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No Place to Hide – U.K. campaign against end-to-encryption encryption
- fnord77 5y agoseems the UK wants to become (another) cautionary tale.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stusherwin 5y agoIn the footer: "This campaign is funded by the UK government"
- HL33tibCe7 5y agoI'm sure our politicians have been discussing this on their E2E encrypted Whatsapp group chats
- rasengan 5y agoEnding encryption to protect children is a fallacy. Further, I don’t understand how they can actually manage to do this without weakening all encryption on the internet. Very strange moves that aren’t well thought out at all with a single focus to reduce the power of the people.
- drcongo 5y ago"Very strange moves that aren’t well thought out at all with a single focus to reduce the power of the people" is a pretty good summary of everything the tory party does.
- Veen 5y agoThis is likely to be a better conversation if it doesn't degenerate into "Tories are evil". The Joint Committee on the Online Safety Bill, which highlighted the potential danger of E2E encryption, includes MPs and Peers from Labour and the LibDems too, all of whom supported it. It's not a party political issue and has broad cross-party support (probably because most MPs don't really understand it).
- dsign 5y agoIt's pretty clear they think child safety is more important than E2E: > We are not opposed to end-to-end encryption, as long as it is implemented in a way that does not put children at risk. The rest is fluff.
- coldcode 5y agoWon't someone please think of the children syndrome. The real answer is we want to read all of your internet interactions any time we want; the children thing is just a way to convince people that letting the government (and everyone else) to spy on you is ok.
- stevespang 5y ago
- grishka 5y agoRussian laws that granted the government the ability to block websites were also initially aimed at protecting children from drugs and suicide. Though somehow, they didn't have any provisions to allow adults access this "forbidden information". After the technical capability was in place, they've expanded the possible grounds to block websites on multiple times. It now includes piracy, refusal of cooperation with FSB, being a public VPN, being related to Navalny, etc.
- DoItToMe81 5y agoIn Australia, we had a plan for a massive web filter in the late 2000s. Their databases were broken into and the blacklist leaked, and inbetween the genuinely illegal sites were sites that had been deemed to be politically immoral, like supporting decriminalization of drugs or spreading information on abortion. There were many things that were perfectly legal but had personally offended the people presiding over the filter, including random Wikipedia pages and certain personal websites, including a dentist's site. This filter, of course, was sold to people with the idea of protecting children against predators. Anything not directly relating to children that is sold to you with "B-BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" is done with the intent to manipulate you and provide you with the false dichotomy of "unconditional acceptance, or child abuse", which is nonsense and should be viewed with extreme suspicion.
- stephen_g 5y agoThis shows that the articles by those who uncovered the plans were right [e.g. 1] - even though this is a political campaign paid for by the UK public (via the Government), and developed and coordinated by the Government, they have big logos of community groups and charities at the bottom and minimises the Government's involvement - > "According to the [M&C Saatchi] presentation, the push will appear to be the result of grassroots action and children’s charities, while downplaying any government role." The whole thing is just a pile of emotional manipulation, while compeletly ignoring the far, far greater number of legitimate uses of end to end encryption, and the actual dangers to everyday people of personal information being stolen, accessed, leaked, etc. if it's banned! Extremely dirty tactics. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955893
- pydry 5y ago
- bitexploder 5y agoThat is wild and I never knee about it, but how is that related to the current story?
- vl5jn 5y ago
- mojzu 5y agoThe only actual number on the site also doesn't seem to be sourced properly, it just sends you to the NCMEC data page, or are they just assuming that they'll lose all of Facebook's submissions if they turn on E2E?
- tomxor 5y ago> dangers to everyday people of personal information being stolen, accessed, leaked, etc This campaign is ripe for hijacking and inverting like the "you wouldn't steal a car" campaign. "NO WHERE TO HIDE: (from criminals)... thought you were safe when writing innocuous private messages on Facebook? think again, criminals intercept the plaintext to commit identity fraud in your name. Thought you only had to worry about corporate surveillance of your location data? think again, now criminals can easily track you to break into your house while you are out. Thought your job was secure? think again, now criminals can build a comprehensive profile of your social and work activities to easily and effectively social engineer their way into your organisation, risking your livelihood." [edit] The other approach is to apply the same thinking to something non technical to more tangibly demonstrate how this is a bad idea. e.g: "NO WAY TO RUN: we are banning wheels, because they help paedophiles make for a quick getaway after abducting their target. In future we plan on banning legs too."
- aunty_helen 5y agoEver wondered what modern day propaganda would look like? This is the kind of stuff that will be in the history books in 2 decades time.
- RansomStark 5y ago>This is the kind of stuff that will be in the history books in 2 decades time. Do you think so? I don't, history is written by the winners, and all western governments play the propaganda game. Doesn't matter if it's the democrats or republicans, labour or Tories. No politician is going to call this out, the behavioural psychologists are in on it, and so are the media companies. Unless there is some major disruption in the next 2 decades, think revolution, invasion. You won't see a thing in the history books. Maybe we need to get ahead of the game. I propose we add a new http error code: 452: this history does not exist
- denton-scratch 5y ago> I propose we add a new http error code: 452: this history does not exist It's 451. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7725 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7725
- denton-scratch 5y agoI actually thought it was really bad propaganda, and quite transparent. The arguments are incoherent, and they don't have any proposal. They say "we aren't against e2e, we just want big tech to deploy it in a way that is safe". Well, either you have e2e or you don't; it's not surprising they have no proposal.
- dogleash 5y ago>I actually thought it was really bad propaganda, and quite transparent. The arguments are incoherent, and they don't have any proposal. There's a saying that you only notice propaganda that doesn't work on you. That's not quite true, but roughly speaking, that's why you think this is so dumb. I could list off around a dozen other incoherent positions with no underlying policy proposals, if it wasn't for the fact they're actually quite popular right now and I know well enough to bite my tongue.
- gpmcadam 5y agothe irony of the active SSL certificate on this page.
