That government funded research shows safe backdoor can be implemented.
There is no question that mass surveillance is possible. It's the government claiming that what it wants tech companies to implement is not mass surveillance.
> That government funded research shows safe backdoor can be implemented.
where did she claim that?
the article just says:
> "If there was a situation where the mitigations that the social media providers are taking are not enough, and if after further work with the regulator they still can't demonstrate that they can meet the requirements within the bill, then the conversation about technology around encryption takes place," she said.
> She said further work to develop the technology was needed, but added that government-funded research had shown it was possible.
The article actually states everything the OP did here. I'm not sure what is missed.
From what Ive heard on the grapevine PR flacks hate the Register. That kind of says it all. They dont just republish press releases like Reuters or write neoliberal op eds like the Economist.
>Britain’s parallel legislative effort is shaping up to be more far-reaching. The Online Safety Bill was conceived in 2019 after the suicide of a 14-year-old who had binged on algorithmically recommended depressive material. Four prime ministers later, the text of the bill has almost doubled in length. An American tech firm dubs it “one of the most complex bills we face anywhere in the world”.
>It goes further than the EU in its loosely worded requirement for platforms to proactively screen material. The larger social networks already check videos for matches with known child-abuse content. But subtler crimes, such as incitement to violence, are harder to detect automatically. The scale of some platforms—YouTube uploads 500 hours of video per minute—means that a strict requirement to pre-screen content could throttle the amount of new material uploaded.
From a larger article looking at US/UK/EU legislation and politics on the issue:
> From what Ive heard on the grapevine PR flacks hate the Register. That kind of says it all.
Everyone with good judgment hates The Register and recognizes that it's unmitigated hot garbage. This does not logically imply that the PR flacks you're referring to necessarily have good judgment and I don't mean to imply that.
Nothing personal, everyone has their lapses. Look at music in the late nineties...
> They dont just republish press releases like Reuters or write neoliberal op eds like the Economist.
So they are trying to get the law passed, despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible, by saying "we know it's impossible but we would like to have the legal right to do it in case it becomes possible in the future"?
they did pass the law through the lower house. the upper house can demand amendments and stall things a bit, but it can also just be completely ignored given enough time.
> despite the obvious objection that message filtering is impossible
it's not impossible, it's just a horrificly bad idea, and why would being impossible affect if it gets passed or not?
> by saying "we know it's impossible but we would like to have the legal right to do it in case it becomes possible in the future"?
no, they issued a press statement saying they won't implement the thing they passed until it's "practical".
lots of governments pass lots of laws and regulations and are untruthful about what they'll do later.
I'm slowly becoming of the opinion that legislators should be punished for creating laws that are nakedly illegal (against the constitution/human rights that have been agreed upon). I don't know what can of worms it would open, but it's getting tiring when politicians just ignore the public and push forward with laws that then spend 5 years in court battles to eventually be struck down. But for those 5 years their bullshit law is active. Eg EU data retention act.
In a country that doesn't have a written constitution [0] (per se), and is continually trying to renege on what human rights have been agreed [1], what would there be to punish against?
Presumably the proposal is for the UK and such places to adopt a written constitution guaranteeing certain rights to the population, and then punish government officials for violating it.
The most effective version is probably not the ability to sue for damages, but rather that if the highest court rules a law unconstitutional, anyone who voted in favor of it is ineligible to run for reelection. This would both get the perpetrators out of office and make them much more cautious about violating the rights of the population.
That’s a dumb way to run things, though. Lawmakers should be punished according to the most expansive definition of human rights that is plausible under the system. If the sort of constitutional/basic laws are ill defined and constantly changing, that’s problem #1 and they should be heavily incentivized to fix it.
There is no such thing as an illegal Act of Parliament in the UK. Parliament has unfettered power to pass whatever laws it sees fit, regardless of existing laws, treaties, or whatever.
To take this to an extreme, are you saying that under UK law, it would be legal for Parliament to legalize slavery or permit other activities that would unconscionable and illegal without such action?
