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UK government plans publicity blitz against encrypted communications

310 points by danyork 5y ago

ashtonkem 5y ago
It honestly seems like the MPs involved still suffer the delusion that the U.K. is important enough to strong arm multinational companies into doing their will in order to gain access to the U.K. as a market. Genuinely not sure why they still think that, after their half assed (pun intended) attempt to ban pornography from their internet.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Governments hate the idea of not being able to open your mail. Politicians want to be able to control every aspect of your life down to picking up some groceries at the grocery or paying your babysitter. I really hope people don't fall for this garbage. Sure there is a price to be paid for privacy but there is a much larger price to pay for not having it.
eunice 5y ago
given how many of this cabinet are close to the likes of jeffrey epstein the 'think of the children' stuff is particularly laughable
tjpnz 5y ago
Any insights as to why the big players are implementing E2E while ignoring P2P? Is this a control issue or purely related to technical challenges?
- 323 5y ago
  One big problem with P2P is that it reveals the IP address of the other party.
  - gruez 5y ago
    p2p but route it over tor?
    - Mystlix 5y ago
      yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right. and no, the companies themselves shouldn't set up exit nodes to expand the network because then they would still know everyone's IP address and could give that info to the police. either the Tor network gets reinforced on a completely independent basis or nothing
      - gruez 5y ago
        >yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right You realize that hidden services don't require exit nodes?
  - tjpnz 5y ago
    That's true but aren't the feds already able to request that as metadata?
    - labawi 5y ago
      Probably, but a random stalker can't, and your local ISP / network snooper can't tell who you talking to either. OTOH, many email providers do include the sender's IP, so it doesn't seem like a deal-breaker.
    - 323 5y ago
      I meant the other party that you are talking too. For example I initiate a conversation with you and now I know your IP address. This was a problem with Yahoo! Messenger which was P2P.
  - salawat 5y ago
    This is true of any network architecture that guarantees delivery of a message between terminii. The legal conflation you're actually homing in on is we conflate technical terminals with their human users. We've been doing it for years, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
- xoa 5y ago
  >Any insights as to why the big players are implementing E2E while ignoring P2P? Is this a control issue or purely related to technical challenges? Both. Certainly a lot of major players see messaging as an important strategic area, not much needs to be said about that. But remember, for actual secure communications one needs both encryption and authentication, and the latter is a much more challenging problem. Purely as a matter of tech there could be better ways to go about that, but in practice there isn't any great infra for that inter-system, which is both distributed or at least federated and easy/accessible for the overwhelming majority of the population. It's improving in fits and starts but still a mess. A lot of the natural places that might make sense to base authentication off of have insecure foundations with enormous legacy base that'd be hard to change (typical collective action problem), or are very slow moving for other reasons. Centralized solutions just make authentication much easier, even if at obvious cost and SPOF-risk. Within any given platform the centralized provider can of course guarantee all participants about certain properties of whomever they're dealing with. Governments could perhaps require some sort of industry standardized public-key based interoperability of auth, but even assuming they didn't muck it up goverments themselves (as this article shows) have unfortunate perverse incentives there. Not many have internalized yet that the economic cost of poor authentication and security is very high because it's so distributed. There may be a bit of coming around on that but it's slow. A grim silver lining to all the ransomware attacks for example is that at least they're highly visible and painful, and at last have started to motivate minds a bit. But the addiction of many agencies to old models is strong.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  In the US, people have meager upload bandwidth. I assume to deliver a comparable experience as serving from the cloud, P2P would require much more upload bandwidth for individuals.
FabHK 5y ago
If only some large tech company could come up with a way to deal with CSAM while still allowing for e2e... /s
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  This sarcasm is unbecoming. Client side filtering absolutely is not a panacea for “safe” end to end encryption. It is a cop in your pocket. Dystopia. The UK can continue making up its own reality if it wishes, strong encryption is the only way forward.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Apple's plan was awful. How about there be no scanning at all? If you don't want your stuff scanned then don't put it on icloud or encrypt it before you put it there. I personally don't want scan-all-the-things policing software put on any of my devices. That should require a warrant at the least.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    But you see what happens when there is no scanning at all: politicians hook onto this awful crime to argue against e2ee. Of course, e2ee everywhere (e2eee? e2e3?) would be all fine and dandy if you didn't have these malicious actors. But we do. Suppose there are three options: 1. Encryption and no CSAM scanning 2. Encryption and on-device CSAM scanning 3. No encryption Currently we have 1 (more or less). Legislators are increasingly averse to keeping it that way, and are arguing for 3. Apple proposed 2. What is the alternative? Is there another option?
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      That's why you fire your representative and get a new one. Two wrongs don't make a right. Don't bend on this or they will break you later. The US government is already heading towards fascism with Trump's likely win in 2024, we don't need to speed it along.
tupac_speedrap 5y ago
This is bollocks, GCHQ get on fine with metadata and most CSAM is back-doored anyway, it is literally "think of the children" claptrap. It's just another power grab, we already have some of the worst privacy laws in the world in the UK.
