I think technology must provide ways to ensure free and secure communication without a possibility of surveillance. The political class cannot be entrusted to shield essential freedoms, so technology has to provide it. Large tech companies are a single point of failure and we already have seen political influence there. While much of it is now challenged at least, I think we can all be glad the the internet provided some resilience against surveillance and propaganda attempts.
In that regard the panic about disinformation is also mostly manufactured in my opinion and the voice of experts will be disregarded anyway.
The truth is that power (aka money) is heavily concentrated in global society. It's a worthwhile goal to break it up, and maybe there are some technical tricks to help people toward that end, but even if we woke up tomorrow with a perfectly decentralized and anonymous network culture, we would still be under the rule of oil interests/unelected bureaucrats/unaccountable intelligence agencies/the finance industry/your bogeyman of choice.
This is surprisingly often the case, not just for criminal law (or "security law") changes, but even in general lawmaking. And way more often than not those experts are spot on. Be it obvious loop holes in regulations, tax code issues, eroding civil rights, obvious unconstitionality of many surveillance (and many other) laws, obvious abuse potential and so on. It's a very long list.
And while I appreciate the level tone... I do wish they'd at least wink at the real reasons this is being put forward. I get why they don't, to maintain respectability and deniability etc.
But look at the sheer hypocrisy on display here. I kinda wish they'd take the gloves off and say, hey - Look at Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter, and God Knows how many others.
Look at how those horrifying scumbags walked around free, for decades, as if authorities didn't know full fine well what they were doing. Look at how they were not just ignored, but protected by the establishment that now wants a backdoor on every private communication.
The plan to bring back "Imperial" measurements still isn't dead, for example.
Liz Truss, worst and shortest PM in living memory, is back after a few months as if nothing had happened. Why? It's not because she has any good ideas; it's because she's a vessel for a particular faction of bad ideas.
Exactly.
He wasn't held to account for "an inappropriate relationship" (which is a fucked up way to describe multiple statutory rape allegations).
Instead, he was protected; given interviews where he practically hanged himself with ridiculous claims ("I don't sweat", "no recollection" of photographic evidence, etc); and still hasn't been investigated, even after refusing to cooperate with investigations.
And, you're dramatically underplaying his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell, which goes back to 1999 and includes weddings, Royal parties, topless Thai festivities, international visits, etc; even after Epstein's conviction: [0], [1]
It's not hyperbole to put him in this list; not at all. His inclusion illustrates the extent of power getting away with crimes in Britain. He was never arrested - but the protester who heckled him was. That says a lot.
0 - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49411215 details the absolute bare minimum extent of it.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/07/prince-andre...
In the UK there’s a concept of the “Westminster bubble”. Politicians believe that people care deeply about “online safety”, which is all that matters really.
This letter is a "nice try", but pretty late and lacking media-awareness. People certainly won't read a 4-page PDF. They should have led with:
> There is no technological solution to the contradiction inherent in both keeping information confidential from third parties and sharing that same information with third parties.
Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam. None of his opponents had ever served.
The public tend to believe what they've been informed and the press tend to be inept when it comes to Gov surveillance.
The history of editors and journalists is 1) they reprint Gov Natsec claims w/o analysis or a single thought about Gov's history and 2) will only report surveillance wrongdoing when their nose has been dragged to it and they've been booted from behind.
And to clarify here, NatSec and Child Safety are just different food colors in the same poisonous water.
The public have largely been sold nothing and are completely, blissfully, ignorant of this legislation. The legislation is being pushed through by politicians who have been sold two lies:
1. The legislation, and 2. the idea that the public care.
The people are always sold a lie. But in a democracy, it is the responsibility of the voter to identify when they are being lied to and to search for the truth.
As much as you claim that media isn’t free and isn’t good, I look around and see the opposite. Now is the best time in the history of the world to get amazing journalism. You are just too focused on the media you dislike to admit that with selection comes lots of terrible choices.
Do you understand this from polling? Can't trust UK media outlets on public opinion, they push, they don't pull. If the public doesn't agree with them, they all will run variations of the same story, aimed at the same targets, for years until they do.
And I think those who are proposing these kinds of bills know this, and are protected by how unlikely it would be to reach any kind of critical mass organically.
I'm sure there are laws against the encouragement of others to commit a crime, but ... wink wink.
You can discuss how high that cost should be, but there is a cost to state surveillance as well.
While conservative news sources historically act in bad faith here, non-conservative news sources lose all reasoning ability, when it comes to Gov surveillance. They rarely hold Gov accountable unless they have little choice.
The latter probably happens because the public endlessly gives news orgs a pass about it.
Same thing happened in many countries with terrorism and loss of rights/super authoritarian/inconstitucional powers for govs, and it was fine... Because the risk is too great and "are you a <insert label here, such as terrorist sympathdizer, grandma killer, etc>
Let's not pretend the UK is particularly bad. Many countries are pushing the same old "destroy encryption" because I need to "tap the bad guys" and people are always fine when given the flimsiest of excuses/narrative.
Yes, HN "tech crowd" too.
https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/past-virus-...
Background: https://www.theverge.com/23708180/united-kingdom-online-safe...
Labour's Lucy Powell:
“The weakened bill will give abusers a licence to troll, and the business models of big tech will give these trolls a platform.”
