Online Safety Bill: New offences and tighter rules

> The report also did not make any moves to ban the use of end-to-end encryption, which has been criticised by some politicians and child safety advocates as enabling criminal activity.

> Instead, it recommends that the use of encryption should be a "risk factor" included in risk assessments the tech companies must complete under the bill.

Banning encryption would be too straight-forward, and would galvanize opposition. Much more effective to weigh down companies with fines and legal and administrative barriers, until they eventually give up and do away with encryption.

This way there is no clear cause for the activist to point at - only companies "voluntarily" doing the "responsible" thing and backdooring their platforms, so GCHQ can bulk monitor all private communications.

> It was planned that Ms Dorries and her successors would have the power to exempt some services, modify codes of conduct, give "guidance" to Ofcom, and exercise powers on national security grounds - which the committee says should be variously restricted, removed, or subject to oversight.

As usual, regime media and collaborators will be given a pass, while others get crackdowns. You'd expect they'd be more subtle about subverting equality before the law, instead of explicitly writing that some may be exempted - provided the curry enough favor with the politicians.