mhh__ 5y ago
We need a new government (then a new political class, but small things first...)
brokenmachine 5y ago
So the UK is getting rid of https now?
kzzzznot 5y ago
> “A glass box is installed in a public space,” the presentation notes. “Inside the box, there are two actors; one child and one adult. Both strangers. The child sits playing on their smart phone. At the other end of the box, we see an adult sat on a chair also on their phone, typing away. > “The adult occasionally looks over at the child, knowingly. Intermittently through the day, the ‘privacy glass’ will turn on and the previously transparent glass box will become opaque. Passers by won’t be able to see what’s happening inside. In other words, we create a sense of unease by hiding what the child and adult are doing online when their interaction can’t be seen.” This is bizarre and confused, sounds like something from Brass Eye/The Day Today.[1] The “privacy glass” doesn’t make you wonder what they’re talking about online, it’s what’s happening in a confined box between a stranger and a child. Before the “privacy” glass is activated, you can’t see what they’re doing on their phones anyway. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=SRRw1ERj2Gc https://youtube.com/watch?v=SRRw1ERj2Gc
abagheri43 5y ago
stephen_g 5y ago
Those stunts sound super creepy and messed up. Weird, manipulative campaign. This shouldn't really be legal surely in democracies to have campaigns that "appear to be the result of grassroots campaigns and children's charities, while downplaying any Government involvement", when it's a political manipulation campaign paid for, coordinated and organised by the Government themselves. I really hope the counter-campaign mentioned is good (although hard to compete with the already hundreds of thousands of pounds already allocated to this already).
- tialaramex 5y ago
  I mean, the present UK government also broke a whole bunch of other laws, so, why would they care if it's illegal? The current British Prime Minister was literally fired from a previous job as a journalist because he can't stop telling lies. It's worth making a distinction from Trump here. Trump wasn't a liar, Trump was a bullshitter. A Liar knows what the truth is, and is trying to convince you of a falsehood, bullshitters have no idea what is true or false, they don't care. In some ways this makes Boris worse - he's deliberately trying to mislead you, which is harder to evade, is his claim that he enjoys making model buses a lie? Probably, but why is he lying about that? There were various theories. With Trump what he's saying has no connection to anything, so, it offers no clues as to the facts but at least you know that. But like Trump, Boris is very popular with people who don't know much of anything. For them, the results of their support for Boris (everything got worse) are disheartening, but they're unable to join the dots. Who knows why this has happened, it surely can't be Boris' fault, wouldn't he tell us?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Given that distinction between liar and bullshitter, I think Johnson is not even capable of comprehending that “truth” is a concept, let alone that other people can and do judge him for saying untrue things. Main example that gives me this belief is this: https://youtu.be/wzUDRyciqVM https://youtu.be/wzUDRyciqVM Where Boris Johnson says “well actually there’s no press here” to a man who responds by turning to and pointing out the press cameras filming both of them having this conversation and saying “What do you mean there is no press here? What are they then?”
samwillis 5y ago
I find it amusing that WhatsApp and its e2ee is used as a common target for regulation by the government when their own ministers are using it to organise all sorts of shenanigans; illegal parties during lockdown, “anonymous” briefing of journalists, leaking compromising information about their peers. Not to mention that it always seems like the government is run via WhatsApp (probably need the e2ee for that!). Ultimately this is about perceived control, the paraphrased saying goes “if you outlaw encryption only outlaws will have encryption”. Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists, it will however allow the government and law enforcement to say “you have encrypted chat software, that’s illegal, therefore you must be doing something illegal”. However, that wont necessarily translate to prosecution, it’s only the perception that matters. Pandora’s box may have been opened but governments will always find a way to “control” their citizens, usually through fear.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  The government likes having THEIR communications e2e but we peasants should not also have that freedom. They feel they should be able to monitor and control every aspect of our lives because that is the type of people that politics attract. They look at China's power to monitor communications, block the entire nation's internet, and wall off entire cities not with shock but with envy.
- adflux 5y ago
  Scumbag politicians here in the Netherlands are actually using Signal to avoid courts obtain their communications through the Dutch equivalent of the FOIA. Politics here is starting to look more like mob politics... Our prime minister is actually known to do as little on paper as possible - so when the shit hits the fan, he'll always say "oh I didn't know" or "I didn't remember"...
- ben_w 5y ago
  > Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists Hmm, I used to think this, but now? Now I think most people are bad at tech and security. No reason to expect the average criminal would be better. Of course, trivial for us to make it, or hide it in something that looks unrelated. And I expect serious organised crime to be able to afford a developer with no morals. But normal crime? It probably will make a difference.
tobbob 5y ago
End to end encryption will surely make a government's task of protecting the public much harder. It allows paedos, terrorists and the like to communicate freely, and any efforts to track what they're up to must be an absolute nightmare. The problem is, getting rid of encryption is replacing a bad situation with a disastrous situation. If you ban locks so the government can obtain access to the house of a terrorist, it means anyone now has access to anyone's house. If this article is to be believed, it really feels like someone just hasn't thought this through. Surely there's tech people whose job is to explain this to politicians.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  If you want your communications to go to the government, I suggest you make a zip file and send it off to them. Personally I don't think any phone, tech device, or anything else should have spying software on it. It should require a specific warrant for a person, place, and time limit. The government has Far Too Much power already, we don't need to give it any more. Sure it allows criminals to do crime but it also allows the rest of us to carry on our lives without being spied on at every turn.
