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Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach
- Aeolun 10mo agoHah, I’m now a hostile actor!
- psychoslave 10mo agoWelcome on the world stage. There is not any actor here that can't be framed hostile, it's all about how the scene highlight into nice or ugly way. Hope you'll enjoy the play.
- pera 10mo agoMeanwhile MI6 offers an onion service for secure communications: mi6govukbfxe5pzxqw3otzd2t4nhi7v6x4dljwba3jmsczozcolx2vqd.onion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYB129pGq0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYB129pGq0k
- N_Lens 10mo agoI wonder how the public in the UK feels about their country quickly devolving into an oversurveilled state.
- cluckindan 10mo agoRemember, remember, the fifth of November…
- antonvs 10mo agoYou should mention the year. That incident was four hundred and twenty years ago. There was no Great Britain, no United Kingdom. Scotland was an independent country. The UK today is not the same place, not in the slightest.
- moi2388 10mo ago420? Perhaps it’s time to blaze it..
- cluckindan 10mo agoWdym, the movie came out in 2005
- blitzar 10mo ago> quickly devolving into an oversurveilled state The UK has been heavily surveilled for several decades, if anything the pace has slowed especially in comparison to the modern US network of CCTV cameras on every doorstep available to the state and "private" survillence apparatus that has taken over.
- rijoja 10mo agoDon't ask them on the internet because they'll be put in prison if they complain online!!!
- amelius 10mo agoThere are a bunch of things the public doesn't seem to care about until it is too late.
- peterspath 10mo ago1984 is used as a manual
- miroljub 10mo agoI wish they used Machiavelli's Prince as a handbook.
- fat-soyboy 10mo ago[dead]
- TacticalCoder 10mo agoIntentions of votes for Labour went from 34% in 2019 to 17% or something now. While Reform UK is gaining voters left and right. But it seems mostly due to a revolt against the "two tier Kharmer" policy of the current government: where normal people are jailed for online posts while others are free to break a female policer's nose at the airport and then be let to walk free by the judge and while others also get to rape hundreds of girls on an industrial scale and enjoy a nation-wide cover-up attempt (thankfully foiled) by the state...
- drumhead 10mo agoLabour have dropped to 17% because their left wing has moved to the greens, Libdems and nationalists. Reform support has stopped growing at 25% and that's mainly Tories moving across. The only people that harp on about "two tier Keir" are the extreme right wing loonies.
- mathw 10mo agoAbsolutely. Labour betrayed their core voters, who are looking for something else, but won't touch Reform UK because they're even more disgusting than the current right-wing Labour-in-name-only government.
- 46996435797643 10mo agoNo true scotsman
- drumhead 10mo agoIt's always been like this. From the official secrets act where they could jail you just for revealing the date of the office Christmas party to D notices suppressing newspapers from publish stories the government thought were to sensitive. MI5 and MI6 acting totally without accountability, with the government not even acknowledging their existence. If anything, things have started to get more transparent now, with a freedom of information act, actual oversight and accountability for the intelligence services and less government. But the default position of the UK government has always been secrecy and the right to do what they want to protect the country.
- hirako2000 10mo agoTo protect the country from a government change?
- rightbyte 10mo ago> But the default position of the UK government has always been secrecy and the right to do what they want to protect the country. Usually those types are the prime threat to the country.
- zimpenfish 10mo agoDevolving? Already there. Mostly the public are ok with it because they're ignorant of the facts, believing whatever they read on Facebook, see on GB news[1], etc. and are happy with "if you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to be afraid of?"[0] By the time the leopards eat their faces, it's too late. [0] Much like the people who voted for Trump and are now slated for deportation because 15 years ago they cashed a check that bounced, etc. [1] Also the BBC has some blame here because if they weren't platforming Farage for years when it was unnecessary, it's conceivable that he wouldn't/couldn't have forced first the Tories and now Labour into their hard-right turns and we'd all be better off.
