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Open Letter from Security Researchers in Relation to the Online Safety Bill [pdf]

martinralbrecht 3y ago
"As independent information security and cryptography researchers, we build technologies that keep people safe online. It is in this capacity that we see the need to stress that the safety provided by these essential technologies is now under threat in the Online Safety Bill."
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  Europe has similar bills with chat control. There was no serious expert that did not warn about the severe negative repercussions. Representatives still didn't seem to be interested and the EU isn't particular democratic so anyone could be held to account. I think technology must provide ways to ensure free and secure communication without a possibility of surveillance. The political class cannot be entrusted to shield essential freedoms, so technology has to provide it. Large tech companies are a single point of failure and we already have seen political influence there. While much of it is now challenged at least, I think we can all be glad the the internet provided some resilience against surveillance and propaganda attempts. In that regard the panic about disinformation is also mostly manufactured in my opinion and the voice of experts will be disregarded anyway.
  - ElevenLathe 3y ago
    I agree generally, but we have to be realistic that decentralization/onion routing/public key encryption and all the other technical tricks at our disposal will only slow the corporations/the state down. Yes, it convenient for the FBI to have a web form to be able to get access to your gmail inbox or whatever, but they will happily just arrest you and beat you with a wrench until you give them your private keys. The truth is that power (aka money) is heavily concentrated in global society. It's a worthwhile goal to break it up, and maybe there are some technical tricks to help people toward that end, but even if we woke up tomorrow with a perfectly decentralized and anonymous network culture, we would still be under the rule of oil interests/unelected bureaucrats/unaccountable intelligence agencies/the finance industry/your bogeyman of choice.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > Yes, it convenient for the FBI to have a web form to be able to get access to your gmail inbox or whatever, but they will happily just arrest you and beat you with a wrench until you give them your private keys. Very unlikely on average, because they cannot (and are not interested) in arresting everyone. Internet surveillance, however, makes it easy to spy on everyone all the time. This is also why it is vital to have approximately everyone using secure technologies.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - wholinator2 3y ago
      Yeah, i think we also have to be wary of defeatism when it comes to things like this as well. Of course they could just kidnap and torture you, they've always been able to do that. But this is about their ability to get information on millions of people simultaneously. It would be pretty unrealistic for the FBI to simultaneously kidnap and torture every member of an ethnic or political group. But if that data is all online then that information becomes easy and instant to get. So yeah, 1 person could be captured, that's not what this is about. This is about the simultaneous capture of _everyone_, which is wholly something outside the realm of possibility currently. We shouldn't give up just because a bad thing already exists.
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    > There was no serious expert that did not warn about the severe negative repercussions. This is surprisingly often the case, not just for criminal law (or "security law") changes, but even in general lawmaking. And way more often than not those experts are spot on. Be it obvious loop holes in regulations, tax code issues, eroding civil rights, obvious unconstitionality of many surveillance (and many other) laws, obvious abuse potential and so on. It's a very long list.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
I think it's inevitable that at some point some legislation like the OSB will pass in most western countries. It's going to drive the people who have the know how underground, and anyone engaging in protecting their privacy will be considered a criminal. We're already creeping toward that IMO.
- blitzar 3y ago
  I think it's inevitable that at some point some legislation like the OSB will pass in most western countries. It's going to be no different at all from the current situation.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > It's going to be no different at all from the current situation. That's not true at all. If OSB is passed, things will be quite different in the UK afterward.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      The snoopers charter already exists, ISPs already have to report your web browsing to the Government database. For everything else there are foreign agencies who are not limited by uk legislation.
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        The issue is that they can't defeat encryption currently, and wish to. Encryption can hide web browsing and a lot more, which they don't like.
  - miohtama 3y ago
