The U.K. government is close to eroding encryption worldwide

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/uk-government-very-close-eroding-encryption-worldwide

by pwmtr • 3 years ago

638 392 3 years ago

eff.org

lijok2• 3 years ago

We could outlaw math. Or the police could start doing their job.

ben_w4• 3 years ago

That would require the UK government to fund the police properly. And the courts. And the judiciary. And the prisons.

For a political party that likes the cliché "tough on crime", it's kinda surprising how far on the path to accidental anarchy they are.

hkt• 3 years ago

They're hoping people will start hiring rent-a-cop type security firms for their areas. Not joking.

tremon• 3 years ago

It's the same party that's tough on immigration, yet keeps importing lorry drivers, health workers and building contractors because they apparently can't be found inside the country.

worik5• 3 years ago

kinda surprising how far on the path to accidental anarchy they are.

"Anarchy" is not a synonym for "chaos". It is the opposite.

Triggered am I!

dewclin• 3 years ago

For a political party that likes the cliché "tough on crime"

Labour also likes that cliché too [1].

They're all the same.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/27/labour-evok...

zen_1• 3 years ago

We could outlaw math.

Maybe that's why math education is being sabotaged.

ethanbond• 3 years ago

I think they'd argue that this is them doing their job: trying to negate the advantages that sophisticated criminals have over law enforcement efforts.

Could you elaborate on what you see as "doing their job" in this context?

itsathrowaway56• 3 years ago

Given that we don't catch, deal with appropriately or rehabilitate the majority of the non-sophisticated criminals, I'd suggest we start with that before we decide to start spying on the rest of the population?

Based on how RIPA and it's successors in the UK have suffered from excessive use I doubt that we will be restricting this power to "sophisticated" criminals if it comes to pass.

nitwit0053• 3 years ago

Surely this won't help them with sophisticated criminals, as they'll find some other way to communicate. You can easily build your own end to end encryption method based on things on github.

It might help them with the dumb criminals.

somat• 3 years ago

The cat is already out of the bag, the encryption already exists. This only hurts them who obey the law.

MarcScott• 3 years ago

I wrote this about 6 years ago when the then PM was trying to do the same thing - http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/

endgame• 3 years ago

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...

Australia tried that. This must be resisted wherever it appears.

mytailorisrich2• 3 years ago

The police can do legal wiretaps because it is a tremendous help to get the job done.

That's the problem with e2e encryption: it makes the police's job much, much more difficult.

That's the point. People have to realise that there is a real issue which does not have a simple solution.

Silhouette4• 3 years ago

All protections of civil liberties and rights to due process can make the police's job more difficult - if you consider the police's job to be something like "catching bad guys without regard to any collateral damage that might be caused along the way". But in a free society that's not normally the job we want the police to do.

Of course the trouble in this case is that we either have private, secure communication or we don't. There is no halfway measure available. So both locking the police out of everything and giving them complete access to everything might be simplistic non-solutions to the real issue but they might also be the only options we have on this one so a least-of-evils argument may have to prevail.

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

I've personal experience of police not doing their job properly.

Anything that makes their job more easy will only make them more lazy.

Police work should be hard, because they have to navigate the law if they're to prosecute anyone. Lawyers love laziness, it's sloppy and steps all over lines of technicality.

Also, the legal right to violate citizens rights should never be 'made easier' by any legislation. To be on the end of state-enabled rights violations pretty much entirely ruins any trust one may have in 'the system'. And that trust seems to be increasingly valuable and decreasingly present amongst the Western populace.

matheusmoreira7• 3 years ago

That's the problem with e2e encryption: it makes the police's job much, much more difficult.

So what? It should be difficult. They should have to literally send a guy to follow and literally spy on you if they want to learn a single bit of information about you. Not push a button and have your entire life revealed on their screens.

isaacremuant2• 3 years ago

They already are. They imprison journalists under terrorist acts if they criticise the gov or they come knock on your door if you put mean things on twitter.

But corrupt politicians? That's not a bug, it's a feature.

worik5• 3 years ago

They imprison journalists under terrorist acts if they criticise the gov

Is that fair? The English state is not doing that are they?

Some examples are suitable to back up such a claim.

veltas• 3 years ago

We could outlaw math

'We' don't call it 'math', who's 'we'?

ssl232• 3 years ago

Is this even enforceable? How can the UK government determine whether encrypted traffic going to/from UK IPs emanates from a messaging service as opposed to any other service?

jamesdwilson• 3 years ago

"Who denounced you?" said Winston. "It was my little daughter," said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. "She saw the installed encryption programs, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact, I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway."

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

This becomes a separate problem of against whom they choose to enforce it.

Defending yourself legally, no matter whether there's a lot or a little evidence, is an expensive, stressful, drawn out exercise.

Sometimes the accusation is the punishment.

darkclouds• 3 years ago

Is this even enforceable?

Not really, people have been talking in code for millennia. I wouldnt be surprised if a car company like Mercedes or Volkswagen could use their vehicles like swarm drones, relaying information between them when passing on the road, which could get data out of the UK using the cross channel ferries and eurotunnel.

There's way too much movement of people and stuff inorder to secure anything really. Even the new Apple headset can read the iris of the eye to get subconscious data out of the user when exposed to AV data, and the users wont even know they are giving out this data. Privacy? We dont have any!

Clandestine communications in cyber-denied environments Numbers stations and radio in the 21st century https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18335330.2023.2...

Number Stations https://www.youtube.com/@RingwayManchester

nitwit0053• 3 years ago

Is this even enforceable?

They'll consider it enforced if all the major companies comply.

In terms of actually having the criminals using software that complies with the law, absolutely not. Making your own program that doesn't comply isn't much of a challenge.

api• 3 years ago

To fully implement this would require dismantling vast amounts of software and protocols including VPNs, SSL/TLS, SSH, WebRTC, and loads more. Other countries won't want these protocols weakened just for the UK. It would end with the UK having a "great firewall" and basically its own little Internet with tech-savvy people punching holes in it just like they do in China.

miohtama2• 3 years ago

Hopefully the role of the UK is:

Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

https://despair.com/products/mistakes

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

I think Australia is used as a canary for laws that other 5-eyes countries want to implement.

