UK government plans publicity blitz against encrypted communications | Hacker News Reader

UK government plans publicity blitz against encrypted communications

rollingstone.com

310 pointsdanyork136 comments

I find it amusing that WhatsApp and its e2ee is used as a common target for regulation by the government when their own ministers are using it to organise all sorts of shenanigans; illegal parties during lockdown, “anonymous” briefing of journalists, leaking compromising information about their peers. Not to mention that it always seems like the government is run via WhatsApp (probably need the e2ee for that!).

Ultimately this is about perceived control, the paraphrased saying goes “if you outlaw encryption only outlaws will have encryption”. Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists, it will however allow the government and law enforcement to say “you have encrypted chat software, that’s illegal, therefore you must be doing something illegal”. However, that wont necessarily translate to prosecution, it’s only the perception that matters.

Pandora’s box may have been opened but governments will always find a way to “control” their citizens, usually through fear.

> Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists

Hmm, I used to think this, but now? Now I think most people are bad at tech and security. No reason to expect the average criminal would be better.

Of course, trivial for us to make it, or hide it in something that looks unrelated. And I expect serious organised crime to be able to afford a developer with no morals.

But normal crime? It probably will make a difference.

You are quite right, normal and “pretty” criminals will just use whatever and not care about encryption. Not only because they won’t necessarily be educated about it, but it will have no impact on their ability to operate.

The police and intelligences agencies aren’t intercepting the communications of normal and petty criminals. It’s organised crime and terrorism that matters, they will obviously continue to use it anyway.

> The police and intelligences agencies aren’t intercepting the communications of normal and petty criminals.

Snowden showed otherwise - they're spying on everyone's conversations, criminal or not.

If they did have that capability do you think they would use it to take down and prosecute a small time drug dealer exposing what they are doing? Even exposing this capability to the Police by give them “secret” intelligence would inevitably result in the knowledge of their capabilities leaking.

If they do have this capability it is only every going to be used for large scale organised crime, terrorism and state security.

They do have this capacity. Given that the existence of this capacity is now public, it is my belief the UK is mainly limited by a combination of selective enforcement, lack of courts and lack of police (weirdly, given their preferred “tough on crime” rhetoric, U.K. courts and police are severely underfunded right now).

It's possible that they like surveillance because it is cheaper than traditional methods.

They might like the cost savings for evidence gathering, but there’s something ridiculous like a half million backlog of court cases in the U.K. right now so the rest of the justice system isn’t in a position to use that evidence.

For the "skeptics", etc — plenty of article sources and other jump-off points here, for those that want them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

> If they do have this capability it is only every going to be used for large scale organised crime, terrorism and state security.

Don’t forget political opposition / dissidents, and analysis to see what they can get away with in terms of public opinion.

Well, I don't know about phone conversations, but every Tom, Dick and Harry gets access to web surfing history. Given that highly casual attitude - formalised into law! - I wouldn't put it past them to informally do whatever they like with the rest of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#...

Even the customers on the darkweb have to encrypt all of their orders with PGP or they won't be accepted. Encryption is definitely used by smaller-time black market operations.

There have been a few interesting cases of "custom" encrypted solutions being sold to crime groups then compromised by law enforcement.

The thing is, most "normal" crime doesn't rely on comms at all - street and domestic violence, burglary, car theft, etc. Fencing stolen items probably could make use of it. It's only really organized crime. And the UK has an increasing problem with organized crime .. from the top, like the unlawful "fast lane" procurement scheme. And the recent business with MI5 identifying an (extremely overt) Chinese agent.

And a surprising amount of terrorist recruitment gets done in the open. As long as you're not planning specific acts it looks like "free speech".

Power deserves scrutiny. Politicians should have less privacy than the average person.

LOL. Your right. If anything politicians should be denied E2EE

Norwegian politicians are required by law to only use official channels of communication (government email, phone etc) when discussing anything related to their public service. Citizens can demand to get access to these communications, even anonymously. This has made it possible for regular citizens to uncover both small and big abuses of power through the years, most recently exemplified by a close connection between the Police and a private anti-drug-lobby organization that has had a big influence on drug policy for decades.

I have, however, heard that apps like Signal has become more common among politicians, but using it for official business is still illegal.

> Norwegian politicians are required by law to only use official channels of communication

Is it really enforacble? What are the sanctions for breaking the law?

What if someone says it's a national secuirty matter?

Scenario nr 1: You are a misiter and you are discussing possible scenarios about a given event (let say something like an abortion). Should pulbic have full access to it?

Scenario nr 2: You are a minister and you are negotiating a new factory in your country. Foregin corporation wants to keep it secret before the deal is reached. How can you communicate?

If politians would be given a device from the deep state to handle all communication then they would have to use is exculsivly, you are givin the deep state an enormous power.

