Will U.K. Online Safety Bill Break Encryption For Mass Surveillance?

The U.K. Online Safety Bill completed its passage through Parliament
earlier this week and is now on its way to the King, for Royal Assent,
after which it will become law. This new legislation seeks to protect
people from illegal content and activity online, with a critical focus
on child protection so that they do not encounter content and activity
that could be harmful to them.

The regulated parties are the providers of user-to-user online
content, which captures the big social media platforms and the like,
the providers of search services, which include search engines and, to
a lesser extent, publishers of online pornography. Broadly speaking,
the platforms will have to perform risk assessments to understand the
extent to which their users will encounter illegal or harmful content,
block access to this content and arbitrate between other interests
that might be engaged by blocking, such as journalistic interests and
freedom of expression.
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Section 122 will empower Ofcom, the communications regulator, to
service notices on regulated platforms requiring them to identify
terrorism and CSEA content and to prevent people from encountering it,
or to develop or source technology for these purposes.
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Reading section 122 at face value, it certainly poses a threat to communications encryption, which in turn creates two risks. Firstly,
there is the obvious privacy risk: why should private sector companies
become a tool of law enforcement and be empowered to survey everyone's communication? Isn't this mass surveillance by the back door?
Secondly, there is the risk to security itself, with the argument
being that once you break encryption, it's broken for everyone, which
in turn helps the bad guys.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stewartroom/2023/09/21/will-uk-online-safety-bill-break-encryption-for-mass-surveillance/?sh=79e1bd6240f0

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