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> As the UK's politicians continue to fail to understand what "strong cryptography" or "banning" even mean, I thought I would have a look at how simple strong c
by seanwilson 11y ago
> As the UK's politicians continue to fail to understand what "strong cryptography" or "banning" even mean, I thought I would have a look at how simple strong cryptography can be.
Not that I think it's a good idea or believe they have a good understanding of cryptography but: if they are being rational about it, I'm guessing they think making strong cryptography less convenient will lead to less encrypted communications between parties they're interesting in snooping on. In this case, WhatsApp would be a considerably more convenient to use than using DOSBox.
- mtgx 11y agoYes, the UK gov argument is basically "You can keep your PGP, just run Gmail, Facebook, Skype, etc over HTTP - or at least let us automatically remove the HTTPS encryption for anyone we want in real-time". They want it this way because: 1) many people will indeed slip when using whatever left is there of "strong encryption" afterwards, especially if it's hard to use - that's pretty good for the UK gov. 2) while they may care about terrorists and whatnot, they care at least as much about spying on many of the people who will never use PGP or even Signal, so again this plan is perfect for them in this regard.
- toyg 11y agoIn fact, this plan's only purpose is average-citizenry monitoring. Terrorists and child pornographers already have such an understanding of how to use crypto (or how not use electronic communications at all, like Osama staying offline most of the time -- this is also what mafia bosses do, btw) that they will be completely unaffected. If that weren't the case, bombs would be going off every day all over Britain, and they just don't. The Snooper's Charter exists just to keep uppity citizens and low-rent drug dealers under control.