If it's a national security matter then they should definitely be using the official channels.

> Foregin corporation wants to keep it secret before the deal is reached. How can you communicate?

Foreign corporation wants to do X but X is banned in country.

We don't accept that for minimum wages, discrimination laws, pollution laws, etc. Why should communication laws be any different?

But there are law that limit the communications e.g. insider trading.

Imagine a public corporation that wants to build a factory, but wants to keep to secret for now, cause they don't want the competition to know or affect the share price.

The law ("Offentlighetsloven") is quite nuanced and take into account a lot of different situations and edge cases. The law does not only apply to politicians, but to every public servant in any position.

The law is available in Norwegian here, if you want to run it trough a machine translation service and have a look: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/nou-2003-30/id38285...

Scumbag politicians here in the Netherlands are actually using Signal to avoid courts obtain their communications through the Dutch equivalent of the FOIA.

Politics here is starting to look more like mob politics... Our prime minister is actually known to do as little on paper as possible - so when the shit hits the fan, he'll always say "oh I didn't know" or "I didn't remember"...

The government likes having THEIR communications e2e but we peasants should not also have that freedom. They feel they should be able to monitor and control every aspect of our lives because that is the type of people that politics attract. They look at China's power to monitor communications, block the entire nation's internet, and wall off entire cities not with shock but with envy.

It doesn't really matter if government ministers organise their illegal lockdown parties over end-to-end encryption or not, when the police force were fully aware of it at the time (two officers stationed on either side of the door!) and decline to "investigate".

Was the same police force who surrounded these dangerous criminals?

"Covid: Women on exercise trip 'surrounded by police'" https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814

> The new campaign, however, is entirely focused on the argument that improved encryption would hamper efforts to tackle child exploitation online.

I bet cars and homes without microphones and cameras spying on their residents also hampers their efforts to keep children safe - are those next on the chopping block? They're already spying on near every street corner, after all.

Funny how they never say "Technology has given us all this extra surveillance capability, you can reduce our legal powers somewhat to compensate" - it's always "People have some tiny scrap of privacy left - we must eliminate it, or terrorists and pedophiles win!"

> They're already spying on near every street corner, after all.

Citation needed.

One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveill...

I'll leave it to you to estimate how many people live per street corner, on average.

For the UK government to be “spying on every street corner”, these cameras would have to be hooked up to some kind of central system. They’re not (and indeed most are privately owned).

Don't forget to count automated license plate readers, too: https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/48/4865.asp

And in the context of a crime investigation, all those private cameras will have their recordings looked at by the police - though I concede "spying" is too harsh a word for that.

>And in the context of a crime investigation, all those private cameras will have their recordings looked at by the police

This might happen in a parallel universe where the police were well resourced and competent. In reality, they rarely bother to access CCTV footage. It's not a particularly quick and easy process.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/met-police-fail-to-sol...

Said surveillance is available at a moment's notice and without a warrant. Just because they can't do the show "24" level of surveillance doesn't mean it's not bad, real bad, out there for someone who just want's to live their life relatively unscrutinized. Can't really believe anyone on HN is standing up for 24 hour surveillance with cameras.

Private individuals and organisations are not obliged to give their surveillance footage to the police without a warrant. There's no centralized system, so the data is not in any way available 'at a moment's notice'.

>Can't really believe anyone on HN is standing up for 24 hour surveillance with cameras.

As explained in the guidelines, there's a broad range of opinion on HN. However, I wouldn't say I'm 'standing up for' it. I'm fairly ambivalent about CCTV. I don't think it makes a large amount of difference, either positively or negatively. I do, however, think it's important to be accurate about how (un)sophisticated and (in)effective the surveillance apparatus actually is.

I only have information on the US, but warrants don't offer much protection:

https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liber...

I have to say this discussion is getting a little frustrating.

First of all, information regarding the US is obviously irrelevant in the context of UK surveillance. Why even bring it up?

Second, every time you reply, you keep broadening out the terms of the discussion further and further, rather than addressing any of the specific factual claims in my posts. I have not taken any strong stance for or against surveillance in general. I'm only concerned to address inaccurate claims about the extent of CCTV surveillance in the UK.

The police can easily get warrants to look at lots of things that might be relevant to solving a crime. Maybe that is a problem. If so, that's an issue that's only tangentially related to CCTV surveillance in the UK.

All I am doing is correcting the claim that the police in the UK can force private individuals to hand over CCTV footage without a warrant. If you have a problem with warrants per se, then that's probably a discussion to be had elsewhere.

> First of all, information regarding the US is obviously irrelevant in the context of UK surveillance. Why even bring it up?

Barring evidence otherwise, I believe it's reasonable to conclude the situation in the UK is similar, or at minimum, that we don't know that warrants in the UK are an adequate protection. Unfortunately I don't know of information about this that is specific to the UK.