- tweetle_beetle 5y agoEven better, the certificate has no Owner information supplied. The YouTube video is unlisted. The YouTube channel supplies no About information. It's fine for them to be anonymous and load a bunch of tracking resources over https. Naming the campaign a title shared by Greenwald's Snowden book is an amazing touch. The same hashtag was even used extensively to discuss/promote the book. Would almost be funny if it wasn't so depressing.
- stayfrosty420 5y agoI hope that is the developer of this site having a sense of humour.
- drcongo 5y agoThe irony of this being served over TLS appears lost on them.
- bjt2n3904 5y agoYeah, that's just the thing though. They aren't against E2E encryption, actually! They're very much for it. Just so long as they get to use it, and you don't.
- prohobo 5y agoEveryone is rightly criticizing the clear manipulation here. That said, "60-90% of abuse takes place within the home or family circle," - a quote from Mick Moran, co-ordinator of the crimes against children unit at Interpol. That leaves up to 40% happening online and elsewhere. Is it actually possible to prevent this online without compromising privacy? I think that's a legitimate problem to try to work on.
- croes 5y ago>That leaves up to 40% happening online and elsewhere Mainly elsewhere and mainly IRL not online.
- throwawayffffas 5y ago> Is it actually possible to prevent this online without compromising privacy? It's trivial, take kids out of social media.
- vorticalbox 5y agoI don't see this said enough and I cannot state enough. You should stop your children from having unrestricted access to the internet. I personalty don't see it as anyone else's job to protect my children but me and their mother.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> That leaves up to 40% happening online and elsewhere “Online” isn't just a place abuse happens in a way that is exclusive with abuse being “at home or in the family circle”, it's a place preparation for abuse happens and products of abuse are distributed. A lot of the online abuse material is from abuse that happens at home or in the family circle.
- Veen 5y ago> We want social media companies to confirm they will not implement end-to-end encryption until they have the technology in place to ensure children will not be put at greater risk as a result. This seems disengenuous. Is there any way to implement E2E encryption that wouldn't "put children at greater risk" if we accept that framing? I understand why the Government and child welfare organizations don't like the idea of E2E. It would, in fact, make it more difficult to identify child abuse on social media, all else being equal. But the attempt to balance privacy with child welfare doesn't have to mean abandoning privacy altogether. An alternative would be to require social media companies to allow parents to monitor their children's social media activity. Or to have "child-friendly" accounts without E2E. It doesn't seem necessary to impose a blanket ban on E2E, which would almost certainly be abused.
- Miner49er 5y ago> Is there any way to implement E2E encryption that wouldn't "put children at greater risk" if we accept that framing? Yeah, that's what Apple's CSAM detection system is basically. They scan the content before encrypting.
- Veen 5y agoTrue, but that wasn't exactly welcomed either.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoArguably, that's not E2E encrypted, since there is a potential vulnerability placed between the user and the start of the encryption.
- stephen_g 5y agoExactly. “Can we have homes that don’t have cameras in every room streaming to law enforcement, without ensuring children will not be put at greater risk?”
- aunty_helen 5y agoYou’re letting them control the narrative. If child’s messages don’t have encryption, the first thing a predator does is move them to an encrypted messaging platform. This is about the massive open door that is messenger and the full sweep the five eyes get from this.
- unwind 5y agoMeta: there's a funny typo in the title, it should be "end-to-end encryption". Now it's quite confusing, since "end to encryption" means something else.
- jonplackett 5y agoA very literal example of "Won't somebody think of the children!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children The use of the phrase "Think of the children" in debate a type of logical fallacy and an appeal to emotion. A debater may use the phrase to emotionally sway members of the audience and avoid logical discussion. EG "I know this national missile defense plan has its detractors, but won't someone please think of the children?" Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFqhjaGh30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFqhjaGh30
- foldr 5y agoThere’s no logical fallacy here, just a factual disagreement over the extent to which E2E encryption actually puts children at risk. Supposing that it does, that would be reasonable grounds for opposing it (so long as countervailing considerations were also take into account). This particular Simpsons joke is pretty tired at this point, and it's often just used to short circuit any discussion of potential harms to children. I am not in favor of banning E2EE, by the way. It’s just that the claim that E2EE puts children at risk should be met with a carefully considered factual response that respects the intelligence of people who are genuinely concerned about child sex abuse, rather than this reflexive ironic cry of “think of the children!”.
- krageon 5y ago> should be met with a carefully considered factual response Engaging with baseless propaganda preying on the unthinking parts of everyone by "carefully considered factual response" means you lose. Every single time. For this reason it is a naive strategy.
- foldr 5y agoThe point is not to engage with propaganda, but with the ordinary people who are genuinely concerned about child sex abuse enabled by social media. This is a real problem, so I don't think it's fair to talk about 'preying on [people's] unthinking parts'. I should think that there must be even less to be gained by responding smugly with rote slogans and links to clips from the Simpsons. Who is going to be persuaded of anything by that? What you need to show is either that (i) kids are already pretty safe online, or (ii) that the situation can be significantly improved without increased surveillance, or (iii) that the current level of child sexual abuse is a price worth paying to preserve important freedoms. But making one of those arguments would require actual thought and effort.
- intunderflow 5y agoSomeone has sniped http://noplacetohide.uk http://noplacetohide.uk and put a post in support of E2E encryption on it
- jkepler 5y agoBrilliant !
- FledNanders 5y agoWonderful initiative! Thank you, Mr. Muffett!
- nickelcitymario 5y agoThey're framing it as a choice between child safety and encryption. I think everyone on HN knows how utterly stupid that is, so I won't belabour the point. However, what offends me, and I don't see mentioned enough, is that the UK government is exploiting the real suffering of children to destroy something that protects us all, children and adults alike. They do not speak for those children or their families. They're exploiting them and their trauma for political gain. If I was in the U.K., this would be enough to forever turn me off the ruling Conservative party. It's disgusting. They have no morals. It's not just that they're lying -- every political side lies all the time, sometimes out of necessity. It's that they're re-victimizing the very kids they claim to be protecting. And they appear to be proud enough of that fact to promote it in this way. I will never vote for a politician or party that's OK with that, no matter what their other policies may be.