> To take this to an extreme, are you saying that under UK law, it would be legal for Parliament to legalize slavery or permit other activities that would unconscionable and illegal without such action?
definitely. why is this surprising? countries permit all sorts of unconscionable things (the US had slavery and only banned it "except as a punishment for crime", literally has the death penalty right now) and by definition legislatures turn things from "illegal" to "legal" and vice versa constantly. the US could re-legalise slavery via a constitutional amendment any time it wanted, Ireland could ban divorce again, Australia could un-repeal Section 127, etc etc.
the only difference in the UK is that there's no "basic law" / "constitution" that's harder to change than regular laws.
Yes to my understanding. Parliament makes the laws. No court can override Parliament. No existing law binds Parliament. The only thing stopping this is how incredibly embarrassing it would be and individual MPs might lose their next election.
Yes. The Supreme Court might declare such a law incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (incorporated into UK law under the Human Rights Act), but that does not in itself invalidate the law: it would remain the law until Parliament amended it or repealed it (if it ever did).
it's not very secret. a bunch of western governments want to be able to spy on the comms of their citizens and lazy terrorists/pedophiles/whatever with poor opsec. basically everyone including normies moving to well-encrypted chat systems makes this very hard (requires court-ordering/NSL/coercing software companies to 0wn their own customers), so instead they want to standardise making it easy for governments.
the UK happens to 1) not have a proper constitution with any encoded human rights and also poor judicial review and 2) an inherently authoritarian currently-ruling party and media ecosystem and culture 3) be a UN SC member, Five Eyes member, G7 member, reasonably big economy etc so it's government is in a good spot to push hard on this and see if it can break the will of tech companies, which would be a great technical and social precedent to help other governments achieve the same goal. Australia is also a battleground for this for similar cultural and political and legal reasons.
what is less clear is why Signal is saying this is a victory, unless they really are so cynical that saving face while losing is more important than standing up on this point of principle that their company was supposedly founded on.
> Casual spying on citizens is new to Western governments (unless you count East Germany as Western).
depends on "casual" and "new" I guess? Echelon is a dragnet from the 70s, and at least the US, UK and Australian governments spied lots on anti-war protestors and environmentalists and civil rights campaigners and trade unionists. Some Australians wrote a book called "Our ASIO Files" (ASIO is the Australian internal spy/security agency) based on being surveilled during the 80s.
"New" is very relative. GSM phone communication protocol from late 80s was intentionally sabotaged to have 54-bit crypto keys so it could be easily attacked.
(And it was only used over radio so base station traffic could be wiretapped even more easily.)
HMRC can do the most unrestricted spy on the British population, and there is a lot of data sharing between all the different parts of the state, ie HMRC, Police, NHS etc etc.
Any employee of the state can spy on you and the press also do a fair bit of spying on the population.
Its a national past time when thinking of curtain twitchers and neighbourhood watch schemes.
You really dont have a clue do you! Every part of the state you interact with takes notes, and the security services have access to it when they want it, bent judges do exist you know, and then they via Special Branch direct the Police.
When is an anonymous tip off by the public, just a cover for the state. They cant do it to everyone as the game would be up, but there is much more surveillance than you realise.
Alot of my relatives worked for the state, and as a kid I over heard alot!
They said nothing about it being practical. Specifically from the Reuters article:
> Junior minister Stephen Parkinson appeared to concede ground to the tech companies' arguments on Wednesday, saying in parliament's upper chamber that the Ofcom communications regulator would only require them to scan content where "technically feasible".
What this means is any chat system that isn't using end-to-end encryption is subject to these laws. Anything using end-to-end encryption is considered unfeasible to scan.
> What this means is any chat system that isn't using end-to-end encryption is subject to these laws. Anything using end-to-end encryption is considered unfeasible to scan.
Why are you asserting this is true?
Adding a backdoor to an e2e system is technically feasible, what makes you imagine that is excluded?
That is what the press release was specifically about.
Additionally, I strongly disagree with your assertion. Adding any kind of scanning system like that is technically infeasible unless you sacrifice some measure of security. The government and many nation states have been trying to argue against encryption of various levels (even less than end-to-end encryption) and the ultimate outcome is it being rejected because all of those measures _meaningfully weaken the security of the system_.
