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UK Parliament undermined the privacy, security, freedom of all internet users
- Marye1 3y ago[dead]
- Marye1 3y ago[dead]
- Marye1 3y ago[dead]
- Marye1 3y ago[dead]
- Marye1 3y ago[dead]
- Marye1 3y ago[dead]
- neilv 3y agoWhat relationship does a company need to have to UK to be subject to this? (Have an office in the UK? Use a SaaS/PaaS subject to UK? Have users from UK? Want your iOS or Android app to be available from the official store to UK users? Want your DNS and routing to work in UK?)
- olliej 3y agoMost countries consider having users to be equivalent to having a presence, free or otherwise.
- awei 3y agoWould it apply to a website like Wikipedia for example ?
- I_am_uncreative 3y agoWikipedia is actually trying to figure that out. Right now WMF legal says no.
- b800h 3y agoThat surprises me. The legislation in the form I last saw it says that they're not allowed to show user generated content to children without an age-gated login.
- ben_w 3y agoYour understanding of the law may be correct, but do remember that law is basically its own language with its own ideas of "common sense" and that if you're not legally trained (and even if you are but you've not read all the other laws that the law in question interacts with) then all sorts of weird misunderstandings can happen. (As your profile is empty, for all I know you've an actual lawyer in this specific field — NH is this kind of place after all — but most of us aren't, and I've been surprised by legal principles that LegalEagle has described as "law school 101, and I mean literally I taught XYZ in a 101 class").
- awei 3y agoThanks for your replies.
- lynx23 3y agoThere you go. GDPR already made companies stop providing to users based on their location. This trend will likely continue.
- jackjeff 3y ago
- b800h 3y ago"Users in the UK". Yes, that means it applies to you if you run a Telnet server and a British person logs in to it and might find a text file created by someone from the US there. You need an age gate in front of the login, unless you can satisfactorily demonstrate that you have few under-18s as users. How to prove that? The law doesn't say.
- HeckFeck 3y agoIRCv3: now with age verification for our UK users!
- neilv 3y agoUnder what circumstances is someone doing a startup in the US subject to this UK regulation?
- msla 3y agoNo. The UK doesn't get to enforce its law everywhere just because it says its law is enforceable everywhere. There's already precedent here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act > The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act is a 2010 federal statutory law in the United States that makes foreign libel judgments unenforceable in U.S. courts, unless either the foreign legislation applied offers at least as much protection as the U.S. First Amendment (concerning freedom of speech), or the defendant would have been found liable even if the case had been heard under U.S. law. > The act was passed by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama. [snip] > The act was written as a response to libel tourism.[1] It creates a new cause of action and claim for damages against a foreign libel plaintiff, if they acted to deprive an American (or certain lawful aliens) of their right to free speech.[2] Despite its goals, it is seen as a weak response to the problem of libel tourism as, although it establishes a new cause of action in § 4104, and allows for the collection of "reasonable" attorneys' fees in § 4105,[note 1] it does not allow for damages to plaintiffs in contrast with stronger provisions in proposed bills which did not pass such as the Free Speech Protection Act of 2009 (H.R.1304, 111th Congress).[3]: 22 > It was inspired by the legal battle that ensued between Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Saudi businessman Khalid bin Mahfouz over her 2003 book Funding Evil.[4] Just to make it even clearer: "Libel tourism" basically means taking your case to British courts, which are hilariously pro-plaintiff when it comes to libel. That's what happened with Ehrenfeld.
- speak_plainly 3y agoI wonder if you could just add a link to a terms of service for your site that explicitly states the site was not for use by users in the UK, and that they should ensure they’re following all laws and using the site at their own risk.
- WA 3y agoNope, that's probably not enough. With regulation, you have to do two things: - Show that you are aware of the regulation - Implement some kind of thing to comply with the regulation. The degree of that is debatable and ultimately can only be decided by a court. Just pointing to a ToS is not enough, because nobody reads them. Implementing a geofence and denying service to UK ip addresses is probably a good start. If UK citizens want to access your service, they could still use a VPN, but then the "malice" is on them. The bigger/widespread your service, the more effort you might have to put in to prevent malicious intent. Think about this way: You are liable for the services you offer. You must comply with local laws. It's up to you how much liability you want to carry. If your compliance with laws is extremely weak, your liability is high.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoWhatever happened to making governments regulate their own citizens? I remember a time on the internet where if a government wanted this sort of control they had to implement it themselves. Something happened at some point where Twitter, Google and Facebook began to comply and now it's the status quo. Why can't we go back to telling governments to go fuck themselves? Police your own fucking people, if you don't want them using our services then block them from doing so. I can't even run an XMPP server with OMEMO now without having to have a fucking legal department to respond to emails from these bureaucrats. I'm absolutely tired of this shit, and the meek response. I am not subject to your god damn jurisdiction.
