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Comment by tacker2000 | Hacker News Reader

tacker2000

To be clear in this case, this is not Europe or the EU, its solely the UK government wanting a backdoor for themselves.

To be clear, the EU is also pushing for encryption and hardware backdoors.

To be clear US does not need to push for hardware backdoors and more because they already got them.

Very much a matter of defining 'themselves'. Our data in their hands. How do we know these people aren't the same incompetents who emailed a spreadsheet containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghan asylum applicants (who had risked their lives to help the Brits) to someone outside the Ministry of Defense.

The government says the individual thought they were sending a list of about 150 names, not the whole set.

Meanwhile the Taliban have been taking revenge: https://pressway.org.uk/news/300408-hunt_for_tranclators_tal...

> A spreadsheet containing the personal information of about 18,700 Afghans and their relatives – a total of about 33,000 people – was accidentally forwarded to the wrong recipients by email in February 2022, Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

This is why authorization matters. Don't send the spreadsheet; send a link to it, because e-mail doesn't implement authorization. Then you can revoke access at any time, and even prevent accidents by setting up access rules and monitoring at the org level.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/17/how-were-identities...

To be clear in this case, the UK is a country in north-western Europe.

Last I checked the UK was in Europe and what you are replying to only mentions Europe, not the EU.

Regardless, the EU is also pushing for the same stuff.

Of course because the UK isn't even in the EU anymore. They're no longer any part of EU policy.

Still European though.

Geographically, yes. But they've made it clear they don't want anything to do with us. Also, the 3-year period after brexit with all the whining about their 'deal' (knowing that what they wanted was legally impossible) was so annoying I'm kinda done with them. Too much drama for too long.

So I've stopped buying UK products and services (eg raspberry pi) and don't consider traveling there anymore. Just like I'm doing now with the US although the latter is more difficult to do.

I think from the point of view of the US and elsewhere, the UK is in Europe and is European. They are aware they are not in the EU, but that doesn't matter as it's inappropriate to make EU synonymous with Europe. (The distinction is much like North America vs USA; if you said the former you definitely don't mean _just_ the latter).

In the context of so-called "European elites threatening freedom and democracy", the UK is very much included in that category, as this story demonstrated.

On the other point, while you can of course boycott anything for whatever reasons you want for as long as you want, you do realise that the UK has a different government now. One that opposed Brexit, and has already signed agreements for closer cooperation with the EU. I still boycott Dyson because of his support for Brexit, but boycotting an entire country because of the actions of a former government that is now in opposition seems a bit pointless.

I know, but I don't think labour is substantially different. They're still pushing for extreme privacy invasive measures (the latest one was only withdrawn due to pressure from the US), they recently introduced mandatory visas for EU visitors.

Like I said elsewhere, it's like with the US, the trust is just gone. Besides, the tories will come back sooner or later (or worse, reform UK). They're not gone.

I'm not going to switch back and forth. Maybe if they play nice for a decade or so I'll change my mind.

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