14 ms·

The fact that every "democratic" superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between

The fact that every "democratic" superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between state actors to do so.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Everything is coordinated at some level. The DMCA began as an attempt to meet our “international obligations.”
seanhunter 4y ago
The intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have collaborated extensively since WWII (this is the so called "Five Eyes"[1]) and of course the NATO powers coordinate defense as well as part of that organization. Edit to add: I mention the five eyes because cryptography (and cybersecurity) tend to fall into the purview of the signals intelligence agencies in government, so that would be NSA in the US, GCHQ in the UK etc. They collaborate under this arrangement. [1] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-five-eyes-the-intelligence-alliance-of-the-anglosphere/ https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-five-eyes-the-intelligen...
- moremetadata 4y ago
  [dead]
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
The fact that we regard as "democratic" (because they are good guys, or so we'd wish) a country with king and lords (even a House of Lords, or even "Lords Spiritual" [1]), is the greater joke. [1] Just a random click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_House_o... on the Bishop of Chichester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_bishops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_b... reveals a list of bishops going back as far as 681, the year 681. Particularly funny is how the majority of the bishops seem to have "died in office". To call a land with 1,300+ years of hegemony "democratic" is beyond satire.
- circuit10 4y ago
  The king doesn’t really have any power in practice, I think the royal family mainly exist for tradition/tourism reasons at this point At least according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index it’s one of the most democratic countries at 18th in the world (to be fair that’s made by a UK company but I don’t see why they would be biased)
  - c0m 4y ago
    > The [monarch] doesn’t really have any power in practice Entirely untrue. The monarch has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. There have been many cases of the Queen getting carveouts, influencing laws, and vetting bills. There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent. This notion that the British monarch has no power is an absolute farce. There’s also the whole concept of King’s Consent, wherein the King gets to vet every single bill for affect the crown's own prerogatives or interests, and negotiate secretly with the government to change the contents of that bill. The Guardian articles detail this process as well. If you seriously believe the King has no power in practice I have a bridge to sell you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Consent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Consent https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-lobbied-for-change-in-law-to-hide-her-private-wealth https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-l... https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbied-for-changes-to-three-more-laws-documents-reveal https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbied-fo... https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-lobbied-scottish-ministers-climate-law-exemption https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-l... https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/revealed-queen-vetted-67-laws-before-scottish-parliament-pass-them https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/revealed-queen-v...
    - eternalban 4y ago
      Also the command-in-chief of UK and other Commonweath militaries? Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief_of_the_Canadian_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief_of_the_Cana... As all executive power is legally reposed in the Crown, the role of commander-in-chief is the only constitutional means by which decisions are made over the deployment and disposition of the Canadian Armed Forces.[6] Under the Westminster system's conventions of responsible government, the cabinet—which advises the sovereign or his viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers—generally exercises the Crown prerogative powers relating to the Canadian forces.[6][7] Still, all declarations of war are issued with the approval, and in the name, of the monarch and must be signed by either the sovereign or the governor general, as was done with the proclamation that declared Canada at war with Nazi Germany, issued on September 10, 1939; it stated: "Whereas by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, We have signified Our Approval for the issue of a Proclamation in the Canada Gazette declaring that a State of War with the German Reich exists and has existed in Our Dominion of Canada as and from the tenth day of September, 1939." Australia: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s68.html http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca4... COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT - SECT 68. Command of naval and military forces. The command in chief of the naval and military forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the Governor-General as the Queen's representative.
LightBug1 4y ago
Mate, we've not been a democratic superpower for more than a decade now. Just a rudderless, inward looking joke floating adrift off the west coast of France.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
- toyg 4y ago
  The UK has not been any kind of superpower for almost a century now. The last decade is just the last gasp, like a disabled 90-year-old refusing to accept that he can't live alone.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
throw7 4y ago
The three name agencies have complained since day 1 about encryption. Of course they want it gone or have some backdoor. Remember to think of the children and that they'd never spy on americans... not unwittingly.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
becquerel 4y ago
you don't need a conspiracy when you have hegemony.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
> some sorta coordination between state actors There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glasses of whisky scheming about how to counter each threat to their power (with their super-secret puppeteers present only as a grim silhouette in the shadows, or maybe as an unexpected call at a climactic moment). The only coordination that exists at the level of these superpowers is systemic, caused and communicated purely by a commonality of incentives and threats, not by words. Every government wants power. One obvious means to achieve that is to retain an ability to surveil their populace. They grew accustomed to growth of this ability as communication shifted from whispered conversations to physical letters to telegrams to analog telephones to unencrypted Internet communication; now the ability of ordinary citizens to trivially encrypt their communication is a major setback to that expectation. The timing of it is merely coincidental, or at most coordinated by the cross-border technological developments.
- junofan 4y ago
  What do you think Joe Biden talks about with Macron, Sunak, and Scholz when he calls them up on the phone?
- slavboj 4y ago
  No, you have your lower-level guys coordinate transnational policy. That is the entire point of organizations like the Atlantic Council!
- tekknik 4y ago
  > There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glasses of whisky scheming about how to counter each threat to their power Why whenever anybody says anything that can be construed as conspiratorial do we automatically assume it is? World leaders can meet without the conspiracy, they do it all the time.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    Why do we automatically assume that people conspiring is a farcical premise? Common criminals conspire with each other all the time. Business leaders conspire with each other when they form illegal cartels. Why can't politicians or even heads of state conspire? Why is that considered so outlandish? For instance, the leaders of prominent American tech companies conspired with each other to suppress wages. Should this be laughed at? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_non-recruiting_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_n... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
arlort 4y ago
There's a correlation but I wouldn't say coordination Cultural drives are somewhat globalized, big news stories which might lead to some desire for government action are unlikely to remain purely local, and they're even more unlikely to be isolated events The whole world uses the same apps to visit the same websites and see mostly the same news stories, tv shows, movies, books, songs etc This kind of big legislation doesn't sprout from nothing it takes time to gather momentum and in the world right now it's not crazy to think that multiple people are thinking about the same thing at various stages at the same time And when one of these laws gets proposed or passed somewhere it helps provide momentum elsewhere so you get a slow boil and then everywhere "at once"
account42 4y ago
This hardly the only policy change that seems coordinated btw.

