UK calls for “device-based” nude controls

Updated July 8 21:36 with comment from Signal.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says tech firms must deploy “device-level controls” to prevent “children from taking, sharing or viewing nude images.”  

During a speech at London Tech Week, he said: “This is not an impossible challenge. These are some of the most innovative companies in the world and I believe they can solve it. But if they choose not to then we will act.”

A three-month warning

The Home Office added that tech companies have three months to take action or the government will force them to do so via legislation that could lead to fines or criminal action against “tech bosses” as a “last resort.”

"Britain will become the first country in the world where it is impossible for children to take, share or view naked pictures on their devices" - The Home Office

The legislation could cover “operating system providers and others in the supply chain, such as retailers, and will not affect the use of devices owned and used by adults who verify their age,” the Home Office said today. 

Controls “only deactivated via age assurance”

The approach seems to suggest a concerted move to drive age verification at OS level across every device; the Home Office is explicit on this.

“The government… wants Apple and Google to block nudity across the whole device by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance.”

Encrypted messenger provider Signal was among those condemning the proposal as "a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all," it said.

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) applauded the call for action and said that beyond app safeguards,  “device‑level protections are also needed [for] stopping harmful content from being created and shared in the first place.”

Encryption a “dangerous feature”?

NCA Director General Graeme Biggar added: “This is one of six changes we called for last month”-- the agency in May called for tech firms  to “remove other high risk features that enable offenders to identify children at scale, to contact them directly, and to message them on end to end encrypted apps.”

“Children should not have access to social media or gaming platforms that have these dangerous features,” he added in a June 8 press release. 

Apple and Google have some tools in place… 

Industry group techUK said the technology to block nude images across devices does exist, but it told The Stack a three-month deadline to implement it was “unfair”.

Apple has long had a “Communication Safety” feature that detects images containing nudity across in-built apps like Messages, AirDrop, and FaceTime, using on-device machine learning. It says the feature “warns kids when receiving or sending images and videos containing nudity, and offers resources…for them to get help, including reporting directly to Apple.”

In March 2026, Apple introduced age checks for all iPhone and iPad users in the UK, requiring ID checks or a credit card to prove they are over 18. 

Communication Safety is turned on by default for users under 18 or unverified. Apple did not directly comment on the government’s request today. It pointed The Stack to its Communication Safety features and flagged that these are “turned on by default for child accounts under 18.”

Google has an optional sensitive content warnings feature able to “detect and blur images that may contain nudity” in the Google Messages app, using its SafetyCore service that processes data; also using on-device ML models.

Google, the UK’s third-biggest smartphone provider (Apple is the first), told The Stack it was “deeply committed to protecting children online.”

A spokesperson said: “We are working constructively with UK partners to find effective, privacy-preserving solutions that deter the spread of harmful content while ensuring a safe digital environment for young people.”

Starmer’s announcement comes less than a month after former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips accused the PM of “dilly dallying and worrying about tech bosses” – adding that “the technology exists to stop children being able to take naked images of themselves… It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space.”

Not a case of "flicking a switch"

Doniya Soni-Clark, techUK’s associate director of public affairs said deploying such technology was “far more complex than simply flicking a switch.”

She told The Stack: “There are a lot of considerations to make, including the differences between operating systems, devices, and apps, to deploy this technology in a safe and effective way. It would be unfair to penalise tech companies for not meeting the implementation timeframe.”

The Home Office shared comments from a range of campaigners supporting its plans. Among them was Internet Watch Foundation CEO Kerry Smith, who  said in the canned statement that the protections will play a “powerful role in a whole-system response to the threats children face in digital spaces.”

Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said in a response to the announcement the technology was a “backdoor digital ID requirement” – adding that the move would substitute “efforts for meaningful tech and parental responsibility with performative, authoritarian government control that children can easily circumvent…” 

Serious privacy questions?

The precise nature of how a device-level control would work to block access to nude image across the whole gamut of third-party systems was not spelled out.

One critic, solutions architect Richard Shand, commented: “If a phone is required to inspect images, messages or behaviour before upload, transmission or onward sharing, the device becomes a regulated enforcement point, with inspection potentially occurring at the endpoint before end-to-end encryption protects transmission. 

Posting on LinkedIn, he added: “That raises serious questions around Article 8 privacy rights, data minimisation, purpose limitation, transparency, false positives, redress, auditability and independent oversight. 

“Governments can argue proportionality under Article 8(2), but proportionality depends on the rigour of the safeguards, and those safeguards have not yet been clearly set out in the public reporting.”

Apple 's earlier UK privacy clashes

In early 2025, Apple pulled its highest level data security tool, ADP, from the UK market rather than comply with the UK government’s demands to allow law enforcement access to encrypted data. 

In 2023, it warned that scanning photos in the cloud and on device for child abuse images could result in a “dystopian dragnet” – explaining why it killed off plans for a "hybrid client-server approach" to CSAM detection.

Apple had announced plans to search for encrypted child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in August 2021 – using cryptographic hashes of abuse images, then trawling customers' devices and iCloud for matches.

As first reported by Wired, Apple’s Erik Neuenschwander, director of user privacy and child safety, wrote to a CSAM campaign group called Heat Initiative in 2023, explaining in more detail why Apple chose not to proceed with such scanning.

"Scanning for one type of content, for instance, opens the door for bulk surveillance and could create a desire to search other encrypted messaging systems across content types,” Neuenschwander said at the time.

UK tech minister: Devices "part of the problem"

“Designing this technology for one government could require applications for other countries across new data types,” Neuenschwander wrote to the campaign group.

“Scanning systems are also not foolproof and there is documented evidence from other platforms that innocent parties have been swept into dystopian dragnets that have made them victims when they have done nothing more than share perfectly normal and appropriate pictures of their babies", he concluded.  

The UK's Technology Secretary Liz Kendall commented today: "No parent should have to worry that giving their child a smartphone opens the door to abuse and exploitation.

"We are holding social media platforms to account and will soon announce our next steps to keep children safe online. But this doesn’t stop with platforms; the devices themselves are part of the problem – and they can be part of the solution."

What are your views on the government's demands?

Get in touch: noah at thestack dot technology