Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 205 posts

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

#151

Post by dark_glass »

crtasm wrote: post #145
jojobas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A gun is self defence incarnate. The right to effective self defence is a natural right and requires no license. Americans use guns defensively hundreds of thousands times a year. Encryption can very much be used to facilitate murder. Your data is not as important as your life.

> The right to effective self defence is a natural right I don't see how that's correct, defending oneself with something natural sounds OK though.

Does a big strong man have more of a right to self defense than a little woman? A gun makes for effective self defense.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

spzb wrote: post #75
skripp wrote: post #39

> The government said its proposal was not "a ban on end-to-end encryption". > Critics say companies could be required by Ofcom to scan messages on encrypted apps for child sexual abuse material or terrorism content under the new law. So, what's going on here? Is it going to be E2EE between user and user and then also a copy E2EE between user and the government? What a time to be alive. Or is the law going to require…

Government policy on encryption (along with many other things including Brexit) relies on "magical thinking". They don't understand the problem so they assume there's an easy solution that's just being withheld from them by nefarious third parties.

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by adrianN »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #52
Dalewyn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Counterpoint: China just makes its own "Internet".

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

#154

Post by jonplackett »

I wish this older generation of politicians who grew up without the internet would hurry up and retire, and let some people who have at least a vague grasp of technology take over. It is painful to watch these people grapple incoherently with the basic idea of how encryption works and what is fundamentally possible or impossible to achieve.

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

#155

Post by boppo1 »

Who are the faces of this bill?

I'm picturing a webcomic where a ~25 year-old's boyfriend asks her for some nudes, she strips to take them and freaks out because [politician] is suddenly sitting there, leering and smiling. "Oh don't mind me, I'm just here to protect children and prevent terrorism."

Any other ideas for a series?

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

#156

Post by andromeduck »

Ntrails wrote: post #76
cnity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make no mistake: the Online Safety Bill has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children. End-to-end encryption is the first line of defence against government approved mass surveillance. If it falls, the rest will follow. It will only be a short period until the operation is expanded under the guise of additional "protections" against the citizens.

> the Online Safety Bill has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children. I wish people would acknowledge both sides of the coin instead of simply pretending the other side doesn't exist. Yes society uses surveillance to identify and prosecute criminals (of various ilks, including those who abuse children). If you render that surveillance impossible by construction then people who might previously have been cau…

It's just like gun control. They're barely enforcing existing laws because of political sensitivities and asking for more power because...?

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

#157

Post by _8j50 »

viridian wrote: post #79
_8j50 wrote: post #42

I will say it again, something has got to give. You can't have humane treatment of child rapists and fear government overreach. It is in fact possible to backdoor communication systems for lawful intercept access. It is possible to also design public auditing of such systems so that a warrant or lawful order being used to intercept communications can be logged and audited by the public. Warrants are not forever secre…

Isn't your argument essentially saying that a nation's sovereign body, no matter what their laws, are not only expected, but also justified and morally correct in enforcing those laws, without any regard to the nature of those laws? By this argument, one would believe that it is imperative for communications networks to assist Nazi Germany in the location and rounding up of undesired people as a part of Gleichschaltu…

Yes that is my argument. Until Nazis try to invade your country. However, you are free to stop providing seevices entirely in that country if you disagree with their laws.

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

#158

Post by polski-g »

skripp wrote: post #39

> The government said its proposal was not "a ban on end-to-end encryption". > Critics say companies could be required by Ofcom to scan messages on encrypted apps for child sexual abuse material or terrorism content under the new law. So, what's going on here? Is it going to be E2EE between user and user and then also a copy E2EE between user and the government? What a time to be alive. Or is the law going to require…

Just scan the encrypted data stream and call it a day. "Well, we tried and did not find anything"

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

#159

Post by mjevans »

Nextgrid wrote: post #107
robertlagrant wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think breaking encryption is a good idea, but I will say that until recently law enforcement could tap phones, rip open envelopes, and get a court order to break into your house and search it. There was never the level of privacy against law enforcement that encryption offers.

> rip open envelopes, and get a court order to break into your house and search it One limiting factor was that this wasn't scalable - so a lot of people would be comfortable with it because there is little potential for widespread abuse - there just aren't enough resources to search & monitor everyone's mail and houses at all times. There are no such limitations online, so better protections such as encryption are r…

Active effort. It also can't just be done passively or archived for later optional analysis by computers or humans.

Further, usually, a judge has to approve. There's at least some oversight and reasonable cause involved.

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

#160

Post by hellojesus »

amarant wrote: post #99
jojobas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will say the same when you lose right to encryption, and both will be wrong.

Except you can't kill someone with encryption. Your freedoms end where my freedoms begin, and guns are just a tool to change that dynamic. They serve no other purpose, unless we're talking hunting, for which you can still get guns, after some education. I don't get how Americans seem to think it makes sense to require a license to drive a car but not to own a gun? Who is more dangerous, a guy driving a sedan or one h…

Because one is protected from government in the Constitution. It literally says that the government cannot infringe on one's right to keep and bear arms. It doesn't say the government allows you to have them. It says the government cannot disallow you from having them.*

*Note: the government could disallow one from having them so long as that person goes through due process, at which point Constitutional restrictions placed upon the government are relaxed in specific areas.

Post reply on HN