The fact that every "democratic" superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between state actors to do so.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Everything is coordinated at some level. The DMCA began as an attempt to meet our “international obligations.”

seanhunter 4y ago

The intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have collaborated extensively since WWII (this is the so called "Five Eyes"[1]) and of course the NATO powers coordinate defense as well as part of that organization. Edit to add: I mention the five eyes because cryptography (and cybersecurity) tend to fall into the purview of the signals intelligence agencies in government, so that would be NSA in the US, GCHQ in the UK etc. They collaborate under this arrangement. [1] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-five-eyes-the-intelligence-alliance-of-the-anglosphere/ https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-five-eyes-the-intelligen...

moremetadata 4y ago
[dead]

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

The fact that we regard as "democratic" (because they are good guys, or so we'd wish) a country with king and lords (even a House of Lords, or even "Lords Spiritual" [1]), is the greater joke. [1] Just a random click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_House_o... on the Bishop of Chichester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_bishops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_b... reveals a list of bishops going back as far as 681, the year 681. Particularly funny is how the majority of the bishops seem to have "died in office". To call a land with 1,300+ years of hegemony "democratic" is beyond satire.

circuit10 4y ago
The king doesn’t really have any power in practice, I think the royal family mainly exist for tradition/tourism reasons at this point At least according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index it’s one of the most democratic countries at 18th in the world (to be fair that’s made by a UK company but I don’t see why they would be biased)
- c0m 4y ago
  > The [monarch] doesn’t really have any power in practice Entirely untrue. The monarch has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. There have been many cases of the Queen getting carveouts, influencing laws, and vetting bills. There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent. This notion that the British monarch has no power is an absolute farce. There’s also the whole concept of King’s Consent, wherein the King gets to vet every single bill for affect the crown's own prerogatives or interests, and negotiate secretly with the government to change the contents of that bill. The Guardian articles detail this process as well. If you seriously believe the King has no power in practice I have a bridge to sell you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Consent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Consent https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-lobbied-for-change-in-law-to-hide-her-private-wealth https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-l... https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbied-for-changes-to-three-more-laws-documents-reveal https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbied-fo... https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-lobbied-scottish-ministers-climate-law-exemption https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-l... https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/revealed-queen-vetted-67-laws-before-scottish-parliament-pass-them https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/revealed-queen-v...
  - eternalban 4y ago
    Also the command-in-chief of UK and other Commonweath militaries? Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief_of_the_Canadian_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief_of_the_Cana... As all executive power is legally reposed in the Crown, the role of commander-in-chief is the only constitutional means by which decisions are made over the deployment and disposition of the Canadian Armed Forces.[6] Under the Westminster system's conventions of responsible government, the cabinet—which advises the sovereign or his viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers—generally exercises the Crown prerogative powers relating to the Canadian forces.[6][7] Still, all declarations of war are issued with the approval, and in the name, of the monarch and must be signed by either the sovereign or the governor general, as was done with the proclamation that declared Canada at war with Nazi Germany, issued on September 10, 1939; it stated: "Whereas by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, We have signified Our Approval for the issue of a Proclamation in the Canada Gazette declaring that a State of War with the German Reich exists and has existed in Our Dominion of Canada as and from the tenth day of September, 1939." Australia: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s68.html http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca4... COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT - SECT 68. Command of naval and military forces. The command in chief of the naval and military forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the Governor-General as the Queen's representative.