- graemep 10mo ago> Also the BBC has some blame here because if they weren't platforming Farage for years Farage is one of the few politicians who has opposed these laws. He wants to repeal the Online Safety Act.
- random9749832 10mo agolol, Farage has already backtracked on tax cuts and his stance on deportations. He is a wet noodle and an opportunist.
- zimpenfish 10mo ago> Farage is one of the few politicians who has opposed these laws. Farage is in the same position as the Tories currently - he can say whatever he wants because he's not in power and has no responsibility to anyone. I would be wholly unsurprised that if Reform won a GE and Farage became PM, anything he said before that would be unceremoniously dropped (see: almost every politician who gains power) and, frankly, Farage goes full Trump and, e.g., applies the OSA to censoring everyone he disagrees with.
- logicchains 10mo agoOne of the original motivations for the First Amendment was the UK's surveillance and censorship of American mail; the UK has been a surveillance state for a very long time.
- antonvs 10mo agoI was amused by the UK TV show Spooks (aka MI5), from the early 2000s - it showed an organization with a ridiculous amount of surveillance and other powers, acting in blatantly partisan ways, but it tried very hard to make that all seem like a good thing. The underlying argument was essentially the same one used in the US: almost anything is justified if it helps prevent anything they subjectively determine as “terrorism”.
- basisword 10mo agoFree speech but a president that can deploy the military anywhere in American for no reason. Free speech but an unthinkable number of children murdered in schools on a regular basis for decades. Free speech but bankruptcy if you get cancer. I think I'm alright with the surveillance.
- globular-toast 10mo agoI also can't help thinking people living in the UK now are descended from people who didn't leave for the colonies, or were too rich to need to. Far too many of us just can't be bothered.
- Silhouette 10mo agoIf anyone wants an honest answer to that question it is fairly simple. Polling has suggested - very consistently and over a long period of time - that a majority of the British public (though often a fairly slim majority) tend to support authoritarian interventions by our governments in the name of protecting the public. Most of the time our governments and government agencies do appear to use such powers responsibly and so they tend to maintain that public trust. There has always been a significant minority who were more cautious on civil liberties grounds and there has always been an issue that the supportive majority aren't always very well informed about what could happen if the laws were applied more strongly in practice. As a personal observation - I think this might start to change over the next few years and the current positions of MPs and government might start to look very out of touch. We are seeing the fall of our long-standing "big" political parties and the rise of a very right wing populist party that is increasingly looking like it might actually win significant power at the next general election. I think awareness of the potential for abuse by the next people to run the government and agencies is growing among the general public. Whether it grows enough to stop some of these policies from becoming law in the near future is a different question of course.
- sys_64738 10mo agoThe Brits are sheeple and too cowardly to push back. They are the ultimate nanny state.
- random9749832 10mo agoHave you spoke to people in the UK? It is a country of complainers but people who can't really 'be asked' to do anything.
- pjc50 10mo agoThe public, or at least the section that buys newspapers and gets onto the Question Time audience, seem to be in favor of this. Like a lot of people, they will vote in favor of repression so long as they think it's being done to someone else. Especially immigrants. You can even see it in the comments here. "Tough on crime" and "tough on terrorism" are magic bullets for winning authoritarian support. That's how people are being persuaded that ECHR is a bad thing.
- asdfdfd 10mo ago[flagged]
- globular-toast 10mo agoMy impression is if you talk about privacy or rights or anything like that you are immediately labelled a weirdo. Nobody wants to hear about it.
- OutOfHere 10mo agoUK has entirely gone off the deep end. The value they place on free speech is nearly zero. It may soon not be safe for authors of any privacy or encryption software to visit it or live in it. The way to fight this is to make and use so much encryption software that no private communications or storage stay unencrypted or non-private.
