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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'

#81

Post by robertlagrant »

mcpackieh wrote: post #29
robertlagrant wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments have never had so much control over money and information. They’re not losing control, they just keep tightening their grip. Well - East Germany must've had worse, surely? All money controlled by the state and state-sponsored spying?

I've heard the Stasi were breaking into people's homes and stealing their underwear to store in archives of scent jars for their dogs, but as extreme as that is I don't think that and their other tactics gave them anything close to the surveillance capabilities modern governments now have thanks to everybody carrying a smartphone 24/7.

Well, sometimes they'd have someone crouched in the room next door listening and looking. That seems fairly invasive even by today's standards.

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

#82

Post by bananapub »

miohtama wrote: post #56
bananapub wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Casual spying on citizens is new to Western governments (unless you count East Germany as Western). However in some countries your phone must have mandatory government spyware on your mobile phone and PC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dam_Youth_Escort

> Casual spying on citizens is new to Western governments (unless you count East Germany as Western).

depends on "casual" and "new" I guess? Echelon is a dragnet from the 70s, and at least the US, UK and Australian governments spied lots on anti-war protestors and environmentalists and civil rights campaigners and trade unionists. Some Australians wrote a book called "Our ASIO Files" (ASIO is the Australian internal spy/security agency) based on being surveilled during the 80s.

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dam_Youth_Escort

did you not read the article you've linked? this was never deplpoyed.

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

#83

Post by EGreg »

bananapub wrote: post #71
curiousllama wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so. Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics.

> And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so. > Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics. What on earth are you talking about? The bill was passed by the Commons and then will be passed by the Lords and then…

Exactly. What are they talking about?

Not only will it become law but in 3-5 years they will continue to tighten the screws.

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

#84

Post by bananapub »

varispeed wrote: post #72
curiousllama wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so. Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics.

This should be classed as an attempt at violating human rights and possibly other violations. After all this worthless bill cost millions to develop and if people knew it is not workable, then they de facto defrauded the tax payer.

this is a very silly take, especially in the case of the UK.

what little actual legal concept of human rights the UK has is also something the current lunatics in government are trying to eliminate also, though.

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

#85

Post by sjducb »

tescocles wrote: post #37
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is, in fact, illegal to pray in many locations of the U.K., and people have been arrested and charged for it. Think about it: prayer, an interior orientation of the mind to God; not even any audible speech is necessary to commit a heinous, treasonous act.

Not even close. The specific case I know you're talking about is the woman who was in an exclusion zone that was in place to stop people harassing women entering an abortion clinic. If she doesn't want "praying silently in her head" to be interpreted as harassment, maybe she should think about the behaviour she and her cohorts have engaged in that might have lead to this interpretation. Sure, you can disagree with th…

This is a common misunderstanding. Harassing people near abortion clinics is a separate offense. The lady in question has harassed people in the past, but she was specifically arrested and charged for prayer in this case. This offense of prayer is separate to her harassment of people.

It’s like if you had drugs in your pocket while harassing someone. They’re separate offenses.

This video explains the situation and references the original police and court records.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FS5FT-4Kx7E

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

#86

Post by bananapub »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #58
bananapub wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's ~100m that could be put towards things that actually help people and improve peoples lives.

if the UK government had an extra £100m, rest assured they would not use it to help anyone or improve anyone's lives

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

#87

Post by zirgs »

kome wrote: post #16

spying metadata is more than enough . and we know it thanks to snowden and assange. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-bas...

But what's the solution to this? Legally requiring communications companies not to store metadata?

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

#88

Post by vaylian »

jacquesm wrote: post #45
hcfman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As long as most people are not aware of these problems, they will not vote against the politicians that make these laws. This is really not a question about democracy but a question about how well-informed the population is.

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

#89

Post by jacquesm »

master-lincoln wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Elections alone don't make a democracy. Fair and free and secret elections are necessary but not sufficient for a democracy. Free press, protection of minorities, free speech, separation of powers, fundamental rights are other parts I think are necessary for a liberal democracy.

To a large degree we have all of those, I'm not sure which countries rank better on those parameters but there can't be all that many of them.

- #6 press freedom ranking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index

- #9 freedom house https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores

- #11 freedom of speech https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

And so on. Now: this isn't saying that NL is perfect, not by a long shot. We have seen some absolutely terrible behavior by politicians, most notably on the right extreme part of the spectrum. Emboldened by Trump's election populism is on the rise here as well and we see just the same idiotic behavior as in the USA. Including word-for-word translations of talking points (which are utterly ridiculous in a Dutch context, but never mind that sort of detail), attempts (and some success) at polarization and so on. For that reasons alone the next elections are pretty exciting in that we can either further derail or - hopefully - that there will be some pushback against this.

But it is usually the people arguing the loudest that there is no democracy, freedom of press and separation of powers here that are the ones that are trying to destabilize things further.

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

#90

Post by kmlx »

Arathorn wrote: post #51
bennyelv wrote: post #47

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.

The root cause of the confusion seems to be https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1699405364968423828 , which appears to be based on a wildly overenthusiastic misreading of this coverage: https://www.ft.com/content/770e58b1-a299-4b7b-a129-bded8649a... . Basically, the government tried to deflect this by saying "don't worry, we'll pass this into law, but we'll only implement this when the scanning tech is ready", and…

> Child safety campaigners have spent years pushing the government to be tougher on tech companies over abuse material that is shared on their apps.

> Richard Collard, head of child safety online policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said: “Our polling shows the UK public overwhelmingly support measures to tackle child abuse in end-to-end encrypted environments. Tech firms can show industry leadership by listening to the public and investing in technology that protects both the safety and privacy rights of all users.”

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