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UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

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Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#211

Post by petre »

rightbyte wrote: post #173
AlecSchueler wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last example would mean more if The Sex Pistols hadn't long ago been thoroughly absorbed into and reapprpriated by the establishment. Imagine if they'd shared a contemporary work calling the monarchy a fascist regime. As it stands it was just a cute joke, and in a way only served to reinforce the soft power of parliament by entering into a playful discourse with it.

Like how Status Quo made some rehashed pro-war "In the army now" army recruitment video ...

I'd like to see them try rehashing In the Navy by the Village People into pro war propaganda.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#212

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

hgomersall wrote: post #205
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's degrees of bias though. The BBC has a charter that is supposed to prioritise impartiality, and yet they show strong bias in many topics.

That's the point I'm making. It's like having their charter saying that pi is 3: reality is no less malleable.

Well, pi is approximately 3 to a certain degree of precision. To make a bad analogy, the BBC is currently saying that pi is 4 and increasing.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#213

Post by upofadown »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #178
jeroenhd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what cryptographers or even most people dealing with messengers would consider end-to-end encryption.

So what would be the correct term to use if one of the "ends" is not a human?

The humanity of the individuals at the ends is not relevant. The point is that each individual only has to trust the other individual. Not, say a TLS certificate authority.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#214

Post by cryptonector »

dragonwriter wrote: post #208
cryptonector wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly Parliament is sovereign, and Parliament is elected, therefore the UK is a democracy. And it's been so for nearly 400 years. Not that any of that guarantees that the UK is a "good democracy", but a democracy it is.

> Clearly Parliament is sovereign, and Parliament is elected Its not though. The House of Commons is elected. The House of Lords and the Crown are not elected, and all three are integral components of the Parliament. [0] [0] https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/relations-with-othe...

But the House has reformed the Lords repeatedly, and the Lords can't stop them. It's like the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate which is constitutional because there is at least one day in every term where it can be amended by a simple majority vote (and, in fact, it can be amended by a majority vote at any time and has been).

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#215

Post by bee_rider »

iso1631 wrote: post #207
bee_rider wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I guess the question is would an elected head of state mean more lobbying from more corrupt people. Sure Charlie might lobby against something happening in his back yard, and that's a pain, but I'd rather that than have big pharma lobby to loosen safety features on drug approvals, or big food lobby to bypass animal welfare

Hard to say, I guess. The US is a bit weird (pretty big, lots of huge companies call us home) so it probably gets more lobbying than most other countries I guess. I’d expect the UK to have a trajectory more like similar sized European countries (Germany maybe? Maybe compare to France, but of course French people have a unique relationship with their government…)

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#216

Post by dragonwriter »

vixen99 wrote: post #89
c0m wrote: 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.

> 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.

Probably not if, as was the case the last time it happened (in 1708), it was because of what was perceived as a radical change of relevant circumstance in between the law being passed and the expected date of royal assent.

(Of course, refusal of royal assent to colonial laws in North America did happen after that, without that reason, and did cause, or at least contribute to, a revolution in those colonies.)

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#217

Post by dragonwriter »

tialaramex wrote: post #111
vixen99 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

> There’s no need to speculate, the reason we say Parliament is sovereign is that Parliament ordered Charles I executed for defying them.

Refusal of Royal Assent has happened since then, and not caused similar responses, though (in England; parts of British North America are…a different story; no regicide of course, but the monarchy itself was replaced.)

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#218

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

hgomersall wrote: post #203
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that people are very bad at assessing what is in their best interest. For sure, the result is a pretty thorny ethical debate, but you can't deny that the ability of the electorate to veto things would not necessarily result in an improvement.

In general I believe people are bad at assessing their best interest as a failure of education (too few teachers, too many students), perhaps with the rise of personal artificial mentors this will be better.

Being able to vote "No" or "No One" may see no improvement, but it would at least give a true option to the 30%-60% of people (various countries) who never vote, a protest vote which is actually significant, especially if voting "No" further decreases the mandate time.

I guess in general we should ask ourselves if the principles on which we build the society are for increasing democracy or for decreasing it. And then we can label it as "democratic" or not, but the rate of change towards a heightened democracy is more important than a single scalar "democracy index". Hence my initial repartee about a 1,300 old society which steadfastly had and has bishops, lords, kings as instruments of power or power-adjacent implementers of power.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#219

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

jen20 wrote: post #199
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am afraid it's rather original. Afraid since originality in politics increases the chance of assassination, or even worse, marginalization.

One technical issue to solve beforehand is reducing the cost of elections by 6-7 orders of magnitude. 2020 US election costed $14 billion (presidential and congressional) [1], 2020 India election costed $7 billlion [2]. It's completely unsustainable. Sending 500 million HTTPS messages using Amazon SES costs around $50,000. Perhaps elections should cost a bit more, but not with much, in order to be able to run them every other day/month.

The fact that our societies are unable to hold elections often and at the cost of spam emails is also a sign we are not trending towards increasing democracy.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-electi...

[2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabh...

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#220

Post by [deleted] »

jen20 wrote: post #199
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]
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