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UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

theregister.com

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Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#41

Post by bananapub »

cbluth wrote: post #34
bananapub wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they are trying to get the law passed they did pass the law through the lower house. the upper house can demand amendments and stall things a bit, but it can also just be completely ignored given enough time. > despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible it's not impossible, it's just a horrificly bad idea, and why would being impossible affect if it gets passed or not? > by saying "we know it…

this narrative sounds like an acceptance of a cat n mouse game that has barely got started

it's not very secret. a bunch of western governments want to be able to spy on the comms of their citizens and lazy terrorists/pedophiles/whatever with poor opsec. basically everyone including normies moving to well-encrypted chat systems makes this very hard (requires court-ordering/NSL/coercing software companies to 0wn their own customers), so instead they want to standardise making it easy for governments.

the UK happens to 1) not have a proper constitution with any encoded human rights and also poor judicial review and 2) an inherently authoritarian currently-ruling party and media ecosystem and culture 3) be a UN SC member, Five Eyes member, G7 member, reasonably big economy etc so it's government is in a good spot to push hard on this and see if it can break the will of tech companies, which would be a great technical and social precedent to help other governments achieve the same goal. Australia is also a battleground for this for similar cultural and political and legal reasons.

what is less clear is why Signal is saying this is a victory, unless they really are so cynical that saving face while losing is more important than standing up on this point of principle that their company was supposedly founded on.

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#42

Post by eesmith »

pipo234 wrote: post #4
nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

I've read six of these "Oh no we didn't back down" stories this morning. What worries me is the appearance of wishful thinking around the language of "technically feasible". Follow this road far enough and we'll have government ministers with marketing credentials defining what is "technically feasible", instead of scientists. https://cybershow.uk #016 | S2 | Special | UK Online Safety Bill Published on Friday 01st S…

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society. Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

> the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

I think that's more an optimistic interpretation of democracy.

After all, it's the government that gets to decide who is a citizen, and who has the franchise.

Historically the US said that African Americans were not citizens, within the meaning of the Constitution. In 1858 your statement might be 100% true about the US, but it would exclude a lot of people - who indeed were justifiably fearful of the democracy they lived in.

While the 14th amendment made many new citizens, for many decades after the end of reconstruction these citizens feared their government far more than vice versa.

You can see the variable concept of "citizen" when considering that a minor may be a US citizen for many purposes, but does not have the voting rights of full citizenship. Before the 26th amendment even 20-year-old adults were not full citizens.

Something like 2% of US adult citizens cannot vote due to being a convicted felon, further showing how shaky your assertion is.

There's also a large number of immigrants to the US who are not citizens, but ideally should not fear the government any more than citizens do.

Perhaps the US doesn't count as democracy, but that sounds too much like a No True Scotsman response. Switzerland, with its famous direct democracy, didn't allow full women's suffrage until 1971-1990, depending on canton, again highlighting that "citizen" and "those who can vote" are not really the same thing in a democracy.

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#43

Post by Arathorn »

Mindwipe wrote: post #3

They really didn't! The bill went through it's third reading in the Lords with literally no changes yesterday! These stories are going to make people complacent that this terrible, terrible bill has gone away. It hasn't, it passed, more or less unchanged (except to make the age verification piece a little bit worse).

Precisely!!! At this rate Signal's inexplicable desire to claim this as a victory (https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1699405364968423828) is distracting at the very worst possible time - this is the last chance to stop the bill, and instead of a final hail mary... we're congratulating ourselves? on the fact that scanning won't be implemented immediately but only once the government has decided that the tech is mature enough?!!

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#44

Post by jacquesm »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #33
pipo234 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society. Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

I try to take a charitable, open-minded position in this. Two of us in the cybershow are parents. Taking on analysis of this bill was a tough decision, but something we felt obliged and qualified to do as parents and security experts. There are obviously grave harms around digital technology, plus its obvious myriad benefits. Covert communications enabling criminal and anti-social activity is just one small part. Our…

That's a very mature stance. Inside the government there are a ton of people doing really hard work who are frustrated by the rise of encryption, so they can no longer do the work that they were doing in the past effectively (some outside of government see this as a good thing).

