Looking at the online world, the report highlights the Online Safety Act 2023, which came into force in 2024, which threatens free speech online and \u201cexpressly expanded Ofcom\u2019s authority to include American media and technology firms with a substantial number of British users, regardless of whether they had a corporate presence in the UK\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026Experts warned that one effect of the bill could be government regulation to reduce or eliminate effective encryption (and therefore user privacy) on platforms,\u201d noted the State Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The report also highlighted that in April 2024, Scotland implemented the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, introducing sweeping new offenses for \u201cstirring up hatred\u201d through speech or online communication. The penalty for speech deemed to be offensive under this law is up to seven years imprisonment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reacting to the report, Lorcan Price, Irish Barrister & Legal Counsel for ADF International in London, said:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s plain to see that the censorship crisis is worsening in the UK \u2013 from citizens being arrested and prosecuted just for praying in their heads, to the Online Safety Act clamping down on free expression online. Whilst these developments are deeply concerning, it\u2019s encouraging to see Britain\u2019s US allies highlight these issues, as more and more Brits speak out in defence of our hard-fought freedom of speech.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking at the online world, the report highlights the Online Safety Act 2023, which came into force in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12389,59,57,58,50,34070,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-64234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-religious-freedom","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}