited forms eg in Google Messages, it isn’t hooked into all camera apps and messaging services, and also children are often using second-hand or hand-me-down phones that are no longer getting software updates from the manufacturer. The Government hasn’t said anything about how this will be enforced on laptops or desktop PCs with webcams.
To work, it will also require a big expansion of age verification, which has plenty of privacy concerns of its own.
Introducing impractical laws that won’t work but add security and privacy risks, while crying “think of the children”, is just theatre.
On the social media ban, while online harms are a real risk, the answer shouldn’t be to regulate and surveil the *victims*, we should be targeting the perpetrators and the platforms that enable them. And just like with porn age verification, kids will find ways round it.
There are solutions already available for adding parental controls on phones. Most parents don’t use them.