8 ms·

Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill

195 points by b800h 3y ago

I thought it might be interesting to compile a list of things which it might be impossible (or at least very difficult) for a private individual to do under the Online Safety Bill. Starters for ten: 1) Minecraft / MineTest server 2) IRC server 3) Mastodon server 4) BBS 5) ... please continue I'm not fully sure about all this - as I understand it, if you allow chat or user generated content, you become a private service provider, and then have a host of responsibilities including annual audits of whether a significant proportion of your users are minors. If they are then you need to use a (commercial?) age verification tool and monitor everything assiduously. Difficult to see most people being able to satisfy those requirements.

amriksohata 3y ago
I read the title and thought that the legislation had gone through already! Might be worth tweaking
- b800h 3y ago
  Good shout, I'll try to squeeze in something within the character limit.
mellosouls 3y ago
(Ask HN: List...)
- b800h 3y ago
  Good point. Done.
b800h 3y ago
Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.
  - ozfive 3y ago
    This guy has a tutorial on running modems over VoIP. https://area-51.blog/2021/01/16/getting-a-dial-up-modem-working-with-voip/ https://area-51.blog/2021/01/16/getting-a-dial-up-modem-work...
  - bityard 3y ago
    Sure, it could be made to work, and it might even be able to keep up with your reading speed. VoIP codecs are heavily optimized for human voice and have just a few kilobits of bandwidth. The analog phone network, before it went entirely digital, had a much higher bandwidth which is why modems were able to reach 56kbps. Phone calls in the 1980s were often crystal clear, almost on par with a broadcast radio station. Cell phones today along with VoIP are a muddy unintelligible mess in comparison.
    - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      Cell phones inject noise on purpose so you don't notice the gaps in transmission when the other end is silent.
    - abwizz 3y ago
      the quality of analog phone calls hung on the quality of the equipment, mostly the cables (and distance), whereas the quality of voip (or volte for that matter) depends mostly on the quality of the codec used. ime both can be shitty or "crystal clear" but i totally agree that having a cell phone call today, with worse quality than an cross-continent analog connection in the 80s is very depressing
    - fbdab103 3y ago
      Say I wanted to communicate with others in the best possible quality, which platform is best?
pacifika 3y ago
This might be useful from June, can’t vouch for correctness. https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2022/the-online-safety-bill---the-uks-answer-to-addressing-online-harms/online-safety-bill-are-you-caught https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2022/the-online-s...
- b800h 3y ago
  Very useful, thanks.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  My TLDR of that law firms info which could be a wrongful interpretation, in priority or execution order. Any Non Specified Entity uploading any data which could be accessed by another Non Specified Entity with or without public access is bound by this bill. Can be used or accessed from the UK. This might be the UK expanding beyond its borders here, because its a given if it not geo restricted it it could be used in the UK. VPN's/Tor may not be able to offer privacy from the state which is my opinion anyway. Applies to all services with a "significant" number of UK users. No definition of significant so dont know if this is the same use of the word significant found in medical studies or not. Definition of search engine is a service which can search more than one website or database. Largest players now have a legal duty to prevent paid-for fraudulent adverts on their service and other regulated content. Clarification on identifying the users of the service, ie profile pics and other identifying data. Exempt specified entities: -------------------------- Software like antivirus, antispam cloud/online submissions where said data is never likely to be used for communication purposes but might be analysed to improve the performance of said software function, ie reverse engineering stuxnet, latest spam techniques. Published Content with commenting for the content, ie online newspaper comments. Posting a link, with or with comments, including like, dislike buttons and emojis of Published Content to another Non Specified Entity. SMS & MMS messaging. Services solely used for specific tasks like education, childcare and possibly health care. One to One Aural (realtime speech and sound only guessing telephone) communication with identifying data allowed with no additional data communication functionality like visuals, text messaging. No mention of recording said Aural data. Any public body carrying out their public duty. Any internal business resource or tool, like company message boards, company chat facility's in all forms. No mention of recording data, would assume business includes official organisations like charities, but not clear. No mention of private paid for programming language groups which can be accessed using a password of sorts and costs Case by case reviews and changes made by the secretary of state so the exemption list will probably grow. So my opinion on the above is if you are a big (US) tech service, you can self regulate, but little users will be watched by the UK state as no one can be trusted. Other laws apply where applicable.
austin-cheney 3y ago
Why isn't VPN to an out of country relay a solution? At any rate situations like these are what partially motivated me to write something like this: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master/documentation/decentralization.md https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master...
- rovr138 3y ago
  Costs would be one. That’s yet another cost you have to take on.
- OJFord 3y ago
  I assume: 1) we're talking about the legal situation, not what would be physically possible; 2) that it applies to citizens, not server location (otherwise affected companies wouldn't be saying they'll exit the UK market, they'd just serve UK users from a further away but friendlier 'edge')
