UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/07/uk_government_clause_online_safety_bill/

by jjgreen • 3 years ago

240 158 3 years ago

I've read six of these "Oh no we didn't back down" stories this morning.

What worries me is the appearance of wishful thinking around the language of "technically feasible".

Follow this road far enough and we'll have government ministers with marketing credentials defining what is "technically feasible", instead of scientists.

https://cybershow.uk #016 | S2 | Special | UK Online Safety Bill Published on Friday 01st Sep, 2023

pipo2344• 3 years ago

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society.

Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

Are they losing control, or are they becoming control freaks who want more control than they've traditionally had and have any right or business having? Both would manifest as the government thinking it has insufficient control, but the cause is very different.

PrimeMcFly14• 3 years ago

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens

It's just their culture. It probably won't change till they get rid of the anachronistic monarchy.

hcfman2• 3 years ago

It's not just the UK. The Netherlands is like that as well and it's lost it's democracy. They can now hack anyone, not just criminals, without a judge being involved or even any evidence. They can shutdown speech that they don't like and they regularly commit criminal acts against non-criminally involved citizens organised by non-accountable organisations.

nonrandomstring3• 3 years ago

I try to take a charitable, open-minded position in this.

Two of us in the cybershow are parents. Taking on analysis of this bill was a tough decision, but something we felt obliged and qualified to do as parents and security experts.

There are obviously grave harms around digital technology, plus its obvious myriad benefits. Covert communications enabling criminal and anti-social activity is just one small part.

Our thought experiment is to assume good faith. To assume the government is sincerely invested in doing it's job of protecting citizens. Then to figure out how this has gone so wrong.

Who are the marginal influencers? Why is the standard of technical expertise and computer science in our government so woefully inadequate. Why has saving face become more important than actually tackling difficult issues?

I would characterise our UK government as confused and frustrated.

Perhaps we should be pleased our government is tenacious in pursuing a bill whose aims we broadly support. But a mixture of prideful ego-politics, poor advice and technologically laughable solutionism has led us into a corner. That's not a good look for a country that started the industrial and digital revolutions.

eesmith4• 3 years ago

the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

I think that's more an optimistic interpretation of democracy.

After all, it's the government that gets to decide who is a citizen, and who has the franchise.

Historically the US said that African Americans were not citizens, within the meaning of the Constitution. In 1858 your statement might be 100% true about the US, but it would exclude a lot of people - who indeed were justifiably fearful of the democracy they lived in.

While the 14th amendment made many new citizens, for many decades after the end of reconstruction these citizens feared their government far more than vice versa.

You can see the variable concept of "citizen" when considering that a minor may be a US citizen for many purposes, but does not have the voting rights of full citizenship. Before the 26th amendment even 20-year-old adults were not full citizens.

Something like 2% of US adult citizens cannot vote due to being a convicted felon, further showing how shaky your assertion is.

There's also a large number of immigrants to the US who are not citizens, but ideally should not fear the government any more than citizens do.

Perhaps the US doesn't count as democracy, but that sounds too much like a No True Scotsman response. Switzerland, with its famous direct democracy, didn't allow full women's suffrage until 1971-1990, depending on canton, again highlighting that "citizen" and "those who can vote" are not really the same thing in a democracy.

bananapub19• 3 years ago

the UK has a weird culture of conformism and authoritarianism, and the weirdo part of the Tory party is deeply into that sort of thing, and is in power now. it's not very mysterious.

andyjohnson0• 3 years ago

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society.

I suspect theres a bunch of things going on.

They've come down so hard on recent protest movements like Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, etc because as you say they feel like they've lost authority and they want it back. National-scale surveillance is a way to remind everyone who really runs the country, and who just does as they're told. The uk has almost always been governed by essentially the same elite group, and they have a lot of experience of keeping it that way. Not by Spectre-style secret meetings, just by convergent overlapping objectives.

