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UK defends plan to demand access to encrypted messages to protect children
- akomtu 3y agoIt's occurred to me that UK isn't lying about protecting children, but what's meant is protecting children of the royalty from peasants who will need secure communication methods to organize.
- wkat4242 3y agoIt really boggles my mind though why these 'peasants' (not my word) keep voting for the Tories. They basically represent the top 1% which in a normal democracy is a non-starter to get a majority. Britain now has a whole ruling class where even labour leaders have gone to rich private schools. Ps: here in Holland it's not much better but I understand better why people vote for the party that doesn't actually represent their interests. With Britain I'm too far away to understand this.
- FreshStart 3y agoCause all the other ideologies got to implement their ideal world and it all lead back to the imperial great game board and caste system the Tories always proclaimed the natural order?
- pipes 3y agoBecause for a while they were the only party who supported a free market. Labour wanted to nationalise all business until new labour arrived. The Tories are shit, but if you believe (like me) that free enterprise is the best way to lift humans out of poverty , they were the best we had. Unfortunately now they are more interested in banning things and meddling in our personal lives.
- immibis 3y agoUnlimited free markets have failed every time they've been tried. But the trees kept voting for the axe, because they thought its handle was one of them.
- scarby2 3y agoMarket failure is a thing with insufficient oversight/regulation. But it's just as easy to cripple something by nationalizing and over regulating it. Take the housing market, when there was no regulations we ended up with inadequate housing and the poor being housed in terrible conditions. Now we brought in all the wrong regulations and it's no longer just the poor who are struggling. Next we'll vote for universal rent control, do nothing else and sooner or later nobody will be able to move. Edit: and if we completely nationalize it we might end up with inadequate commie blocks for everyone.
- immibis 3y ago> if we completely nationalize it we might end up with inadequate commie blocks for everyone. oh no! the horror of everyone having a home that's ugly on the outside!
- themoonisachees 3y agoIt might even remove the tents in the city? They're part of the charm you can't do that!
- scarby2 3y agowell.. I have no issue about ugly on the outside if the quality of the accommodation is adequate. If you actually knew anything about soviet buildings this was pretty far from the truth. Multiple families were often assigned to share kitchens/bathrooms and often just one or two rooms per family to live in. They were not well designed, poorly heated and ventilated and generally pretty miserable places to live. It was not uncommon for the entire family to sleep huddled around the single kerosene heater. They did get better as time went on but it wasn't really until the fall of the soviet union when a lot of these inadequate accommodations were demolished. Also i'm totally on board with having cheap to build ugly accommodation - so long as it's not 100% of the housing stock, By all means throw as much up as possible until we've housed all the poor, but what if i want something different?
- tim333 3y agoHaving Corbyn as leader didn't help. Labour with Starmer will probably win the next one.
- Canada 3y ago"The safety mechanism that we have is very explicit that this (access) can only be used for child exploitation and abuse." This just isn't credible.
- postmodest 3y agoThis from the Jim'll Fix It crowd....
- scohesc 3y agoIt's so laughably stupid. "Trust us, we have a safety mechanism in place." What safety mechanism? Can they elaborate, especially when they're asking for backdoors/tools that will enable them to view private messages of anybody using the platform? This is just a complete violation of individual privacy rights. Hope there's other apps and platforms out there that will operate just out of the governments eyes that will still offer encrypted messaging. I'm not an encryption guru and I don't know the specifics about how they want to add a backdoor to these apps, but can't we generate our own keys to share between people we want to communicate with, removing the need to have these apps provide encryption? Never trust your government (at least in the western world! Some european countries do actually care about their people). They don't care about you one bit other than your ability to shut up and pay taxes. You are a resource to them and if they can control you by reading your messages and punishing you if try and go against their rules, they will.
- twarge 3y agoPerhaps Hanlon’s razor should be evaluated before going quite this far? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- saikia81 3y agoHe is not saying they are malicious in their intent. The policy can still be attributed to stupidity/ignorance. The issue is that once given the power, it will be abused. Never trust anyone to point a gun at you or string a sword above your head. It will be abused at some point.
- sukmywoke 3y ago[dead]
- psychphysic 3y agoOkay so VPN it is. But how would one retain access to say Signal and WhatsApp of they exit UK?
- _trackno5 3y agoI don't think you could. Don't those services use your phone number as your id? They'll just block you from signing up or using the service.
- psychphysic 3y agoSeems like quite the effort to get a new overseas number but I think it would not cost much using something like Lebara.
- CommanderData 3y ago"VPN will fix it" crowd will keep appearing until there are no liberties and freedom left. It should also be accompanied with "stick your head in the sand" if offered as any solution to any of this. Mind you, it is the British way to stick your head in the sand and never complain.
- psychphysic 3y agoCrytpoanarchists arent unique to Britain I don't think. But what do you propose? In this dysfunctional political system where most of the public wants a nanny state?
- isaacremuant 3y ago> But what do you propose? In this dysfunctional political system where most of the public wants a nanny state? I think it's more that they are afraid to rock the boat or oppose authority than having convictions about a nanny state.
- thefurdrake 3y agoWhat evidence do you have that the "VPN will fix it" crowd isn't also involved physically in opposing what is going on? Do you have anything to base that assumption on other than the stated opinion? It's possible for "VPN will fix it" to exist with "Do things to actively resist government overreach" in the same individual.
- croes 3y agoThere is no real encryption with access. Everything else is BS.
