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UK Parliament passes Online Safety Bill
- LightBug1 3y agoYes ... because we've seen how well regulators have managed everything else in the UK ... Water? Energy? Everything else? Man, this is going to be fantastic ... The UK has an problem with regulation ... amongst everything else in this sh!thole.
- toyg 3y agoThat's because those regulations are written by people who despise regulations. They are meant to fail, so that eventually "the free market" (aka their rich friends) will get free reign, because "regulation clearly failed!".
- concordDance 3y agoEh? That is definitely nor what's going on with this bill.
- psd1 3y agoIndeed. This is not corporate regulation, it's social regulation. Social authoritarianism is the driving force in English politics, and it's a big vote-winner in the tabloid- and telegraph-reading constituency. It's also the message that's easiest to flog on social media, since all you have to do is trigger outrage and critical thinking goes out of the window. Liberality is probably more popular, but it's erased by our ghastly electoral system. (Scotland may as well whistle for a say, and I would advise them to secede.) The tories are generally anti-worker and pro-big-business. There was a blip as the Brexit nutters seized power - brexit being anti-everything - but the tories reverted to type with Liz "Lettuce" Truss and Rishi "literally a billionaire" Sunak. Upshot? Forget regulation that might impinge on the free market or protect workers, but prepare your anus for a sequence of civil-right-ectomies. In fact, in my middle age, I cannot recall a home secretary that has not been more illiberal than the last. David Blunkett; John "Dracula" Howard; Theresa "culture of hostility" May; Chris "remove books from prisons" Grayling; now we're up to Suella "ship asylum-seekers to Rwanda" Braverman. These people are FUCKING CUNTS, ffs, when they were dropped at birth they should have been dropped from much higher. I despise Westminster, the two-party system, the capture of media by capital interests, and the vegetative English electorate. I could get myself an EU passport... but where is better? Fascism is close to the surface, everywhere in the first world I look.
- chronicsonic 3y agoThank you for wording that so well, that’s exactly how I feel about the situation. Unfortunately we’re having our own problems here in Scotland (i.e. poverty, economy, low births, alcohol/drugs deaths). But I do now feel like we should drop our anchor that is England. The population is too polite to revolt and voluntarily mind controlled by a rotten press. It’s a shame, being from the EU, I always looked up to Britain. Now while living here, I’m just astonished that people just accept or don’t care that Britain is going backwards. Westminster is a clown show. We’re speed running towards a bleak future.
- randomcarbloke 3y ago>But I do now feel like we should drop our anchor that is England. Truly I am tickled by the image of a garbage-barge lugging around a giant golden anchor only to cut it loose during a great storm.
- ben_w 3y ago> Liz "Lettuce" Truss I think she was on-brand for the Johnson era, but not a reversion to type. Rishi Sunak? I can't really tell, but the vibes are similar to David Cameron. Still, I remain glad I took the opportunity to move to Germany easily before Brexit made it much harder. My Overton Window only just about brushes up against Labour's actual position, and doesn't include the Conservatives at all.
- concordDance 3y agoThe title of this post is broken. @dang?
- dang 3y agoFixed now.
- skilled 3y agoRelevant, ORG warns of threat to privacy and free speech as Online Safety Bill is passed - https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/org-warns-of-threat-to-privacy-and-free-speech-as-online-safety-bill-is-passed/ https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/org-warns-of-... > Open Rights Group has warned that Online Safety Bill, which has been passed in parliament, will make us less secure by threatening our privacy and undermining our freedom of expression. This includes damaging the privacy and security of children and young people the law is supposed to protect. Also other noteworthy discussions on HN, Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32055756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32055756) (July 2022 | 462 comments) Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936127) (February 2023 | 302 comments) The Online Safety Bill: An attack on encryption (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34727082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34727082) (February 2023 | 179 comments) Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online Safety Bill (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36919175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36919175) (July 2023 | 105 comments) Google's Statement on the UK Online Safety Bill [pdf] (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37443634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37443634) (September 2023 | 47 comments) UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408196) (September 2023 | 302 comments)
- Nasrudith 3y agoIt seems that a lot of people idiotically think that what is best for the children is for them to live in a dystopia.
