4 ms·

Yeah, almost makes you wonder who's actually behind it. Wouldn't be a bad political psyop for a UK/democracy adversary to go after. If the intelligence agencie

• raincom 2y ago
  Who else? Five eyes, obviously.
  • jajko 2y ago
    This is political move, quid pro quo just like everything else. I wonder what UK got in exchange for some public heat (maybe not that much since common folks font care about this)
    • hgomersall 2y ago
      They haven't given anything. We've moved from a government of looney idealogues to a government of insecurity. Labours' actions can be pretty well understood as a need to be taken seriously by the Very Serious People, be that finance, big tech or the security services.
    • bloqs 2y ago
      Always always always assume stupidity over villany.
    • crimsoneer 2y ago
      There's really no need to be conspiratorial about this. Law enforcement has always had a way of reading your communications, and the Uk government believes that shouldn't stop because e2e is becoming the default. Nobody is blackmailing them.
• kypro 2y ago
  It's not that they don't understand it's that they don't care. The UK doesn't really respect the right to privacy generally. Walk down any street in the UK you see multiple CCTV cams watching you. Buy something at the supermarket and you'll have at least 1 or 2 facial recognition cams put in your face. The police routinely deploy facial recognition software on random passers by in the street and monitor our social media posts to ensure no one is saying anything hurtful. On entering the UK border police can detain you without grounds and force you to answer their questions (you have no right to silence). They can also force you to provide them with access to your personal devices and if you don't cooperate you'll be charged as a terrorist. They can (and do) legally use this power for arbitrary reasons all the time. In light of this the idea that the UK would be concerned that someone's iPhone data isn't kept completely private is absurd. This just isn't a concern of the UK state. The concern is that people currently have too much privacy and we cannot be trusted with that.
  • kurthr 2y ago
    It's not the right to privacy, it's the manipulation and subjugation of your own state by what is ostensibly a foreign adversary. Or maybe they're all traitors, who knows.
    • kypro 2y ago
      This might be controversial, but as a Brit I fear surveillance of the British government far more than a foreign adversary like China. I totally understand why from a national security perspective we don't want that, but in the UK people get arrested for saying mean things about the government, footballers and Meghan Markle. China doesn't pose a direct threat to my safety or the safety of my love ones, but the government does. The right to privacy is important because it protects individuals from unfair treatment from all governments. This obviously means that some crimes are harder to solve and in grant that in some cases there is a line to draw. However, in this case the reasoning for eroding privacy doesn't seem legitimate. For example, the protect the children justification for this is literally absurd when you consider over the last few decades tens of thousands of British children have been groomed and raped in the open and while the police was fully aware. This just wouldn't be the priority if you were genuinely concerned about sexual crimes against children.