The UK Government has chosen to blatantly disregard an effort by constituents to have the draconian Online Safety Act repealed.

An official petition on the government’s website has reached nearly 400,000 signatures, only 100,000 are needed to “consider this for a debate”. However rather than engage those concerned in good faith, a response from the government has shut out discussion.

I would like to thank all those who signed the petition. It is right that the regulatory regime for in scope online services takes a proportionate approach, balancing the protection of users from online harm with the ability for low-risk services to operate effectively and provide benefits to users.

The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.

The response was from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and appears to conceal a deeper contempt for the signees of the petition. Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology accused all those who want the act repealed of being “on the side of predators“.

For those unaware, the Online Safety Act was recently enacted in the UK. The act forces websites to either block access from the country, or comply with age verification requirements which could put individuals at risk.

Critics of bills like the Online Safety Act point out the inherent risk of giving websites your personal information, or worse, telling the government what sites you access. Just recently, an app for women to discuss dating strategies was found to be insecure and government IDs and metadata were scraped and made public.

It’s worth pointing out that many of the Acts restrictions can be bypassed by a VPN.