> he ultimate outcome is it being rejected because all of those measures _meaningfully weaken the security of the system_.
this is beyond naive.
the reason these measures have been rejected is due to public outcry and bad press for the governments trying it. the US banned exporting functional encryption for a long time, Australia passed it's you-must-assist-security-services bill, every country has LI systems embedded in etc etc. the LI systems hugely reduce security, up to and including mass infiltration by the US of an ally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004–05
if you think "that'll make things less secure" is actually going to stop these constant attempts to eliminate private communications, you're going to be hugely disappointed by the next ten years.
the entire thing that happened yesterday is a nobody minister (not the actual person in charge of any of this) said they wouldn't do a thing the law allows them to do. they didn't change the law, or pass a regulation or anything, they just did a speech.
That’s not how you save face. Genuinely, if nobody said anything about this anymore, basically everyone would forget about it. The privacy nerds that would remember this 6 months from now would be utterly politically immaterially few
With the way the law is going the UK could demand that Tech providers provide backdoors into end-to-end encryption.
The providers can refuse.
The UK can then demand that such apps are not available in the UK.
HOWEVER ... the providers can build WASM equivalents that run in the phones browser. These can be available elsewhere in the world, and there is no way to stop UK residents from installing them. If there is no other way to have end-to-end encrypted messaging, some provider WILL offer this ... and they'll make it pretty slick. You can try prosecute each user (not much chance of success).
Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against.
If the government pushes too hard, all that happens is that encrypted messaging moves out of app stores into the open internet ... and then, not only can they not see the content, they can barely see who is using it.
> Legislation that fights well implemented secrecy will always eventually loose, as the government becomes just one more hostile actor, which the tech is already set up to protect against.
this is a very bad take, especially as governments across the world are all trying to do this exact same thing.
the US ban on encryption exports stopped secure encryption being exported for a long time. china's security services have enormous ability to spy on their citizens. Prism/Echelon/etc all existed and worked well. LI is a thing everywhere.
this last five-ten years where ~all citizens of rich countries had secure communications is a rare and unusual time, and people are trying quite hard to end it.
And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so.
Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics.
> And yet a few layers deeper, a lot has changed. The bill is dead, and anyone who wants to revive it knows they need significant political capital to do so.
> Politics ain't tech - a non-binding agreement that signals "we're not going to do this, at least for the next 3-5 years" is a win in politics.
What on earth are you talking about?
The bill was passed by the Commons and then will be passed by the Lords and then will become law.
> Child safety campaigners have spent years pushing the government to be tougher on tech companies over abuse material that is shared on their apps.
> Richard Collard, head of child safety online policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said: “Our polling shows the UK public overwhelmingly support measures to tackle child abuse in end-to-end encrypted environments. Tech firms can show industry leadership by listening to the public and investing in technology that protects both the safety and privacy rights of all users.”
I've read six of these "Oh no we didn't back down" stories this
morning.
What worries me is the appearance of wishful thinking around the
language of "technically feasible".
Follow this road far enough and we'll have government ministers with
marketing credentials defining what is "technically feasible", instead
of scientists.
https://cybershow.uk #016 | S2 | Special | UK Online Safety Bill
Published on Friday 01st Sep, 2023
Can you please stop using HN to promote your podcast? You're doing it way too much and users are complaining.
HN is supposed to be a place for curious conversation, and promotion is the opposite of that. Hence the guideline:
"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."
The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society.
Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.
I try to take a charitable, open-minded position in this.
Two of us in the cybershow are parents. Taking on analysis of this
bill was a tough decision, but something we felt obliged and
qualified to do as parents and security experts.
There are obviously grave harms around digital technology, plus its
obvious myriad benefits. Covert communications enabling criminal and
anti-social activity is just one small part.
Our thought experiment is to assume good faith. To assume the
government is sincerely invested in doing it's job of protecting
citizens. Then to figure out how this has gone so wrong.
Who are the marginal influencers? Why is the standard of technical
expertise and computer science in our government so woefully
inadequate. Why has saving face become more important than actually
tackling difficult issues?
I would characterise our UK government as confused and frustrated.
Perhaps we should be pleased our government is tenacious in pursuing a
bill whose aims we broadly support. But a mixture of prideful
ego-politics, poor advice and technologically laughable solutionism
has led us into a corner. That's not a good look for a country that
started the industrial and digital revolutions.
