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nitwit005

I'm curious how many companies will just block the UK rather than comply. It's definitely not going to be zero.

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- Whatsapp (Meta)

- Signal

- Apple

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-ministers-lock-horns-with...

WhatsApp requires a phone number, implicitly deanonymizing you. It also lacked e2ee for a long time.

Signal requires a phone number. Use the fork Session that generates anonymous identifiers. https://getsession.org

Apple participated in PRISM and also requires an identifier such as an email address or phone number.

E2E encryption means that the content of the messages you send are encrypted. Requiring a SIM card to sign-up doesn't kill that feature.

Anonymity is not equivalent to privacy, although lots of characteristics overlap.

phone numbers cost like $5. phone numbers don't deanonymize you.

In EU they do.

... and?

Would be amusing if British ministers could no longer use WhatsApp. They seem to be addicted to it.

Meta and Apple will come to and arrangement. Signal will not.

I'm not sure how I feel about any of that.

Agree entirely. Meta and Apple will make a lot of noise but ultimately neither will want to lose the UK market.

Have they quit Australian market?

Do they even have to block UK users?

Can't they just remove any business presence in the country to free themselves from any potential legal troubles?

Blocking UK users is removing business presence. How else would you go about it?

I mean having users in the country without having a business incorporated in the country, therefore there's no entity the Government has any jurisdiction over.

If you accept business from UK customers and take their money or data you need to comply with UK law, as well as collect & pay VAT to the UK. This is more obvious in meatspace, for example it’s obvious that Chinese companies are not allowed to send children toys containing lead to EU markets. Your country of incorporation likely has an international free trade agreement with UK that you can read for details.

Basically, you only need to incorporate in UK or establish a foreign branch if you need offices in UK or want to hire someone from UK (even remotely). The only way to opt-out is to block UK users.

> need to comply

Define "need". If there's no legal jurisdiction, where is this "need"? If a company wants to follow the rules, sure, it will so the thing. But otherwise, is there international legal jurisdiction that covers, for example, a company in Seychelles offering e2e encrypted comms that has users in the UK? Isn't it up to the UK to put in place blocking technology or laws that prohibit specific app usage?

I'm kinda thinking about the US TikTok situation.

What if the service is free, like Signal and WhatsApp? (and TikTok)

Sure, UK will just block you and they will compel app stores to remove you if they want to. That’s what they are doing with tracker websites already.

> Define "need". If there's no legal jurisdiction,

As I have explained your country has an agreement with UK that says they do have the right to make you follow their rules if you want to trade on their market. So they can sue you and your country will say yup that’s fine they can do that. It’s a mutual agreement, so your country can do the same if some UK company decides they don’t want to pay your taxes. There are also mutual agreements about establishing foreign branches & incorporating by foreign persons or companies and UK could demand you must do that as well, if they wanted to.

If there were no diplomatic relations or the country you’re exporting services to was sanctioned then it would be illegal for you to serve or trade with any citizens of that country.

Anyway regardless as before even if you find a country that you think is safe they can still just block your IP range and remove your app, but then you’re clearly not just doing regular business—this was about actual companies operating internationally, so this is a different goalpost. I mean sure, that’s how internet works, but that was already a given.

Also unless you actually live and manage your company from Seychelles or Russia then you should be careful because there are all kinds of laws about creating fictional entities (though mostly concerning avoiding taxes) and you could still be personally liable.

> What if the service is free, like Signal and WhatsApp? (and TikTok)

Certainly WhatsApp isn’t free, you pay with ad impressions and user data. UK can demand you pay tax on that and calculate how much you make for each of their citizens. EU’s doing it already, it’s called EU Digital Tax. Signal has some crypto stuff, they might want to monetize more. Anyway it doesn’t matter, just look at GDPR and how US companies treat it for real-world analog.

The whole thing will fail once they realise how impossible this is to implement.

I wish that were true, but I doubt it. They'll carry on, as they have in other self-immolating ways.

> The whole thing will fail once they realise how impossible this is to implement.

Uhhm…. Brexit?

These clowns (and not just this specific bunch, the entire UK political class) did Brexit, do you really think a small thing like the feasibility of this law will stop them?

What do you mean "these clowns did Brexit"? All they did was to organize a referendum. Why does this make them clowns in your eyes?

yeah all they did is organise a referendum and then work tirelessly to ram lies and propaganda down the entire country's throat to make damn sure it passes.

Just in case you're not british, no that's not what they did. They organised a referendum, voted in parliament to follow through on the vote, then spent 5 years negotiating pretty much the most damaging version of an exit that they could, burnt bridges with the EU, signed an agreement on the border with Ireland which they then decided to renege on, trashed our trade with the EU through failure to compromise on anything, failed to prepare our ports leading to massive queues and delays and the loss of small to medium business transactions with the EU. Implemented damaging and unnecessary additional british regulations which diverge from EU regulations and standards, necessitating extra cost to uk businesses which must support both standards. Screwed over the horizon science funding, screwed over studying abroad, and many other things too. There was a version of brexit that was minimally damaging, but on every case they pursued a maximally antagonistic solution in order to pander to the ERG and be seen to be tough to their senile voter base.

I bet somebody said that very sentence just after the country voted for Brexit. But no. The government handed out shovels and started digging their collective grave at an ever increasing pace.

Yes. And it did fail.

I see GDPR as the same thing. People in Germany getting fined heaps for including google fonts in the websites.

Do they really get fined for this by a DPA or a court in Germany? Is it not one of these shady lawyers sending an invoice for “providing legal advice”? I (and people I “know”) reported countless uses of Google Analytics to our DPA, back when Schrems II was still effective, and all they did was send a bunch of letters. Anyway, GDPR is getting enforced, even if DPAs are slow. Not sure what your point is here.

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