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Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

bbc.com

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Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#51

Post by madaxe_again »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #40
crossroadsguy wrote: post #32

Signal seems to have lost the plot, after everything that went down -- the exodus, sudden interest etc etc, right when they prioritised that crypto thing above everything else and actually released it. In my circle across 4 continents only one person knew about that damn crypto. Heard of it. That niche. But then maybe Signal is supposed to be “that niche”. I don’t know how they spin it (that is if at all they bother)…

I honestly don’t understand what this “crypto thing” you mention is or has any relevance with the discussion. I use Signal every day to communicate with my friends. None of them is a software developer or a technical person. If you are not the target audience of Signal, it does not mean that nobody else is.

I believe he’s referring to this.

https://mobilecoin.com/

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#52

Post by AdrianB1 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #27
AdrianB1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sovereignty on Internet in the Internet age is a nonsense; Internet is not the possession of a government, participating to the Internet at country level (dot uk) is voluntary, if UK wants to get out of Internet as a mesh of interconnected computer networks then it is free to go back to the Dark Ages. Security is another practical nonsense. You don't need to use Signal to encrypt things, anonymous or encrypted commun…

>Sovereignty on Internet in the Internet age is a nonsense; Internet is not the possession of a government, The digital world of the internet exists within physical, analog metal boxes that reside within and thusly are subject to the legal jurisdictions of countries.

Internet can exist without a country or more. It cannot exist if all the countries decide to shut down all the infrastructure in their territories, but Internet can thrive without UK, while UK cannot live without Internet, not today.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#53

Post by thallium205 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #26
jossclimb wrote: post #15

> The government, and prominent child protection charities have long argued that encryption hinders efforts to combat online child abuse - which they say is a growing problem. So take using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. What they should be doing, is rather then increase the risk of for the majority who use encryption for valid reasons (privacy, not nefarious), is invest in services to allow individuals to gain help,…

> So take using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is worse. Encryption does protect children instead of endangering them. So these "charities" aren't even doing their job.

These “charities” are all funded by government grants anyway. You can safely claim they are both the same entity: the government.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#54

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

ben_w wrote: post #41
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems to be the only Tory politician that has any charisma and the party doesn't appear to have any workable ideas as their previous 12 years in power haven't shown them to be effective.

Yeeeees. Rewatching HIGNFY recently, and Johnson somehow (to my introspective horror) managed to come across positively even when he was squirming at Ian Hislop asking about the audio recording of Johnson conspiring to assault a journalist. I half-remember a phrase, but not where from: "people don't remember what you said, just how you made them feel".

I know at least one person that voted Conservative because Johnson made him laugh on HIGNFY. If only he could have been kept as a media personality and not been given power.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#55

Post by thallium205 »

Karellen wrote: post #38
crossroadsguy wrote: post #32

Signal seems to have lost the plot, after everything that went down -- the exodus, sudden interest etc etc, right when they prioritised that crypto thing above everything else and actually released it. In my circle across 4 continents only one person knew about that damn crypto. Heard of it. That niche. But then maybe Signal is supposed to be “that niche”. I don’t know how they spin it (that is if at all they bother)…

What are you talking about? Strong cryptography is Signal's entire point of existence.

I think he’s talking about a shitcoin Signal loaded into their app.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#56

Post by Symbiote »

hunglee2 wrote: post #8

incredible if UK were to ban Signal, but I guess national sovereignty and security are always going to be higher priorities for the state than user sentiment

It was widely reported that the Conservative party moved their internal communications to Signal in 2019. I wonder if they still use it?

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#57

Post by mattmanser »

blitzar wrote: post #28
trollied wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the bill will pass in its current form. Can't see it happening.

When the right wing, small state, less regulation party is obsessed with implementing this sort of policy - who exactly is going to stop them?

They're not really small state, and have never been. They're small state about certain things.

They're small state about consumer protections to make it easier for their corrupting donors to pillage Britain and it's workers. They're small state about not letting public bodies solve big problems like forbidding councils from building houses.

They're big state about controlling the population. They're big state about centralizing government control. They're big state about gerrymandering to impose a minority view on the population.

Very much like the Republican party.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#58

Post by walterbell »

cnity wrote: post #49
Arathorn wrote: post #46

To be clear, this is a really serious situation . The current Online Safety Bill wording from https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/49376/documents/282... ( https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 ) is as follows: clause 124(3) declares that OFCOM (the telco industry regulator) can impose "proactive technology" to comply with or remediate illegal content, child safety or fraudulent advertising(!): (3) A proactive t…

I have a question: what does it mean for the _users_ of messaging applications? If the OSB passes am I still within my rights to PGP encrypt my messages before sending them?

That may depend on whether operating systems (including app stores and package managers) are also regulated, e.g. via the EU Cyber-Resilience Act, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34760173

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#59

Post by Arathorn »

cnity wrote: post #49
Arathorn wrote: post #46

To be clear, this is a really serious situation . The current Online Safety Bill wording from https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/49376/documents/282... ( https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 ) is as follows: clause 124(3) declares that OFCOM (the telco industry regulator) can impose "proactive technology" to comply with or remediate illegal content, child safety or fraudulent advertising(!): (3) A proactive t…

I have a question: what does it mean for the _users_ of messaging applications? If the OSB passes am I still within my rights to PGP encrypt my messages before sending them?

In the current wording: yes, you can go encrypt your messages with PGP before sending them.

However, the worst-case scenario is that Ofcom would then say to Apple and Google: "Hey, you are communication service providers (thanks to iMessage and Google Messages/Chat/etc). We believe you are failing to adequately block illegal content. Therefore we legally require you to perform content moderation. And given you also provide the operating system for your services, and given you've already demonstrated you are willing to do client-side scanning at the OS layer (https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/apple-csam-child-...) clearly we expect you to scan for illegal content in the OS. Therefore, please scan all content for illegal content, otherwise we'll send your UK-based staff to jail. By the way, have you considered putting scanning in the graphics pipeline? Then we can make sure that you do OCR and image-classification on all pixels that users see, to make sure that after users PGP-decrypt their messages we can spot words like 'bomb' or worse, and send evidence through Apple/Google's moderation teams, so they can be able to block the illegal content and uphold their obligations to report CSAM etc to the authorities."

To be clear, this is a worst-case scenario, but it's the logical extrapolation of what the OSB allows. (That said, IANAL).

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#60

Post by Karellen »

thallium205 wrote: post #55
Karellen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Strong cryptography is Signal's entire point of existence.

I think he’s talking about a shitcoin Signal loaded into their app.

Doh. I often get confused when people use "crypto" to refer to cryptocurrencies rather than cryptography and encryption when the context isn't obvious.

If you're talking about a product specifically built around cryptography, I'm definitely going to not think that the context is actually cryptocurrency without any other clues.

Guess I just spent too long being interested in and reading up on crypto before bitcoin was invented.

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