UK spy bill will force tech firms to disclose future products before launch

http://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-spy-bill-will-force-tech-firms-to-disclose-future-products-before-launch/

by maze-le • 10 years ago

158 75 10 years ago

deepnet• 10 years ago

Red tape, costly, lengthy & opaque approvals process - exactly what the UK tech industry needs to flourish. /s

The chilling effect could be that compliant companies are fast tracked, while those who insist on due process get quagmired.

chris_wot4• 10 years ago

Say goodbye to the tech industry in the UK!

fit2rule5• 10 years ago

Indeed. Won't be buying British at all from now on. In fact, I'm putting UK on my blacklist of places to go, and places to buy from/invest in.

Sorry Brits. You are letting your state fall into absolutel disaster. I'm putting you in the same bag as North Korea, now - your state cannot be trusted one bit.

stuaxo2• 10 years ago

I'm curious where you are based, as someone in the UK, I'm not keen on going to the US because of the crazy border controls amongst other things.

chris_wot4• 10 years ago

That might be going a bit far. I was more saying that if firms have to go through all that red tape then there is just no way that they will be able to compete against countries that have technology bases that don't have this level of red tape.

You'll not be buying tech invented in the UK because there won't be much if any new tech developed in the UK!

suvelx• 10 years ago

So what about them ARM cpus then?

7952• 10 years ago

Could this be applied to browsers I wonder?

tempodox3• 10 years ago

Absolutely. The fact that it's a crackbrained idea won't stop law makers. To quote a sentence I once heard: “It's the law, reason doesn't enter into it”. You had better not get caught using the wrong browser in the U.K.!

coldcode• 10 years ago

Simply mandate IE6 for everyone. Easy to hack, no longer supported so hacks keep working, no need to announce new versions, problem solved.

tankenmate• 10 years ago

And what about open source software that anyone can download from the internet? How does Govt UK intend to manage / police that?

elcct• 10 years ago

They will appoint Internet Police

inquisitiveio• 10 years ago

It does make you wonder who advisors these law makers because it comes across as if they don't even have a basic understand how tech works.

tempodox3• 10 years ago

Logically, there has to follow a law that forbids using hardware, software, or anything else for that matter, that wasn't built in accordance to the new rules. So go dig up grandpa's type writer and slide rule...

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

You kid, but the kremlin went back to purely mechanical typewriters a few years ago for this precise reason - and even they can be bugged.

antihero2• 10 years ago

Well they'll require Apple/other device manufacturers to use trusted computing so only government authorised software can run on them, of course.

stuaxo2• 10 years ago

FFS, are they just trying to kill off the tech industry in the UK?

JustSomeNobody2• 10 years ago

And the US...

"Any company with operations in the UK -- including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, which have submitted written evidence calling on the British lawmakers to revise the bill -- would have to comply with the rules."

czechdeveloper• 10 years ago

This will not kill US tech companies. Maybe their UK market.

I'd love to see those companies just leave UK ale let them have what they asked for.

Spearchucker• 10 years ago

Doubt they even see it that way. And the industry won't be killed. Like with drugs, it will simply be driven underground. An astute startup will register an offshore company and develop locally. And then there's the rise of remote working which makes staying legal even easier.

CommanderData• 10 years ago

Don't forget this from 2 months ago.. UK surveillance powers bill could force startups to bake in backdoors

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11265666

These laws WILL affect UK tech start-ups if privacy has anything to do with their business model.

I have said so in the past, don't register your tech startups in the UK. Boycott is sometimes an effective means for change. UK law makers know this could back-fire, they are taking a gamble they have already lost.

JustSomeNobody2• 10 years ago

Between the US and the UK, this is just getting comical.

How do these governments not see that the people who would do harm to us will get their encrypted tech from somewhere else and bring it with them.

Just adds full to the fire that this has nothing to do with protecting citizens.

beedogs• 10 years ago

In the end, it's about controlling citizens and predicting their behaviour, not protecting them.

jackgavigan• 10 years ago

Worth remembering that this has effectively been in place for some time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6893947

15thandwhatever• 10 years ago

In the US, we've had this[1] in place for some time on products for phone networks.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

tempodox3• 10 years ago

We're really living in the age of overreaching surveillance. Law makers seem rabid and unable to consider reason: Just because surveillance is possible, it also has to be taken to the very top. They cover their asses while ruining everything else in the process.

kempe• 10 years ago

Sounds like 1984 coming closer and closer each day.

I wonder however about the negative consequences to the tech industry, why would a company purchase a service they can not trust anymore due to weak encryption?

They government probably also will miss their target completely as criminals/ terrorists etc will simply choose other products and services.

PJDK• 10 years ago

There's a lot of comments in this thread throwing up their hands about this. That's the attitude that will let this sort of thing happen.

Bills are published like this well ahead of them even being debated so that interested parties can comment.

There's a major faction within the Conservative party that is pro privacy (e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7450627.stm), and it's also pro business. This is anti privacy and anti business. It's a winnable fight, but not if you give up at the first suggestion of a thing you don't like.

Write to MPs, say "As CEO of awesome corp I would seriously consider relocating to Berlin". That sort of thing will get attention.

nunobrito3• 10 years ago

Agreed. Need to exist enough voices to keep the balance.

azazqadir2• 10 years ago

Didn't expect UK to present a bill like this one. Russia or China on the other hand would have made some sense.

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

The big guns are already doing it.

It won't help, because the Home Office is run by paranoid authoritarians and crazies, and they keep trying to pull crap like this no matter who is in power.

The critical question is just how likely is it that the gov will prosecute Apple, Google, or FB for not following the rules.

"Not very", I'd guess.