- tm2t 3y ago
  I don't think it would be legal either since VPNs require encryption, too. Maybe some kind of proxy?
  - b800h 3y ago
    It's important to distinguish this from the encryption provisions of the bill. This part of the bill is distinct and means that social sites will need to verify ages of users and fill in lots of forms while they're at it.
    - tm2t 3y ago
      I see. Thanks for the explanation :)
    - loufe 3y ago
      ...for now.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ChrisKnott 3y ago
My understanding is that the OSB creates a responsibility for Ofcom to create a regulatory system for discouraging online harms. Has Ofcom actually said what these regulations will be? Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you predict? The interim codes of practice that the government published don't even apply at all to individuals. They also acknowledge that smaller companies should not be expected to be subject to the same level of regulation as large companies. My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely overblown. Hopefully that's true this time as well.
- b800h 3y ago
  The bill itself doesn't appear to exempt anyone. From Taylor Wessing: "[following amendments] The OSB continues to apply to any service that enables content generated, uploaded or shared by one user to be encountered by another user (user-to-user services) or that allows users to search more than one website or database (search services)."
  - ChrisKnott 3y ago
    It actual exempts several categories (email servers etc). My point is that there is no reason to think the regulations that eventually come into force for services which aren't exempted will be as ridiculous as you suggest. I agree that the OSB gives Ofcom the power to regulate Minecraft servers, but those regulations must be reasonable and proportionate so I don't believe that it will affect a private individual running a private server, as you appeared to suggest.
    - b800h 3y ago
      Yeah agree about point to point services. Email and SMS and voice. What I don't see is the bit where it says that the audit responsibilities are limited to certain people or companies. If you could point to the "reasonable and proportionate" bit in the legislation that would be interesting to check out.
- rovr138 3y ago
b800h 3y ago
Should add MUDs, website guestbooks?
- scandum 3y ago
  MUDs are easily hosted abroad. Problem solved. This reminds me of UK's 90% tax rate, which caused many multi-millionaires to leave the country.
  - getwiththeprog 3y ago
    Could you please provide evidence of a 90% tax rate? I don't believe you.
    - jlokier 3y ago
      It ended 51 years ago in 1972, but there was indeed a top rate of income tax called "super-tax" or "surtax" (only for very high earners) of 90% for a few decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Income_tax_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni... "The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%. It was then slightly reduced and was around 90% through the 1950s and 60s.[citation needed] In 1971 the top rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%. A surcharge of 15% kept the top rate on investment income at 90%. In 1974 the cut was partly reversed and the top rate on earned income was raised to 83%. With the investment income surcharge this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%, the highest permanent rate since the war.[14] This applied to incomes over £20,000 (£221,741 as of 2021). The Government of Margaret Thatcher, who favoured taxation on consumption, reduced personal income tax rates during the 1980s in favour of indirect taxation. In the first budget after her election victory in 1979, the top rate was reduced from 83% to 60% and the basic rate from 33% to 30%." According to the history linked below, the super-tax/surtax was started in 1909, taxed only the top 0.05% of earners, and caused a constitutional crises as the budget was rejected by the House of Lords: https://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History/Paper43/43atkinson.pdf https://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History/Paper43/43atkins...
ta8645 3y ago
Comment section on your personal blog?
- jonatron 3y ago
  Exempt under "Schedule 1 — Exempt user-to-user and search services"
  - ta8645 3y ago
    Is a comment section user-to-user, though? On its face, it seems more user-to-public, since it's not a private user-to-user transmission. If blog comment sections are exempt, it would seem Reddit is exempt too.
    - jonatron 3y ago
      Reddit is user generated content, so isn't exempt. “provider content” means content published on a service by the provider of the service or by a person acting on behalf of the provider. It's unclear if there's a difference between hosting your own blog, or using a blogging service, because the bill is terrible.
endigma 3y ago
Source code hosting; Gitea or Gitlab or Gogs etc all have UGC. The interesting part to me is I'm not sure how this helps the UK citizens who are using the internet be any safer, all you'd have to do is access the rest of the internet to circumvent this.
cjs_ac 3y ago
