Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK.
Said proudly by the hostile actors.
Creating apps like Signal or WhatsApp could be 'hostile activity,' claims UK watchdog
Submitted 2 weeks ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
x00z@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
sleen@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
While casually performing hostile activity
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Wow, the UK sounds like an awful place.
Egonallanon@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Ah its not so bad if you get so drunk your critical thinking skills go out the window.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Which you can do starting at like 15! So it all works out.
Piatro@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
I thought we were unique in this but frankly everywhere in the “western” world is talking about the same things. EU has chat control, Australia has similar efforts, USA aren’t pushing for privacy at all so it’s not a uniquely British problem.
sleen@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
It first starts with the “children” or the “bad actors/terrorists” and ends with a straight up fascist police state.
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Agreed, but Australia and the UK are way ahead of the rest.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Honestly everywhere sounds like an awful place at this point. Freedom is a thing of the past. A thing from a time whence literally everything we did wasn’t tracked, and in order to exist in society, you’re expected to submit to the tracking.
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The world is a big place and disconnecting gives you a huge boost in privacy. It’s not all black-and-white.
obinice@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hey, did you use a secure encrypted connection to make that treasonous remark? I’ve got 999 on speed dial, I’m on to you, you encryption terrorist!
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Damn right I did.
87Six@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
What the fuck happened to the UK? Is Trump president there too?
DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The right wing fascism wave is a world trend my guy. This is just the start.
unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Meta happened. UK, US, all over the world there is a correlation between the adoption of Meta’s products and the corrosion of basic human rights.
bougietherock@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
People pretend not to know but mass immigration creates…issues, and so the UK became a hotbed of espionage and influence operations. With a certain demographic there’s also a high risk of breeding terrorism and social unrest to say the least, that cannot be defused through typical means at such a high rate of immigration through normal means. While these particular measures are draconian, in the end something similar would be done. You see the same trend playing out in other European countries with Chat Control, so to say it is a UK thing is naive. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US probably already can break into these apps because of their technological superiority, and other countries like China straight up demand a back door, so privacy is well and truly dead in modern times.
frostysauce@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
^ That’s racist.
Techranger@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
The USA and UK are both Five Eyes members and routinely share intelligence. If the USA had compromised secure apps, wouldn’t the UK would be privy to intelligence gathered via that method?
eleitl@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Folks, “1984” was supposed to be a warning. Not an instruction manual, with check off items.
SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
We even had a huge reminder with V for Vendetta, but maybe that was too subtle.
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Pervasive surveillance is a hostile act. Abetting genocide and other crimes against humanity is a hostile act. Serving the rich at the expense of the poor is a hostile act.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
It’s a kingdom. They have a certain old dicksucker as a king. And they, importantly, don’t have any historical or current reservations about things you listed, fortified by documents.
razen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What the heck is happening with Europe in general? I thought they were better in terms of maintaining individual privacy, damm.
fatboy93@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
That’s europe, this is just UK. Brexit didn’t work out in a lot of ways they planned
BuckenBerry@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d argue it worked exactly as intended.
yggstyle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Boys… When it’s considered a hostle act to demand rights, ownership, and privacy… We have a problem.
SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Well many governments see their citizens as hostile actors, so its not really a change, is it?
recentSlinky@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
And i think committing and/or assisting in genocides is ‘hostile activity’. One of us is definitely wrong :)
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
wtf is going on in the UK??
Agent641@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The usual.
You got a license for that comment?
horn_e4_beaver@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Welcome to New East Germany.
sleen@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
There needs to be a watchdog for the watchdog, because this is totally unacceptable for a official to be this out of the loop on the technology they are watching over.
If they are a professional they should have some clue as to what is going on, but instead they’re listening to their fascist pals.
DSN9@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Something like everyone can have a say, or input, we can call it democracy, digital democracy, unencumbered by the current neoliberal or rightist fascists. Maybe something where everyone can vote directly, or delegate, and revoke their delegation, with private voting, but open source. No multi trillion dollar budgets for people to cut back room deals for shit outlays. Where public goods funding is reinvigorated for the good of the people, not the administration.