    What would happen in the ideal world: - All online messenger providers (Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram) e.g. withdraw from the UK market. Meta and Google gave a taste for this after Canadian link law. - UK needs to come up with a crappy homebrew messenger ecosystem no one uses. Maybe a messenger.gov.uk? - People download applications with privacy and sideload them to their mobile phones, keep going with their business as usual - The number of childs protected or caught pedophiles stays unchanged - UK parliament members who proposed the bill will look like idiots, not getting re-elected - The "compliance" companies who promoted these solutions, as it's driven by commercial interest that guides the political discussion, go bankcrupt However I remain doubtful if we have this ideal scenario.
mandmandam 3y ago
These researchers are using logic and reason to fight against a bill that seeks to amass power and control. And while I appreciate the level tone... I do wish they'd at least wink at the real reasons this is being put forward. I get why they don't, to maintain respectability and deniability etc. But look at the sheer hypocrisy on display here. I kinda wish they'd take the gloves off and say, hey - Look at Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter, and God Knows how many others. Look at how those horrifying scumbags walked around free, for decades, as if authorities didn't know full fine well what they were doing. Look at how they were not just ignored, but protected by the establishment that now wants a backdoor on every private communication.
- pjc50 3y ago
  It's very difficult trying to do rational opposition to policy in the UK these days because .. that's simply not how it works any more. At best you have to work the kremlinology of different factions to get an idea killed or promoted. But you have to remember that it's a closed news ecosystem, you simply can't get a word in unless you're already part of that media/party group of people. The plan to bring back "Imperial" measurements still isn't dead, for example. Liz Truss, worst and shortest PM in living memory, is back after a few months as if nothing had happened. Why? It's not because she has any good ideas; it's because she's a vessel for a particular faction of bad ideas.
- version_five 3y ago
  I think it's inflammatory and unfair to put Prince Andrew in your list, with a sex trafficker and two serial child abusers. He may have had an inappropriate relationship with a girl at a party, hold him to account for whatever there is in that it, but it's nowhere near on the scale as the others and it's the kind of hyperbole that dismisses the magnitude of major crimes.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    The only reason Prince Andrew met Giuffre in the first place was that she had been "procured" by the Epstein/Maxwell ring!
psychphysic 3y ago
Bigger question how will safe messaging apps exit the market? Will people need a number for a privacy friendly foreign nation to continue access?
- tjpnz 3y ago
  The apps would be delisted in the UK app stores and will eventually stop working for existing users when not updated. That's also a security issue in itself.
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    It'll be a matter of installing the app "from unknown source" then?
    - zirgs 3y ago
      Can't do that on iOS.
      - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        Technically you can, but the hoop jumping isn’t ideal.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        If only iOS devices had web browsers…
      - lrvick 3y ago
        No one using authoritarian computing platforms will fare well at resisting authoritarians.
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      Which, unfortunately, is a rather risky situation considering for instance all the rogue ChatGPT-branded extensions and apps people downloaded without a second thought to their legitimacy. We have been conditioned to view branding as the certificate of legitimacy, and that simply is not true for the Internet where branding can be copied and pasted in seconds.
vixen99 3y ago
Total lack of response to this letter will speak volumes about the essential nature of this UK Government. The UK Opposition Party's view as of last January is here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pledges-toughen-online-safety-bill https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pl.... Background: https://www.theverge.com/23708180/united-kingdom-online-safety-bill-explainer-legal-pornography-age-checks https://www.theverge.com/23708180/united-kingdom-online-safe...
- cbeach 3y ago
  Looks like the opposition's stance is even worse. Labour's Lucy Powell: “The weakened bill will give abusers a licence to troll, and the business models of big tech will give these trolls a platform.” So the Labour government will get to decide who's a "troll," and whether they're de-platformed AKA cancelled. Likewise Labour's desire to curb "legal but harmful" speech means that Labour will get to decide, on an ongoing basis, which speech is "harmful." It won't be defined in law, so the definition will be completely subjective, and ripe for corruption and chilling suppression of innocent people.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > The government disagrees and says the bill “does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption.” The bill mandates an end-run around E2E encryption. Government spokespeople are deeply disingenuous about this; the two ends are me and you, metaphorically; two users. If there's anything in the channel before the content is encrypted or after it's decrypted, then it isn't end-to-end any more.