> to assume good faith. To assume the government is sincerely invested in doing it's job of protecting citizens.
Five thousand years of recorded human history should serve as adequate evidence against making this assumption. And we all know that even if the current government is sincerely invested in doing its job in good faith, any powers that are given to the current government can and will be abused by a future government that may be invested in doing something else.
> And we all know that even if the current government is sincerely invested in doing its job in good faith, any powers that are given to the current government can and will be abused by a future government that may be invested in doing something else.
Exactly this.
For starters, and using the U as an example:
If you are a Democrat (or whatever), think if you want these powers to be available to the next Trump.
And vice versa: if you are a republican (or whatever) think if you want these spying capabilities and what not to be available to the next Democrat president.
At this stage, and in the dying days of a flailing Tory government, that simply makes you a mug.
Also from today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-66720994 ; this is specifically to protect murders carried out by and on behalf of the state in Northern Ireland. Along with historical matters such as the "spycops" scandal, and the abuses of PREVENT, there is a strong risk that mass surveillance will be used in political ways and in the service of misconduct. Accountability is poor and therefore trust is poor.
> Who are the marginal influencers?
The Daily Mail. Well, that and the security services who've clearly been pushing this.
> in the dying days of a flailing Tory government, that simply makes you a mug.
TBF let's take longer view than the incumbent freak show of throwbacks
and incompetents.
> "spycops" scandal, and the abuses of PREVENT,
Do please give the podcast episode I linked a listen. You'll
appreciate that we took that precise case (the Bob Lambert case) as an
example for discussing mission-creep and the impossibility of
containment of digital privilege or other special powers.
That's a very mature stance. Inside the government there are a ton of people doing really hard work who are frustrated by the rise of encryption, so they can no longer do the work that they were doing in the past effectively (some outside of government see this as a good thing).
In those same governments there are those that dream of having access to all of this data with less honorable intentions. Because both are part of the same entity and once the capability is there it is pretty much a given that checks and balances will fail when you need them most I find myself both sympathetic to those that keep us safe and to those that object to this level of invasiveness, and I find myself opposed to those what effectively use terrorism and CP as a way to shepherd us into an authoritarian society.
And then there are the consequences of finding yourself with a really bad instance of government at some point in the future, it could easily happen.
It's not just the UK. The Netherlands is like that as well and it's lost it's democracy. They can now hack anyone, not just criminals, without a judge being involved or even any evidence. They can shutdown speech that they don't like and they regularly commit criminal acts against non-criminally involved citizens organised by non-accountable organisations.
Oh, and the Netherlands also holds provably completely sham court cases where the authorities pervert the course of justice in order to shutdown repercussions of criminal activity that they have been involved in.
This is a bit over the top, don't you think? Case in point: we will have elections one of these days, that seems to be proof to me that we still are a democracy. Or do you believe in widespread vote fraud?
Elections alone don't make a democracy. Fair and free and secret elections are necessary but not sufficient for a democracy.
Free press, protection of minorities, free speech, separation of powers, fundamental rights are other parts I think are necessary for a liberal democracy.
And so on. Now: this isn't saying that NL is perfect, not by a long shot. We have seen some absolutely terrible behavior by politicians, most notably on the right extreme part of the spectrum. Emboldened by Trump's election populism is on the rise here as well and we see just the same idiotic behavior as in the USA. Including word-for-word translations of talking points (which are utterly ridiculous in a Dutch context, but never mind that sort of detail), attempts (and some success) at polarization and so on. For that reasons alone the next elections are pretty exciting in that we can either further derail or - hopefully - that there will be some pushback against this.
But it is usually the people arguing the loudest that there is no democracy, freedom of press and separation of powers here that are the ones that are trying to destabilize things further.
OPs complaint about the police being able to gather private information of their citizens without a judge having to agree to it first might be seen as violating separation of powers, but as long as a judge still decides what the punishment is after seeing the evidence, I merely see this as a state not respecting individual's privacy, which is probably not a common thing to require for a democracy.
Sadly those erosions are to be seen in many EU countries currently...