Australians are pretty darn compliant to bad government because their lives are really quite comfortable either way.

EGreg• 3 years ago

The issue is bigger than just the UK government. Here is the global war on encryption: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en...

jmclnx• 3 years ago

"They" seem to be using the standard play book used by the rich and/or powerful against the will of the people. If you fail, keep trying and trying and trying until they get their way.

Well if the UK and other countries pass this, I guess it is back to gnupg. No way can that be restricted at this point.

kmlx7• 3 years ago

against the will of the people

it is not against the will of the people.

the opposition, NGO’s and the general public are accusing the government of moving too slowly and watering down the law. they want the law strengthened and adopted faster.

stephen_g2• 3 years ago

The Government, Opposition and NGOs don’t necessarily represent the views of the general public. Obviously in a perfect world such a consensus would, but in the real world it’s often not the case unfortunately.

I expect many UK citizens who were given a clear explanation of what the implications of the law was (without revealing which law it is and using its cutesy name) would say they would be opposed to such a hypothetical law, and would then be surprised if you told them you’d just described the “Online Safety” bill - if they knew what it was.

Literally the way these laws get through is because there are enough uninformed and politically non-engaged people that they can slip them by.

vr462• 3 years ago

I honestly hate my current government with all my heart.

Let this series of badly-thought-out bills be destroyed in the courts once the courts find that reality bats last.

There’s probably a clause in there that decrees Pi must be four from now on.

tivert• 3 years ago

Let this series of badly-thought-out bills be destroyed in the courts once the courts find that reality bats last.

How? I thought the UK courts can't override Acts of Parliament, because the courts are subordinate to it (unlike in the US).

LocutusOfBorges• 3 years ago

There’s still the option of appeal to the ECHR, but that’s more or less it - and there’s a quite strong push from the right to leave that as well.

This was absolutely an intended outcome for a lot of the figures responsible for the UK’s exit from the EU - European legislation/institutions were more or less the only real absolute check on the authoritarian tendencies of the British state, given the UK’s insane constitutional structures.

vr462• 3 years ago

IIRC Secondary legislation can be challenged in the courts and this is hopefully where the fight will take place between the well-heeled cat 1 service companies and Uk.gov

Else companies will leave or simply ignore the legislation, e.g. Signal, and the law will quietly become impossible to enforce with a series of arbitrary decisions and fines taking place before the digital economy falls off a cliff.

zabzonk• 3 years ago

the courts in the uk are in the business of interpreting the laws that parliament creates. as these laws are mostly very badly drafted, there is a lot of wiggle-room.

teh_klev2• 3 years ago

I thought the UK courts can't override Acts of Parliament, because the courts are subordinate to it

The UK Courts aren't subordinate to Parliament and can tell the UK government to "go back and think again". For example, the move to export immigrants to Rwanda.

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/rwanda-policy-unlawful-unpacking-the-c...

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

Your 'current' government has been in power for well over 10 years.

teh_klev2• 3 years ago

What do you mean by this non-sequitur?

jbjbjbjb• 3 years ago

It’s not just the current government, the whole of Parliament including the various committees are eager to just go along with the intelligence and security agencies who tell them encryption is bad.

odiroot• 3 years ago

Aren't Labour also in favour of this? So we're screwed anyway.

dheera2• 3 years ago

gives the British government the ability to force backdoors into messaging services

This is NOT enforceable outside the UK any more than Chinese law enforceable outside China. If you are a messaging service, just close all your business entities in the UK and they have no more jurisdiction over you. People in the UK can still use your messaging services unless the UK decides to implement a firewall like China.

which will destroy end-to-end encryption

I don't trust any E2E encryption unless at least the clients are open source. How do I know the NSA hasn't inserted a backdoor into WhatsApp?

And then if the clients are open source, the back doors they insert (via git pull requests?) can be removed.

FpUser• 3 years ago

Or they can be scraping screens so it does not matter whether your encryption is "trusted".

chaxor• 3 years ago

It's much more useful for agencies to backdoor hardware. If Intel chips, the snapdragon line, and AMD chips all have a backdoor allowing root, that's most of the devices out there that wouldn't need to have E2EE broken.

nitwit0053• 3 years ago

I'm curious how many companies will just block the UK rather than comply. It's definitely not going to be zero.

miohtama2• 3 years ago

- Whatsapp (Meta)

- Signal

- Apple

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-ministers-lock-horns-with...

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

WhatsApp requires a phone number, implicitly deanonymizing you. It also lacked e2ee for a long time.

Signal requires a phone number. Use the fork Session that generates anonymous identifiers. https://getsession.org

Apple participated in PRISM and also requires an identifier such as an email address or phone number.

hardlianotion• 3 years ago

Would be amusing if British ministers could no longer use WhatsApp. They seem to be addicted to it.

pauby4• 3 years ago

Meta and Apple will come to and arrangement. Signal will not.

I'm not sure how I feel about any of that.

agilob• 3 years ago

Have they quit Australian market?

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

Do they even have to block UK users?

Can't they just remove any business presence in the country to free themselves from any potential legal troubles?

deno3• 3 years ago

Blocking UK users is removing business presence. How else would you go about it?

jossclimb• 3 years ago

The whole thing will fail once they realise how impossible this is to implement.

djaychela• 3 years ago

I wish that were true, but I doubt it. They'll carry on, as they have in other self-immolating ways.

mdekkers• 3 years ago

The whole thing will fail once they realise how impossible this is to implement.

Uhhm…. Brexit?

These clowns (and not just this specific bunch, the entire UK political class) did Brexit, do you really think a small thing like the feasibility of this law will stop them?

gherkinnn2• 3 years ago

I bet somebody said that very sentence just after the country voted for Brexit. But no. The government handed out shovels and started digging their collective grave at an ever increasing pace.

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

I see GDPR as the same thing. People in Germany getting fined heaps for including google fonts in the websites.

jckahn• 3 years ago

Would this bill affect P2P apps? From the article:

The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force backdoors into messaging services

So it seems like purely P2P communication could still be legally encrypted.

theginger• 3 years ago

The UK Government repeatedly fails to understand that there are no boarders on the internet, and it'd be impossible to impose any without the kind of extreme restrictions of a totalitarian regime.

