[News, Call for Action] The U.K. Government Is Very Close To Eroding Encryption Worldwide
[News, Call for Action] The U.K. Government Is Very Close To Eroding Encryption Worldwide
The U.K. Parliament is pushing ahead with a sprawling internet regulation bill that will, among other things, undermine the privacy of people around the world. The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force...
The U.K. Parliament is close to passing the Online Safety Bill, which threatens global privacy by allowing backdoors into messaging services, compromising end-to-end encryption. Despite objections, no amendments were accepted. The bill also includes content filtering and surveillance measures. There's still a chance for lawmakers to protect privacy with an amendment preserving encryption. A recent survey shows the majority of U.K. citizens want strong privacy on messaging apps.
People glady give up privacy under the guise of helping children, while nothing is actually done to protect children. More at 11.
Actually, politicians give up public privacy under the fiction of helping children, repeatedly.
I cringe every time “online” and “children” are uttered in the same breath.
Which really sucks because us in tech know there's more that we could be doing for sure, but politicians/big tech would rather grandstand with these BS policies that get the masses to agree, while giving up freedom, and not actually solving any problems.
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won't somebody please think of the children!
Indeed, Prince Andrew is still roaming around Pizza Express in Woking.
I'm expecting this weakening of encryption / surveillance is to protect rich people by preemptively punishing dissidents who are organizing against them. It's the step that authoritarian countries like China, Saudi, etc have been using against their own people, either with sweeping regulations, or just straight up buying pegasus spyware.
Pizza express in Woking? Mate you’ve gotta be joking!
That song’s going to be in my head all day now.
U.K. civil society groups have condemned the bill, as have technical experts and human rights groups around the world.
Has there been pushback from banks and other big businesses whose activity fundamentally depends on secure encrypted communications? Has there not been pushback from the intelligence services? Or would they be exempt?
Who do you think has been pushing for the back doors? The intelligence community and law enforcement. They want EASY access to everything so they don't have to take the effort to break encryption after getting a warrant (if they even both with a warrant). You can bet your bottom dollar they are exempt from this law for "public safety."
At least Apple, Signal, and Whatsapp. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/27/an-encryption-exodus-looms-over-uks-online-safety-bill/
I doubt that E2E services will care. Matrix will not change. Just like many other services. They are just insane. You can't also just break TLS in UK only. haha they are crazy.
Current world politicians are so tech illitirare it's bewildering. Supposedly they have experts and think tanks at their disposal to help them in these sorts of endeavours, for what? It's insane how much survailance has been ranked up in the past decade.
Supposedly they have experts and think tanks at their disposal to help them in these sorts of endeavours, for what?
Experts aren’t hired to craft or guide legislation. They’re hired to give a pathway to a destination.
In other words, politicians already know what they want and what they’re going to do, they need a way to make it accepted by society and to force corporations to play ball. “Experts” and “think tanks” will always align with that agenda.
I guess you're right, it's just frustrating this world.
It's not just politicians, it's so many of the older people running the companies and pulling the strings.
My own boss is an absolute nightmare for not understanding that technology that could make our jobs here so, so much easier - and crucially much much more efficient. And yeah, I get that we could endlessly chase the promises of tech, but I'm forever being told to wind back my reliance on online tech because the boss won't spend the money needed on some computers and would rather do things on paper. I just nod, agree, then carry on doing things my way, because it has proven results. There's a bunch of us here who rely on Google Docs for collaboration software, because the boss refuses to spend any money on anything better suited. He didn't need it back when he set up the company 20 years ago, so he doesn't need it now!
Drives me fucking mad.
As to your point on experts; our government ministers actively reject experts who actually know about the issues, choosing instead to listen to people who'll tell them what they want to hear.
Narcissism and confirmation bias runs rampant in our governments and top executives.
I mean, imagine if non-british companies just went "well, no encryption for you, then."
And disabled TLS too.
Online Banking would probably just have to... stop.
And a lot of other pages wouldn't load on most browsers requiring httpsOnline Banking would probably just have to... stop.
What will happen is usually what happens when the UK government introduces a brain melting stupid law (basically any time they do or say anything).
The government will suddenly find out that all the people that said that their stupid law won't work, were right, and that it doesn't work. Shockingly.
Then it will end up getting hastily revised into something moderately functional which will necessitate modifying it to the point at which it effectively doesn't exist, and we all get on with our lives. Repeat process ad nauseum.
See the porn age verification law. Which never ended up happening.
You'd need Microsoft/Apple/Google to agree to this to get these client side message scrapers on devices.
You'd need commercial/closed source e2e messaging services to agree to add a backdoor.
Why would they? Not that they care about end users, but corporate interests will take issue with it too. And it's a bad look. UK is just one market for these global companies. I'm not an expert in such things so I'm basically talking out of my ass, but I think it makes sense.
But even if they somehow manage it, people will learn how to circumvent it. And then there's open source operating systems and e2e messaging which are immune to this.
Edit: grammar.
Several players have said they'll exit the UK rather than exit encryption.
Several players have said they’ll exit the UK rather than exit encryption.
rightly so.
I'd assume any worldwide player couldn't be caught in compliance with this, as long as alternatives exist that don't.
This might have been enough to push EU people away from WhatsApp for example.
Or just not support the UK anymore.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." —Benjamin Franklin
For those who care, here's the actual context of that quote, which has everything to do with taxes and nothing to do with privacy or safety from the government.
The "Safety" he's referring to are bribes paid from certain landowners in order to be exempt from having their land be used defensively by the then-British colonies of America during the French and Indian War. So, literally paying for their physical safety.
If anything, it was very pro-government control, and an example of the shit modern politicians do as well because he was speaking about the these actions being for the "greater good" of the people.
But quotes gonna quote, I guess. I assume the tech-libertarians picked it up at some point and it spread from there. Feels very much like something from the "don't tread on me" mid-2000s Tea Party era.
Not that I think the modern sentiment is wrong, to be fair, but the meaning of the quote has changed so much that I think it's kind of pointless to attribute it to Franklin now unless we're talking about taxing private land for military purposes.
Is everyone forgetting that Australia already did this, and it had no effect on anything? No one put backdoors in, none of these tech companies abandoned australia. This is just another scare mongering tactic. It should still be defeated though.
Ignoring the British government is 99% of what makes someone British.
They are forever coming up with stuff like this. And just like your example with Australia, nothing ever happens, because the people who would be required to actually make it happen have no real interest in doing so, and the people who will try to get the law passed are too tech illiterate to be able to tell if it has or not.
I'm getting really close to just not using the internet anymore. I only use it to stream movies, and doom scroll lemmy right now, anyway. The only reason I have an email is for spam. Take awake the only facade of privacy I have and I may as well hang it all up and walk away.
Still internet is important for many people to talk and come together, to discuss and fight against power abuse. So we all should care.
Does anyone know if this is threatening messengers based on federated networks like XMPP as well? Legally and practically?
This is probably not going to answer your question, but the law doesn't seem to focus on protocols/network topologies, but focuses on providers with certain sizes. So if the protocol is used by large techs, then they might have to do something on their side to comply with the law, depending on etc...