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UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

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Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#181

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

ben_w wrote: post #68
traceroute66 wrote: post #40

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…

The BBC don't seem to care about being impartial when it comes to the royalty. They publish loads of articles about the upcoming coronation and I have yet to see any republican points of view.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#182

Post by giobox »

traceroute66 wrote: post #115
ben_w wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Campbell is IMO the more appropriate comparison too - Mandelson was an elected MP and later a Lord during Blair/Brown years, he wasn't a SPAD for hire like Cummings or Campbell. That said, the three of them worked very closely together - Blair, Mandelson and Campbell.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#183

Post by darrenf »

saurik wrote: post #167
darrenf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the bill was eventually dropped If you're referring to the Electronic Communications Bill, it did indeed become an act. And in fact it contained an explicit section prohibiting the imposition of escrow (which has not been removed by any subsequent amendments): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/7/part/III 14 Prohibition on key escrow requirements (1) Subject to subsection (2), nothing in this Act shall confe…

That the key escrow portion was finally dropped is not somehow incompatible with it being there in the first place. Maybe your comment is just trying to clarify the timeline--due to a pedantic complaint that if a bill is changed to not do something it isn't the entire bill that was "dropped"--but it frankly is coming off like some kind of attempt to gaslight the thread down a path of "this was never a concern and no…

> frankly is coming off like some kind of attempt to gaslight the thread down a path of "this was never a concern and no one was suggesting this".

I mean, I literally quoted an MP saying "The debate on key escrow raged for some time" and linked to the full debate in which it was spoken; hardly a sensible "escrow was never a concern" move. The Telepolis link backs this up with detail - escrow was proposed by the Tories, pledged against yet initially retained by Labour, and eventually withdrawn.

The comment to which I was replying said that an entire bill was junked. I think it's much more interesting, and indeed important, to note that in actuality the act passed with an explicit prohibition of escrow. If the bill was dropped then it would likely have been a case of the govt going, oh, damn, we got embarrassed - kill it for now, we'll come back to it later, but bury it under something else. But no - there was public debate, and democracy functioned as we would all hope - a terrible idea was proposed, defeated, and legislated against.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#184

Post by vixen99 »

schmuelio wrote: post #118
Veen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"...

No doubt you've dispassionately gone out of your way to assesss that evidence and after detailed examination decided it's invalid. Which would be a perfectl reasonable step to make - if that's what you did. Did you?

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#185

Post by gadders »

antibasilisk wrote: post #158
tialaramex wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People just vote for him because he sounds funny, because the only thing the parliament is useful for is its entertainment value.

Politics is showbusiness for ugly people (c) Someone Else.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#186

Post by bee_rider »

iso1631 wrote: post #145
bee_rider wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they lobby much? I vaguely remember a bunch of silliness about trying to figure out the Queen’s preferences around Brexit based on the brooch she was wearing or something like that… I’ve always just thought of royalty as sort of like the prototype for American celebrities like the Kardashians. Just a bunch of people who are famous for being famous.

Oh no, they definitively lobby, as listed in the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35687508 I'm just not sure that "rich person lobbies government" is the jackpot that republicans think it is. The day that Biden, Trump. Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I and before don't get lobbying on a regular basis from major donors then I'll consider it one. Indeed I'd rather Charlie spend an hour a week lobbying…

Huh, interesting, well there goes one of their few redeeming virtues in my mind, I guess.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#187

Post by zackmorris »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #18
derelicta wrote: post #11

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.

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 liked how the Netflix series The Crown depicted Queen Elizabeth II as having God's ear, as a last line of defense against corrupt politicians. The prime minister has to run everything past the king/queen, which hopefully keeps the system honest, or at least in line with tradition.

There's nothing like that in the US, by design, due to our constitutional separation of church and state. The words "In God We Trust" were added to our currency in 1864, and "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.

Although I think we'd benefit from having an ELI5 branch to provide a final sniff test by voters for all controversial legislation. There's only a 10% correlation between what the public wants and what congress passes, because we never managed to separate freedom of speech from freedom of money to buy speech. So the wealthy have a disproportionate say in our political discourse, that's why they push stuff like corporate personhood to maintain power. Which goes all the way back to the formation of the country as a democratic "republic" to hand off unethical decisions around slavery, sexism and colonization to a semi-elected ruling class that maintains the status quo, much like we hand off minor sins like killing animals for meat consumption to butchers. In other words, the US effectively has a lobbyist branch which worships money, instead of a religious branch.

Of course the same argument could be used in reverse to say that all religious involvement in government is about the final control of money and power.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#188

Post by seanhunter »

darrenf wrote: post #53
seanhunter wrote: post #13

The UK has threatened this on and off for a while. I recall around 2000 they proposed a bill which would have forced everyone who wanted to use encryption to escrow a key with the government. I used to watch some TV in those days and the 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[1]. Diffie j…

> the bill was eventually dropped If you're referring to the Electronic Communications Bill, it did indeed become an act. And in fact it contained an explicit section prohibiting the imposition of escrow (which has not been removed by any subsequent amendments): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/7/part/III 14 Prohibition on key escrow requirements (1) Subject to subsection (2), nothing in this Act shall confe…

That's the one. Really cool you unearthed taht. Thanks.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#189

Post by pydry »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #181
ben_w wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The BBC don't seem to care about being impartial when it comes to the royalty. They publish loads of articles about the upcoming coronation and I have yet to see any republican points of view.

They don't care about impartiality in anything, really. Certainly not since Greg Dyke left. The management has increasingly been stuffed with people who are openly Tory.

The recent attack on Gary Lineker for not being "impartial" (not being sufficiently uncritical of Government policy) was particularly galling.

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