- ablation 10mo agoThe UK is just saying the quiet part out loud. If you look at the EARN IT Act in the US or the "Chat Control" proposals in the EU, then the trajectory is identical. The UK is providing the "democratic" precedent that the rest of the Five Eyes will use as leverage. If you think the US isn't eyeing the Online Safety Act as a convenient trial run for overt or covert domestic policy, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. EDIT: You added a lot more after I replied to your post.
- derelicta 10mo agoWesterners never had free speech in the first place. We are free to fight amongst one another, but if we ever act in a manner that endangers the Power that be, you don't live very long.
- kevin061 10mo agoThanks for saying the truth. Free speech is a concept that has been prostituted for political gain, but only for the already powerful. It has never been the case that you could publish the crimes of powerful people and get away with it. And especially now that US has embraced the path of authoritarianism and the government is actively harassing and ridiculing journalists, as well as pulling funding for libraries and schools, a cornerstone of democracy, freedom, and justice. Values the US has abandoned in exchange for oligarchy.
- McDyver 10mo agoIt makes a lot of sense. Whoever wants to continue developing "these apps" will do it privately, and sell the service to those who want to keep doing things in hiding. Well done, watchdog! So again, it just harms the general public, while making it harder to catch criminals.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 10mo agoActually it opens them up to being phished by the government. There have been several high profile cases where because of searching for custom communication services, groups ended up being vulnerable.
- squigz 10mo agoHow many cases have there been of groups successfully finding and use private communication services?
- logicchains 10mo ago>How many cases have there been of groups successfully finding and use private communication services? Probably a lot, given how booming the illegal drug market is. Obviously you don't hear about the successful ones, you only hear about the incompetent ones that get caught.
- moi2388 10mo agoI don’t know, I can’t read their chats..
- kitd 10mo agoIt's simpler than that. OSS strong encryption tools are available than anyone can run on the command line to encrypt their messages, which can then just go as attachments via email, whatsapp, etc. No new developers required. And as you say, the general public have to suffer with weak encryption while those who really want to encrypt do so regardless.
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- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo ago^^; If there was ever a signal ( edit: happy accident ) that it should be done, it is that the government agency thinks it is a bad idea.
- richsouth 10mo agoDevelopers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK. <-- HTTPS does this. What about secure sites like baking sites that encrypt end-to-end? Old farts making laws about things they know nothing about.
- neilalexander 10mo ago> Old farts making laws about things they know nothing about. Who's going to stop them?
- ykonstant 10mo agoYoung poops?
- arccy 10mo agobaking sites, the most secure source of cookies
- SirHumphrey 10mo ago>>> Old farts making laws about things they know nothing about. We should probably stop saying and believing that. This is basically the UK government making a deal to the developers they cannot refuse: cooperate (install backdoors) or get prosecuted. The French tried to do something similar not so long ago. A decade ago politicians genuinely didn’t know much about the internet so most of the laws were terribly ill informed good ideas. The new sweep of internet legislation like chat control, age verification and banning of vpns are much more dangerous because those pushing know exactly what they are doing.
- hs586 10mo agoExactly this. I do not think this is a case of Hanlon's razor. Assuming incompetence or stupidity of the government officials trying to push for is very dangerous. (Great username, btw, SirHumphrey)
- CommanderData 10mo ago
- richsouth 10mo ago"Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK." <-- What about HTTPS, the thing that secures most websites especially banking sites. Old farts making laws about things they know nothing about! FFS
- omnicognate 10mo agoIt sounds like the KC appointed to review it is doing his job, at least.
- flowerthoughts 10mo ago> He warns that developers of apps like Signal and WhatsApp could technically fall within the legal definition of "hostile activity" simply because their technology "make[s] it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications. Sounds like Let's Encrypt would also fall under that. This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the streets they walk on. I walk on them too. And don't use CP as a catch-all argument to insert backdoors. Their big problem here is that previously, it was hard to find people with the same opinion as you. If you couldn't find someone in the same village who wanted to start a rebellion, it probably wouldn't happen. Today, someone can post a Telegram group message and make thousands of people rally to a town square. I see the dangers, and I see why governments think they are doing this to protect the people. No one wants civil war. That is still not a strong enough reason to call road construction a hostile activity. I'm back in Sweden after 12 years abroad. Time to read up on which parties are sane and which aren't when it comes to technical infrastructure.
