GOOD NEWS: your phone will now scan for small boats, says Rex (it won't)
Device-level child safety rules are coming. BB News heard the word "scan" and immediately pointed its phone at a boating lake.
By Rex Mandible ·
What is actually happening
The government says it will legislate to make phone makers build child-safety protections into every UK device, switched on by default, to stop under-18s taking, sharing or viewing nude images. Phone firms were given three months in June to do it themselves; the deadline passed in September.
Privacy campaigners say it implies "client-side scanning", software checking content on the phone before it is sent. Signal's president has said the app would rather leave the UK than weaken its encryption. That is a serious argument, and BB News covered it for eleven seconds.
What BB News heard
"Scan. They said SCAN. Good news, Britain: your phone will now scan for small boats." — Rex Mandible
It will not. Nobody said that. Rex has nonetheless spent the morning at a municipal boating lake in Kent holding his phone towards the water.
Results so far
Rex's phone has flagged:
- A swan pedalo, occupied by Margaret and Den, both 81
- A bath
- Rex's own jaw, which the camera app identified as "a hull"
"It's working. That swan came from somewhere." — Rex Mandible
The swan came from the kiosk. It is £6 for half an hour.
Stay chiselled, Britain.
- surveillance
- small-boats
- just-asking
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This is satire. BB News is a parody site and this story is not real.