Article By Cindy Harper
The idea of software that inspects every image on people’s phones, including those in their private photo albums, has been around for a while, but a cross-party group of UK MPs and peers is now trying to make sure it becomes a reality.
The software would be installed on every phone and tablet sold in the country, to check for child sexual abuse material, including that created using AI. This would include livestreams, The Observer reported on November 8.
The newspaper’s own summary of the proposal is stark: “Smartphones and tablets in UK would be prevented from viewing or creating illicit content by mandatory software on all devices.”
As the report said, this is not something that could be installed only on new devices, but also those already in use would have to be covered, “using a mandatory software update.”
Those behind the idea are led in the Lords by Conservative peer John Nash. In the Commons, the policy is supported by Labour MP Jess Phillips, who until May served as the safeguarding minister and resigned her post over the government’s slow action in blocking nudity on children’s phones.
Now, Phillips wants the government to “look at the technology that we are going to demand children have on their phones and see what else we can think about.”
Meanwhile, Nash is undeterred by the fact that such software would have to look at every image, video, and livestream on the phone, where people also keep their private photos, notes, and conversations.
To block an image, the software has to look at it first, and this is something that has to happen on the device.
Nash, who says he thinks free speech matters, but “we are talking about stuff that is illegal,” wants the software to be installed on all devices, and believes tech companies can be made to do it.
“If it can be done for children’s phones on these images, it can be done for child sexual abuse images on all phones. Frankly, these are trillion-dollar companies. Of course, if they are made to do it, they can do it,” he said.
If the government does not act, Nash plans to propose an amendment, likely to the forthcoming national security bill.
The idea has been in the works for a while. In June, the government gave Apple and Google three months, saying at the time that “companies should switch these protections on by default, for every child, on every device.”
The government promised that this would be done “without threatening privacy or collecting any data” and that “the device should simply block harmful content across all apps and services.”
It was also revealed that while the plan was to have the software switched on by default on all devices, adults would be able to opt in to view nude content “through an age verification process” – meaning that those who don’t provide ID would have their phones treated like children’s.
In September, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy committed to “primary legislation to require major tech platforms to build in device-level protections for children.”
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The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based charity that works to have online child abuse content removed, says that in 2025 it took action on 312,030 reports, and found 3,440 AI-generated abuse videos, up from 13 in 2024.
The British government is not exactly in the best position to be making these demands of Apple and Google, given its own record. In January 2025, the government issued a secret “technical capability notice” under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which would have given it access to any iCloud user’s data worldwide.
Apple reacted by withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection feature from UK users, rather than build a backdoor into it. The government was not deterred, and in the second half of 2025 it issued another notice, this time excluding US users. Apple is now fighting this in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
While all this was happening, a White House security official wrote in September that “the UK is making another attempt to put a backdoor on iCloud.”
The problem with mass surveillance and censorship tools is that they don’t stay focused on one target for long. As we have reported, “Any software capable of scanning images on a device can be updated to scan for different content.”
Germany’s Justice Minister compared mandatory message scanning to “opening all letters as a precautionary measure.”
This is why this latest proposal to the British parliament is so insidious – it puts an inspector on every phone in the country, looking at every photo and piece of writing before it is shared; it is one of the most brazen attacks on privacy ever proposed.
It is coming from a government that has already been caught trying to get a secret backdoor into Apple’s iCloud. Now it wants something even bigger: a way to scan every phone, and have the ability to update the software on it at any time to look for whatever content it chooses.
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