> you keep broadening out the terms of the discussion further and further, rather than addressing any of the specific factual claims in my posts.

I apologize. I did and do concede that referring to the proliferation of mostly (mostly) private CCTV in the UK as "government spying" is incorrect. I did not address the other claims you made because I agree with or believe them or think they're likely true and didn't bother investigating (such as a warrant requirement to take private CCTV footage, and that the police rarely bother to request CCTV footage). I see how that can create a frustrating feeling of getting nowhere.

But while I don't dispute the latter two facts (in fact I think we agree on all factual issues so far), I disagree with the implication that this diminishes the surveillance state, or that the problem is limited to how warrants are issued.

While the police/government may only rarely request CCTV footage, the possibility is there, which is enough to establish chilling effects, especially for groups that may fear selective enforcement, where more resources are expended to suppress them than what is afforded to regular crime.

This is how the US government defended their illegal bulk surveillance PRISM program - that while they collected data on everyone, they had strict (so they say) limits on who humans working there looked at, and that only what humans look at counts as a "search".

And while I do have a problem with how liberally warrants are granted, that would not be such an issue if there was less data for the warrants to request in the first place. Recent history has shown that once the infrastructure for surveillance is built, purely legal means are rarely effective in restricting its use.

https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by...

Holy crap, the US has more cameras per capita than China, according to this. The UK is a somewhat distant third.

Though I think a distinction should be drawn between government-operated and commercial surveillance.

Per Capita is probably the wrong metric to use here. This isn't just limited to cameras but you don't need a single camera to track a single person. The more population dense an area is the higher efficiency a single camera can have.

Just think about it in this manner. If you have a house and you set up cameras that monitor every square inch of the house, does it matter if there is one person in the house (high camera per occupant) or many people in the house (low camera per occupant)? Obviously not. The US is also one of the least population dense developed nations.

Not that we shouldn't be worried about surveillance, but let's use good metrics.

Fair enough. I didn't find a ready source on average camera densities by country, but comparing cities at the link below can give a sense of the difference. London has 399 cameras per square kilometer. Beijing has 278. NYC has 26, so not quite as Orwellian, in terms of cameras at least.

Approximate Populations, per wikipedia, for reference:

  London:   9 million  
  Beijing: 21 million  
  NYC:      9 million

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-top-surveillance...

Just take a walk down any British town street. If you can't physically do it there's always Google Street View

I think complaining about ‘think of the children’ arguments is bad because:

1. These arguments appeal to people and making fun of them makes you sound like an ass. If your goal is to just complain to your in-group then I suppose that’s fine, but it won’t convince many people outside.

2. The arguments are true to some extent. CSAM online is a big thing, it’s hard to combat and seems shockingly common. (Though I’ve not worked for a big internet company that is likely to interact with this problem so this is all second hand). We are fortunate to mostly not be exposed to this part of society.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t support e2ee, but it does mean that it’s unfair to dismiss these arguments as a secret ploy to spy on your communications and unrelated to any actual problem.

> The arguments are true to some extent. CSAM online is a big thing

As is sexual abuse inside private homes. Any child-protection argument that applies to spying online, applies ten times over to spying at home. How many children are raped each year, because you're unwilling to let a few cameras into your house? We pinky swear we'll only use the video feeds to investigate "serious" crimes.

In the US, all new cars are required to have anti impaired driving tech installed by 2026, which I’m really certain will involve a camera… all cars come with microphones already built-in. So really they just need to get in your home - that’s what 802.11bf will do.

Those stunts sound super creepy and messed up. Weird, manipulative campaign.

This shouldn't really be legal surely in democracies to have campaigns that "appear to be the result of grassroots campaigns and children's charities, while downplaying any Government involvement", when it's a political manipulation campaign paid for, coordinated and organised by the Government themselves. I really hope the counter-campaign mentioned is good (although hard to compete with the already hundreds of thousands of pounds already allocated to this already).

I mean, the present UK government also broke a whole bunch of other laws, so, why would they care if it's illegal?

The current British Prime Minister was literally fired from a previous job as a journalist because he can't stop telling lies. It's worth making a distinction from Trump here. Trump wasn't a liar, Trump was a bullshitter. A Liar knows what the truth is, and is trying to convince you of a falsehood, bullshitters have no idea what is true or false, they don't care. In some ways this makes Boris worse - he's deliberately trying to mislead you, which is harder to evade, is his claim that he enjoys making model buses a lie? Probably, but why is he lying about that? There were various theories. With Trump what he's saying has no connection to anything, so, it offers no clues as to the facts but at least you know that.

But like Trump, Boris is very popular with people who don't know much of anything. For them, the results of their support for Boris (everything got worse) are disheartening, but they're unable to join the dots. Who knows why this has happened, it surely can't be Boris' fault, wouldn't he tell us?

