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Comment by nickelcitymario | Hacker News Reader

They're framing it as a choice between child safety and encryption. I think everyone on HN knows how utterly stupid that is, so I won't belabour the point.

However, what offends me, and I don't see mentioned enough, is that the UK government is exploiting the real suffering of children to destroy something that protects us all, children and adults alike. They do not speak for those children or their families. They're exploiting them and their trauma for political gain.

If I was in the U.K., this would be enough to forever turn me off the ruling Conservative party. It's disgusting. They have no morals. It's not just that they're lying -- every political side lies all the time, sometimes out of necessity. It's that they're re-victimizing the very kids they claim to be protecting. And they appear to be proud enough of that fact to promote it in this way.

I will never vote for a politician or party that's OK with that, no matter what their other policies may be.

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> If I was in the U.K., this would be enough to forever turn me off the ruling Conservative party. It's disgusting.

Unfortunately this isn't unique to the Tories. Politicians across the whole political spectrum have fought to introduce increasingly authoritarian controls over the internet and technology over the past 30 years.

UK culture as a whole is more authoritarian than you'd expect. Labour would gladly implement their own version of the same if they had the opportunity. To that point, any UK millennial will likely not be able to remember a time where there wasn't some hand wringing campaign about online privacy or porn.

The problem is that Blairite/Starmer Labour are just Tories wearing a red rosette, they do not differ on policy in any meaningful manner.

You think Corbynites would be less keen on authoritarianism?

Unsure. His voting record indicates that he is anti-authoritarian, but the telegraf tells me he is pro-authoritarian.

He has publicly clashed with the powers that be about increasing police powers.

But I don’t have a clear answer for your question, especially as he has many supporters who might not vote along his own lines.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40154361

In all likelihood, yes: they are from a faction of the Labour party that was routinely surveilled by police throughout the 20th century (and more recently, in all likelihood).

The election manifesto for Labour in 1983 contained pledges to abolish the secret services, too.

Not to mention the fact that this same part of the Labour party is often engaged in protests that will have left wingers as attendees and speakers. They're very often on the sharp end of both surveillance and crackdowns on protest.

That combined with their belief that the police are racist (eg the Met) and that prison is generally harmful is not likely to produce an authoritarian programme.

They'd have dealt with large scale tax dodgers too, unlike the current leadership.

The Liberal Democrats are anti-authoritarian, but our first-past-the-post elections don't give them a proportional number of seats :(

For example, they blocked the "snoopers charter" (digital economy bill) when they were in coalition; although the Conservatives, predictably, passed it after they won the following election on their own.

The Lib Dems managed to mitigate a lot of damage done by the Conservatives during their time in the coalition. And they were rewarded with blame for everything they couldn't stop, and a hugely reduced voter base ever since.

Unfortunately for them they sold out their student voters in order to do that, all but guaranteeing that those people would not trust the LibDems again.

Was it a good trade in hindsight? I'm not so sure. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and my vote, a couple more times.

I'll be the first to admit my bias against the lib dems (I cant say I like any of the parties but I do have a particular dislike for them), but putting that aside as much as I can I doubt they'd be any different outside a coalition. At best, I can see them being apathetic, which when combined with pressure applied from their opposition could well turn into support.

Not on the level of the tories, and perhaps labour, but I doubt they'd be anything special in that regard

The Lib Dem's main focus for at least the last 30 years has been electoral reform, preferably to a proportional system like STV which doesn't punish third-parties. If nothing else, a Lib Dem government managing to pass that would have a massive impact on the future of UK politics, and break the two party system that first-past-the-post inevitably causes (whether Whig/Tory, Liberal/Conservative, or recently Labour/Conservative).

They took a huge gamble entering the ConDem coalition: getting some concessions from the Conservatives (e.g. same-sex marriage), but overall achieving hardly any of their manifesto promises (which, indeed, included scrapping tuition fees; first mentioned on page 33 https://www.markpack.org.uk/files/2015/01/Liberal-Democrat-m... ).