EGreg 3y ago
This is just a small battle in a global war: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-encryption/214/2 https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en...
AbhiAmbad 3y ago
now feeling safe
a_c 3y ago
As I understand it, most UK public are in favour of this bill almost Pavlovianly. There is a clear disconnect between us, the tech know-how, and the general public.
- pjc50 3y ago
  The UK public are extremely conservative, and extremely misinformed by conservative news sources. That's at the root of a lot of the demand for authoritarianism.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    Conservative? Has Labour opposed any of it?
    - feldrim 3y ago
      I believe here it is used as an adjective, not the name of a political party.
      - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
        I think it's used as a reference to the UK incarnation of a political philosophy [1], which by no means has a monopoly on promoting the serveillance state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
    - stephen_g 3y ago
      Labour are not “The Conservative Party” but they are definitely (at the moment) pretty solidly a conservative party.
      - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
        The surveillance state isn't an exclusively conservative idea though. It has a long and storied tradition on the Left as well.
bell-cot 3y ago
Sigh... Beyond the security researchers' own little "computer savvy 1%" bubble, is there any intended audience for such Open Letters? Could they actually communicate with normal people if they (somehow) wanted to? Are there laws in the UK that make it too risky to just say something like "This bill will make it so much easier for the next Wayne Couzens to find his perfect Sarah Everard."?
- anonymousDan 3y ago
  This is directed primarily to politicians about to vote on the bill.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    In theory. Could you tell us about the historical effectiveness of such open letters to UK politicians, from tiny numbers of technical experts, on issues politically similar to this? Assume that we've heard of Performative Activism.
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      While not the UK you might have heard of this letter from a tiny number of technical experts on a politically sensitive technical topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_letter#/media/File:Einstein-Roosevelt-letter.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_let...
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        Yes. Context: The President it was addressed to had been working to prepare for war against Germany for most of a year. Einstein's "famous, politically ~neutral super-genius" reputation was far loftier than that of any signatory to this Open Letter. And it warned the U.S. President about a super-powerful type of bomb which Germany might develop (and use against the U.S.A.) during a period when both bomber and bombing technologies were obviously advancing very rapidly. If a "smartest in the world" mathematician wrote the current U.S. President, to warn that the crypto algorithms currently used by the U.S. for uber-secret stuff might quite possibly be fully broken by China in the next few years - then I suspect that the current U.S. President might be fairly willing to take action. That is not the scenario around this Open Letter.
q8Ekg3V8 3y ago
The media has only to gain, imagine the extra sales they will get from publishing all the future leaks that will occur.
- blitzar 3y ago
  I for one welcome a future where (you can once again) sit in a coffee shop and watch peoples plaintext usernames and passwords travel over the ether followed by the plaintext content of their messages.
temptemptemp111 3y ago
[dead]
fwungy 3y ago
When Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the drugs our politicians were on, he wasn't completely fabricating. DC is high on prescription pharmaceuticals and the actual legislation is coming from lobbyists hired by people who are also highly medicated. They don't care what the people want after campaign season is over, however they will back off from anything that generates genuine outcry, for a while, then they'll try it again later.
mlinksva 3y ago
No date on the letter or the PDF metadata but https://twitter.com/martinralbrecht/status/1676486065106964480 https://twitter.com/martinralbrecht/status/16764860651069644... from one of the corresponding authors is today, July 5.
LatteLazy 3y ago
When you have nothing to offer on real issues (inflation, housing, pay, jobs, transport, health, education, social mobility etc), you have to constantly whip up fear over non-issues (people online). (both with the general population, and your own back benches) Once you have have spent years whipping up fear over non-issues, you inevitably have to do something about them. But you cannot actually do something that doesn't have side effect worse than the intended effect. But you can't just admit that or walk away. You have convinced your electorate these are the number 1 issues facing the nation. So you write a law that's meaningless nonsense, and poop it out into Parliament. That is how we got this bill. That's how we got Brexit. Whether we can overcome this sort of disfunction will basically decide whether algo-sphere style democracy is sustainable...
Jigsy 3y ago
So unworkable. I've personally never used Tor, but the moment this bill goes live, I'll be setting up Whonix in a VM on Linux OS.