Any measures without broad international cooperation will push vast number of people towards darker corners of the internet, which will not just end up completely undermining what they are trying to achieve, it will make the problems worse.

Meta alone have the power to make this law a miserable failure. People will want to use WhatsApp, the government themselves use it extensively. If meta refuses there is very little they can do. Facebook can continue to operate without a single person on the ground in UK. It might harm their business in some ways but it's definitely doable. The government might be able to force/convince Apple and Google to take it out their app stores in the UK but such regional restrictions are easily bypassed and WhatsApp is popular enough to make people try it. So that would then normalise the practices such as side loading / jail breaking and avoiding regional restrictions. Cyber criminals would be rubbing their hands at the opportunities this creates and I am sure the peodos and terrorists this is meant to be stopping will jump at the chance to get in on the act.

dheera2• 3 years ago

Even with a totalitarian regime, they cannot stop the rest of the world from using encryption. People can pull their business entities out of the UK and they have no jurisdiction outside their borders.

If I create an E2E messaging app, I don't need to listen to the UK at all. The UK can't tell me what to do any more than China can. China can block my app if they want, but it's on them, not me, to block it. Same goes for the UK. They can set up a firewall too if they want. But I don't need to change my app if I don't set foot in the UK.

account-53• 3 years ago

Yeah the UK doesn't have the clout of the US that does go after app creators in other countries all the time extraditing them to the US etc, or attempting to anyway.

jokethrowaway4• 3 years ago

They certainly can, if they wanted to - or they could block your app and exile you with minimum effort.

Telegram is half banned in Russia.

Of course this doesn't apply to the bad guys: they're already breaking the law, using E2E is a no-brainer for them.

The UK government can't ban math out of existence (even if it looks like they're trying very hard, judging from the quality of their education system) so there will always be encryption.

It's the same with guns: congratulations you've outlawed guns and now only criminals can use them.

ajdude• 3 years ago

The government might be able to force/convince Apple and Google to take it out their app stores in the UK

Apple has even threatened to withdraw their own systems from the UK rather than comply with this.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/20/apple-imessage-facetime-remov...

sneak6• 3 years ago

Unlike in China, where they do presently escrow keys to the government for mass surveillance.

FirmwareBurner3• 3 years ago

The UK Government repeatedly fails to understand that there are no boarders on the internet

Don't know what universe or timeline you're from, but on this earth today, the internet definitely has borders.

That's why we have those EU cookie banners and GDPR consent forms, and why some of my favorite piracy websites are blocked by all ISPs in my country, or why I can't watch Top Gear on BBC's website because I'm not from the UK, or why Facebook had to remove some politically spicy content worldwide because the courts where I live forced them to, etc, etc.

Mainstream web companies have to conform to local laws in each country or they'll get fined or blocked. Sure, there's VPNs to circumvent that, but the days of the lawless and borderless internet are a thing of the past.

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

My choice of interpretation is that those aren't internet borders, they're copyright borders, commercial borders, layers on top of a borderless internet.

This argument tends to break down at The Great Firewall of China, however, due to its thoroughness.

splix• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, we see those EU cookie banners and GDPR forms even if we live and visit a non-EU web site from outside. It doesn't target only the people inside the EU. So for this particular case is has no borders.

momonotoro• 3 years ago

Ever been to China? The internet certainly has borders and boundaries. Sometimes you can sneak across or get a visa, but individual nations make their own rules. Most people either follow them or remain unaware of them, and large multinational companies will typically follow local laws because they are juicy targets.

In the UK, companies which protest this law are threatening to leave the market. That would mean blocking UK users on their properties, not helping them find ways to break the law.

Or, when you say "no boarders," do you mean that the internet is not zoned for residential use? Sorry if I misunderstood.

throw_nbvc1234• 3 years ago

"and it'd be impossible to impose any without the kind of extreme restrictions of a totalitarian regime."

Surely china would fall under that statement from OP's perspective.

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

If the UK implemented something like The Great Firewall of China, it would be a gigantic statement about the country's future ideological direction (arguably started and in line with Brexit), and may actually be enough to cause protests large enough to make a difference.

tjpnz2• 3 years ago

The internet most in China have access to is best viewed as a national intranet.

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

I already block EU countries from my site. Wrote a gem called "GDPR safe" and it returns an http error code 457, if the IP address indicates an EU country.

lvturner2• 3 years ago

The borders and boundaries are bypassed with a roaming SIM card.

BeFlatXIII• 3 years ago

That would mean blocking UK users on their properties, not helping them find ways to break the law.

That's a sad reflection of the tech industry. Too much "we can't make money from them" and too little spitefulness of the sovereignty of foreign governments.

coldtea2• 3 years ago

The UK Government repeatedly fails to understand that there are no boarders on the internet, and it'd be impossible to impose any without the kind of extreme restrictions of a totalitarian regime.

Why would the latter stop them? They have no problem with these.

Any measures without broad international cooperation

Don't worry, other governments are just as shitty and want the same BS.

ccppurcell• 3 years ago

It's Charles II banning coffeehouses all over again.

ethbr03• 3 years ago

The central problem with the UK is that they've never fully embraced, or taken the time to understand, an inherent, universal, unconditional right to freedom of speech by all of their citizens.

Kings respected it... when it was convenient.

And so the democracy they begat also only respects it... when it is convenient.

But freedom of speech when another permits it is no freedom at all, because the right's value increases precisely with its ability to stand up to other, more powerful interests' disagreement with speech.

wesapien4• 3 years ago

It's not impossible. The pandemic showed that you don't need a Hitler or Stalin figure to be ruled with an iron fist. The oligarchy could just make the pro encryption people the new ivermectin.

aaron_m043• 3 years ago

The oligarchy could just make the pro encryption people the new ivermectin.

Can you elaborate?

matheusmoreira7• 3 years ago

The international network we used to know has been destroyed. It is fracturing into smaller regional networks with heavy filtering at the borders as countries seek to impose their little laws on it.

I'm glad I was able to experience the true internet while it lasted. Truly a wonder of this world.

ethbr03• 3 years ago

Encryption respects no authority...

