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Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

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Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#131
post #33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make no mistake: the Online Safety Bill has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children. End-to-end encryption is the first line of defence against government approved mass surveillance. If it falls, the rest will follow. It will only be a short period until the operation is expanded under the guise of additional "protections" against the citizens.

The "children" excuse + most of the population saying "I don't need privacy, I have nothing to hide" is a double whammy against any form of encryption and it's just a matter of time before our Internet privacy rights are completely stripped away. A huge educational campaign is necessary to convince people and the average politician that being pro-encryption doesn't mean being criminals or pedophiles. So it's a lost b…

100%

I see you posting an opinion I agree strongly with here often. Glad you’re still at it.

I will offer a positive side to this situation. Their war against math proves the math works and they don’t have an internal workaround. Since a war against math is bound to fail in long term (just like the war on vegetables aka “war on drugs”), short term victories of oppression won’t shut down the future.

The children angle is insidious, especially when whistle blowers, reporters, and power players in revealing high up people involved in pedophilia seem to all magically have unfortunate accidents. It is a tool to emotionally manipulate a population which is ravenous against pedophilia. A very effective one. I look forward to the day these people are all held accountable.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Element was founded as half French/British, but we also have German & US legal entities now, and we will shift our HQ out of the UK if forced to.

What do you think of the EU "Chat Control" proposals? https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co... > The European Commission went a step further on the 11 May 2022 by presenting a proposal which would make chat control mandatory for all e-mail, chat and messenger providers and would even apply to so far securely end-to-end encrypted communication services ... All of your chat conversations and emai…

> One way to increase awareness of these proposals would be for E2EE messengers to include an in-app notice and call to action, for customers in affected countries.

I think this is a really cool, low-cost/effort way to raise awareness.

Makes me wonder if this could be used against those apps somehow. We all know some countries' governments are quite coerceful and scummy...

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#133
post #99
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will say the same when you lose right to encryption, and both will be wrong.

Except you can't kill someone with encryption. Your freedoms end where my freedoms begin, and guns are just a tool to change that dynamic. They serve no other purpose, unless we're talking hunting, for which you can still get guns, after some education. I don't get how Americans seem to think it makes sense to require a license to drive a car but not to own a gun? Who is more dangerous, a guy driving a sedan or one h…

A gun is self defence incarnate.

The right to effective self defence is a natural right and requires no license.

Americans use guns defensively hundreds of thousands times a year.

Encryption can very much be used to facilitate murder.

Your data is not as important as your life.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but that still isn't a net loss in privacy. We can still communicate the way we could, except now we also would like an unbreakable way of communicating online. I understand of course that scale is an issue online, but that doesn't affect the idea that encryption gives us basically unbreakable communication over a distance, and removing it is not eroding our last vestiges of privacy.

It's making privacy more expensive and rare, while making surveillance cheaper and more common. Do we have to wait until it is literally impossible to share a single word in private before we start to worry?

> Do we have to wait until it is literally impossible to share a single word in private before we start to worry?

No one is saying anything like that.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#135
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans kill more people by non-gun means than say Australians total (per year per 100k). Whatever their problem is it's not guns.

Guns are definitely a major problem - a lot of people who shouldn't have access to guns do and use them. I'm not talking about intentional, targeted murders or settling gang disputes - those will happen anyway regardless of the law. However, easy access to guns mean that people in an unstable mental state might use one to commit (mass?) murder in an act of folly that they would otherwise not do (or at the very least…

Only in California, where they cause cancer

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#136

Never mind signal, what would Apple do if the UK government forced them to compromise E2E crypt? Someone hasn't thought this thorough properly...

I'd like to think that the UK is small enough of a market for Apple to not give a single flying fuck about the govt forcing them to compromise E2E crypto.

Apple willingly handed over all iCloud data on Chinese citizens upon request. They don't care about privacy at all. They won't abandon the U.K. They'll comply with every single legal directive, as they have pledged to do on multiple occasions.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#137
post #99
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will say the same when you lose right to encryption, and both will be wrong.

Except you can't kill someone with encryption. Your freedoms end where my freedoms begin, and guns are just a tool to change that dynamic. They serve no other purpose, unless we're talking hunting, for which you can still get guns, after some education. I don't get how Americans seem to think it makes sense to require a license to drive a car but not to own a gun? Who is more dangerous, a guy driving a sedan or one h…

Likewise, its not the gun that kills

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#138
post #120
post #73

Honestly, this government has some balls. Signal won't be the only one leaving the UK - it's becoming a really poor place to live with high taxation, stalling economy, low consumer rights, environmental protections being stripped away and erosion of civil liberties and rights to privacy. Only when there's enough brain drain might they backtrack but politically we have a party in power that is susceptible to infightin…

With many reputable universities and large companies, brain drain isn't a realistic outcome.

There was a story about researchers leaving because they wouldn't take part in European funded work anymore... that's that sort of bureaucratic stuff that researchers will not put up with when they feel like they're not able to keep up with their peers.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#139
post #86

> "we would absolutely 100% walk rather than ever undermine the trust that people place in us to provide a truly private means of communication." This from the same signal that refuses to update its privacy policy to reflect the fact that they've started permanently storing sensitive user data in the cloud ( https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu... ). The same Signal that ignored the users who…

What alternatives are there to signal? Reasonable, for a lay person.

If you don't mind the lack of polish I've been using Jami for secure communication and even file sharing and I've gotten a couple lay people set up and running without much trouble. Set up is pretty easy. They don't even need you to give them an email address, but it's different. It's not going to look or act like Signal.

What I loved about Signal on mobile was how it handled both encrypted messaging and plain old SMS/MMS in the same app and I don't have a real alternative for that.

Re: Signal would 'walk' from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to think that the UK is small enough of a market for Apple to not give a single flying fuck about the govt forcing them to compromise E2E crypto.

Apple willingly handed over all iCloud data on Chinese citizens upon request. They don't care about privacy at all. They won't abandon the U.K. They'll comply with every single legal directive, as they have pledged to do on multiple occasions.

China is a far more crucial market for them for a wide variety of reasons.

They have virtually no operations in the UK. If the PR impact will cost them more than ditching the UK, they will ditch the UK.

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