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.
Hold on! Kill all HTTPS? Biometric passports? I haven't tried to read the bill, but AFAIK there are no provisions in the bill that attack HTPPS, and given that biometric passports are not a communications technology, I don't see how they could be impacted.
I don't see how the bill impacts email at all; opportunistic SMTP encryption isn't E2E in the first place, and PGP is rarely used in email. And when it is used, it's usually to sign rather than to encrypt.
TLS / HTTPS would be included in my definition; the purpose of which is that the two parties are the only ones that can see the traffic.
Honestly, it kind of needs to happen properly, otherwise people will never learn. Allowing these half baked pieces of legislation to pass and then not implementing them except for some edge case allows the idiots who write it and promote it to claim they were right all along.
And this is a silly law. Everyone will break it, every time they use an encrypted communication, which is pretty-much every single thing one does on the internet these days. It's a perfect recipe for the authorities to let everyone carry on as normal, then when they want to crush someone they're certain to find some law that they have broken like this one.
We should be throwing out such laws.
Has anyone checked if the legislation has the special clause for "prosecutions require permission from the Attorney General"? (i.e. politically motivated prosecutions only - this has been seen before)