- thelittleone 3y agoSeems the number one fear of any government is it's citizens.
- komali2 3y agoToo vague - the number one fear of any government is noncompliance. From citizens, bureaucrats, and enforcers (military + police). There's an important concept in the military wherein you should never give an order you think might not be followed, because it collapses the illusion of authority. Authority is, after all, an illusion. The same is true for governments. It's why governments that want total surveillance and police states must tippie toe their way there with bills like this, or, do things in total secrecy like the NSA. Try to push the overton window too quickly and you risk noncompliance from a tech company, non compliance from juries, sometimes even (extremely rarely) non compliance from cops, at which point you're facing a governmental crisis of the highest degree.
- mjan22640 3y agoThough illusion plays a role in the formation of these phenomena (government, authority), I would disagree that the phenomenon itself is an illusion.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
- Almondsetat 3y agoSo are Whatsapp, Signal and Apple going to keep their word or has some minuscule thing changed in the legislation that they can backpedal by saying it's now fine with them?
- lambdas 3y agoTheir opposition was that the motion was still in flux on the wording, and could have outright said “E2EE is illegal, we want either A) a backdoor into encryption if you use it B) on device monitoring for harmful content”. It came to pass that MP’s realised they couldn’t do that… yet. So what has actually gone in is some vague wording on “should the technology become available you’ll have to implement it”. Now most people are taking that as a win, that the wording is admitting defeat. Surely you can’t circumvent privacy whilst maintaining freedoms, you may as well put in “when 1+1=3”. And the companies are saying that’s fine, it doesn’t affect us. But you can’t help but feel pessimistic. That clause is Chekhov’s gun, it’s put in there in its nebulous state exactly to be vague. I’ve no doubt in the coming years there’ll be a consensus where “the technology is available” comes down to MITM or something.
- elephanlemon 3y agoMakes me think of the approach Apple attempted
- dfawcus 3y agoNothing changed in the legislation from when those companies stated their concerns. All that happened is a gov spokesman stood on his hind legs in the Lords, and in effect said "Trust us. we won't use these powers - yet".
- amoss 3y agoWhat does this mean for Signal and Telegram in the UK?
- FujiApple 3y agoVery little coverage of this bill passing in the UK mainstream media that I have seen.
- jgaa 3y agoIt has no tits. Things without tits gets little coverage in the UK mainstream media ;)
- vixen99 3y agoLot of truth in that though to be fair the 'page three' tradition (the inclusion of an image of a half-naked female on page 3 of a tabloid newspaper) finally ended in 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_3
- jpsouth 3y agoAlso the disgustingly seedy countdowns to when certain girls turned 16 so they could be on page three. Thank god it’s in the past.
- b800h 3y agoNothing at all. It's crazy.
- Shrezzing 3y agoThe media's very busy dealing with the Prime Minister announcing a policy that'll be reversed before it's ever implemented.
- bluescrn 3y agoDelaying the 2030 ICE ban was inevitable. Moving it to 2035 puts it in line with the EU. (But it'll probably get delayed again. You can't just price the poor off the roads nationwide and expect the economy not to nosedive. As well as charging options for people without large detached homes with private driveways/garages, we need affordable used EVs, and we need to be sure thet battery packs in those older vehicles won't be utterly worthless)
- scott_w 3y agoWhat’s truly insane about this law is how pathetically performative it is. Let’s pretend it was a good idea to break encryption for users. The current prosecution rate for rape accusations stands at 2% in the U.K. with only half of those leading to conviction. These problems come from poor training, lack of police and lack of funding for the court system. This Act changes nothing about those fundamental issues so, assuming you catch someone with child pornography on their iPhone, you still won’t be able to convict them! Edit: typo
- kwhitefoot 3y ago> This Act changes nothing about those fundamental issues That doesn't matter to the politicians pushing for such laws. They want two things: government control over the populace, re-election. The second is the most important. Can we be sure that Labour would repeal such a law? If they try then the Conservatives, Daily Mail, etc., will claim that Labour are enabling paedophiles and other criminals. That will give Labour an incentive to keep the law or even to strengthen it in order to appear more virtuous than the Conservatives.
- scott_w 3y agoI don't think they're thinking beyond the end of the day. Look at today's news: the Tories are cancelling policies that don't even exist! This is why it's completely performative. They try to get the headlines without having to actually put in any work.
- jgaa 3y ago[flagged]
- b800h 3y agoHas anyone figured out what the wording "directly on the service" means - does that mean they've accidentally exempted federated content, ie. everyone having their own Mastodon server?
