Policy & Regulation

Academic Lead: Asma Vranaki, Madeline Carr

Protecting citizens online is a complex, multifaceted policy challenge, involving highly contested debates at both domestic and international levels. These debates encompass critical issues such as rights, privacy, responsibility, liability, legality, and the effectiveness of interventions.
At the domestic level, our policy work engages closely with key governmental and regulatory efforts to tackle online harms, including those led by DSIT, DCMS, the Home Office, and Ofcom. Internationally, this strand engages with broader initiatives, such as those spearheaded by the European Union, ensuring a cohesive approach to global challenges.
To tackle these intricate issues, we convene a diverse range of experts and stakeholders. This includes academics and practitioners across fields such as law, economics, public policy, human rights, international relations, law enforcement, software and hardware design, and international standards. Additionally, we incorporate the perspectives of citizens through innovative approaches like citizens’ juries, fostering a comprehensive and inclusive dialogue.

The Policy and Regulation team has a proven track record of impactful engagement, having conducted significant community consultations and responded to key calls for evidence. These efforts have culminated in a series of expert-informed documents developed in collaboration with the REPHRAIN community, which can be found below:

Notably, REPHRAIN played a central role in the debates on end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and privacy-impacting clauses in the Online Safety Bill. We were invited by DCMS to undertake an independent evaluation of the prototypes selected as part of the government’s Safety Tech Challenge Fund, producing not only the scientific evidence but also the first systematic evaluation framework for child abuse detection tools.

The report was highlighted by the BBC and subsequently led to interviews and coverage on BBC Newsnight, Al-Jazeera and TechCrunch, as well as being widely referenced in open letters by UK and EU researchers to their respective parliaments, as well as a central citation in Ofcom’s Approach to implementing the Online Safety Act. Consequently, Claudia Peersman was invited to discuss this work at events hosted by the UK Parliament, United Nations, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and the Home Office.