[HN Gopher] UK proposal to criminalize "sophisticated encrypted ...
___________________________________________________________________
UK proposal to criminalize "sophisticated encrypted communication
devices"
Author : costco
Score : 104 points
Date : 2023-01-24 21:43 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk)
| Havoc wrote:
| I can sorta get the where they're going with this on the Encro
| example given, but that line seems impossible to define.
|
| "Sophisticated encrypted communication devices" is a complete and
| utter joke in a world where even the memes are https encrypted
| jchw wrote:
| So basically... computers. That have been either modified, or
| created, in such a way that they are illegal. They do not
| actually specify how. The phrasing is "modified and bespoke
| devices that enable access to platforms [...] where the
| software/hardware has been developed to anonymise its users and
| their communications".
|
| Now... of course, we can always trust the good intentions of
| government bodies and agencies _wink_ but it sounds like by this
| definition, installing Tor and a couple of apps that use it onto
| a phone _could_ qualify as a "sophisticated encrypted
| communication device."
|
| It seems that in a race to the bottom, the UK government is
| always a few steps further ahead of their peers.
| facorreia wrote:
| So... computers running firewall software? Perhaps browsers
| with TLS support and anonymous mode as well?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Mobile phones are an obviously difficult target to go after (due
| to the public perception) but what about tor, encrypted Linux
| systems, or specifically tails?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| And to contradict my own point, australia has anti-association
| rules specifically to deal with known criminals associating to
| prevent organised crime, to my knowledge this hasn't been
| abused to infringe on the rights of previously convicted but
| otherwise legitimate people from associating.
| tptacek wrote:
| HN is trying to derive axiomatically what this is about, but
| there's an empirical backstory you want to know about this. Start
| with this grugq conversation on Twitter from a few months ago:
|
| https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/1610169123388141568
|
| What this appears to be about is not encrypted messengers but
| rather particular brands of modded Android phones that are used
| exclusively for organized crime.
|
| That doesn't mean you should support the proposal, but if you're
| reading it as "the UK is trying to ban encryption outright",
| that's not the whole story.
| wmf wrote:
| This whole story is kind of sad because crimephones don't even
| provide good security. Either they are easily hacked by the
| government or they're government honeypots from the beginning.
| costco wrote:
| From what I have read [no1bc](https://no1bc.com) has been one
| of the more popular devices after the Sky ECC takedown, and
| it's basically just an iPhone with their special messaging app
| installed and an MDM setup to disable a bunch of settings and
| allow remote wipe. An iPhone is "commercially available" and
| some of these services even have their apps on the app store.
| Would that be a sophisticated encrypted communication device?
| It will be interesting to see what definition they come up with
| but it seems likely it will include some false positives.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If anyone wants to start reading on the shady world of
| organized crime, smuggling, gangsters and such that can be
| found in Vancouver, BC, google "phantom secure Vancouver".
|
| The well known "phantom secure" custom firmware phones sold
| years ago for organized crime type people.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=phantom+s...
|
| Then google "Vancouver Canada casino money laundering".
|
| I would think that any sufficiently sophisticated organized
| crime group _in 2023_ would consider any "special" secure
| phone sold with such software to be a honeypot, and either DIY
| it or come up with some other method. This sort of thing would
| be purchased by clueless/gullible mid and low level people only
| now.
| realce wrote:
| > This sort of thing would be purchased by clueless/gullible
| mid and low level people only now.
|
| And therefor should actually be subsidized immediately.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >"the UK is trying to ban encryption outright", that's not the
| whole story
|
| It really is though.
|
| They'll always have a good reason to present, and they'll
| always say it won't go any further.
| endgame wrote:
| The problem, of course, is that the government can never be
| trusted to keep within the boundaries they claim they'll set.
| Metadata retention went through in Australia and the meat
| inspectors wanted access to it; surveillance in the UK was used
| to spy on people who left their rubbish bins out; at the height
| of the pandemic, contact-tracing data (which was promised hand-
| on-heart to be for public health only) was used by the police
| for unrelated crimes.