LightBug1 4y ago

Mate, we've not been a democratic superpower for more than a decade now. Just a rudderless, inward looking joke floating adrift off the west coast of France.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]
toyg 4y ago
The UK has not been any kind of superpower for almost a century now. The last decade is just the last gasp, like a disabled 90-year-old refusing to accept that he can't live alone.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

throw7 4y ago

The three name agencies have complained since day 1 about encryption. Of course they want it gone or have some backdoor. Remember to think of the children and that they'd never spy on americans... not unwittingly.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

becquerel 4y ago

you don't need a conspiracy when you have hegemony.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

> some sorta coordination between state actors There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glasses of whisky scheming about how to counter each threat to their power (with their super-secret puppeteers present only as a grim silhouette in the shadows, or maybe as an unexpected call at a climactic moment). The only coordination that exists at the level of these superpowers is systemic, caused and communicated purely by a commonality of incentives and threats, not by words. Every government wants power. One obvious means to achieve that is to retain an ability to surveil their populace. They grew accustomed to growth of this ability as communication shifted from whispered conversations to physical letters to telegrams to analog telephones to unencrypted Internet communication; now the ability of ordinary citizens to trivially encrypt their communication is a major setback to that expectation. The timing of it is merely coincidental, or at most coordinated by the cross-border technological developments.

junofan 4y ago
What do you think Joe Biden talks about with Macron, Sunak, and Scholz when he calls them up on the phone?
slavboj 4y ago
No, you have your lower-level guys coordinate transnational policy. That is the entire point of organizations like the Atlantic Council!
tekknik 4y ago
> There's no smoky backroom where Biden and Macron and Sunak and Scholz sit in high-back leather chairs with glasses of whisky scheming about how to counter each threat to their power Why whenever anybody says anything that can be construed as conspiratorial do we automatically assume it is? World leaders can meet without the conspiracy, they do it all the time.
- stametseater 4y ago
  Why do we automatically assume that people conspiring is a farcical premise? Common criminals conspire with each other all the time. Business leaders conspire with each other when they form illegal cartels. Why can't politicians or even heads of state conspire? Why is that considered so outlandish? For instance, the leaders of prominent American tech companies conspired with each other to suppress wages. Should this be laughed at? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_non-recruiting_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_n... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

arlort 4y ago

There's a correlation but I wouldn't say coordination Cultural drives are somewhat globalized, big news stories which might lead to some desire for government action are unlikely to remain purely local, and they're even more unlikely to be isolated events The whole world uses the same apps to visit the same websites and see mostly the same news stories, tv shows, movies, books, songs etc This kind of big legislation doesn't sprout from nothing it takes time to gather momentum and in the world right now it's not crazy to think that multiple people are thinking about the same thing at various stages at the same time And when one of these laws gets proposed or passed somewhere it helps provide momentum elsewhere so you get a slow boil and then everywhere "at once"

account42 4y ago

This hardly the only policy change that seems coordinated btw.