... which is why they continue to come for encryption.

hkon• 3 years ago

I think it's dangerous to assume they fail to understand. These are smart people with good advisors. They just want to do it anyway. Which puts them in the category of evil.

Who would you rather be in the public eye, evil or stupid?

kmlx7• 3 years ago

They just want to do it anyway.

some background here.

the opposition in the UK is accusing the government of dragging their feet over this law, and are pushing them to adopt it sooner. they are also criticising the government for watering it down.

various NGOs are also attacking the government for watering it down and not moving as fast as possible.

basically the whole political spectrum is not only for this law, but wants it strengthened even further. there are also calls from the public for the government to go even further.

this is why there is no real backlash against this law. everyone no only wants it, but wants it to go a lot further than what the government has proposed.

jen205• 3 years ago

These are smart people

They really are not. The current crop of UK politicians of all stripes are thick as they come - intellectual lightweights who can bullshit their way through a media appearance thanks only to an abject lack of shame. No one can look at people like Mark François, Liz Truss or Dianne Abbott (just to take three) and think “ah, there’s someone playing dumb for the camera”!

Unfortunately, the current crop of journalists are largely ineffective if not broadly enabling if this kind of behaviour, and politics is not a field anyone not already independently wealthy can afford to be in (a junior developer in the Bay Area can easily make more than the Prime Minister) so it does not seem likely to self-correct.

retube3• 3 years ago

If meta refuses there is very little they can do. Facebook can continue to operate without a single person on the ground in UK

If it came to it, Whatsapp could be blocked at the network level. All the gov need to do is impose regulations that forbid ISPs and other infrastructure hosts to carry the traffic.

cassianoleal• 3 years ago

And then you present commercial VPNs to people who might have never heard of it.

Now you need to block VPNs, and the cat-and-mouse game gets in full action!

Also, at this point you've basically implemented the roots of a British version of The Great Firewall.

McDyver• 3 years ago

As GP pointed out:

such regional restrictions are easily bypassed and WhatsApp is popular enough to make people try it. So that would then normalise the practices such as side loading / jail breaking and avoiding regional restrictions.

If people would be doing this (using a VPN, for instance), they would know how to bypass those restrictions.

Breaking encryption is not good for anyone and won't solve absolutely any problems, except the "problem" of right to privacy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy

tim3333• 3 years ago

The UK Government repeatedly fails to understand ... impossible to impose

Yeah but it's never worried them much in the past. As a Brit I occasionally come across the effects of them requiring ISPs to block piracy sites. Something comes up saying "this site is blocked" so you click like one or two buttons to switch to a different connection or turn a VPN on (VeePN is good and free). I imagine their encryption ban will be similarly tricky to avoid. I think it's more about looking noble to the electors than actually achieving anything.

Digit-Al• 3 years ago

I think a large majority of the "non technical" population would have no clue how to sideload apps, or even that it was possible, and that the more likely result of WhatsApp being withdrawn from the UK would be massive screaming from the public of such intensity and wrath that the government would be forced to backtrack.

dalbasal2• 3 years ago

Legislators, courts and bureaucrats (in this order) always fail to grasp such things. That's an idea erodes their jurisdiction and authority, and abhorrent to thee ethos.

No borders (from their POV), puts internet businesses above the law... which it sort of does. The global village happened, but global authority did not. There are no clean resolutions to some of these tensions.

pmontra• 3 years ago

They might even understand that but if they think that they'll get more votes by banning e2e encryption, they'll ban it. If people will sideload WhatsApp, they might not go after them. They'll keep the extra votes coming from "we care about the children" and lose very little votes for the small inconvenience of sideloading once.

By the way, does a sideloaded WhatsApp on Android still update from the Play store? And what will iPhone owners do?

keepamovin2• 3 years ago

I see no failure to understand. The UK is a pragmatic imperial power, not a collaborative cooperative peer. They built Empire upon the asymmetric application of technology. When time to surrender Empire, they did so. When time to build a Financial Empire, they did so. When the time comes to build an Internet Empire, I'm sure they will do that too, by applying whatever technology they have at hand.

jabradoodle• 3 years ago

When is the time to build an internet empire if not 20 years ago?

christkv• 3 years ago

I bet the five eyes are exited about this then maybe the us and Europe can use the uk to spy on their citizens. Since it’s not them doing the spying hey presto legal.

xwdv3• 3 years ago

Funny thing is, this doesn’t hurt criminals at all. If you’re doing serious crime, you bring your own encryption. There are cartels that spend a lot of money rolling their own crypto.

kypro3• 3 years ago

In the UK we have a huge problem with children sending hateful communications online which cause anxiety and distress. As it stands we can only arrest children who are doing this in public but banning encryption should give authorities more power to arrest children who are committing these crimes in private (eg on WhatsApp).

The list really of hate crimes being committed online is endless and these are just the criminals doing this in public:

https://news.sky.com/story/teenager-jailed-for-sending-racis... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-4381692 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-52877886

morkalork3• 3 years ago

Are you being serious? Racist trolls causing "anxiety and distress" is justification for undermining everyone's security and privacy? Shame.

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

I'm going to assume this is the case:

"I'll sometimes use sarcasm as a tool to make you think harder about an opinion expressed."

Kamq2• 3 years ago

Is this satire? Between being pro child-arrest, and using the phrase "anxiety and distress", which seems to be rather uncommon, and is the exact same phrasing as your 3rd link, I'm starting to feel like parody is the most likely option.

jjgreen3• 3 years ago

Ironically, irony is no longer possible in the UK.

morkalork3• 3 years ago

Heck, they roll their own infra. Billions in cash buys a lot of tech.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-s...

xwdv3• 3 years ago

Yes, it’s laughable to think they will use the same compromised channels as the masses. These are serious businesses.

Some cyber crime operations have something similar to AWS. I’ve seen it.

tim3333• 3 years ago

This assumes criminals are not stupid which is not always the case.

zgluck2• 3 years ago

The UK is an island, physically and metaphorically. It can dig its (financial) grave if it wants to, the rest of the world won't really care much.