I think part of their fear comes from seeing how popular devolution has been in the UK. And partly how successful the EU has become, hence brexit. Theres also a part of the tory party that wants to nope out of the ECHR jurisdiction, and this kind of legislation potentially sets-up a fight with the court that could be used as a pretext for withdrawal. Some of them undoubtedly also simply see the potential to make some money from a surveylance society.

I also suspect they've finally woken up to the climate-related crisies that are now just down the road and they've decided that a more authoritarian society is the only way to keep their position at the top.

Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

Err... nope. Can't build stable societies on fear. The "whole point of democracy" is how to negociate the divergent desires and opinions of the nation's citizens.

kmlx2• 3 years ago

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens

because it's been asked for by various ONGs, civil society at large, even the opposition parties want it strengthened.

it's not the government that is forcing these things. it's voters.

slashdev2• 3 years ago

The thing is it is always technically feasible, even for end to end encryption ( you just do the scanning before encrypting on the device, or upload the plain text copy of all the messages to a government service.)

I’m worried that it won’t offer any protection in the end.

pydry5• 3 years ago

"Technically infeasible" is code for "we asked the American tech companies for a backdoor, they told us to fuck off and we dont have the cojones to actually ban whatsapp". The phrase is only intended to imply that they didn't lose a political battle.

Actual technical feasibility is beside the point. Whatsapp probably already has backdoors they just don't want to hand the keys over to 10 downing street.

jjgreen3• 3 years ago

Just move one end a bit, smart move!

dang2• 3 years ago

Can you please stop using HN to promote your podcast? You're doing it way too much and users are complaining.

HN is supposed to be a place for curious conversation, and promotion is the opposite of that. Hence the guideline:

"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Mindwipe• 3 years ago

They really didn't!

The bill went through it's third reading in the Lords with literally no changes yesterday!

These stories are going to make people complacent that this terrible, terrible bill has gone away. It hasn't, it passed, more or less unchanged (except to make the age verification piece a little bit worse).

pcrh3• 3 years ago

Could you expand on that?

reidrac• 3 years ago

As I understand it, they just said they aren't going to do it because is not technically feasible, but the bill includes the clause to do it, if it was possible.

I can't see anything to celebrate here. The bill should have been amended further.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/06/whatsapp-signa...

They didn't change the bill, but also said "If the appropriate technology doesn’t exist which meets those requirements, then Ofcom will not be able to use clause 122 to require its use".

Arathorn3• 3 years ago

Precisely!!! At this rate Signal's inexplicable desire to claim this as a victory (https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1699405364968423828) is distracting at the very worst possible time - this is the last chance to stop the bill, and instead of a final hail mary... we're congratulating ourselves? on the fact that scanning won't be implemented immediately but only once the government has decided that the tech is mature enough?!!

kome• 3 years ago

spying metadata is more than enough. and we know it thanks to snowden and assange.

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...

zirgs• 3 years ago

But what's the solution to this? Legally requiring communications companies not to store metadata?

bananapub19• 3 years ago

The reporting on this is horrific, including by the businesses involved.

Absolutely nothing legally was changed. The government put out a press release saying some worthless crap, that's the entire thing that happened.

edit: sorry, not a press release, sent a minion to read out a non-binding statement, who then confirmed the the law was not actually changed at all: https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position...

hathchip• 3 years ago

So they are trying to get the law passed, despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible, by saying "we know it's impossible but we would like to have the legal right to do it in case it becomes possible in the future"?

bananapub19• 3 years ago

they are trying to get the law passed

they did pass the law through the lower house. the upper house can demand amendments and stall things a bit, but it can also just be completely ignored given enough time.

despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible

it's not impossible, it's just a horrificly bad idea, and why would being impossible affect if it gets passed or not?

by saying "we know it's impossible but we would like to have the legal right to do it in case it becomes possible in the future"?

no, they issued a press statement saying they won't implement the thing they passed until it's "practical".

lots of governments pass lots of laws and regulations and are untruthful about what they'll do later.

pg_1234• 3 years ago

Fortunately:

With the way the law is going the UK could demand that Tech providers provide backdoors into end-to-end encryption.

