Responding to the Government’s plan to regulate images on devices, Matthew Lesh, Public Policy Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs said:

“The Government’s plan to turn every smartphone into a government scanning device is a creepy infringement on user privacy that will inevitably be exploited by bad actors with nefarious intent – be it criminal hackers or authoritarian governments.

“Over 90% of contact child sexual abuse is committed by people known to the child, according to the NSPCC. No phone-level fix addresses that. The unglamorous task of safeguarding children does not come with easy technical fixes.”