In those same governments there are those that dream of having access to all of this data with less honorable intentions. Because both are part of the same entity and once the capability is there it is pretty much a given that checks and balances will fail when you need them most I find myself both sympathetic to those that keep us safe and to those that object to this level of invasiveness, and I find myself opposed to those what effectively use terrorism and CP as a way to shepherd us into an authoritarian society.

And then there are the consequences of finding yourself with a really bad instance of government at some point in the future, it could easily happen.

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#45

Post by jacquesm »

hcfman wrote: post #30
pipo234 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society. Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

It's not just the UK. The Netherlands is like that as well and it's lost it's democracy. They can now hack anyone, not just criminals, without a judge being involved or even any evidence. They can shutdown speech that they don't like and they regularly commit criminal acts against non-criminally involved citizens organised by non-accountable organisations.

This is a bit over the top, don't you think? Case in point: we will have elections one of these days, that seems to be proof to me that we still are a democracy. Or do you believe in widespread vote fraud?

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#46

Post by bananapub »

pipo234 wrote: post #4
nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

I've read six of these "Oh no we didn't back down" stories this morning. What worries me is the appearance of wishful thinking around the language of "technically feasible". Follow this road far enough and we'll have government ministers with marketing credentials defining what is "technically feasible", instead of scientists. https://cybershow.uk #016 | S2 | Special | UK Online Safety Bill Published on Friday 01st S…

The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society. Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.

the UK has a weird culture of conformism and authoritarianism, and the weirdo part of the Tory party is deeply into that sort of thing, and is in power now. it's not very mysterious.

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#47

Post by bennyelv »

Something strange is going on here. Nothing has changed about the bill, yet all news outlets are reporting as if it has.

All that happened was that somebody said "yeah but we won't use these controls so don't worry".

What is the authority of that statement? The bill hasn't been changed.

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#48

Post by bananapub »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #27
tcldr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise the 'anachronistic monarchy' is just a tourist attraction/diplomatic lever at this point, right? Britain is a parliamentary democracy. I'm pretty confident Charlie doesn't have a hand in enabling sweeping snooping powers. More hacking scandals are the last thing his poor family needs!

> You realise the 'anachronistic monarchy' is just a tourist attraction/diplomatic lever at this point, right? It's not. It still has power, and it's still costing tax payers a shitton so one family can live above everyone else. More importantly there are plenty of royalists who support it.

christ alive buddy.

the royal family costs the UK tax payer ~100m a year[0], which is about the cost of the three nuclear bombs in the US or less than one of the ill-advised F-32 purchases Australia is making. it's also maybe a 1/10th of the amount of money stolen by Tory mates for their various PPE crimes during the early pandemic.

every country has very very dumb shit they piss money up the wall over, but it's not a game changing amount of money.

0: dodgy source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/how-much-royal-family-cos...

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#49

Post by justin66 »

bananapub wrote: post #17

The reporting on this is horrific, including by the businesses involved. Absolutely nothing legally was changed. The government put out a press release saying some worthless crap, that's the entire thing that happened. edit: sorry, not a press release, sent a minion to read out a non-binding statement, who then confirmed the the law was not actually changed at all: https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-…

No human being whatsoever should be surprised when Reuters offers better reporting than The Register.

Re: UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'

#50

Post by sph »

pipo234 wrote: post #36
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand enough about UK to see why anachronistic monarchy would be at the heart. Not saying the monarchy is at heart, just that the culture won't change until they have some sort of cultural revolution and get rid of it.

Yikes! Historically, revolutions are bloody and generally do not end well. Cultural revolutions less so. Having said that, I would not mind seeing King Charles abdicate; England, Wales, Scotland, N-Ireland become proper republics; help the remnants of upper class strongholds adapt to reality, if that's what you mean. :-)

> Historically, revolutions are bloody and generally do not end well. Cultural revolutions less so.

Historically, major changes only come with a bloodshed, you forgot that part. We speak highly of Gandhi because he's an exception to this rule, not the norm. (And blood was shed in that case as well)

The corollary is, don't expect much to change until there's a major societal break and pushback. That is, unless you have drunk the kool aid of modern politics and think your party will fix things for real, this time.

In Britain, I'm less concerned about King Charles III and its effect on the populace, than Starmer, Sunak, and any other idiot in Westminster. They're the ones writing the government laws and budget for their own interests.

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