Given that distinction between liar and bullshitter, I think Johnson is not even capable of comprehending that “truth” is a concept, let alone that other people can and do judge him for saying untrue things.

Main example that gives me this belief is this: https://youtu.be/wzUDRyciqVM

Where Boris Johnson says “well actually there’s no press here” to a man who responds by turning to and pointing out the press cameras filming both of them having this conversation and saying “What do you mean there is no press here? What are they then?”

> Johnson is not even capable of comprehending

Alex Johnson was scholarship boy at Eton and writing books about Shakespeare is his hobby. He is very well capable of comprehending abstract concepts and manipulating their perception to his benefit. He publicly portrays himself as "Boris the bumbling fool" but unlike Trump does not act like that in private. The fact that he is unethical and lazy does not mean he is stupid, and it is a dangerous assumption to make.

IQ is a separate axis to what I’m saying. A person with prosopagnosia need not be stupid, they just lack the particular neural structures allowing face recognition. What I’m saying is like (but with much looser language than) saying Johnston lacks the neural structure for comprehension of the concept of truth.

Boris knows the press are there, they're the only reason he's even talking to that man. Off camera Boris would ignore him completely. But "Boris doesn't know this obvious TV camera is pointed at him" is charming buffoonery. "Boris is intentionally destroying the NHS to kill your grandparents" is something you might want to vote against.

Some politicians would try to engage on the issues, but a ten minute debate in a hospital corridor isn't going to make the highlight news even if your well-rehearsed answers work, and it might not even get reported in rolling news if there's man falling into a vat of blancmange or something that gets laughs. "Boris doesn't know the cameras are there" works.

And sure enough, it worked on you as intended and you've taken away the message Boris wanted you thinking about. Boris doesn't want your respect, Boris wants power and has since childhood.

Much more recently Boris hid in a (walk-in) fridge. Ha ha ha. But wait, why did he hide in a fridge? Well that's funny and it made the news and is still used in memes, whereas "Boris refuses to answer important questions" looks a bit like maybe we shouldn't have him as leader, doesn't it...

> And sure enough, it worked on you as intended and you've taken away the message Boris wanted you thinking about.

You’re saying he wanted me to take away the message that he’s pathologically dishonest? Because that also looks a bit like maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to lead a country, or even his dog around for a walk without the supervision of someone more responsible.

Sadly, this isn’t the first case of the U.K. government going for something this super creepy. I’ve personally seen London’s “Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes” posters, which are felt like a parody by its own opponents to discredit it: https://mindhacks.com/2007/01/09/secure-beneath-the-watchful...

"In a Godless society, Government creates the panopticon."

Or something. It sounds profound.

I remember discovering that the Scotland Office has a (crap) Buzzfeed posting account for the Indyref: https://www.buzzfeed.com/youdecide2014

This is normal for the UK.

It was the current government, well it's previous coalition instantiation that created the nudge unit[0]. A group of behavioural psychologists that use mind tricks to convince people to do as they are told, whether that is to drink less, or stop smoking or to follow COVID rules. A group that has since been spun off as a business to sell coercion as a service, to any two bit dictator, or free democracy that needs it.

This is the same government that deployed it's army information warriors against its own people during COVID [1]. The unit is known as 77 brigade and explains its mission as "modern warfare using non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of the opposing forces and adversaries" [2].

The UK has never had more than a thin veneer of freedom, it's always been an aristocracy lording it over the rest of us. They should just do away with the pretence.

[0] https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/nudge-u...

[1] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/77-brigade-is-countering-cov...

[2] https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brig...

Or do away with the aristocracy. Now seems like a good time.

We have the same unaddressed issues as America does on race, but also with class. Social mobility was just a way of introducing crippling brain drain into working class communities - something which led to them being effectively criminalised as an underclass through ASBOs and the like.

(For the alternative to social mobility, the old line: "rise with your class, not above it")

>This is the same government that deployed it's army information warriors against its own people during COVID [1].

Your [1] link asserts, right at the very top, "It is important to note that this isn’t being directed at British citizens or at UK organisations, the effort is being directed at sources outside of the country."

Yes it does. The UK defence journey is not exactly an unbiased source and always follows the party line. However at least 1 MSP would disagree with that narrative [0] and suffered significant inline abuse for that post. Which oddly enough suggests he might have been on to something, given the brigades operations.

You will find this article is also biased, unfortunately in your current timeline finding unbiased sources is becoming harder everyday

[0] https://www.thenational.scot/news/17858200.vile-abuse-snp-mp...

The sheer audacity of claiming this is about protecting children, while politically connected people like Prince Andrew walk free, is just mindblowing. Wow, just wow.

Not sure if he'll walk free (that would be for a judge to judge), but this week was a bit of turning point:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/13/veterans-ask...