| realce wrote:
| > but if you're reading it as "the UK is trying to ban
| encryption outright", that's not the whole story.
|
| But isn't that the whole story? A device produced to securely
| encrypt data is proposed to be outlawed - if that's a physical
| device today, it'll be an algorithmic device tomorrow. A law
| against one effective safe is a law against all effective
| safes.
|
| Any encryption device is "sophisticated" if it is useful. Maybe
| we could read it as "UK is trying to ban /useful/ encryption
| outright"
| nhchris wrote:
| It's dangerous to assume context and intent when writing a law
| will limit how that law, once passed, is applied. Because they
| won't. And there's a lot of "not available commercially"
| language in there, that makes me think it'll apply to anything
| you can't buy at a local mall, e.g. a privacy-focused Android
| fork.
|
| It's also a dangerous step in making the mere act of hiding
| from the government a crime.
| RajT88 wrote:
| It's still troublesome as a precedent: Making a particular
| class of software illegal to be in possession of.
|
| As others have pointed out - once the precedent is in place,
| what is stopping them from deciding that some other piece of
| software superficially matches the law close enough that the
| police will ding you for it? After all, this is policing 101,
| where they use whatever laws are on the book as leverage for
| something totally unrelated to the laws they're using.
|
| Having a look at the wording on offer:
|
| - An offence of making, modifying, supplying, offering to
| supply a specified article where a person has reasonable
| grounds to suspect that it will be used in any serious crime.
|
| - An offence of possessing any specified article where a person
| intends or, has reasonable grounds to suspect, that it will be
| used in any serious crime.
|
| Every time we get new laws like this, we take a step towards
| the police being able to arrest anyone, for any reason, at any
| time.
| ben_w wrote:
| Two things are simultaneously true:
|
| 1. The entire UK economy is dependent on everyone having
| access to cryptography so good that even Russia can't break
| it, therefore it is of paramount national interest that
| everyone does have access to it.
|
| 2. Bad people will use the exact same tech to avoid detection
| while planning and committing major crimes that have the
| potential to escalate to the level of undermining the state.
|
| The only way to _prevent_ #2 is to _enforce_ extremely
| luddite laws that mess up #1.
|
| In reality things get much harder to guess at when
| pontificating from armchairs, as when you have to account for
| the fact that the government and police aren't actually
| trying to _perfectly_ enforce _any_ specific law -- not even
| the ones we all grew up assuming they "surely must" fully
| enforce because they were the worst horrors in the newspapers
| -- it stops being clear how much any given law is supposed to
| help nor how much harm it will cause.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > The only way to prevent #2 is to enforce extremely
| luddite laws that mess up #1.
|
| That's often how they think, but of course it isn't true.
|
| The FBI has had good success with another route:
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-sold-criminals-fake-
| encrypted...
|
| Then there's just good old fashioned good police work.
| Informants. In-person Surveillance. Sting operations.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| If a communication device is favoured by criminals, I kinda
| want in. I mean, we're talking people who have very good
| reasons to avoid detection, right? Maybe there's something good
| in those phones?
|
| _(Not that I would trust the criminal 's supply chain, mind
| you.)_
| costco wrote:
| You would think so but most of them have terrible security:
|
| https://threatpost.com/europol-arrests-cracked-sky-
| ecc/16474...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/encrochat-phone-police-
| hacking-e...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2018/11/polic...
|
| https://www.engadget.com/fbi-encrypted-chat-app-anom-
| crimina...
| cm2187 wrote:
| > _An offence of making, modifying, supplying, offering to supply
| a specified article where a person has reasonable grounds to
| suspect that it will be used in any serious crime._
|
| Looks broad enough to cover any object. I have reasonable ground
| to suspect that of all the hammers sold in the UK, some will be
| used to break a window. It would certainly catch exploit
| toolkits, even if their primary intended use is pen testing. How
| can you not suspect someone will use it to break in into some
| system? And VPNs, ISPs, etc.
