The Online Safety Bill: An attack on encryption
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Former prime minister Boris Johnson was infamous for pitching outlandish ideas like this in the face of mounting criticism of his party and governance. my hypothesis is this bill serves to misdirect the public using moral panic to distract from serious issues like the NHS funding crisis and the slow rolling catastrophe of brexit.
Can we instead look to pass the opposite? A bill that marks the right to use private encryption as a fundamental right?
Is that kind of thing possible?
Where or how would I support such an activity?
1. again, one of their key reasoning points is always that they saw a hollywood movie and they think copy protection circumvention means something else like being a ninja running into a building and quickly killing 3 people with a katana
You could use the same hocus-pocus people use to explain why say a surface to air missile isn't "arms" to explain why encryption isn't "speech", and honestly it'd probably be easier to do with the latter.
I can’t point encryption at you and end your life.
gun:nuke
plaintext:encrypted
If nukes, which are arms, can be banned under 2A -- why can't encrypted speech be banned under the 1A? I mean hell the 1A can even ban materials of 'prurient interest' which as far as I can tell a picture of a naked woman isn't going directly to kill anyone either.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-ut/legacy/2...
[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=CmPKNI2z5-AC&q=heller+%22n...
edit to add - per [1] above, 18 USC § 922(k), (o) & (v); 26 USC § 5861 specifically prohibits "KNOWINGLY POSSESS OR MANUFACTURE [...] E. Destructive device" which is defined as:
> A “destructive device” includes any explosive, incendiary or poison gas --- (i)bomb; (ii) grenade or (iii) similar device, or any combination of parts designed or intended to be converted into a destructive device, or from which a destructive device may be readily assembled. Does not include black powder or antique type firearms. 18 USC §921(3).
[1] Is just so bad I'm pretty sure it was written by a drunk child (admittedly the intelligence level of most government employees), I would not trust this document AT ALL. It's egregiously wrong. You can own sawed off shotguns with a tax stamp (in fact it was written in law as a tax because they thought they had no constitutional right to ban them). It also says idiotic things like you can't own a gun without a serial number (WTF, a ton of early 20th century guns don't even have these).
Now I know some of you will say "but notch, if you have to get a stamp it's a privilege not a right." And I'll explain to you why that's wrong. If you're allowed to have it, they have to give you the stamp. If you're not? Oh you're gonna love this -- if you're not THEN THEY CAN'T PROSECUTE YOU FOR NOT HAVING THE STAMP. Self incrimination. That's right, if you're a criminal you don't legally need the stamp! Only law abiding people have to get it, and hey if you don't theyll just make you a felon so you don't have to get it the next time!
It also uses "transported across strate line" to establish federal jurisdiction which is just straight up 100% wrong, it doesn't need to do that as feds will happily prosecute an item even DIY made in the same state (see conviction of kettler). I actually lost track because it seemed like almost everything I read there was wrong. I hope whoever wrote that has a nice job collecting quarters from the parking meters or something now, because I wouldn't trust them with much else.
Note: this is entertainment and not legal advice. Seek a lawyer before acting in your own individual circumstance.
That reads as applying when providing nuclear support to a foreign terrorist power. Technically not incompatible with OP's interpretation, which would presumably be for domestic use.
(c) I would argue, from a strict reading of the constitution, is unconstitutional as it bans mere possession domestically of nukes. I could be misreading that section though. IMO there really should be constitutional amendment of the second to clearly ban nukes and possibly some other WMDs. As a bonus once all that stuff is spelled out it will give a lot less ammunition for people to hold the second amendment hostage by saying "well we have to interpret it creatively because we'll all be living on a radioactive sheet of glass if we don't."
note: entertainment and not legal advice
side note: Domestically people designated to be "terrorists" can legally buy and be sold arms (see the terrorist screening center list and TSC no-fly list, the people on there can buy guns inside the US if not otherwise prohibited persons). That is someone on the terrorist list at the TSC can walk into a gun store and pass the background check no problem, and be sold a gun domestically.
https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/stat...
[0] Unfortunately, only in theory considering how often attacks against that protection are made by US policymakers.
Fundamentally if we're ok with weakening some amendments through interpretation short of constitutional convention we should resign ourselves to the idea that we are weakening all of them.
> (1) First, the Court reviews the standard that the Court’s cases have used to determine whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to “liberty” protects a particular right.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Edit: I guess it's actually both.
> Roe held that the abortion right is part of a right to privacy that springs from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Something like the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified into local law by each country. That would be much harder politically to overturn by the next parliament.
Can't see it happening though.
And if you are not taught law, how can anyone claim to live in a democracy to debate the laws?
Everybody is born into a legal dictatorship if you weren't taught law and with todays communication technology, there is no excuse for it. Its just setting people up to be victims of crime especially kids, its a criminal way to make people dependent on employees of the state who claim to be picking up the pieces.
