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Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

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Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#161

Post by [deleted] »

miroljub wrote: post #42
mosura wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the streets they walk on. That would be against everything european governments stand for.

I don't understand why you got heavily downvoted. Yes, there are governments that are worse than European, but the decline of European government is the fastest. You may be surprised that the UK is the world leader in the number of people arrested because of internet posts. And that Germany, which is still way behind the UK, has more people arrested for the same reason than Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Belarus,…

[deleted]

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#162

Post by 9dev »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #154
9dev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know its satisfying to think of the government as some singular nefarious entity, but the reality is far worse: There is no one in charge. It’s chaos all the way down.

There are a few people in charge, they just don’t advertise the fact. Similar how the ‘Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence’. These both appear correct to the vast majority of people because of the Pareto distribution of outcomes, the vast majority of people experience the incompetence / no-one in charge and don’t experience the relatively tiny number of events when the competent…

No, that's what I was getting at. Thinking "they" are in charge is actually very widespread, with varying opinions on who "they" actually are—whether it's billionaires for you, the Rothschild's for others, or Reptilians for some.

How great it would be to have a select few evil masterminds, a clear enemy to roil against! That isn't reality, though. Would the super-secret council of puppet masters have allowed Trump to become president of the USA (again) and ruin the economy? You'll have an answer to that, obviously. It matters little. Reality is far more complex, shadow masters prefer stability over chaos, and the world is generally full of competing and opposing interests.

A few rich men might hold a lot of power in their hands, I give you that; but unless you limit "the world" to mean an arbitrary smaller region of earth, nobody is in charge of it all.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#163

Post by sneak »

nirui wrote: post #123

> Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK. So say if my UK friend connected directly to my PC with SSH/RDP, both uses end-to-end encrypted link, to chat with me using `wall`, `write` or Windows Task Manager, then all of sudden this is a hostile and Mr Big Ben will just launch laser at me to burn me to death. Wow, this is just mes…

> So say if my UK friend connected directly to my PC with SSH/RDP, both uses end-to-end encrypted link, to chat with me using `wall`, `write` or Windows Task Manager, then all of sudden this is a hostile and Mr Big Ben will just launch laser at me to burn me to death. Wow, this is just messed up.

No, because nobody is using those systems to communicate at scale to try to destabilize a government.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#165

Post by [deleted] »

McDyver wrote: post #6

It makes a lot of sense. Whoever wants to continue developing "these apps" will do it privately, and sell the service to those who want to keep doing things in hiding. Well done, watchdog! So again, it just harms the general public, while making it harder to catch criminals.

[deleted]

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#166

Post by squigz »

jokoon wrote: post #115

If a government is legitimately elected, and respects due process, I don't see why people would want to hide from the government. There are very few situations where a journalist would need to hide himself from a legitimate government who respects due process. With the Trump administration, in China, Russia, yes of course. Those apps do matter. Conventional apps are probably giving data to abusive governments if thei…

The issue is what happens when you no longer trust your government

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#167

Post by dathinab »

josteink wrote: post #136
dathinab wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, and here is a fun fact, most of the push for mass surveillance comes from the European Council, the thing is that literally are "just" the locally elected leaders... not some vague far away "the EU (personalized)" thing which also mean you can locally enact pressure on them furthermore the EU supreme court(s) might have more often hindered mass surveillance laws in member states then the council pushing for them…

> mass surveillance comes from the European Council, the thing is that literally are "just" the locally elected leaders... Factually incorrect. The European Parliament is elected. The Council is appointed, so there is no direct democratic incentive for the council to act on and no direct electorate to please. On top of that the actually elected European Parliament can only approve (or turn down) directives authored b…

> Factually incorrect.

no please read what I wrote

_local elected leaders_

they are the leaders each member state democratically elected in their own way

and that makes a lot of sense the EU isn't a country after all so using the already democratically elected leaders makes a lot of sense

> They have no authority to draft policies on their own.

yes neither did I claim so, the EU is by far not perfect

> Which evidently there is a lot of!

yes, but that is mainly a reflection of corruption in local Politics

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#168

Post by hexbin010 »

chii wrote: post #111
flowerthoughts wrote: post #17

> He warns that developers of apps like Signal and WhatsApp could technically fall within the legal definition of "hostile activity" simply because their technology "make[s] it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications. Sounds like Let's Encrypt would also fall under that. This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the stree…

> I see why governments think they are doing this to protect the people. they're not doing this to protect people, they're doing this to ensure there cannot be rebellion against unpopular policies. Organization is harder if all communications is monitored. But this is how gov't get to be kept in check - the risk of "rebellion". If this risk is removed, you get authoritarian states - see north korea.

> they're not doing this to protect people, they're doing this to ensure there cannot be rebellion against unpopular policies

Yup. There is a huge amount of resentment about handouts for pensioners, a lot of disagreement with any kind of new 'islamophobia law', anger about actual and perceived reneging on pre-election promises, still a lot of anti asylum-seeker sentiment, anger about grooming/rape gangs etc.

And Labour are worried about Reform making big gains again in local elections next year.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#169

Post by hexbin010 »

CommanderData wrote: post #99
lordfarquad wrote: post #93

The authorities here (UK resident) are already pushing hard for as much authoritarianism as they can get. They are also increasing prison capacity and the two tier system is a genuine thing with public services collapsing. Police militarization, drones, army unit investigating private civilians, digital powers widening... I am more scared of the government than I am of local paramilitary forces at this point. It may…

Removal of Jury service for certain crimes says it all, seeing this happen in the wake of Palestine Action is considerably disturbing, if I were a conspiracy nut I'd argue these things are being done to please Israel.

> Removal of Jury service for certain crimes says it all

Point of order: the concept already existed, they just want to expand it, for more crimes (the extent of which I'm unsure of).

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