In the physical world, the limits are clear: no democratic government is permitted to monitor citizens in their homes without a court order, even to prevent domestic violence or child sexual abuse. In the digital world, though, the answer remains unresolved. Child safety advocates believe that governments must be able to unlock private messages, while tech companies and privacy activists see a smokescreen for mass government surveillance.
My understanding is they’ve done bugger all. MP’s behind the bill have merely said they won’t use the provision, primarily because there is no sufficient technical means to do so, but the wording of the bill hasn’t changed.
If the bill goes through as is then businesses may be compelled to create the means to do so, regardless of it breaking encryption - maybe they won’t do it right away, but they’ll have the perogative under law. It wouldn’t be too much more effort to throw in a gag order and prevent public disclosure. I’m sure Signal and a few others would kick up a stink and leave if they were targeted, but I could see Facebook and Google signing up, for a price. Hell I’d be more surprised if WhatsApp didn’t already have backdoors.
My understanding is they’ve done bugger all. MP’s behind the bill have merely said they won’t use the provision, primarily because there is no sufficient technical means to do so, but the wording of the bill hasn’t changed.
What will happen here will be exactly like what happened with the net neutrality laws in the US. Even if we beat it once they’ll just keep trying until the media gets fatigued and they can pass it without a large amount of uproar. There’s no legal way for us to stop them.
There’s no legal way for us to stop them.
Not there is a feasible way to remove e2e from the internet. tons of banks would just stop working in the UK. the bill wouldn’t last a week.
I see this argument every time this comes up but it’s not true. The end to end encryption they are talking about is between users so the service provider doesn’t have access to the data.
You sent a WhatsApp message and it’s encrypted right through to the recipient’s phone.
Your banking doesn’t do that, it’s encrypted between you and the bank.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you there’s no feasible way to stop it and hasn’t been for 30 years since the release of PGP, but it’s not about encryption in general, it’s specifically encrypted communication between individuals and bringing other stuff into it just weakens the argument against it.
Tbh you can just do it client side once it’s decrypted. It may not be that hard to circumvent but the vast majority wouldn’t bother.
I’m hoping this just doesn’t get passed in its current form. But not sure the house of lords will have much understanding of this stuff.
They want to do client side scanning which technically keeps E2E encryption but basically destroys the principle behind it. Today it’s CSAM, tomorrow its terrorism related phrases, next year its “anti-government sentiment”
Which won’t affect the majority of people at all. Which is how they get away with it.
The people who do care will just move to safer alternatives.