- __alexs 3y agoOfcom are about to start a consultation with industry to figure out how to apply such vague laws.
- LispSporks22 3y agoWhat’s up with the UK and its surveillance heavy approach to its citizens? Reminds of what George Orwell feared.
- flangola7 3y agoUK still has the attitude that social classes are a legitimate and real thing. That there exist people to rule or be ruled. Similar attitudes manifest in other western nations but none so normalized that huge sums of taxpayer money funds the lavish lifestyle of a specific family's bloodline, so explicit that living rulers (not leaders, self identified rulers) are placed on every instrument of currency. Their de jure power may be ceremonial but the cultural effect is very real, even if subconscious. Such an attitude enables practices that better attitudes would see as abhorrent.
- widdershins 3y agoThe Conservative party are in government. Their programme is designed to extract wealth and political agency from the general populace, and suck it up into the control of their own class of people (a mixture of landed gentry, financiers etc). Their vehicles for doing this are fear and distraction, propagated by the media outlets they and their friends own. In this context, zeal for surveillance makes perfect sense. It plays well with people convinced by the Daily Mail that some boogyman (immigrants, paedophiles, whatever) is coming to get them and their children. And it's also useful for keeping tabs on protesters and strikers, who try to draw attention to their tactics and goals.
- bloppe 3y agoFundamentally, encryption is just math, and math is still mostly legal in the UK. There seems to be an obvious workaround here: - It's not illegal to supply someone with an E2E encryption tool like OpenPGP. - It's not illegal to provide a messaging service. - The OSB seems to make it illegal to provide both of these things in a single package. So there is now a bit of friction involved for anyone who wants E2E communication in the UK, but there doesn't have to be that much friction. You just need separate legal entities to provide you with the 2 tools involved (the encryption tool and the messaging service), and you need to keep track of your own private keys. Sure, the vast majority of people will not bother with this, but it's really not enough friction to stop even the casually motivated; i.e. anybody involved in anything even remotely illegal. I'd applaud the implementation of a maximally convenient system like this, just to lay bare the idiocy of this law.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoIt's not yet illegal to supply someone with an E2E encryption tool like OpenPGP. People are concentrating on the technicalities of implementation and completely missing the point that a substantial fraction of the UK population appears to think that pervasive surveillance is the solution to crime of all kinds. That it might or might not be feasible while still allowing people to have secure communications is not really relevant because there are enough people who would be quite happy for their communications to be less secure just so long as one more paedophile or protester can be brought to justice.
- PhilipRoman 3y agoThis only works if the judge actually cares about what is written in the law. Might work in the USA but hardly anywhere else.
- gwnywg 3y agoMaybe I'm wrong but who can stop you or me from deploying VPN and providing secure comms channel to our families? surely, any user who encrypts their comms is suspicious to govt, but there needs to be something more than suspicion for govt to step in and tell me I can't encrypt my traffic?
- 3y ago
- b800h 3y agoIncidentally, @dang you're currently in violation of the law. HN has to be age-gated now.
- switch007 3y agoHow do UK laws apply to a US hosted website run by a company whose only legal entity AFAIK is in the US? What action do you think the UK can take?
- gambiting 3y ago>>How do UK laws apply to a US hosted website run by a company whose only legal entity AFAIK is in the US? If you serve content to UK users, UK government thinks you should be bound by this law. >>What action do you think the UK can take? Short term it can order ISPs to ban HN traffic until it complies(as it already does with many websites), and prosecute dang if he should ever vist the UK. Of course the chances of that happening are very small given the size of this website, but you never know and it's this permanent state of "everyone is doing something bad we are just choosing not to prosecute it" that creates a surveilance state for everyone. UK ISPs are already required to keep 12 months of browsing history from everyone and it can be accessed warrant free by 17 different agencies including department of agriculture. As a Brit, I can only conclude that the majority of the population doesn't care, or is too mesmerized by whatever is the current topic in the media instead.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago> As a Brit, I can only conclude that the majority of the population doesn't care, or is too mesmerized by whatever is the current topic in the media instead. I'm a Brit too and I can do nothing about it, not even vote because I live outside the UK. But what exactly do you propose that people who can vote do? It's not as if one can vote on this particular law. You can just vote for a Conservative or a Labour MP, the rest don't matter. Do you really expect people to vote against the MP or party that they otherwise support merely to get this one law defeated?
- willk 3y agoWhat happens if services just stop serving content in the UK? Will that get the attention of those who come up with these ridiculous laws?
- Reason077 3y agoIf they’re big and important enough (eg: Google, Apple, WhatsApp), then yes, that would get their attention. But nobody’s going to notice/care if some small services pull out. Some US websites still refuse to serve content to the UK and Europe due to GDPR, and no one seems to care much.
