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This article is completely wrong, and almost sabotages the fight against the UK Online Safety Bill, given it claims a victory that simply doesn't exist, and so

This article is completely wrong, and almost sabotages the fight against the UK Online Safety Bill, given it claims a victory that simply doesn't exist, and so lures everyone into a false sense of complacency. The UK govt must be ecstatic that they have changed nothing and yet the tech industry seems to believe that they've won something. All the govt said was "we'll only force scanning when it's "technically feasible" to do so" - i.e. when someone believes the CSAM scanning quality is high enough beyond some given threshold. It's still scanning though, and still fundamentally undermines encryption; it's just potentialy delaying the implementation a bit... having enabled it in law. The thing we should be fighting is enabling it in law. Politico just published an article which nailed it: https://www.politico.eu/article/whatsapp-signal-meta-facebook-uk-online-safety-bill-encryption/ https://www.politico.eu/article/whatsapp-signal-meta-faceboo... > "On Wednesday, Whittaker and other privacy campaigners falsely claimed that London was pulling back from its bid to access encrypted messages" Likewise, the Government has spelt out very clearly that they consider absolutely nothing to have changed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66716502 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66716502 dang: it's almost worth flagging this thread as being based on entirely incorrect data. For whatever reason, the desire to make progress on this issue means that folks have jumped the gun and are prematurely celebrating a win which is not a win, and thus undermining the whole campaign to protect encryption.

stephen_g 3y ago
Basically all of the secure messaging platforms have indicated that they will pull out of the UK rather than weaken the security model, if or when they are instructed to. That hasn’t changed either. What this may be politically is a way of the Government saying they won’t actually do it, while pretending that nothing has changed to make it look like it’s not a U-turn and pretending they’re not backing down. Hence their eagerness to pretend nothing is different. As long as the messaging platforms don’t change their commitment then celebrating a small acknowledgement from the Government that the bill is basically unworkable is not a huge issue.
- Arathorn 3y ago
  > What this may be politically is a way of the Government saying they won’t actually do it But this is the problem: the Government is NOT saying they won't actually do it. They're saying "we'll do it (when we consider it technically feasible)". The ability to force 3rd party scanning software is STILL going into law, and that's the catastrophic bit! It's terrifying that this story has been perceived as a victory, and therefore we can take the pressure off. The OSB is STILL on track to go into law giving the government the right to tell Signal or WhatsApp or Element etc that they either need to do compulsory scanning or they are breaking the law. I am literally receiving emails from Element customers and suppliers which begin: > Saw that the government backed down from their plans last night and immediately thought of Element – you must be pleased! ...which just leaves me speechless. I'm almost wondering if there's a deliberate misinformation campaign here to prematurely claim victory in order to derail the attempt to protect encryption in the bill.
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    and another datapoint at https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position-encryption-not-changed-2023-09-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position... > "We haven't changed the bill at all," she told Times Radio. > "If there was a situation where the mitigations that the social media providers are taking are not enough, and if after further work with the regulator they still can't demonstrate that they can meet the requirements within the bill, then the conversation about technology around encryption takes place," she said.
- abwizz 3y ago
  > As long as the messaging platforms don’t change their commitment what could possibly go wrong
pg_1234 3y ago
With the way the law is going the UK could demand that Tech providers provide backdoors into end-to-end encryption. The providers can refuse. The UK can then demand that such apps are not available in the UK. HOWEVER ... the providers can build WASM equivalents that run in the phones browser. These can be available elsewhere in the world, and there is no way to stop UK residents from installing them. If there is no other way to have end-to-end encrypted messaging, some provider WILL offer this ... and they'll make it pretty slick. You can try prosecute each user (not much chance of success). Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against. If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against. If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it. This is insightful. The mistake the UK government is making lies in it's naked aggression. It's become sandwiched in hostility toward Big Tech, and the people. And it's a no win situation. It literally wants to get in the middle, and that seems a sign of great fear of losing power in the digital age. Fundamentally our government lack the humility to engage in meaningful, evidence-based, debate with all parties, which would be extremely difficult but necessary. Of course encrypted messaging is already out on the open internet. It's just used for social messaging by a relative minority. The reason governments love (read: awkwardly tolerate) big platforms is they concentrate use, where they hope it can be "kept an eye on". For me this is "Police and thieves in the street, fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition" It's a three way fight in which the most important group - the people - are unarmed, indeed entirely excluded. What we tried to do on https://cybershow.uk https://cybershow.uk is to present some accessible banter that helps the main stakeholders - children and vulnerable people - get a better fix on the issues, and have a voice.

