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UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

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Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#171

Post by moremetadata »

seanhunter wrote: post #16
derelicta wrote: post #11

The fact that every "democratic" superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between state actors to do so.

The intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have collaborated extensively since WWII (this is the so called "Five Eyes"[1]) and of course the NATO powers coordinate defense as well as part of that organization. Edit to add: I mention the five eyes because cryptography (and cybersecurity) tend to fall into the purview of the signals intelligence agencies in government, so that would be N…

[dead]

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#172

Post by lb1lf »

chacham15 wrote: post #79
seanhunter wrote: post #13

The UK has threatened this on and off for a while. I recall around 2000 they proposed a bill which would have forced everyone who wanted to use encryption to escrow a key with the government. I used to watch some TV in those days and the UK programme "NewsNight" had a discussion about it. There proposing the idea was some poor government flunky. There explaining the flaws in the idea was Whitfield Diffie[1]. Diffie j…

> It would be essentially infinitely valuable as a cyberattack target. While I understand what you mean, there are already keys which are "infinitely valuable": root CA keys. If you have those, you can essentially impersonate anyone. Therefore, we must have ways to protect these sort of keys. That being said, a root CA key is probably locked up on an air gapped machine vs some machine which actively using the key to…

They've got a ceremony for that!

https://www.cloudflare.com/dns/dnssec/root-signing-ceremony/

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#173

Post by rightbyte »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #135
ben_w wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC certainly has a lot of problems with regard to actual independence, but I would like to *ahem* provide some balance by pointing to the satirical popular news quiz "Have I Got News For You" which spent the early part of the Blair years having to beep out certain references to Peter Mandelson — the Dominic Cummings of his era — that only ended with (from memory): ???: "Peter Mandelson is a hom… owner" Regular g…

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 ...

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#174

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

pjc50 wrote: post #159
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much not from US. Just pointed out a hypocrisy of our language. As an aside, US has lords as well, perhaps even more powerful than UK lords, they just go by other names: Supreme Court judges, some Senators [1], some CEOs, and the like. [1] Just the top: Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), almost 51.5 years mandate, most kings couldn't even dream of such a lengthy reign, https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senator…

I don't know why this of all your comments is downvoted. The US Supreme Court is quite strongly analogous to life peers, in that they get to make legislative and even super-legislative decisions while being lifetime political appointees. And, it appears, accepting gifts.

The sore points were hit right in the sore, so to speak. I am guessing the founder/CEO-as-dictator aspect is also not very welcoming. It's quite telling: how could a society be democratic if some of its most (if not the most) important aspects, the lifecycles of companies, are fundamentally non-democratic. I should know, I own 3 (not profitable, but that's another matter) companies on 2 continents.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#175

Post by yrro »

chacham15 wrote: post #79
seanhunter wrote: post #13

The UK has threatened this on and off for a while. I recall around 2000 they proposed a bill which would have forced everyone who wanted to use encryption to escrow a key with the government. I used to watch some TV in those days and the UK programme "NewsNight" had a discussion about it. There proposing the idea was some poor government flunky. There explaining the flaws in the idea was Whitfield Diffie[1]. Diffie j…

> It would be essentially infinitely valuable as a cyberattack target. While I understand what you mean, there are already keys which are "infinitely valuable": root CA keys. If you have those, you can essentially impersonate anyone. Therefore, we must have ways to protect these sort of keys. That being said, a root CA key is probably locked up on an air gapped machine vs some machine which actively using the key to…

> If you have those, you can essentially impersonate anyone.

Once. This would be immediately detected through Certificate Transparency and there would be front-page headlines around the world about the chaos that ensued as vendors issued a critical update blocking that CA certificate.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#176

Post by psychphysic »

lwhi wrote: post #170
traceroute66 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK programme "NewsNight" had a discussion about it. There proposing the idea was some poor government flunky. There explaining the flaws in the idea was Whitfield Diffie Aah, the good old days when the BBC was un-biased. These days you would get a government flunky, and on the other side of the table a pro-government flunky from a lobbying outfit whose real accreditation has been carefully omitted by the BBC and th…

I'm sorry, but we'd be a hell of a lot worse off without the BBC. For all its flaws, it does a huge amount of good. All reporting will inevitably hold a bias simply because selection of story for time scheduled news will _always_ involve excluding other news items. The amount of criticism the BBC recieves is significant, and it's gone up a lot more recently. I think it's a reflection of the incumbent gov more than th…

No one has a problem with the BBC existing. Just that it is de facto a state funded and government affiliated news agency.

One of the funnier stories supporting this is that MI5 had to ask the BBC to stop sending everyone for vetting because it was unnecessary!

> when MI5 suggested scaling back the number of jobs subject to vetting, the BBC argued against such a move.

Something the BBC lied about repeatedly and only admitted years after other news agencies broke the story.

Now it's run by the guy who was the PMs boss and who organised a loan for the last PM. And people claims it's totally independent? These sound like stories about RT.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43754737

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#177

Post by maccam912 »

Unrelated, I just wanted to get it on record somewhere that I sometimes like to send myself random strings of characters and/or bytes. Sometimes to friends and family too. Sometimes they think its so funny they send back random strings as well. Its a thing we do, so I'm glad this law is not going to stop us from sending plaintext random strings to each other.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#178

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

jeroenhd wrote: post #97
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> End-to-end implies traffic between individuals That's certainly one interpretation, but I'd counter that an HTTPS connection to an online shop is also end-to-end as the contents are encrypted such that any intermediate ISP cannot sniff the contents, but only myself and the online shop are able to.

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?

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#179

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

darrenf wrote: post #148
pjc50 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Taylor_(British_politician... : appears to be the now almost vanished old school type of conservative. Member of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, so at least knows some tech people. Europhile, to the extent of quitting the party over Brexit. Pro-space exploration. Anti-Iraq-war. No wonder he quit.

And the people of Esher & Walton are now served by ... Dominic Raab.

I wonder how he treats his constituents. Hopefully better than civil servants.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#180

Post by iso1631 »

jabradoodle wrote: post #75
tialaramex wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to learn to at least read between the lines. "On the advice of her government" means it's what the government decided to do. Why so? Because although they had sufficient numbers to ensure the bill wouldn't become law, using Consent allowed them to prevent debate.

You need to learn to read. I am stating that the monarch has the power to veto legislation, not that the power was used in opposition to the advice of ministers. That you don't see an issue with democratic debate being shutdown on the advice of a government minister to the monarch is another issue.

The government has the power to veto legislation, not Charlie Windsor the billionaire guy with a fancy hat.
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