- baloki 3y agoWhat I really don’t understand is why parents aren’t responsible for monitoring they’re children's access to the Internet anymore? Why does it need to be done at each website instead of at the point of access?
- null0pointer 3y agoIt’s not about the kids. It’s never about the kids.
- fragmede 3y agoUnless you're Prince Andrew
- Phemist 3y agoI think this could serve a good rule-of-thumb test. Whatever measure is being taken, would it stop (or have stopped) Prince Andrew (and similar)? If not, the measure is at best ineffective and at worst not intended to stop them. We can call this the Prince Andrew Test.. This current law fails the Prince Andrew Test.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Delphiza 3y agoExactly. Making it about the kids makes it difficult for people to protest or object. I had an awkward time on our very technical team call yesterday when I ranted a bit about the bill passed. Senior engineers wanted me to 'move along' because somehow they believe that it is better for their own kids.
- HeckFeck 3y agoChildren shouldn't be on the internet, just like they shouldn't be left to cycle on motorways. Or enter contracts and take on debt. Or fly jet planes. Or be left alone in a workshop or kitchen. Etc. We restrict their activities because their judgement is limited, and this most certainly extends to Internet access, which ought to be adult-only. It should be seen as extremely irresponsible parenting to leave your kids online. This is the answer to what to do to 'keep kids safe' - the same things parents have done for millennia. Restrict their activities. No one who 'gets' the internet wants the government's opinion of what is 'safe' applied to it. The only reason this sells is because lazy fucks of parents who want the Internet as a substitute for interaction that they owe their children. Or other activities that they could organise which would be more suitable for children. This is too much effort for them apparently - just dump little Johnny and Lucy in the corner with their iPads! Of course access to unlimited information and communication is dangerous for children - they don't know how to handle it, they have limited experiences of trust and how to manage that, such things only come with growth, involved parenting and repeated interactions over the years. Again, the Internet is no substitute for that, and only adults can reasonably manage their lives online.
- gambiting 3y agoI've said it before and I'll repeat it here - as someone who lives in the UK the thing that bothers me the most about it is a complete apathy from everyone I know, and I work in IT. People just go "meh what are you going to do", or recently very common "I don't have strength to be angry at this government all the time over everything, I just carry on forward and hope things improve". And of course the fact that this is getting 0 coverage from mainstream media doesn't help.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoI think this hits the nail on the head. Pretty much everyone here in the UK is just waiting for the general election to remove the incumbent right wing party. The government itself seems utterly internally divided and unable to find a direction and after a while everyone (cabinet ministers included) is just waiting for it to be over. So this slips in and most peoples reaction if they know about it at all is "this is not legitimate because the people enforcing it are so weak" Basically it's set up to be ignored - a populist press release dressed up a legislation. Worrying
- nly 3y agoThe current government isn't even that right wing. Whole I agree with everything you said, it's actually worse... nobody really believes the next (Labour) government will improve things either.
- cs02rm0 3y agoEconomically it seems hard to differentiate as much further right than the previous Labour governments. It's certainly spending a lot more on the NHS (in real terms). Furlough was a pretty eye-wateringly expensive state intervention. Traditional conservative economics don't seem to be on offer in the UK these days.
- polshaw 3y agoFurlough has driven an enormous increase in inequality though, thus not as left-wing as it might appear on the surface. Money was given to ordinary working people (whose outgoings, being essentials, didn't change much), and then went straight to the landlords etc (whose outgoings, being more discretionary, were massively cut during the pandemic). So everyone who hasn't significantly increased their wealth over the pandemic in nominal terms (and many did, we had rising stocks and housing prices.. during a pandemic!!) is today poorer than before.
- finned 3y agoSounds alright to me. Something needs to be done about young children accessing pornographic content, and terrorists and paedophiles using end-to-end encrypted chat systems to cover their tracks. This seems like a reasonable compromise that won't affect most users, while also not mandating any specific technical solution, leaving the implementation up to subject matter experts. These type of restrictions are always going to be somewhat difficult to fully realise due to the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet, but at least the UK is trying to do what's right for its own citizens. Which is quite an unusual yet welcome action for the current Government.
- __alexs 3y agoSubject matter experts have unanimously said such a technology is not possible to implement safely.
- finned 3y ago[dead]
- __alexs 3y agoI was obviously being rhetorical. "Fixable in practice" is really not a sufficient rebuttal when the people tasked with actually building this stuff have given clear and specific reasons why building this stuff safely is impossible. That the government think it's totally fine if the government have the power to listen in on everything is not especially surprising. The problem is most people don't actually trust the government with this power.
- finned 3y agoPointing out that specific objections are fixable in practice is just a summary point - they wrote a detailed paper on this topic, which is worth reading in full: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09506.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09506.pdf Do you have a reasonable counterargument to any of the points they make in this work?