  - tobbob 5y ago
    Are people only reading the first sentence I wrote? I made the argument in favour of encryption.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Yes, malicious actors can also be found within the government. This is the reason behind placing limits on the power of the state.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wanda 5y ago
  > protecting the public Are you serious? This isn't high on their agenda at all. > surely there's tech people whose job is to explain this to politicians You have a very, very optimistic view of the world. If the government needs to get a consultant, they'll just find one who agrees with them.
323 5y ago
A more effective approach would be to highlight how the far-right uses encrypted chat apps. That would get the majority of the media and blue-checks supporting you. > Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists. https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-social-media-extremists https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia... > In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where... > Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-warned-of-nurturing-subculture-deifying-terrorists https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war... > White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-telegram-racism-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t... > Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/telegram-signal-misinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-telegram-chat-apps/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-...
- decremental 5y ago
  Clearly extremist rhetoric. It needs to be called out before we all drown in it. Luckily and thankfully the community is identifying it as such.
- wanda 5y ago
  Don't forget to promote chopping off everyone's hands. I hear some ultra-right-wing people might be typing their nonsense with their hands. So we should make sure no one has hands, that'll get em. ~ Also, this list of US news vendors' articles against e2ee is kinda evidence that it's not just the UK going on a campaign.
mbroncano 5y ago
Does anybody know how (or even if) these kind of campaigns are run in the US?
- petre 5y ago
  No, in the US the government just classified encryption as weapons unsuitable for export. A more clean approach, rather than think of the children shenigans, all while certain members of the royal family have ties with a convicted child trafficker and his wife.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > in the US the government just classified encryption as weapons unsuitable for export. ... You realize that that hasn't been the case for ~20 years, right?
    - petre 5y ago
      Yes. I'm not blaming, it was a rather bureaucratic move though and it did not stop US citizens from using encryption, nor export. Tampering with the ECC crypto factors was much more ellegant.
    - humazed 5y ago
      >... You realize that that hasn't been the case for ~20 years, right? that's not true, try submitting an app to apple store, and you will get hit with a lot of Encryption Export Regulations prompts. please see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying_with_encryption_export_regulations https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying... >When you submit your app to TestFlight or the App Store, you upload your app to a server in the United States. If you distribute your app outside the U.S. or Canada, your app is subject to U.S. export laws, regardless of where your legal entity is based. If your app uses, accesses, contains, implements, or incorporates encryption, this is considered an export of encryption software, which means your app is subject to U.S. export compliance requirements, as well as the import compliance requirements of the countries where you distribute your app.
basisword 5y ago
This is just exasperating. Pro privacy? You’re responsible for child abuse. Every time you think the current British government can’t sink any lower…
- hn_version_0023 5y ago
  Seems to me its the people in the government who are widely responsible for child abuse. Just ask Prince Andrew.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    What does Prince Andrew have to do with the government?
    - adventured 5y ago
      The United Kingdom is a monarchy ruled by Queen Elizabeth (the mother of Andrew), even though the British people go far out of their way to pretend that's not the case. It's why Boris Johnson had to meet with the queen about forming a new government. Why is she involved at all? It's because she rules the United Kingdom in fact. Andrew's family rules Britain (for what, 1200 years? [1]), that's quite relevant to the context. The political structure of the United Kingdom goes very far out of its way to look after and protect the royal family (their rulers). Shall we pretend that the family that has ruled Britain for 1200 years has no political power? Har har. Every country in Europe that still regressively clings to a monarchy (and there are a lot of them) goes out of its way to pretend - because it's so comically backwards - that their monarchy is only a figurehead / ceremonial and has no real role. In fact they're all back up dictatorships waiting in the wings if there's ever enough political chaos to prompt the people to turn to that, and that happens every time historically. [1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/lineage-british-royal-family https://allthatsinteresting.com/lineage-british-royal-family
      - KaiserPro 5y ago
        > Shall we pretend that the family that has ruled Britain for 1200 years has no political power? Har har. That's like saying the Church of England still has significant political power. it still has the ability to take tithes, although they are mostly optional. The present royal family only really dates back to victoria, I mean sure they are tangentially related to the german/dutch/scots/danish that ruled before, but its not that strong. The monarchy is constitutional technical debt. Technically the queen can refuse to sign laws, and dissolve parliament, but as the constitution is basically "because we said so" it'll be the last thing the queen does. The queen has "influence", but not political power.