"As independent information security and cryptography researchers, we build technologies that keep people safe online. It is in this capacity that we see the need to stress that the safety provided by these essential technologies is now under threat in the Online Safety Bill."

raxxorraxor 3y ago
Europe has similar bills with chat control. There was no serious expert that did not warn about the severe negative repercussions. Representatives still didn't seem to be interested and the EU isn't particular democratic so anyone could be held to account. I think technology must provide ways to ensure free and secure communication without a possibility of surveillance. The political class cannot be entrusted to shield essential freedoms, so technology has to provide it. Large tech companies are a single point of failure and we already have seen political influence there. While much of it is now challenged at least, I think we can all be glad the the internet provided some resilience against surveillance and propaganda attempts. In that regard the panic about disinformation is also mostly manufactured in my opinion and the voice of experts will be disregarded anyway.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  I agree generally, but we have to be realistic that decentralization/onion routing/public key encryption and all the other technical tricks at our disposal will only slow the corporations/the state down. Yes, it convenient for the FBI to have a web form to be able to get access to your gmail inbox or whatever, but they will happily just arrest you and beat you with a wrench until you give them your private keys. The truth is that power (aka money) is heavily concentrated in global society. It's a worthwhile goal to break it up, and maybe there are some technical tricks to help people toward that end, but even if we woke up tomorrow with a perfectly decentralized and anonymous network culture, we would still be under the rule of oil interests/unelected bureaucrats/unaccountable intelligence agencies/the finance industry/your bogeyman of choice.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > Yes, it convenient for the FBI to have a web form to be able to get access to your gmail inbox or whatever, but they will happily just arrest you and beat you with a wrench until you give them your private keys. Very unlikely on average, because they cannot (and are not interested) in arresting everyone. Internet surveillance, however, makes it easy to spy on everyone all the time. This is also why it is vital to have approximately everyone using secure technologies.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Yeah, i think we also have to be wary of defeatism when it comes to things like this as well. Of course they could just kidnap and torture you, they've always been able to do that. But this is about their ability to get information on millions of people simultaneously. It would be pretty unrealistic for the FBI to simultaneously kidnap and torture every member of an ethnic or political group. But if that data is all online then that information becomes easy and instant to get. So yeah, 1 person could be captured, that's not what this is about. This is about the simultaneous capture of _everyone_, which is wholly something outside the realm of possibility currently. We shouldn't give up just because a bad thing already exists.
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  > There was no serious expert that did not warn about the severe negative repercussions. This is surprisingly often the case, not just for criminal law (or "security law") changes, but even in general lawmaking. And way more often than not those experts are spot on. Be it obvious loop holes in regulations, tax code issues, eroding civil rights, obvious unconstitionality of many surveillance (and many other) laws, obvious abuse potential and so on. It's a very long list.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

I think it's inevitable that at some point some legislation like the OSB will pass in most western countries. It's going to drive the people who have the know how underground, and anyone engaging in protecting their privacy will be considered a criminal. We're already creeping toward that IMO.

blitzar 3y ago
I think it's inevitable that at some point some legislation like the OSB will pass in most western countries. It's going to be no different at all from the current situation.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > It's going to be no different at all from the current situation. That's not true at all. If OSB is passed, things will be quite different in the UK afterward.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    The snoopers charter already exists, ISPs already have to report your web browsing to the Government database. For everything else there are foreign agencies who are not limited by uk legislation.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      The issue is that they can't defeat encryption currently, and wish to. Encryption can hide web browsing and a lot more, which they don't like.
- miohtama 3y ago
  What would happen in the ideal world: - All online messenger providers (Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram) e.g. withdraw from the UK market. Meta and Google gave a taste for this after Canadian link law. - UK needs to come up with a crappy homebrew messenger ecosystem no one uses. Maybe a messenger.gov.uk? - People download applications with privacy and sideload them to their mobile phones, keep going with their business as usual - The number of childs protected or caught pedophiles stays unchanged - UK parliament members who proposed the bill will look like idiots, not getting re-elected - The "compliance" companies who promoted these solutions, as it's driven by commercial interest that guides the political discussion, go bankcrupt However I remain doubtful if we have this ideal scenario.