The headline is false.

cpncrunch• 3 years ago

Indeed. The article itself doesn't explain why this will affect the rest of the world. In fact, Apple has said they would consider withdrawing FaceTime and iMessage in the UK if this law goes ahead, so I think it is unlikely it will affect the rest of the world. Either the UK will be left with fewer encrypted products, or they will do a u-turn.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/20/uk-survei...

zgluck2• 3 years ago

I've lost count of the number of u-turns they have done already. I think it's like 5 or so.

(I'm including their various attempts to ban porn from the internet.)

Hizonner• 3 years ago

The rest of the world is taking notes. They're trying to push something similar through in the EU. The US has at least 2 or 3 bills active right now that would have similar effects.

dfawcus5• 3 years ago

The UK is a number of islands.

The main one being Great Britain, plus a chunk of Ireland. There are then a number of smaller islands around the English, Welsh, and Scottish parts of Great Britain.

tamimio• 3 years ago

Let me guess, to protect the children and the rest of us from terrorists?

You know bad actors won’t care about your bill, I would love to see how the government is going to block an email encrypted with gpg?

matheusmoreira7• 3 years ago

to protect the children and the rest of us from terrorists

Don't forget the pedophiles.

xcdzvyn• 3 years ago

I presume GP's comment was meant to be read "to protect the children[? and protect] the rest of us from terrorists?

user6723• 3 years ago

Yeah well I have an AR-15 try to take my BSD and OpenSSL away bitch I dare you.

CTDOCodebases• 3 years ago

Most sieges don't tend to end well for the person inside the building.

jstarfish• 3 years ago

Especially these days. You're up against drones now, so it's not like you're going to do any damage on the way out.

Find another means of resistance, ideally a nonlethal one (they bet everything on terrorism). Bunkering with a shotgun and a six-pack won't cut it anymore.

dang• 3 years ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

psychphysic• 3 years ago

Is this legislation likely to land? I mean I'd expect all relevant vendors to drop the UK than to pick up so much liability and be expected to hold it world wide.

Apple told the US to suck lemons why would it kowtow to the UK.

account-53• 3 years ago

It does in China, but maybe the market is too small??

toyg5• 3 years ago

It's a desperate lame-duck government, heading for an electoral wipeout of historic proportions - all bets are off.

scrlk• 3 years ago

The two main parties do not care about civil liberties or privacy. This will resurface in the next administration under a new name with a few tweaks here and there.

yungporko4• 3 years ago

yes, it's almost certain at this point.

dbg31415• 3 years ago

Wankers.

SillyUsername4• 3 years ago

Tosspots

pphysch• 3 years ago

Would this Online Safety Bill have protected Julian Assange from being imprisoned by a foreign totalitarian regime?

BLKNSLVR11• 3 years ago

No. There's nothing that would have stopped that. If the US wants to make an example of someone, laws don't stop them.

Nice thought eh?

Doesn't help that Australian has some sweet FA to help one of its citizens. Weak as piss.

nomendos• 3 years ago

This is uber stupid, because it will create way more divided internet (all countries will start separating further) and will create loss of trust in western/UK/US products (why would rest of the world continue to use iPhone/MacBook, google, Amazon, etc,..) therefore it will have huge cost in terms of lost revenue to all big companies. On the other hand there are smarter ways to do what is needed that respect privacy and do not cause such unnecessary economic harm to companies, but hey we'd need to have smart people in the governments (which are full of not smart people). Another aspect is that this will be unenforceable for huge majority of individuals since there will be plenty of solutions that will circumvent this, plus then number of companies will start forming companies in non affected geo's (off shore etc) and provide for example alternative to Viber/Skype/google/etc.. (some already exist).

Aerbil313• 3 years ago

it will create way more divided internet (all countries will start separating further)

IMHO that's the future.

bhewes2• 3 years ago

Yep will be as effective as trying to block Activision Blizzard deal.

kmlx7• 3 years ago

that actually worked.

bhewes2• 3 years ago

except it didn't and the deal is going through.

PenguinRevolver• 3 years ago

If you live in the UK, then please go to the UK Government and Parliament website and sign your name on this petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/634725

It's currently at 6,327 signatures; it needs 3,673 more for the government to respond and 90,000 more after that for a debate to be considered.

IshKebab2• 3 years ago

Writing to your MP (don't use a template) would be more effective. I have yet to see a single one of those petitions that resulted in anything more than a brush off. Even much more popular ones.

Letters to MPs almost always result in a brush-off too but they do take notice of them at least. Very occasionally you do get a non-template response too.

frereubu• 3 years ago

I've written to my MP twice in my life (as you say, non-templated because otherwise it's as meaningless as sending them a photocopy) and got a detailed response twice. If you take the time, they generally do too. (Obvious caveat that this is a sample size of one person and two emails / letters...)

jaredlt• 3 years ago

For others reading, I just used https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ to write to my MP.

bdavbdav• 3 years ago

This is interesting- 6k signatures (and just the one (no duplicate) petition when searching seems very low. I suspect there isn’t a huge amount of knowledge in the Facebook-mass-share spheres that usually kick these petitions into the big numbers.

easytiger4• 3 years ago

For context this is a cross party designed in committee policy.

Yes, both parties are that bad.

The dumbest thing about this is you create a single attack vector for nation state enemies who we know now all have the facilites to exploit this.

You might as well just turn the lights off and hand Russia, China, Iran, N. Korea the keys.

toyg5• 3 years ago

Still, an early general election would put the brakes on this bill. The next Labour government will be under no pressure to pick it back up, and in fact will likely be under quite a bit of pressure to let it go.

This is the sort of terrible throwaway law that results from lame-duck governments.

easytiger4• 3 years ago

What do you base that on?

My understanding is this bill will have cross party support and has been in development for many many years.

It might be politically expedient to abandon it at some point, but the mainstream media largely have completely ignored it and the public have little knowledge of it but at all

worik5• 3 years ago

Yes, both parties are that bad.