- HL33tibCe7 5y agoYes, although keep in mind that these efforts have strong cross-party support. This isn't only an issue with the Conservative party.
- agilob 5y agoThe website does NOT even offer HTTP, it has 301 redirect to ENCRYPTED HTTPS. Do not click it, it's obviously a scam from hypocrites!
- brandoncoburnss 5y ago[flagged]
- NazakiAid 5y agoWell guess I won't be supporting Barnardos again. Disappointed to see them supporting this cause.
- intricatedetail 5y agoThis smells of Nudge all over it. Government is using psyops against public interest for quite some time now.
- barrkel 5y agoISTM that ending E2E encryption can only be the starting point. As long as kids are getting internet connected cameras - which is pretty much all kids these days - and using them to talk to people online, there will be people trying to convince them to broadcast activities which should stay private. How does ending E2E encryption fix that, without additionally implementing total surveillance? How does it work across borders?
- webdelv 5y ago> "We want social media companies to confirm they will not implement end-to-end encryption until they have the technology in place to ensure children will not be put at greater risk as a result." Most of these companies already know the users birthday, if this is only about child abuse then instead of adding backdoors for everyone, why not just disable end to end encryption conversations for users under 16?
- jMyles 5y ago> why not just disable end to end encryption conversations for users under 16 That is the cohort that _most_ needs end-to-end encryption. https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryption/ https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryp...
- brippalcharrid 5y agoDoesn't that open up a whole new can of worms, though, because it would require the operator of every service to check the age (and by extension, identity) of every user of their service, so as not to inadvertently E2EE the communications of a child? Passing off this verification to a Trusted Third Party (wink wink) is just as bad (probably worse), because you would be make it even easier for the government to tie it into a̶ ̶s̶o̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶d̶i̶t̶ ̶s̶y̶s̶t̶e̶m̶ whatever they have planned for the next stage.
- webdelv 5y agoIf a child wants to be "protected" online then it would be up to them to enter their actual age. But you are right, the government will take any excuse to get users verifying their age.
- denton-scratch 5y agoThey already reject users who say they are under 13. How well has that been working out?
- easrng 5y agoAlmost everyone <18 lies about their age on the internet. I have clicked through uncountably many age gates.
- hd4 5y agoThis is all part of Operation Save Big Dog aka saving Boris Johnson's ass from being forced out as PM. Yesterday it was the TV licence fee ending. Tomorrow it will be some other populist nonsense. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-downing-street-partygate-b1993433.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson...
- truculent 5y agoIt is opportunistic timing, but the Home Office have been pushing for this for years.
- hd4 5y agoThey were also talking about ending the TV licence for years. The timing couldn't be more obvious.
- _joel 5y agoDon't forget the Navy being brought in to do something with the same legal standing as Border Force could do, but duly reducing our available Navy resources. The people who buy into these stupid red meat policies don't realise they can't blow up ships crossing, if anything they'll have a larger capacity to help them, therefore trafikers.
- truculent 5y agoYes. But foolish to dismiss it as just “populist nonsense”. There are many in government, police etc who are desperate for this.
- boppo1 5y agoThe only thing I see ending this push is a "fappening" style leak involving CEOs, celebrities, and government figures. Not necessarily just intimate sexual content, but as much 'personal' information as possible. I really think we're heading straight into the panopticon. We'll probably happily vote for it, to "protect" ourselves. I'll buy some more PLTR and the bags under my eyes will grow darker.
- Mystlix 5y agoIf you don't want your children to be molested via the internet don't give your children access to the internet, end of story. You'd never let your 10yo child hang out at the skater park because the moment you are not there present someone might abduct him, but letting your child create accounts on every social media imaginable and giving him unfiltered access to the network is somehow acceptable and the rest of the world should suffer because of it? Children don't need to own smartphones, computers or internet access, just like they don't need to listen to death metal or watch gore movies. Those things will come with time and maturity and your lack of parenting is never going to excuse the government snooping on everything I do
- jkepler 5y agoTeach them to read real books, on paper, by real authors. Given them lots of unstructured time in nature with other children, with a watchful parent nearby (this requires investment of a parents' time, but I can't think of a better investment).
- Mystlix 5y agoSorry, mine wasn't a plain boomer rant, there are plenty of "real" books I would never let my child read. Most classics are very mature and talk very vividly about violence, death, sex and atrocities. Children should be exposed to nuanced stuff that isn't dumbed down, it's just that these nuanced things should be in the realm of a child, leaving the more mature stuff to older people. A book talking about the friendship between two children in a complex way is cool and good, a book talking about the friendship between two drug addicts might be more suitable to someone who knows a bit more about life.
- HL33tibCe7 5y agoI agree with this, but this is something that needs to be done on the societal level. Doing this individually will be nearly impossible without impacting the social life of the child involved, which no parent wants to do. I think the vast majority of people agree that unrestricted screens and online communication are bad for kids, so I think this idea could get pretty widespread support. It shouldn't be the norm that a 10yo has an iPhone. It's like giving them a Land Rover instead of a Hot Wheels. But of course, the Hot Wheels of phones doesn't exist right now. Maybe it should. A smartphone dedicated for children, which can only install a small number of safe apps?
