This is a continuation of the Ofcom Files, a series of First Amendment-protected public disclosures designed to inform the American and British public about correspondence that the UK’s censorship agency, Ofcom, should prefer to keep secret. See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
We heard from Ofcom again today.
The agency writes:
The full letter Ofcom attached to their e-mail was full of legally illiterate nonsense claiming extraterritorial power to enforce their censorship laws against Americans in the United States.
Bryan Lunduke highlighted the key bits over on X. The full letter is at the bottom of this post.
We replied as follows:
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Sirs,
Last night Sarah Rogers, the United States Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, let it be known on GB News, in London, that the United States Congress is considering introducing a federal version of the GRANITE Act.
The GRANITE Act, at state level, is a foreign censorship shield law reform proposal I threw together exactly 51 days ago on my personal blog. Colin Crossman, Wyoming’s Deputy Secretary of State, turned it into a bill. Now, it seems, very dedicated staffers in Congress and our principled elected representatives are keen to make it a federal law.
The proposal was inspired by your agency’s censorship letters, letters targeting Amercians in America for conduct occurring wholly and exclusively in America, letters just like this one and the dozen others you’ve sent to my countrymen over the last eleven months.
It was also inspired by the passive-aggressive phone call I had with officials from your Home Office in 2023 asking me how my clients would implement your rules because, according to them, my clients’ users would demand that they comply (as far as I am aware, of my clients’ tens of millions of users among their various websites, not a single one has asked to be censored by the British). I replied that if your country wanted to censor my clients, the British Army would need to commence a ground invasion of the United States and seize their servers by force. That answer remains unchanged.
4chan is a website where users are free to remain anonymous. Your “age assurance” rules would destroy anonymity online, which is protected by the First Amendment. Accordingly, 4chan will not be implementing your “age assurance” rules.
Prompt and voluntary cooperation with law enforcement on child safety issues, including UK law enforcement, is what really matters for children’s safety online. That work happens quietly and non-publicly with officials who are tasked with performing it, namely, the police. My client will not be working with you on that important work because your agency is a censorship agency, not a law enforcement agency. Ofcom lacks the competence and the jurisdiction to do the work that actually matters in this space.
Regardless of whether GRANITE makes it on the books or not, and I will do everything in my personal power to ensure that it does, my clients don’t answer to you, 4chan included, because of the First Amendment. But then, Ofcom already knew that.
I copy the U.S. government and government officials in several states. My client reserves all rights.
Preston Byrne
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Pretty sure my invitation to Number 10’s Christmas party is going to get lost in the post this year.
There is a possible future, in the very near future, where these notices will be utterly impossible for foreign governments to send to American citizens – notices I have been parrying, professionally, for eight years.
America needs to protect her builders from this foreign overreach. I am extremely hopeful that the U.S. Congress and the White House will seal the deal and secure the American-led future of the Internet for decades to come. We’re not there yet, but we’re close.