Live data from Hacker News

UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

schneier.com

111–120 of 234 posts

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#111
post #89
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The [monarch] doesn’t really have any power in practice Entirely untrue. The monarch has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. There have been many cases of the Queen getting carveouts, influencing laws, and vetting bills. There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent. This notion that the British monarch has no power is an absolute farce. There’s also the whole concept of King’s Consent…

'There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent'. True but I await the day that happens! The Brits don't go in for revolution but there'd be all hell to pay if this occurred. It would likely mark the beginning of the end for the House of Windsor. Anti-monarchists should hope such a thing comes to pass.

There's no need to speculate, the reason we say Parliament is sovereign is that Parliament ordered Charles I executed for defying them. The King is replaceable, status as Monarch of the United Kingdom is something its Parliament can bestow.

Turns out that people who hate fun (Puritans) are even less popular than a King who keeps starting wars, so Parliament installed a replacement King.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#112

The fact that every "democratic" superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between state actors to do so.

Mate, we've not been a democratic superpower for more than a decade now. Just a rudderless, inward looking joke floating adrift off the west coast of France.

[deleted]

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#113
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that we regard as "democratic" (because they are good guys, or so we'd wish) a country with king and lords (even a House of Lords, or even "Lords Spiritual" [1]), is the greater joke. [1] Just a random click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_House_o... on the Bishop of Chichester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_b... reveals a list of bishops going back as far as…

I’m sorry but this is a very simplistic take. The King has no meaningful power at all, MPs have power over the Lords and they are democratically elected. I’m not for a second saying the system is wonderful and beyond reproach. But suggesting it’s equivalent to an autocracy or something is just flat out wrong. If you want to complain about the U.K. political system complain about first past the post or the creeping an…

The king has veto power over any acts he believes affects him, and him and the queen have apparently used the threat of this many times in order to shape UK legislation before it's argued on. Apparently almost all legislation is passed by the royal family's office for edits before it goes up for debate.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...

This idea that the royal family has no meaningful political power is not congruent with how the British political system works.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The king doesn’t really have any power in practice, I think the royal family mainly exist for tradition/tourism reasons at this point At least according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index it’s one of the most democratic countries at 18th in the world (to be fair that’s made by a UK company but I don’t see why they would be biased)

This is a tiring narrative. They do have power, e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Action_Against_Iraq... That the royal family is useful for tourism is also laughable

If you're not familiar with how the British constitution works, this stuff can be confusing. But "The bill sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to Parliament" actually means "transfer the power from the PM to Parliament so that Parliament gets a vote." Command of the military is a royal prerogative executive power that is exercised by the Prime Minister, not the Monarch.

If you're genuinely interested, you can learn more about the Royal Prerogative and prerogative powers here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03...

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#115
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK programme "NewsNight" had a discussion about it. There proposing the idea was some poor government flunky. There explaining the flaws in the idea was Whitfield Diffie Aah, the good old days when the BBC was un-biased. These days you would get a government flunky, and on the other side of the table a pro-government flunky from a lobbying outfit whose real accreditation has been carefully omitted by the BBC and th…

The BBC certainly has a lot of problems with regard to actual independence, but I would like to *ahem* provide some balance by pointing to the satirical popular news quiz "Have I Got News For You" which spent the early part of the Blair years having to beep out certain references to Peter Mandelson — the Dominic Cummings of his era — that only ended with (from memory): ???: "Peter Mandelson is a hom… owner" Regular g…

> Blair years having to beep out certain references to Peter Mandelson — the Dominic Cummings of his era

I thought Alastair Campbell was Blair's Cummings ?

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#116
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting times ahead. I would assume that child porn is illegal because it's production harms children. When we can synthesise it without child involvement, what are the reasons for banning it? It becomes on the same level as gore movies, kink adult porn or any fictional perversion book. It's up to consumer to choose to consume it or not. And at the end everything mentioned before can be turned to 1 and 0. So shou…

FWIW, my reaction to the side-of-a-bus adverts for Saw franchise films in the UK was visceral disgust that there exist enough people who would buy tickets on the basis of those adverts to justify the existence of the adverts, let alone the films themselves — if I thought banning them would actually make any difference, I would call for exactly that! I don't know of human psychology really works like the toy model in…

Yeah, i would not watch willingly any of that content if even i were paid to do so. I pitty content moderators who have to filter through such content.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#117
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that we regard as "democratic" (because they are good guys, or so we'd wish) a country with king and lords (even a House of Lords, or even "Lords Spiritual" [1]), is the greater joke. [1] Just a random click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_House_o... on the Bishop of Chichester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_b... reveals a list of bishops going back as far as…

I’m sorry but this is a very simplistic take. The King has no meaningful power at all, MPs have power over the Lords and they are democratically elected. I’m not for a second saying the system is wonderful and beyond reproach. But suggesting it’s equivalent to an autocracy or something is just flat out wrong. If you want to complain about the U.K. political system complain about first past the post or the creeping an…

> The King has no meaningful power at all,

Please define "meaningful power".

Because getting millions of pounds from the state every year [1], having massive media attention, having the ear of international leaders in politics, and having ones face on currency, sounds pretty impactful to me, especially given the fact that all this is conferred by being born to certain parents, and not by, say, something like an election.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Grant_Act_2011

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#118
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK programme "NewsNight" had a discussion about it. There proposing the idea was some poor government flunky. There explaining the flaws in the idea was Whitfield Diffie Aah, the good old days when the BBC was un-biased. These days you would get a government flunky, and on the other side of the table a pro-government flunky from a lobbying outfit whose real accreditation has been carefully omitted by the BBC and th…

It's worth pointing out that right-wingers say precisely the opposite and can produce plenty of evidence showing the BBC's left-wing bias.

I think it would be more apt to call it plenty of "evidence"...

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#119
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, I just like long hereditary lines [1]: if those don't show what power is, then I don't know what power is. Being hoi polloi myself, I barely know who my grandparents were, not to speak of their parents. [1] A really fun one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_of_Dunsany#Barons_of_Dun... Christopher Plunkett, 1st Baron of Dunsany (1410–1463) Richard Plunkett, 2nd Baron of Dunsany (died c. 1480) John Plunkett,…

Out of interest, I googled the last chap in the list [1]. Class/socio-economic privilege is very much a thing, but he's not quite the Jacob Rees-Mogg type you might expect. Also "The current heir to his title is his younger brother, Oliver, a games designer and programmer who lives in the US." - he probably has a login on here :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randal_Plunkett,_21st_Baron_of...

And to the point, Rees-Mogg was elected. Misguided they might be, but a majority of those who voted in his constituency (yup, not just a plurality, a majority) picked Rees-Mogg. For better or worse that's democracy for you.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#120
the title is somewhat misleading; the Gov hasn't said this exactly, this is just very likely outcome of this bill. the bill says that platforms that host user generated content would be required to up the moderation game and to feed the content (messages) into a home-office built/approved system for monitoring. (not sure if all content goes through HO or if it's just messages). no one is banning maths or secure banking just e2ee for comms.

It also mentioned that people within the user generated content company would be held criminally liable for breaches of this law, spefically content moderation. completely defeats the point of being a company.

the whole thing is a fucking joke and should be scrapped, just thought I'd clarify some points

Post reply on HN