If I read this correctly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...) there are twelve parties in Westminster

easytiger4• 3 years ago

i really don't understand what point you are trying to make.

can you elaborate?

wudangmonk• 3 years ago

Maybe when they were part of the E.U it mattered what the U.K did but now they do not seem important enough to be able to dictate things on a global scale. Not trying to put it down but do people worry about how Estonia's law will affect the rest of the world?. Nobody cares, because you are just not a big enough market to matter.

jokethrowaway4• 3 years ago

I'd agree with you but all governments think alike and I'm sure this will reach the EU and the states (with whatever excuse they can think of)

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

Yep.. This will be the test bed for it. See which companies bend the knee. Then hobble the others.

Once this is done, they'll move the law around to other countries.

Sporktacular4• 3 years ago

It's not made clear how the UK Gov would erode encryption worldwide

Seems like they'll only be stuck with their own police state friendly system.

JHorse4• 3 years ago

People on the other end of encrypted conversations outside of the UK would also be surveilled.

More broadly, any backdoor built into any app can and will be exploited by bad actors. Theres no "safe" way to break end to end encryption for just the " good guys".

matheusmoreira7• 3 years ago

It will absolutely erode encryption in my country. Our government seems to operate on the following logic:

1. We want to be a developed country.

2. X is a developed country.

3. X does Y.

4. Therefore, we must also do Y.

We have our own GDPR. I've seen judges citing european laws in decisions. Watching other countries pass laws like this one is like getting a glimpse into the future.

Sporktacular4• 3 years ago

I guess then it would be your government eroding encryption in your country. To take it your way, every law passed everywhere has an effect on anything, which is so indirect it starts to become meaningless.

The UK has been getting less relevant for years. It's why tech companies are telling it to stick its laws without concern about losing that market. So its position on encryption is becoming less relevant too. But sure it's erosion and that sucks.

ipcress_file• 3 years ago

I run an encrypted XMPP server for about a dozen people. It's completely ephemeral in the sense that the server stores no messages. If you're offline, you miss them, kind of like IRC.

Will this apply to me? Do I need to ensure that no UK users are on my server?

I never anticipated this back when I set up the server. I thought that implementing strong security and privacy measures was a responsibility that I should take seriously.

I wouldn't be willing to run the server if I had to compromise people's privacy. If you don't have privacy, you might as well be on a mega-corp service.

x3n0ph3n3• 3 years ago

If you are not in the UK, you are not under the UK's jurisdiction.

luc4sdreyer• 3 years ago

They can still open a case against you and put out a warrant for your arrest, in the UK. Then you need to ensure that you never have a flight routed through there. Though I doubt that they would go to all this trouble for a small fry.

sacnoradhq2• 3 years ago

Tories == fascists. And big money even sits in the PM's chair.

userbinator• 3 years ago

I wish they would outlaw remote attestation, because that also uses encryption, but I bet they won't.

incompatible• 3 years ago

If you can't offer safe encryption, without backdoors, then you shouldn't offer encryption at all. No point in giving people a false sense of security. Let them accept that everything they say is potentially public.

Eventually, they may even decide that they'd like a little privacy and force their government to back down.

protocolture2• 3 years ago

How does this differ from the access and assistance bill in Australia?

While its super illegal for anyone to talk about, literally none of the actions that were going to be taken (Atlassian threatened to move overseas and stop servicing oz, Apple/Facebook/Google all rattled sabers) eventuated. We can only assume that the backdoors have been delivered on time without complaint.

Buttons840• 3 years ago

Is it really considered a "backdoor" for one party to willingly hand over the data that was exchanged through an encrypted channel? I'm not sure what you mean.

protocolture2• 3 years ago

The access and assistance bill requires platforms to create a technical capability on demand.

From there the cops get to use their imaginations.

Do they create a backdoor that allows them to get the data just after decryption from the end device?

Do they ask for this to happen in real time for all users and that firehose is directed at some gubment server?

Do they want the ability to unilaterally shut down the service?

Its a grab bag. If the cops are more creative than me, than we are in even worse strife.

FredPret• 3 years ago

This nation gave us the first mecahnical computer, the first programming language, Alan Turing, the first digital computer, broke the Enigma encryption, and the World Wide Web… and now, this.

defrost2• 3 years ago

broke the Enigma encryption

Poland?

and the World Wide Web

CERN is a country?

djohnston• 3 years ago

Poland broke Enigma? Is the whole Bletchley park history just some fairytale?

CERN is not a country. Neither is Tim Berners Lee for that matter.

tcptomato• 3 years ago

the first digital computer

Z3?

jjgreen3• 3 years ago

I guess they mean Colossus (1943) but debatable https://www.britannica.com/technology/Atanasoff-Berry-Comput...

FollowingTheDao• 3 years ago

Y’all forget the ultimate choice. None of us need these phones or need to use the Internet. I am sure it will make life much more difficult, but we don’t need to use these devices as much as we do. You have much more control than you think over the situation.

luxuryballs• 3 years ago

what does a black market on encrypted comms look like? if they can’t read your communication logs you go to jail?

lozenge• 3 years ago

There's already a crime of refusing to provide a password. With a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment, or five years in cases involving national security or child indecency.

https://www.saunders.co.uk/news/prosecuted-for-your-password...

tjpnz2• 3 years ago

I wonder what twisted shit the tories are looking at online. We already know they watch porn in the commons. By eroding encryption we'll soon be seeing what they look at in the privacy of their own homes.

archsurface• 3 years ago

Because labour would never. You think this will go away when labour get in?

acumenical• 3 years ago

To break from the party line and parrot that E2E encryption is a human right for just a moment, does anyone else experience the same fatigue with communities on encrypted platforms? I've never found a good community on Tor, everyone on Signal seems to become a shadier version of their public selves, Telegram seems it's all full of smut.

However I believe this is due to my small social circle. Does anyone with better social skills (any at all) have a more positive experience with E2E platforms? Please help me out because I want to believe. I believe it's important for people to speak freely but I'm having trouble reconciling that with how nasty they become.

gherkinnn2• 3 years ago

I don’t see how E2EE services affect people’s behaviour.

Anonymity does though.

stephen_g2• 3 years ago

Less than people might think. Apparently a lot of the the worst cyber-bullying (like the stuff that drives teens to take their own lives) happens from real-name accounts on Facebook and Messenger…

matheusmoreira7• 3 years ago

WhatsApp is end to end encrypted, this has been proven in actual court in my country. Everyone here uses it for everything every day. Never before have so many people used something that is this secure by default.

