UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable

North Korea and Saudi Arabia and China and the UK would claim that their justice systems are working just fine.

As would my local sheriff jurisdiction where they can't even manage to hire anybody who bothers to do so much as use turn signals. If they can't even manage to do that tiny thing, greatest country on earth or no, I don't trust them with the temptations of the kind of power you're talking about.

>If you think you country justice system is not working properly there are ways to fight that.

LOL! Good luck! Strictly speaking, you are correct that "there are ways to fight that" but the consequences are brutal! It's a pretty big ask for most people. And that possibility will be eroded and, more likely, wholly negated by such systems.

The interviewer could explore the impact of online fraud or identity theft or cyber-bullying, and look at how fast these problems have been growing in recent years. Then challenge the advocate of weakened encryption or mass surveillance over why they want to require security vulnerabilities or create huge databases that will make great targets for criminals. If they claim everything would be securely held and strictly for police use or similar, go with Snowden and Wikileaks.

If the advocate brings up their other favourite argument about protecting children, the interviewer could ask whether it's really a good idea to make it easier to intercept private picture messages between teenagers.

They could ask why the government wants measures that would inevitably undermine investigative journalism that holds the government and the police and the security services to account. Then start listing past controversies relating to the behaviour of those groups to demonstrate why that public interest reporting matters.

It's not as if privacy and security advocates only think these things are important because they don't like the government or something. There are real, serious consequences in play several different ways here.

Theoretical security and actual security are two very different things. Once is mathematical which can be verified by equations. Other deals with software and imperfect developers. Software can't be verified for perfect security in a deterministic way, no matter how hard you try. Vulnerabilities pop up all the time. Your expectation that theoretical security translates to real world security is something I believe you need to think about again.

>Not if it's designed to be monitored. Even if the experts are perfect angels and absolutely competent, if there is a way to monitor, hackers will find a way to get access to it.

You seem to miss the part where I said a new protocol, not something which is modified, or backdoored. I'm surprised at you being so sure about the failure of a non-existent protocol. Do you have anything to back up your claim that any such protocol wouldn't work? Remember, it doesn't exist yet.

I honestly didn't find most of your post very coherent. There is no avenue for free speech in North Korea and other authoritarian regimes so it is a waste of time talking about working around the existing government for privacy and free speech rights. The only place where the masses can bring about change is in a democracy.

>not with the little bubble of one democracy

Last time I checked, most countries are democratic. Please show me the case where democratic countries vastly differ in how their government is organized.

> The reality includes police states where the police are truly evil.

Again, I talked about a democracy since we really can't do anything to help them with encryption and code. If there are no rights, strong encryption doesn't really matter. Look up rubber-hose cryptanalysis.

> The system has to work for this reality. I'm pretty sure that simply drawing a line and fully protecting the privacy of users' messages, full stop, is a better solution than whatever you and your senators will come up with.

It is of course is a better solution for individual privacy, I thought I talked about this at the end of my last comment. I don't have much control over my senators.

>>>When it comes to properly securing the physical part (the servers), I'm sure something can be figured out there.

>You're dreaming. Remember, the authorities will have full power over that system, and even in countries where the authorities are not evil, the authorities as a rule are inevitably corruptible if not corrupt. This isn't just cynicism, it's reality. Look around.

Full power? I don't believe you have understood what I said.

At this point it feels like you're arguing for the sake of an argument.

Nice post. I agree almost entirely with you, but you can't put a bollard everywhere, and even if you could, bad people would find a way around or between the bollards, or simply another way to hurt people. It would be like playing a futile game of whack-a-mole.

At the end of the day, there are people who are so mean-spirited that they want to hurt innocent people for no reason, and they will find a way to do that no matter what we do. Honestly I think a lot of it is mental health more than anything we can really protect against.

It's not possible to wrap everyone in cotton wool, and in order to have some freedom we risk a small percentage of harm. There is no way around that. Without that freedom, there's also the IMO much larger risk of harm from the authorities themselves.

There's no way around it, living in the world involves some risk. It's unrealistic to not accept that risk and fantasize that all outcomes are preventable.

Like another comment mentioned, there are literally tens of thousands of stabbings in the UK every year. Why are we even talking about removing fundamental freedoms (the right to privacy) in order to probably not prevent a few unfortunate deaths per year? The payoff is so small and the cost is much too great.