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UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

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191–200 of 234 posts

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#191
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key word in "liberal democracy" is "liberal", not "democracy". There exists only a single political system - an oligarchy. When the oligarchs decide to be nice, we call that "democracy".

Not saying this applies to you, but generally when I see someone espousing this opinion online, they are about to endorse a country who literally has a single king-like ruler, who will throw you in jail if you speak ill about them

> Not saying this applies to you, but

So your comment is unfounded and useless, in other words.

One can point out that liberal democracies are heavily liberal and only somewhat democratic without committing to endorsing any other kind of government or regime, ya know.

(A common statist fallacy: assuming that some criticism of an existing type of government must imply that they are rooting for another kind of government. Not saying that this applies to you, though!)

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#192

A paraphrase of the age-old glib phrase is in order: If you outlaw End-to-End Encryption, only criminals will have End-to-End Encryption. It should also be pointed out to them that saying “you there, yes you, stop doing that” to remote, likely anonymous, criminal types, has never been effective.

In practice if you offer criminals a choice of real encryption (Signal) or fake encryption (Sky ECC, Anom, etc.) they choose the fake encryption.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#193
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but there are multiple roots

There are also multiple countries

Escrow compromise as described has a iserial systems failure probability wheres today with root keyts it's parallel. That's weakest link vs isolated/partitioned.

CAs have been nuked on occasion without much fanfare to everyday users.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t like this argument because it makes the subject in question overly abstract in a way that would not apply in other situations. Examples: “How dare you make me become a licensed engineer just to be paid to do math?” “How dare you arrest me for this child porn? It’s just a sequence of 1s and 0s, therefore, you are criminalizing a number!”

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…

Any thoughtful continuation of this subject requires us to get into the weeds: even doing just that is enough to attract heavy criticism.

When it comes to porn, the general consensus is that it must be based on consent. But even that is ambiguous: whose consent are we talking about? The actors, or the characters they portray?

It's very straightforward to require consent of each person filming. No matter what the story is, actors have human rights that must be actively preserved.

But what about the content itself? Porn that portrays fictional sexual assault is generally accepted as morally good. How? Audience.

A person may have a fantasy where they are the victim of assault. Are they doing anything wrong? No. It isn't wrong to be a victim, or to imagine it. From that perspective, the foundation of consent is met. An adult watching fictional assault porn can bring their own consent into the experience, reframing the content into a useful and healthy context.

But what if that person is not an adult? The general consensus is that a child cannot give consent. I think a better framing would be to say that an adult cannot ask for, accept, or use a child's consent. This rule is the foundation for making it criminal to sell porn to minors.

Many would argue that any fictional portrayal of a child being sexually assaulted cannot have a moral perspective or utility. A child might be able to fantasize as the victim of their own assault, but no adult can sell a fictional portrayal of that fantasy to them.

---

So all that's left are the weeds: should a person watch fictional assault porn while imagining themselves as the perpetrator? Should fictional child sexual assault media be used as a pacifier for pedophiles?

These are hard ugly questions, and the emotional response from most people is an unequivocal, "no". Can we trust our emotions to lead to justice, or do they simply distract us with victory?

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#195
post #57

Where others see conspiracy I see incompetence (wish a dash of conspiracy). Time and time again it’s shown that our elected officials have no clue what they’re doing with tech. They simply do not understand the issues at hand in an era when tech is taking over more and more of our lives. I’d say we should elect more people with tech knowledge but who’s going to quit their lucrative software engineering job to run for…

At some point, there is no point in distinguishing the two. Does it matter that Boris was a real-life clown or that Labour (or LibDems for that matter) were so high on their own farts as to not be able to make a reasonable challenge when given the opportunity (see 2010 election)?

No, there is not.

I subscribe to Grey's Law:

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

If they can't be bothered to actually learn about the tech, perhaps it's because their funders don't want to.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#196
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 ?

I'm thinking mainly of the perception of each was that they were a dislikable Machiavellian power behind the throne: https://youtu.be/IWKBe7L50VA

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#198
post #121

In practice, this probably just means that WhatsApp, Signal etc. have to implement a lawful intercept capability, whereby a targeted user can have their communications read but everyone else continues as normal. Doesn't seem like such a big deal, considering this would be done by court order and limited to users suspected of engaging in criminal activity.

What if the user is not/ has never lived in the country with the court order?

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#199
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It was just a quick quip how we regard as "democratic" a country (?) called "United Kingdom", language is funny like that. Sure, UK is a great place to live for many of their citizens, and a great country overall, culture and so forth. It's not for nothing we are speaking their language and not Esperanto or something. But it's not a democracy, and that is fine. If you ask me (I know you didn't, but just in case), not…

Tying mandate to turnout is actually a very interesting idea. Has this ever been tried?

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#200
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also multiple countries

Escrow compromise as described has a iserial systems failure probability wheres today with root keyts it's parallel. That's weakest link vs isolated/partitioned. CAs have been nuked on occasion without much fanfare to everyday users.

You could theoretically set up multiple competing government agencies, each with their own root key. That would deal even with organisational risk.
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