The UK Government says it wants to stop children taking, sharing or viewing nude images on smartphones and tablets. But Scotland should ask why the phone is being regulated with such urgency while physical sexual violence, child protection, court delay and women’s safety remain harder, slower and less politically convenient problems.
The first duty of any country is to protect children.
That is not in dispute.
But there is a simpler question ministers seem reluctant to ask.
If smartphones are now considered so dangerous for children that the state wants scanning, age checks and device-level controls built into them, why not remove the smartphone from childhood rather than build a surveillance system around it?
A child under 16 can be given a simple phone. A dumb phone can call home. It can send a text. It can help a parent know where a child is and allow a child to ask for help. It does not need an app store, a camera roll, algorithmic feeds, private image-sharing channels, pornography, strangers, livestreams and commercial platforms designed to keep the child engaged.
That would not solve every danger. But it would address much of the smartphone problem at its source, without requiring the state to place a checkpoint inside every modern device.
Child protection cannot be used as a soft wrapper for a permanent surveillance system.
On 8 June 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer used London Tech Week to call on technology companies operating in the UK to introduce device controls that prevent children from sending and receiving sexually explicit images. The Home Office announcement went further, saying Big Tech companies such as Apple and Google must activate built-in features or implement technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children.
The Government says the goal is to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images on their devices. If companies do not act within three months, ministers say they will bring forward legislation, including fines and, as a last resort, possible criminal liability for tech bosses.
That sounds simple until the mechanism is examined.
The Government is not merely asking social media platforms to remove material after it is posted. It wants controls built into the device itself. Its announcement says current nudity detection does not cover the camera, broader apps, third-party messaging services or search functions. It therefore wants Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, with adults able to deactivate the controls only through age assurance, which may function in practice as a digital permission system.
The phone is no longer just the tool. The private device becomes a place where the state, the operating system and an age-verification provider may decide what a person is permitted to do.
What is being proposed?
The current announcement is aimed at smartphones and tablets, including existing and newly sold devices in the UK. It does not clearly say that laptops, desktops, games consoles, school computers, smart TVs or other connected devices are immediately covered.
That distinction is interesting. And it matters.
If the policy remains limited to smartphones and tablets, children and abusers may move activity to laptops, web apps, cloud drives, gaming platforms, old devices or devices not registered as child devices. The safeguarding claim weakens because the behaviour may move rather than end.
If the policy later expands to laptops and other devices, the proposal becomes far larger than ministers first described. It would move from phone safety into the general scanning and age-permission of ordinary digital life.
That is the laptop question. It is not a technical footnote. It is the test of the whole policy.
A laptop can take and receive images, use encrypted messaging through a browser, access pornography and store files. A laptop can be used for social media, school work, journalism, politics, banking, domestic abuse support, legal advice, health appointments and private family communication.
Once ministers claim the right to make a phone camera into a checkpoint, what stops the same argument being made about the laptop camera, the school computer, the gaming console and the family desktop?
This is the primrose path. It begins with one category of harm, one device type and one urgent moral claim. It then discovers that the first perimeter is not wide enough.
What about dumb phones?
Dumb phones reveal something the Government does not seem eager to say aloud.
A basic phone without a modern app ecosystem, advanced camera, full internet browser, app store or integrated operating system cannot be controlled in the same way as a smartphone. Some basic phones have cameras or limited internet access, but they do not operate like an iPhone or Android device connected to an app store, cloud account, messaging ecosystem and platform identity.
For many families, a simple phone may provide the thing a child actually needs: the ability to call home, text a parent, be collected from school, contact help, and remain reachable.
That raises a more basic question than Westminster appears willing to ask. Does childhood need safer smartphones, or does childhood need fewer demands to live through smartphones at all?
If the safest phone is the one that cannot carry the surveillance machinery, the public should be allowed to notice.
Is this a digital ID system?
The Government does not call it that.
It calls it age assurance, child protection, device safety, online safety and platform responsibility.
But the public should look at the mechanics, not the label.
If adults can deactivate controls only by proving their age, then ordinary communication begins to depend on age status. If platforms, operating systems or age-verification providers must decide whether a user is a child or an adult, then access is no longer simply open. It is conditional.
There is also the oldest problem in safeguarding: the person causing harm may be the person with access.
An abuser could unlock the device for the child. An older child could verify an account or disable a setting for younger friends. A group at school could pass around a method for bypassing controls. A small underground trade could emerge where phones are unlocked for lunch money, passwords, favours or pressure.
