Surveillance-by-Design in Proposed Amendments to the UK Investigatory Powers Act | Hacker News Reader

Surveillance-by-Design in Proposed Amendments to the UK Investigatory Powers Act

lawfaremedia.org

> There is a bill moving rapidly through the U.K. Parliament that poses a significant threat to data security and privacy in the U.K. and beyond. It is ill considered and should be amended substantially before it moves forward. The bill is flawed in several respects

UK citizen (person of interest?) here.. sadly, this summarises what passes for the New Normal here in Britain. Contentious bills are always "rushed", and will only be considered by the people it will ultimately affect. These bills are always flawed in some way, but somehow, the Oppositin never seems to oppose. I'm not surprised.

It doesn’t matter what the opposition does, Conservatives have a massive majority.

This explains why the distraction is going on - just like last time when they got the last bill through.

I hate them with all my heart - not very HN of me, I know.

Labour are on course to win a landslide of their own in the election expected to be held this year.

Expect more of the same regardless of which party are in power.

IMHO in order to stop an oppression, people need to withdraw there support of said system by organizing directly and withdrawing from party politics because party systems create polar opposites that keep the status quo going.

Look, I get what you are trying to say. But in a democracy, do what you can with what you have. Not voting or not participating leaves the entire game board to whoever pissed you off this much.

Yes thats true, but the end goal is to remove all value from that system that it no longer has any support. It's the long game that nobody wants to play. I think Gandhi had the right idea. They lost in the battle of oppression, but eventual won the war of having a country free from colonialism which eventual got them what they wanted.

I don’t think there’s a massive majority next time.

The jury is still out on whether this is 1992 again or 1997 again, but their ducks are still not in a row, and many of their ducks are retiring from the pond this time around.

There is a thing you can do, though. Persuade people to get voter ID and vote.

Unfortunately Labour (with the exception of when they had Corbyn in charge) are habitually authoritarian. The mark of a party of lawyers, perhaps. So, no real opposition.

The conservative party bears the mark of a party of the uneducated and unemployed.

As little as laywers bring to the table, its at least something.

No, they have always been the party of the elite. They pander to the "bread and circuses" crowd because they'd never get elected otherwise.

The ingress into politics has a vicious filter that works against working class people. I've been in the Labour Party and seen it in action. The tories have a native contempt for them too. It is a pretty grim thing that only the left most constituencies choose to field candidates whose lives are recognisable to the average person: Nadia Whittome is a great example of that.

Even if that were true (its not IMO), its not the educated and unemployed who like this sort of legislation.

It is the security services, police, and civil service.

At the moment the weak leadership (useless PM) is giving them an opportunity to rush the politicians into stiff like this.

Back in the day this stuff was recognised. In 1983 Labour's manifesto pledged to abolish the secret services and that was part of the reasoning.

I the Labour party were more like they were in 1983 I would vote for them! Not to the extent of abolishing the secret services, maybe, but definitely more control.

I there has also been a change of mindset. Politicians (correctly) recognize that these people are the experts, but they seem to forget that their job is to weight up these opinions, ask questions, consult other experts, and apply the subjective judgements required to make trade offs (in this case security against privacy).

Same, it was a good era of Labour policy, regardless of what people say.

I don't think "experts" are always what they're cracked up to be. Partisan writers funded by anonymous third parties etc try to put themselves on a par with eg, university professors. Both groups like to ignore people's actual experiences too, preferring abstraction that misses key things.

Ultimately experts can't answer the question of what a good society looks like. Their job is to make it happen - if they're intellectually honest enough to try even when they don't agree with the starting point the politicians and electorate come up with.

The original Investigatory Powers Act and Brexit were the two reasons I left the UK; the latter hit me harder than I expected even by the immediate aftermath of the poll results, but the former was so obviously broken even at the time that I'm surprised the UK even has a tech sector any more… though I suppose, like GDPR, everyone who is being forced to comply is trying to do the least effort version of compliance, and the inherent secrecy is combining with cluelessness about who has exactly what capability to make "do very little" a much easier path than I was expecting.

I went to actual Portcullis House to talk to my local MP in person about the IP Bill and try to convince her to at least limit the worse parts. Nada.

Unfortunately most people outside tech circles either don’t care or don’t understand the danger of unchecked surveillance. By the time negative effects will be visible it will be too late.

It would be good to hear what was said, if you don't mind sharing.

The in-person meeting wasn't recorded, but I do have some emails and my MP did suggest I write to John Hayes with a 1-page summary.

All the emails together may be a bit much to read, but as a general sense I figured that it would be a mistake to say "surveil absolutely nothing absolutely ever" as that would seem like petulance to a non-technical MP and thus get ignored; also, as I think criminal gangs are just as capable of digital attacks and surveillance as governments, I'm not so much worried about the surveillance itself as I am about the social damage from how this enables blackmail (which requires social rather than technical solutions) and the security damage from deliberately created weak points (which leads to "use a different method for the surveillance you're going to insist on doing anyway no matter what I say and will continue to do even if we remove all the laws supporting you").

In retrospect, and as I'm not a lawyer, I suspect I also thoroughly misunderstood some of the parts of the bill I was reading and objecting to.

> Paired with the gag order that comes with each, this has several effects, including that the non-U.K. company can’t notify its home government of the demand, even one that violates the law of the home government, preventing any sort of diplomatic assistance.

What is wrong with the British government, that they even think they get to order foreign companies to break the laws of their home countries?

Well they can always just not sell to the UK if it’s such a problem.