While I'm not a supporter of the Online Safety Bill, I do find that the opprobrium that it has inspired is consistently hyperbolic. The Online Safety Bill bans nothing. What it does do is create a regulatory framework for the Office for Communications (aka Ofcom, HM Government's regulator for the communications industry) to operate and enforce. The regulatory framework is based around risk assessments, and sets out specific risks (of the sort that most people would agree need to be minimised). Ofcom is empowered to decide that internet services are within scope, and then demand to see policies relating to ameliorating those risks within a service. The regulatory framework does specify that end-to-end encryption is incompatible with the reduction of these risks. However, we do have to play the ball and not the person of unspecified gender here. We are, after all, talking about the UK here. The phenomenon of 'those whom the law protects but does not bind, and those whom the law binds but does not protect' is still very much in effect here. This legislation has also been proposed by a government that responds to increasing crime (caused by insufficient police officers) by giving those police more powers (that they don't have the resources to exercise). Ofcom has wide-ranging responsibilities: it regulates the press and broadcast media, it allocates EM spectrum bands, it regulates the telephone network, and regulates the Royal Mail. Like all organisations in the Home Civil Service, it is staffed by a core of 'generalists' with humanities degrees, assisted by a small cadre of 'specialists', who are put back in their cupboard once they've given their opinion. What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects that the government has said it will in its press releases. Ofcom will go after the big social media companies and the likes of 4chan. Your Mastodon server or your Gitea server or your corner of the Tildeverse or whatever will never appear on their radar. Ofcom won't have the budget or the resources to go after individuals or small communities; they won't even know you exist. In the UK, an energy bill or council tax bill is an important identity document, necessary for opening a bank account, because any time someone starts talking about identity cards, the readers of the Daily Telegraph start muttering about the Gestapo. Ofcom isn't going to audit your homelab for online harms.
- GordonS 3y ago
  It sounds like you're chiding others for complaining about the bill, and excusing this because the bill "only" enables mass surveillance and anti-privacy measures, rather than stipulating them. Might be I'm reading you wrong on this, but that's what I'm taking away. > What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects that the government has said it will in its press releases. I don't really believe that for a second. Whenever sweeping powers are introduced, there is scope creep. Just look at how anti-terrorism laws have been abused. And it seems Apple and others don't believe it either.
pmlnr 3y ago
One scenario is that Whatsapp and Apple leave the UK market, another is that nobody going to do anything about the "law", which is rubbery enough to be ignored. I'm quite curious how it's going to go down.
osigurdson 3y ago
Certainly the online activities that the bill is meant to address will still continue. Criminals don’t care about following the law unfortunately.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  While I think this law is bonkers, "then only criminals will have guns" style arguments are terrible counterpoints. They depend on a 5 year old's view of the world where there are "good guys" and "bad guys" and nobody is a bit in-between. They also use the same oversimplification that economists are famous for - that everyone has perfect information, acts completely rationally, has infinite motivation, etc. etc. In the real world, criminality is a spectrum and difficulty is a real thing.
  - pas 3y ago
    offtopic: economists use these models in places where even these oversimplified ones work pretty well and usually the issues with results are not because information asymmetry
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    I think the 5 year old’s bimodal criminality distribution is likely more accurate than your posited normal one - unless the spectrum you refer to includes parking tickets, and bylaw infractions.
    - IshKebab 3y ago
      It includes everything. Fraud, shoplifting, term time holidays (a criminal offence in the UK), pub fights, stealing office equipment, piracy, taking photos of your own naked children, dangerous driving, manslaughter, criminal negligence, insider trading, murder... Just curious, do you support the death penalty?
      - osigurdson 3y ago
        I see, you are saying there are serious crimes and less serious ones. I agree, but how is this related to government surveillance? Are you suggesting it is worth it?
intunderflow 3y ago
Does it matter? The UK can't enforce anything outside its borders. Just putting another nail in the coffin of UK tech startups that aren't in Financial Services.
- b800h 3y ago
  It matters if you're in the UK and you're a tech hobbyist.
  - intunderflow 3y ago
    In my opinion the UK has always been against that group and others who stick out, and that's not going to change in the future. Unfortunately if you're a tech hobbyist in the UK your best option is to leave, especially if you're any good with technology. There are plenty of other countries that will treat you far better than the UK ever would.
    - b800h 3y ago
      Absolutely not true historically. We were brilliant in the early 80s, largely thanks to Mrs. Thatcher.
      - timsneath 3y ago
        Agree. She was a polarizing figure in the UK, but the newly-installed Conservative government of the early 80s certainly moved fast to respond to both the threat and the opportunity of the coming information revolution. In partnership with the BBC, they instituted the Computer Literacy Project which comprised education, television programs, subsidized computers for schools, and of course the BBC Microcomputer. For those who want to read more, there's a great archive site here: https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/history https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/history and an interesting book from MIT Press (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262034036/now-the-chips-are-down/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262034036/now-the-chips-are-dow...) which covers this period.
KomoD 3y ago
> you become a private service provider, and then have a host of responsibilities including annual audits of whether a significant proportion of your users are minors. If they are then you need to use a (commercial?) age verification tool and monitor everything assiduously. Difficult to see most people being able to satisfy those requirements. And then I just block the UK instead, let's hope this just doesn't go through.
justinclift 3y ago
"Use Signal" seems like it won't be possible any more.