- mosura 10mo ago> This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the streets they walk on. That would be against everything european governments stand for.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- p0pularopinion 10mo ago> That would be against everything european governments stand for. I really struggle to understand why the hell this is always only applied to european governments? The idea to take 1984 as a book of requirements seems to extend *far* beyond europe.
- nisegami 10mo agoThere's societal memory of monarchies and kings that held a lot of power that still impacts things to this day, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes consciously.
- omnicognate 10mo agoThis is a terrible headline, despite being the original. The "watchdog" is a KC (senior barrister) officially appointed to review the legislation. He's warning that this could be considered hostile activity under the act, which would be a bad thing. In other words, he's criticising the act for being overly broad, a view that most on HN agree with, and his criticisms of it presumably carry some weight, given his official role. As usual, this has provoked a load of ill-informed knee-jerk rants about the UK government from people who didn't read past the headline. This act is an absolute stinker, but let's maybe criticise what's actually happening rather than some imagined cartoon variant of it.
- eterm 10mo agoOnce again, the transparency we do have in the UK is weaponised against it. You see this with "OMG knife-crime is out of control in London" type stories that the US love to run. It's because we were : 1. a decade or more ahead of the rest of the world in actually collecting knife-crime stats 2. Include in those stats people who were simply carrying the kind of knife that wouldn't even get you noticed elsewhere, let alone recorded in the stats. The actual rate of stabbings per capita is higher in the USA than the UK. And that's even without considering that the weapon of choice in the USA is the firearm. But you wouldn't beleive it from the headlines. Back to this story, here we have legislators doing their job of scrutinising, and their open scrutiny is held up against the country. We could instead have a system where people vote on bills without knowing their contents like the US does.
- AlexandrB 10mo ago> The actual rate of stabbings per capita is higher in the USA than the UK. This fact seems to have no impact on UK politicians who now want to try to ban knives with pointy tips: https://theconversation.com/why-stopping-knife-crime-needs-to-start-in-the-kitchen-246258 https://theconversation.com/why-stopping-knife-crime-needs-t... In general, this approach to crime is ridiculous and has no rational end-point.
- joe463369 10mo ago
- LunicLynx 10mo agoI think there is a point to this. I’m not saying I’m a fan. But the reality is that it is too simple to communicate secretly, and the government has an interest in protecting its citizens. This is true in many aspects. (Health, technology, electronics, traffic) Btw. The https communication comparison does not hold, there is always a third party that can read what you say. E2E chats are effectively communication where evidence is instantly destroyed. Want to have a private communication, I think offline is the right approach. I agree that it sucks, but it’s probably not about you. It’s about nefarious people that use this as an uber advantage.
- baq 10mo agothe problem with current government protecting its citizens by collecting their private communications is the next government having access to this sensitive data.
- miroljub 10mo agoYep, the next government may be evil tyranny, but it's beyond my comprehension why would I have to trust current or any government with the data I'm sure they'll abuse the moment they have it.
- nisegami 10mo ago>Btw. The https communication comparison does not hold, there is always a third party that can read what you say. E2E chats are effectively communication where evidence is instantly destroyed. If I use a third party CA this is correct. But what third party can read communications over HTTPS between a client and a server I control with a self signed SSL cert?
- oasisaimlessly 10mo agoNot even correct for a third party CA (unless they MITM you).
- sgtrx 10mo agoThis isn't correct with 3rd party CA's with modern TLS either. TLSv1.2 has Perfect Forward Secrecy with DHE and ECDHE key exchanges and in TLSv1.3 PFS is mandatory. A compromised root CA or even leaf certificate these days protects you from a man-in-the-middle and not a whole lot else - the certificate private key is never used for session key derivation and the keys themselves are ephemeral and never sent over the wire so even intercepting the key exchange doesn't allow decryption of the stream.