Even if he eventually gets in trouble, it’s hard to argue that the British state didn’t pull out the stops to protect their pedophile prince while wringing their hands about child abuse and online encryption. Oh, and Keir Starmer oversaw the prosecutor’s office who decided not to charge Jimmy Savile, who turned out to be a prolific (hundreds of accusers) child rapist.

So as far as child abuse is concerned, the call appears to be coming from inside the house.

Prince Andrew is just the tip of the iceberg of the UK's heinous, protected, pedophile classes.

The other day I was telling my mum about how in China they can monitor and delete anything you post online. Even delete an entire type of post made by millions of people based on a keyword etc etc.

Her response, rather than the horror I was trying to i instil, was “I think we ought to have that here!”

So it does worry me that public support could go the wrong way on this if they spend a lot of time on messaging.

I hope that the high level of mistrust of the government - built up especially through covid - will prevail.

This is bollocks, GCHQ get on fine with metadata and most CSAM is back-doored anyway, it is literally "think of the children" claptrap. It's just another power grab, we already have some of the worst privacy laws in the world in the UK.

This is just exasperating. Pro privacy? You’re responsible for child abuse. Every time you think the current British government can’t sink any lower…

Seems to me its the people in the government who are widely responsible for child abuse.

Just ask Prince Andrew.

What does Prince Andrew have to do with the government?

The United Kingdom is a monarchy ruled by Queen Elizabeth (the mother of Andrew), even though the British people go far out of their way to pretend that's not the case. It's why Boris Johnson had to meet with the queen about forming a new government. Why is she involved at all? It's because she rules the United Kingdom in fact. Andrew's family rules Britain (for what, 1200 years? [1]), that's quite relevant to the context. The political structure of the United Kingdom goes very far out of its way to look after and protect the royal family (their rulers).

Shall we pretend that the family that has ruled Britain for 1200 years has no political power? Har har.

Every country in Europe that still regressively clings to a monarchy (and there are a lot of them) goes out of its way to pretend - because it's so comically backwards - that their monarchy is only a figurehead / ceremonial and has no real role. In fact they're all back up dictatorships waiting in the wings if there's ever enough political chaos to prompt the people to turn to that, and that happens every time historically.

[1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/lineage-british-royal-family

> Shall we pretend that the family that has ruled Britain for 1200 years has no political power? Har har.

That's like saying the Church of England still has significant political power. it still has the ability to take tithes, although they are mostly optional.

The present royal family only really dates back to victoria, I mean sure they are tangentially related to the german/dutch/scots/danish that ruled before, but its not that strong.

The monarchy is constitutional technical debt. Technically the queen can refuse to sign laws, and dissolve parliament, but as the constitution is basically "because we said so" it'll be the last thing the queen does.

The queen has "influence", but not political power.

> That's like saying the Church of England still has significant political power.

Yes, they have no political power except the 26 unelected, unaccountable bishops they have in the House of Lords, where every law must pass through.

> The queen has "influence", but not political power.

There’s a very peculiar differentiation to make.

Also not true. The Queen is a lobbyist with legally enshrined privileges, see this report:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que...

"A series of government memos unearthed in the National Archives reveal that Elizabeth Windsor’s private lawyer put pressure on ministers to alter proposed legislation to prevent her shareholdings from being disclosed to the public."

Not to mention the lobbying Charles undertook, which took years to uncover, again because of his privileges as part of the royal family:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/29/prince-charl...

""I would explain that our policy was not to expand grammar schools, and he didn't like that," said Blunkett, who held the post from 1997 to 2001. "He was very keen that we should go back to a different era where youngsters had what he would have seen as the opportunity to escape from their background, whereas I wanted to change their background."

Call it influence or power, fundamentally it is rich people getting to exert pressure on the legislative and executive that none of us get to exert.

>and dissolve parliament

The monarchy no longer has that power. It was removed a decade ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2...

France abolished their monarchy. I think the other monarchies took note of this and decided to simply live a life of power, prestige, and influence and not get their heads on a pike by ruling like tyrants.

I think if they tried to exercise major operational control in government, it would trigger revolutions, formal republics, etc.

Reality is usually a bit more nuanced than the formal rules on paper. We have all kinds of laws on the books that don't really apply. Likewise with many of the supposed powers of these monarchies. Without exercise, exercising them makes them legal in the same way killing a home intruder is legal. Legality doesn't mean exercising it won't be bloody, won't have cost, won't have risk, etc...legality one way or another doesn't matter that much.

> Andrew's family rules Britain (for what, 1200 years? [1]),

Try a bit over 100. The House of Windsor ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom in the misty past of … 1901. Even if we disregard royal houses and look at just successions then you run into some awkward situations pretty early, including a nice run of kings born in Hanover and speaking primarily German.

