how about arresting known terrorists first, then focus on what normal people are doing.
Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
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Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#42The tale of The Orwellian Kingdom continues... No really. I've written about this before, but I sincerely refuse to believe that the government are doing this out of ignorance anymore. There's been too many people telling them how it actually is, but they persist. That leads me to conclude that either they're severely mentally dysfunctional, or there's another reason for doing this. PR maybe? Votes? Something more si…
they continue to do the same with other legal systems like cannabis law and speed traps with poor visibility that do more harm than good.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#43Meanwhile people can support ISIS and advocate for attacks in plain sight and that apparently isn't a problem
So I see how "worried" they are about that
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#44I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public in communicating the concerns around trying to 'backdoor' encryption or giving up more of our privacy. While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything t…
I like to take the backdoor argument to its logical conclusion - if we're not going to allow terrorists to hide by encryption, why should we allow them to hide by speaking in private? It's about time construction companies and car manufacturers stopped giving terrorists a place to hide - make always-on microphones mandatory in all homes and cars. Don't worry - they'll need a warrant to access the recordings!
All private homes.
Government homes and offices are special. The general public is not allowed to know what goes on behind their doors.
Seriously, don't give the government ideas :( I am of the opinion that our current PM would gladly shove cameras up people's *sses if she thought it could catch terrorists.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#45It's like Rudd and Abbott are competing in which will come up with more ridiculous notion. And you'd think they would choose someone competent for bloody home secretary and shadow home secretary respectively.
For a minute there I thought you were talking about Australian prime ministers. What a coincidence!
I feel like that phrase would've been perfectly applicable to their time as PM/opposition leader though.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
When was the last IRA attack, Manchester 1996?
A republican bomb maker was convicted literally yesterday. This isn't ancient history.
That's interesting. Looks like he was a member of the Continuity IRA[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_Irish_Republican_Ar...
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#47There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe". Although that it is often the intention of legislation to prevent behaviour which may lead to unsafe situations. For example, making it illegal to drink and drive. You can arrest someone for breaking the law, but never can you arrest someone right up to the point of breaking the law. For example, You cannot arrest so…
Unfortunately, there's a misconception underlying this one that there are 'good people' and 'bad people', and the role of Government is to protect the former from the latter. This of course flies in the face of the reality that crime is committed by otherwise ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances.
Under this rhetoric - widely subscribed to by the right wing and tabloid press, it seems a logical step that the role of Government should be to impede 'bad people' as much as possible - "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is an obvious corollary from this position too.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#48There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe". Although that it is often the intention of legislation to prevent behaviour which may lead to unsafe situations. For example, making it illegal to drink and drive. You can arrest someone for breaking the law, but never can you arrest someone right up to the point of breaking the law. For example, You cannot arrest so…
In the UK* it is an offence to be "drunk in charge of a vehicle" so you absolutely can be arrested and charged for being asleep whilst drunk in a vehicle. You'll be having to defend yourself in court as to whether it was likely that would could have driven it drunk.
In the same way reading communications can be perfectly legal and is often helpful in establishing conspiracy cases. Accepting that Governments can legally intercept communications with some form of due process shouldn't be viewed as going after "pre-crime". It has always been the case before now that legal interception powers also enable illegal Government (or indeed non-state) snooping, that should be dealt with by robust interventions by an independent judiciary.
* Road Traffic Law is one of the relatively few criminal areas that is UK wide
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#49Meanwhile people can support ISIS and advocate for attacks in plain sight and that apparently isn't a problem So I see how "worried" they are about that
More than one of the terrorist incidents in France were arranged by simple, unencrypted SMS, and the security services couldn't catch them beforehand.
We don't need to give the security services more data. We need them to focus on better dealing with the data they currently have access to.
Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary
#50I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public in communicating the concerns around trying to 'backdoor' encryption or giving up more of our privacy. While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything t…
> or maybe effectively enough
I'm not sure it is that, or if there is a way to communicate with some of the governments implementing these laws.
Take Australia, recently. The government came out in favour of weakening encryption, after consultation with security and privacy experts, as well as some economics experts and the like.
The thing was though, the usual man who advised them, and has in past similar investigations before creating laws to do with technology, advised them that it was a terrible idea.
He was then dismissed, and a series of other experts were called in, until the government were able to get an expert who saw things their way.
If the decision has already been made, how is anybody supposed to influence it?