Online safety campaigners reveal Starmer frustrations after Phillips exit
Internet safety and children’s rights campaigners have accused Keir Starmer of failing to act on proposals to stop children sending and receiving nude images on their phones, after Jess Phillips resigned from the government saying she was tired of seeing “opportunities for progress stalled and delayed”,The Labour politician was one of four ministers who quit on Tuesday and joined more than 80 MPs calling for the prime minister to go,In a coruscating letter she focused on a lack of urgency and boldness in tackling child abuse images, accusing Starmer of failing to take action to stop children being able to take or send naked pictures,She said: “Over a year ago I presented solutions, long worked on by brilliant civil servants, that would end the ability for children in the UK to take naked images of themselves,“We could stop this abuse.
It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space.Not legislate, just threaten.This is the definition of incremental change.Nothing bold about it.The announcement was meant to be in March.
”Hannah Swirsky, head of policy and public affairs at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), said campaigners had been pushing for the government to force tech companies to block the ability to send and receive naked images on devices belonging to children.“This technology exists, it can be implemented and it would be a big step in stopping the proliferation of child sexual abuse images because it would stop a significant number of them being produced at source,” she said.Campaigners had hoped the government’s violence against women and girls strategy, published in December, would include plans to force tech companies to make the image blocker a default feature on children’s phones if they did not take action voluntarily.Instead, the strategy promised to “join forces with tech companies so we can work together to make [blocking images] a reality and better protect young people from grooming, extortion, bullying, harassment and sexual abuse.”In 2024, 91% of the reports of child sexual abuse images received by the IWF that were found to be criminal contained “self-generated” imagery, according to the charity’s research.
Police recorded 7,263 sexual communication with a child offences in the last year, almost double the number recorded since the offence came into force in 2017-18.“The government has been extremely slow, they have been too cautious and not gone as far as needed to tackle the issue of online child sexual abuse,” said Swirsky.Sources who had pushed on the policy behind the scenes said measures had found support in the Home Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, but had encountered a wall of inertia in Downing Street.They said that despite “private assurances” from the prime minister that he would do more to keep children safe online, it had sat on his desk “for months”.“I think there are questions to be asked about the access and the proximity of tech companies to the government and whether No 10 has been prioritising trade deals over online safety,” they said.
“It felt like some of the people who were advising on this decision were too close to the tech companies,”Others described a deep frustration at an “incremental” approach to change, saying an opportunity had been missed,“If we did this then the UK could be the world leader in tackling online child abuse, because other countries would have to follow – it’s just been painful to watch the complete lack of action,”Andy Burrow, CEO of the Molly Rose Foundation, said campaigners were “deeply frustrated” at the “logjam” that proposals had faced at the top of government,“The frustrations that Jess has expressed publicly today are the same frustrations that have been swirling privately for quite some time, and deservedly so,” he said.
“There is just this sense that it’s just been stuck in treacle in No 10,”There had been hope that the measures could be included in Starmer’s king’s speech, which is expected on Wednesday, he added,“We hoped there was a chance as of the end of last week that some of this would make its way in,” he said,“But quite where we are now, given the last 48 hours, is anybody’s guess,”
Google announces raft of free upgrades for Android phones
Google has announced a range of features coming to Android phones this year, including a new Gemini Intelligence AI system and a tool to help users avoid distracting apps.Revealed in a livestreamed “Android Show” event, the free upgrades are scheduled to arrive in waves over the next year for high-end new and old phones alike, including Samsung and Pixel devices. Google also revealed that a new lineup of laptops will arrive in the autumn.Gemini Intelligence will combine the company’s top AI tools into one system aimed at being more proactively useful.It will be able to automate tasks by directly interacting with the apps already on a phone
Head of Microsoft’s Israel branch to step down after inquiry into dealings with Israeli military
The head of Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary will step down in the wake of an inquiry that has scrutinised its business dealings with the Israeli military.Microsoft ordered the inquiry last year in response to a Guardian investigation revealing the military had used the company’s technology to operate a powerful surveillance system that collected Palestinian civilian phone calls on a mass scale.The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found the military’s elite spy agency, Unit 8200, had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store a vast trove of intercepted calls from Gaza and the West Bank.The inquiry commissioned by Microsoft is understood to have recently concluded. Its findings are unclear; however, sources familiar with the situation said they prompted an announcement last week that Microsoft Israel’s general manager, Alon Haimovich, would leave the company
GameStop’s $55.5bn bid for eBay rejected as ‘neither credible nor attractive’
The board of eBay has rejected the US video games retailer GameStop’s surprise $55.5bn bid (£41bn) for the online marketplace, describing the proposal as “neither credible nor attractive”.Earlier this month, GameStop made an unsolicited bid for eBay, publishing a letter on its website outlining a half-cash, half-stock proposal.This was despite the US games company – which became a global household name during the meme stock craze of 2021 – being worth far less than its takeover target. GameStop had a market valuation of roughly $12bn before its bid, almost a quarter of eBay’s $46bn valuation
Trump heads to China to spread the gospel of American tech
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian.Donald Trump is headed to China this week. If his guest list is any clue, he wants to discuss technology with Xi Jinping, though perhaps after the war in Iran.On Monday, news broke that outgoing Apple CEO, Tim Cook, as well as SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, would join Trump
Trump heads to China to spread the gospel of American tech while emulating Xi Jinping on AI
Donald Trump is heading to China this week. If his guest list is any clue, he wants to discuss technology with Xi Jinping, though perhaps after the war in Iran.On Monday, news broke that outgoing Apple CEO, Tim Cook, as well as SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, would join the US president. Other guests from the tech sphere include Meta’s recently appointed president, Dina Powell McCormick; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of computer memory maker Micron; Chuck Robbins, CEO of longtime telecom giant Cisco; and Cristiano Amon, CEO of semiconductor maker Qualcomm, according to a White House official.Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO – who is close to Trump but criticized the US’s limitations on chip sales to China in an April interview, saying that he didn’t want a “loser mentality” to cost the US its edge in AI – will not be joining the president
Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright
Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instruction of a charlatan astrologer called Pseudoramus, insists his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden and elderly wigmaker.While the theme could well have been dreamed up by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and scenery were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat)
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