195 points by b800h 3y ago

amriksohata 3y ago

I read the title and thought that the legislation had gone through already! Might be worth tweaking

b800h 3y ago
Good shout, I'll try to squeeze in something within the character limit.

mellosouls 3y ago

(Ask HN: List...)

b800h 3y ago
Good point. Done.

b800h 3y ago

Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system, you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but: 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow. 2. Bit niche...

LeoPanthera 3y ago
Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on. On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an analogue phone line.
- ozfive 3y ago
  This guy has a tutorial on running modems over VoIP. https://area-51.blog/2021/01/16/getting-a-dial-up-modem-working-with-voip/ https://area-51.blog/2021/01/16/getting-a-dial-up-modem-work...
- bityard 3y ago
  Sure, it could be made to work, and it might even be able to keep up with your reading speed. VoIP codecs are heavily optimized for human voice and have just a few kilobits of bandwidth. The analog phone network, before it went entirely digital, had a much higher bandwidth which is why modems were able to reach 56kbps. Phone calls in the 1980s were often crystal clear, almost on par with a broadcast radio station. Cell phones today along with VoIP are a muddy unintelligible mess in comparison.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    Cell phones inject noise on purpose so you don't notice the gaps in transmission when the other end is silent.
  - abwizz 3y ago
    the quality of analog phone calls hung on the quality of the equipment, mostly the cables (and distance), whereas the quality of voip (or volte for that matter) depends mostly on the quality of the codec used. ime both can be shitty or "crystal clear" but i totally agree that having a cell phone call today, with worse quality than an cross-continent analog connection in the 80s is very depressing
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    Say I wanted to communicate with others in the best possible quality, which platform is best?

