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UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

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Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#91

Post by vixen99 »

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.

That's just rude.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#92

Post by dexterdog »

dspillett wrote: post #31

A paraphrase of the age-old glib phrase is in order: If you outlaw End-to-End Encryption, only criminals will have End-to-End Encryption. It should also be pointed out to them that saying “you there, yes you, stop doing that” to remote, likely anonymous, criminal types, has never been effective.

It should be "If you outlaw End-to-End Encryption, only outlaws will have End-to-End Encryption."

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#93

Post by arlort »

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.

There's a correlation but I wouldn't say coordination

Cultural drives are somewhat globalized, big news stories which might lead to some desire for government action are unlikely to remain purely local, and they're even more unlikely to be isolated events

The whole world uses the same apps to visit the same websites and see mostly the same news stories, tv shows, movies, books, songs etc

This kind of big legislation doesn't sprout from nothing it takes time to gather momentum and in the world right now it's not crazy to think that multiple people are thinking about the same thing at various stages at the same time

And when one of these laws gets proposed or passed somewhere it helps provide momentum elsewhere so you get a slow boil and then everywhere "at once"

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#94

Post by night-rider »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #88

To ban end-to-end encryption you effectively need to ban math. Even if all messaging apps will remove built-in encryption function you can still use e2ee in your keyboard app or something that would seamlessly decrypt incoming messages and encrypt outgoing messages on the fly.

Or they could license strong cryptography to organizations that need it like banks & fintech. The 'banning' part means the ordinary citizenry can't use it except for online banking.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#95

Post by gadders »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #87
gadders wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of non-Brits hear "House of Lords" and think you have to have been born in a castle with a coat of arms. Whilst that may be true in the case of the hereditary peers (which are the minority in the HoL), there are also Life Peers. Some of these are ex/failed politicians, but some are appointed on the basis of their eminence in their field [1] or public works [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wi…

I know, I just like long hereditary lines [1]: if those don't show what power is, then I don't know what power is. Being hoi polloi myself, I barely know who my grandparents were, not to speak of their parents. [1] A really fun one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_of_Dunsany#Barons_of_Dun... Christopher Plunkett, 1st Baron of Dunsany (1410–1463) Richard Plunkett, 2nd Baron of Dunsany (died c. 1480) John Plunkett,…

Out of interest, I googled the last chap in the list [1]. Class/socio-economic privilege is very much a thing, but he's not quite the Jacob Rees-Mogg type you might expect. Also "The current heir to his title is his younger brother, Oliver, a games designer and programmer who lives in the US." - he probably has a login on here :-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randal_Plunkett,_21st_Baron_of...

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#96

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

denton-scratch wrote: post #47
dghf wrote: post #9

I'm sure we had legislative threats to encryption under Cameron, and Blair, and quite possibly every prime minister between. I'm uncertain whether to be relieved (because multiple previous attempts have come to naught) or worried (because they might actually do it this time).

> under Cameron, and Blair, and quite possibly every prime minister between. There was exactly one Prime Minister between Blair and Cameron, and he (Brown) wasn't elected.

Brown was elected. He was elected as MP by his constituents, and selected as PM by the Queen, just like every other PM. Or, essentially, he was elected by the House, which is the electorate for the PM, but instead of actually holding a vote, the Queen just assumed what the result would be, which is how the UK always does it.

(Ireland actually holds the vote for Taoiseach, and every party solemnly puts forward their own candidate, and makes speeches on their behalf, despite the fact that everyone knows what the result would be. It's a piece of political theatre.)

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#97

Post by jeroenhd »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #73
beardyw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End-to-end implies traffic between individuals. So for instance WhatsApp can't read your messages but the end recipient can. That said, my bank did try to reassure me they had end-to-end encryption for my web access. It's not the same thing.

> 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.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#99

Post by c0m »

eternalban wrote: post #84
c0m wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The [monarch] doesn’t really have any power in practice Entirely untrue. The monarch has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. There have been many cases of the Queen getting carveouts, influencing laws, and vetting bills. There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent. This notion that the British monarch has no power is an absolute farce. There’s also the whole concept of King’s Consent…

Also the command-in-chief of UK and other Commonweath militaries? Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief_of_the_Cana... As all executive power is legally reposed in the Crown, the role of commander-in-chief is the only constitutional means by which decisions are made over the deployment and disposition of the Canadian Armed Forces.[6] Under the Westminster system's conventions of responsible governm…

It’s concerning to think of some sort of major constitutional crisis taking place during wartime due to disagreement between PM and King. I’m a little baffled that this has never been framed as a national security issue, at least it hasn’t been a popular narrative in my lifetime.

At the same time, whatever government opens that particular Pandora’s box is in for a hell of a ride, so I understand why.

I'm obviously an abolitionist but I would be much less worried about this if the powers matched the role. I'm sure HN could empathise better than most websites that giving a supposed read-only user unused, powerful permissions is probably not the best idea.

Re: UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

#100

Post by varispeed »

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's a sign of slowly moving Overton Window.

They'll eventually get it.

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