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Comment by gavaw | Hacker News Reader

As the article says, this bill is not targeting whatsapp specifically. Any other e2e-encrypted chat app will have to leave the UK as well. (Which Telegram isn't, btw)

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They have to leave the UK if they're concerned about forking over 10% of their turnover as a penalty for failure to comply, but that means nothing if they're out of reach of UK courts, or a decentralized volunteer organization. Plenty of ways to offer end to end encrypted chats to UK users without having an office in Shoreditch.

I read that in the article and meant to scratch Signal off the list but never did. Fixed now. The idea that they could stop any criminal accessing some sort of alternative E2EE chat incredibly easily despite this bill is really a commentary on either how pathetic their technical advisory team is, or how little they listen to said team.

You mean people committing crimes will also commit a crime to commit those crimes? I never thought of that. Such clever criminals.

The above statement is absurd right? I'm legitimately asking because I feel as though I must be missing something. Maybe it will stop a few folks and that is the victory? I think the new entries learning that the technology is working might be more numerous than the people who get stopped. Pedos read news don't they?

This is the reason that the IRS asks you to declare your illegal income. It can be used as a tool to make catching crimes easier. If using encrypted communication is illegal then they can just ding all of the criminals for that, or their criminal activities are harder to operate because they need to hide existence of communication from law enforcement, not only the contents. If it is legal then they have to 1. identify who is doing other crimes 2. prove those crimes. So the more crimes that criminals need to perform to get their "valuable" crimes committed the more likely it is that they get caught for something.

I don't believe at all that the means justify the ends, and I think the ends in this case will be only a very minor bother for criminals. But there is some logic to this concept.

> The idea that they could stop any criminal accessing some sort of alternative E2EE chat incredibly easily despite this bill is really a commentary on either how pathetic their technical advisory team is, or how little they listen to said team.

Totally agree. This is partly what makes me so frustrated with this sort of legislation, because the technical arguments and assumptions that they base a lot of their legislative discussions on don't seem to make any sense at all.

Eh, that’s kind of like saying banning guns is pointless because criminals will still get them. Banning tools is effective even if there are “easy” workarounds, but in this case it will end up hurting law abiding citizens more than protecting them.

Secret chats would probably be subject to this, not the platform as a whole though, no

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