Controlling digital technology: Law not enough

Richard Bruton, the minister for communications, climate action and environment, will introduce a new Online Safety Act today to try to improve online safety and ensure that children can be protected online.

As the scale, the influence, the raw power and ethics-free commercial ambitions of most tech giants become more and more apparent, as the reach of the Silicon Valley empires stretches ever-deeper into our lives it is hard not to think that Mr Bruton, and his all peers are more like a modern King Canute trying to hold back the tide than politicians with any real capacity to stand between citizens and the undoubted, growing threat of unfiltered digital technology.