| rom-antics wrote:
| HTTPS is pretty sophisticated. Are we going to outlaw Google
| Chrome next?
| reeckoh wrote:
| You joke, but until the year 2000, open-source asymmetric
| encryption such as TLS was export-controlled as a munition
| under ITAR in the United States.
|
| Apparently the government didn't see much of a problem with
| that classification until online merchants started wanting to
| encrypt credit card transactions in the mid-'90s, and the ball
| was slowly rolled uphill from there.
| vsviridov wrote:
| Do cellphones qualify? They are very sophisticated and full of
| encryption...
| Muromec wrote:
| sophisticated as in "we tried to decipher or wiretap it and
| failed at both"
| vlovich123 wrote:
| This presumably would criminalize E2E encryption apps like
| iMessage, FB, Whatsapp, Signal etc. All of these are popular
| enough on their own that I don't see how you can reasonably
| go this approach. We'll find out quickly though about which
| clients have backdoors based on the exception list.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| do any of those services anonymize the social graph?
|
| law enforcement cares less about what people are saying,
| more about who is talking to who
| varenc wrote:
| No. They state this quite clearly.
|
| > " _the provisions will not apply to commercially available
| mobile phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on
| them_ "
|
| They say they're going after bespoke devices whose " _user base
| is assessed to be almost certainly criminal_ ". Of course,
| that's very open to interpretation.
|
| Also they go on to discuss how simply providing or possessing
| one of these devices should be crime in itself because of the "
| _difficulty of identifying legitimate uses for such technology_
| ". It's the classic "If you're trying to hide something you
| must be a criminal" approach.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The legitimate use for such technology is I want my
| communications to remain private. I get that that is
| inconvenient for those who might wish to surveil me, but
| their right to not be inconvenienced is less important than
| my right to private speech. (I'm speaking from a US
| perspective here, not a UK one.)
| asow92 wrote:
| "the provisions will not apply to commercially available mobile
| phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on them"
| dilippkumar wrote:
| So, all you have to do is make these devices be "mobile
| phones" and "commercially available"?
|
| Is selling a device on Ali Express enough to qualify?
| splatzone wrote:
| Nathan Fielder would be proud. This policy will be easily
| avoided by any serious manufacturer of devices like these.
| asow92 wrote:
| That is a great question.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Almost enough to undermine your faith in commercially
| available mobile phone encryption, hm?
| jacooper wrote:
| GrapheneOS? Its not really commercial is it?
| splatzone wrote:
| " Sophisticated encrypted communication devices have been used
| extensively by criminals to facilitate organised crime. We're
| targeting the modified and bespoke devices that enable access
| to platforms, similar to Encro Chat, where the software/
| hardware has been developed to anonymise its users and their
| communications and its user base is assessed to be almost
| certainly criminal. Under Option 1 where articles will be
| specified, we will be targeting those that supply, modify, and
| possess these bespoke devices; the provisions will not apply to
| commercially available mobile phones nor the encrypted
| messaging apps available on them."
|
| Seems to suggest that handsets explicitly made for anonymous
| encryption could be banned, but not messaging apps on normal
| phones.
| tobr wrote:
| How can it possibly matter that the "user base is assessed to
| be almost certainly criminal"? Like, if you criminalize using
| such a device, I suppose the whole user base is now criminal.
| But if they already were and you can prove it, why do you
| need to criminalize the device as well?
| costco wrote:
| Here is an example they give:
|
| >The case relates to an alleged conspiracy to transfer cash
| in excess of PS10m out of the UK.
|
| >A number of defendants were charged with conspiracy to
| remove criminal property from England and Wales contrary to
| section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977. Mr A was a
| relative of one of the defendants (Mr B). They both lived
| at the same address. When Mr B was arrested, the officers
| recovered an encrypted EncroChat telephone which Mr A
| admitted was his. Another defendant (Mr C) stated that he
| had been instructed to call Mr A on the EncroChat telephone
| once he had safely boarded the flight with the cash.
