"I'm having those conversations in private"
Ah yes, the old "Fuck you, we got ours" mentality.
Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
211–220 of 276 posts
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe". What misconception? This is the basis of the social contract between society and its government, to safeguard the natural rights of society, the foremost of which (Life, among Life, Liberty, Property/Pursuit of happiness) is the safety and security of members of society. Read up on Locke and Rousseau https://en.wik…
Rights aren't natural , they aren't inherent, they are assigned (or granted ) by a given constitutional context. In some systems there are rights that do not exist in other systems, even very fundamental ones. Governments are extending their mandate and they are curtailing/" ungranting " certain other rights (principally, the uncodified "right to privacy"). Insofar as Parliament is sovereign in the UK and is the ulti…
While that may be true, it's not the philosophical basis of our current system of government. The concept of natural law is, though. And in general, the majority of people seem to believe in rights under that definition (albeit more likely due to religious beliefs than having read Enlightenment philosophers).
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#213There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe". Although that it is often the intention of legislation to prevent behaviour which may lead to unsafe situations. For example, making it illegal to drink and drive. You can arrest someone for breaking the law, but never can you arrest someone right up to the point of breaking the law. For example, You cannot arrest so…
> There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe". What misconception? This is the basis of the social contract between society and its government, to safeguard the natural rights of society, the foremost of which (Life, among Life, Liberty, Property/Pursuit of happiness) is the safety and security of members of society. Read up on Locke and Rousseau https://en.wik…
The Right to Liberty, which we will secure for you by taking away as much of it as possible.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this comment particularly interesting. I have a suspicion that believing in good and bad people is a product of fairytales and religion. I've never quite understood why authoritarianism, religion and the right seem to go together, maybe this is part of puzzle.
Fairytales and religion wouldn't be so popular if people didn't already have an innate desire to believe in good and bad people.
Then again, people wouldn't have an innate desire to believe in good and bad people if fairytales and religion weren't already so popular.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#215There's something deeply dysfunctional in the UK Home Office. People who've been through that mill seem to come out with a really weird myopic perspective on the world, May included.
We've known this for quite some time:
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." --- George Orwell, 1984
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
The PREVENT strategy could have been useful. But schools over-report (because that's the safest thing to do when you're compelled to report) and there doesn't seem to be sensible triage in place to filter out over-zealous referrals. Here's an example of what the PREVENT agenda should be about: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html or this case: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2016/3171.html
> The PREVENT strategy could have been useful. No, it couldn't have been. It's a mistake to believe that any prevention strategy will work on a large scale, and the reason is you'll always get too many false positives like that [1]. It's not just an issue with schools being too eager to report. It will happen in any scenario, including inside intelligence agencies if you force them to go after any "remotely potential…
> thousands and thousands of false positives.
Or, for Iraqis from 2003-2007, one truly egregious one.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#217I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public in communicating the concerns around trying to 'backdoor' encryption or giving up more of our privacy. While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything t…
I've read so many arguments advocating strong encryption, all of which I agree with, and many of them are simplified as best we techies can - check out some of Troy Hunt's posts. But even avoiding the tech aspect completely, there is one thing the government simply refuses to accept. Banning strong encryption will not stop people using it. It will stop the 'good' and generally innocent populace using it and severely…
> It will stop the 'good' and generally innocent populace using it and severely infringe on their right to privacy, but the 'bad' people will just fork an open-source messaging system that uses E2E encryption and start using that.
And that would be the point of the ban - anyone using E2E is bad therefore, gov attacks them.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#218ah more security cluelessness from the UK Government. The frustrating piece is that they're ignoring their own internal experts on this. The people running the National Cyber Security Centre are very bright and have stated that they think backdoors are a bad idea from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/05/problems-end... "Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security, told the New Statesma…
This isn't cluelesness, it's maliciousness.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#219The tale of The Orwellian Kingdom continues... No really. I've written about this before, but I sincerely refuse to believe that the government are doing this out of ignorance anymore. There's been too many people telling them how it actually is, but they persist. That leads me to conclude that either they're severely mentally dysfunctional, or there's another reason for doing this. PR maybe? Votes? Something more si…
It's maliciousness, not cluelessness.
An analogy: humans have developed neo-cortex. The neo-cortex now wants to run everything, often to the chagrin and pain of the rest of the body (e.g. fad diets).
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe". What misconception? This is the basis of the social contract between society and its government, to safeguard the natural rights of society, the foremost of which (Life, among Life, Liberty, Property/Pursuit of happiness) is the safety and security of members of society. Read up on Locke and Rousseau https://en.wik…
Rights aren't natural , they aren't inherent, they are assigned (or granted ) by a given constitutional context. In some systems there are rights that do not exist in other systems, even very fundamental ones. Governments are extending their mandate and they are curtailing/" ungranting " certain other rights (principally, the uncodified "right to privacy"). Insofar as Parliament is sovereign in the UK and is the ulti…
> Right's aren't natural, they aren't inherent, they are assigned (or granted) by a given constitutional context.
Wrong. A government violating your natural rights is not the same thing as those rights not existing. There is nothing immoral or unethical about a government which does not safeguard non-existent rights, it is the act of violation which violates the social contract and makes the government illegitimate.