datavirtue 5y ago
Hmmm....it's for the children. This sounds like an attempt to keep law abiding people from privacy while guaranteeing that any criminal worth their salt is fully protected by their own encryption. Again, law abiding citizens are left unprotected as the government seeks it's own interest in keeping popular platforms wide open to their unconditional snooping. Spending tax dollars to eliminate privacy for those paying the taxes. Keep poking the bear.
tradesurplus 5y ago
This is to prevent MPs and civil servants from evading professional communications logs rules, right? Right?
kerneloftruth 5y ago
I'm not surprised that the UK is deploying it's often used Nanny State scare tactics to try and outlaw encryption. Don't take them lightly, though, fight back!
motohagiography 5y ago
The campaign as described sounds like what would be classified as hate speech against any other identifiable group, and yet so long as governments and their appendant "agencies" approve of creating new identifiable groups to target with otherwise proscribed speech, it's somehow acceptable? This is Hutu vs. Tutsi meets Gobbels level propaganda, and I'm sure it must be very fun to be so righteous, we know how it ends. While mainstream society and discourses are not allowed to reason about the applicability or justness of violence, these official parties appear free to incite and direct it, and notably, to selectively enforce the provisions against it so that it's directed at the right people. These are dishonest parties working in bad faith using special protection, what are the alternatives? I'm afraid the only thing they will understand is cost.
jevoten 5y ago
> The new campaign, however, is entirely focused on the argument that improved encryption would hamper efforts to tackle child exploitation online. I bet cars and homes without microphones and cameras spying on their residents also hampers their efforts to keep children safe - are those next on the chopping block? They're already spying on near every street corner, after all. Funny how they never say "Technology has given us all this extra surveillance capability, you can reduce our legal powers somewhat to compensate" - it's always "People have some tiny scrap of privacy left - we must eliminate it, or terrorists and pedophiles win!"
- belter 5y ago
- mattlondon 5y ago
  > They're already spying on near every street corner, after all. Citation needed.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jevoten 5y ago
    One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveill... I'll leave it to you to estimate how many people live per street corner, on average.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - foldr 5y ago
      For the UK government to be “spying on every street corner”, these cameras would have to be hooked up to some kind of central system. They’re not (and indeed most are privately owned).
pixelpoet 5y ago
The sheer audacity of claiming this is about protecting children, while politically connected people like Prince Andrew walk free, is just mindblowing. Wow, just wow.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Not sure if he'll walk free (that would be for a judge to judge), but this week was a bit of turning point: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/13/veterans-ask-queen-to-strip-prince-andrew-of-honorary-military-titles https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/13/veterans-ask...
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Even if he eventually gets in trouble, it’s hard to argue that the British state didn’t pull out the stops to protect their pedophile prince while wringing their hands about child abuse and online encryption. Oh, and Keir Starmer oversaw the prosecutor’s office who decided not to charge Jimmy Savile, who turned out to be a prolific (hundreds of accusers) child rapist. So as far as child abuse is concerned, the call appears to be coming from inside the house.
  - boffinAudio 5y ago
    Prince Andrew is just the tip of the iceberg of the UK's heinous, protected, pedophile classes.
oliv__ 5y ago
The way the article breaks down exactly how the campaign is set to "persuade" the public feels so dystopian and cynical. Launching a £500K media campaign (with public funds) under the cover up pretense that "UK’s biggest children’s charity and stakeholders have come together to urge social media companies to put children’s safety first" and then swaying people through "'sofa programmes' such as Loose Women and This Morning for broadcast". If this isn't manufactured consent, I don't know what is. But seeing what happens behind the curtains really makes you wonder: what other "mainstream opinions" were created this way?
CommanderData 5y ago
Because TLS is already broken with the trusted model. CAs subpoenaed and also hacked a few years ago. PKI is dead. If you're a threat level is the state then there's very little to hide from them.
jonplackett 5y ago
The other day I was telling my mum about how in China they can monitor and delete anything you post online. Even delete an entire type of post made by millions of people based on a keyword etc etc. Her response, rather than the horror I was trying to i instil, was “I think we ought to have that here!” So it does worry me that public support could go the wrong way on this if they spend a lot of time on messaging. I hope that the high level of mistrust of the government - built up especially through covid - will prevail.
barnabee 5y ago
Does anyone know who I can donate to to fund a counter-campaign?
ghostwriter 5y ago
The Government should instead be running a publicity blitz on how the police and law enforcement agencies ignore victims of grooming gangs and avoid investigations because of political correctness [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7901731/Police-chief-admitted-force-ignored-sex-abuse-grooming-gangs-30-years.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7901731/Police-chie... [2] https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/harrowing-texts-girl-grooming-gang-25542778 https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/harrowing-t... [3] https://mallarduk.com/grooming-gang-survivor-proposes-new-definition-dr-ella-hill/ https://mallarduk.com/grooming-gang-survivor-proposes-new-de... [4] https://archive.is/TVP64 https://archive.is/TVP64 [5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-59828338 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-598283...
prima-facie 5y ago
Good thing this government has solved the rampant knife crime in London and the rest of England. Now they can move on to more pedestrian things like banning WhatsApp.