- blackhaz 5y agoI understand the criticisms. But hear me out as a parent: 1) There is no way to monitor/prevent abuse for kid to get exposed to extreme (literally, potentially mentally damaging) pornography and perversion that percolates into the mainstream life via innocent channels - manga, anime, Reddit, and so on. When I grew up the content of that sort was significantly more limited, i.e. occasional porn GIFs, most fine erotic material, but nothing of the extreme sort you could easily stumble upon by just being online today, etc). 2) Qustodio can partially filter out some content as it's installed on the PC and the smartphone, but due to the all-pervading encryption it has no visibility into Discord and other social networks. 3) Disastrous breaches in IT school policies. School has given mandatory Chromebooks to all kids which they use probably half of the time in the class and for homework, and there is no way to bind the school account to Google Family Links - this is forbidden by the school admin. There is some filtering on the school Wi-Fi which school kids circumvent by joining their phone's shared Wi-Fi. Complained, received boilerplate "we are doing our best" reply. This is an independent school in London. 4) The only option I have is to begin breaking SSL in the middle via, say, FortiGate and hope it will catch some of the sites. This would also be applicable only to home Wi-Fi, rather ineffective. As a parent, the only solution I have is to prohibit access to screen, i.e. take all devices away, completely. Which I have failed, as there are very little communal spaces for the kids to hang out and interact where I live, and those who do hang out tend to be vaping, drinking alcohol, etc. All the kids are online in the evenings - chatting, sharing memes, laughing together, or they have pre-arranged playdates. So, my choice here is to completely take away all devices and, hence, completely remove the social component. Or just pray he won't get abused online. I, honestly, don't know what to do. I have been living with computers since 80s, started out with ZX Spectrum and PC/XT, and I am horrified by what allowing the kid to roam Internet without filters may lead to now.
- throwawayffffas 5y agoI think that you are looking for a technological solution to a non technological problem, even if there was no encryption at all there is no way to 100% inspect all of your kids communications. The same way there is no way to follow them and watch them 100% of the time in the real world. The only thing you can do is educate your kid about these issues and trust them.
- jMyles 5y agoProtecting kids by eliminating or breaking end-to-end encryption is a contradiction in terms. End-to-end encryption is crucial to protect today's kids. https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryption/ https://blog.nucypher.com/todays-kids-need-end-to-end-encryp...
- londons_explore 5y agoWatched the video. I actually think it's a decent ad for their cause. It's technically accurate, and doesn't make unfounded claims. Now, the e2e encryption crowd needs to make a similar ad explaining why encryption is important. And the public can make their minds up when they vote.
- jkbbwr 5y agoThe only problem is the public is fucking stupid.
- MadeThisToReply 5y agohttps://xkcd.com/1386/ https://xkcd.com/1386/
- raxxorrax 5y agoThey did not make a good case. "No place to hide" is vindictive emotional manipulation at best and their fantasies about online interactions are a bit weird. Maybe they should be watched and their exchanges put under scrutiny? Institutions for children are often the source of their abuse.
- throwawayffffas 5y agoDo you guys think this is security apparatus backed, or politically backed? I mean do you think that this is the government being "convinced" by law enforcement and the rest of the security apparatus in order to maintain the state of easy interception, and mass intelligence gathering? Or do you think this is purely politicians thinking about how to keep their analytics algorithms and propaganda machines fed with data collected from social media on private chats?
- throwawayffffas 5y agoI think it's both but I wonder what everyone else is thinking.
- denton-scratch 5y agoI think it's neither; this is just pure politics - it's meant to distract the attention of authoritarian backbench conservative MPs away from the manifest deficiencies of their leader.
- kiryin 5y agoYou'd think the "think of the children" gag has already more than served it's purpose in this world, but then stuff like this pops up...
- azalemeth 5y agoI feel a bit odd posting this. My HN news identity is tied to that of mine in real life – something that I am proud of, but something I might change shortly. Apologies in advance for the very long sentences. In many ways, my childhood was horrific. Bullied from a young age for being very different to my peers, I had my bones broken by older children aged 8, 9, and 13; scratches and bite marks from the age of about 5. Older children did "things" to me that definitely count as sexual assault with adult eyes; I'd rather not get into all of it as I was never groomed, but I was certainly abused. One memory I have is of sitting on the sofa with my arm in plaster, freshly broken, and playing the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on my N64. A teacher visited, out of the blue, and asked my mum not to sue the school I was at. Several of the teachers I had as a teenager are now convicted paedophiles -- convicted because they had sex with students (of my gender). I remember one talking about getting large erections in class. When I went to Oxford, to read physics, after years of being beaten, bullied, spat at, stamped on, urinated upon; after having to battle my school to pay for someone to invigilate my entrance exam paper (they refused -- I did it in the head of the sixth form's office); after being threatened with expulsion for cracking their WEP key to read wikipedia in class; after having faeces thrown at me, a firework placed in my locker, stolen property put in my coat pocket to frame me, and other boys putting what would now be considered "extreme pornography" in the UK in my coat pocket, or changing my unlocked computer's desktop picture to horse porn; or being shown videos of pigs being decapitated with a chainsaw because I was vegetarian -- after all that, when finally, I was welcomed into a place where learning was encouraged, and the others were like me, I frankly thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I've hung onto it, tooth and nail, trying to do good in the world (and let others like me have their chance). I therefore feel that I'm uniquely qualified to comment this government's attempt at disrupting E2E encryption. I understand the maths (but I am not a cryptographer) and I very much feel like I would be in the target demographic. Banning or breaking end to end encryption won't help. Targetted abuse is, I believe on the part of the abuser(s), entirely psychological, and that process leads to physical violence. The medium is a lesser concern. I had seven shades of shit beaten out of me in the era before 2004 -- at AIM and Jabber's height -- and snooping my messages would not have helped. People who are sexually attracted to children are very rare, and the allegations take a long time to come out because your state of mind only really develops fully about the whole process years later. The medium of communication matters -- and having some sort of post facto evidence chain is undoubtedly helpful -- but breaking disappearing messages is not what this PR campaign is about. It's about increasing the ability of the security services to snoop. The proposals are something I vehemently disagree with – there is a very large difference between a complaint being raised, that complaint being investigated, and as part of that evidence gathered (and message databases recovered); and proactive, untargetted investigation of crime. The UK's town of "Scunthorpe" famously fails most "bad language" filters and it blights the lives of its residents. Having the police investigate children proactively without talking to them is...immoral. I very much believe that, complete with the five-years-non-negotiable key disclosure law in the UK, encryption moves the burden of duty appropriately onto the police: they can investigate matters when a complaint is raised, but not before. Any further goes too far towards the surveillance (Stazi-style) police state, in my opinion, with children being investigated by the empowered, frightening apparatus of the state because they said something naughty. We already know what happens to children who look like they might happen to be carrying drugs on their way to school, when the police have the powers to stop and search. It hasn't ended well, either for the police (wherein trust is rapidly falling), or for the children in question. Let's not make the same mistake again with what is, fundamentally, maths.