> a state not respecting individual's privacy, which is probably not a common thing to require for a democracy.
Surely invasion of privacy is a violation of the CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION.
"
Article 7
Respect for private and family life
Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.
Article 8
Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."
How is the press free? Even the ANP nieuws is owned by some hedgefund that calls itself 'fuck off'. Do you think they will ever print something against the status quo?
A free press means: you can go buy a press, issue a newspaper as of tomorrow (or a website, for that matter) and write there whatever you want, and until a judge is involved nothing can or will be done about barring some emergency order.
Who owns ANP nieuws has nothing to do with whether or not the press is free.
As long as most people are not aware of these problems, they will not vote against the politicians that make these laws. This is really not a question about democracy but a question about how well-informed the population is.
Except of course the bit that these problems are overblown. But the people pushing these as problems are exactly the ones that stand to benefit from trying to grab power. There is a substantial amount of money pumped into the destabilization of the Dutch political order, a massive powershift is expected and the direction we are headed in is the wrong one by any objective measure. To a large extent this anti-EU, anti-climate and anti-press sentiment originates from both the very wealthy agricultural lobby in NL as well as the right wing. The interesting part is that you'll find the parties that would like to deport foreigners fomenting civil unrest and these are now in bed with the farming lobby.
It's with some anxiety that I'm looking at the next six months here, it could well go the way of Italy, or possibly much worse (think 'Orban' or something like that).
Are they losing control, or are they becoming control freaks who want more control than they've traditionally had and have any right or business having? Both would manifest as the government thinking it has insufficient control, but the cause is very different.
I've heard the Stasi were breaking into people's homes and stealing their underwear to store in archives of scent jars for their dogs, but as extreme as that is I don't think that and their other tactics gave them anything close to the surveillance capabilities modern governments now have thanks to everybody carrying a smartphone 24/7.
Yes, the things the Stasi did were insanely paranoid. But I think they still got less "bang for their buck" than modern western democracies. The latter have a far more complete map of who associates with who, logs of where people have been even months before they become subjects of interest, etc.
I think it was probably better - if people can turn in their neighbours or family for a small reward that's a lot cheaper than mass surveillance, and it induces compliance as a bonus!
Theyre authoritarian control freaks. The UK is undergoing progressive Russification with bipartisan support (Labour under Starmer and the Tories are both on board with it).
Protesting is now effectively illegal thanks to a new law criminalizing it if it's a "nuisance".
You're still technically allowed to hold up a blank piece of paper but the police will threaten to arrest you if you write something on it. That happened during the coronation.
I'm fairly sure theyre going to borrow a whole lot more from Putin's playbook in the next few years - especially now that British oligarchs have managed to hammer the two previously opposing parties back into ideological alignment.
The specific case I know you're talking about is the woman who was in an exclusion zone that was in place to stop people harassing women entering an abortion clinic.
If she doesn't want "praying silently in her head" to be interpreted as harassment, maybe she should think about the behaviour she and her cohorts have engaged in that might have lead to this interpretation.
Sure, you can disagree with that as well, but she wasn't arrested for praying. She was arrested for intimidation and harassment. She doesn't get a special pass just because of the method.
This is a common misunderstanding. Harassing people near abortion clinics is a separate offense. The lady in question has harassed people in the past, but she was specifically arrested and charged for prayer in this case. This offense of prayer is separate to her harassment of people.
It’s like if you had drugs in your pocket while harassing someone. They’re separate offenses.
This video explains the situation and references the original police and court records.
If anyone wants to jump straight to the order itself, it's the first link under that youtube video.
> the council is satisfied on reasonable grounds that there are a number of activities, carried out or are likely to be carried out in a public space namely the area within and surrounding Station Road, Birmingham, B30, shown outlined on the map attached ( the restricted area) that have had, or are likely to have, a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality. The effect or likely effect of these activities is of a persistent or continuing nature such as to make these activities unreasonable, and justifies the restrictions imposed in this order
[...]
