Around 450 People Will Be Working On The Enforcement Of The UK’s Online Safety Act – To Begin With, At Least…
from the harder-than-it-looks dept
Techdirt has been covering the UK’s awful Online Safety Act for nearly five years now. During that time it has changed name — it was originally called the Online Harms Bill — but the many bad ideas have remained. Some have even become worse. For example, the UK government said that it wouldn’t enforce the part that effectively outlaws encryption, but that it would leave the relevant section in the Act, which means that it could still be used at any time.
However badly drafted, the Online Safety Act is nonetheless law in the UK, which means we pass from the years of argument over what should be in the legislation to how it is actually enforced. That’s the responsibility of the UK regulatory body Ofcom, which released last year a roadmap for rolling out the law. A news item in the Financial Times provides a glimpse of what is going on behind the scenes:
Ofcom has been poaching staff from Big Tech companies as the UK media watchdog prepares to enforce one of the world’s toughest new regulatory regimes for the internet.
The regulator has created a new team of nearly 350 people dedicated to tackling online safety, including new hires from senior jobs at Meta, Microsoft and Google. Ofcom also aims to hire another 100 this year, it said.
To put those figures in context, Ofcom’s most recent annual report (pdf) for 2021-22, shows that the average number of employees rose from 992 in 2020/21 to 1,102 the following year. The report says that this was “primarily as a result of the preparation work for our new duties regarding Online Safety.” Ofcom’s Online Safety Act team, which is expected to grow to around 450 according to the FT news item, will represent therefore around a quarter to a third of the entire Ofcom personnel. That’s a measure of how big the task facing them will be. It will also be an expensive undertaking. According to the FT article:
Ofcom has estimated that implementing the act will cost £166mn [around $210 million] by April 2025, of which £56mn [approximately $70 million] will have been spent by April this year. The regulator plans to create a fee structure for companies to recover costs.
It’s not clear whether those figures take into account what is likely to become a major cost: legal battles.
Ofcom also expects that many of its decisions may need to be defended in the courts, with tech companies keen to challenge unclear aspects of the act to clarify the law. That will test how effective the watchdog is up against the legal teams of some of the world’s deep-pocketed tech companies.
“We are fully prepared to take risky cases in terms of our own legal exposure,” said Suzanne Cater, director of enforcement at Ofcom. “We will be up against some big companies; there could be a very hostile environment here.”
That’s putting it mildly. As we have seen with the EU’s GDPR privacy legislation, companies like Meta are happy to litigate repeatedly in an effort to block rulings that would adversely affect their business models. There is likely to be a fierce fight against the Online Safety Act, which aims to bring in some of the toughest online regulations in the world. Ofcom will doubtless find that this is harder than it thinks, which will probably result in the Online Safety Act team growing larger to meet the increased demands placed upon it.
The danger is that Ofcom’s Online Safety Act department will grow into a huge administrative monster that overshadows and drains the rest of the regulatory body, while still failing to bring about the revolution in online behavior the new law clearly aims to produce. Along the way it will also harm the UK’s flourishing digital economy with an unrealistic new compliance regime, and encourage other countries to engage in the same hopeless quest to make the Internet “safe.”
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky.
Filed Under: eu, gdpr, implementation, ofcom, online harms, online safety act, privacy, uk
Companies: google, meta, microsoft
Comments on “Around 450 People Will Be Working On The Enforcement Of The UK’s Online Safety Act – To Begin With, At Least…”
Its looking more and more like WHEN not IF the law will collapse under its own weight.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Only TechDirt could be upset that a government was adequately staffing up a regulatory agency charged with protecting safety online.
It’s like you literally want chaos, anarchy, abuse and predation online.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
shut the fuck up right wing loser
Re:
flag this ac
Re:
ok then show us your real name and your search history if you think this will protect kids
Re:
And it’s like you literally want governments to destroy privacy and security on the internet.
Re: Re:
and the funny thing he’s a ac trying to promote the destruction of privacy and security
Re:
If you literally want chaos, anarchy, abuse and predation online, keep on supporting shitty legislation like the Online [Lack of] Safety Act.
Ahh, the problems that modern managers and politicians cause by believing they can micromanage that which the do not understand.
Just to clarify
A comment by someone on here: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/03/online-safety-bill-is-official-now-we-see-what-enforcement-looks-like/
Said this and I quote “Having read the roadmap, they are being put out for consultation and the final versions that will be enforceable won’t be until Autumn next year. Alot of chances for the wheels to fall off.”
Is that true?
Re:
🤷
Re:
Still a bit early to say.
'Nice platform you got here, be a shame if something we to happen...'
For example, the UK government said that it wouldn’t enforce the part that effectively outlaws encryption, but that it would leave the relevant section in the Act, which means that it could still be used at any time.
Something which I’m sure will never be used to bludgeon companies into compliance with the threat of ‘either you do it our way and ‘voluntarily’ sabotage your own encryption in just a teeny-tiny way or we make use of the clause that forces you to do it wholesale.’
Simple rule of thumb: If a government writes in a clause that gives them a power but pinky-promises that they won’t ever use it after facing criticism for it they’re lying; if they didn’t plan to use it they’d just get rid of it to address the criticism so if they keep it the question isn’t ‘will’ they use it but ‘how soon and how often’.
The original name was a lot more honest.
At least back then they were making it clear that it was “A bill for the imposition of online harms”
Re:
The new name is accurate too: they claim it’s about online safety, but that’s just an act.
The UK is not in the eu some company’s might choose to block UK users rather than comply with a law that is pointless and expensive to follow and reduces the right of users to have private conversations .breaking encryption makes users more vulnerable to hackers or financial scammers
Breitbart loves parts of the UK Safety bill
Although they’re not in love with the UK Safety bill because of not allowing hate speech, I read an article that Breitbart news is calling the UK Safety Bill a step in the right direction. They feel that the internet should be like a Disney World theme park run by Walt Disney Not Robert Iger. They hope a senator like John Kennedy of Louisiana or Josh Hawley of Missouri can write a law for the internet the same as the UK Safety Bill but with hate speech protected. The right with its book bans and porn site bans proves everyday that they truly are the party of Trump and please do not allow Trump even a foot to the White House. Trump would gladly make the internet worse and only in favor of his bigoted supporters
This is why we need to fight the authoritarian Right with more than just words. The people who run and contribute to Breitbart are some of the first who should be removed from polite society because of the threat they pose to Democracy.
I know you all agree with me, but I understand it’s scary to give voice to these sentiments. Revolutionary justice demands Courage!
Re:
So, we need to fight with more than just the words which we are already afraid to say. Got it.
Re:
And which methods would you suggest, and please, be specific so that there is no chance for misunderstanding.
Re:
Violence is usually the sword we draw only when all other options have failed.
And evidence suggests that this Act will collapse on itself before long. There was one other silly Ofcom act that also collapsed under its own weight.
Are you suggesting we crack the egg before it’s hatched? I mean, waiting while ensuring the Nazis have as little reach as possible seems to be the better option right now.
Re: Re:
De-bank them first. Complete exile from the financial system.
Then extremist disruption orders, for is Nazism not terrorism?
Follow with deportation of all violators who were not born in British islands. (In fact, just wholesale deportation of any British Dependent Territories citizens-out of spite!)
etc…
Violence would be way down on the list.
Re: Re: Re:
If you haven’t heard, criminals are already doing their fucking banking in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Oh, and thanks for also making them also be useful assets for other nations.
Then they’ll move to the belligerent nations. I mean, Assange was Australian and I believe he’s a useful Russian Asset…
Why do I sense an actual pattern here?
Your fascism is showing.
Do realize that your “suggestions” as it were, are more or less the exact same steps the actual Nazis used to get Jews out of Germany. And even then, wholesale denial of certain rights and privileges are things you really, really don’t want to do unless you are very damn sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, and with irrefutable evidence that they are, in fact, commiting high treason or something similar to harm the nation-state of your choice.
Unless you want the face-eating leopards to eat your face as soon as they eat your enemies’…
No encryption?
So what, no more https either? After all that’s encryption.