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It seemed to me that Google were struggling to stay its their limit as a company which supports government initiatives and is trying to find a way of working wi

by dmcq2 3y ago

It seemed to me that Google were struggling to stay its their limit as a company which supports government initiatives and is trying to find a way of working within them, whilst pointing out that most of what is being proposed is totally unworkable. I think they did about as well as one can in that situation. They put in a couple of very strong warnings about what they would do if it wasn't changed but I don't think it'll have much effect without some much stronger arm twisting. The measures seem to me to have little to do with protecting children and would not be very effective in that respect, volunteer groups work at detection very successfully but the law and police don't really support them. What they do wouldn't really be covered by this at all. It seems something the security services and the control freaks in government want, and who's going to oppose it and be liable to being called a paedophile supporter?

wredue 3y ago
What does the bill actually say? To state that I don’t trust google here is an understatement. If google is pissed off, then my default position is that the government is probably correct. Not having all the facts, I could be coerced to a different position.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  The bill says a lot of things, it started out bad and has been amended and amended many times over years. I think the relevant points are putting things like requirements for age verification for anything possibly considered ‘harmful’ (like adult images) by way of, for example, requiring uploading an image of your Government issued ID or by using a face scan AI recognition system. The main other contentious one is the power for Ofcom to direct companies offering encrypted messaging services to break the security model of end-to-end encryption to allow content scanning and surveillance. Most big platforms (e.g. Apple, Meta/WhatsApp, Signal) said they would withdraw messaging services from the UK rather than breaking E2EE. The Government recently kinda said they might not use that power but then have been quite keen to try and say they’re not backing down so who knows what that means…
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  Cloudflare falsely thinks I'm a bot so I can't actually read it, but I believe the full text of the bill is here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0362/220362.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0362...
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    . . . but that's exactly what a bot would say!
    - Rebelgecko 3y ago
      Ironically it looks like I can read the document by having an actual bot fetch it for me. If I was a UK citizen I'd be pissed though (in the sense of being angry, not intoxicated). Everyone should be able to read the laws that their government is trying to pass.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  Google gets a bad wrap for many reasons, I think mainly for its ad business. UK gov on the other hand.. oh brother. Where to start and where to end? They have been an ongoing fiasco/circus for the past decade, to say the least. Irrelevant to the specific topic, but in the "UK gov" front, I am still waiting for Boris Johnson and his minions to rake in the £350m every week and fund the NHS. Back to the topic, for a country where intensive surveillance is BAU, it's no wonder they want to weaken and/or remove E2EE. I wouldn't be surprised if in X years we hear that they (UK gov) have also tried to pull a "Room 641A" and failed.
  - dmcq2 3y ago
    System X was set up thirty to forty years ago to do everything Room 641A was supposed to do without needing to be anywhere near the exchanges. They could just sit in London and put in the numbers to intercept and analogue signal processors looked out for various key words and important lines could be fully monitored
kmlx 3y ago
> It seems something the security services and the control freaks in government want i am writing this comment again: it's not the government that is pushing this. it's all the NGOs, various civil society organisation, even the opposition criticises the government for not going far enough (they wanted jail sentences for CEOs, making VPNs illegal, etc). and polls point to massive support for this from the locals. it's not the government, it's society that wants this.
- dmcq2 3y ago
  It's not a vote winner.
  - kmlx 3y ago
    depends how you frame it. for example: “the government doesn’t want to protect your children”. but the way the opposition attacked the plans as weak or very weak tells me they’ve done the studies. also, this: > Richard Collard, head of child safety online policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said: “Our polling shows the UK public overwhelmingly support measures to tackle child abuse in end-to-end encrypted environments. Tech firms can show industry leadership by listening to the public and investing in technology that protects both the safety and privacy rights of all users.”

by dmcq2 3y ago

wredue 3y ago

What does the bill actually say? To state that I don’t trust google here is an understatement. If google is pissed off, then my default position is that the government is probably correct. Not having all the facts, I could be coerced to a different position.

stephen_g 3y ago
The bill says a lot of things, it started out bad and has been amended and amended many times over years. I think the relevant points are putting things like requirements for age verification for anything possibly considered ‘harmful’ (like adult images) by way of, for example, requiring uploading an image of your Government issued ID or by using a face scan AI recognition system. The main other contentious one is the power for Ofcom to direct companies offering encrypted messaging services to break the security model of end-to-end encryption to allow content scanning and surveillance. Most big platforms (e.g. Apple, Meta/WhatsApp, Signal) said they would withdraw messaging services from the UK rather than breaking E2EE. The Government recently kinda said they might not use that power but then have been quite keen to try and say they’re not backing down so who knows what that means…
Rebelgecko 3y ago
Cloudflare falsely thinks I'm a bot so I can't actually read it, but I believe the full text of the bill is here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0362/220362.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0362...
- psunavy03 3y ago
  . . . but that's exactly what a bot would say!
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    Ironically it looks like I can read the document by having an actual bot fetch it for me. If I was a UK citizen I'd be pissed though (in the sense of being angry, not intoxicated). Everyone should be able to read the laws that their government is trying to pass.
HenryBemis 3y ago
Google gets a bad wrap for many reasons, I think mainly for its ad business. UK gov on the other hand.. oh brother. Where to start and where to end? They have been an ongoing fiasco/circus for the past decade, to say the least. Irrelevant to the specific topic, but in the "UK gov" front, I am still waiting for Boris Johnson and his minions to rake in the £350m every week and fund the NHS. Back to the topic, for a country where intensive surveillance is BAU, it's no wonder they want to weaken and/or remove E2EE. I wouldn't be surprised if in X years we hear that they (UK gov) have also tried to pull a "Room 641A" and failed.
- dmcq2 3y ago
  System X was set up thirty to forty years ago to do everything Room 641A was supposed to do without needing to be anywhere near the exchanges. They could just sit in London and put in the numbers to intercept and analogue signal processors looked out for various key words and important lines could be fully monitored

kmlx 3y ago

> It seems something the security services and the control freaks in government want i am writing this comment again: it's not the government that is pushing this. it's all the NGOs, various civil society organisation, even the opposition criticises the government for not going far enough (they wanted jail sentences for CEOs, making VPNs illegal, etc). and polls point to massive support for this from the locals. it's not the government, it's society that wants this.

dmcq2 3y ago
It's not a vote winner.
- kmlx 3y ago
  depends how you frame it. for example: “the government doesn’t want to protect your children”. but the way the opposition attacked the plans as weak or very weak tells me they’ve done the studies. also, this: > Richard Collard, head of child safety online policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said: “Our polling shows the UK public overwhelmingly support measures to tackle child abuse in end-to-end encrypted environments. Tech firms can show industry leadership by listening to the public and investing in technology that protects both the safety and privacy rights of all users.”