The week in free expression: 17–23 May 2025
Index rounds up of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days
Latest news
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Why we need to support Global Encryption Day
There are many reasons why governments want to break encryption but breaking it for one breaks it for all
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Silence in the valley: The brutal repression of Kashmiri writers
Works are banned and authors raided if they are seen to promote secession
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How a billionaire mogul pushed France’s media to the right
Vincent Bolloré, known as the "French Murdoch", dominates media on the other side of the Channel
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We’re going on a bear hunt: Spitting Image challenged over Paddington satire
The recent litigation against the satirical TV programme raises questions as to the Peruvian immigrant's meaning in British culture
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Spotlight: Global Encryption Day
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UK court rejects Home Office bid to hear Apple encryption case in secret
Index on Censorship, Big Brother Watch and Open Rights Group welcome ruling over UK Government attempts to gain backdoor access to data
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Rights groups call for Apple’s closed appeal against the Home Office’s encryption-breaching order to be opened to the public
Representatives of rights groups have written to the President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to call for Apple's case to be made public
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Breaking end-to-end encryption would be a disaster
Index launches campaign to highlight why politicians should not rush to add a "back door" to messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal
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“An attack on encryption unprecedented in any democracy”
The Online Safety Bill returns to the House of Commons for the first time in eight months on 11 September. This is the last chance the Government h...
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MAGAZINE
LATEST ISSUE: VOLUME 54.03 Autumn 2025
Truth, trust & tricksters: Free expression in the age of AI
It is difficult to spend a day without using artificial intelligence. Whether we look up a fact on Google or use our car’s navigation system, AI is helping to guide us. AI is not human, but is increasingly taking on human characteristics. Want to write a five-year strategy for work? AI can give you the structure. A text to the lover you’re breaking up with, ChatGPT is on hand with the perfect choice of words. Even as I compose this editor’s letter in a Word document, the sinisterly named Copilot – Microsoft’s AI assistant – is hovering in the margin with the tantalising offer that it could do a better job.
So what does it all mean for free expression? We asked a range of writers to explore themes around censorship and AI for this latest issue, and the result is fascinating. Kate Devlin delves into griefbots which are essentially deepfakes of dead people – often with all their unpleasant characteristics removed.
Innocent enough but in the wrong hands they are pernicious. A country’s political hero can be resurrected to encourage causes they would have disavowed were they alive. Ruth Green looks at whether AI has free speech.
In a recent US lawsuit, the owner of a chatbot which had been talking to a teenager, in a sexualised way, before he killed himself, argued that the bot’s communications were covered by the First Amendment. Luckily the judge threw the case out.
Meanwhile Timandra Harkness examines how AI can trawl social media to discover every word you’ve ever written.
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