> The Activities prohibited by the Order are:
> i Protesting, namely engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means. This includes but is not limited to graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counselling,
> ii Interfering, or attempting to interfere, whether verbally or physically, with a Robert Clinic service user, visitor or member of staff,
> iii Intimidating or harassing, or attempting to intimidate or harass, a Robert Clinic service user, visitor or a member of staff,
> iv Recording or photographing a Robert Clinic service user, visitor or member of staff or
> v Displaying any text or images relating directly or indirectly to the termination of pregnancy.
She was protesting. It's a persistent pattern of behaviour. It's harassment.
By specifically calling out prayer the order does ban prayer...
In that case the woman was arrested for silently praying by herself. Her prayer was to stop the abortion clinic, but it was silent and in her own head.
I understand that the intent of the law is to ban prayer near an abortion clinic to stop harassment, but they have banned prayer.
(I support everything else in that order, I’m pro choice. I just don’t think we should ban prayer)
Any form of harassment is illegal. See the pics I posted in an edit above; the protestors make their opinions clear to visitors to the clinic, even while being silent.
Pretty sure I could walk through that area while praying and not get arrested. I'd do it by making no outward signs that I was praying. Therefore, prayer is not banned.
Also pretty sure I could get arrested in that area by kneeling on the pavement and meditating, rather than praying. I don't think "but I was meditating" would cut it as a defence, either, because what's banned is "anything that looks like protest, here are some examples".
I think it's the kneeling she got arrested for, which happens to be coded as "prayer" in our culture. In other words, she was arrested for protesting.
> Do you agree that the UK has banned some silent prayer?
This is true in the same sense that the UK has also banned breathing, because murdering people is illegal and some people happen to be breathing whilst doing their murdering.
> the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.
I think that's more an optimistic interpretation of democracy.
After all, it's the government that gets to decide who is a citizen, and who has the franchise.
Historically the US said that African Americans were not citizens, within the meaning of the Constitution. In 1858 your statement might be 100% true about the US, but it would exclude a lot of people - who indeed were justifiably fearful of the democracy they lived in.
While the 14th amendment made many new citizens, for many decades after the end of reconstruction these citizens feared their government far more than vice versa.
You can see the variable concept of "citizen" when considering that a minor may be a US citizen for many purposes, but does not have the voting rights of full citizenship. Before the 26th amendment even 20-year-old adults were not full citizens.
Something like 2% of US adult citizens cannot vote due to being a convicted felon, further showing how shaky your assertion is.
There's also a large number of immigrants to the US who are not citizens, but ideally should not fear the government any more than citizens do.
Perhaps the US doesn't count as democracy, but that sounds too much like a No True Scotsman response. Switzerland, with its famous direct democracy, didn't allow full women's suffrage until 1971-1990, depending on canton, again highlighting that "citizen" and "those who can vote" are not really the same thing in a democracy.
Hence "I think that's more an optimistic interpretation of democracy."
I don't think it's a goal of democracy, and I highlighted what I think are flaws with thinking of it that way. In your ideal democracy should non-citizens fear the government? Are children full citizens and, if not, should they fear the government too?
It's also a goal of communism and of anarchy, yes?
Yes, it's a goal of (Marxist) communism, and (AFAIK) the one largest goal of anarchy.
You can criticize it as a goal as much as you want. There's plenty of things to disagree in it. But you just can't go and state it's a no true Scotchman, that is meaningless nonsense.
> The bigger picture of why UK is hell bent on surveilling their citizens, communities is that the number one problem is that governments are losing control over society.
I suspect theres a bunch of things going on.
They've come down so hard on recent protest movements like Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, etc because as you say they feel like they've lost authority and they want it back. National-scale surveillance is a way to remind everyone who really runs the country, and who just does as they're told. The uk has almost always been governed by essentially the same elite group, and they have a lot of experience of keeping it that way. Not by Spectre-style secret meetings, just by convergent overlapping objectives.
I think part of their fear comes from seeing how popular devolution has been in the UK. And partly how successful the EU has become, hence brexit. Theres also a part of the tory party that wants to nope out of the ECHR jurisdiction, and this kind of legislation potentially sets-up a fight with the court that could be used as a pretext for withdrawal. Some of them undoubtedly also simply see the potential to make some money from a surveylance society.
I also suspect they've finally woken up to the climate-related crisies that are now just down the road and they've decided that a more authoritarian society is the only way to keep their position at the top.