- AshleysBrain 5y agoThere doesn't appear to be any clear proposals put forward. The goals under "Our campaign" are vague and high-level. How exactly can E2E encryption be done without putting children at risk, as they put it? This page at least appears to be silent on the matter. So it's hard not to come away thinking that this is just a "think of the children" attack on E2E encryption as a whole.
- KaiserPro 5y agoIts odd that they are framing it as social media companies are now "starting to roll out e2ee" All the main messaging platforms have some sort of e2ee, apart from gchat and FB messenger (that I know of, I'm not considering snap/insta/twitter/tiktok DMs) Given that Facebook are going to outspend the government significantly to prove that they are encrypting and making your messages private, its going to be an interesting fight.
- lnxg33k1 5y agoBut to be honest all these attacks on the e2e encryption in order to prevent child abuse or security are a bit busting balls, like there has been for years pedo content in light on youtube, and no police saw that, other than VIPs and princes going to islands to see kids, I think this has nothing to do with kids and security, it's just another way to shrink individual liberties
- totetsu 5y agoNo place to hide is such a terrifyingly direct phrase given the real effects/intentions of this
- spamizbad 5y agoAn ironic initiative from the UK, considering the conduct of Prince Andrew, the BBC covering for Jimmy Savile for decades, and of course the British tabloid press defense of convicted sex abuser Ghislaine Maxwell. Would eliminating E2E encryption helped Savile's, Maxwell's, or Prince Andrew's victims? Nope.
- bidirectional 5y ago> the British tabloid press defense of convicted sex abuser Ghislaine Maxwell. I haven't seen a single article that could reasonably be called a defense of Maxwell.
- spamizbad 5y agohttps://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-hard-not-to-pity-ghislaine-maxwell https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-hard-not-to-pity-gh... > It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell — 500 days and counting in solitary confinement. I intersected briefly with her at Oxford. As a fresher I wandered into Balliol JCR one day in search of its subsidised breakfast granola-and-Nescafé offering and found a shiny glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table, a high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris’s thigh. She gave me a pitying glance but I did manage to snag an invite to her party in Headington Hill Hall — even though I wasn't in the same college as her and Boris. I have a memory of her father, Bob, coming out in a towelling robe and telling us all to go home. I’m sure fairweather friends would not reveal they went to a Ghislaine Maxwell party: as Barbara Amiel’s brilliant memoir Friends and Enemies proves, you only know who your real chums are when you’re in the gutter.
- kypro 5y ago> We are not opposed to end-to-encryption in principle and fully support the importance of strong user privacy. So they're not opposed to an end-to-encryption in principle? I'm sure that was an honest mistake.
- bradvl 5y agoThey're lobbying against encryption, but using HTTPS?
- motohagiography 5y agoWe should be a bit less naive about what this play really is. There is a talking point I've observed in some of my more progressive circles that "nerds aren't the good guys anymore," as managerialists see principled people who demand facts, evidence, logic, and reason as an obstacle to their maintaining control of "The Narrative," which is whatever absurdity authorities and their toadies use to demonstrate their alignment. This campaign has nothing to do with protecting children - especially given the UK establishment's veritable tradition of both organizing and covering up industrial scale sexual abuse - and it is nothing more than hate speech designed to cast aspersions upon and isolate technologists as part of a broader political effort. The Rolling Stone article from earler this week said, "The Home Office has hired the M&C Saatchi advertising agency — a spin-off of Saatchi and Saatchi, which made the “Labour Isn’t Working” election posters, among the most famous in UK political history — to plan the campaign, using public funds." I would encourage HN readers to recognize this campaign is only nominally about encryption, and mainly it is about politically attacking the credibility and reputations of civilian technologists, and by conflating your expertise with abusers this M&C Saatchi agency has produced literal hate propaganda against you. (just following orders, surely!) I'd recommend people to not underestimate what this is.
- boffinAudio 5y ago>it is about politically attacking the credibility and reputations of civilian technologist No question about it, this is accurate - especially given the way the UK has treated those who have a legitimate reason to use encryption for political reasons. This is cynical authoritarianism being used to confer a totality over protective technology.
- zohch 5y ago
- bogle 5y agoThis is from a government that has consistently waged war on expert opinion, "I think the people in this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong." - Gove This is, quite frankly, from a government that has waged a war on truth.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoThey say up to 14 million reports of suspected child sex abuse could be lost each year. I couldn't easily verify that number from the linked NCMEC web site (seems high from the reports I read), but let's assume it's accurate. However... What can even be done with 14,000,000 annual reports of suspected child sex abuse? I'm just intrigued to know how that volume of data supports actual investigations, and to what extent it has helped bring perpetrators to justice or helped children suffering abuse.
- easrng 5y agoBesides, report features could include the keys for the reported message.
- alecmuffett 5y agoConfusingly, perhaps intentionally so, it's a global number, not a UK one. Details here. https://alecmuffett.com/article/15902 https://alecmuffett.com/article/15902 Disclosure: I wrote the blogpost.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoGreat analysis, thanks for posting it. I only got as far as realising the stats were from the US and were probably global.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoI'm sure they liked a large headline figure. They should have disclosed that the figures were global at the very least.
- MattPalmer1086 5y agoAlso, interesting that the majority of them are duplicates.
- 15characterslon 5y agoAccording to statista, the UK has about 14 million residents younger than 20 years, so they're just counting everyone as a potential victim. https://www.statista.com/statistics/281208/population-of-the-england-by-age-group/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281208/population-of-the...