Secondly employees of the state are treated as superior to members of the public by the courts, which makes me think the legal system isn't fit for purpose here in the UK.
This is why America fought a war of independence against them.
95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than our society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the ruler's will: There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.
I mean I discuss the writings of haber creating the haber-basch process too, but I think it'd be weird for people to constantly point out how that's improper to cite a guy who spent much of his time creating and distributing chemical weapons.
Not in the UK because of parliamentry authority, no. A law cannot be made that binds future parliament from being able to undo it, thus 'fundamental rights' cannot be legislated.
Before the bill even made it to the House of Lords, you can see the creeping political censorship. In a written statement on 17 January 2023, the government added an amendment that “posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light” should be considered “priority illegal content.”
Amendment 82, page 10, line 25, at end insert—
‘(3A) Content under subsection (3) includes content that may result in serious harm or death to a child while crossing the English Channel with the aim of entering the United Kingdom in a vessel unsuited or unsafe for those purposes.’
This amendment would require proportionate systems and processes, including removal of content, to be in place to control the access by young people to material which encourages them to undertake dangerous Channel crossings where their lives could be lost.
Anyway, I realized after I wrote the comment that ANOM is a bad example for arguing in favor of ubiquitous end-to-end encryption (E2EE). ANOM is only attractive to criminal organizations because other forms of "E2EE" are not resilient to government snooping. It's kind of an interesting point but I do personally land on a preference for ubiquitous E2EE.
Ultimately, I suspect the resources of law enforcement would win out given enough creativity from officers but, unfortunately, the current ecosystem does not require them to be creative.
But doing so would get asylum seekers out of the collective conciousness, which has been politically advantageous to the incumbent party.
I'm not necessarily interested in following through the more tenuous links. But illegal immigrants are an absolute boom to Conservative parties. It's a recruitment, it's a distraction, it's an effective and frequent emotional lever.
No, that amendment was clearly intended to prevent lefty liberals like me from saying that the asylum seekers themselves are in any way decent or good or deserving of support.
Same party used similar language for a thing called "Section 28", so they don't get to pretend they don't know what effect it would have.
The connection to section 28 is spurious and deserves no rebuttal. The two things have nothing to do with each other.
I could believe that's a thing (although I'd appreciate a reference if you've got it). I couldn't, however, believe "posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light" counts as any of those things.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-01-17/debates/230...
It's actually section 25. That confused me for a bit. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/77/section/25
I don't see how anyone can get from what's written there to "aiding, abetting, counselling, conspiring etc. those offences by posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light". It just says "facilitates". But I know nothing about law.
I think the many generally feel the same way about refugees but just that a lot of the people arriving are not validly refugees. People boating out of France to the UK are, by international definition, not refugees. They've already escaped persecution in their home countries.
My parents jumped a border while emigrating to avoid a war so I empathize but I wish we could discuss the topic without emotionally loading it by calling people asylum seekers when they are not or implying that others don't care about people in general. There are resource and fairness issues that emotional appeals won't make go away.
Which international law do you think does that? (I'm assuming from your username that you're a lawyer; I'm not, though I do try to read the texts of statutes sometimes).
I remember hearing a lot about the Dublin Regulation, but that's an EU rule that no longer applies because of Brexit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation
(I tried reading the legal text for this even though the UK is no longer in it, but a casual skim didn't get me anything that did what it's usually claimed as doing, the claim being that it requires asylum seekers to claim in the first safe country).
> There are resource and fairness issues that emotional appeals won't make go away.
This particular point I vehemently disagree with. The resource and fairness issues with regard to these people is, IMO, caused by their demonisation in the public eye and as such will be fixed by emotional appeal.
This is because their status legal status means they are by default actively prevented from working and covering their own costs, and this only has some limited exceptions: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/handling-applicat...
> Which international law do you think does that?
I used the term 'international definition' intentionally. I'm speaking about the common definition of the word not including people in the situation of crossing multiple large friendly countries to go to another as refugees at that point. The immediate threat to life and limb is over and now others are in more dire need.
And yet, it's not as simple as entry to the first country either, because we can both acknowledge that if someone escaping from Syria crosses the border into Iraq or Lebanon that they should keep on walking until they find an actually safe place.
But the point is that you're talking to people, using emotional terms, but trying to use legalistic reasoning to make them do something they feel is not only needed but benefits the wrong people. They're using their eyes and judging the conditions of the refugee claimants and finding them wanting.
> > emotional appeals won't make go away.
> caused by their demonisation in the public eye and as such will be fixed by emotional appeal.
I have a feeling that this has already been tried and that there's probably some misalignment preventing that from working - maybe making it backfire. Maybe that you may feel that this isn't a valid political opinion on the values of the refugee system but a comment on the race of the claimants or something...?