The providers can refuse.

The UK can then demand that such apps are not available in the UK.

HOWEVER ... the providers can build WASM equivalents that run in the phones browser. These can be available elsewhere in the world, and there is no way to stop UK residents from installing them. If there is no other way to have end-to-end encrypted messaging, some provider WILL offer this ... and they'll make it pretty slick. You can try prosecute each user (not much chance of success).

Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against.

If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it.

justin662• 3 years ago

No human being whatsoever should be surprised when Reuters offers better reporting than The Register.

Canada2• 3 years ago

She said further work to develop the technology was needed, but added that government-funded research had shown it was possible.

Wow, she just lies so easily.

pydry5• 3 years ago

What is wrong with it?

The article actually states everything the OP did here. I'm not sure what is missed.

From what Ive heard on the grapevine PR flacks hate the Register. That kind of says it all. They dont just republish press releases like Reuters or write neoliberal op eds like the Economist.

curiousllama• 3 years ago

And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so.

Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics.

bananapub19• 3 years ago

And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so.
Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics.

What on earth are you talking about?

The bill was passed by the Commons and then will be passed by the Lords and then will become law.

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137

varispeed• 3 years ago

This should be classed as an attempt at violating human rights and possibly other violations.

After all this worthless bill cost millions to develop and if people knew it is not workable, then they de facto defrauded the tax payer.

Arathorn3• 3 years ago

As I tried to explain on the thread about the Financial Times coverage of this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37416203), the headline here is COMPLETELY WRONG. It's doubly frustrating given i'm quoted in the article and i spoke to the journalist to try to ensure the "UK drops spy clause" falsehood wasn't propagated.

The UK government has changed nothing. All that happened is that a junior minister said "obviously we won't implement this until it's technically feasible", (https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position...) which was inexplicably seized on by Signal as evidence that the government was backing down. Cue this nightmarish news cycle of the press declaring "UK drops spy clause" when absolutely nothing has changed: the spy clause is still there, and the govt has explicitly said that they WILL utilise it if they think it necessary (once they consider the tech good enough).

So it's incredibly counterproductive to claim this as a victory, and thus cause complacency, and distract from the fact that today more than ever we need to be putting the pressure on to get the clause dropped. It almost feels like a misinfo campaign: what better way to win a battle than to let the other side think they've already won so they sit back and selfcongratulate rather than fight at the critical decisive moment?! Meanwhile folks are misreading the "we didn't back down" coverage as evidence that the government really is about to back down. It's a kafkaesque nightmare!

bennyelv• 3 years ago

Something strange is going on here. Nothing has changed about the bill, yet all news outlets are reporting as if it has.

All that happened was that somebody said "yeah but we won't use these controls so don't worry".

What is the authority of that statement? The bill hasn't been changed.

Arathorn3• 3 years ago

The root cause of the confusion seems to be https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1699405364968423828, which appears to be based on a wildly overenthusiastic misreading of this coverage: https://www.ft.com/content/770e58b1-a299-4b7b-a129-bded8649a.... Basically, the government tried to deflect this by saying "don't worry, we'll pass this into law, but we'll only implement this when the scanning tech is ready", and inexplicably this was seen as a win?!?

kmlx2• 3 years ago

Child safety campaigners have spent years pushing the government to be tougher on tech companies over abuse material that is shared on their apps.
Richard Collard, head of child safety online policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said: “Our polling shows the UK public overwhelmingly support measures to tackle child abuse in end-to-end encrypted environments. Tech firms can show industry leadership by listening to the public and investing in technology that protects both the safety and privacy rights of all users.”

_lvbh• 3 years ago

Media manipulation is rampant

Lolaccount• 3 years ago

Government by Press Release ...

Like pieces of paper floating on an ocean of excrement.

The pieces of paper are new, but the ocean has not changed.

Welcome to the United Kingdom.

dang2• 3 years ago

Recent and related:

UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408196 - Sept 2023 (287 comments)

UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

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