It seems they gave away way too much in order to get a meagre chance at voting reform. The resulting referendum was watered-down to Alternative Vote (rather than STV), and was not only attacked by Conservatives, but also Labour (who had ignored their own manifesto pledge in 1997 to follow the Jenkins Commission recommendations, which were to use a variant of Alternative Vote!)

There are some grass-roots efforts to support electoral reform in Labour; I doubt they'd do it themselves (like they didn't in 97), but maybe they'd be more amenable to accepting it in return for Lib Dem support?

My main worry about a Lib Dem government would be how much influence their 'free market libertarian' wing would have; where 'individual liberty' becomes a synonym for 'deregulation of the private sector'. There's definitely been more of a such rightward-lean since Clegg (compared to e.g. Charles Kennedy).

They're framing it as a choice between child safety and encryption

Politicians can always rely on any part of the holy trinity of terrorism, piracy or child to either justify or manipulate their constituency to support a measure that infringes on their security/privacy. The media plays along too easily.

Interestingly, conservatives in the US made anti end to end encryption legislation part of the EARN IT act, which also claims to deal with child abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020#Legislatio...

Do politicians actually care about piracy?

I get how IP holders care about piracy, but I don’t think it resonates enough with the general public for it to really matter to politicians… Unless the politicians are literally just being paid by IP holders to care about it, which could be a thing.

NEWS from California / Hollywood :

"politicians are literally just being paid by IP holders to care about it"

> NEWS from California / Hollywood

Reports are also coming in from certain parts of Central Europe …

> holy trinity of terrorism, piracy or child

you forgot to add the mandatory element of ignorance on a particular subject matter to make the mix truly explosive, but fair point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

This is the worst generation of Tory politicians in living memory, although sadly the authoritarian streak is not absent from the Labour party either.

I've been working within the Liberal Democrats to try and push policies that are pro-privacy for the past few years, revoking some of the acts put in by the current Conservative government and pushing new ones to protect against future government breaches like this. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't stick when polled to the general public. The average person simply doesn't care it seems, no matter how you frame it, and as such it's almost impossible to break ground into updates to the party manifesto. I tried the same thing within Labour a few years before and the same barriers existed, with the added fact that many of the MPs seemed to be cut from the same cloth as the Tories, and that they were incredibly resistant to change outside of their traditional focuses (NHS, Unions, Immigration, Education, blah, blah).

To be frank, it seems like most politicians would rather be at war with the technologically apt than to work with them. All we can hope is that technologies adapt at a faster rate than authoritarian governments can, and the witty can outwit the witless.

These normal people don't vote for it for a good reason! The importance of online security is massively overstated, especially by specialists like us on forums like HN. We've got to keep our credit card details private, yes. But in general we (e.g. HN community) completely fail to do the cost benefit analysis -- we talk about security as if you always have to have maximum security, rather than recognizing that it's a trade off with convenience. That combined with the tin foil hat tendencies of some HN types who comment on security. Really the best thing for almost everyone is to just keep everything in Google Drive: the probability of google employees stealing it multiplied by the loss is much smaller than the probability they won't multiplied by the convenience. I hope this comment doesn't come across as trolling-- I found your post genuinely interesting and I genuinely think that the normal folk who you're having a hard time convincing have a point -- the correct position to adopt lies in between the two camps. Which is a truism. But I mean, like, relatively far from either!

"Really, the best thing for almost everyone is to hand all their belongings to an unaccountable American corporation (which effectively provides no support), so that they can datamine it for advertising and identification purposes."

The fact that "specialists like us on HN" can say this sort of thing with a straight face and no hint of doubt, is one of the many reasons we are sleepwalking into dystopia.

Note that we're talking about security here, not preventing a corporation from profiting from us. All normal people need to do is store their stuff in Google Drive. I agree it's not pretty, and I agree hopefully we can get to a better future where we don't use a megacorporation for this, but it is safe and sensible for normal people. You've got to remember that other things happen in peoples lives -- their loved ones die -- and that's all more important than the aesthetics of their digital lives. Google gets the job done for them.

There's a much narrower range of debate these days. Labour's response to the "concentration camp ships" plan was that it was an inefficient use of funds.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/03/uk-ministers-w...