Thankfully in my country many of the questionable refugee claimants are the same racial group as many current legal immigrants and this is defusing that would otherwise be a nasty race-baiting angle to the debate.
Otherwise, I would ask what more demonization you think is needed other than for them to be shown to be jumping a queue meant to save lives?
> their status legal status means they are by default actively prevented from working and covering their own costs
If they really are fleeing for their life we can cover the costs and would be glad to.
I hear this from people who seem to be promoting using the system as a back-door way into a permanent work visa. I'd rather avoid perverse incentives and just support people.
> I think it stays the way it is because of "taking the jobs" of natives
This sounds like something a privileged knowledge worker can sneer at the low-brows for. I think it's as valid a consideration as any other import/tariff type issue and should be examined honestly. Again though, we can avoid the issue by simply paying to help refugees and that's probably the kindest.
If we allow them to work then we're essentially requiring them to work and if they just escaped with their lives they probably have other priorities for a while. The economic benefit for us from more workers is minimal enough that we can forego it to make a better and less exploitative system.
> allows politicians to demonize them as a drain on the public purse
I think there are enough obviously false claims that people are upset about that they're not worried about the costs of the honest claimants.
Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the... net. Britons will never be... Hmm, this song will need a lot of changes.
Although for the people in scotland, this is more accurate. We are not represented for over a decade by the UK government, and have been removed from the EU against our will...
That’s not quite true - the parliamentary Tory and Labour parties gave away the right to select the leader to their members. Hence we got Truss who MPs didn’t vote for but members did.
By that measure, it's pretty reasonable to say that people did not vote for this.
And punishment for tweeting mean things aside: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-user-...
And dragnet surveillance aside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016?...
And the likely introduction of complete monetary surveillance and control aside: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/uk-plans-...
The slope is indeed slippery, and the UK is very far down it already.
Indeed it is ridiculous to arrest people for saying things on the internet where violence is no being incited or condoned.
if you don’t know how the UK system works, then yes, you are correct.
i think you’re confusing democracy in general (and it’s many flaws) with whatever you’ve noticed in the UK. if you’d study other democratic countries you’d find huge issues as well.
lived most of my life in such a system. it basically disenfranchised people from voting as whatever party they voted for never got enough votes and had to go into an alliance with other parties thus dropping their election pledges and thus removing any sort of democratic mandate. result: fewer and fewer people now go out to vote: https://www.statista.com/statistics/300427/eu-parlament-turn...
Democracies are best judged by how well they ensure minorities interests are allowed to influence policy.
exactly this is why voters simply don't turn up to vote any more. by "negotiating" those parties break their election pledges to their voters. voters thus become disenfranchised. we can see the end result today: very few people vote.
> Democracies are best judged by how well they ensure minorities interests are allowed to influence policy.
there are many ways to judge democracies. that's just one of the myriad of indicators.
(Somewhat related: Anyone who complains about the 'undemocratically elected' Tories is compelled by consistency to complain about the 'undemocratically elected' Labour government of Tony Blair and the likely forthcoming 'undemocratic' government of Kier Starmer. If they are quiet about that, then they haven't a leg to stand on. See also complaining about the results of the Brexit Referendum, which won a clear, although narrow, majority of the people who bothered to vote, and was therefore legitimate by the lights of people who prefer majority decisions.)
A government formed through negotiation is more democratic if you accept that a representative government can ever be democratic and that the parties actually represents the interests of their voters in as much as if neither party achieves a majority, then a compromise that provides for some of what is wanted by all is more democratic. If anything, I'd argue the broader coalition the more democratic - democracies are best measured by how well they ensure also the interests of the minorities are protected.
The social contract isn't to be "only be ruled by a strict majority" but to agree to be ruled by the party who wins by any workable system.
A system imposed on people which denies them representation has no claim to be considered democratic.
The primary goal isn't to represent, but to reduce misrepresentation to the point where we can literally live with it.
To me it's only illegitimate if this is coupled with unreasonable attempts to keep us from improving the system as technology and knowledge give us the means.
There is a guy named Assange who has been rotting in a UK dungeon for years who would beg to differ.
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lydon-death-penalty-sex...
No, the idea that the likes of facebook have a "duty to moderate content" led to the OSB.
this article is uninteresting clickbait by fake grassroots webshit crypto company that can be cracked in 2 seconds solely because their trusted code base is hundreds of millions of lines of code in 7 different languages including C. we are just here to cringe at yet another UK police state episode more than anything particular the article stated
The part where these articles always claim a horrific bill has some genuinely good intentions - it's truly obnoxiously weasely.
No it does not have genuinely good intentions. It's a fraud wrapped inside a con wrapped inside a gigantic theft of human liberty and privacy.