> Off course the whole point of democracy is that governments should fear their citizens, rather than vice versa.
Err... nope. Can't build stable societies on fear. The "whole point of democracy" is how to negociate the divergent desires and opinions of the nation's citizens.
Yes, you're right. I meant to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” And indeed democracy isn't liberty, it's just the least bad attempt to achieve a bunch of laudable goals.
Ideally “the government” wouldn’t fear the people any more than, say, my computer fears me. It is a tool. It exists to implement my will.
Fear derives from things like our sense of self-preservation, and other concerns that our goals might not be achieved. Since the government ideally has no goal but to serve the people, it should have no fear (perhaps other than the fear of failure).
the UK has a weird culture of conformism and authoritarianism, and the weirdo part of the Tory party is deeply into that sort of thing, and is in power now. it's not very mysterious.
Labour don't oppose it because it makes no sense for them to do so.
If they did oppose it, then the still-powerful right-wing press would be immediately printing LABOUR SUPPORT PAEDOPHILES on their front pages.
Most people wouldn't care, but because of FPTP, elections are determined by a small number of swing voters. Anyone slightly left of the Tories is almost certainly going to vote Labour anyway, because they don't really have any political choice.
It's just posturing for the media, I think. I suspect most people involved realise that what the bill is trying to do is unworkable.
yes, the rightward authoritarian shift of the Labour party is also depressing, just less pressing since they're not the ones orchestrating these bills. I don't really know how Britain will become less like this.
>It probably won't change till they get rid of the anachronistic monarchy.
It's nothing to do with the monarchy - indeed, if anything I think the consensus amongst pro-monarchy folks is that the monarch is a constitutional escape hatch in the event of a government getting out of control.
Both the Conservative and Labour parties have an authoritarian streak to them when in government, and a solid percentage of the population seem to trust that our institutions know what they're doing and can keep their databases secure (although I hope that's been shaken in the last month with a number of police and electoral register database leaks).
I don't understand enough about UK to see why anachronistic monarchy would be at the heart. (To lesser extent) we see a lust for surveillance in many other democratic countries too.
Isn't an easier explanation that society is getting more complex while politicians double down on managing their reputation, which inevitably results in loosing trust in institutions? (Or something along those lines.)
Yikes! Historically, revolutions are bloody and generally do not end well. Cultural revolutions less so.
Having said that, I would not mind seeing King Charles abdicate; England, Wales, Scotland, N-Ireland become proper republics; help the remnants of upper class strongholds adapt to reality, if that's what you mean. :-)
> Historically, revolutions are bloody and generally do not end well. Cultural revolutions less so.
Historically, major changes only come with a bloodshed, you forgot that part. We speak highly of Gandhi because he's an exception to this rule, not the norm. (And blood was shed in that case as well)
The corollary is, don't expect much to change until there's a major societal break and pushback. That is, unless you have drunk the kool aid of modern politics and think your party will fix things for real, this time.
In Britain, I'm less concerned about King Charles III and its effect on the populace, than Starmer, Sunak, and any other idiot in Westminster. They're the ones writing the government laws and budget for their own interests.
> Yikes! Historically, revolutions are bloody and generally do not end well. Cultural revolutions less so.
I specifically said cultural revolution because I tried to imply a non-violent revolution. Not all revolutions are violent. Think technological revolution.
Unfortunately the usual referent of "cultural revolution" is the Maoist one which was extremely violent. You could try referencing the colour revolutions or the Portuguese "carnation revolution" maybe.
Generally when I've seen cultural revolution being used it has been in reference to the 60s or similar, but upon searching you are definitely correct; I just wasn't aware of that. There's still a lot of history I've yet to learn about.
You realise the 'anachronistic monarchy' is just a tourist attraction/diplomatic lever at this point, right? Britain is a parliamentary democracy. I'm pretty confident Charlie doesn't have a hand in enabling sweeping snooping powers. More hacking scandals are the last thing his poor family needs!
> You realise the 'anachronistic monarchy' is just a tourist attraction/diplomatic lever at this point, right?