- nurumaik 5y agoThe domain name speaks about their end goal much clearer than the title
- Terry_Roll 5y agoI'm not getting into the rights or wrongs of child abuse because there are many legal forms of child abuse which religions and govts have normalised over the centuries as acceptable behaviour, but considering it is currently portrayed as the worst act someone can do, this is a campaign that has high knee jerking manipulation potential against the uneducated. Why doesn't the Govt produce an app, which lets people voluntarily offer up information to authorities that can run on all their devices? This way a subsection of the population will be automatically sidelined and the authorities can concentrate on the data from those not using their app. But this only targets devices, it doesnt target offline situations like people meeting in a pub arranging things, where the consumption of alcohol provides an automatic defence to the prosecution!
- regularjack 5y agoThe title is inaccurate, the site explicitly says: > We are not opposed to end-to-end encryption. I'm not commenting on the merits of this campaign, simply on the fact that the title is inaccurate.
- emptysongglass 5y agoI don't believe it's inaccurate. That sentence is put out there early but the rest of the paragraphs go on to beg businesses not to turn it on. It plays as a way to get ahead of the argument but ends up countering itself at every turn.
- bo1024 5y agoThe site also says right above that > We want social media companies to confirm they will not implement end-to-end encryption (our two quotes both omit similar amounts of context.)
- jeroenhd 5y agoThey say: > We are not opposed to end-to-end encryption, as long as it is implemented in a way that does not put children at risk. We are in favour of both strong privacy and children’s safety and urge social media companies to protect both. Which basically means "we are not opposed to end-to-end encryption as long as the encryption is not end-to-end".
- zohch 5y ago
- bArray 5y ago> But some are planning to introduce end-to-end-encryption, which scrambles messages so that only the sender and receiver can see what is being shared. One could also argue this could further _protect_ children. Now, criminal material cannot be viewed by an unintended third party. For example, it is well known that an iCloud hack leaked the photos of many celebrity women and was dubbed "the fappening", only possible because they were stored in a viewable format without e2e. We should be maximizing the control an individual has over their own data, not minimizing control. Anything the police can easily access is also something tonnes of other people can easily access. Given how common data breaches are, we should simply not trust that the transit/storage process is secure at all.
- cakoose 5y ago> For example, it is well known that an iCloud hack leaked the photos of many celebrity women and was dubbed "the fappening", only possible because they were stored in a viewable format without e2e. I thought the 2014 iCloud hack was because attackers tricked users into revealing their passwords, not because Apple's iCloud service itself was compromised. If that's true, e2e would not have made a difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak (Of course it's definitely possible for a service itself to be hacked wholesale, in which case e2e would help.)
- philistine 5y agoIt was the lack of two-factor that was the vector of attack for the hack. It's why so many iCloud features these days are not available at all if your Apple ID doesn't have two-factor enabled; Apple justifiably got shamed into improving security.
- da39a3ee 5y agoWhy the focus on child sex abuse? End-to-end encryption makes it easier to have all sorts of conversations privately, criminal or not.
- jowsie 5y agoHere's one of the ads for this campaign. https://youtu.be/1wKSDv77FBs https://youtu.be/1wKSDv77FBs
- idontwantthis 5y agoThe thing I never understand is that anyone can make an e2e chat app in an hour. It can exchange files in an afternoon. It’s like banning hand signals. How do you ban a way of communicating that anyone can do for free?
- gampleman 5y agoYou don't. You just give yourself the ability to send eye-watering fines to any of these apps. If the fine is £100,000,000, but you have only an estimated 0.01% of being prosecuted for it, would you write such an app in an hour? Or would you think twice about it?
- denton-scratch 5y agoIt doesn't matter how big the penalties are, if your chance of getting caught is approximately zero. They keep jacking up the penalties for using a mobile phone behind the wheel, but everyone is still doing it. Big penalties without enforcement is just political theatre.
- FerretFred 5y agoInterestingly, that site has been blocked by my employer's Corporate Overlord Content Filter. Had to use another computer to view the content, and now I can see why.
- Dave3of5 5y agoSo the reality of this is that this is the UK government not being able to spy on platforms like whatsapp. Remove the E2E encryption and five eyes gets it's eyes on whatever you're saying. It's really scummy to use children as a weapon here e.g. Encryption allows child abuse.
- balabaster 5y agoHaving children allows child abuse - do we ban people from having children? Of course we don't...
- balabaster 5y agoWhat if we look at ideas such as encryption requiring licensing such that there are valid use cases for it and invalid use cases for it. Things that automatically qualify as valid use cases would be things like login systems, payment systems, communication between certain parties deemed essentially private - for example client attorney communications, patient and medical team communications, reporters, whistleblowers, and other similarly essential services that require protection. I'm sure there are many valid use cases. Invalid use cases would be things like social media platforms where children are able to communicate with unknown parties. Could something like that work? How could a system like that be protected from abuse? Obviously pedophillic doctors and reporters would have an immediate loophole that would need to be considered... There has to be a way where we can have legitimately end to end encrypted systems while preventing illegitimate ones. There's a massive grey area in between "ban encryption" and "let pedophiles do what they want without any oversight." There must be a solution that falls somewhere in the middle of those two things.
- lbriner 5y agoThere is a massive issue here of which this is merely a symptom. The amount of harmful content available today is orders of magnitude more than it was 30 years ago. Sure, there has always been porn and abuse etc. but the scale that is permitted now due to the internet is massive. There are questions around how to reduce demand for content that feeds illegal activity including child abuse but also drugs, terrorist materials, human trafficking from certain porn etc. It isn't just how do we protect children but how do we protect society from becoming so numb to this that it just continues? How do we teach children that some snuff movies are real? That you cannot unsee an execution? That most porn content is either fake or coerced? How can you teach people that just because someone is called Doctor, doesn't mean their anti-vax conspiracy is true. Sure, you cannot stop them seeing it but we definitely have to think of some way of deciding what is and isn't acceptable and having much better cross-border enforcement for people who peddle this stuff. I think removing E2E encryption is a piss poor tool unless you fix the bigger problem.
