Feedback on The Online Safety Act (an email to my MP)
Now that the Online Safety act has come into effect and the inevitable consequences are starting to play out, I decided to email my MP to try and find out what the Government intends to do to unpick the mess.
Doing this felt particularly important in light of the divisive comments made by Peter Kyle MP (I feel extremely dirty agreeing with anything that Farage has said, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day).
Kyle pointed to the cases of Nicholas Hawkes and Tyler Webb as examples of the Act's benefit. With an act as broad as the Online Safety Act, there will always be some successes.
However, both are also examples of cases that were pursued without needing any of the act's more draconian measures: Both Hawkes and Webb were caught because of the courage of their victims, who took screenshots and reported the behaviour to the police.
Requiring adults across the country to share sensitive personal information had absolutely no bearing on either case - the only relevance of the Online Safety Act is that it defined some offences which did not previously exist.
