The U.K. Parliament is pushing ahead with a sprawling internet regulation bill that will, among other things, undermine the privacy of people around the world. The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force backdoors into messaging services, which will destroy end-to-end encryption. No amendments have been accepted that would mitigate the bill’s most dangerous elements. If it passes, the Online Safety Bill will be a huge step backwards for global privacy, and democracy itself.
There are so many trends with technology that seem to favor another 1930’s Europe situation. The 1940 film “The Great Dictator” describes it pretty well, and it is sad how much love and compassion seem to be out of favor as people march more and more towards mechanized hate-driven systems of society. I really hope a pro-humanism civil rights movement takes hold, like Martin Luther King Jr’s kind of teaching, but it seems to not happen that a popular person like that comes to the top. Even a Carl Sagan type person with mass popularity to much of what Sagan shared in his books and speeches would be a good direction.