310 points by danyork 5y ago

It honestly seems like the MPs involved still suffer the delusion that the U.K. is important enough to strong arm multinational companies into doing their will in order to gain access to the U.K. as a market. Genuinely not sure why they still think that, after their half assed (pun intended) attempt to ban pornography from their internet.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Governments hate the idea of not being able to open your mail. Politicians want to be able to control every aspect of your life down to picking up some groceries at the grocery or paying your babysitter. I really hope people don't fall for this garbage. Sure there is a price to be paid for privacy but there is a much larger price to pay for not having it.

eunice 5y ago

given how many of this cabinet are close to the likes of jeffrey epstein the 'think of the children' stuff is particularly laughable

tjpnz 5y ago

Any insights as to why the big players are implementing E2E while ignoring P2P? Is this a control issue or purely related to technical challenges?

323 5y ago
One big problem with P2P is that it reveals the IP address of the other party.
- gruez 5y ago
  p2p but route it over tor?
  - Mystlix 5y ago
    yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right. and no, the companies themselves shouldn't set up exit nodes to expand the network because then they would still know everyone's IP address and could give that info to the police. either the Tor network gets reinforced on a completely independent basis or nothing
    - gruez 5y ago
      >yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right You realize that hidden services don't require exit nodes?
- tjpnz 5y ago
  That's true but aren't the feds already able to request that as metadata?
  - labawi 5y ago
    Probably, but a random stalker can't, and your local ISP / network snooper can't tell who you talking to either. OTOH, many email providers do include the sender's IP, so it doesn't seem like a deal-breaker.
  - 323 5y ago
    I meant the other party that you are talking too. For example I initiate a conversation with you and now I know your IP address. This was a problem with Yahoo! Messenger which was P2P.
- salawat 5y ago
  This is true of any network architecture that guarantees delivery of a message between terminii. The legal conflation you're actually homing in on is we conflate technical terminals with their human users. We've been doing it for years, and it shows no sign of slowing down.
xoa 5y ago
>Any insights as to why the big players are implementing E2E while ignoring P2P? Is this a control issue or purely related to technical challenges? Both. Certainly a lot of major players see messaging as an important strategic area, not much needs to be said about that. But remember, for actual secure communications one needs both encryption and authentication, and the latter is a much more challenging problem. Purely as a matter of tech there could be better ways to go about that, but in practice there isn't any great infra for that inter-system, which is both distributed or at least federated and easy/accessible for the overwhelming majority of the population. It's improving in fits and starts but still a mess. A lot of the natural places that might make sense to base authentication off of have insecure foundations with enormous legacy base that'd be hard to change (typical collective action problem), or are very slow moving for other reasons. Centralized solutions just make authentication much easier, even if at obvious cost and SPOF-risk. Within any given platform the centralized provider can of course guarantee all participants about certain properties of whomever they're dealing with. Governments could perhaps require some sort of industry standardized public-key based interoperability of auth, but even assuming they didn't muck it up goverments themselves (as this article shows) have unfortunate perverse incentives there. Not many have internalized yet that the economic cost of poor authentication and security is very high because it's so distributed. There may be a bit of coming around on that but it's slow. A grim silver lining to all the ransomware attacks for example is that at least they're highly visible and painful, and at last have started to motivate minds a bit. But the addiction of many agencies to old models is strong.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
In the US, people have meager upload bandwidth. I assume to deliver a comparable experience as serving from the cloud, P2P would require much more upload bandwidth for individuals.

FabHK 5y ago

If only some large tech company could come up with a way to deal with CSAM while still allowing for e2e... /s

randomhodler84 5y ago
This sarcasm is unbecoming. Client side filtering absolutely is not a panacea for “safe” end to end encryption. It is a cop in your pocket. Dystopia. The UK can continue making up its own reality if it wishes, strong encryption is the only way forward.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Apple's plan was awful. How about there be no scanning at all? If you don't want your stuff scanned then don't put it on icloud or encrypt it before you put it there. I personally don't want scan-all-the-things policing software put on any of my devices. That should require a warrant at the least.
- FabHK 5y ago
  But you see what happens when there is no scanning at all: politicians hook onto this awful crime to argue against e2ee. Of course, e2ee everywhere (e2eee? e2e3?) would be all fine and dandy if you didn't have these malicious actors. But we do. Suppose there are three options: 1. Encryption and no CSAM scanning 2. Encryption and on-device CSAM scanning 3. No encryption Currently we have 1 (more or less). Legislators are increasingly averse to keeping it that way, and are arguing for 3. Apple proposed 2. What is the alternative? Is there another option?
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    That's why you fire your representative and get a new one. Two wrongs don't make a right. Don't bend on this or they will break you later. The US government is already heading towards fascism with Trump's likely win in 2024, we don't need to speed it along.

tupac_speedrap 5y ago

This is bollocks, GCHQ get on fine with metadata and most CSAM is back-doored anyway, it is literally "think of the children" claptrap. It's just another power grab, we already have some of the worst privacy laws in the world in the UK.

mhh__ 5y ago

We need a new government (then a new political class, but small things first...)

brokenmachine 5y ago

So the UK is getting rid of https now?

