Signal: surveillance is not safety as UK weighs scanning device content

Signal has published a statement warning that the UK government's push to scan content on devices sold or used in the country will not make children safer. The document, dated June 8 and titled "Surveillance Is Not Safety", argues that the proposals endanger everyone while strengthening the market dominance of Apple, Google and Microsoft over people's most personal information.

What the UK is demanding

The statement describes a requirement that all content on all devices in the UK be scanned on the presumption of nudity, delivered through a combination of age verification and content scanning. Signal calls forcing every UK resident to prove their age or submit their content for scanning just to exercise a fundamental right to communicate a perilous proposition.

Children, the company argues, deserve safety, protection and nurturing — and they also deserve their human right to privacy, as does everyone else. Surveillance, funding cuts and cover-ups are not what they need.

Why the scope will not stay narrow

Signal's central argument is that mass surveillance and censorship capabilities never remain narrowly scoped, however sincere the promises of those who introduce them. Once created, the company says, they will be expanded and wielded in the UK and abroad to censor and surveil whatever authorities consider "threats" or "harmful content".

Promises that such a system would only run on-device are cold comfort. Wherever it runs — including the camera itself, once it is in place on UK devices — its scope will be defined by the government of the day: to detect nudity today and political speech tomorrow. Signal points to law enforcement agencies that have already asked for similarly broad powers, powers it says are ripe for exploitation in an increasingly tenuous political landscape, and warns the tools would be used to report people to the authorities automatically.

What child safety looks like

Real child safety, in Signal's telling, means well-funded education, robust social services and meaningful guardrails on the AI technologies and platforms the current government is eagerly courting. What the government wants instead, the statement says, is invisible surveillance infrastructure switched on by default and potentially rushed into law under cynical pretexts, with scant care for the children it claims to protect.