- dsign 5y agoYou are making a really good point. I do like E2E and privacy, but for the broader aim of getting people to generally distrust the Internet, any step that makes its use a hazard is good, simply put. The Internet has incredible value, I can't say that there will come a time when we will give up on messaging and e-commerce because everything else we do there is so fraught with danger. But sometimes the future is unpredictable. What if ten years from now armies of hackers operate AIs that pollute absolutely everything with false information, impossible to distinguish from true facts? Those information wars are being waged now, only by humans, and yet, often with great effect. Imagine a time when a small agency can deploy an AI that creates hundreds of thousands of fake profiles looking like actual people, each posting slightly biased opinions on a slew of topics. At that point, the biggest social good may be to outright ban a big chunk of the Internet. And yes, it would be a sad day.
- gtsop 5y agoWhen technologically impared people make decisions. Here is a possible solution to your problem: Release an open source library that locally has a trained model to detect child abuse texting. Allow messaging platforms to integrate this library on the user end (you know, after the second "end" in the end-2-end). Implement parental control tools that enable this library to look st messages and report when something is fishy. Op-in, privacy respecting, user controlled.
- nybble41 5y ago> (you know, after the second "end" in the end-2-end) The "end" in E2EE is the end user, or software acting on that user's behalf as their agent—not software acting for some third party such as the service provider against the end user's will. Integrating digital spies into peoples' devices is not the answer.
- gtsop 5y ago> Integrating digital spies into peoples' devices is not the answer. I am not sure you read my comment but anyway.
- herio 5y agoFrom this day on, letters are banned. All posted material must be on post cards so that any and all can inspect them in case you are being naughty. Funny how we've gone from court order to intercept somebodies mail to this...
- jimbob45 5y agoDo they just not know about deniable encryption? Even something like DNS can be self-hosted to circumvent DNS-over-HTTPS bans. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
- AitchEmArsey 5y ago"Won't somebody please think of the children" It is horrifying to me that this approach of using pedophelia as a scapegoat to permanently degrade civil liberties goes largely unchallenged in the media.
- arpa 5y agoPaging Paedofinder General[0]! 0. https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Paedofinder_General https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Paedofinder_General
- dbg31415 5y agoRelevant from Australia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-OMR-iWOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW-OMR-iWOE
- cannabis_sam 5y agoThe UK under its current government is unfortunately a failed state..
- fguerraz 5y agoI wonder if we could make it backfire by setting up a similar campaign "No Place to Hide for MPs" for them to stop using WhatsApp and other end-to-end encrypted systems[1]. Demanding total transparency in their communications, in an effort to avoid them dodging their own rules. If done quickly and sent to the newspapers this could maybe discredit that campaign? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-switch-to-messaging-app-signal-to-curb-whatsapp-leaks https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-swit...
- aftergibson 5y agoAgreed, lead by example to save the children. Right?
- 19870213 5y agoEspecially needed, because "who knows what they will do to harm the children, maybe not this cabinet, but what about the next one?"
- dataduck 5y agoDoes anyone know of an organised resistance to this?
- miracle2k 5y agoThe right against e2e encryption will ultimately be lost, IMO. There is just no concrete, tangible reason why sex predators and terrorists do need to have this protection from law enforcement. Meanwhile, there is no concrete, tangible need for the average citizen to be able to foil lawful access by police (say after a warrant was issued - you do have protections!). I say concrete and tangible, because while I strongly support e2e, it is impossible to justify on purely objective, let's weigh specific pros and cons grounds. It's essentially an ideological position, where you are willing to accept a lot of concrete downsides for the idea that the right to privacy is a tool in the balance between the individual and the state. I'd venture to say that very few people here actually deeply believe this though. Rather, it has been adopted as commonly accepted wisdom within our community. Your supposed to support encryption. Within the larger culture wars and the techslash, I have serious doubts as to how many people are willing to defend e2e encryption once the wider public turns against it. This just needs persistence and the right political trigger. By the way - the argument for cryptocurrency, or for Tor, is exactly the same as the argument for e2e encryption. You are supposed to accept all the bad stuff (crime), not because the average Joe needs the tech, but because it serves as a counterweight against the tyranny of the majority. You don't need to be a libertarian to believe that.
- harryvederci 5y ago"OMG, knifes can hurt children, yet evil store owners continue to sell knifes anyway!" Here's a controversial thought: maybe you should educate your children? And if that doesn't work, maybe children shouldn't be allowed to be on social media, since (if I recall correctly) it's proven to be bad for them anyway? (By the facebook/instagram leak?)
- mitchdoogle 5y agoYou can gauge the honesty of any proposed computing law by measuring how soon and how loudly they mention child pornography. And this one has it in huge letters at the top of the page.
- aethertron 5y agoOnline-initiated grooming presumably begins outside of e2e'd 1-on-1 communications. Seems social media platforms have a bunch of options to help prevent that, and keeping e2e. (CSAM is a different sort of crime and must have a different solution). Facebook knows the age of its users, right? There's no good reason a regular strange adult's account should be privately communicating with a teenager (aside from special services like a suicide or domestic violence hotline). Twitter/Reddit? Kids shouldn't be on those. They're full of porn.
- bmh100 5y agoConsider the manager of a fast-food restaurant.
- aethertron 5y agoA boss grooming his underage staff? That would be offline-initiated grooming, so not really the remit of social media companies. Workplace communications should be auditable.
- networkid 5y agoSeriously? Maybe they just should not give their children devices?
- kmlx 5y ago> End-to-end encryption is valuable technology designed to keep our data and conversations safe. We are not opposed to end-to-encryption in principle and fully support the importance of strong user privacy. Instead, our campaign is calling for social media companies to work with us to find a solution that protects privacy, without putting children at even greater risk. wouldn't apple's solution from last year be a pretty good solution for the way they're framing this?
