So they are trying to get the law passed, despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible, by saying "we know it's impossible but we would like to have the legal right to do it in case it becomes possible in the future"?
they did pass the law through the lower house. the upper house can demand amendments and stall things a bit, but it can also just be completely ignored given enough time.
> despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible
it's not impossible, it's just a horrificly bad idea, and why would being impossible affect if it gets passed or not?
> by saying "we know it's impossible but we would like to have the legal right to do it in case it becomes possible in the future"?
no, they issued a press statement saying they won't implement the thing they passed until it's "practical".
lots of governments pass lots of laws and regulations and are untruthful about what they'll do later.
the UK happens to 1) not have a proper constitution with any encoded human rights and also poor judicial review and 2) an inherently authoritarian currently-ruling party and media ecosystem and culture 3) be a UN SC member, Five Eyes member, G7 member, reasonably big economy etc so it's government is in a good spot to push hard on this and see if it can break the will of tech companies, which would be a great technical and social precedent to help other governments achieve the same goal. Australia is also a battleground for this for similar cultural and political and legal reasons.
what is less clear is why Signal is saying this is a victory, unless they really are so cynical that saving face while losing is more important than standing up on this point of principle that their company was supposedly founded on.
However in some countries your phone must have mandatory government spyware on your mobile phone and PC:
depends on "casual" and "new" I guess? Echelon is a dragnet from the 70s, and at least the US, UK and Australian governments spied lots on anti-war protestors and environmentalists and civil rights campaigners and trade unionists. Some Australians wrote a book called "Our ASIO Files" (ASIO is the Australian internal spy/security agency) based on being surveilled during the 80s.
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dam_Youth_Escort
did you not read the article you've linked? this was never deplpoyed.
Five Eyes are old hands at spying on their citizens. [0]
Any employee of the state can spy on you and the press also do a fair bit of spying on the population.
Its a national past time when thinking of curtain twitchers and neighbourhood watch schemes.
come on mate, get your head straight.
When is an anonymous tip off by the public, just a cover for the state. They cant do it to everyone as the game would be up, but there is much more surveillance than you realise.
Alot of my relatives worked for the state, and as a kid I over heard alot!
(And it was only used over radio so base station traffic could be wiretapped even more easily.)
If I was giving them the benefit of the doubt I would say they are trying to avoid losing face.
After boris johnson, liz truss, not achieving much after 13 years etc, etc, etc I rather suspect saving face is the least of a Tory worry.
the bill passed: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137
the entire thing that happened yesterday is a nobody minister (not the actual person in charge of any of this) said they wouldn't do a thing the law allows them to do. they didn't change the law, or pass a regulation or anything, they just did a speech.
0: https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/britains-unwritten-co...
1: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/05/tory-mps-to...
The most effective version is probably not the ability to sue for damages, but rather that if the highest court rules a law unconstitutional, anyone who voted in favor of it is ineligible to run for reelection. This would both get the perpetrators out of office and make them much more cautious about violating the rights of the population.
(At least, that's the standard interpretation, though some authorities have suggested it's not quite as simple as that: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty_in_t... for details.)
https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/parliame...
definitely. why is this surprising? countries permit all sorts of unconscionable things (the US had slavery and only banned it "except as a punishment for crime", literally has the death penalty right now) and by definition legislatures turn things from "illegal" to "legal" and vice versa constantly. the US could re-legalise slavery via a constitutional amendment any time it wanted, Ireland could ban divorce again, Australia could un-repeal Section 127, etc etc.
the only difference in the UK is that there's no "basic law" / "constitution" that's harder to change than regular laws.
Unfortunately, this cuts both ways.
> Junior minister Stephen Parkinson appeared to concede ground to the tech companies' arguments on Wednesday, saying in parliament's upper chamber that the Ofcom communications regulator would only require them to scan content where "technically feasible".
What this means is any chat system that isn't using end-to-end encryption is subject to these laws. Anything using end-to-end encryption is considered unfeasible to scan.
Why are you asserting this is true?
Adding a backdoor to an e2e system is technically feasible, what makes you imagine that is excluded?
Additionally, I strongly disagree with your assertion. Adding any kind of scanning system like that is technically infeasible unless you sacrifice some measure of security. The government and many nation states have been trying to argue against encryption of various levels (even less than end-to-end encryption) and the ultimate outcome is it being rejected because all of those measures _meaningfully weaken the security of the system_.
this is beyond naive.
the reason these measures have been rejected is due to public outcry and bad press for the governments trying it. the US banned exporting functional encryption for a long time, Australia passed it's you-must-assist-security-services bill, every country has LI systems embedded in etc etc. the LI systems hugely reduce security, up to and including mass infiltration by the US of an ally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004–05
if you think "that'll make things less secure" is actually going to stop these constant attempts to eliminate private communications, you're going to be hugely disappointed by the next ten years.
With the way the law is going the UK could demand that Tech providers provide backdoors into end-to-end encryption.
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.
this is a very bad take, especially as governments across the world are all trying to do this exact same thing.
the US ban on encryption exports stopped secure encryption being exported for a long time. china's security services have enormous ability to spy on their citizens. Prism/Echelon/etc all existed and worked well. LI is a thing everywhere.
this last five-ten years where ~all citizens of rich countries had secure communications is a rare and unusual time, and people are trying quite hard to end it.
Why would it not be successful?