|
| >Mr A denied any knowledge or involvement in any of the
| criminal activities. Mr A had no legitimate income that
| would have allowed him to own and maintain such an
| expensive mobile device.
|
| >Based on available intelligence, the investigating team
| strongly believed that Mr A had been supplied with the
| EncroChat telephone by an OCG for the purpose of carrying
| out conduct in furtherance of the conspiracy. However,
| investigators were unable to access any data from the
| telephone due to the device's security features which led
| to the data automatically deleting after a few days. It was
| assessed that there was not sufficient evidence to seek to
| prosecute Mr A under existing offences.
|
| It doesn't really make sense to me though. Presumably the
| penalty if he were to unlock the phone would have been way
| higher than the penalty they are going to create for
| possessing such a device.
| maznu wrote:
| From the linked PDF:
|
| > "This option would require the drafting of precise
| definitions of the specific articles, for example a definition
| of sophisticated encrypted communication devices which does not
| include all mobile phones."
| dirigeant wrote:
| Years ago, Turkish government made a law to force companies which
| develop crypto communication devices to share a copy of keys with
| government. Few years later, a group leaked call recordings of
| president and ministers. The same government complained about
| corruption in the system and power of bad guys. They couldn't
| accept they were hit by their own gun. in UK, as conservatives
| screw everything up even with crypto devices, they may not be
| worried about these kind of leaks.
| rlpb wrote:
| I think it's important to note that the linked document does say
| this:
|
| "...the prosecution would need to show that the accused had
| reasonable grounds to suspect that the article they are making,
| modifying, supplying, offering to supply or possessing will be
| used in serious crime."
|
| In other words, they're not proposing to criminalize
| "sophisticated encryption devices" _except when associated with
| crime_.
|
| I think the HN headline is misleading by omitting this
| distinction.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Much democracy...
| staringback wrote:
| Elected representatives voting for a bill? Yes you are right
| that is democracy.
|
| I feel like you wanted a different word for this.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| It's only democracy if the _people_ would actually have voted
| those laws.
|
| We have many, _many_ examples demonstrating without the
| shadow of a doubt that elected representatives are often a
| pretty bad proxy for the actual will of the people.
|
| There's a bill in the works right now in France to increase
| the legal retirement age, that we have excellent reasons to
| believe over 2/3rd of the population is against. Yet the
| politicians are very likely to vote it (or something similar)
| anyway.
|
| Elections don't make a democracy.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Man... I wonder why people will stop denying/ignoring such
| criticism like the one in my parent comment and start calling a
| spade a spade. Police bill, online censorship, and now banning
| encryption along with all the rest that is happening in the UK.
| Its going towards a hellhole. Denying reality wont change the
| reality. It didnt change it during and after the Brexit
| debacle. It wont change it now. Things will only change when
| people stop denying reality and take matters into their own
| hands.
| bbg2401 wrote:
| The proposal does not seek to simply ban encryption.
|
| > Sophisticated encrypted communication devices have been
| used extensively by criminals to facilitate organised crime.
| We're targeting the modified and bespoke devices that enable
| access to platforms, similar to Encro Chat, where the
| software/ hardware has been developed to anonymise its users
| and their communications and its user base is assessed to be
| almost certainly criminal. Under Option 1 where articles will
| be specified, we will be targeting those that supply, modify,
| and possess these bespoke devices; the provisions will not
| apply to commercially available mobile phones nor the
| encrypted messaging apps available on them. The proposed
| offences will seek to tackle those supplying and exploiting
| these devices in order to carry out serious crimes and will
| seek to reduce the supply of these devices to serious
| criminals
| sublinear wrote:
| These may be incredibly dumb questions, but...
|
| Can someone explain to me how making something illegal actually
| prevents crime?
|
| Is it really so difficult to prove crimes are being committed
| without making something illegal?
|
| Why would anyone vote in favor of measures like this?
