Child online grooming is at record highs, according to a leading children’s welfare charity.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) have reported that UK police have recorded 34,000 crimes since 2017 and have called for the Online Safety Bill to be passed amid its extensive delay.
The landmark piece of legislation - which seeks to limit the tech industry's power - has been hindered by amendments and debates about the scope of government in restricting internet freedom and their duty to protect children and other vulnerable people from exploitative content.
Tech giants like WhatsApp and Signal have threatened to leave the UK market if the bill is passed, as they argue it pulls the plug on end-to-end encryption, which enables the message to be only read by the sender and the recipient.
Rani Govender, the senior policy officer at the NSPCC, told BBC News: "We don't think there's a trade-off between safety and privacy, we think it's about investing in those technical solutions which we know are out there that can deliver for the privacy and safety of all users on these services."
Many internet safety campaigners - like Kate Robertson at Citizen Lab, an organisation looking at security on the internet -oppose the bill.
She said: "We shouldn’t be drilling more holes in the internet safety."
Kate added that encryption "is an important source of safety for vulnerable individuals, and it's also an important safety net for privacy itself".
Elsewhere, Susie Hargreaves, the CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation, has called for more protections.
She said: "Without them, end-to-end encryption will be a smokescreen for abusers, helping them hide what they're doing, and enabling them to continue to hurt children and destroy young lives."