pacifika 3y ago

This might be useful from June, can’t vouch for correctness. https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2022/the-online-safety-bill---the-uks-answer-to-addressing-online-harms/online-safety-bill-are-you-caught https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2022/the-online-s...

b800h 3y ago
Very useful, thanks.
darkclouds 3y ago
My TLDR of that law firms info which could be a wrongful interpretation, in priority or execution order. Any Non Specified Entity uploading any data which could be accessed by another Non Specified Entity with or without public access is bound by this bill. Can be used or accessed from the UK. This might be the UK expanding beyond its borders here, because its a given if it not geo restricted it it could be used in the UK. VPN's/Tor may not be able to offer privacy from the state which is my opinion anyway. Applies to all services with a "significant" number of UK users. No definition of significant so dont know if this is the same use of the word significant found in medical studies or not. Definition of search engine is a service which can search more than one website or database. Largest players now have a legal duty to prevent paid-for fraudulent adverts on their service and other regulated content. Clarification on identifying the users of the service, ie profile pics and other identifying data. Exempt specified entities: -------------------------- Software like antivirus, antispam cloud/online submissions where said data is never likely to be used for communication purposes but might be analysed to improve the performance of said software function, ie reverse engineering stuxnet, latest spam techniques. Published Content with commenting for the content, ie online newspaper comments. Posting a link, with or with comments, including like, dislike buttons and emojis of Published Content to another Non Specified Entity. SMS & MMS messaging. Services solely used for specific tasks like education, childcare and possibly health care. One to One Aural (realtime speech and sound only guessing telephone) communication with identifying data allowed with no additional data communication functionality like visuals, text messaging. No mention of recording said Aural data. Any public body carrying out their public duty. Any internal business resource or tool, like company message boards, company chat facility's in all forms. No mention of recording data, would assume business includes official organisations like charities, but not clear. No mention of private paid for programming language groups which can be accessed using a password of sorts and costs Case by case reviews and changes made by the secretary of state so the exemption list will probably grow. So my opinion on the above is if you are a big (US) tech service, you can self regulate, but little users will be watched by the UK state as no one can be trusted. Other laws apply where applicable.

austin-cheney 3y ago

Why isn't VPN to an out of country relay a solution? At any rate situations like these are what partially motivated me to write something like this: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master/documentation/decentralization.md https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master...

rovr138 3y ago
Costs would be one. That’s yet another cost you have to take on.
OJFord 3y ago
I assume: 1) we're talking about the legal situation, not what would be physically possible; 2) that it applies to citizens, not server location (otherwise affected companies wouldn't be saying they'll exit the UK market, they'd just serve UK users from a further away but friendlier 'edge')
tm2t 3y ago
I don't think it would be legal either since VPNs require encryption, too. Maybe some kind of proxy?
- b800h 3y ago
  It's important to distinguish this from the encryption provisions of the bill. This part of the bill is distinct and means that social sites will need to verify ages of users and fill in lots of forms while they're at it.
  - tm2t 3y ago
    I see. Thanks for the explanation :)
  - loufe 3y ago
    ...for now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ChrisKnott 3y ago

My understanding is that the OSB creates a responsibility for Ofcom to create a regulatory system for discouraging online harms. Has Ofcom actually said what these regulations will be? Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you predict? The interim codes of practice that the government published don't even apply at all to individuals. They also acknowledge that smaller companies should not be expected to be subject to the same level of regulation as large companies. My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely overblown. Hopefully that's true this time as well.

b800h 3y ago
The bill itself doesn't appear to exempt anyone. From Taylor Wessing: "[following amendments] The OSB continues to apply to any service that enables content generated, uploaded or shared by one user to be encountered by another user (user-to-user services) or that allows users to search more than one website or database (search services)."
- ChrisKnott 3y ago
  It actual exempts several categories (email servers etc). My point is that there is no reason to think the regulations that eventually come into force for services which aren't exempted will be as ridiculous as you suggest. I agree that the OSB gives Ofcom the power to regulate Minecraft servers, but those regulations must be reasonable and proportionate so I don't believe that it will affect a private individual running a private server, as you appeared to suggest.
  - b800h 3y ago
    Yeah agree about point to point services. Email and SMS and voice. What I don't see is the bit where it says that the audit responsibilities are limited to certain people or companies. If you could point to the "reasonable and proportionate" bit in the legislation that would be interesting to check out.
rovr138 3y ago

b800h 3y ago

Should add MUDs, website guestbooks?

