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> Theresa May says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" The article focuses largely on the technical difficulties and implementat

> Theresa May says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" The article focuses largely on the technical difficulties and implementation risks that make this goal impractical. I would like to point out that the goal in question is explicitly Orwell-style surveillance.

theossuary 9y ago
That seems to have been the UK's goal for a while now
threeseed 9y ago
No. Their goal is simply to go back to the previous status quo. Which was when communication was capable of being monitored when there was a reasonable suspicion of a crime about to be committed. Now I don't believe this makes any sense in this era (criminals will have crypto, ordinary people/dissidents/journalists etc will not) but I can very much appreciate where they are coming from. It's not a simple issue.
- chillwaves 9y ago
  That's not an honest representation of the argument given there is no parallel you can make between today's world of electronic communication passing over centralized infrastructure to however people communicated before. There was no ability for the government to read everyone's (or anyone's) mail at once in the past.
  - threeseed 9y ago
    Intelligence services absolutely had the ability to read people's postal mail and intercept their phone calls. For example, the CIA in a declassified report from 1976 opened over 215,000 physical letters: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/0001420864 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/0001420864
    - andy_ppp 9y ago
      I guess that's a very small sample. We are talking about them making copies of every letter ever sent...
  - shusson 9y ago
    What about telephone wire tapping? e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
    - izacus 9y ago
      There is a huge difference in scale. Phone wiretapping required explicit targeting and was not possible at scale modern measures allow.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out. It's a key point to make that it's kind of a complex issue. It's obvious to me that cryptography shouldn't and realistically cannot be outlawed. That doesn't make any sense. On the flip side, I think that most people would accept that targeted surveillance of criminal suspects is a reasonable tool. The thing is, if it becomes the default for all messages to be encrypted end-to-end – obviously a good thing – then this effective tool becomes useless. I think any proposals to restrict cryptographic software are obviously wrong and doomed to failure, and I will continue using such software regardless of what laws are passed in the UK. But it is a complex issue, and I wish there was some more acknowledgement of how the field of surveillance has changed.
  - sbov 9y ago
    Is it complex? Even with crypto authorities have more ability to surveil us than any other time in human history. Crypto seems like a very small loss when looking at the way things have trended the last 10 years, much less 100.
  - ianopolous 9y ago
    Even with end to end encryption they can still hack any current OS. We're a long way from having provably secure operating systems for current devices.
    - subway 9y ago
      provably secure? I'd almost settle for theoretically secure these days.
  - confounded 9y ago
    The Manchester attacker was reported many times as an extremist, and had the ISIS flag on his car. To suggest that he would have been caught if only the Food Standards Authority has constant read-access to your drunk teenage loveletters is ridiculous. We need more actual police officers to do more actual police work.
    - 9y ago
- tempodox 9y ago
  Does that mean you open people's letters to make sure they don't commit a crime?
  - brians 9y ago
    Yes. The overt statements of HMG say they want warrants and court orders and individual targeting, not kibozing or grepping the gmail spool.
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      They already grep phone conversations and SMS messages, and whatever Internet traffic they can. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
- rimliu 9y ago
  > capable of being monitored when there was a reasonable > suspicion of a crime about to be committed. The thing is: they knew about the Manchester attacker, and today on BBC was also a report that law enforcement was informed about one of the London attackers. If they cannot act on the intelligence they already have what's the point of diluting it with even more data?
- type0 9y ago
  > criminals will have crypto, ordinary people/dissidents/journalists etc will not Does is imply that politicians will have crypto?
- thriftwy 9y ago
  You can't go back to the previous status quo any more than you can ask your mother to "bear you back" because you don't like living outside. Trying to pretend you can is one of the most dangerous things a politician can ever do.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  yea, its a rejection (a lack of understanding) of the technology of internet. It clearly states in their manifesto that they want to treat the internet the same as the physical world without appreciating that this is impossible. I look forward to whenever politicians work out that people not under their legal jurisdiction can muck about on their internet thereby making their intent of constraint irrelevant.
dpwm 9y ago
There's another angle to this. In her previous role, Theresa May presided over record police cuts with utmost arrogance. It turns out that even if we had everything in plaintext, that there almost certainly isn't the manpower to follow up leads generated from a mass surveillance programme. If we assume that May is competent and not exploiting a tragic attack to engage in jingoistic gesture politics for the election on Thursday, then this can only be about making sure that law-abiding dissidents cannot communicate with each other in secret to hold the powerful to account.
- cmurf 9y ago
  I think the competency of most politicians right now is seriously suspect; but then the general population is, to me, sounding increasingly tired of democracy and just wants an autocrat to make all their life choices for them. (Not necessarily a majority of society, but perhaps a significant minority). The rational response is, more people die from falling off ladders than domestic terrorism. Can we look at this problem seriously in a way that includes the economics, without insisting that people be scared little bunny rabbits? Apparently we're not so inclined toward Vulcan logic, this silly primate species.
  - Proof 9y ago
    The problem is not that more people die from ladders or cars for that matter, it's that in a polictical landscape: "no tragedy shall go to waste." We saw similar pushes for strengthening Canada's Surveillance State when they had two terrorist acts. Canada's PM didn't even hesitate. When an attack or an event happens that puts people in a state of shock and fear, politicians know their nefarious ideas have a higher probability of slipping through the public's filter. UK's PM is doing what has now become an automatic response to any kind of act. Expand government's power at all cost.
  - dpwm 9y ago
    Terrorism is the current justification for military operations abroad. Likewise, there are some who believe terrorism to be an externality of our operations abroad, in which case there is positive feedback. We are told by our leaders as the justification for war that it will cause negative feedback, though the recurrence of terrorism would suggest this is not the case. Even without any feedback, to look at this economically you would have to take into account the news, the journalists, the wars, the arms sales, the rebuilding, the cable-laying that comes from war and the attempt at peace. Consider two countries at war with the other. Now imagine that both are part of the same territory but the planes still fly and the bombs still fall on the same places. It is clear that this is economic and political madness. So as a combined system, the two warring countries are better off not engaging in war. But if one country can make money from war then it is beneficial for it to be at war. The answer is for those who govern to think in terms of the whole system, i.e. both countries. That is unpopular with patriotic voters who accuse such leaders of being traitors.
eveningcoffee 9y ago
May has pretty clearly positioned herself as a dictator wannabe.
dgregd 9y ago
> the goal in question is explicitly Orwell-style surveillance Because that's the only politically correct thing they can do.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > Because that's the only politically correct thing they can do This is not even wrong. There is a long list of 'politically correct' things the government could do which are inconvenient (timing-wise) as they would highlight their fallibility/incompetence. First on the list is to stop the drastic cuts[1] they instituted to the police force. A close second is to stop exporting jihadists (that's right: exporting civilian British nationals[2]) to wage war in Islamic countries. It is unfortunate that saving face in light of the impending snap-elections is preventing real solutions from being implemented; instead, we get security theatre that sounds good to the electorate but wouldn't even have prevented the previous attacks - a necessary factor for the action to be considered as an improvement at the very least. Right now the issues are totally unrelated; just opportunistic legislation. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/02/inspectorate-police-engaging-dangerous-practices-austerity-cuts-diane-abbott https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/02/inspectorate... 2. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-manchester-bombing-as-blowback-the-latest-evidence-83ec2127801d https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-manchester-bombi...