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Something must be done, we are doing something, something has
| been done.
|
| That's one bias: legislator wielding law to solve every and all
| problems like they would the proverbial hammer. Reinforced by
| the fact that they're public figures, surely they can't be
| caught doing _nothing_?
|
| A second, more pernicious possibility, is to make illegal stuff
| that is highly correlated with actual crimes, such that law
| enforcement can now arrest people for innocuous as a substitute
| for punishing them for the real thing. Think Al Capone being
| done for because of _taxes_ of all things.
|
| A third, positively alarming possibility, is to facilitate
| arbitrary arrests. Probably wasn't the intent (it rarely is),
| but it does give ammunition to future governments or law
| enforcement, should they need to stifle, silence, or discourage
| political opposition.
| costco wrote:
| > A second, more pernicious possibility, is to make illegal
| stuff that is highly correlated with actual crimes, such that
| law enforcement can now arrest people for innocuous as a
| substitute for punishing them for the real thing. Think Al
| Capone being done for because of taxes of all things.
|
| I think it's mostly this. If you read their example they're
| basically mad that they couldn't prove that the guy ("Mr A")
| had a bunch of illegal money.
| nhchris wrote:
| > Similarly, when individuals are found in possession of such a
| device, it may not be possible to prove their knowledge or intent
| to the thresholds required to convict them, despite the
| difficulty of identifying legitimate uses for such technology.
|
| Privacy is illegitimate, apparently.
|
| _Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this
| weekend. Use the internet safely._
|
| -Glasgow Police,
| https://twitter.com/GreaterGlasgPol/status/71586727326166220...
| sys32768 wrote:
| Can't they just criminalize crime and put away the bad guys so
| that good people can enjoy society?
| asdadsdad wrote:
| One more from the new, independent Britain =)
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > Digital files or templates for 3D-printed firearms components
|
| Since freedom of speech is no longer a value of the UK, the
| population can now be arrested for having files that the
| government doesn't care for.
|
| Mirroring thingiverse? That's a crime now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The title is "Two legislative measures to improve the law
| enforcement response to serious and organised crime" under the
| "government consultation" subheading. This is a request for
| comment. Not an act of Parliament.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Home Office"
|
| Is that you Xi?
| raspyberr wrote:
| I wonder if this applies to GrapheneOS. It's not far off the
| Encro phone that this is clearly targetting.
| belter wrote:
| Next step.... UK to criminalize possession of Number Theory,
| Combinatorics, Probability Theory, Statistical Analysis Math
| Books. Special temporary licenses will be granted by your local
| Met Office to be allowed to read on Galois Theory.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This reminds me of Charles Stross's "Laundry Files" series,
| which I frequently recommend to anyone at the intersection of
| enjoying computers, spy stories, and Lovecraftian horror.
|
| (The first conceit of the story is that there were _two_
| Church-Turing Theses, and the second one would be so disastrous
| as public knowledge that it was immediately suppressed by Her
| Majesty 's Government, known only to a select few and the folks
| they monitor and handle).
| [deleted]
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Don't joke, Australian 'luminary' Malcom Turnbull passed a set
| of stupid laws and said unflinchingly and unironically that,
| "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law
| that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"
|
| Politicians are idiots and the security services will play them
| like a fiddle.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Was he an idiot? It's pretty clear that what he indicated was
| these products/tools would be made illegal, not that he could
| literally change the laws of math.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Isn't this ironic? A proposal for criminalization of encryption
| devices in the country which broke the Enigma device...
|
| From where, to where...
| onei wrote:
| Well, it would have been much simpler if Britain had banned
| encrypted communications during WW2 and Germany had
| cheerfully complied.
| bayindirh wrote:
| That would be hilarious, indeed. Chaps shall communicate
| clearly. Makes sense.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Oi m8 you got a loisence for them there elliptic curves?
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Obviously they want to _keep_ breaking that stuff. Worked out
| in the past, didn 't it?