- amelius 10mo agoSoon in the UK: "That photo you took looks too noisy. You could be hiding data in it!"
- bilekas 10mo agoThis was my first exact thought.. "That payload that went over the wire looks like gibberish, send in the SWAT team". These arguments are so ridiculous. Privacy is now a weapon of terror apparently.
- fennecfoxy 10mo agoLmao next-gen noiseless image sensors developed in response to UK gov's snooping. Just kidding, I'm well aware that we'll likely never escape photon/shot noise. :(
- strangescript 10mo agoAI can make you a basic signal for whatever group you want with zero oversight now anyway. The days of trying to proxy anti-encryption laws so you can spy on your people are numbered.
- jonapro 10mo agoNot unlike in Canada right now. The bill is stage 2 but proceeding. https://www.globalencryption.org/2025/09/open-letter-bill-c-2-strong-borders-act/ https://www.globalencryption.org/2025/09/open-letter-bill-c-...
- iamnothere 10mo agoThis needs more attention due to the potential impact on OpenBSD and OpenSSH (both Canadian).
- anthk 10mo agoEchelon, Five Eyes. If you feel safe because of "Muricah", then you know nothing. Just look at the Tempest for Eliza project. And current snoopers are even more effective than that.
- general1465 10mo agoWe are just one step from banning HTTPS in UK, aren't we?
- bilekas 10mo agoNo need really, your ISP are not going to go to bat for your privacy.
- blitzar 10mo agoUK government departments already have direct access to ISP logs (Investigatory Powers Act 2016).
- bilekas 10mo agoExactly my point. They don't need to 'ban' https
- pona-a 10mo agoDo you understand what transit encryption is? The point of TLS is the ISP can't inspect the traffic. They can of course refuse to carry all encrypted traffic, but 1) stenography exists, so have fun writing DPI filters to detect suspicious noise in the note velocities of MIDI data; 2) turns out the free market didn't adopt HTTPS just to hide drug dealers -- I don't know if you heard, but there's this itty bitty thing called e-commerce, and unless you want people's credit card numbers flying in cleartext left right and center, it is better the padlook stays on. Now what they can do is mandate their own root CA be installed on all the devices in the country, a tactic actually adopted by real regimes like Russia and Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, so far all they could do is beg and plead over SMS and refuse connections to the online government portal without the CA, while Mozilla and even Google blacklisted their certs. If certificate transparency becomes universal, now the browser won't even connect until the feds politely check their little spy op into an immutable ledger. So the only remaining point of failure is the browser itself, but by that point it might as well send a clear copy on its own.
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- engcoach 10mo agoFuck the government
- pfortuny 10mo ago"Claims" in the title is misleading. He (It/They, I guess it is an organism, not a single person) is _warning_ about that, same as this page always does. So, it is not an infamous claim, it is a warning to all affected parties (i.e. also the government).
- mihaaly 10mo agoYou, UK regulators and law enforcement, shall learn first how to do your frickin job! Intruding everyone's privacy is not that! Should everyone hand in their full recording of private conversations and full track of movements per month so you can filter out those breaking the law and claim you did your job?! NO! Or better yet, should everyone spend two weeks in a high-security jail every three years, just so you can claim that, statistically speaking, crimes were punished? So your life can be easy, you can kick back, and collect paychecks? You'd like that, wouldn't you?! Maybe farmers can ask people making food for themselves but still collecting money for it, shouldn't they? If you must intrude the privacy of all people then you are just a buch of incompetent idiots without a clue how to chase the actual criminals instead of harassing honest people! Exposing everyone to bad actors. Which is a crime on its own, by the way! If you are unable to do without privacy violations for everyone then get a job you are able to carry out! Walls, locks, gates, and all such are made for a purpose: to protect people. Don't break them!