kzzzznot 5y ago

> “A glass box is installed in a public space,” the presentation notes. “Inside the box, there are two actors; one child and one adult. Both strangers. The child sits playing on their smart phone. At the other end of the box, we see an adult sat on a chair also on their phone, typing away. > “The adult occasionally looks over at the child, knowingly. Intermittently through the day, the ‘privacy glass’ will turn on and the previously transparent glass box will become opaque. Passers by won’t be able to see what’s happening inside. In other words, we create a sense of unease by hiding what the child and adult are doing online when their interaction can’t be seen.” This is bizarre and confused, sounds like something from Brass Eye/The Day Today.[1] The “privacy glass” doesn’t make you wonder what they’re talking about online, it’s what’s happening in a confined box between a stranger and a child. Before the “privacy” glass is activated, you can’t see what they’re doing on their phones anyway. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=SRRw1ERj2Gc https://youtube.com/watch?v=SRRw1ERj2Gc

abagheri43 5y ago

stephen_g 5y ago

Those stunts sound super creepy and messed up. Weird, manipulative campaign. This shouldn't really be legal surely in democracies to have campaigns that "appear to be the result of grassroots campaigns and children's charities, while downplaying any Government involvement", when it's a political manipulation campaign paid for, coordinated and organised by the Government themselves. I really hope the counter-campaign mentioned is good (although hard to compete with the already hundreds of thousands of pounds already allocated to this already).

tialaramex 5y ago
I mean, the present UK government also broke a whole bunch of other laws, so, why would they care if it's illegal? The current British Prime Minister was literally fired from a previous job as a journalist because he can't stop telling lies. It's worth making a distinction from Trump here. Trump wasn't a liar, Trump was a bullshitter. A Liar knows what the truth is, and is trying to convince you of a falsehood, bullshitters have no idea what is true or false, they don't care. In some ways this makes Boris worse - he's deliberately trying to mislead you, which is harder to evade, is his claim that he enjoys making model buses a lie? Probably, but why is he lying about that? There were various theories. With Trump what he's saying has no connection to anything, so, it offers no clues as to the facts but at least you know that. But like Trump, Boris is very popular with people who don't know much of anything. For them, the results of their support for Boris (everything got worse) are disheartening, but they're unable to join the dots. Who knows why this has happened, it surely can't be Boris' fault, wouldn't he tell us?
- ben_w 5y ago
  Given that distinction between liar and bullshitter, I think Johnson is not even capable of comprehending that “truth” is a concept, let alone that other people can and do judge him for saying untrue things. Main example that gives me this belief is this: https://youtu.be/wzUDRyciqVM https://youtu.be/wzUDRyciqVM Where Boris Johnson says “well actually there’s no press here” to a man who responds by turning to and pointing out the press cameras filming both of them having this conversation and saying “What do you mean there is no press here? What are they then?”

samwillis 5y ago

I find it amusing that WhatsApp and its e2ee is used as a common target for regulation by the government when their own ministers are using it to organise all sorts of shenanigans; illegal parties during lockdown, “anonymous” briefing of journalists, leaking compromising information about their peers. Not to mention that it always seems like the government is run via WhatsApp (probably need the e2ee for that!). Ultimately this is about perceived control, the paraphrased saying goes “if you outlaw encryption only outlaws will have encryption”. Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists, it will however allow the government and law enforcement to say “you have encrypted chat software, that’s illegal, therefore you must be doing something illegal”. However, that wont necessarily translate to prosecution, it’s only the perception that matters. Pandora’s box may have been opened but governments will always find a way to “control” their citizens, usually through fear.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
The government likes having THEIR communications e2e but we peasants should not also have that freedom. They feel they should be able to monitor and control every aspect of our lives because that is the type of people that politics attract. They look at China's power to monitor communications, block the entire nation's internet, and wall off entire cities not with shock but with envy.
adflux 5y ago
Scumbag politicians here in the Netherlands are actually using Signal to avoid courts obtain their communications through the Dutch equivalent of the FOIA. Politics here is starting to look more like mob politics... Our prime minister is actually known to do as little on paper as possible - so when the shit hits the fan, he'll always say "oh I didn't know" or "I didn't remember"...
ben_w 5y ago
> Legislation won’t reduce the use of encryption by criminals and terrorists Hmm, I used to think this, but now? Now I think most people are bad at tech and security. No reason to expect the average criminal would be better. Of course, trivial for us to make it, or hide it in something that looks unrelated. And I expect serious organised crime to be able to afford a developer with no morals. But normal crime? It probably will make a difference.

tobbob 5y ago

End to end encryption will surely make a government's task of protecting the public much harder. It allows paedos, terrorists and the like to communicate freely, and any efforts to track what they're up to must be an absolute nightmare. The problem is, getting rid of encryption is replacing a bad situation with a disastrous situation. If you ban locks so the government can obtain access to the house of a terrorist, it means anyone now has access to anyone's house. If this article is to be believed, it really feels like someone just hasn't thought this through. Surely there's tech people whose job is to explain this to politicians.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
If you want your communications to go to the government, I suggest you make a zip file and send it off to them. Personally I don't think any phone, tech device, or anything else should have spying software on it. It should require a specific warrant for a person, place, and time limit. The government has Far Too Much power already, we don't need to give it any more. Sure it allows criminals to do crime but it also allows the rest of us to carry on our lives without being spied on at every turn.
- tobbob 5y ago
  Are people only reading the first sentence I wrote? I made the argument in favour of encryption.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Yes, malicious actors can also be found within the government. This is the reason behind placing limits on the power of the state.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wanda 5y ago
> protecting the public Are you serious? This isn't high on their agenda at all. > surely there's tech people whose job is to explain this to politicians You have a very, very optimistic view of the world. If the government needs to get a consultant, they'll just find one who agrees with them.