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Cryptography is in the forbidden library Harry
| E2EEd wrote:
| If that helps to compartment knowledge in order to further UK
| security, one can expect it, eventually.
|
| Nothing is scarier to me than a distant techno landscape where
| knowledge in irresponsible or irrational hands can be used for
| unimaginable horrors. Such extreme measures as censorship of
| undergrad STEM education would, in such a case, seem appealing
| to authorities.
|
| Encryption offers table stakes for weaponization of math. I do,
| however, agree in spirit with your slippery slope arg
| scrlk wrote:
| Two things to fear: the criminalization of mathematics;
| secondly, the enforcement of the new regulations being in the
| hands of the UK's weather service.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Met_Office
| belter wrote:
| I was assuming should be the Met Office as they would have
| the mathematical education :-)))
| CJefferson wrote:
| You'll be shocked to hear how most countries already ban large
| pieces of chemistry, and even inappropriate uses of momentum.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| The world isn't exactly Texas indeed.
|
| Still... I do hope even Texas bans some of those
| _inappropriate_ uses of momentum. I do value the
| electrochemical impulses going on between my fellow meatbags
| ' ears.
| Moissanite wrote:
| They'll have to prise my illicit angular momentum from my
| cold, dead, rapidly rotating fingers.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Framing it like that doesn't help, when they banned drugs did
| they banned chemical reactions or the atomic theory or the gas
| laws?
|
| Obviously the intentions here are not to ban computations but
| devices doing computations that makes jobs of those people
| harder.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Computers are a little different than specialised devices
| like... well, bombs & drugs let's say.
|
| Heard of the coming war on general computation?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
|
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com.
| ..
| mrtksn wrote:
| People claim things all the time.
|
| It gets old quickly to claim that "they introduced DRM"
| kind of things as if those things were imposed from the top
| and didn't happen within the dynamics of the businesses.
| johnklos wrote:
| That sounds flippant, but it really isn't.
|
| Imagine this: someone doesn't like you and wants to harm you.
| They plant a USB stick with random data on it on you, or in
| your home. They call the authorities and tell a story about how
| you're colluding with terrorists, and the information you've
| been exchanging with terrorists is somehow in your possession.
|
| The hard part would be to get someone to believe the story
| enough to get a search warrant, but if you're in a position of
| authority in the government, this isn't unreasonable.
|
| Now the warrant is executed, your home is searched, and the USB
| stick is found. The data is examined, and the judge orders you
| to provide the means to decrypt it. Because you can't, and
| because the data is indistinguishable from real, encrypted
| data, the judge orders you held until you provide the keys.
|
| Is this theoretical? No. It really could happen. The UK is a
| very, very scary place to be if you ever do anything that might
| piss off someone in power.
| convery wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Illegal_number
| jb1991 wrote:
| Well, they didn't want to be part of the European Union, and
| they're very clearly demonstrating that they are indeed not part
| of the European Union.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| First they came for financial privacy, and I did not speak out -
| because I did respect care about financial privacy...
| er4hn wrote:
| > We're targeting the modified and bespoke devices that enable
| access to platforms, similar to Encro Chat, where the software/
| hardware has been developed to anonymise its users and their
| communications and its user base is assessed to be almost
| certainly criminal. Under Option 1 where articles will be
| specified, we will be targeting those that supply, modify, and
| possess these bespoke devices; the provisions will not apply to
| commercially available mobile phones nor the encrypted messaging
| apps available on them. The proposed offences will seek to tackle
| those supplying and exploiting these devices in order to carry
| out serious crimes and will seek to reduce the supply of these
| devices to serious criminals.
|
| The paper makes it sound like the intent is to target services
| that are advertised as being used for crime. While that is a
| judgement call, I do appreciate that standard devices / standard
| apps are not being targeted.
|
| On it's surface it seems pretty straightforward. If you are
| advertising "Crime Talk as a Service", you'll probably be
| investigated and this gives a clear policy decision. If you are
| advertising "Anonymous chats away from nosy spouses" the police
| will have to do a _smidge_ more legwork to build a case.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| >that is a judgement call
|
| I think this is the critical point though. It leaves a lot of
| room to criminalize any type of encrypted communication device
| mthomasmw wrote:
| Make me a hammer that only works on nails
| stuaxo wrote:
| The laws are never written so that they only target specific
| things.