We need to hit every company with a demand not to do business in the UK because of this, just like we did with SOPA. IF they government isn't going to be accountable then we have nothing left by to hold the companies accountable ourselves. I'll admit, this problem is so pervasive that literally every business we use in our society could potentially be a culprit :(

They may well just not operate in the UK, but it remains to be seen if anyone will speak openly about being given an order they're not supposed to reveal the existence of, even in cases where that order is to break a law passed by their own government without telling their own government.

Whether or not that is a reasonable response is irrelevant to the fact that the law is, on its face, idiotic. How else would you frame requiring someone not bound by your laws to break the laws of their own country?

Trade in the UK and you are, in fact, bound by UK laws.

That this regularly comes as a surprise to Americans is perhaps why the UK is so suspicious of US Big Tech firms.

I agree with what you're saying; the problem is that it looks like the UK is trying to give itself the power to force companies to secretly break the laws of the nation the company is based in.

Companies can make themselves the servants of two masters by operating in two jurisdictions with mutually incompatible laws, but they do so at their own peril.

Similar discussion with different details comes up sometimes with e.g. "should Apple do business in China?", but (IMO) the UK isn't as important as China and (IMO) has less leverage to encourage companies to take that risk.

While I think this particular piece of (proposed) law is nuts, I think it’s just a dark mirror of the kinds of laws that compel companies to operate as commercial cover for espionage or unofficial foreign policy and break the law in foreign countries where they operate.

And if you think that the USA for example is not already quietly compelling subsidiaries of foreign firms to break the laws of their own home countries then I would suggest you consider why not.

Good point, though bad example - the USA is kinda infamous for throwing their weight around like that. The UK… is run by people who still think the UK's natural place is to rule most of the world.

This is untrue. The current British government hold no beliefs in empire or British international superiority.

They wouldn’t all have so much of their personal wealth stored and invested offshore if they did!

Our government appears to feel deeply entitled, but is insular and defensive, not strident and bold.

Nonetheless, I don’t think it is necessarily wrong to create a landscape of legal uncertainty for foreign Big Tech: why would any government not have laws saying “we welcome your business but you must understand that our laws are incompatible with some laws of your home country, and to continue to trade here you agree not to follow those home regulations?”

Otherwise the most dominant country in the world simply exports its law through foreign business expansions. And I hate to break it to people but US law is not a strict subset of best practice.

> Our government appears to feel deeply entitled, but is insular and defensive, not strident and bold.

Hm, you justified well, perhaps the current lot aren't quite as bad as the recent few governments from the same party.

> Otherwise the most dominant country in the world simply exports its law through foreign business expansions.

I think they do, at least a bit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_effect

That said, I have for a while now felt that the internet messes with the pre-telecommunications concept of Westphalian sovereignty. No idea how that is going to end up.

> And I hate to break it to people but US law is not a strict subset of best practice.

As a Brit living in Germany, I absolutely agree. That was one of several reasons why I chose Berlin rather than the Bay, post-Brexit.

> perhaps the current lot aren't quite as bad as the recent few governments from the same party.

Worse on every other metric, unfortunately!

I think the UK kinda just needs to build its own “internet” like China does. Apps for UK people to get spied and surveilled upon and generally “kept in line”. Also maybe a courtesy firewall so they don’t feel completely left out.

I live in the UK. And I agree. May as well.

You can put lipstick on pig. But it’s still a pig. Not sure if Cameron got that memo, mind you.

I’m sure the lipstick will suit him just fine!

Loved that episode of Black Mirror

The sad thing is that our political class and media used to actively ridicule China's Great Firewall, but now when the internet nasty of the month pops up they all froth at the mouth over controlling what people can see.

The political class and media STILL to actively ridicule China's Great Firewall while proposing the same thing while claiming that it is "completely different".

Wait till you hear their thoughts on the disgusting social credit system ...

I think there are those of us in the UK that would welcome a home grown alternative to Silicon Valley surveillance capitalism

This essentially means that companies will be able to lie about certain features they are giving users, such as being able to delete data or data being encrypted and because of the gag order they will know that they wouldn’t be allowed to tell users anyway. So it cleverly allows companies to be able to advertise security features whilst protecting them from the law when they don’t give those features…

Clever. And very sneaky.

Is there a name for efforts that are terrible and often defeated, but are basically inevitable due to just wearing down its opponents over time?

"War of attrition" is the phrase I hear used most frequently in such contexts.

Democracy.

You can use the same tactics.

Yes.

I moved here 10 years ago and this country has been in constant downward spiral since then. I'm pretty sure I won't be here in the next 10 year. It's insane.

Why is this so suddenly being pushed so strongly by governments. Is seems like something kicked at a hornets nest.

Other than ai companies and ai workers no decent engineer or company would agree to these changes. The UK government seems desperate to alienate everyone.

Ahh, classic HN.

You have to love how it never approaches “no politics” to discuss the EU or the UK, when any discussion that the US —- itself quietly pretending the NSA is not essentially unchained —- is at considerable risk of ending the whole “great experiment in self-rule”, the superiority of which it lords over the rest of us, is essentially verboten.

We get it: HN hates the Brits and distrusts Europeans. But as the bard (Elvis) said: “clean up your own backyard”.

> the U.K. government could use existing powers to require that the company meet surveillance capability demands as a condition of making a product or feature available.

> If the government’s demands are not met, the company may have no choice but to abandon the product or feature launch, giving the government essentially a veto power on how companies innovate and improve their products

Well, that's going to attract tech companies to the UK /s

>There’s no reason to think that the intentions behind the bill are anything but noble.

Who are these ex-cops kidding?

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