UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging

As long as the messaging platforms don’t change their commitment then celebrating a small acknowledgement from the Government that the bill is basically unworkable is not a huge issue.

The providers can refuse.

The UK can then demand that such apps are not available in the UK.

HOWEVER ... the providers can build WASM equivalents that run in the phones browser. These can be available elsewhere in the world, and there is no way to stop UK residents from installing them. If there is no other way to have end-to-end encrypted messaging, some provider WILL offer this ... and they'll make it pretty slick. You can try prosecute each user (not much chance of success).

Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against.

If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it.

The only relevant part of from op is the govt acknowledging that 2+2 = 4. But it fails to acknowledge that if they want to get 5, they can still order the equation to be 3+2.

When the general sentiment of the average Dave is ‘encryption === bad’ this BS will rear its head again.

Seems to have been the standard play for governments of this country for decades now.

Maybe that's why they want to keep a provision for it in the law, but develop the technology to break (current) public-key encryption schemes themselves?

But then they'll always be chasing, as the world moves to post-quantum encryption and they won't be able to break it anymore. So it'll always remain technically unfeasible.

Its likely that from a political standpoint, it was easier to deem the bill as technically unfeasible now rather than kill it completely.

Imagine their influence if they would have stayed in the EU, and if France would have joined them (which they usually do when it comes to more governmental oversight of the executive branches of the government).

What scares me a little now is that there was a loss of balance, which is important for any democracy to make progress. And if Big Tech's reaction is always "well then we just pull out of your market(s)" then it's gonna be an empty threat after the third time.

I don't know how the reactions to these events will be like, but most likely we'll see an increase of propaganda press statements on "how bad secure messaging" is, trying to push the narrative into a different direction.

I can assure you that isn't the case. Whoever wrote that headline is a copywriting genius. The headline conveys almost the exact opposite of what really happened, without being factually wrong.

That doesn't happen by accident.

Also not quite democratic when the uk electorate last voted for a gov in 2019 but we have had 3 prime ministers since all with vastly different strategies, where the last 2 were chosen by anyone who wants to pay for a membership to the tory party, including fake identities made by journalists who registered from france.

If you had some context, bigtech are actually fighting to keep encryption alive and are the goodies in this story.

Context is important, so is reading. But thanks for your insight in the article you didn't read.

> UK ministers seek to allay WhatsApp and Signal concerns in encryption row

Nothing to see here folks, just a minor dispute between the Gov and two companies ...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/06/whatsapp-signa...

That's obviously not a good thing at all, and also I would think illegal, but I guess at least it's encrypted. The irony.

To revive this, they would have to find an expert to attest that it is technically feasible to have security with a backdoor that government can access, but at the same time is impossible for malicious entities to access.

Ergo, this is technically dead, which is the best form of dead.

Very roughly, I assume every Whatsapp message follows something along the lines of:

1. Unencrypted input

2. Encryption

3. Encrypted transmission

4. Decryption

5. Unencrypted stream to display handler

Technically - what's to stop them from compelling Apple and Google into putting a software keyboard logger inbetween 1 & 2 and another output logger between 4 & 5?

Edit: I'm not saying this backdoor would be secure btw. Of course it wouldn't. But that seems to me a separate issue than "breaking encryption"

It’s really upto a few execs at tech giants betting how much money is at risk.

For UK and Canada, the state isn’t competent at building a clone of social networks with wide adoption.

China can throw insane money, regulation and Human Resources until they get what they want.

^ Again, in practice if not in law: since no service provider could fully identify and restrict all 'adult' material in real-time, they will be effectively unable to serve any interactive content to minors. Only if the penalties for non-compliance were low enough would the largest of companies take that risk.

The Conservative party's own members tore it to shreds.

From: https://cybershow.uk/media/episodes/OSB1_r2_2023-08-27.mp3 *

"The source of the bill itself, the UK Conservative Party, has a significant number of its own critics calling it "fundamentally misdesigned" David Davis said its well-intentioned attempts may constitute "the biggest accidental curtailment of free speech in modern history."

(* sadly my other sincere comment has been buried by people who apparently can't read past the first line)

Campaigning to your MP is and always has been a waste of time.

In addition, the "safer" their seat, the more of a waste of space the MP is because they know their constituents would vote for a pig if the right coloured rosette pinned to it.

Most of the time they don't bother replying, and then if they do reply, you get a two-page party political broadcast, followed by a generic paragraph about "how they understand your concern blah blah blah" but never addressing the point at hand.

As we progress with climate change and climate disaster, it’s clear that eco terrorism is going to be increasing. This has been especially highlighted in UK.

I put it in quotes because honestly it’s just fighting for survival at this point, but the ones in charge have decided to add the word terror to make it scarier.

I don't think politicians set out to do this but it's been around in some form or other in Whitehall for so long that there's no real responsibility anywhere and it was low priority enough that noone ever thought to properly kill it.

It's very British in that sense.

The basic premise is that online platforms like Facebook and X will have more legal responsibility and requirements to follow particular UK law and guidance on content that their platforms host.

This is very popular with the press and enjoys widespread public support in polling. All major political parties support it.

The encryption and scanning aspects of it are just one part of the bill.

That this will lead to a significant amount of crime is simply assumed, and not from any basis in reality. They also misuse statistics to try and make issues look larger than they are, which does a disservice when these are actually really serious issues. Like with CSAM, they always talk about so many millions of reports, without mentioning that reports are only suspected content, and the vast majority turn out not to actually be illegal (something like 70-80% of reports are discarded by law enforcement in the first pass - but it's understandable that platforms have to be extremely conservative and report anything that even looks a little like it could possibly be CSAM). Then there are massive amounts of duplication and things like that. But it is a serious issue, so it does my head in that they misuse the 'big, impressive reports number' when they know only a fraction lead to investigations, because that just gives critics a basis to show that they're massively exaggerating which could lead people to minimise the issues.

Of course, at the end of the day, you can't surveil your way to safety and these problems are best solved at the source. But that would require things like fighting poverty (oh no, welfare spending!) and deploying large numbers of social workers to help support people in marginalised communities.

There should be things the state simply cannot touch not just things which it should not touch.

they've become the biggest laughing stock in multiple other avenues anyways, you need an example for people to learn from

one look at san fransisco and people start funding their police departments again

if you want to “be done with the endless debate” then perhaps use (and contribute to) protocols/infrastructure which aren’t so easily governed.

no, throughout history has always been the privilege of those with the ability to encrypt, which was often governments, big businesses, or in some cases very clever individuals.

with the ability to encrypt becoming simpler it follows that the cleverness of individuals to achieve it has decreased.

Electronic financial transactions (banking, e-commerce,...) and commercial communications are two main reasons we won't see this. Too much impact on the economic levels and the government already have access to this data, so it will be just cons, no pro.

You won't catch bad actors, they will move to illegal services and protocols. I think the voice of reason just prevailed and they realized that it's a bad idea. The only next step I can see is the requirement for data persistence to be done inside the country.

Government doesn't want it debated or scrutinised. Tech companies want it to go away. The media doesn't understand it and cannot communicate the issues. People are scared or too pre-polarised to take a position. It's been kicked into the long grass by 4 prime-ministers. Even mentioning here that it is complex and worth examining both sides gets one down-voted to hell (judging by my other comment).