- JR1427 3y agoThis just seems to add another pretext (alongside terrorism) to snoop on someone. Great...
- Havoc 3y agoWhat would be a good country for vpn exit point? Something in Europe due to latency Nothing to hide, but this just rubs me wrong out of principle
- doublerabbit 3y agoIreland. But not N.Ireland as thats still under UK rule.
- nly 3y agoI've been using VPN services for every byte of traffic in and out of my home and on my mobile phone for 15 years. This sort of thing is why and I will continue to do so. Based on stories I've heard from people work in industry, every major ISP in the UK keeps DNS query logs and "internet connection records" and makes these available to authorities (without a warrant)
- kmlx 3y ago> Based on stories I've heard from people work in industry, every major ISP in the UK keeps DNS query logs and "internet connection records" and makes these available to authorities (without a warrant) there's no "story". it's the law in many countries: > In many countries, ISPs are legally required to monitor and store data about your browsing history for an extended period of time. This is called mandatory data retention. This data is used for policing, government surveillance, and sometimes even advertising. > The length of time that ISPs must retain data varies by country. The U.S. government requires ISPs to keep records of customers’ internet history for a minimum of 90 days, while the UK and European Union requires ISPs to keep browsing records for up to 12 months. 6 months: Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Sweden 1 year: Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, UK 18 months: Latvia 2 years: Australia, Poland
- cccbbbaaa 3y agoI don't know where your citations come from. EU law does not require such a thing. The Data Retention Directive mandated retention from 6 to 24 months, but it was invalidated by the CJUE years ago, and asserts that comparable national laws are illegal.
- kmlx 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention the EU directive was invalidated, but member states still hold on to all the data. for example: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/data-retention-france-illegally-extends-blanket-mass-surveillance-of-the-entire-population/#:~:text=the%20location%20data%20of%20electronic,and%20evidence%20are%20not%20provided https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/data-retention-france-illeg....
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sundarurfriend 3y ago> This violates fundamental principles about anonymous and simple access that has existed since the beginning of the Internet. You shouldn’t have to show your ID to get online. My current hypothesis is that this will start happening within the next few years anyway, regardless of such laws - there will come a point when spammers start making massive use of LLMs to post to forums, comment sections, chat rooms, etc., and there doesn't seem to be a way to defend against that taking over your websites, unless you implement a "one ID-verified person = one account" type policy. Am I wrong about that? Are there any other reasonably implementable solutions that people have been thinking about?
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoWhat if people sold their verified ID status to spammers? People already sell their kidneys.
- PhilipRoman 3y agoThe person whose identity is used will be held accountable. This is more like getting paid to serve a jail sentence in place of someone else.
- logicchains 3y agoWhat if it's a homeless person?
- rightbyte 3y agoAccountable for what? Shilling is usually not provable in a legal sense even if you can smell it miles away.
- PhilipRoman 3y agoSure, someone who doesn't use facebook might not care if you sell essential oils in his name on facebook, but if you are required to prove your identity, presumably that identity is available to the service provider. So your identity will get permanently banned from the service after the first few violations, making it not cost effective for something like spamming. Its not like the captcha solving farms which sell them for 0.1 cent a piece. If, instead of just spamming, you want to do something a little more devious, like running a pyramid scheme, making a bomb threat or posting whatever your government calls hate speech - the person who gave you his identity is in trouble. It's kind of like saying "I will [digitally] sign any paper you want for $100". The ceiling for negative consequences is practically limitless. He might get away by claiming the identity was somehow stolen, but that would have to be a lot of money for so much potential trouble.
- bArray 3y ago> The U.K. Parliament has passed the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which says it will make the U.K. “the safest place” in the world to be online. You think the UK is safe, go to China or Russia! They have _really_ 'safe' internet. Even better, just cut the internet off, it couldn't be any safer! The politicians passing this stuff are literally the least qualified people to discuss anything tech related. They literally do not understand (or possibly don't care) that a backdoor for them is a backdoor for any motivated attacker. > A clause of the bill allows Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, to serve a notice requiring tech companies to scan their users–all of them–for child abuse content. This is Apple's CSAM [1] all over again. I'm sure it won't be used at all for out-of-scope reasons... Firstly expanded to terrorism, and then generic crime, then extreme political views, then hate speech, etc. Can somebody in 'Big Tech' please remind them that this includes _their_ messages too? I want you to email them on a regular basis something like: "We have scanned all of your files and private communications as per the requirement of the OSB, and found nothing currently deemed unacceptable by the current government. This is a reminder that any content sent now or any time in the past will be retroactively scanned and reported based on continuously evolving guidelines." > This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy. As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor. It looks like I will be moving to E2E via private servers. [1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_for_Children_Frequently_Asked_Questions.pdf https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...