stephen_g 3y ago

Basically all of the secure messaging platforms have indicated that they will pull out of the UK rather than weaken the security model, if or when they are instructed to. That hasn’t changed either. What this may be politically is a way of the Government saying they won’t actually do it, while pretending that nothing has changed to make it look like it’s not a U-turn and pretending they’re not backing down. Hence their eagerness to pretend nothing is different. As long as the messaging platforms don’t change their commitment then celebrating a small acknowledgement from the Government that the bill is basically unworkable is not a huge issue.

Arathorn 3y ago
> What this may be politically is a way of the Government saying they won’t actually do it But this is the problem: the Government is NOT saying they won't actually do it. They're saying "we'll do it (when we consider it technically feasible)". The ability to force 3rd party scanning software is STILL going into law, and that's the catastrophic bit! It's terrifying that this story has been perceived as a victory, and therefore we can take the pressure off. The OSB is STILL on track to go into law giving the government the right to tell Signal or WhatsApp or Element etc that they either need to do compulsory scanning or they are breaking the law. I am literally receiving emails from Element customers and suppliers which begin: > Saw that the government backed down from their plans last night and immediately thought of Element – you must be pleased! ...which just leaves me speechless. I'm almost wondering if there's a deliberate misinformation campaign here to prematurely claim victory in order to derail the attempt to protect encryption in the bill.
- Arathorn 3y ago
  and another datapoint at https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position-encryption-not-changed-2023-09-07/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position... > "We haven't changed the bill at all," she told Times Radio. > "If there was a situation where the mitigations that the social media providers are taking are not enough, and if after further work with the regulator they still can't demonstrate that they can meet the requirements within the bill, then the conversation about technology around encryption takes place," she said.
abwizz 3y ago
> As long as the messaging platforms don’t change their commitment what could possibly go wrong

pg_1234 3y ago

With the way the law is going the UK could demand that Tech providers provide backdoors into end-to-end encryption. The providers can refuse. The UK can then demand that such apps are not available in the UK. HOWEVER ... the providers can build WASM equivalents that run in the phones browser. These can be available elsewhere in the world, and there is no way to stop UK residents from installing them. If there is no other way to have end-to-end encrypted messaging, some provider WILL offer this ... and they'll make it pretty slick. You can try prosecute each user (not much chance of success). Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against. If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
> Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against. If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it. This is insightful. The mistake the UK government is making lies in it's naked aggression. It's become sandwiched in hostility toward Big Tech, and the people. And it's a no win situation. It literally wants to get in the middle, and that seems a sign of great fear of losing power in the digital age. Fundamentally our government lack the humility to engage in meaningful, evidence-based, debate with all parties, which would be extremely difficult but necessary. Of course encrypted messaging is already out on the open internet. It's just used for social messaging by a relative minority. The reason governments love (read: awkwardly tolerate) big platforms is they concentrate use, where they hope it can be "kept an eye on". For me this is "Police and thieves in the street, fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition" It's a three way fight in which the most important group - the people - are unarmed, indeed entirely excluded. What we tried to do on https://cybershow.uk https://cybershow.uk is to present some accessible banter that helps the main stakeholders - children and vulnerable people - get a better fix on the issues, and have a voice.