mandmandam 3y ago

These researchers are using logic and reason to fight against a bill that seeks to amass power and control. And while I appreciate the level tone... I do wish they'd at least wink at the real reasons this is being put forward. I get why they don't, to maintain respectability and deniability etc. But look at the sheer hypocrisy on display here. I kinda wish they'd take the gloves off and say, hey - Look at Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter, and God Knows how many others. Look at how those horrifying scumbags walked around free, for decades, as if authorities didn't know full fine well what they were doing. Look at how they were not just ignored, but protected by the establishment that now wants a backdoor on every private communication.

pjc50 3y ago
It's very difficult trying to do rational opposition to policy in the UK these days because .. that's simply not how it works any more. At best you have to work the kremlinology of different factions to get an idea killed or promoted. But you have to remember that it's a closed news ecosystem, you simply can't get a word in unless you're already part of that media/party group of people. The plan to bring back "Imperial" measurements still isn't dead, for example. Liz Truss, worst and shortest PM in living memory, is back after a few months as if nothing had happened. Why? It's not because she has any good ideas; it's because she's a vessel for a particular faction of bad ideas.
version_five 3y ago
I think it's inflammatory and unfair to put Prince Andrew in your list, with a sex trafficker and two serial child abusers. He may have had an inappropriate relationship with a girl at a party, hold him to account for whatever there is in that it, but it's nowhere near on the scale as the others and it's the kind of hyperbole that dismisses the magnitude of major crimes.
- pjc50 3y ago
  The only reason Prince Andrew met Giuffre in the first place was that she had been "procured" by the Epstein/Maxwell ring!

psychphysic 3y ago

Bigger question how will safe messaging apps exit the market? Will people need a number for a privacy friendly foreign nation to continue access?

tjpnz 3y ago
The apps would be delisted in the UK app stores and will eventually stop working for existing users when not updated. That's also a security issue in itself.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  It'll be a matter of installing the app "from unknown source" then?
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Can't do that on iOS.
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      Technically you can, but the hoop jumping isn’t ideal.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      If only iOS devices had web browsers…
    - lrvick 3y ago
      No one using authoritarian computing platforms will fare well at resisting authoritarians.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    Which, unfortunately, is a rather risky situation considering for instance all the rogue ChatGPT-branded extensions and apps people downloaded without a second thought to their legitimacy. We have been conditioned to view branding as the certificate of legitimacy, and that simply is not true for the Internet where branding can be copied and pasted in seconds.

vixen99 3y ago

Total lack of response to this letter will speak volumes about the essential nature of this UK Government. The UK Opposition Party's view as of last January is here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pledges-toughen-online-safety-bill https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pl.... Background: https://www.theverge.com/23708180/united-kingdom-online-safety-bill-explainer-legal-pornography-age-checks https://www.theverge.com/23708180/united-kingdom-online-safe...

cbeach 3y ago
Looks like the opposition's stance is even worse. Labour's Lucy Powell: “The weakened bill will give abusers a licence to troll, and the business models of big tech will give these trolls a platform.” So the Labour government will get to decide who's a "troll," and whether they're de-platformed AKA cancelled. Likewise Labour's desire to curb "legal but harmful" speech means that Labour will get to decide, on an ongoing basis, which speech is "harmful." It won't be defined in law, so the definition will be completely subjective, and ripe for corruption and chilling suppression of innocent people.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> The government disagrees and says the bill “does not represent a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption.” The bill mandates an end-run around E2E encryption. Government spokespeople are deeply disingenuous about this; the two ends are me and you, metaphorically; two users. If there's anything in the channel before the content is encrypted or after it's decrypted, then it isn't end-to-end any more.

EGreg 3y ago

This is just a small battle in a global war: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-encryption/214/2 https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en...