CaptainFever• 3 years ago

Telegram seems it's all full of smut

Telegram is not E2EE.

(Unless you use secret chats, which hardly anyone does.)

natch• 3 years ago

To the extent this also breaks or threatens the security of financial services, I’d like to see credit card brands and non-UK banks also pull out of UK.

I know it may be dreaming but as a consumer outside of UK I don’t want to be saddled with the costs via higher fees, inferior service etc. that will be necessitated to pay for the knock-on effects of this weakening of security.

I’d rather do business with companies that stay more secure and not pay this “shoddy security tax” they will impose on the industry.

CommanderData3• 3 years ago

I hate our government but the media has a massive part to play in propping them up.

All the tech companies should stand together and be ready to block access to their services. Imagine if the UK was left without access to just WhatsApp, let alone iMessage etc. It's not irresponsible or unsafe, there's always SMS for which the govenment has full control over.

Also I don't think any of these companies should fear an competitors. Why? These services are so ingrained a few weeks if not months of protest will not change anything. When the govnement finally succumbs restoration will be easy and the numbers will go back to normal quickly.

dmje2• 3 years ago

Agree - a UK without WhatsApp would be a UK in revolt. Literally everyone I know from teens to oldies organises their lives on it. Lack of WhatsApp would be enough to drag our sorry apathetic lazy non-protesting arses out onto the street

switch0074• 3 years ago

It absolutely wouldn’t. Just because we use a lot of something doesn’t mean we care about it. We are extremely politically apathetic.

You need targeted messages on social media and savvy campaigns to get people irate. Eg “campaigners stopping a pregnant mother getting to hospital”. That’s what gets people foaming at the mouth. Even then that’s usually just limited to angry replies on social media

It’s also illegal to peacefully protest now

CommanderData3• 3 years ago

I agree and platforms explaining why access has been blocked. It needs to be politicised perhaps EFF can get involved with a page explaining it and steps for action (emailing MPs, those that voted for it etc). We are supposed to be a democracy after all right?

This govenment is nutorious for it's u-turns. I would be happy to see another in this case.

FB, Apple and Microsoft need to start this campaign ASAP.

iLoveOncall• 3 years ago

There could be public executions of children caught for stealing candies and nobody would go protest in the UK. There's nobody with less backbone than the Brits.

fluidcruft2• 3 years ago

Suppose WhatsApp added an insecure mode, required UK users to use it, marked it prominently as "inspected by UK government and law enforcement" and refused to allow UK users to communicate with non-UK users by popping up a nag screen every time they tried.

hnhg• 3 years ago

I watched an interview with David Yelland, former editor of the Sun, recently where he said that the news media in the UK is more or less run by the same minority class of people who typically work as spads[1]. That would follow your point that the media props them up, because it is a homogenous and tight knit community now between media and politics.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/19/spads-speci...

SillyUsername4• 3 years ago

Stupid question maybe, but could certificate signing keys already be in government hands via backdoor (physical) handshakes/greased palms?

If this is the case, then you have to ask, why is this bill even needed?

NohatCoder• 3 years ago

A government would still have to make and use their own keys in a man-in-the-middle attack. The forged key means that if anyone bothers to check it will be detected, and there are also various ways that an application can lock the used key to make this impossible. Man-in-the-middle requires a lot of control over the infrastructure, for something that works reliably they would need to cooperate heavily with telcos, and spend a good deal of money.

SillyUsername4• 3 years ago

Thanks for explaining. I did wonder why the downvote from someone, now I understand why

vesinisa• 3 years ago

That's a very bold claim, any evidence you can provide to support it? How do the governments sidestep Certificate Transparency, which makes the simple possession of the signing keys ineffective? And have there ever been reports of developers observing these rogue certificates in the wild?

SillyUsername4• 3 years ago

My assumption was that the signed certificates are provided by governments to state owned or shell companies (China having high profile cases of this). But if it really was this simple, it would have been noticed earlier.

soundsgoodtome2• 3 years ago

So glad we threw that tea into Boston harbor

soundsgoodtome2• 3 years ago

Could you imagine if the UK was just… cut off from the rest of the western internet?

What a time to be alive.

ajmurmann• 3 years ago

I hope that will be the response. I wish the same had happened when the EU passed the stupid cookie law. Everyone should have replaced their websites with a static page that explains browser cookie settings when accessed from Europe.

kmlx7• 3 years ago

zero chance. did anything happen in australia after they passed a very similar law? nope.

https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryptio...

gorgoiler• 3 years ago

At the same time as this is going on the UK is rolling out fibre to every home. I know of multiple people who live in the deepest darkest rural country lanes who are seeing 36x fibre COF215 drop cables strung up through the trees or trenched by the muddy roads. EE pioneered LTE cat16 at the end of the last decade in first and second tier cities right in time for iPhoneX to ship with support for gigabit traffic. It’ll be available in a field near you soon. There’s about to be an abundance of low latency bandwidth available to everyone.

With all that connectivity you can start being much more creative about who provides your transport versus who provides your IP connectivity. VPNs are already becoming mainstream. Sounds like a positive way forward, right? The internet just routes around damage, heh, and laws that restrict what you can and can’t do can be “routed around” by terminating all your traffic in Dublin or Amsterdam.

The trouble is that as it becomes normal for British subjects to export their traffic overseas then I can’t see HM Government policy avenue going anywhere other than all out war on encryption. Again.

can16358p2• 3 years ago

I hope all the intelligent people eventually move away from those authoritarian governments' countries, moving all the brainpower away from serving their economies.

pauby4• 3 years ago

And go where exactly?

can16358p2• 3 years ago

Anywhere that doesn't block freedom.

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

What needs to happen here is a breech of UK government officials private stuff. Not gov secrets, but real private conversations between the members who vote yes. Here's a conversation with your mistress. No we don't respect your privacy.

yungporko4• 3 years ago

as others have said, it's not going to affect the rest of the world, UK will just lose access to services.

as a UK resident, i can safely say that we aren't going to do a single thing to stop this and we wholeheartedly deserve this and everything else the government does to strip away our rights. we are a nation of spineless cowards, do not feel bad for a single one of us.

kmlx7• 3 years ago

the opposition not only wants this to become law, they are accusing the government of watering it down and not moving fast enough.

same for NGOs. they want the government to go even further.

various members of the public have come forward accusing the government of not doing enough to protect them from the perils of the internet (there were a few tragic cases, as it’s always the case).

basically, everyone wants this, and want it sooner and strengthened.