323 5y ago

A more effective approach would be to highlight how the far-right uses encrypted chat apps. That would get the majority of the media and blue-checks supporting you. > Why right-wing extremists’ favorite new platform is so dangerous. Telegram’s lax content moderation and encrypted chats make it a convenient tool for extremists. https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-social-media-extremists https://www.vox.com/recode/22238755/telegram-messaging-socia... > In collaboration with anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, the Guardian has tracked McLean’s activity through the rabbit warren of largely unregulated Telegram groups and found that he describes a vastly different version of his intentions. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where-freedom-meets-the-far-right-the-hate-messages-infiltrating-australian-anti-lockdown-protests https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/26/where... > Far-right groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps — and out of view of law enforcement https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-warned-of-nurturing-subculture-deifying-terrorists https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/telegram-war... > White supremacists openly organize racist violence on Telegram, report finds https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-telegram-racism-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/white-supremacists-t... > Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot? Telegram and Signal, the encrypted services that keep conversations confidential, are increasingly popular. Our tech columnists discuss whether this could get ugly. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/telegram-signal-misinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > A report this week found that the messaging app had emerged as a central hub for several conspiracy movements espousing antisemitic tropes and memes, including QAnon, as well as others on the extreme right promoting violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-telegram-chat-apps/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/15/parler-...

decremental 5y ago
Clearly extremist rhetoric. It needs to be called out before we all drown in it. Luckily and thankfully the community is identifying it as such.
wanda 5y ago
Don't forget to promote chopping off everyone's hands. I hear some ultra-right-wing people might be typing their nonsense with their hands. So we should make sure no one has hands, that'll get em. ~ Also, this list of US news vendors' articles against e2ee is kinda evidence that it's not just the UK going on a campaign.

mbroncano 5y ago

Does anybody know how (or even if) these kind of campaigns are run in the US?

petre 5y ago
No, in the US the government just classified encryption as weapons unsuitable for export. A more clean approach, rather than think of the children shenigans, all while certain members of the royal family have ties with a convicted child trafficker and his wife.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > in the US the government just classified encryption as weapons unsuitable for export. ... You realize that that hasn't been the case for ~20 years, right?
  - petre 5y ago
    Yes. I'm not blaming, it was a rather bureaucratic move though and it did not stop US citizens from using encryption, nor export. Tampering with the ECC crypto factors was much more ellegant.
  - humazed 5y ago
    >... You realize that that hasn't been the case for ~20 years, right? that's not true, try submitting an app to apple store, and you will get hit with a lot of Encryption Export Regulations prompts. please see https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying_with_encryption_export_regulations https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying... >When you submit your app to TestFlight or the App Store, you upload your app to a server in the United States. If you distribute your app outside the U.S. or Canada, your app is subject to U.S. export laws, regardless of where your legal entity is based. If your app uses, accesses, contains, implements, or incorporates encryption, this is considered an export of encryption software, which means your app is subject to U.S. export compliance requirements, as well as the import compliance requirements of the countries where you distribute your app.

basisword 5y ago

This is just exasperating. Pro privacy? You’re responsible for child abuse. Every time you think the current British government can’t sink any lower…

hn_version_0023 5y ago
Seems to me its the people in the government who are widely responsible for child abuse. Just ask Prince Andrew.
- rosndo 5y ago
  What does Prince Andrew have to do with the government?
  - adventured 5y ago
    The United Kingdom is a monarchy ruled by Queen Elizabeth (the mother of Andrew), even though the British people go far out of their way to pretend that's not the case. It's why Boris Johnson had to meet with the queen about forming a new government. Why is she involved at all? It's because she rules the United Kingdom in fact. Andrew's family rules Britain (for what, 1200 years? [1]), that's quite relevant to the context. The political structure of the United Kingdom goes very far out of its way to look after and protect the royal family (their rulers). Shall we pretend that the family that has ruled Britain for 1200 years has no political power? Har har. Every country in Europe that still regressively clings to a monarchy (and there are a lot of them) goes out of its way to pretend - because it's so comically backwards - that their monarchy is only a figurehead / ceremonial and has no real role. In fact they're all back up dictatorships waiting in the wings if there's ever enough political chaos to prompt the people to turn to that, and that happens every time historically. [1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/lineage-british-royal-family https://allthatsinteresting.com/lineage-british-royal-family
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      > Shall we pretend that the family that has ruled Britain for 1200 years has no political power? Har har. That's like saying the Church of England still has significant political power. it still has the ability to take tithes, although they are mostly optional. The present royal family only really dates back to victoria, I mean sure they are tangentially related to the german/dutch/scots/danish that ruled before, but its not that strong. The monarchy is constitutional technical debt. Technically the queen can refuse to sign laws, and dissolve parliament, but as the constitution is basically "because we said so" it'll be the last thing the queen does. The queen has "influence", but not political power.

