From LifeSiteNews

By Didi Rankovic

Labour MP Lola McEvoy defended the Online Safety Act’s censorious measures, including bans and fines for social media platforms which ‘don’t comply’ with the strict age verification law.

Politicians from the U.K.’s ruling Labour party are starting to openly “out” the country’s Online Safety Act for the sweeping censorship law that its opponents have all along been warning it is.

The extreme case of using the law to completely ban social media platforms in the U.K. is now being promoted as a possibility by Labour MP Lola McEvoy.

“If these big platforms that have huge users don’t comply with the Online Safety Act, then they have no right to be accessed in this country,” the MP said while appearing on a podcast, adding, “So I think that’s what the law’s about.”

The masks are coming off, prompted by the latest clash between the government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer in particular and X owner Elon Musk – who criticized their role in a historical child sex exploitation scandal in the U.K.

In addition to saying that failure to comply with the law could result in the platforms getting banned, McEvoy suggested that “unelected citizens from other countries” should not be allowed to criticize U.K.’s government – she justified this by saying the criticism of Minister for Safeguarding Jess Phillips created “a very dangerous situation,” equating it to “bullying and harassment.”

McEvoy even made a point of public figures needing to be even more aggressively protected through censorship – effectively from whatever the government backing those figures decides to pack into the vague categories such as “bullying” and “harassment,” and in that way deal with critical, including legitimate, speech.

And where would any controversial call to step up online censorship be without getting served to the public as a way to above all – protect children?

So, in addition to blanket bans on accessing apps and platforms for essentially political reasons, China-style, McEvoy recalled that the Online Safety Act also contains the threat of massive fines in case the social media companies fail to comply with what she referred to as “very strict age verification” requirements.

McEvoy spoke about regulator Ofcom’s powers, which she described as “really significant” in enforcing the fines under the law that is being gradually implemented.

And as that is happening, this MP wants the Online Safety Act to be “strengthened” where it concerns the focus on things it treats as harmful to children, such as access to illegal content or pornography.

Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.

By Didi Rankovic

Clearview AI is said to subjecting billions of people to this, without consent. From there, the implications for privacy, free speech, and even data security are evident.

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has suffered a legal setback in Canada, where the Supreme Court of British Columbia decided to throw out the company’s petition aimed at cancelling an Information and Privacy Commissioner’s order.

The order aims to prevent Clearview AI from collecting facial biometric data for biometric comparison in the province without the targeted individuals’ consent.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The controversial company markets itself as “an investigative platform” that helps law enforcement identify suspects, witnesses, and victims.

Privacy advocates critical of Clearview AI’s activities, however, see it as a major component in the burgeoning facial surveillance industry, stressing in particular the need to obtain consent – via opt-ins – before people’s facial biometrics can be collected.

And Clearview AI is said to subjecting billions of people to this, without consent. From there, the implications for privacy, free speech, and even data security are evident.

The British Columbia Commissioner appears to have been thinking along the same lines when issuing the order, that bans Clearview from selling biometric facial arrays taken from non-consenting individuals to its clients.

In addition, the order instructs Clearview to “make best efforts” to stop the practice in place so far, which includes collection, use, and disclosure of personal data – but also delete this type of information already in the company’s possession.

Right now, there is no time limit to how long Clearview can retain the data, which it collects from the internet using an automated “image crawler.”

Clearview moved to try to get the order dismissed as “unreasonable,” arguing that on the one hand, it is unable to tell if an image of a persons face is that of a Canadian, while also claiming that no Canadian law is broken since this biometric information is available online publicly.

The legal battle, however, revealed that images of faces of residents of British Columbia, children included, are among Clearview’s database of more than three billion photos (of Canadians) – while the total figure is over 50 billion.

The court also finds the Commissioner’s order to be very reasonable indeed – including when rejecting “Clearview’s bald assertion” that, in British Columbia, “it simply could not do” what it does in the US state of Illinois, to comply with the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

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