- firecall 3y agoIt doesn’t always include _their_ messages too. Forms of this legislation mandate exclusions for politicians and public figures. Apologies for the vague statement - on my phone, short of time.
- rakkhi 3y agoYes the only chance we have is big tech to massively boycott the UK https://open.substack.com/pub/rakkhi/p/big-tech-vs-governments?r=1afqp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://open.substack.com/pub/rakkhi/p/big-tech-vs-governmen...
- world2vec 3y agoWhat can I do as someone that lives in UK (but European nationality)? Is using a good VPN enough to mitigate these privacy and security issues?
- mattrighetti 3y ago> Is using a good VPN enough to mitigate these privacy and security issues? No, you don't ever use VPN for privacy. 99% of the VPN providers log every single activity on their servers. I am using Mullvad and they seem take privacy very seriously and I kind of trust them, certainly more than all the other providers. Do I trust them 100%? Definitely not.
- world2vec 3y agoYeah I also use Mullvad and only have good things to say about them. Besides that, what can a person do?
- Moldoteck 3y agoYou'll end up like meta/threads is duing in eu: even with vpn you can't access their site
- isaacremuant 3y agoSo many people fail to realize that it's not a partisan game. Surveillance and authortiarianism keeps going in one direction in many countries no matter what the party is. Stop buying into this simplistic false dichotomies.
- scopeh 3y agoChina: Look at our internet, users only do what we want. UK: Hold my beer, I'm going to do this for the whole internet. --- All the companies that said they would stop operating in the UK if this bill was passed, need to now do so. There are provision in place that say companies won't be forced to do so unless technologically possible. But I think we all know how that plays out.
- cimi_ 3y agoI am so disappointed by this. I moved to the UK from Eastern Europe and it's hands down better in almost every way if you consider personal freedom, in my opinion. In terms of policing, it's better than most EU states. See this for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxiTdRTPMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxiTdRTPMg The argument in the video is that French police is brutal because of the remnants of Nazi collaborationists in the police, and this applies to everywhere in Europe occupied by Nazis. And then you have Eastern Europe with its brutal communism. I hear a lot of British people complain about how bad society has gotten etc. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's something to still be proud of. But this kind of shit will break it. To the people saying it's the fault of people being apathetic, what would you have done? :(
- tgv 3y agoThat's not only irrelevant to the discussion, WW2 ended 80 years ago. Anyone who was a Nazi or collaborated is well over 90.
- cimi_ 3y agoEffects of this are felt today - policing of the population is worse in the countries that were either Nazi occupied or communist compared to the UK. My point was that measures like this destroy this 'advantage'. (I don't know if advantage is the right word but I can't come up with a better one)
- tgv 3y agoI don't think policing in The Netherlands, Denmark or even Germany is bad. > My point was that measures like this destroy this 'advantage'. First, I don't think politicians care about this 'advantage'. Second, policing is necessary, and with changing conditions, the means for policing change. There's always tension between individual freedom and security/safety. But I agree that this is not a great move.
- tim333 3y agoIt's not that bad really. I'm sure it'll be done in a half arsed way.
- neonihil 3y agoNot a biggy. Let's have them implant backdoors everywhere, and then use it to acquire and publish all their data and their conversations. I'm sure that besides loosing their power quickly, they also going to face prison time for abusing it. It would be such a wonderfully poetical end of them! /sacrasm off
- Gud 3y agoDisgusting. Can the UK still be considered a democracy if the state has this access to private communication?
- bigyax 3y agoSadly there wasn't much hope of this bill not making it into law. The opposition parties if anything felt that the law wasn't strong enough and pushed to make it even more draconian. The British public at large are in favour of any law that imposes harsher penalties and regulation on the tech giants. 'Protect the children' is far more emotive than 'But we might eventually lose encryption', and the collateral damage to our freedoms is slow and insidious enough that it's not recognised or appreciated. I think given everything we have to take the governments vague concession of 'when the technology becomes available' as a win, it was the best we were going to get, no way was this bill not going to pass. We are still in the early Wild West days of the internet, but in the decades ahead bills like this will become more commonplace as governments try to wrestle back control of what citizens can access
- tmjwid 3y agoI wrote to my MP about this and got a response. They agreed with me that it is "important to protect users' freedom of expression and personal privacy". They "do not believe it is right for encrypted messages to become decrypted. There must be a balance between our fundamental right to privacy and keeping people safe online, which raises difficult questions for platforms such as WhatsApp". But they "do not believe that the legislation impacting private messaging will damage this encryption, as a variety of technologies are emerging that could allow for scanning on issues such as child sexual abuse material while retaining the privacy benefits afforded by end-to-end encryption". They do note however that having Ofcom be the regulator and monitor isn't right, which seems to have been a bit under reported to my knowledge. Funnily enough, they did not vote on this matter and I shall be finding out why.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> They do note however that having Ofcom be the regulator and monitor isn't right When the UK Government adds yet another enforcement responsibility to OFCOM's list of duties, you know that's a task they don't really want done. OFCOM has always been seriously underfunded. Most of OFCOM's "activity" consists of sending out letters to offenders, drawing their attention to the relevant legislation, and advising them of the steps they should take to come into compliance. Actual fines are as rare as unicorn shit.