AbhiAmbad 3y ago

now feeling safe

a_c 3y ago

As I understand it, most UK public are in favour of this bill almost Pavlovianly. There is a clear disconnect between us, the tech know-how, and the general public.

pjc50 3y ago
The UK public are extremely conservative, and extremely misinformed by conservative news sources. That's at the root of a lot of the demand for authoritarianism.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  Conservative? Has Labour opposed any of it?
  - feldrim 3y ago
    I believe here it is used as an adjective, not the name of a political party.
    - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
      I think it's used as a reference to the UK incarnation of a political philosophy [1], which by no means has a monopoly on promoting the serveillance state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    Labour are not “The Conservative Party” but they are definitely (at the moment) pretty solidly a conservative party.
    - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
      The surveillance state isn't an exclusively conservative idea though. It has a long and storied tradition on the Left as well.

bell-cot 3y ago

Sigh... Beyond the security researchers' own little "computer savvy 1%" bubble, is there any intended audience for such Open Letters? Could they actually communicate with normal people if they (somehow) wanted to? Are there laws in the UK that make it too risky to just say something like "This bill will make it so much easier for the next Wayne Couzens to find his perfect Sarah Everard."?

anonymousDan 3y ago
This is directed primarily to politicians about to vote on the bill.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  In theory. Could you tell us about the historical effectiveness of such open letters to UK politicians, from tiny numbers of technical experts, on issues politically similar to this? Assume that we've heard of Performative Activism.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    While not the UK you might have heard of this letter from a tiny number of technical experts on a politically sensitive technical topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_letter#/media/File:Einstein-Roosevelt-letter.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_let...
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      Yes. Context: The President it was addressed to had been working to prepare for war against Germany for most of a year. Einstein's "famous, politically ~neutral super-genius" reputation was far loftier than that of any signatory to this Open Letter. And it warned the U.S. President about a super-powerful type of bomb which Germany might develop (and use against the U.S.A.) during a period when both bomber and bombing technologies were obviously advancing very rapidly. If a "smartest in the world" mathematician wrote the current U.S. President, to warn that the crypto algorithms currently used by the U.S. for uber-secret stuff might quite possibly be fully broken by China in the next few years - then I suspect that the current U.S. President might be fairly willing to take action. That is not the scenario around this Open Letter.

q8Ekg3V8 3y ago

The media has only to gain, imagine the extra sales they will get from publishing all the future leaks that will occur.

blitzar 3y ago
I for one welcome a future where (you can once again) sit in a coffee shop and watch peoples plaintext usernames and passwords travel over the ether followed by the plaintext content of their messages.

temptemptemp111 3y ago

[dead]

fwungy 3y ago

When Hunter S. Thompson wrote about the drugs our politicians were on, he wasn't completely fabricating. DC is high on prescription pharmaceuticals and the actual legislation is coming from lobbyists hired by people who are also highly medicated. They don't care what the people want after campaign season is over, however they will back off from anything that generates genuine outcry, for a while, then they'll try it again later.

mlinksva 3y ago

No date on the letter or the PDF metadata but https://twitter.com/martinralbrecht/status/1676486065106964480 https://twitter.com/martinralbrecht/status/16764860651069644... from one of the corresponding authors is today, July 5.

LatteLazy 3y ago

When you have nothing to offer on real issues (inflation, housing, pay, jobs, transport, health, education, social mobility etc), you have to constantly whip up fear over non-issues (people online). (both with the general population, and your own back benches) Once you have have spent years whipping up fear over non-issues, you inevitably have to do something about them. But you cannot actually do something that doesn't have side effect worse than the intended effect. But you can't just admit that or walk away. You have convinced your electorate these are the number 1 issues facing the nation. So you write a law that's meaningless nonsense, and poop it out into Parliament. That is how we got this bill. That's how we got Brexit. Whether we can overcome this sort of disfunction will basically decide whether algo-sphere style democracy is sustainable...

Jigsy 3y ago

So unworkable. I've personally never used Tor, but the moment this bill goes live, I'll be setting up Whonix in a VM on Linux OS.