Preparing for another expansion to the UK Secure Invoice Online: Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law to protect victims of revenge porn, deepfakes and other abuses involving the taking and sharing of intimate images without consent – during a raid impose a type of abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls.
The Government says the latest amendment to the Bill will expand the scope of current intimate image violations – “so that more perpetrators will face prosecution and potentially face prosecution.” in prison”.
Other abuses that would become explicitly illegal include “dethroning” (where photographs are taken down a woman’s shirt without consent); and the installation of equipment, such as hidden cameras, to take or record images of someone without their consent.
The government describes the planned changes as a comprehensive package of measures to modernize legislation in this area.
It’s also notable because it’s the first time it has criminalized the sharing of deep works.
Powerful and increasingly accessible image and video creation AIs have led to an increase in the creation and abuse of deepfake pornography, raising concerns about harms associated with this type of AI-powered technology. .
Just this week, the precipice reports that the maker of the open-source AI text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion has tweaked its software to make it harder for users to create nudity and pornography — seemingly in response to the total AI technology risk. used to create sexually explicit images of child abuse material.
But that’s just an example. Many other tools for creating pornographic deepfakes are still available.
From revenge porn to deepfakes
While the UK passed legislation against porn revenue back to 2015 Victims and campaigners have been warning for many years that the mode does not work and pressure to rethink.
This has resulted in a number of goal changes over the years. For example, the government made ‘upskirting’ illegal through a law change that came into effect. back in 2019. While in Steps areit said ‘cyberflashing’ will be added as an upcoming online safety law violation.
However, it has now decided that further amendments are needed to expand and clarify the offenses related to intimate images to make it easier for police and prosecutors to pursue cases and ensure the law. catching up with technology.
It is acting on a number of recommendations by the Law Commission in review in 2021 abuse of intimate images.
This includes repealing and replacing existing laws with new crimes that the government believes will lower the threshold for successful prosecution, including a new basic crime of sharing intimate images without consent. (so in this case there would be no requirement to prove intent to cause distress); along with two more serious offenses based on the intent to cause humiliation, vigilance or suffering and to gain sexual gratification.
The planned changes will also create two offenses namely threatening to share and setting the device to allow photography; and criminalize the non-consensual sharing of generated intimate images (also known as deepfakes).
The government says 1 in 14 adults in England and Wales have been threatened with intimate images sharing, with more than 28,000 reports of private sexual images being released without consent due to Police records from April 2015 to December 2021.
It also points to an increase in abusive deepfake pornography — note one example of a mostly nude women’s website receiving 38 million hits in the first eight months of 2021.
An increasing number of UK lawmakers and campaign groups have called for a ban on the use of AI to nudity women since the abuse of the technology emerged – because of this. BBC report on one such site, called DeepSukebe, was reported last year.
Commenting on the planned changes in a statement, the deputy prime minister and judicial secretary, Dominic Raab, said:
We must do more to protect women and girls from those who take or edit intimate photos to hunt or humiliate them.
Our changes will give police and prosecutors the power they need to bring these cowards to justice and protect women and girls from such horrific abuses as so.
Under the government’s plan, new deep-rooted pornography offenses will place a legal obligation on platforms and services subject to upcoming online safety legislation to remove this type of material if it is shared. share on their platforms without consent – at the risk of severe penalties, under the Online Safety Bill, if they don’t remove illegal content.
Victims of revenge porn and other intimate image abuse have complained for years about the difficulty and disproportionate effort they need to track and report images that have been shared online without without their consent.
Ministers argued that the proposed changes to UK law would improve protections for victims in this area.
Commenting in another statement of support, DCMS state secretary Michelle Donelan said:
Through the Online Safety Bill, I guarantee that tech companies will have to prevent illegal content and protect children on their platforms, but we will also upgrade the criminal law to prevent it. horrible crimes such as cyberattacks.
With these latest additions to the Bill, our legislation will go even further to protect women and children, who are severely impacted, from this horrific abuse once and for all. forever.
One point to note is that the Online Safety Bill is still on hold while the government drafts amendments related to Another aspect of the law.
Yesterday, House Leader Penny Mordaunt confirmed the bill would return to parliament on Monday, December 5.
The government has A denied delay would derail the passage of the bill through parliament — but certainly, congressional time is tight. So it is unclear when (or even if) the bill will actually become UK law, as there are only about two years left before a General Election is to be held.
In addition, parliament must also take the time to make the necessary changes to UK law on the abuse of intimate images.
The government has yet to set a timetable for that component – only saying it will introduce the package of changes “as soon as parliamentary time permits”, adding that it will announce more details “in the future”. next time”.
This report has been updated to include the Online Safety Bill’s congressional return date for the remaining phases.
