It's the latest blow to encryption in the UK

Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK.

  • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
    238·
    24 days ago

    Remember how, before the internet, intelligence agencies by default didn’t know what anyone was saying to anyone else face to face or by mail, and had to actually work to find out? The country didn’t fall apart. Why is the standard now that everything must be handed to them on a plate? Did they just get lazy?

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      24 days ago

      You’ll love this!

      I deployed an open-source chat system at work, just for convenience. Boss was concerned that it didn’t do any logging and we couldn’t tell who said what.

      “You don’t have any records of what we say verbally. What’s the difference?”

      “…Oh. Well, you’re right.”

      He was coming from a legit concern. We didn’t point fingers when someone screwed up, zero blame, but we needed to know exactly what happened so we could fix it.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      171·
      24 days ago

      That they can is what has changed. They didn’t have sufficient information to put pressure.

      They still had microphones and inquiry drugs, including those causing memory loss. So they knew plenty of what people were saying to each other.

      Anyway. Everything has changed a lot, not just technology, and one can’t really make a chain of causation to all this. There are plenty of feedback loops.

      The rules now are “we are stronger, so we are forbidding everything we don’t want”. Losing leverage does that.

      Until you learn of some way to hit them back, such questions are no good, because not answering them doesn’t cost anything.

    • big_slap@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      24 days ago

      I think its a mixture of lazy and inexperience.

      I believe if someone in a position of authority who understands how vital E2EE is in order for the internet to work, this suggestion wouldn’t even be on the table.

      its a case of just kicking destroying E2EE down the road for another generation to deal with, I believe. not sure what the solution is, either

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        5·
        24 days ago

        I believe if someone in a position of authority who understands how vital E2EE is in order for the internet to work, this suggestion wouldn’t even be on the table.

        That might be an illusion. You might be perceiving the world without normalized E2EE as something too horrible to consider. But it would be a stable system, functional for the taste of those people.

        • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          24 days ago

          Lawmakers will make exceptions to allow E2EE for their own communications and those of the very wealthy.

    • fartographer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      24 days ago

      They cut costs by firing the people doing the legwork and passed the savings along to billionaires who promised sustainable models. Now they can’t hire people to do real legwork anymore because, “no one wants to work anymore for their grandparents’ wage in an economy and society designed to turn people into voluntary slaves and the only way to escape is to become homeless and go off the grid, but the laws are being molded to prevent anyone from escaping the system.”

      I’m pretty sure that’s how the old adage goes.

    • Piatro@programming.devEnglish
      24·
      24 days ago

      I thought we were unique in this but frankly everywhere in the “western” world is talking about the same things. EU has chat control, Australia has similar efforts, USA aren’t pushing for privacy at all so it’s not a uniquely British problem.

    • Obinice@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      24 days ago

      Hey, did you use a secure encrypted connection to make that treasonous remark? I’ve got 999 on speed dial, I’m on to you, you encryption terrorist!

  • eleitl@lemmy.zipEnglish
    581·
    24 days ago

    Folks, “1984” was supposed to be a warning. Not an instruction manual, with check off items.

  • 87Six@lemmy.zipEnglish
    571·
    24 days ago

    What the fuck happened to the UK? Is Trump president there too?

    • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      221·
      24 days ago

      Meta happened. UK, US, all over the world there is a correlation between the adoption of Meta’s products and the corrosion of basic human rights.

        • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          2·
          23 days ago

          To be totally clear, the UK has been a fucked up place for centuries, I don’t think Meta fundamentally changed the culture.

          Having said that, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc are tools that enable political influence over the population at levels that were previously unimaginable. Look into Cambridge Analytica a bit or borrow Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America by Christopher Wylie from your local library for details.

          Starting as early as 2012 we have evidence that Facebook was pivotal in stoking racial tensions in Myanmar, leading to a genocide.

          There’s evidence that Meta was a major factor in Brexit, which more specifically relates to my claim with respect to influence in the UK.

          The US election in 2016 was clearly influenced by Meta platforms, including taking Russian money to stoke racial tensions in line with the Russian Manifesto, The Foundations of Geopolitics.

          I’m currently reading through Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which is a memoir about how these systems were conceptualized and built at Facebook, and so far I’d recommend it.

          Obviously Meta isn’t the only problem, Tiktok is clearly a problem of similar size and scope, and other social apps have their own challenges (X being owned by the richest man alive and actively influencing the algorithm, for example), but in many ways Meta is the OG, and blazed the trail for others.

    • bougietherock@lemmy.zipEnglish
      116·
      24 days ago

      People pretend not to know but mass immigration creates…issues, and so the UK became a hotbed of espionage and influence operations. With a certain demographic there’s also a high risk of breeding terrorism and social unrest to say the least, that cannot be defused through typical means at such a high rate of immigration. While these particular measures are draconian, in the end something similar would be done. You see the same trend playing out in other European countries with Chat Control, so to say it is a UK thing is naive. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US probably already can break into these apps because of their technological superiority, and other countries like China straight up demand a back door, so privacy is well and truly dead in modern times.

      • Techranger@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        The USA and UK are both Five Eyes members and routinely share intelligence. If the USA had compromised secure apps, wouldn’t the UK be privy to intelligence gathered via that method?

  • electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    51·
    24 days ago

    Pervasive surveillance is a hostile act. Abetting genocide and other crimes against humanity is a hostile act. Serving the rich at the expense of the poor is a hostile act.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      52·
      24 days ago

      It’s a kingdom. They have a certain old dicksucker as a king. And they, importantly, don’t have any historical or current reservations about things you listed, fortified by documents.

  • razen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    501·
    24 days ago

    What the heck is happening with Europe in general? I thought they were better in terms of maintaining individual privacy, damm.

  • recentSlinky@lemmy.caEnglish
    381·
    24 days ago

    And i think committing and/or assisting in genocides is ‘hostile activity’. One of us is definitely wrong :)

    • DSN9@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      24 days ago

      Something like everyone can have a say, or input, we can call it democracy, digital democracy, unencumbered by the current neoliberal or rightist fascists. Maybe something where everyone can vote directly, or delegate, and revoke their delegation, with private voting, but open source. No multi trillion dollar budgets for people to cut back room deals for shit outlays. Where public goods funding is reinvigorated for the good of the people, not the administration.

      We can call it democracy… something