It's not. It still has power, and it's still costing tax payers a shitton so one family can live above everyone else. More importantly there are plenty of royalists who support it.
the royal family costs the UK tax payer ~100m a year[0], which is about the cost of the three nuclear bombs in the US or less than one of the ill-advised F-32 purchases Australia is making. it's also maybe a 1/10th of the amount of money stolen by Tory mates for their various PPE crimes during the early pandemic.
every country has very very dumb shit they piss money up the wall over, but it's not a game changing amount of money.
They are net contributors even before tourism. (Massively so after it, but I suppose it'd be hard to say how much of that would remain, especially in the short term, if we had no current monarchy but still the history, buildings, military, etc.)
You can argue that even greater than the tourism revenue they generate (which is significant) it's the soft power they yield; all the heads of state want to grab a selfie with Lizzie, less so with Rishi. (Time will tell with Charles.)
I don't doubt you're well intentioned, but there's probably more useful things to be fighting over. Especially as what you're fighting for will generate negligible incomes at best and negative incomes at worst. The last thing the UK needs after Brexit is a referendum on becoming a republic.
> I don't doubt you're well intentioned, but there's probably more useful things to be fighting over. Especially as what you're fighting for will generate negligible incomes at best and negative incomes at worst. The last thing the UK needs after Brexit is a referendum on becoming a republic.
I disagree. The UK is still backwards in many ways, hell, they still have an unelected upper house. Getting rid of the monarchy sends a strong message and allows other reforms to follow in its wake.
I'm also skeptical the monarchy generate any tourism. People come to see the palace that would remain regardless, and the funny guards that trample over children. They don't come to the UK for that stuff, they see it while they are there, and they certainly don't come hoping to see a member of the royal family.
The thing is it is always technically feasible, even for end to end encryption ( you just do the scanning before encrypting on the device, or upload the plain text copy of all the messages to a government service.)
I’m worried that it won’t offer any protection in the end.
"Technically infeasible" is code for "we asked the American tech companies for a backdoor, they told us to fuck off and we dont have the cojones to actually ban whatsapp". The phrase is only intended to imply that they didn't lose a political battle.
Actual technical feasibility is beside the point. Whatsapp probably already has backdoors they just don't want to hand the keys over to 10 downing street.
The bill went through it's third reading in the Lords with literally no changes yesterday!
These stories are going to make people complacent that this terrible, terrible bill has gone away. It hasn't, it passed, more or less unchanged (except to make the age verification piece a little bit worse).
Precisely!!! At this rate Signal's inexplicable desire to claim this as a victory (https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1699405364968423828) is distracting at the very worst possible time - this is the last chance to stop the bill, and instead of a final hail mary... we're congratulating ourselves? on the fact that scanning won't be implemented immediately but only once the government has decided that the tech is mature enough?!!
As I understand it, they just said they aren't going to do it because is not technically feasible, but the bill includes the clause to do it, if it was possible.
I can't see anything to celebrate here. The bill should have been amended further.
They didn't change the bill, but also said "If the appropriate technology doesn’t exist which meets those requirements, then Ofcom will not be able to use clause 122 to require its use".
As I tried to explain on the thread about the Financial Times coverage of this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37416203), the headline here is COMPLETELY WRONG. It's doubly frustrating given i'm quoted in the article and i spoke to the journalist to try to ensure the "UK drops spy clause" falsehood wasn't propagated.
The UK government has changed nothing. All that happened is that a junior minister said "obviously we won't implement this until it's technically feasible", (https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-minister-says-position...) which was inexplicably seized on by Signal as evidence that the government was backing down. Cue this nightmarish news cycle of the press declaring "UK drops spy clause" when absolutely nothing has changed: the spy clause is still there, and the govt has explicitly said that they WILL utilise it if they think it necessary (once they consider the tech good enough).
So it's incredibly counterproductive to claim this as a victory, and thus cause complacency, and distract from the fact that today more than ever we need to be putting the pressure on to get the clause dropped. It almost feels like a misinfo campaign: what better way to win a battle than to let the other side think they've already won so they sit back and selfcongratulate rather than fight at the critical decisive moment?! Meanwhile folks are misreading the "we didn't back down" coverage as evidence that the government really is about to back down. It's a kafkaesque nightmare!
UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408196 - Sept 2023 (287 comments)