> It's disgusting. They have no morals.

You've gone pretty extreme there. There is a much more plausible explanation, which is that they genuinely believe that more people would be saved if the security services could access messaging apps and they don't think the level of potential abuse is worth worrying about.

Don't get me wrong, I think they have made bad decisions etc. but in this case, I think it is simply naive "if you haven't done anything wrong..."

> You've gone pretty extreme there. There is a much more plausible explanation, which is that they genuinely believe that more people would be saved if the security services could access messaging apps and they don't think the level of potential abuse is worth worrying about.

I think both can be true: the government believes it can increase security in general by expanding the state's surveillance powers--the state always wants to trade privacy for security. However, they're not framing it as a general "give us more surveillance powers and we'll increase security"; they're framing it narrowly as about protecting children ("give us more surveillance powers and we promise we'll only use them to protect sexually exploited children") which is exploiting victimized children in my book.

I don't believe the UK government for this matter is naive. They know very well what and why they are doing this and it's the same strategy used in different parts of the world. It's not new and there's no need to come up with anything new because it works so well and you can justify trading privacy (or even more important things) for security this way no matter how little sense this makes.

I do think that it's naive to think that one of the most important countries in the world with a rather effective intelligence service and a lot of smart people everywhere in the state is naive. I really don't think the UK government believes that if they remove encryption from popular chat apps the tiny percentage of population that might use it for evil purposes will be caught instead of, you know, moving to a different mechanism.

There is a much more plausible explanation, which is that they genuinely believe that more people would be saved if the security services could access messaging apps and they don't think the level of potential abuse is worth worrying about.

There's an even more plausible explanation, which is that both are true. They're aware that stopping encryption might save a few children, but they're also aware that it enables the mechanisms of the surveillance state that give them extraordinary power over the public. They want to stop child sex trafficking and they want to abuse people's privacy.

I regularly support Big Brother Watch, an anti-surveillance and pro-privacy campaign group in the UK. They send every MP lengthly reports that detail the follies and costs associated with these measures.

I've also heard Conservative MPs say that "lockdown measures were against our freedom-loving sensitivities" or something similar, so they at least acknowledge the value of freedom to the population.

Our ruling class cannot plead ignorance as an excuse.

The UK government is currently facing demands from within his own party that the Prime Minister resign. There is talk of a campaign of policy proposals ("Red Meat") aimed at Conservative backbenchers, to distract attention from the hypocrisy and lies of the Prime Minister.

I think the more-plausible thing is that this part of that Red Meat programme, which is going to consist of a train of announcements designed to appeal to rightwing Conservatives, none of which will have anything at all to do with the Prime Minister.

This Red Meat programme will also distract the opposition away from the Prime Minister's moral emptiness and deceitfulness; the government hopes that by making sufficiently-nasty policy proposals, they can force the opposition to devote their time and attention away from the weaknesses of the Prime Minister and his coterie, and towards opposing these proposals. It's very cynical.

Forecast: I have a long record of wrong political prophesies! But I think Boris will have gone within a week. I have no idea who they will replace him with; none of his colleagues has electoral appeal, as far as I can see, and they're facing a General Election in two years. I wouldn't offer odds on the outcome of that election, either; the leader of the opposition isn't particularly appealing, is not loved by his party, and seems to have no policies.

It very much does seem to be a week of 'throw it all at the wall and see what sticks'.

I have to admit - I was expecting Brexit, Trump, and a massive Tory majority at the last GE (not rubbing it in - good lord I wish I had been wrong about all of these), but I really don't know how much road Johnson has left to run. I really think it's getting shorter now every day. The (liberal) press have made a big deal about everything else so far, but the lockdown parties (sorry, meetings) I think are the first 'real' big hits to him that people will actually care about. It's genuinely going to get bumpy for him, but he was smart and filled his cabinet mostly with people who just aren't that clever and are dedicated to him - I don't think there's anyone who knows when to make the first move. I think he can only really be removed when there's someone ready to replace him.