So the Labour government will get to decide who's a "troll," and whether they're de-platformed AKA cancelled.
Likewise Labour's desire to curb "legal but harmful" speech means that Labour will get to decide, on an ongoing basis, which speech is "harmful." It won't be defined in law, so the definition will be completely subjective, and ripe for corruption and chilling suppression of innocent people.
The bill mandates an end-run around E2E encryption. Government spokespeople are deeply disingenuous about this; the two ends are me and you, metaphorically; two users. If there's anything in the channel before the content is encrypted or after it's decrypted, then it isn't end-to-end any more.
It's going to drive the people who have the know how underground, and anyone engaging in protecting their privacy will be considered a criminal. We're already creeping toward that IMO.
In fact, I very see the opposite. Passing this kind of legislation will kill e-commerce for sure, so it will never happen.
It would be a return to the pre internet era, so probably is the will of the people and on form for the UK. I kind of hope they pass it then realise what it actually means.
My money is on Canada. The Trudeau Liberals passed their first of three internet control and censorship bills, C-18, and it has already backfired stupendously. It's quite similiar to Australia's similiar bill to force some companies to pay for linking to news content, but the Liberals saw that and thought "we should try it too!". Same result, Google basically said "no problem, we won't link to news in Canada".
However, unlike Australia, the Canadian Liberals are doubling down. New tax payer-funded subsidies for Canadian news are already being discussed to make up for the lost revenue the legislation caused. The Liberal-funded media is also trying to paint this as evil greedy foreign capitalist technology companies refusing to pay their fair share for exploiting Canadian news companies.
But that's why my money is on Canada. It has the perfect blend of incompetent leadership, empowered by another party that helps them pass any legislation no matter what, and constituents that are largely apathetic to anything that happens.
Raid warrants are already being signed off based on the tiny window into an IP address' life provided by legislated metadata retention. And no further actual police work is done on backgrounding the persons or households involved before choosing to suspend their rights.
It's going to be no different at all from the current situation.
- All online messenger providers (Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram) e.g. withdraw from the UK market. Meta and Google gave a taste for this after Canadian link law.
- UK needs to come up with a crappy homebrew messenger ecosystem no one uses. Maybe a messenger.gov.uk?
- People download applications with privacy and sideload them to their mobile phones, keep going with their business as usual
- The number of childs protected or caught pedophiles stays unchanged
- UK parliament members who proposed the bill will look like idiots, not getting re-elected
- The "compliance" companies who promoted these solutions, as it's driven by commercial interest that guides the political discussion, go bankcrupt
However I remain doubtful if we have this ideal scenario.
That's not true at all. If OSB is passed, things will be quite different in the UK afterward.
Beyond the security researchers' own little "computer savvy 1%" bubble, is there any intended audience for such Open Letters?
Could they actually communicate with normal people if they (somehow) wanted to?
Are there laws in the UK that make it too risky to just say something like "This bill will make it so much easier for the next Wayne Couzens to find his perfect Sarah Everard."?
> There is no technological solution to the contradiction inherent in both keeping information confidential from third parties and sharing that same information with third parties.
It would be more effective to tweet that sentence wherever the discussion is remotely touched. Nobody, including politicians, reads such lengthy letters.
That have that comm channel. It's the press and the press instantly loses it's way, the moment Gov puts on a NatSec or Child Safety mask.
At least where I live, the middle-aged owner of a small-town ice cream parlor is 99% likely to know how to do an effective press release. The "news" can be a new ice cream flavor, with the colors of the local HS sports teams...but you carefully write that press release in such a way that any over-worked bottom-rung reporter can spend 30 seconds adjusting the pronouns & such, then publish it in their paper.
There aren't a lot of people who are at the intersection of technology and advocacy, but they do exist and would be able to help us know what effective advocacy looks like. We just need a little guidance as a community.
Could you tell us about the historical effectiveness of such open letters to UK politicians, from tiny numbers of technical experts, on issues politically similar to this?
Assume that we've heard of Performative Activism.
How so?
Will people need a number for a privacy friendly foreign nation to continue access?
The micronation thing is silly, as is relying on a shrinking number of countries which claim they won't enforce these laws. We need satellite-based servers. If I were Musk and had that chain up in the sky, I'd open a simple E2EE Whatsapp for anyone who could ping them directly. At this point, anyone who wants private comms is going to need to go to space for them.
If you were Musk, and if Musk were some sort of superhero fighter for communications freedom. If Musk wants private communication for himself and his friends, I'm sure he can manage it.
Once you have have spent years whipping up fear over non-issues, you inevitably have to do something about them.
But you cannot actually do something that doesn't have side effect worse than the intended effect. But you can't just admit that or walk away. You have convinced your electorate these are the number 1 issues facing the nation.
So you write a law that's meaningless nonsense, and poop it out into Parliament.
That is how we got this bill. That's how we got Brexit.
Whether we can overcome this sort of disfunction will basically decide whether algo-sphere style democracy is sustainable...
I've personally never used Tor, but the moment this bill goes live, I'll be setting up Whonix in a VM on Linux OS.
They don't care what the people want after campaign season is over, however they will back off from anything that generates genuine outcry, for a while, then they'll try it again later.