datavirtue 5y ago

Hmmm....it's for the children. This sounds like an attempt to keep law abiding people from privacy while guaranteeing that any criminal worth their salt is fully protected by their own encryption. Again, law abiding citizens are left unprotected as the government seeks it's own interest in keeping popular platforms wide open to their unconditional snooping. Spending tax dollars to eliminate privacy for those paying the taxes. Keep poking the bear.

tradesurplus 5y ago

This is to prevent MPs and civil servants from evading professional communications logs rules, right? Right?

kerneloftruth 5y ago

I'm not surprised that the UK is deploying it's often used Nanny State scare tactics to try and outlaw encryption. Don't take them lightly, though, fight back!

motohagiography 5y ago

The campaign as described sounds like what would be classified as hate speech against any other identifiable group, and yet so long as governments and their appendant "agencies" approve of creating new identifiable groups to target with otherwise proscribed speech, it's somehow acceptable? This is Hutu vs. Tutsi meets Gobbels level propaganda, and I'm sure it must be very fun to be so righteous, we know how it ends. While mainstream society and discourses are not allowed to reason about the applicability or justness of violence, these official parties appear free to incite and direct it, and notably, to selectively enforce the provisions against it so that it's directed at the right people. These are dishonest parties working in bad faith using special protection, what are the alternatives? I'm afraid the only thing they will understand is cost.

jevoten 5y ago

> The new campaign, however, is entirely focused on the argument that improved encryption would hamper efforts to tackle child exploitation online. I bet cars and homes without microphones and cameras spying on their residents also hampers their efforts to keep children safe - are those next on the chopping block? They're already spying on near every street corner, after all. Funny how they never say "Technology has given us all this extra surveillance capability, you can reduce our legal powers somewhat to compensate" - it's always "People have some tiny scrap of privacy left - we must eliminate it, or terrorists and pedophiles win!"

belter 5y ago
mattlondon 5y ago
> They're already spying on near every street corner, after all. Citation needed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jevoten 5y ago
  One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveill... I'll leave it to you to estimate how many people live per street corner, on average.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - foldr 5y ago
    For the UK government to be “spying on every street corner”, these cameras would have to be hooked up to some kind of central system. They’re not (and indeed most are privately owned).

pixelpoet 5y ago

The sheer audacity of claiming this is about protecting children, while politically connected people like Prince Andrew walk free, is just mindblowing. Wow, just wow.

Freak_NL 5y ago
Not sure if he'll walk free (that would be for a judge to judge), but this week was a bit of turning point: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/13/veterans-ask-queen-to-strip-prince-andrew-of-honorary-military-titles https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/13/veterans-ask...
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Even if he eventually gets in trouble, it’s hard to argue that the British state didn’t pull out the stops to protect their pedophile prince while wringing their hands about child abuse and online encryption. Oh, and Keir Starmer oversaw the prosecutor’s office who decided not to charge Jimmy Savile, who turned out to be a prolific (hundreds of accusers) child rapist. So as far as child abuse is concerned, the call appears to be coming from inside the house.
- boffinAudio 5y ago
  Prince Andrew is just the tip of the iceberg of the UK's heinous, protected, pedophile classes.

oliv__ 5y ago

The way the article breaks down exactly how the campaign is set to "persuade" the public feels so dystopian and cynical. Launching a £500K media campaign (with public funds) under the cover up pretense that "UK’s biggest children’s charity and stakeholders have come together to urge social media companies to put children’s safety first" and then swaying people through "'sofa programmes' such as Loose Women and This Morning for broadcast". If this isn't manufactured consent, I don't know what is. But seeing what happens behind the curtains really makes you wonder: what other "mainstream opinions" were created this way?

CommanderData 5y ago

Because TLS is already broken with the trusted model. CAs subpoenaed and also hacked a few years ago. PKI is dead. If you're a threat level is the state then there's very little to hide from them.

jonplackett 5y ago

The other day I was telling my mum about how in China they can monitor and delete anything you post online. Even delete an entire type of post made by millions of people based on a keyword etc etc. Her response, rather than the horror I was trying to i instil, was “I think we ought to have that here!” So it does worry me that public support could go the wrong way on this if they spend a lot of time on messaging. I hope that the high level of mistrust of the government - built up especially through covid - will prevail.

barnabee 5y ago

Does anyone know who I can donate to to fund a counter-campaign?

ghostwriter 5y ago

The Government should instead be running a publicity blitz on how the police and law enforcement agencies ignore victims of grooming gangs and avoid investigations because of political correctness [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7901731/Police-chief-admitted-force-ignored-sex-abuse-grooming-gangs-30-years.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7901731/Police-chie... [2] https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/harrowing-texts-girl-grooming-gang-25542778 https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/harrowing-t... [3] https://mallarduk.com/grooming-gang-survivor-proposes-new-definition-dr-ella-hill/ https://mallarduk.com/grooming-gang-survivor-proposes-new-de... [4] https://archive.is/TVP64 https://archive.is/TVP64 [5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-59828338 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-598283...

prima-facie 5y ago

Good thing this government has solved the rampant knife crime in London and the rest of England. Now they can move on to more pedestrian things like banning WhatsApp.