theossuary 9y ago

That seems to have been the UK's goal for a while now

threeseed 9y ago

No. Their goal is simply to go back to the previous status quo. Which was when communication was capable of being monitored when there was a reasonable suspicion of a crime about to be committed. Now I don't believe this makes any sense in this era (criminals will have crypto, ordinary people/dissidents/journalists etc will not) but I can very much appreciate where they are coming from. It's not a simple issue.

chillwaves 9y ago
That's not an honest representation of the argument given there is no parallel you can make between today's world of electronic communication passing over centralized infrastructure to however people communicated before. There was no ability for the government to read everyone's (or anyone's) mail at once in the past.
- threeseed 9y ago
  Intelligence services absolutely had the ability to read people's postal mail and intercept their phone calls. For example, the CIA in a declassified report from 1976 opened over 215,000 physical letters: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/0001420864 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/0001420864
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    I guess that's a very small sample. We are talking about them making copies of every letter ever sent...
- shusson 9y ago
  What about telephone wire tapping? e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
  - izacus 9y ago
    There is a huge difference in scale. Phone wiretapping required explicit targeting and was not possible at scale modern measures allow.
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. It's a key point to make that it's kind of a complex issue. It's obvious to me that cryptography shouldn't and realistically cannot be outlawed. That doesn't make any sense. On the flip side, I think that most people would accept that targeted surveillance of criminal suspects is a reasonable tool. The thing is, if it becomes the default for all messages to be encrypted end-to-end – obviously a good thing – then this effective tool becomes useless. I think any proposals to restrict cryptographic software are obviously wrong and doomed to failure, and I will continue using such software regardless of what laws are passed in the UK. But it is a complex issue, and I wish there was some more acknowledgement of how the field of surveillance has changed.
- sbov 9y ago
  Is it complex? Even with crypto authorities have more ability to surveil us than any other time in human history. Crypto seems like a very small loss when looking at the way things have trended the last 10 years, much less 100.
- ianopolous 9y ago
  Even with end to end encryption they can still hack any current OS. We're a long way from having provably secure operating systems for current devices.
  - subway 9y ago
    provably secure? I'd almost settle for theoretically secure these days.
- confounded 9y ago
  The Manchester attacker was reported many times as an extremist, and had the ISIS flag on his car. To suggest that he would have been caught if only the Food Standards Authority has constant read-access to your drunk teenage loveletters is ridiculous. We need more actual police officers to do more actual police work.
  - 9y ago
tempodox 9y ago
Does that mean you open people's letters to make sure they don't commit a crime?
- brians 9y ago
  Yes. The overt statements of HMG say they want warrants and court orders and individual targeting, not kibozing or grepping the gmail spool.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    They already grep phone conversations and SMS messages, and whatever Internet traffic they can. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
rimliu 9y ago
> capable of being monitored when there was a reasonable > suspicion of a crime about to be committed. The thing is: they knew about the Manchester attacker, and today on BBC was also a report that law enforcement was informed about one of the London attackers. If they cannot act on the intelligence they already have what's the point of diluting it with even more data?
type0 9y ago
> criminals will have crypto, ordinary people/dissidents/journalists etc will not Does is imply that politicians will have crypto?
thriftwy 9y ago
You can't go back to the previous status quo any more than you can ask your mother to "bear you back" because you don't like living outside. Trying to pretend you can is one of the most dangerous things a politician can ever do.
Quarrelsome 9y ago
yea, its a rejection (a lack of understanding) of the technology of internet. It clearly states in their manifesto that they want to treat the internet the same as the physical world without appreciating that this is impossible. I look forward to whenever politicians work out that people not under their legal jurisdiction can muck about on their internet thereby making their intent of constraint irrelevant.

