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

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181–190 of 205 posts

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

#181
post #25

> The government, and prominent child protection charities have long argued that encryption hinders efforts to combat online child abuse - which they say is a growing problem. So take using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. What they should be doing, is rather then increase the risk of for the majority who use encryption for valid reasons (privacy, not nefarious), is invest in services to allow individuals to gain help,…

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.

>Make no mistake: the Online Safety Bill has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children

Exactly, they could start teaching law in a concept understandable manner from primary school age, concentrating on what can cause the damage mentally and physically, like the spread of germs from a young age. But they dont, so kids cant even protect themselves in an offline world and the state gets to maintain its air of pseudo respectability whilst most people dont understand how the state is causing lifelong trouble.

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

#182
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Except you can't kill someone with encryption." You can damn sure wreck their lives without it though. Lets say a generally good guy is thinking about running for office. He has a encrypted chat with some old friends where they occasionally make off color jokes about whatever protected class happens to be in favor at the time, gay, trans, black, whatever. He runs for office and the people in power simply pull up his…

Hacking individuals in this way is already done via targeted 0-day exploits. The targets are more likely to be journalists and activists (for their sources) though.

The noided assumption is that politicians and business leaders self-compromise in order to boost their chances of career success (and/or that they see getting compromised by Epstein et al as a career perk rather than a career mistake). It's the same principle as cops only being able to get promoted if they're known to be on the take.

This sort of law enables dragnet surveillance. Domestic Intelligence are always looking for new ways to take temperature readings on agitation before it boils over into public protest and to identify previously unknown community leaders that should be placed under more direct surveillance.

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

#183
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The right to effective self defence is a natural right I don't see how that's correct, defending oneself with something natural sounds OK though.

Respondents here are missing what (I think?) is the joke here, which is that "natural rights" aren't really a thing, except as an arbitrary label. It's never been a very sturdy concept, unless some radical, new defense of them has been discovered and overcome the copious objections of critics, since I last checked.

It's fine to like and defend liberties often labeled "natural rights", but justifying them on the basis of their being "natural" doesn't tend to be a strong line of argument—while it does open up room for making jokes by intentionally confusing two senses of "natural", which one may as well since the word doesn't carry much meaning in the phrase "natural rights" anyway.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think breaking encryption is a good idea, but I will say that until recently law enforcement could tap phones, rip open envelopes, and get a court order to break into your house and search it. There was never the level of privacy against law enforcement that encryption offers.

> rip open envelopes, and get a court order to break into your house and search it One limiting factor was that this wasn't scalable - so a lot of people would be comfortable with it because there is little potential for widespread abuse - there just aren't enough resources to search & monitor everyone's mail and houses at all times. There are no such limitations online, so better protections such as encryption are r…

> One limiting factor was that this wasn't scalable - so a lot of people would be comfortable with it because there is little potential for widespread abuse - there just aren't enough resources to search & monitor everyone's mail and houses at all times.

It's recently started to emerge that US opened and censored all international mail 1950-1989. We're talking millions of letters a week. It started as a measure to remove all reference to US use of biological weapons in the Korean War and grew from there. (the third season of the Blowback Podcast did a couple of interviews which covered it really well.)

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

#185
If governments suddenly wanted to ban fire extinguishers, I think most people would be very concerned about what these authorities might be planning, but instead of fire, when they go to ban the tools we use to protect ourselves from crime and corruption, they get the benefit of the doubt?

There is no principle for anti-encryption policy, it's not worth arguing with them, as these policymakers are not moved by reason. You can only organize and get them out.

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

#186
post #81
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m sorry, but if that’s your idea of freedom, you can fucking keep it. Our police, though not saints, don’t shoot unarmed people. At least in Britain we are free from being shot in school.

the total number of unarmed shootings by police each year in the US is in the double digits in a country of 400m. how many kids got raped in rotherham?

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> used against those apps somehow

Speech about _draft_ laws is known as debate in a democracy.

Coercion about _draft_ laws would remove any illusion of consent and illustrate why the proposals are misguided.

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

#188
post #148
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is already a more subtle problem here, at least in countries with case law. The people who end up on trial trying to defend encryption are typically guilty (as very roughly 90% of people who go to trial are). Many of them are guilty of things that most of us look very strongly down upon, like possessing and sharing child sexual abuse material. Thus if you want to set a strong precedent for protection of encrypt…

[citation needed]

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

#189

How is that different from the CIA being able to sniff and access their servers thanks to the US patriot act? will they 'walk' from the US too? [1] Oh, my bad, i almost forgot! it's the tech that's being tested to power the digital online passport, we'll get to see it first with twitter [2], then meta, then it'll expand everywhere else Ahh, the joy of the bitcoin, who said china was evil with their social credit syst…

Flashback, in case people don't have the reference: https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

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

#190
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right to effective self defence is a natural right I don't see how that's correct, defending oneself with something natural sounds OK though.

How can self defense not be a natural right? Someone comes into your home is beating your child and you're not home. Should your wife be forced to fight a man twice her size with her natural hands or is it ok for her to shoot the guy trying to kill her kids? Same situation. You are home. Should you be forced to engage the criminal with your bare hands knowing that if you lose the fight your kids will be murdered?

Please spare us the appeals to emotion.

The context here is owning something to provide "effective self defense" - so where do we draw the line? Can I decide that only owning a gun is not enough against the other gun owners so I need something more effective?

GP's claim is this right justifies owning a weapon that can easily kill. That's far beyond "effective" in my view.

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