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Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#231

Post by cr0sh »

Jedd wrote: post #181
reitanqild wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next they take your car. Why? Cars kills way more people than guns. Often not because of a need to get from a to b but because of reckless driving just for the fun of it. So - you could argue - you should not only need to have a drivers permit but a driving permit for your actual trips. Ok. Maybe cars should be banned. Or at least restricted to people with a legitimate reason like politicians and doctors. But do you…

> Next they take your car. But cars are useful and, on average safer, for many / the majority of people that use them. Guns are, on average, not so useful / safe. Note that I'm averaging this across the planet, not just across one small (5% of global population) country with a lot of strong opinions on the matter. > Why? Cars kills way more people than guns. I know it's a pithy aphorism, but in the same way that guns…

> We don't have toys that we hand out to toddlers and You obviously never played with your toy cars properly as a child...

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#232

Post by marcosdumay »

317070 wrote: post #5

> "However, there is a problem in terms of the growth of end-to-end encryption. "It’s a problem for the security services and for police who are not, under the normal way, under properly warranted paths, able to access that information.” What surprises me about this argument, is that their stance is that terrorists are accidentally starting to use encryption. So, by consequence, that in the past terrorists simply did…

Everybody is starting to use encryption right now. That's because governments everywhere were caught spying on people, so modern software is written with a "encrypt by default" mindset.

This movement was triggered by spying. But it is also because encryption is mostly free nowadays, while a couple of decades ago it was almost too expensive to use anywhere. Thus you can also view the causality starting with technology improvement, and that all the encryption demand was there, latent, with the spying only perturbing things a little and unleashing a chain reaction.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#233

Post by timthorn »

discombobulate wrote: post #227
timthorn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed a critical bit: "...with the intention of assisting another to commit acts of terrorism..."

My quote was the entirety of Count 1. I believe a count is a distinct offence[0]. [0] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/count

All the numbered paragraphs are subject to the rider "As the Particulars of that offence make clear, with the intention of assisting another to commit acts of terrorism, you engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to that intention namely:"

The relevant legislation is here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/11/section/5

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#234

Post by dragonwriter »

discombobulate wrote: post #227
timthorn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed a critical bit: "...with the intention of assisting another to commit acts of terrorism..."

My quote was the entirety of Count 1. I believe a count is a distinct offence[0]. [0] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/count

> My quote was the entirety of Count 1.

No, it's not. It's the entirety of the first numbered point (of six) on page 1; all six of the numbered points there, as well as the paragraph leading into the numbered list and all but the last two paragraphs of page 2 address Count 1. Count 2 is addressed in the penultimate paragraph of page 2, and Count 3 is addressed in the final paragraph of page 2, which carries over onto page 3. The remainder of the document is not recounting the offenses but discussing other sentencing factors.

There are only 3 counts (as stated at the very beginning of the document), so even if the beginning of the discussion of each count weren't explicitly marked in a parenthetical, it would be easy to see that the numbers of the six-item numbered list could not be count numbers.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#235

Post by discombobulate »

timthorn wrote: post #233
discombobulate wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My quote was the entirety of Count 1. I believe a count is a distinct offence[0]. [0] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/count

All the numbered paragraphs are subject to the rider "As the Particulars of that offence make clear, with the intention of assisting another to commit acts of terrorism, you engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to that intention namely:" The relevant legislation is here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/11/section/5

I don't know enough about the subject to defend my position.

Guess I'll just concede: assigning a reasonable probability of you being correct.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#236

Post by mschuster91 »

joosters wrote: post #191
mdekkers wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK's speed cameras are brightly coloured Not everywhere. When was the last time you were on the M25? They are brightly coloured in places where they actively want you to reduce speed (residential areas and the like), and at infamous accident hotspots. Everywhere else (mostly motorways) they are hidden, and traps.

The M25 is littered with speed camera signs, so I don't see how a driver could claim to be surprised by any of the cameras on the road. What is the excuse for being caught speeding on it? Did the driver just forget what the motorway speed limit is? The controlled speed stretches of the M25 also feature regular electronic signs showing the current speed limit in large bright lights. If you fail to see them, you probab…

> and many also have the white lines painted on the road to calibrate the camera pictures, but far fewer actually have any speed cameras.

I call this "underprovisioning" ;) It's a common cop tactic to have a couple points where you can just position a squad car with a radar gun, have a quick calibration and off you go... and as soon as local radio stations or apps broadcast you're there and sniping people for speeding, you take the squad car and go somewhere else.

The fixed-position cams are there to actually reduce accidents because people know where they are and/or get warned by apps, so the danger points are defused; the mobile units are just for the additional profits, in most cases (people will speed up after getting out of the cam range, and then you can bust them).

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#237

Post by wfo »

qubex wrote: post #224
solatic wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm sorry, but you are absolutely misinformed. If I am a citizen of a country that does not, for example, recognise the right to vote then there is no higher authority I can go to in an attempt to obtain redress, both because there is no higher authority, and because the vote is not a right in this legal system. No rights have been violated, they are simply not extant in this system.

I think you misunderstand fundamentally, GP is saying that no matter the position of the current government there are absolute inalienable rights which is a common position to take (outlined in the founding of the US, for example) and that there is indeed a higher authority than government, morality/religion/philosophy/humanism. Some consider, e.g. the UN declaration of human rights to enumerate rights which can be violated by governments even though you cannot go to the UN for redress.

You are considering a 'right' to be defined as 'a thing the particular current government allows you to do' which is a great technical legal definition in service of blind unquestioning obedience to the powerful and is a nice clean enunciation of the universally rejected philosophical principle "might is right" but is actually the exact opposite of what most people mean when they refer to rights. The law (even highest law of the land) and its enforcers can violate your rights and you can defend your rights by refusing to obey unjust law, for example. The whole point of saying a right exists is to define what it means for a government to be evil or oppressive; to deny natural rights. To say rights are defined by what the government permits is to say no government can ever be evil or oppressive, and that it justifies itself by its power and nothing more, an idea we rejected hundreds of years ago as a race when we moved past the divine right of kings.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#239

Post by Havoc »

fredley wrote: post #199
beagle3 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is happening simultaneously almost everywhere. Different countries are at different stages, but it doesn't look like anywhere is a safe haven. Having lived in several countries over the years, the grass is rarely greener as a whole - some parts are, and they may matter more to you, but the western world is mostly on par on everything. Where did you think of going?

Germany or Holland are contenders. While they may not have a perfect political climate, almost anywhere in the Western world is an improvement on the UK.

Germany isn't far behind on their monitoring stuff. Not sure about Holland

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#240

Post by type0 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #164
PeterisP wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remove the technological protections, the communications become accessible not only to law enforcement but also to malicious people - cryptography doesn't care if you have a warrant or not. A particular communications channel either is secure from anyone or it's vulnerable to everyone. If UK home secretary argues that we shouldn't be allowed to use secure channels, then that does imply that all such communicat…

The superficial solution to this is not to outlaw cryptography completely, but to require those who make cryptography available to keep master keys and/or logs. I know that these are not a real solution as they can be leaked or abused, but it's best that we don't pretend not to hear this argument. We should make clear that these are insufficient and that there's nothing wrong with private communications truly remaini…

> The superficial solution to this is not to outlaw cryptography completely, but to require those who make cryptography available to keep master keys and/or logs.

Completely or not completely, so to outlaw the strong crypto without a backdoor and put privacy activists who create such tools behind bars? I see where the UK is headed.

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