We can call it democracy… something
deathbird@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Absolutely insanity.
ItsMeSpez@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Truly. This global push towards mass surveillance is extremely alarming.
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Don’t y’all vote over there? Government isn’t us vs them. Government is us. Period.
FG_3479@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We have been voting for greedy shits larping as conservative (Conservatives) and greedy shits larping as liberal (Labour).
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
and hanging over us are greedy shits who are pretty openly fascist (reform)
SaraTonin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Up until basically after the last election this was essentially a two-party state. However much of a shitshow Labour is, the Tories were guaranteed to be much worse.
Also, there was a mind of unspoken assumption that human rights lawyer Keir Starmer would gradually move the party back to the left once in power, instead of spending 99% of his time trying to court the small minority of far-right voters who’d never vote Labour in a million years, which is what has actually happened.
And, unless there’s electoral reform in the next 3 years it looks like the actual far-right party will win the next election, because we’ve still got a system designed for a two-party stare in what is now really a 5-party state, meaning that Reform’s current 30% polling would see them with 100% control of the country, if the voting matched the polls.
Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’m baffled that all this tracking nonsense is pushed through by a government that is supposed to be left of the tories. I guess that goes to show you that “center” parties can be just as evil as conservatives.
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
They aren’t left. Starker and chums undermined the left-wing leader of Labour. They’re the pro-business wing of the party. New Labour folks were always dreadful for this sort of thing. Many authoritarian changes are coming from the centre, in UK, France, Denmark etc.
It all feels co-ordinated as states and their representatives squeeze down on working people.
Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I know they aren’t left, that’s why I wrote “left of the tories”. They are centrist and how Starmer ever managed to become prime minister is beyond me. That guy as a suit through and through.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You are exactly where the US was thirty or so years ago. Get ready for the hard push right to try to “attract the moderate Tories”.
khannie@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
PGP has been around since the 90’s can you PLEASE shut the fuck up.
Like please.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What the fuck happened to UK, I knew their average population was dumb when brexit happened but they doubled down on it, like the Americans?
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
People ran so hard from the Tories that they didn’t consider Blue Labour would be dreadful also. Right now Labour and Tories are politically in danger and Reform and the Green Party are surging. Folk are fed up of parties not representing them. They just haven’t fully cottoned on that that also applies to Reform. Greens are probably the main hope right now. Membership trebled to 180k. Polling close to Labour.
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Gosh, and these powers could be handed to Farage.
They could be complicit in what comes next.
sleen@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Farage will definitively not dismiss this opportunity - this and more is what he craves. Fascism will be pushed harder down the throats of the working class which will go a step further than the already fascist attempts at taking away rights of young people.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Doesn’t even RCS and iMessages use E2EE?
I think most messaging apps these days have it. Allegedly even Discord (calls only, not text chat) has it.
brotato@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I think part of this is lawmakers not understanding the gravity of what they’re suggesting. Besides, most of these apps have some sort of backdoor built-in so they can decrypt messages if required in legal proceedings. Ripping E2EE out of everything is an insane assertion to make, and would make the Internet an even more dangerous place than it already is.
fonix232@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Most definitely this.
Most lawmakers don't understand even the surface level nuances of messaging and encryption. All they see is a communication solution that can potentially be used by bad faith actors without any possible oversight by the intelligence services.
partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Does iMessage store the keys locally and encrypt the entire message so only the recipient can decrypt it? Any idea what their handshake looks like—I’m curious if they can still see the messages or not.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
These guys are so fucking stupid. Security and privacy goes both ways. Either for people to use or not. If you don’t want encryption, fine, your online banking doesn’t work anymore
Solrac@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Let’s be hostile together then
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Stamer is running a social experiment, see how many people worldwide can hate him in the least amount of time possible. Everything he and his goons do is double down constantly on shit nobody wants.
oftenawake@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Starmer is a fucking terrible PM and we knew he would be from the start because the establishment wheeled him out to get rid of the Jeremy Corbyn problem.