- b800h 3y agoThis is an odd one, as it means that OFCOM are now regulating private citizens for the first time, to the best of my knowledge. Hmm, apart from Ham Radio Licenses, I guess.
- petercooper 3y agoMeanwhile, a British MP chairing a media committee thinks it's appropriate to write to content platforms to suggest that they demonetise people they don't like: https://twitter.com/rumblevideo/status/1704584929026216118 https://twitter.com/rumblevideo/status/1704584929026216118
- dewclin 3y agoThis should get more coverage, as it's a worrying development. The tone of the letter is disturbing. Surprisingly enough, the mainstream media haven't covered it at all ...
- petercooper 3y agoI learnt about it from the BBC News homepage, where it currently remains, but I know they show different front page stories based on location. But yes, it's a nasty bit of overreach. What's annoying is all the people I see being vocal about it on Twitter are the alt-right or pro-Tory/Telegraph/Mail folks I wouldn't usually want to align with. I suspect the presence of Brand is key to them, and if a similar letter had been written targeting someone on the left, they would be quiet.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> if a similar letter had been written targeting someone on the left, they would be quiet. The author of the letter, Dame Dinenage, is a Tory MP. To my mind, the letter is quite mild; there are no threats or demands, just questions. In view of her job as Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, it seems a reasonable letter to write (even on House of Commons notepaper).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- leonixyz 3y agoThe british are known for being this kind of people. They must be isolated and boycotted.
- morkalork 3y agoTrouble is that governments in their former colonies look up and say "That's a nice precedence for abusing our citizens, let's try that here!"
- thfuran 3y agoNah, we just use our secret courts to issue secret orders to hand over data or just have the intelligence agencies backdoor everything without bothering to make a big fuss over it.
- rosmax_1337 3y agoNot quite two weeks ago I was discussing the censorship that we face in the west with a few other users here. Some of them seemed to not quite believe their ears when I brought up the phenomena. I think that some good can come of bills like this, and the letters which the UK parliament recently sent out to question various internet platforms about a users ability to operate on the platforms. Clear cut government censorship like this, can bring to attention how pervasive censorship in general actually is. And I strongly hold that this is just the tip of the iceberg, the visible censorship, when governments ask explicitly try to stop freedom of speech, not only in their own countries but among neighbors as well. What lies beneath the surface is untold amounts of private censorship which certainly is not often government affiliated, but still politically motivated.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 3y agoIt seems a big majority in this thread agrees this is bad, and user privacy is key. I wonder, what do you think about the Government's counter-argument, that effectively user privacy is secondary to child protection? I'm just playing devil's advocate, and not endorsing this position. - Is the internet a major medium for child exploitation? - If this bill puts N offenders in prison per year, is it worth it? What is N? I agree this is bad for internet privacy, and likely just a privacy grab by the government. Equally, I think discussing it without referencing the stated goals ("it's just a power grab", "we have a right to privacy", "this won't save any children because, erm, it won't") is counterproductive to getting the point across to a wider population.
- Taek 3y agoI would love to see data driven statistics on the number of pedophiles that are caught each year owing to the onerous requirements that are being put on our internet infrastructure. Not just pedophiles though. How many criminals are government backdoors catching? How often do NSL's turn up data or leads that allow the government to catch criminals that would otherwise go free? How much does KYC/AML enforcement (which causes a huge clamping effect on our economy) actually control the actions of criminals, versus inhibit the daily lives of citizens? I'm so confident that the evidence would show that these rights-violating laws are a net harm to society that I think all we need to push for is data, and that alone will highlight how terrible these ideas are.
