The only good thing is that all traditional UK government IT projects have been truly awful (and unfortunately consumed insane amounts of money). Hopefully Apple, Google et al will head this off or find a way to do it securely with trusted computing in a Secure Enclave and on-device only.

I’ve been working in the IT-related sector for thirty years and what I’m seeing happening at the moment worldwide is highly concerning and in most part entirely unnecessary.

What they are planning with data controls here is exactly the thing that China currently do… that’s the point. Similarly the USA’s plan for a massive data grab on tourists in the World Cup with Palantir. I’d trust our government and civil service if they understood computing, but they don’t.

That may not be the original intent, because let’s face it most members of parliament and the House of Lords are technology illiterate, but the fact remains that once such controls are in place they are hard to remove and definitely open to abuse in the future and that should be a concern to anyone

It is not a conspiracy. Right now data harvesting and data control are major target areas within computing, just take a look at the Cambridge Analytica scandal or the plans of Palantir. This isn’t tin foil hat territory. It’s pragmatism. Give people the leverage to control such things and they will.

There are ways to stop this commercial exploitation that does not involve the government installing a control layer into every single phone and desktop computer in the country… it’s not that hard to understand that concept is it? /sigh

I should be able to do whatever I choose - as long as it is legal - on my own devices without having to have someone looking over my shoulder or to give away personal data to do so. The “but think of the children” is not an acceptable risk for the removal of privacy.

At the moment they’re treating this as safety for children, but a future government could attempt to restrict further blocking any sociopolitical views they disagree with and block dissent. Once the mechanism is in place they can force it to be extended. It’s the dumbing down of society.

Parental filters and device configuration can block most of this already. Parents should be guarding children’s usage of devices themselves; we don’t need a nanny state where all adults are treated as children unless proven otherwise. That’s a ridiculous state of affairs to be in.

It’s not about that though. Operating systems already have these sorts of controls, and the ones governments do tend to overreach. This is not about porn - it’s about putting in mechanisms for a potential future surveillance state where any action on your own system may need external approval.

The fundamental issue with all of this isn’t about the display of explicit imagery but it being potentially the beginning of successive power grabs until everything you do on your own computer is monitored and requires some form of government approval. Sleepwalking towards an Orwellian nightmare.

As a developer I’m worried about all the “vibe coding” including test suites direct from LLMs. In my experiments they often produce overly complex and bad code, and hallucinate to the point of arguing methods and modules exist when they don’t. It makes me worried how much of this goes into prod.

And whilst in this case it may not have been a third party recommended by the OSA the fact remains that it’s hard to trust that any third party age verification system is handling data in a secure manner if any of the data or processing occurs off-device… if that data is stored online it is at risk

I don’t commute in and know there’s a strike on. However in serious mode, train lines (including suburban commuter, Elizabeth and Overground) aren’t on strike and funnel everyone into the same entrance/exits, hence the crowds.