UK Online Safety Bill threatens encryption, secure communication, and reporting | Hacker News Reader

UK Online Safety Bill threatens encryption, secure communication, and reporting

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114 pointswalterbell25 comments

If you're in the UK and not already a member, I suggest joining the Open Rights Group [1], the "EFF equivalent" in the UK. Their campaign on the Online "Safety" Bill is good, and it is here: [2]. We've lost a profound amount of legislative protection in the last ten years, from food inspectors being able to see your ISP's DNS logs without a warrant to the forced-disclosure laws that mean that forgetting a password can automatically land you years in gaol with no defence, even if you had genuinely forgotten a password on a rarely-used (remote) machine.

The problem is that both major political parties are desperate to Save The Children™ and have both a very vocal press baying for control of the internet and a large number of tragic cases to back it up – the internet is much easier to point fingers to than the decline of much of the social support networks of the state, for example. Nerds like us are collateral damage.

[1] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/

[2] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaign/save-encryption/

> both major political parties are desperate to Save The Children™

Cohorts of children need a brand licensing trust to create financial instruments to manage the use of their brand (Gen Foo, YYmm-YYnn) for promised option benefits via legislative restrictions on societal futures. Performance of each financial instrument to be evaluated by its cohort when they reach adulthood, based on open telemetry data escrowed for objective assessment.

No more hand-waving and amnesia – how many previous legislative solutions actually Saved The Children™?

This makes sense. Of course, as they are not economically benefitting society, they will need to borrow against the brand value of older generations, with an interest rate applied due to their risk premium. The older generation can then finance their health care needs with the repayments.

> Cohorts of children need a brand licensing trust to create financial instruments to manage the use of their brand (Gen Foo, YYmm-YYnn) for promised option benefits via legislative restrictions on societal futures. Performance of each financial instrument to be evaluated by its cohort when they reach adulthood, based on open telemetry data escrowed for objective assessment.

I've read this paragraph multiple times and have no idea what you're trying to say. Could you rephrase it in simpler terms please?

> Cohorts of children need a brand licensing trust t

Kids need to setup companies to make decisions they can't make because they are not of legal age...

> to create financial instruments to manage the use of their brand (Gen Foo, YYmm-YYnn)

to create monetary contracts which manage a trademark named after their specific generation on a fine scale (like Mill-2010)

> for promised option benefits via legislative restrictions on societal futures

so that they can monetize the promises that adults in power make on their behalf like 'give up encryption cause CSAM exists'.

> Performance of each financial instrument to be evaluated by its cohort when they reach adulthood

each group of kids with a brand with a trademark will get control of the contract and be able to evaluate how well it did after they reach adulthood

> based on open telemetry data escrowed for objective assessment.

based on data that is collected without and placed somewhere no one can mess with it until they get control.

Thanks for the translation!

Can you link a source for that food inspector comment?

Not the OP, but it's likely referring to the Investigatory Powers Act which has a table summarising what officers of which government agencies can authorise and delegate access to what data:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/schedule/4/enac...

Where a "grade 6" staffer of the Food Standards Agency "(b) may authorise the obtaining or disclosure of data by a person who is not an authorised officer, or any other conduct by such a person, which enables or facilitates the obtaining of the communications data concerned, and (c) may, in particular, require a telecommunications operator who controls or provides a telecommunication system to obtain or disclose data relating to the use of a telecommunications service provided by another telecommunications operator in relation to that system."

Thank you.

That doesn't automatically mean that any inspection officer will have such power delegated to them, but it may enable it, and the dismal history of the UK govt with intrusive measures isn't reassuring (immediately after the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005) it was used to remove an 82-year-old from a hall after he shouted "nonsense" during the Secretary of State's speech)

When the judicial and legislative systems have no oversight, we can assume the power is being used by every executive branch agency all the time.

> That doesn't automatically mean that any inspection officer will have such power delegated to them, but it may enable it

Some council authorities already used them to spy on families, to determine whether to extend such things as school placements and tax discounts.

You have to assume RIPA powers are abused as a matter of routine.

I think a good way to counter the "save the children" argument is to quote Albright on the Iraq sanctions/war (in which the UK has participated):

https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...

The death of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was "a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it"

Not only are these children, but children of color, which the politicians pretend to care about even more.

Of course it is all a smoke screen. The security state just wants more control.

Thanks for the reminder, I've set up a monthly DD to donate to them.

It really is a mess of a bill, but both sides of the house seem to thing it's vote winner for them so they're trying to outbid each other on who can be more repressive.

Attempt 3527 by now? Some day it's going to pass.

Legislative fuzzing.

We need an art project which matches every insane regulation with a sane regulation from an alternate universe of marginal improvements.

Hmm.

No idea if it's good enough yet, but I'm wondering if any current GPT models can be used for finding problems with, and suggesting fixes for, bills?

(I hear GPT-4 does exist, even if it's specifics are still private)

An excellent use of non-deterministic computing!

Especially when 100s of pages must be reviewed and voted upon, with short notice.

It already has passed the house unfortunately.

We will just have to hope that it collapses under it's own weight under judicial review, given it attempts to do several contradictory and impossible things.

>>Yet this is the question that the U.K. government may be asking social media firms to answer when their users try to upload posts containing video footage of migrant crossings under proposed online safety legislation drafted to compel companies like Facebook to control the spread of illegal content within the U.K.

I think this is more aimed at the channels on Telegram that advertise crossing services to illegal immigrants and that show safe arrival of previous "clients".

Governments will never not want to grab as much power as they can and never end growing the police state until the people push back. It's fucking ridiculous.

I mean, yes, that is the whole point.

I think that's a regressive, counterproductive, dangerous step. But the government have been pretty clear about it...

An easy way is to simply blacklist UK IP addresses so that they become an internet island. The days of the empire are long gone.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

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