- The UK is expected to bring in new measures Sunday to criminalize "cyberflashing."
- The new law would crack down on people who send unwanted sexually explicit images online.
- But campaigners are worried it might still be difficult to prosecute cyberflashing cases.
The UK is expected to make "cyberflashing" a new criminal offense, explicitly targeting predators who send unsolicited sexual images online.
The government is set to announce the new offense Sunday, under the UK's Sexual Offences Act 2003, a source with knowledge of the matter told Insider.
The Times first reported in February that cyberflashing could potentially land offenders with a two-year jail sentence.
Campaigners have advocated for years to make cyberflashing its own offense, which has been the case in Scotland for over a decade.
Features such as AirDrop, a way for one Apple user to share files over Bluetooth with another, have made it easier for people to send unwanted sexual images to strangers in public spaces.
It's been a widely documented issue on public transport in the UK — with women complaining about being sent unwanted dick pics over file transfer — but is difficult to prosecute under existing indecent exposure laws.
Advocates remain worried that the new offense still leaves gaps for victims, if the definition of "cyberflashing" is limited to cases where it's proven the offender was acting for their own sexual gratification or to cause a victim distress.
"We have a clear choice," Clare McGlynn QC, a professor at Durham University in the UK and an expert on cyberflashing, told Insider, between a "limited law because we are worrying about over-criminalizing men who send penis images not sure if they have consent" and one which "prioritizes the rights of women and girls."
One risk of a motivation-based law is that cyberflashing cases might be too difficult to prosecute because of a lack of evidence.
"We risk seeing women's confidence in the criminal justice system reducing even further," McGlynn added.
It was initially thought that the government would add a specific cyberflashing offense under the upcoming Online Safety Bill, a major legislative push to monitor online content in the UK more aggressively and target tech companies that the government doesn't think are doing enough to block "harmful" content.
But observers expect the "cyberflashing" law to come as a separate, smaller piece of legislation, and is likely to face little opposition in the UK Parliament.
The British Transport Police recorded 66 reports of unsolicited photographs in 2019, up from three in 2016, according to data released in early 2020. Although a small figure, the UK's Law Commission suggested cyberflashing is an underreported phenomenon.
In the US, 8% of adults reported being victims of non-consensual image-based sexual abuse in a 2020 study of 3,044 American adults.