> They're framing it as a choice between child safety and encryption

Its worse than that by the looks. They're trying to convince people you can still have end to end encryption whilst having a man in the middle scan it to make sure its all A-Okay. Again, I think everyone knows how stupid this is.

I seem to remember Theresa May talking about this a few years ago and the idea was quickly shot down, and here I was hoping that was the end of it.

Yes, although keep in mind that these efforts have strong cross-party support. This isn't only an issue with the Conservative party.

Both major political parties in U.S. did the same thing with SESTA/FOSTA. Every smart politician will exploit anyone they can to get what they want (in that case, scoring cheap political points with their base) as long as their base do not complain loudly.

UK peeps: complain loudly!

It's classic, fighting the last war, for the "security" agencies. They think that by surveilling their own people they can protect the politicians. What they have in fact done is collected huge dossiers on their public (and gov employees), which can be compromised and used by foreign powers for targeted misinformation, agitprop, and blackmail. They are the weakest link.

Since the rise of PGP and fall of key-escrow it has become more and more clear that spreading free (ussurveilled) communication between individuals and businesses was necessary to the operation of capitalist democracies. However, they can't give up their dreams of controlling their own populations so they will cede them to competing totalitarian states, which already know how to control their populations and can well afford to breach such "security".

> They think that by surveilling their own people they can protect the politicians.

That idea is so outrageously stupid that no, I don't believe they think that.

Every one of those intelligence agencies are perfectly aware they are collecting dossiers on their public (with emphasis to gov employees) that can be used to compromise the administration and coerce people into doing illegal or immoral acts. You just got the wrong adversary in mind.

Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous or utterly incompetent? If they wanted to surveil their own (as presumably some do), they wouldn't need to compromise standard coms protocols.

It's not collecting the dossiers... it's that they are the weak link, whether they like it or not.

> Wow, you really think they are either completely treasonous or utterly incompetent?

Well, any other one would require that people on the intelligence community, whose work consists mostly on either using dossiers to compromise people or avoiding the creation of dossiers so people aren't compromised to not noticing that they are collecting a dossier on every citizen or not being aware that will lead to people being compromised... and incompetence or dishonesty not being involved.

> They're framing it as a choice between child safety and encryption.

doesn't seem so:

> End-to-end encryption is valuable technology designed to keep our data and conversations safe. We are not opposed to end-to-encryption in principle and fully support the importance of strong user privacy. Instead, our campaign is calling for social media companies to work with us to find a solution that protects privacy, without putting children at even greater risk.

they apparently claim to be looking for a third way.

There is no "third way". End-to-end encryption means no one other than the sender and the intended receiver(s) can access the decrypted messages; full stop. That includes the social media companies and the government. This obviously also precludes hacks like subverting the client software on either side to report back on the content of the messages (i.e. Apple's implementation)—if the user can't trust their client not to deliberately leak details about the message then they don't have E2EE, since someone else's agent has been placed in the communication path.

A third way would be to use a neural network to analyze a message before encryption, or to duplicate the message for receipt by the service provider.

I specifically covered that. If anyone other than the original sender (one end of the communication channel) and the intended recipient(s) (the other end of the channel) is granted access to any information about the content of the messages (including not just the full plaintext but also e.g. a digest created by a neural network on behalf of the service provider) then the system does not have the characteristics of end-to-end encryption. You've only encrypted part of the communications channel.

In any case, advocating for mandatory digital spies on end-users' devices is arguably worse than attempting to undermine E2EE.

Please don’t try to come up with solutions. At best they will be hopelessly naive or worst: dystopian nightmare worlds. Giving any credence to the idea that E2E w/ side channels is acceptable should be rejected strongly.

What you are proposing is a pluggable censorship module that can identify any forbidden speech and report back to the authorities. It will take less than 16 months for every regime to co-opt for their own aims. It will indirectly lead to the deaths of thousands of dissidents.

No, that would be severe and encroaching mass surveillance that undermines trust and sense.

> this would be enough to forever turn me off the ruling Conservative party

Welcome to every conservative party in every country. They're all terrible humans

Why do you think Brexit was what it was?

UK wants to dominate and enslave its population for the political gain of the ruling class.

It is clear as day to me.

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