Starmer sold his soul long ago, his big “human rights lawyer” past counts for jack shit - it’s history. He’s so unlikeable, stands for nothing, has no moral clarity, and has absolutely zero charisma. He’s liked and respected less than a dull secondary school headteacher. Even people who agree with his policies die of boredom and cringe when he’s speaking.
He’s alienated so many former supporters, and meanwhile despite adopting right-wing talking points and policies, he is absolutely loathed by the people who will vote for Fartrage and ReBørk. They think he’s woke, when actually he’s just useless.
Starmer has painted himself into a corner like a twat, and now has nowhere else to go. Labour could have seen it coming if they cared, but they didn’t care because Corbyn posed a bigger threat with some actual socialist policies that were gaining popularity the more people heard about them. We couldn’t have that, could we!
Labour smears Corbyn with bullshit antisemitism accusations, while continuing to arm Netanyahu and profiting from the genocide. A Palestinian genocide we’re not allowed to express support for a certain genocide-opposing nonviolent direct Action movement, without getting arrested?
Now there’s nonviolent political prisoners, held on remand with no trials yet, some seriously ill on hunger strike. All because Labour have no principles.
The whole lot is laid bare here in fascist Britannia. The Labour party is bought and paid for by the arms industry and the Israel lobby. Starmer is a loathed lame-duck PM and should go ASAP to limit the damage, but he won’t. He’s a hanger-on, an egotist with a messiah complex, much like Blair was. It’s already too late and in any case there’s nobody good to replace him, or anywhere to advance current Labour policies that doesn’t just play more into the narratives of the far right. The more Starmer plays on their terms, the more he and Labour lose. He’s lost authority and has no control of the narrative.
The Tories are in disarray too and are trying to play the “brown people who are clamping down on immigration” fool move, also directly playing on the far right’s terms and losing. Bad-enoch is also utterly uncharismatic, but in far more of a problem for potential Tory voters, she’s black and a woman! A tokenistic bit of lip-service to trying to be a modern political party - it won’t wash with Tory voters, they will smile and secretly vote to stab Bad-enoch in the back when she’s no longer useful to them.
If bloody Fartrage gets in though, it’s firmly at the feet of Starmer, who couldn’t be harder to vote for if he tried.
Because he’s so crap, and implementing fascist policies, he will be directly responsible for ushering in ReBørk votes, since he hasn’t really made the case for anything different.
What a fucking waste of space and very real fascist threat Starmer is!
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I often wonder whether Starmer has even one sincerely held political beliefs or value. I’d love to put him in a zone of Truth (D&D spell) and just ask him what he actually believes.
It’s weird, because it means that I sort of respect the Tories more. They believed many abhorrent things, such as that a cripple like me is at best, an inconvenient drain on the country’s resources, and at worst, someone who is making it all up to escape having to work — but at least they sincerely believe that.
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
And tk think that you’ve barely scratched the surface of the actual shitshow that fucker is. I’m not British, but have plenty of very good British friends, and in my over half a century of age, I never though 1 fucker could destroy British culture and way of life the way this asshole has singlehandedly done, and somehow figuring out how to make it worse every day. I feel for the British people.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You may think they’re idiots who pass Reform’s laws for them, but you are wrong! They also pass Conservative laws!
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Competition was always a myth anyways.
DSN9@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
What’s app 😂 how does what’s app ever get rolled in with privacy respecting apps
“Today, with the right information, right technology and algorithm, companies can create simulations of individuals, and use the machines to predict future actions such as purchases, locations, changes in career or relationship status.
According to a study published in 2019, there is a possibility of achieving 95% of the potential predictive accuracy for an individual using their social ties. This means that one’s social contacts are sufficient to predict their personal attributes.”
LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Off topic but does the UK still have the death penalty for treason? Just wondering.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I know this is gonna get downvoted but…
This is all going to lead to needing to use some open blockchain based communication system.
E2E encrypted, routed through a public blockchain they can’t block. Use one of Ethereums L2 systems to keep short messages under a penny and route all payments through Tornado Cash so they can’t be tracked.
All open source, nothing to take down, uncensorable.
It won’t be for everyone at first it would he too technical in a lot of cases, but it’s going to he the last option at the end of this road.
AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I dont see why it need blockchain unless it’s needed to keep a registry. Which for day to day communication I think it’s excessive
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s because it can’t be taken down. What happens when they arrest everyone working at signal? When they arrest you for hosting a encrypted message relay?
That’s where language like this is headed.
Ethereum also recently introduced something called blobs, which is temporary data that lasts around 18 days. So it isn’t necessary stored forever if you wanted a not as permanent message. There are archives that will keep all that as well, but it’s not maintained on the regular chain.
RedGreenBlue@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
The future is in making a laptop that doesn’t appear to be encrypted. AI-powered steganography will be the only way to communicate reasonably at some point. The only thing that’ll give it away is that there are more than the usual number of poorly cropped and unique memes.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean ya, that works if they know who you are.
horn_e4_beaver@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
You are about 4 years behind the zeitgeist. Where is the AI?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sorry my bad. The messages will all be converted into AI slop when you submit them so you aren’t actually communicating with someone with your own written words so you have plausible deniability that you didn’t actually write any messages using encryption which is now an offense punishable by death.
0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I don’t know about you guys but this feels like a reverse psychology psyop to increase the usage of these two apps. There are a ton more e2ee chat messengers, but they point to the only two apps using the signal protocol. Maybe they’re sitting on some 0-day exploits?
But if you want to believe the surveillance government at face value then go right ahead.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Remember how, before the internet, intelligence agencies by default didn’t know what anyone was saying to anyone else face to face or by mail, and had to actually work to find out? The country didn’t fall apart. Why is the standard now that everything must be handed to them on a plate?
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I’m not disagreeing with you but what would happen back then is that they simply wouldn’t stop the crime.
At some point we need to decide if giving up all of our personal freedoms is with stopping some of that. I vote no enthusiastically. We just have to accept that some of that crime won’t be stopped and law enforcement will have to work harder.
4am@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
If our countries could stop doing things that give people a reason to commit terroristic acts, Maybe that would solve some of it and we could be more secure in our papers and possessions without unlawful interference and undue search and seizures but that’s apparently none of my business
arrow74@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
This isn’t a new concept by any means. The argument of crime prevention has been used since governments existed
JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
They don’t even stop significantly more crime now… They simply invent new “crimes” and jerk each other off for keeping the streets safe from that minority eating their lunch or going for a walk.
hayvan@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
I would give up privacy only under one condition: everyone gives up all privacy. No exceptions.
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You’ll love this!
I deployed an open-source chat system at work, just for convenience. Boss was concerned that it didn’t do any logging and we couldn’t tell who said what.
“You don’t have any records of what we say verbally. What’s the difference?”
“…Oh. Well, you’re right.”
He was coming from a legit concern. We didn’t point fingers when someone screwed up, zero blame, but we needed to know exactly what happened so we could fix it.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
That they can is what has changed. They didn’t have sufficient information to put pressure.
They still had microphones and inquiry drugs, including those causing memory loss. So they knew plenty of what people were saying to each other.
Anyway. Everything has changed a lot, not just technology, and one can’t really make a chain of causation to all this. There are plenty of feedback loops.
The rules now are “we are stronger, so we are forbidding everything we don’t want”. Losing leverage does that.
Until you learn of some way to hit them back, such questions are no good, because not answering them doesn’t cost anything.
big_slap@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think its a mixture of lazy and inexperience.
I believe if someone in a position of authority who understands how vital E2EE is in order for the internet to work, this suggestion wouldn’t even be on the table.
its a case of just kicking destroying E2EE down the road for another generation to deal with, I believe. not sure what the solution is, either
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
That might be an illusion. You might be perceiving the world without normalized E2EE as something too horrible to consider. But it would be a stable system, functional for the taste of those people.
fartographer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They cut costs by firing the people doing the legwork and passed the savings along to billionaires who promised sustainable models. Now they can’t hire people to do real legwork anymore because, “no one wants to work anymore for their grandparents’ wage in an economy and society designed to turn people into voluntary slaves and the only way to escape is to become homeless and go off the grid, but the laws are being molded to prevent anyone from escaping the system.”
I’m pretty sure that’s how the old adage goes.