- versteegen 3y agoWe can instead look at the statistics for scanning of communications that aren't yet end-to-end encrypted, which will provide a good indication for the effect of bypassing encryption. [Edit:] I know this is not a great source, but from https://www.gov.uk/government/news/home-secretary-urges-meta-to-protect-children-from-sexual-abuse https://www.gov.uk/government/news/home-secretary-urges-meta... > Currently, 800 predators a month are arrested by UK law enforcement agencies and up to 1,200 children are safeguarded from child sexual abuse following information provided by social media companies. There are also some interesting NCMEC statistics which provide a sense of scale, at https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/cybertipline/cybertiplinedata https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/cybertipline/cybertip... > The CyberTipline receives reports from the public and online electronic service providers (ESPs). ... U.S. based ESPs are legally required to report instances of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or “apparent child pornography” to the CyberTipline when they become aware of them, but there are no legal requirements regarding proactive efforts to detect CSAM (Reports are also in various other categories aside from CSAM.) > In 2022, NCMEC staff escalated over 49,000 reports to law enforcement as the reported incident was urgent in nature or there was information that a child was in imminent danger. ... NCMEC designated 49% of the reports from the tech industry as “actionable” when referring them to law enforcement in 2022 (49000 is a heavily filtered fraction of the 32 million total reports.)
- hermannj314 3y agoI wrote a letter to my congressperson (US based) when this topic come up a few months ago. His reply was, basically, there are exactly two distinct groups of people: 1. People that think their government should be able to read what they do online. 2. Child molesters. I don't have a lot of faith in the system anymore.
- Taek 3y agoThere are definitely two groups of people: 1. people who trust that the government both has their best interest at heart and also makes very few mistakes 2. people who realize that governments have a long legacy of committing both intentional and unintentional atrocities on the people of the world Unfortunately, very few of the latter end up working for the government
- Flenser 3y agoand even if we have government 1 now, we could always have government 2 after the next election
- Ajedi32 3y agoI'm thankful our constitution here in the U.S. seems to have been written entirely by people firmly in group 2. Sadly, it feels like those principles have been slowly eroding ever since...
- manonthewall 3y ago[dead]
- seydor 3y agoWe live at the time of democracy vs corporatocracy. Both have their weapons but we re reaching to the point of parity, onwards to the latter.
- cornercasechase 3y agoIronic that the UK wants to spy on its citizens to “protect the children” but it also just sealed Prince Andrew’s records until 2065 to hide his Epstein activity: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/09/prince-andrew-government-files-secret-until-2065 https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/09/prince-andrew-gover... Also, Jimmy Saville sure spent a lot of time with the royal family and government leadership.
- ansmithz42 3y agoI do so wish we could stop using the term "backdoor". When it comes to computer systems, there is really no "front" or "back" and so any access granted is just another door. This then removes the idea that it can be made "safer" just by calling it something different. There are so many cases of "hidden" or "secret" APIs being made public because people found them, there is absolutely no way that an additional can be made any safer.
- _lvbh 3y agoHaving lived in China and now living in the UK, I really don’t see much difference between “The East” and “The West” in terms of freedom.
- throwoutway 3y agoWhataboutism. In the West, I can vocally oppose this and peacefully protest without being detained, arrested, brutalized, or killed, and without destroying my 'social credit' or being banned from leaving the country. We can still work to overturn the legislation. You can't do that in the East
- dzonga 3y agoonce again local first systems win. instead of relying on 3rd parties for your privacy. rely to everything being local first. download copies of things. because nothing lasts forever on the internet. have multiple offline copies. encrypt your drives.
- stainablesteel 3y agoserious question: there's been talk of rape gangs in britain that heir from india/pakistan i've never been so i don't understand the situation outside of that but from what i gather it seems the police in the uk don't do much about them, meanwhile there's videos of them harassing people over much more minor offenses, and lately there was a video where an autistic child said something mild to a english lesbian cop and this resulted in the gestapo showing up at her house. so is this really over child abuse?
- nojvek 3y agoI wonder what the future of governance holds in the next 50 to 100 years. On one hand technology will amplify surveillance powers in the hands of few, and explode misinformation/propaganda. On the other hand internet and AI compute costs will go down making the average person able to digest more information. China is a great example with great firewall, restricted speech and citizens rights restricted. Technology is just a tool, a very powerful tool that holds a serious risk of suppressing “others”.
- IndigoIncognito 3y agoDoes the government only care about catching dumb paedophiles? Im pretty sure if your running a child abuse ring, your going to know how to circumvent these "protections"
- trinsic2 3y agoThis will be great for governments who want to silence critics of corruption. Just place the targeted media the law is intended for on the targets phone and bam! You have a case against them to discredit anything that persons says from then on. If I were an ISP in Briton. I would shutdown until this law is overturned.
- ulizzle 3y agoDang. Well here’s my public apology to Stallman for thinking he was a kook for still using ancient cellphones. I’ve been obviously proven wrong However I probably won’t make it out of this fever so perhaps I’m going to die at just the right time Obviously the “think of the children” justification is more about partisan censorship but I kinda still believe it’s up in the air that all this censorship is going to work out.
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