The U.K. Government Is Very Close To Eroding Encryption Worldwide
The U.K. Government Is Very Close To Eroding Encryption Worldwide
The U.K. Parliament is pushing ahead with a sprawling internet regulation bill that will, among other things, undermine the privacy of people around the world. The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force...
Tories really trying to cause as much harm as possible before they get voted out so they can blame the next party for mismanaging their mistakes.
Edit:
the U.K.’s Minister for Culture, Media and Sport simply re-hashes an imaginary world in which messages can be scanned while user privacy is maintained.
Those are literally opposites to each other.
It's not just the Tories, Keir Starmer has already tried to get VPN's included in the bill. Don't kid yourself its going to be any better when Labour get in.
Labour's authoritarian streak is slightly more than the tories. Only sightly, mind. Labour have zero intention of stopping or (if it goes through - it still needs to go through the Lords yet, and as I understand it, they're not as keen) if it goes into law: removing it.
Tories really trying to cause as much harm as possible before they get voted out so they can blame the next party for mismanaging their mistakes.
That's the conservative M.O. It's literally the only thing they do.
You're underestimating Starmer Chameleon's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Plus starmer's gov would probably do something similar lol the man is a red Tory through and through
I read the article, and it's hard to see how this would have worldwide effects. If anything, the companies with customers in the UK will: disable E2EE for chats with UK parties (likely warning the parties); leave the UK market rather than weaken their brand; or create a secondary product just for the UK. Consumers will continue to find workarounds provided the phones and computers are not fully controlled by the government.
The fact that the government would have to force client side scanning software onto phones and computers is probably the death knell of the UK tech industry. Either that, or so many exceptions will need to be added that the legislation would be ineffective. Can you imagine a Linux hacker recompiling their own kernel and then getting thrown in jail because they didn't enable the government scanning module?
The reason it will impact security worldwide is that the UK is part of the "14 eyes" alliance, an alliance between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden used to spy on citizens. This data from the 14 eyes is also shared with countries in strategic alliances, like NATO members not listed here, Israel, South Korea, Japan, etc.
Any encrypted data going to or through the UK will need to have this backdoor, exposing all encrypted traffic to this vulnerability while also sharing that data with foreign governments. Edward Snowden exposed that the US government was paying the UK government to spy on US citizens for the data. This is what will happen in the UK, but for people around the globe.
I think the major concern is the idea of the government backdoor, any company that implements such a thing is adding a serious weakness to their product. I’m sure the major companies will probably find some other way to contain it to the UK (or leave the UK entirely), but some will opt for the backdoor to cut costs.
I'd imagine any company who needs their encryption to be taken seriously will openly remove encryption or the product entirely in the UK only.
Since otherwise all their customers would assume they added backdoors and compromised security....
"I think the major concern is the idea of the government backdoor"
The concern is individual security and privacy, not the government getting what it deserves if that were to happen
You're probably right, but the problem is the political precident that's set. Once a major western government codifies this into law, it becomes a little bit easier and more self-justifiable for other world governments to follow suit.
Every relevant player here needs to be swift and unequivocal about pulling out of the UK if this becomes law. It's needs to result in a PR disaster and loss of power for the UK government so the world can see what bafoons they are and no one else dares to make the same ill-fated attempt.
The tech industry has an ethical responsibility to unequivocally reject this.
Don't you just love it when the justification for fascism becomes, "What about the kids?" I am not saying that this is necessarily the case in this instance, but it's a common refrain for breaking technology and taking away rights by the authoritarian state.
Well at least in the EU where simiar stuff is Plotted by politicians this is exactly their "Argument "
I am not saying that this is necessarily the case in this instance
It's literally stated in the article. And terrorism of course.
I didn't read the article. I fully admit that.
They really wanna know what porn we're watching don't they?
I can go and watch my femdom in the House of Lords if they really want me to. Hell, it might even add to the experience.
Whenever law enforcement can scan your stuff to make sure it's safe, it can also be exploited by corporations, data harvesters, industrial spies (from competitors in your industry), and malware bandits.
You can't tell the software who the good guys are, only who the guys are who have keys.
Oh, how progressive