The problem the government seems to have is they don’t understand much of the internet operates completely outside their jurisdiction. Or have any real understanding of the internet.
It is also impossible to have a mechanism for ‘good guys’ which cannot be exploited by ‘bad guys’, not even considering the many so called ‘good guys’ who have abused access they have, whether that’s police running searches for personal gain, or councils abusing anti terror legislation for mundane purposes.
It’s always “think of the children”, but the reality is that even if you could implement such a scheme, it can still be evaded quite easily. And if you really care about the “won’t someone please think of the children” argument, it would be far better to invest even more resources into social services, and specialist police who infiltrate such groups.
seriously hope the gov can stop this ridiculous bill; so-called stopping child abuse is not an excuse to sacrifice privacy.
[deleted]
Always always always, increased surveillance is delivered under the guise of “won’t somebody think of the children”, its the oldest trick in the book for getting these bills through.
Look at the scale of mass surveillance Snowden uncovered, was that primarily used for catching pedophiles? No, it was used to (illegally) spy and collect data on everyone on a vast scale with little to no oversight.
Hilarious that people think that these services haven’t had a backdoor for intelligence agencies for years
End-to-end encryption removal impacts law-abiding citizens, while
criminals can still use their own encryption methods. The existence of
backdoors increases the attack surface for hackers, putting everyone at
risk without providing any benefits.
Try telling someone with a low so-called “social credit score” that they have never had anything to hide. That is the level of trust that should be afforded to the so-called good guys.
If the maxim of “nothing to hide… was true”, then why do we have state secrets?
The very existence of the Official Secrets Act debunks the whole “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” claim.
If it is the case that no-one has anything to hide, let us start with MI5 and MI6. Then we might believe you. Oh wait…
Perhaps, because any backdoor (or front door) for the so-called good guys can and will be abused by criminals and rogue third party states.
My theory: WhatsApp especially likes to bang on about end-to-end encryption and how not even they know what your messages contain.
But you E2EE or not, you still have to trust the app that’s doing the encryption in the first place; I don’t, it’ll probably come out years later that WhatsApp could easily instruct your phone to pass the NSA a copy of your messages on a whim, it is Meta owned after all.
Delete WhatsApp, go with something open source and proven to be secure, like “Signal”.
Well I think all mail sent via post should be opened just in case….
One of the things to keep in mind, if this law ever passes, MPs will be exempt.
Don’t expect the positive of “now we can spy on the prime minister” to ever happen.
They’re the ones who make the laws, there are always exceptions for MPs
Can’t wait to FOI every single Tory politician for years to come for their WhatsApp messages.
It seems like we have to fight this battle every 2 or 3 years. Encryption is under attack everywhere these days. Even the EU, once a champion for privacy, is set to introduce new laws that allow for “backdoors” for law enforcement. I think Governments just don’t want their citizens to have privacy on principle. They want to read us like open books. But like other’s have said, these same rules definitely won’t apply to the politicians; THEY’LL be allowed to have encrypted messaging systems.
Furthermore, our police officers are mostly creepy rapists and racists. What sane person would trust them with access to their private messages when they can’t even solve a simple burglary?
This is going to cause so many problems that the gov seem to completely miss, or at least the politicians think it will get them votes and have missed the bigger picture entirely. Pattern spotting is how they track and catch criminals. Not reading every single text message ever written. When you use the likes of Whatsapp, you are leaving a pattern of who you communicate with. That is how criminal organisations get caught. I know this from first hand experience.By banning these tools, criminals then move to platforms that don’t leave such breadcrumb trails.Look at the school shootings in the US – its individuals with an agenda – the hardest criminal to catch before the act. Acting alone.By banning the likes of WhatsApp, you lose that trail and in effect turn each criminal in a criminal ring, into a lone actor. Now you have lost your breadcrumbs.
Not to mention weakening encryption is just a bad idea for legitimate uses. Let’s not even talk about what “safe backdoors” means (or doesn’t mean).
Besides, encrypted data sent over a wire looks identical to complete garbage and if it doesn’t its easy to make it look that way. Enforcing this is just impossible.
Maths is not the enemy here. The government are going to cause a lot of problems that they either know about but are acting against their better judgment or are just blind ignorant.
Hanlon’s razor – “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Oh and also, no you cannot trade our privacy for safety. That is not the job of a government. This is not 1984.
I highly doubt Whatsapp etc would pull out of the UK. They make too much money from our data and us using the app to turn there back on that
Anyone who supports this for safety purposes would be happy with their post being opened too then. Right? The principle is effectively the same, while doing just as much good.
I can’t believe they still trying this backdoor bullshit. They have been told so many times that this makes essential encryption useless. Government full of barely sentient turds.
Just a pr spin for their users to read. The gov already has access to all your data.
