The British government has had enough of online pornography. It’s had enough of fraud and trolls. It’s had enough of social media posts that try to promote suicide or eating disorders. In an effort to turn the country into the “safest place in the world to be online,” the government is doggedly pushing the so-called Online Safety Bill through parliament.
But tech companies ranging from Wikipedia to Signal say the bill goes way too far and that instead of making the internet safer, it will actually crush free expression. One of the loudest voices in this debate has been WhatsApp, which is the country’s most popular mobile app and for many Brits, the de facto way to communicate. The messaging service considers the bill an existential threat to its end-to-end encryption.
To persuade politicians to rewrite the bill, WhatsApp has tried insults—comparing the UK’s erosion of online privacy to that of Iran, one of the world’s most repressive regimes. The company has also tried threats—pledging to cut UK users off if the bill passes. But now the Meta-owned app has enlisted a new (and slightly reluctant) ally in its argument to protect encryption: an Afghan women’s soccer team.
Today, WhatsApp released a short film showing how a group of teenage Afghan soccer players used the app to coordinate their escape from the Taliban after the chaotic withdrawal of US troops two years ago. At the time, there was concern that female soccer players would be targeted—alongside women’s rights activists—for taking part in a sport the regime considered un-Islamic.
The implication of WhatsApp’s doc is that it’s not only criminals who will be affected by the inability to communicate privately. “We produced this documentary to help raise awareness around the particular safety issues women face and how private communication allows everyone to speak freely, wherever they are in the world,” says Victoria Grand, WhatsApp’s VP of global affairs.
Read the full article here