dpwm 9y ago

There's another angle to this. In her previous role, Theresa May presided over record police cuts with utmost arrogance. It turns out that even if we had everything in plaintext, that there almost certainly isn't the manpower to follow up leads generated from a mass surveillance programme. If we assume that May is competent and not exploiting a tragic attack to engage in jingoistic gesture politics for the election on Thursday, then this can only be about making sure that law-abiding dissidents cannot communicate with each other in secret to hold the powerful to account.

cmurf 9y ago
I think the competency of most politicians right now is seriously suspect; but then the general population is, to me, sounding increasingly tired of democracy and just wants an autocrat to make all their life choices for them. (Not necessarily a majority of society, but perhaps a significant minority). The rational response is, more people die from falling off ladders than domestic terrorism. Can we look at this problem seriously in a way that includes the economics, without insisting that people be scared little bunny rabbits? Apparently we're not so inclined toward Vulcan logic, this silly primate species.
- Proof 9y ago
  The problem is not that more people die from ladders or cars for that matter, it's that in a polictical landscape: "no tragedy shall go to waste." We saw similar pushes for strengthening Canada's Surveillance State when they had two terrorist acts. Canada's PM didn't even hesitate. When an attack or an event happens that puts people in a state of shock and fear, politicians know their nefarious ideas have a higher probability of slipping through the public's filter. UK's PM is doing what has now become an automatic response to any kind of act. Expand government's power at all cost.
- dpwm 9y ago
  Terrorism is the current justification for military operations abroad. Likewise, there are some who believe terrorism to be an externality of our operations abroad, in which case there is positive feedback. We are told by our leaders as the justification for war that it will cause negative feedback, though the recurrence of terrorism would suggest this is not the case. Even without any feedback, to look at this economically you would have to take into account the news, the journalists, the wars, the arms sales, the rebuilding, the cable-laying that comes from war and the attempt at peace. Consider two countries at war with the other. Now imagine that both are part of the same territory but the planes still fly and the bombs still fall on the same places. It is clear that this is economic and political madness. So as a combined system, the two warring countries are better off not engaging in war. But if one country can make money from war then it is beneficial for it to be at war. The answer is for those who govern to think in terms of the whole system, i.e. both countries. That is unpopular with patriotic voters who accuse such leaders of being traitors.

eveningcoffee 9y ago

May has pretty clearly positioned herself as a dictator wannabe.

dgregd 9y ago

> the goal in question is explicitly Orwell-style surveillance Because that's the only politically correct thing they can do.

sangnoir 9y ago
> Because that's the only politically correct thing they can do This is not even wrong. There is a long list of 'politically correct' things the government could do which are inconvenient (timing-wise) as they would highlight their fallibility/incompetence. First on the list is to stop the drastic cuts[1] they instituted to the police force. A close second is to stop exporting jihadists (that's right: exporting civilian British nationals[2]) to wage war in Islamic countries. It is unfortunate that saving face in light of the impending snap-elections is preventing real solutions from being implemented; instead, we get security theatre that sounds good to the electorate but wouldn't even have prevented the previous attacks - a necessary factor for the action to be considered as an improvement at the very least. Right now the issues are totally unrelated; just opportunistic legislation. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/02/inspectorate-police-engaging-dangerous-practices-austerity-cuts-diane-abbott https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/02/inspectorate... 2. https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-manchester-bombing-as-blowback-the-latest-evidence-83ec2127801d https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-manchester-bombi...