|
| Examples in the UK are many, you can go back 20-30 years when
| CCTV and surveillance started, powers aimed at "serious"
| things, resulting in local councils buying night vision goggles
| to make sure people are using the right bins.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| I always felt US was most authoritative govt amongst the
| democratic countries, now I feel that spot is being taken either
| by UK or Australian govts.
| costco wrote:
| The US put the operator of a service called PhantomSecure in
| jail after he expressed willingness to sell phones to an
| undercover pretending to represent a drug cartel. A Canadian
| who started a similar service after PhantomSecure was shut down
| is also currently wanted by the US
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.casd.70...
| despite there seemingly being very limited evidence he was
| aware of criminal activity on his platform.
| dvh wrote:
| Is Vernam cypher sophisticated?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Does that mean I can still use Pig Latin?
| chatmasta wrote:
| It's a yearly tradition in the UK to propose some draconian law
| that will be the end of the internet. And yet the policies
| generally remain unimplemented. Is there some systemic pattern
| that explains this trend?
| stuaxo wrote:
| People that understand the implications are still in some
| places and put the brakes on.
| stranded22 wrote:
| This time around, we have a party that is able to push through
| laws as they have 1) 80 majority and 2) no qualms about hiding
| their facist ways.
| splatzone wrote:
| I reckon it's the dire quality of our elected politicians. UK
| politicians don't try to understand technology, and they feel
| entitled to dismiss expert opinion whenever it will win them
| public favour, hence the disaster with Covid lockdowns.
| dijit wrote:
| they keep trying, public outrage keeps it from being viewed by
| our ruling class as anything other than political suicide.
|
| These policies will get implemented as soon as we are sick of
| being outraged.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Everytime there is an uproar to fight it again, so they wait
| and try again a year later.
|
| They aren't giving up, they are just waiting as they "only have
| to get lucky once"
|
| Meanwhile those who recognize the issue instead must live by
| the maximum "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| The only way to stop having to constantly fight this issue is
| to manage to swing things back further _back_ , to have
| backlash in the direction of "no and stop asking", or if
| necessary, "no, and your smoking crater will be a warning to
| the next person to try".
|
| We _should_ be in a world where "I want to ban encryption"
| results in "Of course not, and your career in politics is now
| over". We _should_ be in a world where "I want to ban
| encryption" results in "No, in fact here are a bunch of laws
| enshrining the right to encryption and privacy". We _should_
| be in a world where everyone building encryption technologies
| is building it in a fashion not just resistant to but
| _actively hostile_ to any ability to control or backdoor it.
| Lio wrote:
| I always wonder if it's a _" look at this crazy law we might
| pass and definitely don't look at the money we're stealing from
| the NHS or the tax we forgot to pay or the_ "loans" _we 've
| been given in exchange for plush jobs and peerages"_ kind of
| deal.
| TillE wrote:
| They tried for years to implement a bizarre law that would
| impose onerous age verification systems on porn sites, but do
| nothing about porn on Twitter or Reddit or whatever. Just total
| ineffectual nonsense, whatever you think about the principle.
|
| I think they finally gave that one up.
| jjice wrote:
| I'm terrified that one of these many proposals that come up from
| time to time by ignorant politicians will get through because of
| other ignorant politicians and scare campaigns. These are all too
| common.
| amatecha wrote:
| The suggestions appear to refer to some custom-tailored software
| made specifically for organized crime purposes, the example given
| being EncroChat[0]. Stuff like Signal, Telegram, Tor or whatever
| are not included in this proposal.
|
| > the provisions will not apply to commercially available mobile
| phones nor the encrypted messaging apps available on them
|
| That said, I'm never a fan of any outlawing of encryption of any
| kind, so I do hope people in the respective jurisdictions voice
| their disagreement. I also imagine that what starts as "just
| criminal-focused services" will quickly expand to more popular
| stuff.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Stuff like Signal, Telegram, Tor or whatever are not included
| in this proposal.
|
| Yet...
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