A lot of royalist propaganda is an attempt to tie relatively short lived dynasties into some mythical long lived chain of succession, mostly to reinforce the idea that they rule by right rather than by force or accident of history. In reality royal houses are regularly discarded when they become too inept, too inbred, or (in England’s case) too Catholic for the people to tolerate.

> House of Windsor ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom in the misty past of … 1901

Just because the 1901 successor to the monarchy (Ed 7) was the son of a reigning queen (Vicky) rather than the son of a king does not make him unrelated to the previous dynasty. Agnatic primogeniture is just as much a bronze age concept as a particular family lording it over everyone by the gods' grace...

It’s a useful metric because that’s how the royal family sees itself. It can’t both claim to be a new dynasty and to have ruled England for over 1000 years at the same time.

The royal family has no involvement with the UK government.

The queen is officially head of state, but in reality does what she is told by the current party in power (queen's speech is written for her for example).

That's not true. The queen does have final say over laws.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/08/queen-...

The fact the Queen is exceedingly good at doing exactly what a Head of State should endeavor to do (not use power) does not mean they never will. Something to keep in mind. Especially with an informal Constitution.

Not that a formal one makes much difference when the people who interpret it start doing mental gymnastics.

She uses power, we just don’t get to see it. She gets final review over any law that affects her estates before it’s submitted to parliment, which includes anything related to tax and employment law.

The whole “the queen is just this beloved and powerless figurehead” is propaganda.

Indeed, I recall the stink when this came out: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secret...

She used "Queen's consent" to make sure she is the only person in Scotland who is exempted from a law designed to cut carbon emissions.

That’s the same gimmick the US government uses, associating encryption with the boogeyman of the day, usually terrorism, child abuse, or Nazis. However it might also include migrants, drug dealers, unwed teenage mothers, welfare recipients, a laundry list of non-caucasians, and the Irish (I like to add that one in just to highlight the absurdity but the US really toned down the anti-Irish stuff in the 40s).

> “A glass box is installed in a public space,” the presentation notes. “Inside the box, there are two actors; one child and one adult. Both strangers. The child sits playing on their smart phone. At the other end of the box, we see an adult sat on a chair also on their phone, typing away.

> “The adult occasionally looks over at the child, knowingly. Intermittently through the day, the ‘privacy glass’ will turn on and the previously transparent glass box will become opaque. Passers by won’t be able to see what’s happening inside. In other words, we create a sense of unease by hiding what the child and adult are doing online when their interaction can’t be seen.”

This is bizarre and confused, sounds like something from Brass Eye/The Day Today.[1] The “privacy glass” doesn’t make you wonder what they’re talking about online, it’s what’s happening in a confined box between a stranger and a child. Before the “privacy” glass is activated, you can’t see what they’re doing on their phones anyway.

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=SRRw1ERj2Gc

The way the article breaks down exactly how the campaign is set to "persuade" the public feels so dystopian and cynical.

Launching a £500K media campaign (with public funds) under the cover up pretense that "UK’s biggest children’s charity and stakeholders have come together to urge social media companies to put children’s safety first" and then swaying people through "'sofa programmes' such as Loose Women and This Morning for broadcast".

If this isn't manufactured consent, I don't know what is. But seeing what happens behind the curtains really makes you wonder: what other "mainstream opinions" were created this way?

The campaign as described sounds like what would be classified as hate speech against any other identifiable group, and yet so long as governments and their appendant "agencies" approve of creating new identifiable groups to target with otherwise proscribed speech, it's somehow acceptable?

This is Hutu vs. Tutsi meets Gobbels level propaganda, and I'm sure it must be very fun to be so righteous, we know how it ends. While mainstream society and discourses are not allowed to reason about the applicability or justness of violence, these official parties appear free to incite and direct it, and notably, to selectively enforce the provisions against it so that it's directed at the right people.

These are dishonest parties working in bad faith using special protection, what are the alternatives? I'm afraid the only thing they will understand is cost.

The Government should instead be running a publicity blitz on how the police and law enforcement agencies ignore victims of grooming gangs and avoid investigations because of political correctness [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7901731/Police-chie...

[2] https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/harrowing-t...

[3] https://mallarduk.com/grooming-gang-survivor-proposes-new-de...

[4] https://archive.is/TVP64

[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-598283...

This is to prevent MPs and civil servants from evading professional communications logs rules, right? Right?

We need a new government (then a new political class, but small things first...)

given how many of this cabinet are close to the likes of jeffrey epstein the 'think of the children' stuff is particularly laughable

Governments hate the idea of not being able to open your mail. Politicians want to be able to control every aspect of your life down to picking up some groceries at the grocery or paying your babysitter. I really hope people don't fall for this garbage. Sure there is a price to be paid for privacy but there is a much larger price to pay for not having it.