HeckFeck3• 3 years ago

I wish it would affect the rest of the world, so everyone else could at least give our government a well-deserved kicking. I've not checked but I would be doubtful that Sir Keir's Labour will reverse this dreadful bill, but if they do that will be welcomed.

yungporko4• 3 years ago

they won't, they support it too. the tories are evil but unfortunately that doesn't make labour good.

kmlx7• 3 years ago

i guess this thread is a great example of how different the HN crowd is to the rest of the population. i keep seeing the same type of comments for every article where encryption is threatened.

to me it looks like the direction of policy in the world when it comes to the internet is pretty clear: the internet needs to be brought to heel. it needs to respect local laws, it can’t be a black box, we can’t rely on foreign/american companies to moderate.

this direction is coming mainly from voters. they feel disenfranchised from the big internet companies, they feel threatened, the internet still feels like a dangerous place. and to be fair, there are so many crimes enabled by the internet, some of them violent.

and so the public and the NGO’s make enough noise so that politicians take stock and start doing something about it.

this law is not the first law in the world to force internet companies to better moderate their content. and it won’t be the last.

but if HN folk want to change people’s view around this issue then they need to step out of this bubble and engage with people’s concerns.

because this direction of travel has been set for a while now. and it won’t change anytime soon.

what’s going to happen with this law? nothing special. it will be adopted, and there will be no consequences. just like all the other countries that did the same.

disclaimer: i’ve been on the internet since there were ~10 websites. that wild west stuff was amazing when growing up. but the cat is now out of the bag.

Sporktacular4• 3 years ago

There was even pushback on HN to Apple's communication safety feature which would warn kids about nude photos. No big brother, not even CSAM matching. Just locally run nudity detection in a reasonable, even minimal effort to address some harm to kids.

Comments wailed about the invasion of privacy, thin end of the wedge/normalisation of scanning etc. without any mention of the problem this tries to address.

Personally I still think the risk of encryption to children is outweighed by the risk of permanent, incontestable authoritarian regimes (in which kids aren't safe either). But effectively arguing this requires acknowledgement of the other side's concerns.

As you say, most people prioritise child safety over privacy, so these bills are going to keep happening until the rest of us make our case, acknowledge the problem and help find solutions.

But I disagree there will be no domestic consequences for this law. The UK is the home of the coverup and this places even more power in the hands of a barely accountable old boys club. It should still be opposed, but privacy activists need to better make the case why.

retube3• 3 years ago

Everybody was fine using non-e2ee messaging for like 2 decades before whatsapp and competitors implemented it.

So why is it now so important, when since the early 90s everyone was totally happy to communicate without it?

harryvederci• 3 years ago

If you really don't understand why, look into a guy named Edward Snowden.

fragmede• 3 years ago

Other people listening in on private conversations hasn't been "fine" since the the first private conversation. It wasn't okay in the 90's and it isn't okay now. More people are aware now so more people are asking about it, which is making it seem more important, but it's always been important.

We don't use telnet anymore, we use SSH, and for good reason. That people that have never heard of ssh have the same demands for their communications shouldn't surprise you.

tim3333• 3 years ago

The British public seem mildly in favour of the thing

"As the Online Safety Bill returns to parliament this month, polling shows overwhelming public support for tougher measures to enforce children’s safety online." "81% UK adults want senior tech managers to be appointed and held legally responsible for stopping children being harmed by social media, new polling reveals" https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2023/Majority...

also https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-poll-finds-7-in-10-ad...

Although those don't mention encryption and more are asking about protecting kids from harmful content.

Here's some earlier encryption polling:

More than half (55%) of UK adults believe the ability to detect child abuse images is more important than the right to privacy
Only 4% say privacy should be prioritised over safety https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2023/Majority...

mattmaroon• 3 years ago

Better title: The U.K is close to making some chat apps no longer available to UK citizens. No apps are going to adopt this for a country that’s like 3% of its revenue.

willtemperley2• 3 years ago

I'm a UK resident not opposed to this bill.

First, child protection is paramount.

Second, The erosion of big tech companies' power is a benefit as far as I can see.

Third, We still have effective encryption in our hands. TLS is not going to be broken by this.

The argument that offenders will be pushed into darker corners of the internet is probably true, though I expect that will make it easier for law enforcement - take ANOM [1] as an example.

The battle I'd fight would be some kind of accountability in intelligence services.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANOM

jerryzh• 3 years ago

Read the book Just Law published by your own people

willtemperley2• 3 years ago

Can you turn your comment into an argument please? This is obtuse.

zahllos2• 3 years ago

I see a few comments suggesting a change of government will help.

The previous Labour government (1997-2010) introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_...), which amongst other provisions includes key disclosure rules (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Ki...). The burden of proof in key disclosure is inverted (the accused must prove non-possession of the key or inability to decrypt), which was somewhat controversial amongst people who cared at the time (activation, i.e. actual use if RIPA III provisions, began in 2007).

The same Labour Government ran the Interception Modernisation Programme (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interception_Modernisation_P...) (you may recognise this or "mastering the internet" from the Snowden leaks, although IMP was not a secret) and proposed legislation to enact part of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Data_Bill_200.... This never made it into law.

I think Labour are on board with this, and the senior civil service (those at the top levels who work with ministers or close to those who do) don't change in the same way US administrations do. It might be the case that this bill runs out of time in the current parliament and is not picked up by the next government (this can happen even if the same political party holds office) but the idea will be back in some form one way or another and I suspect will make it into law.

j0ej0ej0e• 3 years ago

Given Labour also have not committed to reverting the anti-protest laws that were brought in by Suella Braverman, and where the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said along the lines of "now is not the time to review that" when a caller literally asked that question, I don't hold out much hope for them doing anything progressive in relation to this.

The U.K. government is close to eroding encryption worldwide

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