That is not speculation from fantasy. It is how young people and abusers respond to systems built around gates. They look for the key, borrow the key, steal the key or find someone willing to sell it.
A device-level control may stop a careful child in a careful home from making a mistake. It may not stop a coercive adult, an older teenager, a group chat, a shared device, a laptop, a web app or a phone already unlocked by someone else. This is why scanning should not be mistaken for safeguarding. A checkpoint can be bypassed. A child cannot be protected by software alone when the risk is pressure, fear, coercion, shame or violence.
The harder work remains the same: trusted adults, education, consent, social work, policing, prosecution, mental health support, youth services and family capacity. Those are slower than a phone setting. They are also closer to safety.
Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office have stated that self-declaration alone is not an effective way to determine age. They also recognise that all age assurance methods involve the processing of personal data and must be necessary, proportionate and compliant with data protection law.
That means age assurance is not a magic curtain. It is data processing. It may involve identity documents, facial age estimation, payment cards, account history, parental verification or third-party checks. Some methods may be less intrusive than others. None is nothing.
The insult is not only the system itself. It is the apparent assumption that the public will not recognise a digital permission regime when it is assembled in front of them, piece by piece.
What law already exists?
The Online Safety Act 2023 already created a UK-wide system of online regulation, overseen by Ofcom. It places duties on social media companies, search services and other regulated platforms to reduce risks, protect children and deal with illegal content.
From July 2025, platforms had legal duties to protect children from harmful content, including pornography, suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content. Ofcom guidance requires highly effective age assurance in relevant cases.
The Government’s new direction builds on that architecture but moves it closer to the person. It shifts the centre of control from the platform to the device.
That shift should not be treated as administrative footnote. It is a change in power.
Why are civil liberties groups alarmed?
Signal, the encrypted messaging service, published a statement on 8 June 2026 called Surveillance Is Not Safety. It argued that the UK proposal would require content scanning and age verification in ways that endanger everyone.
Signal’s concern is not only whether scanning happens on a company server or on the device itself. Its concern is that once a legally required detection layer exists inside personal technology, the state has created a capability that can be expanded.
Today the category may be nudity. Tomorrow it could be self-harm content, drugs, extremism, misinformation, protest, political speech or whatever a future government decides is harmful.
Supporters will say this is scaremongering. History says it is ordinary caution.
Powers built for one purpose rarely remain untouched when the next emergency arrives.
What about Scotland?
Scotland will be affected.
Online content regulation and enforcement sit with the UK Government. The Scottish Government has acknowledged this in its Online Safety Taskforce Action Plan, saying regulation and enforcement of online content is reserved. Scotland can work through devolved responsibilities such as education, child protection, youth work, policing practice, mental health, social work and support services, but the central law on online content is not made in Holyrood.
That creates an uncomfortable division of power. Westminster can shape the rules inside the phone. Scotland must deal with much of what happens outside it.
If a UK-wide device-scanning or age-verification regime is imposed on Apple, Google or other technology companies, Scottish families, schools, councils, police, children’s services, support charities and young people will live with the result. Scotland may be consulted. It will not have full control.
That matters because Scotland’s online safety problem does not exist in isolation from Scotland’s wider safety problem.
The phone is getting emergency attention at the same time that physical sexual violence in Scotland remains severe.
What does Scotland’s sexual violence record show?
Scotland’s recorded crime figures show that rape and attempted rape rose by 15% in 2024-25, from 2,522 to 2,897 crimes. Over the decade from 2015-16 to 2024-25, recorded rape and attempted rape increased by 60%, from 1,809 to 2,897 crimes.
Of the post-2010 rape and attempted rape crimes recorded in 2024-25, 95% had female victims.
Sexual assault increased by 2% in 2024-25, from 5,025 to 5,124 crimes, and stood 29% higher than in 2015-16. At least 34% of all sexual crimes recorded by Police Scotland in 2024-25 related to a victim under 18.
Police Scotland’s own analysis says rape is at its highest level of recording and accounts for almost one fifth of all reported sexual crimes. It says 70% of rapes were committed against females over 16, and that over half of rape crimes had a domestic element recorded.
The danger is not only on a platform, in a message thread or inside a device. It is also in homes, relationships, familiar settings, schools, streets, workplaces and ordinary physical life.
Why is the phone getting rules first?
Because the phone is easier to regulate than violence.
It is easier to summon Apple and Google than to fix court delays. It is easier to demand a technical switch than to rebuild social work. It is easier to announce age verification than to ensure every survivor is supported, every school has capacity, every child protection service is resourced, every police investigation is timely, and every prosecution has a realistic path through the system.