- nybble41 5y agoApple's "solution" is not end-to-end encryption. They place their software agent in the communication path (as a man-in-the-middle) to report back on the content of the messages, circumventing the encryption. It's not enough to encrypt only part of the path; E2EE means only the sender and intended recipient(s) have access to the messages. Apple is neither, and yet they give themselves access to the messages; ergo their system is not encrypted from end to end.
- gidorah 5y agoI like that there is a share to Whatsapp button there
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- hkt 5y agoThis actually sounds like a campaign for the client side content detection thing Apple cooked up recently. But still grim.
- bacan 5y agoFine. Lets abolish the govt secrets act & all the secret courts and what not too. No secrets for us, none for the govt too
- blunte 5y agoOne solution is for black and gray hats to make a coordinated effort to regularly publish conversations between officials and promoters of these policies. When their conversations with their mistresses become frequently public, they will change their attitudes.
- squarefoot 5y agoObligatory cartoon: https://i.redd.it/ifb8agngc7dy.jpg https://i.redd.it/ifb8agngc7dy.jpg Anyone willing to make a UK version?
- outside1234 5y agoIts always supposedly about the children
- lowbloodsugar 5y agoIs it odd that the website is encrypted? Why would they need that?
- DrBazza 5y agoArt student politicians that don’t understand tech, plus Hanlon’s razor, and MI5, MI6 and the Met whispering in the cabinet’s ears and we get this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- lowbloodsugar 5y agoWho is fighting this and where do I send money?
- sixhobbits 5y agoI wonder if they intentionally overlapped with Greenwald's book on Govt surveillance [0] > No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State is a 2014 non-fiction book by American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. It was first published on May 13, 2014 through Metropolitan Books and details Greenwald's role in the global surveillance disclosures as revealed by the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.[2] The documents from the Snowden archive cited in the book are freely available online. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Place_to_Hide_(Greenwald_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Place_to_Hide_(Greenwald_bo...
- Paul_S 5y ago"The campaign is funded by the UK Government" What is this nonsense? They are a majority government, they can pass any laws they want, why are they wasting my money on this insulting propaganda.
- DocTomoe 5y agoThe ability to pass any law you want is in itself pretty useless, because if the population thinks you did pass the wrong laws, you lose the power to pass future laws you might want, either due to getting thrown out during the next election, or because of loss of cranium, French Revolution style. What is important is lying about your true intention convincingly enough.
- LinuxBender 5y agoShould something like this come to pass I would expect quite an amusing arms race. One could create add-ons that use code similar to txtmode [1] not my project to encode anything into words from a word list that anyone could create. Encoded in those words could be a compressed and/or encrypted string. There are probably even more clever and efficient ways to do E2EE without it looking like encryption at all. Would it be worthwhile to have a competition to create something along this line? Something in the same spirit as the js13kGames [2] but in this case who can create the most human looking and most efficient communication that is actually E2EE encrypted messages using customizable word-lists? [1] - https://github.com/c9fe/txtmode.git https://github.com/c9fe/txtmode.git [2] - https://js13kgames.com/ https://js13kgames.com/
- Maxburn 5y agoPrecisely; as soon as E2EE is outlawed it starts to look just like gun laws, only the criminals have it. Worse the software and methods are out there, all that happens next is you are raising the bar on being able to use it as it won't be commonly available.
- mrtesthah 5y agoEven better, use GPT-3 to generate grammatically correct text which steganographically encodes an encrypted message.
- bee_rider 5y agoSteganography is the broader topic. Recently, I think it has been assumed that anybody basically has a right to talk to anybody else without any real justification, so messages were encrypted instead. But steganography was popular in, for example, ancient times when the local king or church officials might demand to see your letters. If it is due for a comeback that says something pretty sad about our society I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
- pfortuny 5y ago@dang: just realized the title is wrong (end-to-ENCRYPTION encryption).
- mnd999 5y agoWow, a fake grass roots campaign. That’s original.
- mimsee 5y agoThere's this gem in the source: console.log("you are being tracked");
- grumpymouse 5y agoI live in the UK here and I have no problem with the police or government being able to read my WhatsApp messages - provided there is sufficient judicial oversight (i.e. they can convince a judge there’s sufficient evidence I’m doing something criminal). They can already get a warrant to go through my underwear drawer, tap my phone or read my snail mail. Why would chat messages be different?
- drexlspivey 5y agoDo you think that you should have the right to talk to someone in person without the government tapping into that? If so why chat messages should be different?
- grumpymouse 5y agoIf the police can prove to a court that there’s evidence somebody’s committing a serious crime I’m fine with them listening to people talk in person. For example, if it really looked like I were trafficking drugs it would be fine to send somebody to follow me and listen to me talk to people
- athrowaway3z 5y agoI have ( a completely unverified ) view of this trash. Every foundation/organization initially to influence politicians (i.e. what happened here through government funding) wrt end-to-end encryption is at most two bank transactions away from getting funding from either Hollywood or the military. "Save the children" (c) , because some organization is controlled by a power mad narcissist, for whom privacy is a luxury you shouldn't be able to afford.
- onemoresoop 5y agoIm a bit confused what exactly means by banning end to end encryption. What would stop two parties from sending encrypted data across the wire and decrypt it on the other end of it? How would they ban that? If one posts some gobbledygook encrypted text on a forum that only a specific recipient would have the key how would that be stopped?
- shaftway 5y agoI think the most telling part is the typo in the first paragraph (and in the HN title): "End-To-Encryption"
- callahad 5y agoWorth noting that the majority party in Parliament, the one pushing this nonsense, switched en masse to Signal two years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-switch-to-messaging-app-signal-to-curb-whatsapp-leaks https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/17/tories-swit...
- ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago
- adamleo 5y agoNot sure if anybody remembers or knows that months ago in New Zealand, there was a knife attack, and they took knives off shelves, basically tried to ban knives. This campaign is emphasizing on one aspect of a tech, and trying to manipulate people emotionally.
- LennyHenrysNuts 5y ago
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- orca_ 5y ago