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Comment by SCdF | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I was going to have that as an example in my comment, but even then that seems unrealistic to me. Why wouldn't the big tech companies simply not do that? The UK needs them more than they need the UK, and if you took away the country's access to Facebook for more than an hour you'd have a riot on your hands.

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Facebook (et al) already hand over user data to UK and other authorities. There is no need for any MITM certificate and even if there was, these companies would just do it since it makes it easier for them to say to authorities they already have the key to read it without involving Facebook - instant plausible deniability for Facebook to say we don't hand over info to authorities and full access for Governments everywhere.

I'd assume they'd go along with government policy, like they have done in e.g. China. And the government proposed taking down twitter and BBM during the London riots a few years ago.

I'm afraid you might be a tad ambitious regarding the weight the UK market carries with global corporate interests, as compared to the Chinese

I'm not so sure. It only takes one browser vendor with a significant interest in the UK (Google would be a good candidate, given that advertisers are very sensitive to legislation) to make the whole exercise useless.

The big tech companies already support legal intercept for content traversing their networks.

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