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Comment by hadlock | Hacker News Reader

Is there some sort of way short of constitutional amendment (or UK equivalent) to avoid having to defend this "legal challenge" every time it comes up? This is so exhausting I don't even bother clicking on the article, I just write a check to the EFF.

I feel like the toothpaste is already out of the tube on effective, low effort, decentralized encryption, but there's plenty of $$$ government contracting dollars to be made integrating government systems with megacorp datastorage, so there will always be someone else pushing to make this happen.

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Just to be clear, the UK system is much simpler than the US system. There is just a bad law. That law could be repealed with a majority in parliament tomorrow, until it is repealed (spoiler it absolutely will not be repealed) the regulator can and will file these law suits. The best we can hope for is that the regulator (Home Office) just don't bother trying to enforce the law.

The core problem is the people writing the laws are know-nothing busy bodies who write crap laws and then cause massive problems, and we've demonstrated over the last 18 months that you can fire literally 70% of the UK Parliament, replace them all and still end up with the same rules written by the same know-nothing busy bodies.

Is the problem that the system is inherently broken, or does the problem sit in that 30% ?

Whitehall - the UK civil service - persists between governments in a fairly unique way. It's essentially a political entity that exists beyond democracy that has pinky-promised to be politically ambivalent.

To paraphrase an adage I've forgotten: you can skim as much shit as you like off the Thames, it'll still be a filthy river.

an adage that is certainly true in the analogy but no longer true of the Thames.

The closest the UK has to a constitution-like protection is getting it to sign an international treaty, e.g. what's behind the Human Rights Act — after Brexit, some of the usual suspects have been campaigning to also leave the corresponding treaty, because it limits the sovreign right of each government to completely disregard what the previous one did.

To answer your question, the other solution is to do what I did in response to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016: leave the country.

> The closest the UK has to a constitution-like protection is getting it to sign an international treaty

international treaties have no effect under UK law, unless Parliament decides to pass an Act containing its provisions

this is called dualism

for example, the effect of all EU law in the UK was dis-applied with an Act of Parliament, by a single line:

> The European Communities Act 1972 is repealed on exit day.

(European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018)

> international treaties have no effect under UK law, unless Parliament decides to pass an Act containing its provisions

Indeed, all I claim is that leaving treaties comes with consequences that mean they stick, hard to change in practice even when it's theoretically just another law that only needs a parliamentary majority to delete.

Functional closest equivalent, not identical in every detail.

Any decade bow the answer will dawn on someone.

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