- varispeed 3y agoAnyone living in the UK can call it bollocks. "Low level" crime is essentially legalised because Police has been defunded and demoralised. If someone reports abuse, most likely it will be dismissed until the risk for reaching tabloid headline is too high. Then they'll need evidence, ideally case completely "solved", before they even start doing anything. So that tells me the purpose for this law isn't protection of children, because the government couldn't care less about children welfare, as government is engaging themselves in abuse by running down the economy and forcing thousands of children to go hungry.
- pipes 3y agoOr even if you beat up your own daughter with an iron bar the judge won't send you to prison: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/father-who-battered-daughter-with-iron-bar-is-spared-jail/ar-AA1eNmh6 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/father-who-battered-dau... Because...his daughter said she still loved him
- willcipriano 3y agoBritish law enforcement are pretty rich to pull out the think of the children card especially after decades of ignoring grooming gangs.
- jra_samba 3y agoAh yes, the UK Police certainly won't use this to police speech they don't like: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-66462895 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-66462895
- varispeed 3y agoAnd will ensure that all messages will be kept safe: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-66486034 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-66486034
- _l219 3y agoThe UK on its way towards becoming like China. I thought I would never have to use VPNs again after leaving but oh well. Notes from my 5 years in China: - Use a protocol like trojan-gfw over cloudflare. It 1: hides the fact that you’re using a VPN and looks like normal https traffic, 2: Is open source and the Trojan-go/v2ray repositories are well tested in nightmarish environments like China. 3: Cloudfare obscures the IP address of your server from the government. - You can have your server use something like Mullvad so that your traffic blends into the crowd (of customers) - Always have an emergency protocol that is unlikely to get blocked. I wrote my own custom implementation of HTTPS over DNS for when they decide to cut off general internet access to sites outside the country. (Happens every month or so for a few days) - For messaging, use a fully open source & end to end encrypted & federated protocol that you can self host. Matrix.org is blocked in China but self hosting still allows you to contact people on the main server.
- immibis 3y agoFor the time being, you don't have to hide the fact that you're using a VPN in the UK.
- varispeed 3y agoUntil government orders ISPs to to send details of all customers who connected to known VPN services and then issue everyone a fine as a warning or worse. The thing is, currently nothing works in the UK, so if you think you'll be able to dispute anything...
- Defletter 3y agoStill, it may be worth getting familiar with the software so one isn't frantically learning it all if and when we do have to start hiding it.
- _l219 3y agoMy concern is that they are logging traffic and will retroactively enforce new laws. This is concerning for someone born in an Islamic country and having lived in China (both somewhat enemies of the UK occasionally - I don’t actually know if there is/will be discrimination). Better safe than sorry.
- guilhas 3y agoYes, to protect the children, we should have access to all politicians, and billionaires, messages
- olliej 3y agoAgain, the language doesn’t limit this to protecting children, and makes all data available to any part of any government or hacker group anywhere. The delusional belief that you can back door crypto without breaking it, and the willingness of reporters to regurgitate nonsense remains obnoxious.
- anyoneamous 3y ago"Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!"
- goku12 3y agoI wonder how we ended up as a society where democratically elected representatives are allowed to gaslight the public like this. Yes - the freedom on the internet is under threat. But we have a bigger problem when principles of democracy are under threat.
- jalapenos 3y agoIt's certainly been sad and eye-opening to realise that while the rest of us who read George Orwell's 1984 considered it a worst case scenario, those attracted to careers in the government have found it heartwarming and inspirational. There's nothing in that book you couldn't justify with "think of the children". It seems that, as usual, the only way to escape tyranny is emigration, but I worry one day we'll run out of freer countries to emigrate to.
- tim333 3y agoThings remain pretty non 1984 like in the UK. Not so sure about Russia and China.
- StanislavPetrov 3y agoSeems like we've been fighting over The Clipper Chip in one form or another for the last 30 years.
- codedokode 3y agoWhy not ban children from Internet and messengers instead? We don't allow them to have alcohol, why should they have Internet? Probably because it won't give a King an excuse to read his subjects's private conversations.
- FreshStart 3y agoSeperate add free internet for minors via protocol?
- codedokode 3y agoWe could start with locked devices (laptops and smartphones), that allow to use Internet with restrictions (e.g. visit only whitelisted sites, use whitelisted apps that support "kid mode", all contacts must be approved by parents or school, all chats should be moderated). The lock should be on a physical level and unremovable. All applications installed should support "kid mode", e.g. browser would refuse to visit unapproved sites. Bringing unlocked devices to school should be not allowed, they should be confiscated. This way kids will be in a safe, fully controlled environment. The problem that Microsoft, Google and manufacturers do not want to invest in this. Meta doesn't want to create a kid version of Facebook, Microsoft doesn't want to make a locked version of Windows, Samsung doesn't want to make a locked phone, etc. You cannot show ads to kids, you cannot collect their data, so they are an unwanted audience, a nuisance. Proposed ban on encryption doesn't prevent teenagers from typing "adult video" in Google. On a locked phone, a locked version of Google would show an educational video about an international economy for this query. Also, ban on encryption won't prevent a criminal from abroad from interacting with children.
- balderdash 3y agoI just think it’s laughable that they think encryption is the constraint. If one could make the argument that the police force was 1)staffed with smart, moral, motivated, and well trained individuals, and 2) had adequate capacity and resources to pursue these crimes, and the only thing standing in their way was encryption, I’d at least be willing to entertain the conversation, but since little emphasis seems to be placed and 1&2, it’s hard to take this line of argument seriously.
- protocolture 3y agoIf you read the history of the QLD police force you would wonder why they werent all being lined up and shot, rather than given more power.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoDoesn't this bill have several "exemptions" for the powerful and well-connected people or certain professions?
- lips4tips 3y agoAh yes, it's "for the children" !