scandum 3y ago
MUDs are easily hosted abroad. Problem solved. This reminds me of UK's 90% tax rate, which caused many multi-millionaires to leave the country.
- getwiththeprog 3y ago
  Could you please provide evidence of a 90% tax rate? I don't believe you.
  - jlokier 3y ago
    It ended 51 years ago in 1972, but there was indeed a top rate of income tax called "super-tax" or "surtax" (only for very high earners) of 90% for a few decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Income_tax_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni... "The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%. It was then slightly reduced and was around 90% through the 1950s and 60s.[citation needed] In 1971 the top rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%. A surcharge of 15% kept the top rate on investment income at 90%. In 1974 the cut was partly reversed and the top rate on earned income was raised to 83%. With the investment income surcharge this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%, the highest permanent rate since the war.[14] This applied to incomes over £20,000 (£221,741 as of 2021). The Government of Margaret Thatcher, who favoured taxation on consumption, reduced personal income tax rates during the 1980s in favour of indirect taxation. In the first budget after her election victory in 1979, the top rate was reduced from 83% to 60% and the basic rate from 33% to 30%." According to the history linked below, the super-tax/surtax was started in 1909, taxed only the top 0.05% of earners, and caused a constitutional crises as the budget was rejected by the House of Lords: https://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History/Paper43/43atkinson.pdf https://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History/Paper43/43atkins...

ta8645 3y ago

Comment section on your personal blog?

jonatron 3y ago
Exempt under "Schedule 1 — Exempt user-to-user and search services"
- ta8645 3y ago
  Is a comment section user-to-user, though? On its face, it seems more user-to-public, since it's not a private user-to-user transmission. If blog comment sections are exempt, it would seem Reddit is exempt too.
  - jonatron 3y ago
    Reddit is user generated content, so isn't exempt. “provider content” means content published on a service by the provider of the service or by a person acting on behalf of the provider. It's unclear if there's a difference between hosting your own blog, or using a blogging service, because the bill is terrible.

endigma 3y ago

Source code hosting; Gitea or Gitlab or Gogs etc all have UGC. The interesting part to me is I'm not sure how this helps the UK citizens who are using the internet be any safer, all you'd have to do is access the rest of the internet to circumvent this.

cjs_ac 3y ago

While I'm not a supporter of the Online Safety Bill, I do find that the opprobrium that it has inspired is consistently hyperbolic. The Online Safety Bill bans nothing. What it does do is create a regulatory framework for the Office for Communications (aka Ofcom, HM Government's regulator for the communications industry) to operate and enforce. The regulatory framework is based around risk assessments, and sets out specific risks (of the sort that most people would agree need to be minimised). Ofcom is empowered to decide that internet services are within scope, and then demand to see policies relating to ameliorating those risks within a service. The regulatory framework does specify that end-to-end encryption is incompatible with the reduction of these risks. However, we do have to play the ball and not the person of unspecified gender here. We are, after all, talking about the UK here. The phenomenon of 'those whom the law protects but does not bind, and those whom the law binds but does not protect' is still very much in effect here. This legislation has also been proposed by a government that responds to increasing crime (caused by insufficient police officers) by giving those police more powers (that they don't have the resources to exercise). Ofcom has wide-ranging responsibilities: it regulates the press and broadcast media, it allocates EM spectrum bands, it regulates the telephone network, and regulates the Royal Mail. Like all organisations in the Home Civil Service, it is staffed by a core of 'generalists' with humanities degrees, assisted by a small cadre of 'specialists', who are put back in their cupboard once they've given their opinion. What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects that the government has said it will in its press releases. Ofcom will go after the big social media companies and the likes of 4chan. Your Mastodon server or your Gitea server or your corner of the Tildeverse or whatever will never appear on their radar. Ofcom won't have the budget or the resources to go after individuals or small communities; they won't even know you exist. In the UK, an energy bill or council tax bill is an important identity document, necessary for opening a bank account, because any time someone starts talking about identity cards, the readers of the Daily Telegraph start muttering about the Gestapo. Ofcom isn't going to audit your homelab for online harms.