That does not make online harm harmless.
It means scanning is not safety.
A country that can move rapidly towards device-level controls should be asked why physical and sexual violence does not produce the same visible emergency.
When the camera is also the witness
There is another danger in the proposal that should not be missed. A smartphone is not only a risk to a child. In some circumstances, it may be the child’s only way to record, photograph, document or report what is happening to them.
If the state removes or restricts a child’s ability to use the camera, record video, save images or send material from their own device, it may also remove a route by which abuse, threats, coercion, violence or neglect can be evidenced. The very control presented as protection could work in favour of the adult causing harm.
An abusive adult may not fear a child’s blocked phone. They may welcome it.
A child may need to photograph an injury. A young person may need to record threatening behaviour. A teenager may need to send evidence to a trusted adult, a teacher, a social worker, a lawyer, the police or a helpline. A blanket device control that treats the camera as the danger may forget that, for some children, the camera is also a witness.
That does not mean children should be left exposed to sexual exploitation, image coercion or pornography. It means safety cannot be designed as though the child’s device is only a source of harm. Sometimes it is a lifeline. Sometimes it is the only record. Sometimes it is the thing an abuser cannot control.
A government that wants to disable, scan or restrict the child’s device must explain how it will avoid protecting the abuser from being recorded.
Scotland should not accept a false choice between protecting children and protecting privacy.
Children need protection from online coercion, sexual exploitation and predatory technology. They also need protection from physical violence, domestic abuse and sexual crime. Families need support, not a maze of age checks, blocked cameras and systems that may be bypassed by the very people causing harm.
The state is moving quickly towards the device because the device is easier to control than the conditions in which children are harmed.
That is not safety.
It is government surveillance looking for a door into the device.
SOURCES
UK Government, Home Office, “New plans to stop children taking, sharing or viewing nude images”, published 8 June 2026.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-plans-to-stop-children-taking-sharing-or-viewing-nude-images
Prime Minister’s speech at London Tech Week 2026, GOV.UK, published June 2026.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-at-london-tech-week-2026
UK Government consultation, “Growing up in the online world: a national consultation”, published 2 March 2026.
PDF version of “Growing up in the online world: a national conversation”, UK Government.
Online Safety Act 2023, legislation.gov.uk.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50
UK Government Online Safety Act explainer.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer
UK Government Online Safety Act collection, including July 2025 child safety duties.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/online-safety-act
Ofcom, “Age checks to protect children online”.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/age-checks-to-protect-children-online
Ofcom and Information Commissioner’s Office, “Age Assurance: A Joint Statement”, published 25 March 2026.
ICO, “Joint statement from ICO and Ofcom on age assurance”, published 25 March 2026.
Scottish Government, “Online Safety Taskforce Action Plan 2026/27”, published 25 March 2026.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/online-safety-taskforce-action-plan-2026-27/
Scottish Government, “Strengthening the law”, Online Safety Taskforce Action Plan 2026/27.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/online-safety-taskforce-action-plan-2026-27/pages/6/
Scottish Parliament written question S6W-35089, answer on online safety and the limits of devolution.
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/questions-and-answers/question?ref=S6W-35089
Signal, “Surveillance Is Not Safety: A statement on the UK’s latest threat to privacy”, published 8 June 2026.
https://signal.org/blog/pdfs/2026-06-08-uk-surveillance-is-not-safety.pdf
Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland 2024-25, Sexual crimes.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2024-25/pages/sexual-crimes/
Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland 2024-25, full report.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2024-25/
Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland, “Deep Dive Analysis of Rape & Sexual Crime”, 19 March 2025.
Scottish Government and COSLA, Equally Safe: Scotland’s strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls.
Police Scotland, Violence Against Women and Girls strategy.
Scottish Government, Improving protections in the justice system for women and girls.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/improving-protections-justice-system-women-girls/
National Crime Agency, response to Government announcement on nudity controls for phones and tablets.
Internet Watch Foundation, response to the UK Government’s nudity control proposals.
https://www.iwf.org.uk/news-media/news/
Dhyey Mehta, Eldar Jalilzade, Maksim Kalameyets, Rebecca Owens, Marc Juarez, Stergios Aidinlis, Lei Shi and Tuğrulcan Elmas, “Online Safety Regulation Increases Privacy Risk: Evidence from the UK Online Safety Act”, arXiv, published June 2026.