How likely is the gov to prosecute Tiny Corp Ltd?

"8.1 Small companies (with under 10,000 users) will not be obligated to provide a permanent interception capability, although they may be obligated to give effect to a warrant."

But look at this:

"8.17 A person to whom a technical capability notice is given is under a duty to comply with the notice. In respect of a technical capability notice to give effect to equipment interference or bulk acquisition warrants, the duty to comply with a technical capability notice is enforceable against a person in the UK by civil proceedings by the Secretary of State.

The duty to comply with a technical capability notice to give effect to interception warrants and CD authorisations is enforceable against a person in the UK and a person outside the UK by civil proceedings by the Secretary of State."

That's civil proceedings, not criminal proceedings. So basically the SoS can sue, but not jail anyone.

It's all quite confused, and fundamentally fails to understand the differences between targeted surveillance, bulk surveillance, end-to-end encryption, commercial encryption for (e.g.) secure banking, open source VPNs, and so on.

If you pull apart the language, the mental model is of someone who thinks encryption is like an envelope around a letter. So if you demand a de-enveloping tool from the people who make and sell envelopes you've done your job.

There's a bit more to it, but the legal language doesn't have any insight into that.

kardos• 10 years ago

It won't help, because the Home Office is run by paranoid authoritarians and crazies, and they keep trying to pull crap like this no matter who is in power.

And forever pushing back is the price of freedom. OP is right, you have to keep telling them no.

secfirstmd9• 10 years ago

People of Ireland speaking here:

-Not a massive fan of the British surveillance state?

-Want to stay in the EU?

-Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%?

-Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment?

-Want (relatively incompetent) pro-business government to butt out of your companies launch plans?

Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com

This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)

jsingleton2• 10 years ago

I sometimes wonder why Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook etc. don't have data centres in the UK but many are in Ireland.

flashm2• 10 years ago

Yes please, where can I sign up?

Seriously though, I live in Berkshire, and am looking for decent places to move to. The grass is definitely always greener! :)

I have even begun to look at some roles in SF.

_b8r0• 10 years ago

I've started putting my affairs in order in preparation to move to Ireland should Brexit actually happen. There will be massive upheaval in the UK if it goes ahead, and I'm not sure sticking around would be my preferred option.

jsingleton2• 10 years ago

I wonder how different things would be if Davis had won the Conservative party leadership. Probably as hard to tell as what might have happened if Gore had kept his presidential win.

Edit: Totally agree that if you want to help fight this then write to your MP and consider donating towards a publicity campaign by https://www.dontspyonus.org.uk.

secfirstmd9• 10 years ago

I used to work in Westminster and Davis was one of the only Conservatives who was pro-privacy. Partly because he a) Had a military background so wasn't intimidated by people in uniform recommending things to him. He was aware as anyone with military service of the crap that the military often push. b)He had spent time over seeing parts of the intelligence budget, so was very sceptical of the things they were pushing and their effectiveness.

knorker• 10 years ago

So it's prior restraint?

nunobrito3• 10 years ago

From today's Dilbert: http://assets.amuniversal.com/721c8690d8e901334e5c005056a954...

stegosaurus• 10 years ago

Do we just end up in a state where the idea of a 'firm' has to radically change?

It feels like the ultimate endgame of all of this is either that the technology industry just freezes (because innovation is killed by bureaucracy), or that we end up in some cryptopunk space in which the only interesting stuff happens over Tor/Freenet/whatever else.

And of course, the latter becomes harder every day with hardware backdoors.

I think that fundamentally the idea of the state regulating commerce is flawed.

Individuals want to be able to make choices, but at the moment they can't because economics forces their hand. Apart from a few radicals, everyone has to use a car, has to use the subway with its' smart card, has to use their mobile phone for business, because otherwise society doesn't have a role for you any more.

Can UBI help here? Or are we really just doomed to basically disable the Internet we created because it's too powerful?

antihero2• 10 years ago

Idea: Create a company who's explicit purpose is to create and submit billions of iterations of the same software for their auditing purposes which horrifically unreadable/obfuscated code that completely swamps whatever agency is responsible for the process, and effectively DoSes them until literally nobody can release software at all.

fsloth2• 10 years ago

And I thought the character of 'C' in the Spectre(2015 film) was a bit over the top. How silly I was, the fact that it culminated only on one character was actually a massive understatement

fsloth2• 10 years ago

So the UK intelligence wants the capability provided by the Echelon surveillance network back?

It's actually not as chilling in the sense that this would be nothing new - rather, I'm sure the spooks are grieving the fact that people are moving to secure technologies.

I'm pretty sure that before the internet no envelope or phone call was inaccessible.

willow9886• 10 years ago

This is quickly shaping up to be another "War on Drugs"... It's hard to determine whether UK lawmakers actually think bills like this will make them more secure, or if it's just one incremental move in a long term strategy to remove any assurance of privacy.

Either way the UK gov is looking highly incompetent.

jamedjo• 10 years ago

First thought was that people would protest this by flooding the relevant department with product updates, maybe triggered on each commit. Then I noticed the caveats:

- Updates don't count: only significantly large changes need disclosing.

- Can't be forced on companies with fewer than 10,000 users. Maybe commercially led open source products could claim that users are spread across many forks each with fewer users.

- New product disclosures only applies to communications companies already forced to backdoor existing products. Maybe we'll see companies akin to Alphabet evading the need to backdoor new products by forming separate companies.

Overall I'm more worried by the requirement to backdoor communications than having to disclose new services. Security shouldn't be sacrificed. Additionally the gagging order would prevent companies from being honest with their users as well as making it harder for them to fight against it.

UK spy bill will force tech firms to disclose future products before launch

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