GordonS 3y ago
It sounds like you're chiding others for complaining about the bill, and excusing this because the bill "only" enables mass surveillance and anti-privacy measures, rather than stipulating them. Might be I'm reading you wrong on this, but that's what I'm taking away. > What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects that the government has said it will in its press releases. I don't really believe that for a second. Whenever sweeping powers are introduced, there is scope creep. Just look at how anti-terrorism laws have been abused. And it seems Apple and others don't believe it either.

pmlnr 3y ago

One scenario is that Whatsapp and Apple leave the UK market, another is that nobody going to do anything about the "law", which is rubbery enough to be ignored. I'm quite curious how it's going to go down.

osigurdson 3y ago

Certainly the online activities that the bill is meant to address will still continue. Criminals don’t care about following the law unfortunately.

IshKebab 3y ago
While I think this law is bonkers, "then only criminals will have guns" style arguments are terrible counterpoints. They depend on a 5 year old's view of the world where there are "good guys" and "bad guys" and nobody is a bit in-between. They also use the same oversimplification that economists are famous for - that everyone has perfect information, acts completely rationally, has infinite motivation, etc. etc. In the real world, criminality is a spectrum and difficulty is a real thing.
- pas 3y ago
  offtopic: economists use these models in places where even these oversimplified ones work pretty well and usually the issues with results are not because information asymmetry
- osigurdson 3y ago
  I think the 5 year old’s bimodal criminality distribution is likely more accurate than your posited normal one - unless the spectrum you refer to includes parking tickets, and bylaw infractions.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    It includes everything. Fraud, shoplifting, term time holidays (a criminal offence in the UK), pub fights, stealing office equipment, piracy, taking photos of your own naked children, dangerous driving, manslaughter, criminal negligence, insider trading, murder... Just curious, do you support the death penalty?
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      I see, you are saying there are serious crimes and less serious ones. I agree, but how is this related to government surveillance? Are you suggesting it is worth it?

intunderflow 3y ago

Does it matter? The UK can't enforce anything outside its borders. Just putting another nail in the coffin of UK tech startups that aren't in Financial Services.

b800h 3y ago
It matters if you're in the UK and you're a tech hobbyist.
- intunderflow 3y ago
  In my opinion the UK has always been against that group and others who stick out, and that's not going to change in the future. Unfortunately if you're a tech hobbyist in the UK your best option is to leave, especially if you're any good with technology. There are plenty of other countries that will treat you far better than the UK ever would.
  - b800h 3y ago
    Absolutely not true historically. We were brilliant in the early 80s, largely thanks to Mrs. Thatcher.
    - timsneath 3y ago
      Agree. She was a polarizing figure in the UK, but the newly-installed Conservative government of the early 80s certainly moved fast to respond to both the threat and the opportunity of the coming information revolution. In partnership with the BBC, they instituted the Computer Literacy Project which comprised education, television programs, subsidized computers for schools, and of course the BBC Microcomputer. For those who want to read more, there's a great archive site here: https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/history https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/history and an interesting book from MIT Press (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262034036/now-the-chips-are-down/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262034036/now-the-chips-are-dow...) which covers this period.

KomoD 3y ago

> you become a private service provider, and then have a host of responsibilities including annual audits of whether a significant proportion of your users are minors. If they are then you need to use a (commercial?) age verification tool and monitor everything assiduously. Difficult to see most people being able to satisfy those requirements. And then I just block the UK instead, let's hope this just doesn't go through.

justinclift 3y ago

"Use Signal" seems like it won't be possible any more.