- vintermann 10mo agoInteresting how the term "watchdog" has been appropriated to mean an organization keeping watch not on the powerful, but on everyone else.
- throawayonthe 10mo agoin this case it seems to be the former
- lordfarquad 10mo agoThe authorities here (UK resident) are already pushing hard for as much authoritarianism as they can get. They are also increasing prison capacity and the two tier system is a genuine thing with public services collapsing. Police militarization, drones, army unit investigating private civilians, digital powers widening... I am more scared of the government than I am of local paramilitary forces at this point. It may be enough to swing my vote towards Irish unity given the topic will be forced within my life time.
- CommanderData 10mo agoRemoval of Jury service for certain crimes says it all, seeing this happen in the wake of Palestine Action is considerably disturbing, if I were a conspiracy nut I'd argue these things are being done to please Israel.
- hexbin010 10mo ago> Removal of Jury service for certain crimes says it all Point of order: the concept already existed, they just want to expand it, for more crimes (the extent of which I'm unsure of).
- DaSHacka 10mo ago> if I were a conspiracy nut I'd argue these things are being done to please Israel. Or just someone who has at least 100 IQ
- random9749832 10mo agoIrish unity will never happen. Not even sure where that came from. People can make random accounts named after Shrek making weird claims that immediately gets upvoted. The mass astroturfing you see everywhere on the internet now has made it shit.
- DaSHacka 10mo ago"astroturfing is when a lot of people disagree with me"
- dlahoda 10mo agoanybody can buy esim on street(ask llm how to do so) for cash or crypto. anybody can randomly talk on random webrtc domain or use random delta chat email to text. if somebody really has high income(and high risk) illegal scheme he will not use signal for very bad things. more, llm can tell exactly do things outlined above. so chat control is for small(small income) crime and control of ordinary citizens behave well. in this sence it will serve its purpose. so what is purpose going for signal developers? why not they try to do same with webrtc standard and browsers and llms?
- hexbin010 10mo ago> anybody can buy esim on street(ask llm how to do so) You can also get a physical SIM from tons of shops (corner shops, supermarkets etc) with no ID and cash lol
- CommanderData 10mo agoThis government has to be stopped and any other governments that are 'hostile' to it's citizens. Vote them out at the very least.
- nephihaha 10mo agoAnd replace them with what? Tories who do the exact same and hang out at Davos etc with them? The Lib Dems who are mostly interested in pavement politics and have no backbones. The Greens who back more control taken away from the public? Reform who also seem to want more government powers in certain places? The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parties who can never get enough seats to outvote this?
- callamdelaney 10mo agoAnd the government defrauding the English of their own homeland while pumping in misinformation by the petabyte while simultaneously calling everything else misinformation isn't hostile activity?
- jokoon 10mo agoIf a government is legitimately elected, and respects due process, I don't see why people would want to hide from the government. There are very few situations where a journalist would need to hide himself from a legitimate government who respects due process. With the Trump administration, in China, Russia, yes of course. Those apps do matter. Conventional apps are probably giving data to abusive governments if their laws require it. With criminals using those apps to not get caught in those legitimate due process countries, I don't really know if those apps are worth using it they help criminals. I agree that I don't want to give my data to big companies or for ads. But I trust a legitimate government and due process.
- squigz 10mo agoThe issue is what happens when you no longer trust your government
- nephihaha 10mo agoWhat is a legitimate government? Just because a group gets most votes doesn't mean it should be able to do what it wants and go back on what it promised. Starmer's government is the least popular in living memory.
- nirui 10mo ago> Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK. So say if my UK friend connected directly to my PC with SSH/RDP, both uses end-to-end encrypted link, to chat with me using `wall`, `write` or Windows Task Manager, then all of sudden this is a hostile and Mr Big Ben will just launch laser at me to burn me to death. Wow, this is just messed up. Someone should check the cognitive of those lawmakers, because these guys are clearly not good at their jobs. If such they failed to understand such simple concept, how can they understand much much more complex construct such as society?
