Trump ally hits out at ‘chilling’ online safety rules

LONDON — A prominent U.S. lawmaker and Trump ally says he is unpersuaded new European online safety laws will not violate the free speech of Americans.

Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Republican Rep. Jim Jordan told a press briefing on Friday: “The biggest takeaway from our week here in Europe is that nothing has really changed our concerns.”

Jordan is heading back to Washington after leading a bipartisan delegation to the continent this week. He said the committee would be reporting back to the Trump administration upon its return to DC. 

“We’ll take the opportunity to fill them in on our week and the discussions we had and how that supports what I believe the White House already fully, fully understands,” Jordan said.

Jordan also said he’d questioned U.K. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle about his department’s correspondence with social media platforms during last summer’s riots in England.

In an X post Wednesday, the congressman accused the British government of trying to censor discussions of “two-tier policing” by asking platforms to monitor such content closely.

“I don’t know that we got a satisfactory answer [from Kyle]” he said. 

“[The U.K. government] can say, ‘Oh, this is all designed to be helpful and apple pie and god bless the U.K, god bless America, [that] kind of mindset,’ but I don’t know that that’s how it’s typically interpreted from the United States, from citizens or from companies.

“The chilling impact is every bit as real as the direct when it comes to speech.” 

The furore comes after Preston Byrne, managing partner at U.S.-based tech law firm Byrne & Storm, told POLITICO that “multiple” American websites had instructed him to bring a lawsuit against the U.K’s telecoms regulator Ofcom over free speech concerns. 

“We will also be seeking a declaratory judgment from a federal court that confirms, in writing, the indisputably correct legal position that the Online Safety Act is null and void in the United States. With any luck, this should clear up the question for the hundreds of thousands of American companies that Ofcom hasn’t targeted yet, but planned to target until our clients bravely stood in their way,” he added. 

Byrne said he’d been providing staffers on the House Judiciary Committee “with all the relevant Ofcom documents that cross [his] desk.” But he clarified the communication was “largely one-way” and that he and Jim Jordan weren’t directly working together. 

An Ofcom spokesperson said Friday: “The new rules require tech firms to tackle criminal content and prevent children from seeing defined types of material that’s harmful to them. There is no requirement on them to restrict legal content for adult users. In fact, they must carefully consider how they protect users’ rights to freedom of expression while keeping people safe.”