Good thing this government has solved the rampant knife crime in London and the rest of England. Now they can move on to more pedestrian things like banning WhatsApp.

Hmmm....it's for the children. This sounds like an attempt to keep law abiding people from privacy while guaranteeing that any criminal worth their salt is fully protected by their own encryption. Again, law abiding citizens are left unprotected as the government seeks it's own interest in keeping popular platforms wide open to their unconditional snooping.

Spending tax dollars to eliminate privacy for those paying the taxes. Keep poking the bear.

It honestly seems like the MPs involved still suffer the delusion that the U.K. is important enough to strong arm multinational companies into doing their will in order to gain access to the U.K. as a market. Genuinely not sure why they still think that, after their half assed (pun intended) attempt to ban pornography from their internet.

Does anybody know how (or even if) these kind of campaigns are run in the US?

No, in the US the government just classified encryption as weapons unsuitable for export. A more clean approach, rather than think of the children shenigans, all while certain members of the royal family have ties with a convicted child trafficker and his wife.

> in the US the government just classified encryption as weapons unsuitable for export.

... You realize that that hasn't been the case for ~20 years, right?

Yes. I'm not blaming, it was a rather bureaucratic move though and it did not stop US citizens from using encryption, nor export. Tampering with the ECC crypto factors was much more ellegant.

>... You realize that that hasn't been the case for ~20 years, right?

that's not true, try submitting an app to apple store, and you will get hit with a lot of Encryption Export Regulations prompts.

please see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying...

>When you submit your app to TestFlight or the App Store, you upload your app to a server in the United States. If you distribute your app outside the U.S. or Canada, your app is subject to U.S. export laws, regardless of where your legal entity is based. If your app uses, accesses, contains, implements, or incorporates encryption, this is considered an export of encryption software, which means your app is subject to U.S. export compliance requirements, as well as the import compliance requirements of the countries where you distribute your app.

The US let authorities invent and market an encrypted communication tool, tricking criminals into using it (and surely some non criminals). In many ways I much prefer that, to the UK thing…

Which ones are compromised? Or conversely, which ones are not compromised? Signal?

The one FBI orchestrated was “Anom”.

https://www.engadget.com/fbi-encrypted-chat-app-anom-crimina...

I’m not sure why criminals use these botique services rather than sticking with the major ones.

I'm not surprised that the UK is deploying it's often used Nanny State scare tactics to try and outlaw encryption. Don't take them lightly, though, fight back!

Any insights as to why the big players are implementing E2E while ignoring P2P? Is this a control issue or purely related to technical challenges?

One big problem with P2P is that it reveals the IP address of the other party.

That's true but aren't the feds already able to request that as metadata?

Probably, but a random stalker can't, and your local ISP / network snooper can't tell who you talking to either.

OTOH, many email providers do include the sender's IP, so it doesn't seem like a deal-breaker.

I meant the other party that you are talking too. For example I initiate a conversation with you and now I know your IP address. This was a problem with Yahoo! Messenger which was P2P.

p2p but route it over tor?

yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right. and no, the companies themselves shouldn't set up exit nodes to expand the network because then they would still know everyone's IP address and could give that info to the police. either the Tor network gets reinforced on a completely independent basis or nothing

>yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right

You realize that hidden services don't require exit nodes?

This is true of any network architecture that guarantees delivery of a message between terminii.

The legal conflation you're actually homing in on is we conflate technical terminals with their human users. We've been doing it for years, and it shows no sign of slowing down.

>Any insights as to why the big players are implementing E2E while ignoring P2P? Is this a control issue or purely related to technical challenges?

Both. Certainly a lot of major players see messaging as an important strategic area, not much needs to be said about that. But remember, for actual secure communications one needs both encryption and authentication, and the latter is a much more challenging problem. Purely as a matter of tech there could be better ways to go about that, but in practice there isn't any great infra for that inter-system, which is both distributed or at least federated and easy/accessible for the overwhelming majority of the population. It's improving in fits and starts but still a mess. A lot of the natural places that might make sense to base authentication off of have insecure foundations with enormous legacy base that'd be hard to change (typical collective action problem), or are very slow moving for other reasons.

Centralized solutions just make authentication much easier, even if at obvious cost and SPOF-risk. Within any given platform the centralized provider can of course guarantee all participants about certain properties of whomever they're dealing with. Governments could perhaps require some sort of industry standardized public-key based interoperability of auth, but even assuming they didn't muck it up goverments themselves (as this article shows) have unfortunate perverse incentives there. Not many have internalized yet that the economic cost of poor authentication and security is very high because it's so distributed. There may be a bit of coming around on that but it's slow. A grim silver lining to all the ransomware attacks for example is that at least they're highly visible and painful, and at last have started to motivate minds a bit. But the addiction of many agencies to old models is strong.

