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How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

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Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#31

Post by jlokier »

randompwd wrote: post #26
viktorcode wrote: post #5

Sad to see UK becoming one of the apologists of internet censorship, closing the gap to the levels of authoritarian countries. Once you have censorship facility in place, the area of its application will only grow. The term "illegal information" is also widely used in Russia for the same purpose.

> Sad to see UK becoming one of the apologists of internet censorship Almost as if, (at this point in time), the benefits of this to the people of the country(not just you) outweigh the negatives...

Not really. This legislation is not something the electorate knew about, let alone discussed, when they were voting in the current government.

It's just one of those things a government with a large majority keeps quiet about until it's got plenty of time between elections to bring it up and push it through before the next one.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#32

Post by ne0flex »

hwbehrens wrote: post #15

While I agree with their position overall, particularly with the ambiguity of "harmfulness", I think this is not the right tack to take here: > fails to acknowledge how actually harmful it would be for certain groups of the population to have their real life identity associated with their online identity No nanny-state-style government is going to buy this argument for a moment, because it requires a certain level of…

Agree that the way an argument for privacy is framed determines the support from the average person.

I've heard a number of times people saying that they have nothing to hide, yet would not give my unreserved access to their phone when I ask. Then I try to explain to them that Google, Apple, etc. are doing the same thing except they're not asking permission and they just don't seem to care. The convinience of having an Alexa that they can talk to whenever is worth more to them than the possibility that these companies can be listening in on them. Until an event that causes real fear of privacy loss occurs, I don't think many will take it seriously.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#33

Post by KingOfCoders »

Arathorn wrote: post #18

One of the most frustrating things about this legislation is that it's set up so that the only outfits with the resources to do the requested censorship would be a GAFAM. Which is utterly perverse, as on one hand the UK govt is despairing about the extent to which the UK is dependent on Big Tech social media and the control they exert on society... whilst simultaneously pushing through legislation which effectively e…

It's the same with GDPR. When I worked for a large enterprise, we had a legal/compliance team of dozens of people and a huge outsourced legal budget. When I worked in the startup of my wife, it was me implementing GDPR compliance.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#34

Post by jancsika »

______- wrote: post #8

I wish there was some sort of island or safe haven country setup by cryptographers so they could safely work on crypto without legal issues or crypto being seen as a munition and a threat to government. We could call it `01` and have it in a non fourteen-eyes jurisdiction preferably as an independent nation. We could export code containing cryptographic algorithms to countries that need it for privacy and safety reas…

> I wish there was some sort of island or safe haven country setup by cryptographers so they could safely work on crypto without legal issues or crypto being seen as a munition and a threat to government.

I wish there was some sort of island of safe haven country setup by compiler developers where C didn't have problems with memory safety.

Why is politics the only domain where HN'ers think they can make the domain's problems disappear entirely by moving it physically to an island? It's inane.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#35

Post by robobro »

newacct583 wrote: post #19
______- wrote: post #8

I wish there was some sort of island or safe haven country setup by cryptographers so they could safely work on crypto without legal issues or crypto being seen as a munition and a threat to government. We could call it `01` and have it in a non fourteen-eyes jurisdiction preferably as an independent nation. We could export code containing cryptographic algorithms to countries that need it for privacy and safety reas…

> Cryptography actually is needed for safety more than it is used by undesirable people to commit crimes! This is actually more because criminals on balance tend to be too dumb to hide their traces than because of any demographic truth. There are a lot of criminals. Focusing on "crypto" is, I think, a forest for the trees argument. Look instead at anonymity for evidence of where this kind of thing goes. Put up any re…

I recently made a federated, anonymous / pseudonymous messageboard. It took about 2 months before I had found cyber criminals had translated it into another language and were using it to sell narcotics on the darkweb.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#36

Post by Aerroon »

viktorcode wrote: post #5

Sad to see UK becoming one of the apologists of internet censorship, closing the gap to the levels of authoritarian countries. Once you have censorship facility in place, the area of its application will only grow. The term "illegal information" is also widely used in Russia for the same purpose.

Haven't they been that for a long time? Wasn't Britain the country that pushed for that EU directive that required all ISPs to save all the traffic of their users? They were also the ones that tried doing website blacklists and are trying to censor social media (google: "girl punished for hate crime for posting rap lyrics").

What does the UK have to do so that people will accept that the UK is lying when it calls itself a free country? Start arresting people for speech? For activism? Kill protesters?

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#37

Post by onetimeusename »

______- wrote: post #8

I wish there was some sort of island or safe haven country setup by cryptographers so they could safely work on crypto without legal issues or crypto being seen as a munition and a threat to government. We could call it `01` and have it in a non fourteen-eyes jurisdiction preferably as an independent nation. We could export code containing cryptographic algorithms to countries that need it for privacy and safety reas…

Creating an island nation to evade laws won't work. It's the same thing as trying to evade tax laws but for content laws.

What has happened to tax havens is they are labeled tax non-compliant and then an IGO effectively embargoes them unless they turn over all tax records and come into compliance with their laws. So the same thing would apply to creating an island nation to evade some cryptography export law, or content restriction.

I don't think convincing the respective governments with arguments will work either because the incentive they have to require censorship on internet content that they are not mentioning is that they can censor it for their own purposes. For example, Russia is considering blocking Twitter entirely for having illegal content (you know what I mean by this) but I think everyone knows that's not the real reason they are considering blocking Twitter.

I don't know what the best solution is.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#38

Post by [deleted] »

Aerroon wrote: post #36
viktorcode wrote: post #5

Sad to see UK becoming one of the apologists of internet censorship, closing the gap to the levels of authoritarian countries. Once you have censorship facility in place, the area of its application will only grow. The term "illegal information" is also widely used in Russia for the same purpose.

Haven't they been that for a long time? Wasn't Britain the country that pushed for that EU directive that required all ISPs to save all the traffic of their users? They were also the ones that tried doing website blacklists and are trying to censor social media (google: "girl punished for hate crime for posting rap lyrics"). What does the UK have to do so that people will accept that the UK is lying when it calls its…

[deleted]

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#39

Post by einpoklum »

> Whilst we sympathise with the [UK] government’s desire to show action in this space and to do something about children’s safety (everyone’s safety really)

I don't sympathize with it. A government which supports and arms near-genocidal attacks and blockades in Yemen and in Palestine - is not a legitimate actor where it comes to safety and harm prevention online. Or at the very least - where its involvement may have effect on non-UK-citizens.

Re: How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

#40

Post by Arathorn »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #33
Arathorn wrote: post #18

One of the most frustrating things about this legislation is that it's set up so that the only outfits with the resources to do the requested censorship would be a GAFAM. Which is utterly perverse, as on one hand the UK govt is despairing about the extent to which the UK is dependent on Big Tech social media and the control they exert on society... whilst simultaneously pushing through legislation which effectively e…

It's the same with GDPR. When I worked for a large enterprise, we had a legal/compliance team of dozens of people and a huge outsourced legal budget. When I worked in the startup of my wife, it was me implementing GDPR compliance.

But at least GDPR /is/ tractable to implement at small scale. Whereas for the OSB: if you run a smallish but popular chat/blog/forum/etc service, there literally isn’t a solution for moderation which isn’t fiendishly expensive, privacy invasive, or both.

The legislation has clearly been dreamt up by folks saying “ah ha! if we threaten the Facebook UK executive mangement team with jailtime unless they do better at filtering self-harm/CSAM/terrorism/etc then they will obviously get their house in order!”. Whereas in practice they crush their own UK-based startups instead. So frustrating.

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