- runeofdoom 3y agoI expect that the overlap between "honestly care for childrens' quality of life" and "understands the ramifictions of this bill to any significant extent" is near zero. (Though there are doubtless many people who have inaccurately convinced themselves they are members of both classes.)
- jimnotgym 3y agoI don't know why the UK bothers to make new laws. It has no hope of enforcing them. The Police are mired in scandal and cut to the bone. The courts system is taking apart, with criminal barristers forced to strike for pay, courts closed and massive backlogs in both the criminal and civil branches. Prisons are full, and taking apart. A terrorist on remand escaped last week. What are they possibly going to do with yet another law? Edit: spelling.I use a swipe keyboard on my phone due to arthritis, and weird misspellings are a side effect. Sorry to the pedant below who couldn't see past one typo well enough to address the point.
- miohtama 3y agoSpy their own citizens
- PaulKeeble 3y agoThe point isn't to enforce it, the judicial system has completely collapsed. The point is just to appeal to their voters who don't understand none of this can be enforced and when it doesn't happen (their own failures) they can claim the deep state and civil service are all to against them doing what people want.
- biscuitech 3y agoI hate that you're right. It doesn't apply exclusively to the UK
- basseed 3y ago"scandal"
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoWhy is the UK government in collapse? The same reasons as the US?
- KaiserPro 3y agodifferent. The US government is designed to be inefficient and requires bipartisan agreement or a majority in both chambers to do stuff. The UK government has significantly more executive powers, far more than the president, and normally has a majority to pass things that can't be done by the excutive. the problem is that brexit and bad party leaders has been exceedingly disruptive and killed both the conservative and labour party. This is because it ripped apart the coalitions inside both parties. Suddenly the us and them was not our party and thier party, but people within the same party. The competent have been driven out by the populists, and then they've burnt up and been replaced by the "tim, nice but dims". (populists were boris and corbyn) Until we actually "deal" with or defuse brexit, and actually begin to structurally reform large parts of the country (education, industrial relations, health and local government to name but a few) we are going to be stuck
- mattlondon 3y agoI wonder if this sort of thing would lead to more people self-hosting again since it seems to be targeted at "big tech". So because Facebook, tiktok, YouTube et al start over-censoring, people just think fuck it and start hosting their own content again?
- laluneodyssee 3y agoFor most, I dont think anything will change. Convenience is king.
- boppo1 3y agoCan self hosting deliver content at the scale we're used to now?
- nine_k 3y agoYes, because most people have like 30 contacts in their IM roster. Your phone, your home router, maybe even your smart fridge would be able to tackle this scale. Something like Twitter cannot be as easily replicated, but it's never been about privacy ad encryption. Another thing that's hard to replicate is a global namespace. Federated namespaces (see email. mastodon. matrix) work acceptably well though.
- Nickersf 3y agoDoubtful. People either don't care or are too lazy to shift. Also, I think it's safe to assume ISP's are going to be wrapped in on this too.
- TeaDude 3y agoFacebook, Twitter et al have entire office floors to deal with legal threats. The UK police love to go after "soft" targets and there's no-one softer than someone who's life can immediately be ruined by arresting them and thus getting them fired due to missing work. Edit: I now see you mean "host their own personal content" but the point still stands.
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- cwales95 3y agoNow this is a headline I didn't want to see pass. I wonder if Apple will do what they said and pull iMessage and FaceTime. Same with Meta and WhatsApp.
- jimnotgym 3y agoWell that would be a nice side effect, yes. It would be great if a terrible law had such fine consequences.
- TetraBeef 3y agoI think most of the companies saying they would pull out said they would because of the parts of the bill targeting end to end encryption. I thought they dropped that part of the bill, I may be mistaken though.
- Jigsy 3y agoThey said it wasn't currently feasible. Meaning they believe it will be (lol) years or decades down the line.
- cwales95 3y agoPretty much. I’m not sure if it got included but if it was feasibly possible they absolutely would — which is just as bad in my opinion. Lack of capability does not nullify intent.
- darreninthenet 3y agoIt was included, I think the wording was changed to include something like "when technically feasible" or similar
- toyg 3y agoNothing was changed. The government just trotted out a nobody to make a statement that basically said "we won't do it until we think it can be done"; the sensationalist media thought they had got their U-turn, ran a few headlines, and moved on. The bill just passed as it was. The British establishment is occasionally infuriating.