In the US, people have meager upload bandwidth. I assume to deliver a comparable experience as serving from the cloud, P2P would require much more upload bandwidth for individuals.

Does anyone know who I can donate to to fund a counter-campaign?

Because TLS is already broken with the trusted model. CAs subpoenaed and also hacked a few years ago. PKI is dead.

If you're a threat level is the state then there's very little to hide from them.

So the UK is getting rid of https now?

A more effective approach would be to highlight how the far-right uses encrypted chat apps. That would get the majority of the media and blue-checks supporting you.

> Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists.

https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia...

> In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where...

> Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war...

> White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t...

> Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t...

> A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-...

Clearly extremist rhetoric. It needs to be called out before we all drown in it. Luckily and thankfully the community is identifying it as such.

Don't forget to promote chopping off everyone's hands.

I hear some ultra-right-wing people might be typing their nonsense with their hands. So we should make sure no one has hands, that'll get em.

~ Also, this list of US news vendors' articles against e2ee is kinda evidence that it's not just the UK going on a campaign.

I think the parent was commenting not on the ability of disfavored groups to use encrypted chat to organize, but on how readily the current social elite can be scared into banning anything by telling them that such disfavored groups are using it.

Telegram is not e2ee, by default, IIRC. You have to manually switch to an encrypted chat. Are those group chats typically e2ee?

Telegram doesn't support e2ee for group chats.

Yep, no way to make them encrypted.

If only some large tech company could come up with a way to deal with CSAM while still allowing for e2e... /s

This sarcasm is unbecoming. Client side filtering absolutely is not a panacea for “safe” end to end encryption. It is a cop in your pocket. Dystopia. The UK can continue making up its own reality if it wishes, strong encryption is the only way forward.

Apple's plan was awful. How about there be no scanning at all? If you don't want your stuff scanned then don't put it on icloud or encrypt it before you put it there. I personally don't want scan-all-the-things policing software put on any of my devices. That should require a warrant at the least.

But you see what happens when there is no scanning at all: politicians hook onto this awful crime to argue against e2ee.

Of course, e2ee everywhere (e2eee? e2e3?) would be all fine and dandy if you didn't have these malicious actors. But we do.

Suppose there are three options:

1. Encryption and no CSAM scanning 2. Encryption and on-device CSAM scanning 3. No encryption

Currently we have 1 (more or less). Legislators are increasingly averse to keeping it that way, and are arguing for 3. Apple proposed 2.

What is the alternative? Is there another option?

That's why you fire your representative and get a new one. Two wrongs don't make a right. Don't bend on this or they will break you later. The US government is already heading towards fascism with Trump's likely win in 2024, we don't need to speed it along.

End to end encryption will surely make a government's task of protecting the public much harder. It allows paedos, terrorists and the like to communicate freely, and any efforts to track what they're up to must be an absolute nightmare.

The problem is, getting rid of encryption is replacing a bad situation with a disastrous situation. If you ban locks so the government can obtain access to the house of a terrorist, it means anyone now has access to anyone's house.

If this article is to be believed, it really feels like someone just hasn't thought this through. Surely there's tech people whose job is to explain this to politicians.

Yes, malicious actors can also be found within the government. This is the reason behind placing limits on the power of the state.

> protecting the public

Are you serious? This isn't high on their agenda at all.

> surely there's tech people whose job is to explain this to politicians

You have a very, very optimistic view of the world. If the government needs to get a consultant, they'll just find one who agrees with them.

That's nonsense. It's all very well being ultra cynical, makes you feel high and mighty but what you're saying is absurd.

What I said is a long way from "ultra cynical"

And I didn't say it for any feelings of my own, or for anyone's feelings for that matter.

E2E encryption is a form of security. It also protects the victims of these people; and it protects the police. So the question is not black and white, but more about shifting the balance between different people. And in this case I'm not sure it'd shift it in the right direction.

Drug dealers might be able to intercept police communications and be long gone. Pedophiles might be able to more easily track down their (next) victims. And terrorist groups tend to invest more and more in hacking units, and weakened defenses for police, off duty soldiers, and civilian targets can't possibly be a good idea.

Finally the big one is state level actors using weaknesses in encryption to attack, impersonate, and undermine politicians; spearphish infrastructure and communications personnel, and just cause all-round havoc.

In short, to paraphrase Franklin: Those who give up essential security to purchase a little security, err... end up with no security at all?

If you want your communications to go to the government, I suggest you make a zip file and send it off to them. Personally I don't think any phone, tech device, or anything else should have spying software on it. It should require a specific warrant for a person, place, and time limit. The government has Far Too Much power already, we don't need to give it any more. Sure it allows criminals to do crime but it also allows the rest of us to carry on our lives without being spied on at every turn.

Are people only reading the first sentence I wrote? I made the argument in favour of encryption.

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