Strengthening Privacy in the Online Safety Bill: Joint Civil Society Briefing

The Community Policy Forum is proud to contribute to a joint briefing outlining why the Online Safety Bill must strengthen its protection of privacy and anonymity if it is to keep users safer and protect freedom of expression.

Privacy and anonymity are essential protections to keep people safe online, and allow them to exercise their digital rights and freedoms. The Online Safety Bill overlooks this, and sees privacy and anonymity primarily as constraints on the pursuit of safety or as risks to be managed. This briefing sets out why the protection of privacy and anonymity in the Bill should be strengthened, if the Bill is to deliver on its promises to keep users safer online and protect freedom of expression. It sets out how this can be achieved through strengthening rights protections and reducing the incentives for platforms to meet their safety duties through the use of systems which fail to protect the privacy of their users.

Read the full briefing: