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How the UK's online safety bill threatens Matrix

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61–70 of 165 posts

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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK if you won't give up your password (or essentially give means to decrypt data) when requested you can get 5 years for that. Encryption will not protect against the state in this case. Likely other countries will start to copy that...

I know it's the law already, but has it actually ever been used against anyone? I always thought it would be extremely difficult to successfully prosecute because if you give them "a" password and swore it's "the" password to the best of your knowledge you couldn't be accused of maliciously refusing to cooperate. I imagine they would still throw a book at you somewhere, but probably not the 5 years under this law.

Yes! Plenty of times e.g.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140116/09195525902/uk-ma...

You can Google more easily...

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

#62
post #14

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.

The UK was already heading down that route with the public surveillance cameras, IMHO.

Most cameras in the UK are private (around 95% if I recall correctly). Businesses, home cctv, doorbell cameras, etc.

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

#63
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…

They created it and called it rust. Time fixes all bugs.

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

#64
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is only tractable because 90% of companies don't implement it. In Germany thousands of companies illegally use Mailchimp for example.

I am curious what about Mailchimp make them illegal to use ? On the face of it they seem to have support for the required stuff: https://mailchimp.com/gdpr/

I was also curious, so I found this:

https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/bavarian-dpa-...

The core: ... transfers of personal data to the U.S.- were not lawful.

So the problem is that an US company cannot be GDPR compliant, because that conflicts with US law. Which sucks for mailchimp but makes sense.

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

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cameras tracking everything everywhere in UK would say that it's long been an authoritarian country. Authoritarianism is a sliding scale. From what I can gather, lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian (against the kinds of people they don't like, of course).

Most cameras in the UK (I think around 95% even) are private. Not sure why you think the UK is an authoritarian regime. Check any ranking and it is one of the freest countries out there (Heritage Ranking, for example: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking )

He is referring to the camera network in London.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's the law already, but has it actually ever been used against anyone? I always thought it would be extremely difficult to successfully prosecute because if you give them "a" password and swore it's "the" password to the best of your knowledge you couldn't be accused of maliciously refusing to cooperate. I imagine they would still throw a book at you somewhere, but probably not the 5 years under this law.

Yes! Plenty of times e.g. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140116/09195525902/uk-ma... You can Google more easily...

Yes, thank you for reminding me I can Google.

From your own link - he said he forgot the password, which(I assume) in itself wasn't enough to prosecute, it was the fact that he eventually caved in and provided it 4 months later, so they got him on purposefully obstructing justice for 4 months. It's not clear if he could be successfully prosecuted for this crime if he never remembered the password.

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

#67
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what about Mailchimp make them illegal to use ? On the face of it they seem to have support for the required stuff: https://mailchimp.com/gdpr/

I was also curious, so I found this: https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/bavarian-dpa-... The core: ... transfers of personal data to the U.S.- were not lawful. So the problem is that an US company cannot be GDPR compliant, because that conflicts with US law. Which sucks for mailchimp but makes sense.

[deleted]

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

#68
post #12
post #3

> Forcing a “duty of care” responsibility on organisations which operate online will not only drown small and medium sized companies in administrative tasks and costs, it will further accentuate the existing monopolies by Big Tech. I often wonder about this. I mean, just the other day there was an article[1] here about sending GDPR requests to a health non-profit in order to sequence your genes for free. The costs of…

GDPR, or CCPA, isn't all that costly as long as you stop thinking of user data as something for you to harvest, mine, resell and profit from. If you instead treat user data like a security liability, system designs and trade-offs will flow from there. They'll help ensure you design systems that minimise collection and anonymise things early, remove data promptly when no longer needed, and make it easy to audit what d…

It's possible for you to be in violation of GDPR without "thinking of user data as something for you to harvest, mine, resell and profit from".

If it's "killing a few companies" and "a startup doesn't end up seeing the light" then "GDPR is doing what I'd like it to do."

That's a pretty shitty opinion to hold.

What did those companies and startups do wrong? I'm as tired of stupid startups as the next person, but I won't cheer for their failure unless they actually do something wrong.

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

#69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most cameras in the UK (I think around 95% even) are private. Not sure why you think the UK is an authoritarian regime. Check any ranking and it is one of the freest countries out there (Heritage Ranking, for example: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking )

He is referring to the camera network in London.

The government's camera network in London is very small, only 23708 cameras (15516 of which are from Transport of London across the tube network)[0].

It's a fairly small network for an authoritarian government.

[0]https://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-lo....

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

#70

> Whilst we sympathise with the government’s desire to show action in this space and to do something about children’s safety (everyone’s safety really), we cannot possibly agree with the methods. Respectfully, stop sympathising with authoritarians who want to take away your freedom. They are not good people. Good people aren't nosey. Good people don't deprive others of liberty. Neither do they class a whole group (In…

Indeed. We know exactly how much the UK conservatives care about child safety by their decisions around funding for child protection, schooling, health and so on. The child protection argument is a smoke screen.
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