- sneak 10mo ago> So say if my UK friend connected directly to my PC with SSH/RDP, both uses end-to-end encrypted link, to chat with me using `wall`, `write` or Windows Task Manager, then all of sudden this is a hostile and Mr Big Ben will just launch laser at me to burn me to death. Wow, this is just messed up. No, because nobody is using those systems to communicate at scale to try to destabilize a government. Quantity has a quality all its own.
- JoshTriplett 10mo ago> destabilize a government Governments often equate any opposition to "destabilizing"; don't let them. Yes, there are real information-warfare efforts in the world to destabilize governments and societies. There are also far more people who are trying to organize, and rally, and communicate about issues they care about.
- immibis 10mo agoAt the same time, intentional government destabilization - usually by governments of rival countries - is real and shouldn't be ignored. Two conflicting problems can be true at once, and require careful balancing.
- joe463369 10mo agoPlease read the report linked in the article. This in not a policy announcement. This a report from a government-appointed official illustrating that there is a theoretical possibility that the current legalisation may be interpreted in a way they didn't intend.
- stalfosknight 10mo agoWhat the fuck is the UK's problem? In fact, what the fuck is wrong with Europe in general when it comes to freedom of expression today?
- trolleski 10mo agoThis was easy to predict. It also shows how backwards are the UK security bureaucracy as you can simply clone Signal and tweak it, and deploy your own blend. Also, perhaps an LLM can do it as well, what if the prompt is "keep me safe from a totalitarian government"?
- lunias 10mo agoAbsolutely sick and tired of what I call "minority report" laws where you didn't cause any harm, but you are flagged and penalized for having had the potential to cause harm. Illegal is illegal, you don't need to make precursors illegal.
- sneak 10mo agoStrong encryption is necessarily at odds with the state. It's somewhat crazy that states allowed private citizens to use it freely as long as they did.
- Ylpertnodi 10mo agoAnd yet they still allow snail mail.
- Havoc 10mo agoUK gov seems intent to establish a surveillance state :(
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- zkmon 10mo agoIt's not technology. It's negotiation between people and state. Having a state requires people to forego something and contribute something. More stronger the state you want, more you need to give up. It's about your needs and making a deal.
- throw7 10mo agoThe encryption debate is the same as the gun debate. The tools are politicized because it's the easy thing for lawmakers to make it look like they're taking action. As the report warns, the deployed laws have negative consequences. Outlaw all guns and make end-to-end encryption illegal doesn't stop GRU dropping novichok perfume bottles around england.
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- ErroneousBosh 10mo ago> Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation and Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation Right-wing extremist and likely Russian asset.
- varispeed 10mo agoWhen government is corrupt, any activity that makes it easy for citizens to protect themselves can be described as hostile. This is just a symptom of security services not doing the job tax payers pay them to do. Like when foreign asset managers can influence government to create policies nobody voted for and make it the most important thing on the agenda? No a single arrest? We are entering banana republic territory.
- fennecfoxy 10mo agoI know this is about UK (where I am a foreigner living for almost a decade). But why are pretty much all governments universally inept? It's not only the UK but US gov has also pushed for this and plenty of other stupendously stupid ideas or decisions - and plenty of other governments (well, all of them) besides. It leads me to believe that our species is incapable of leading itself, that we are incapable of choosing good leaders.
- bschwarz 10mo agoThe skill set required to reach leadership positions does not necessarily match the skill set of a good leader.
- IshKebab 10mo agoWhat makes you think this is ineptitude? They know exactly what they're doing. The mistake HN commenters make is thinking "But TLS is encryption too! They can't ban Signal without also banning TLS!". They absolutely can if they want to.
- fennecfoxy 10mo agoSorry, ineptitude was perhaps the wrong word. But I'm sure people know what I'm getting at.