These people in charge of our country are literally insane. Both Cameron and May attempted this and they’ve learned nothing from it. 🤡
21 comments
The problem the government seems to have is they don’t understand much of the internet operates completely outside their jurisdiction. Or have any real understanding of the internet.
It is also impossible to have a mechanism for ‘good guys’ which cannot be exploited by ‘bad guys’, not even considering the many so called ‘good guys’ who have abused access they have, whether that’s police running searches for personal gain, or councils abusing anti terror legislation for mundane purposes.
It’s always “think of the children”, but the reality is that even if you could implement such a scheme, it can still be evaded quite easily. And if you really care about the “won’t someone please think of the children” argument, it would be far better to invest even more resources into social services, and specialist police who infiltrate such groups.
seriously hope the gov can stop this ridiculous bill; so-called stopping child abuse is not an excuse to sacrifice privacy.
[deleted]
Always always always, increased surveillance is delivered under the guise of “won’t somebody think of the children”, its the oldest trick in the book for getting these bills through.
Look at the scale of mass surveillance Snowden uncovered, was that primarily used for catching pedophiles? No, it was used to (illegally) spy and collect data on everyone on a vast scale with little to no oversight.
Hilarious that people think that these services haven’t had a backdoor for intelligence agencies for years
End-to-end encryption removal impacts law-abiding citizens, while
criminals can still use their own encryption methods. The existence of
backdoors increases the attack surface for hackers, putting everyone at
risk without providing any benefits.
Try telling someone with a low so-called “social credit score” that they have never had anything to hide. That is the level of trust that should be afforded to the so-called good guys.
If the maxim of “nothing to hide… was true”, then why do we have state secrets?
The very existence of the Official Secrets Act debunks the whole “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” claim.
If it is the case that no-one has anything to hide, let us start with MI5 and MI6. Then we might believe you. Oh wait…
Perhaps, because any backdoor (or front door) for the so-called good guys can and will be abused by criminals and rogue third party states.
My theory: WhatsApp especially likes to bang on about end-to-end encryption and how not even they know what your messages contain.
But you E2EE or not, you still have to trust the app that’s doing the encryption in the first place; I don’t, it’ll probably come out years later that WhatsApp could easily instruct your phone to pass the NSA a copy of your messages on a whim, it is Meta owned after all.
Delete WhatsApp, go with something open source and proven to be secure, like “Signal”.
Well I think all mail sent via post should be opened just in case….
One of the things to keep in mind, if this law ever passes, MPs will be exempt.
Don’t expect the positive of “now we can spy on the prime minister” to ever happen.
They’re the ones who make the laws, there are always exceptions for MPs
Can’t wait to FOI every single Tory politician for years to come for their WhatsApp messages.
It seems like we have to fight this battle every 2 or 3 years. Encryption is under attack everywhere these days. Even the EU, once a champion for privacy, is set to introduce new laws that allow for “backdoors” for law enforcement. I think Governments just don’t want their citizens to have privacy on principle. They want to read us like open books. But like other’s have said, these same rules definitely won’t apply to the politicians; THEY’LL be allowed to have encrypted messaging systems.
Furthermore, our police officers are mostly creepy rapists and racists. What sane person would trust them with access to their private messages when they can’t even solve a simple burglary?
This is going to cause so many problems that the gov seem to completely miss, or at least the politicians think it will get them votes and have missed the bigger picture entirely. Pattern spotting is how they track and catch criminals. Not reading every single text message ever written. When you use the likes of Whatsapp, you are leaving a pattern of who you communicate with. That is how criminal organisations get caught. I know this from first hand experience.By banning these tools, criminals then move to platforms that don’t leave such breadcrumb trails.Look at the school shootings in the US – its individuals with an agenda – the hardest criminal to catch before the act. Acting alone.By banning the likes of WhatsApp, you lose that trail and in effect turn each criminal in a criminal ring, into a lone actor. Now you have lost your breadcrumbs.
Not to mention weakening encryption is just a bad idea for legitimate uses. Let’s not even talk about what “safe backdoors” means (or doesn’t mean).
Besides, encrypted data sent over a wire looks identical to complete garbage and if it doesn’t its easy to make it look that way. Enforcing this is just impossible.
Maths is not the enemy here. The government are going to cause a lot of problems that they either know about but are acting against their better judgment or are just blind ignorant.
Hanlon’s razor – “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Oh and also, no you cannot trade our privacy for safety. That is not the job of a government. This is not 1984.
I highly doubt Whatsapp etc would pull out of the UK. They make too much money from our data and us using the app to turn there back on that
Anyone who supports this for safety purposes would be happy with their post being opened too then. Right? The principle is effectively the same, while doing just as much good.
I can’t believe they still trying this backdoor bullshit. They have been told so many times that this makes essential encryption useless. Government full of barely sentient turds.
Just a pr spin for their users to read. The gov already has access to all your data.
These people in charge of our country are literally insane. Both Cameron and May attempted this and they’ve learned nothing from it. 🤡