David Cameron is going to try and ban encryption in Britain | Hacker News Reader

David Cameron is going to try and ban encryption in Britain

businessinsider.com

59 pointslelf14 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9811288

The society of connoisseurs of random computer art welcomes you to share your master-pieces with each other. The beauty of this abstract art form is in the eye of the beholder... there is no key dear police!

To me it sounds like he wants to ban the likes of Tor rather than at-rest encryption. This would be a natural extension of the current situation where ISPs are required to block a list of websites containing the likes of child porn and bittorrent search engines.

I can see the government doing this with reasoning along the lines of "You don't need to hide if you're in a 'free country' like the UK, so UK ISPs can block Tor without impinging on the opportunities of whistle-blowers, informants or activists". Bullshit.

I guess Cameron wants to see UK turned into the world of We Happy Few: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/112359230/we-happy-few-...

Will he ban HTTPS? A browser is everything that needs to be distributed for encrypting communications.

Anyway:

> Britain is not a state that is trying to search through everybody’s emails and invade their privacy …

No, it's a state that is achieving it, right now.

Yes, because David Cameron can ban math.

Lol.

The old joke from the Soviet Union,

"Why do police go around in triples?" "One of them can read" "One of them can write" "And the third is to keep an eye on those two dangerous intellectuals."

This has nothing to do with stopping terrorists. I'm pretty sure Cameron is not a stupid person and has consulted with experts on the matter, and there's no way anybody with any kind of clue is going to think it's possible to stop terrorists from using strong crypto.

No, this sounds like playing the Terrorist wild card to ensure the common people don't get crypto. Cameron probably fears that your average (criminal) Joe, with the help of tech companies, transparently gets to use crypto. Crypto is getting to easy to use.

Absolutly impossible. I can understand how someone can propose something like that.

They should ban David Cameron and monarchies. I hope that ban covers TLS too. Brits don't need HTTPS websites.

Maybe he doesn't like that Britain is the financial center, perhaps he thinks money spoils people :-)

Seeing the photo of the Queen reminded me of something undemocratic that could be banned.

Useless politician.

from my cold dead hands...

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