- ryandrake 10mo agoLook at how these guys are selected: Democracy: Through popularity contests Monarchy: Through birth Other various dictators: Through force/corruption How on earth does anyone expect the best, most competent people for the job to be selected by these methods?
- IAmGraydon 10mo agoThe first one is the best one, but it only works well with an educated population. Unfortunately, many democratic countries have lost that key ingredient.
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- dmitrygr 10mo agoThis was always the end game and all our warnings were ignored. One of those very bittersweet “told you so” moments. Bye bye, Britain.
- ZebusJesus 10mo agoIt is becoming more and more important that people learn to encrypt things locally themselves, its not end-to-end if the users are the ones encrypting and decrypting manually and then sending that message over unencrypted methods to comply with this draconian invasion of privacy. It would probably be a matter of time before they try to make using PGP usage illegal as well but they haven't yet.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- dang 10mo agoThere are quite a few comments below complaining about the headline - happy to change it, but I'm in a meeting trying to figure out more about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301921 for the next bit. Can someone suggest a better title? Better here means "accurate and neutral, and preferably using representative language from the article".
- nightpool 10mo ago"Creating apps like Signal could be considered 'hostile activities' under new Counter-Terrorism and National Security Acts, UK watchdog warns" The language changes here are slight (claims -> warns) and includes more context about the reason this watchdog is speaking out (current debates around the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, new implementation of the National Security Act), using language from the first 4 paragraphs (may be considered, could be considered, stark warning, report warns, etc). You could also leave out the specific names of the acts—they're not super helpful to me as a non-UK news consumer, but I suspect they might be more crucial to someone who's tapped into the UK political news cycle: "Creating apps like Signal could be considered 'hostile activities' under new laws, UK watchdog warns"
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nightpool 10mo agoAlthough I'm not actually sure how much the watchdog is "warning" here, despite the article claiming it is. The language from the report is the following: 6.18. In each of these cases the motive of the app developer/ lobbyist/ journalist may be more sinister than first appears, so permitting an officer to examine whether the individual is a witting or unwitting agent of a foreign state might be described as necessary in the right circumstances. Serious responsibility is placed on police to use the power wisely. The report doesn't make any recommendations or suggest any changes to the law, it seems to consider that it is good that this could be considered Section 3 "hostile activity". This later part about Schedule 3 investigations also makes this clear: The Joint Committee on Human Rights was of the view that there was an even greater risk of arbitrary use of Schedule 3 than of Schedule 7, owing to the broader and more ambiguous definition of “hostile activity” (than of terrorism). I would develop the point further: • For Schedule 7, the examining officer must at least have in mind the possibility that the examined person is morally blameworthy. That arises from the statutory question: whether the individual is a person “…is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism” • By contrast, under Schedule 3 a lawful examination may take place, with all the intrusion and inconvenience attached, of an individual for whom the question of moral fault does not arise at all. 6.22. Having said this, I am not yet able to draw any practical conclusions from this conceptual distinction. Firstly, most examinations are likely to be directed at the issue of witting or witting participation, which incidentally puts a premium on human as well as digital interrogation. Secondly, the possibility that an examinee is in fact entirely innocent also arises under Schedule 7. I will therefore keep under review whether this needs to be reflected in the Code of Practice, but make no recommendation at this stage.
- germandiago 10mo agoI am quite possed with the implementation of social control and restrictions that increasingly look like the only purpose is to keep power tight and half-slaving people. I think we should all massively move to crypto, gold and such things, avoid KYC when possible and show these people that we will not go through their wishes no matter the oppressive laws they try to come up with. They can put a few in jail. But when we are millions, what are they going to do? Being hostile to these agendas is becoming a necessity.
- nephihaha 10mo agoThe current UK government is attacking the vulnerable and clamping down on protest and free expression, increasing mass surveillance and introducing digital ID. It's fast becoming an authoritarian hellhole.
- ursAxZA 10mo agoAfter preserving total surveillance for decades, the UK eventually succeeded: there were no UK citizens left to monitor. — Britain, 2077