Dear Mike, in the last couple days, several "amendments" (actually brand new pieces of legislation) have been cynically snuck into the Children Wellbeing and Schools bill by some stooges in the House of Lords. These have been expertly timed to ensure that they will never be debated or scrutinised by Parliament because the Bill has already progressed beyond those stages. This means that deeply invasive spyware will be mandated in Britain without even a veneer of democratic process.

The "amendments" will force manufactures of phones and tablets for use in the UK to install "tamper-proof" software that prevents the "recording, viewing or transmission" of csam. This goes way beyond Chat Control, it is basically a rootkit on every mobile device. It will be incompatible with users having root privileges on devices they own, wiping out Linux and Android Open Source devices overnight. The "amendment" also gives the Secretary of State the power to extend the statute to cover PCs and laptops without oversight, simply by fiat. This means it will only be possible to have Windows or MacOS PCs with no admin privileges. Linux is simply incompatible with such a system.

Nobody seems to know this is happening. It's such a flagrant abuse of democracy and our British system of checks and balances that I have been left utterly speechless. It's also, in my opinion, a disgusting abuse of power by these "Lords". The function of the House of Lords is to scrutinise Bills introduced by our nominally elected representative in Parliament. These Lords are in fact introducing brand new legislation under the guise of "amendments". I don't know if that's even lawful. It's certainly a deeply cynical abuse of power.

If you can use your reach to let people know this is happening, that would be truly helpful. The "amendments" also mandate, amongst other things, age verification for VPNs. You can see the proposed new legislation masquerading as amendments at bills.parliament.uk/pub…

A word search of all the previous versions of the Bill will confirm that terms such as VPN or CSAM do not appear, confirming that these so-called amendments are entirely brand new material.