The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
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Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#2>“end-to-end encryption poses an unacceptable risk to user safety and society. It would prevent any access to messaging content and severely erode tech companies’ ability to tackle the most serious illegal content on their own platforms, including child abuse and terrorism.”
Implying that any system which looks to casual users e2e encrypted now isn't, like the web. Are they ready to open that can of worms?
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#3"... and asking for stricter regulation of the technology"
Like, stricter regulation of mathematics?
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#4>> One industry source who has spoken with government figures is skeptical that such a radical scenario will come to pass
And yet the Investigatory Powers Act[1] passed into law in the UK and has never been repealed.
We haven't seen a headline like "local ambulance chief spied on my wife's porn browsing habits" so far but I do wonder if there have been any abuses by now?
[1] That's the law which allows people like your local fire chief or food standards agency to download a copy of your browsing history without a warrant. From the legislation itself, here are the surprisingly large list of people:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/schedule/4/enac...
Getting a warrant in the UK is not some huge effort, in the worst cases it can take just under 1 month but regularly can be under 35 minutes.
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#5"... and asking for stricter regulation of the technology" Like, stricter regulation of mathematics?
Right now, mass consumer use of technology for communication is predicated by:
1. There being a service provider that is a legal entity. 2. The service provider providing the client software. 3. The service provider gatekeeping to the social network that makes the system useful. 4. Consumers not generally being able or willing to interfere with their client end software to add E2E on top of what the service provider does, even if that is technically feasible.
Under these conditions, mandating backdoors through regulation is perfectly feasible, regardless of mathematics.
Maybe one day we'll see true P2P software that users actually control, with no central entity that the government can coerce, actually being used by the mass market. Until then, it's not defying mathematics at all to mandate backdoors.
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#6"... and asking for stricter regulation of the technology" Like, stricter regulation of mathematics?
Right now, mass consumer use of technology for communication is predicated by: 1. There being a service provider that is a legal entity. 2. The service provider providing the client software. 3. The service provider gatekeeping to the social network that makes the system useful. 4. Consumers not generally being able or willing to interfere with their client end software to add E2E on top of what the service provider…
I would argue connecting child abusers is a pretty niche market.
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#7>> One industry source who has spoken with government figures is skeptical that such a radical scenario will come to pass And yet the Investigatory Powers Act[1] passed into law in the UK and has never been repealed. We haven't seen a headline like "local ambulance chief spied on my wife's porn browsing habits" so far but I do wonder if there have been any abuses by now? [1] That's the law which allows people like yo…
i assume in days of https, most of the history they would be able to obtain are only domain names, not specific URLs, right?
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#8>> One industry source who has spoken with government figures is skeptical that such a radical scenario will come to pass And yet the Investigatory Powers Act[1] passed into law in the UK and has never been repealed. We haven't seen a headline like "local ambulance chief spied on my wife's porn browsing habits" so far but I do wonder if there have been any abuses by now? [1] That's the law which allows people like yo…
i assume in days of https, most of the history they would be able to obtain are only domain names, not specific URLs, right?
Correct
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now, mass consumer use of technology for communication is predicated by: 1. There being a service provider that is a legal entity. 2. The service provider providing the client software. 3. The service provider gatekeeping to the social network that makes the system useful. 4. Consumers not generally being able or willing to interfere with their client end software to add E2E on top of what the service provider…
I would argue connecting child abusers is a pretty niche market.
And enabling child abusers is even more niche, yet houses are still sold without built-in surveillance cameras, that would let law enforcement look at the recording of what you were doing (with a warrant, of course!)
But as it stands, private houses are warrant-proof places where anything can happen.
Re: The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook's End-to-End Encryption
#10"... and asking for stricter regulation of the technology" Like, stricter regulation of mathematics?
France actually banned non approved use of encryption algorithms/math in the 90s so there's some precedence.
https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_...