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Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#51

Post by fredley »

Fifer82 wrote: post #16

Oh god, I despair of this country. After a decade of conservative I have never been so disillusioned. I feel like I am stuck in a rut or like, I don't belong here. It is a horrible feeling. Deep down I know that the government is stuck in 1740 and by the time that millennials walk the halls of power, their parents will have signed away all their rights. The very last thing I love is my country, that is for sure.

I am in the same boat. I am staying at the moment because of my work situation and my family, but I have an inevitable sense that should either of those situations change, particularly the former, I'll be actively looking to move out. The war on reasoning and facts is too intense, and even though I'm largely sheltered from it where I live and work (almost everyone I know has similar views to me on these matters), it's becoming too much to bear. I do love my country, and it has a lot to give the World, which makes it all the more painful to see it go through such a transformation.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#52

Post by yen223 »

H4CK3RM4N wrote: post #45
yen223 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't help that our prime minister recently made a laughable comment about this: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/malcolm-turnbull-prime-min...

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#53

Post by sambe »

jstanley wrote: post #2

> When pressed on what kind of metadata she wanted, she replied: “I’m having those conversations in private.” Well I would like to know who she's having those conversations with, when she's having them, and how long they last. I think it's important that she share this information with us. So that we can catch criminals.

Exactly this. I often hear such things from politicians who sound like they don't understand the topic, and it's usual at a point of "weakness" for civil liberties such as after terorism events. I assume it's just a form of lobbying, but I wonder if it's from other clueless people (police chiefs/unions who just want the job to be easier) or elite security services who make a conscious decision to trade public good for their own interests (ignoring the claim that they do good themselves...).

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#54

Post by proactivesvcs »

raesene6 wrote: post #35

ah more security cluelessness from the UK Government. The frustrating piece is that they're ignoring their own internal experts on this. The people running the National Cyber Security Centre are very bright and have stated that they think backdoors are a bad idea from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/05/problems-end... "Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security, told the New Statesma…

The UK government has a habit of ignoring its own experts, to the degree of firing them if they give advice the government don't like. Drug policy is another area that suffers from this approach.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#55

Post by Freak_NL »

This is another statement that is part of a trend in many countries, and it is worrying to be sure. But I suspect that the aim of these audacious statements is not to actually ban the technology of strong end-to-end encryption. Rather, it is to force the Google, Apple, and Facebook to provide backdoors in their popular messaging platforms (e.g., WhatsApp) that can be used by law enforcement.

They don't care about someone using GnuPG to mail someone something private (because that would be impossible to legislate effectively), but they do care about the big honey-pot of always-on end-to-end encryption offered to anyone with an off-the-shelf smartphone.

The call for legislation and a ban on strong encryption is meant to put pressure on Google, Apple, and Facebook to cooperate with the Five Eyes without too much fuss, and simply let them in. I can't see it making any sense otherwise.

Whether that access is to act on signals of religious radicalisation and planned acts of terrorism or something much more encompassing (big data predictive crime analysis and other scary stuff) I don't know.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#56

Post by J-dawg »

DropbearRob wrote: post #30

There 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…

I happened to catch a Radio 4 documentary [0] on Sunday about the government's "Prevent" strategy, which aims to find evidence of extremism in places such as schools and "nip terrorism in the bud". It featured several worrying stories (including a school calling the police because a boy was talking about a toy gun he'd been given as a present [1]).

The most worrying part was when they interviewed a senior police officer and he actually said words to the effect of:

"We are operating in a pre-criminal space."

And went on to attempt to justify retaining people's data when they have intervened in this way.

So they are now actually talking openly about pre-crime, and using people's children against them.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08yp16m

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/27/bedfordshire...

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#57

Post by EvilGrin »

discombobulate wrote: post #22
sonthonax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of terrorists are clowns. Perhaps if you're referring to home grown Islamic terrorists. However Britain does have a problem with an experienced group of rather professional terrorists called the IRA.

When was the last IRA attack, Manchester 1996?

27 March 2017.

http://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2017/03/27...

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#58

Post by stefs »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #20
rwmj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of terrorists are clowns who, if they happen to use encryption at all, will mess up infosec in ways that are trivial to compromise. So if the Home Secretary is saying that message encryption is a "problem" then there must be something else going on which has little to do with terrorism.

thanks for the mental image of clown-terrorists :( as if either weren't bad enough on their own. Isn't it obvious? This has got f-all to do with terrorism. The bad guys have always hidden their communication. What's getting the security services all riled up is that ordinary law-abiding citizens are suddenly encrypted. And, of course, there's no way out of this. Either encryption is secure, or it's broken. If it's se…

i'm not even sure about that. i think i remember the story about islamic terrorists in europe last year using plain old SMS to coordinate their attack. didn't make a difference though, their communication was only analyzed after it happened.

so for the average imbecile just using whatsapp, signal or a self-hosted service would actually make a difference, but if it'd make a difference for law enforcement is a different matter. having access to billions of messages and actually doing something with them are two different kinds of beasts.

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#59

Post by mmjaa »

libeclipse wrote: post #19

The 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…

GCHQ are the only reason the UK are able to maintain their grip over the world economy. If it weren't for the UK's massive spy industry, it'd just be another irrelevant European state.

(Yes, I know: Londons' Finance Industry is a big reason for the UK's reach around the world - well, I happen to believe that GCHQ and The City work hand in hand to maintain that power.)

Re: Message encryption a 'problem' – UK home secretary

#60

Post by [deleted] »

hd4 wrote: post #37
Fifer82 wrote: post #16

Oh god, I despair of this country. After a decade of conservative I have never been so disillusioned. I feel like I am stuck in a rut or like, I don't belong here. It is a horrible feeling. Deep down I know that the government is stuck in 1740 and by the time that millennials walk the halls of power, their parents will have signed away all their rights. The very last thing I love is my country, that is for sure.

Iktf. The Brexit shit won't wash away, not in our lifetimes. I'm looking at France or Switzerland. This Bizarro country can't be the best that humanity can do.

[deleted]
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