Just because someone feeds you sugar so that the poison they're giving you tastes better, it does not mean the intentions are good.
Perhaps I misunderstand the analogy, but this doesn't seem to do anything to the "very fabric of encryption."
It certainly would make me have zero trust in any encrypted messaging apps that continue to operate in the UK and follow this law. Otherwise, anyone who wants to have truly encrypted messaging can do this on their own. And if the barrier of entry for learning how to sign messages is too high, I don't doubt that open source encrypted messaging apps already exist or will quickly come into existence and will refuse to comply with laws like these.
What are they going to do, force math to comply with their laws?
No, we don't. Many of us are fine with free speech, and believe the only valid form of censorship is choosing not to listen.
Isn't the process of writing legislation just an attempt to enumerate all possible ideas in line with their party as a matter of course?
And I don't say that lightly.
It won't succeed, but that's the current reality.
Well, bad actors and most of FOSS.
I guess it's just another fear agenda to tight freedom and human rights and rise state surveillance. Like terrorisms brings CCTV and phone monitoring, etc.
I'm going to have to look at who said it was being dropped, and figure out the reasoning.
it's like cleaning (like any and all maintenance work), you're never done with it.
what a lie (a mistake) to believe that liberty once fought and realized stays with us, in a state of having been won. It must be maintained, it's like being in shape.
Liberty, software, bureaucracies and their complicated interactions... why must it get worse before it gets better?
why does it seem like tyranny is easier to keep?
And governments are going to constantly try to regulate the Internet and crack down on it, because it's a threat to them. Look at China where regulation reached its logical conclusion.
I'm just enjoying our little golden age of the web where I don't have to upload a scan of my passport just to read a blog post. These are the good ol' days we will look back on fondly. Make the most of them.
Tyranny is the default of civilization. When left alone, that's what it turns into. Tyranny is weeds in your garden. A few here and there not plucked, after a while, you have nothing to eat. Freedom and liberty must always be tended to because of this.
I think it's a lot like the "paradox of tolerance". if society is too tolerant of intolerant people, the intolerant people end up taking over and society becomes intolerant as a whole.
Analogously, there are always people, organizations, and emergent forces that seek to deprive individuals of their freedom. A society that is excessively free will allow these forces to flourish, leading to loss of freedom and ultimately an unfree society.
In an economic context for example, this is the basic argument in support of antitrust law.
Anyway, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. I posited an explanation for why tyranny in some form another seems like a default state in human organizations. If you think my explanation is wrong, I'd like to hear an actual argument or evidence against it.
To clarify, I find it frustrating when people justify the government making laws that limit or take away existing freedoms by claiming that they are "preventing intolerance". I believe that laws are, first and foremost, justifications for the government to use force against you, and no government in the history of mankind has ever given a single shit about "preventing intolerance". They care about keeping the rich rich and the working class oppressed and powerless.
To your point, I completely disagree, and think it's extremely naive. Tyrannical governments seem to be the default because it's the easiest way for the powerful to control the powerless, which is the fundamental purpose of most governments throughout history.
Okay, but that's the whole nature of OP's question: Why does tyranny arise again and again, as if it were a natural equilibrium state of some kind?
I don't see why government should be treated differently from other institutions in analyzing this question. Deebo and Lord Farquad were both tyrants; was the nature of their tyranny any different, just because one happened to represent "government" and the other didn't?
My proposition is that it requires constant effort and vigilance to prevent the rise of tyranny, because the forces that lead to tyranny are ever-present. So any society that exists temporarily in a non-tyrannical state is still subject to power grabs and takeover attempts by would-be tyrants.
Maybe you're implying that the existence of a state or government is what facilitates such tyranny; I've heard that one many times. I contend that if the state did not exist, then other people and institutions would fill the same role; that the nonexistence of a state would not represent an impediment to tyranny; and that the existence of a state is not itself a strong indicator of the presence of tyranny.
If somehow an un-pickable lock were the only way to get into a house and a sizeable portion of houses could practically be built that way, you can bet the courts would invent a reason why the government has to have the key in basically every anglo-sphere country. It would only take a few news stories about "women beaten to death while police desperately and futilely attempt entry" or "terrorist hiding in London house, alive and well years after attack but unable to be arrested" before half the public would start begging for something to be done about it.
It's actually a myth police have to have a warrant in the US. There are a couple other options
1) Hot pursuit
2) Exigency
Domestic violence falls under the second. Battering ram can come out.
Edit: to elaborate on "the silverware", "the police" having access means effectively anyone has access. It's not just 1 infallible person, you're giving that key to the whole station, and it's being kept somewhere, which makes it (more) vulnerable to theft, especially since a large cache of such keys is going to be much more attractive to a criminal than a single key.