Submitted 14 hours ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to technology@lemmy.world
Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK.
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?
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.
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
This isn’t a new concept by any means. The argument of crime prevention has been used since governments existed
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.
I would give up privacy only under one condition: everyone gives up all privacy. No exceptions.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
wtf is going on in the UK??
Well many governments see their citizens as hostile actors, so its not really a change, is it?
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.
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.
Absolutely insanity.
Truly. This global push towards mass surveillance is extremely alarming.
What the fuck happened to the UK? Is Trump president there too?
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.
The right wing fascism wave is a world trend my guy. This is just the start.
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.
What the heck is happening with Europe in general? I thought they were better in terms of maintaining individual privacy, damm.
That’s europe, this is just UK. Brexit didn’t work out in a lot of ways they planned
I’d argue it worked exactly as intended.
Wow, the UK sounds like an awful place.
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.
It first starts with the “children” or the “bad actors/terrorists” and ends with a straight up fascist police state.
Agreed, but Australia and the UK are way ahead of the rest.
Ah its not so bad if you get so drunk your critical thinking skills go out the window.
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.
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!
Said proudly by the hostile actors.
While casually performing hostile activity
Welcome to New East Germany.
PGP has been around since the 90’s can you PLEASE shut the fuck up.
Like please.
Folks, “1984” was supposed to be a warning. Not an instruction manual, with check off items.
We even had a huge reminder with V for Vendetta, but maybe that was too subtle.
And i think committing and/or assisting in genocides is ‘hostile activity’. One of us is definitely wrong :)
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.
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
Let’s be hostile together then
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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!
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.
You may think they’re idiots who pass Reform’s laws for them, but you are wrong! They also pass Conservative laws!
Gosh, and these powers could be handed to Farage.
They could be complicit in what comes next.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Off topic but does the UK still have the death penalty for treason? Just wondering.
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.
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.
I mean ya, that works if they know who you are.
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
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.
You are about 4 years behind the zeitgeist. Where is the AI?
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.
yggstyle@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Boys… When it’s considered a hostle act to demand rights, ownership, and privacy… We have a problem.
I’m reminded of a particular movies speech…