- pickleoctopus 3y agoThis is genuinely terrible for people living in the UK who care about their privacy and freedom on the internet. I do wonder whether this bill was caused by sincere misunderstanding of how tech works on the part of the legislators or, more cynically, a government agenda to crush privacy on the internet. Either way, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- hellojesus 3y agoThe legislators know exactly what they're doing. They had amble information from everyone not in government. They're banking on big tech accommodating them. Once they have all the data, they can sell it to the US gov, who then can target it's citizens by circumventing 4A.
- pickleoctopus25 3y agoThis is genuinely terrible for people living in the UK who care about their privacy and freedom on the internet. I do wonder whether this bill was caused by sincere misunderstanding of how tech works on the part of the legislators or, more cynically, a government agenda to crush privacy on the internet. Either way, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago"The government, however, has said the bill does not ban end-to-end encryption. Instead it will require companies to take action ... as a last resort develop technology to scan encrypted messages... Tech companies have said scanning messages and end-to-end encryption are fundamentally incompatible." Any questions? You can't make a bill for what is impossible, and this debate is going on for how many years now? It is agenda. You know you are screwed when someone repeats apparent lies over and over...
- mhandley 3y agoIf there is a plus side, I guess it will be that it will teach all our teenagers the importance of using a VPN.
- HeckFeck 3y agoGoing to buy shares in VPN providers. Seriously though, this just feels like the walls closing in on the freedom we had online. There’s no way these powers won’t be extended into more surveillance and censorship generally, now that they’re in the door. We all lose. And it won’t make the lives better for miserable children whom this bill is supposed to help - if anything, by controlling online content more they have even fewer places to reach out and find help without ‘somebody watching’. The children prone to “online harms” will just find another outlet, and the parents (probably responsible for their misery in the first place) will switch to blaming that and demanding legislation to control it. Rinse and repeat.
- IYasha 3y agoWelcome to the goolag, comrades. As sad as it sounds. This stuff is emerging in <s>WEF</s>different countries almost simultaneously. Do you see the pattern here? I do. Freakin prison under disguise of safety.
- octacat 3y agoPretty much, it is a copy of the law they had in russia 10 years ago. Good to start censorship. And if some service is not "committed enough", it would have to be blocked by the providers to "protect our children/citizenships".
- gustavus 3y ago"Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquillity of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the fifth, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well, certainly, there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. They were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic, you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words; they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me, one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot." - V
- psd1 3y ago
- b59831 3y ago[dead]
- netdoll 3y agoI wonder if there will be any substantial increase in pedojacketing among cultural elites towards those they see as undesirables now that the bill is passed, or whether the second order effects of the bill will lead to a backlash against the existing proliferation of it from the young, globally connected, and tech savvy populations still remaining in Britain after the depredations of the last decade.
- kulahan 3y agoThe bill makes sites prove they are committed to removing content: * promoting or facilitating suicide * promoting self-harm Serious question - how will this affect discussions around euthanasia? Can people just not discuss that online in the UK anymore?
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y agoYes but not in the way you think. You will be prohibited from opposing it. It will be "self-harm" to live and it isn't suicide when the government kills you to save the NHS money.
- zarzavat 3y ago“self-harm” is a broad category as well. A lot of things that people do are harmful to the self in some way. For harm to others we have the bright(er) line of consent, but for harm to oneself, who is to say?
- qingcharles 3y agoSurely cramming french fries and soft drinks into your piehole all day is self-harm. Will they be banning McDonald's?
- globular-toast 3y agoIt's supposed to get rid of stuff that makes people uncomfortable, like knowing about the existence of people in pain who want to end it. The bright, happy marketing of McDonald's is quite the opposite! Have it your way! Yay! Look forward to animal welfare issues being hidden in the same way too.
- psd1 3y agoWhile the bill is appalling, don't downplay the issue. Voluntary euthanasia is a total strawman. "kys" is widely-understood netspeak nowadays. It means "kill yourself". Children are cruel. Mostly because they are mentally insufficient - it takes time and mistakes to learn human values. (Although cruelty lingers into adulthood in some.) The new(ish) problem is that, previously, ideally, bullied teens could come home and have respite from cruelty and experience love. But nowadays the bullying follows the mobile phones. And love is quiet but cruelty is vigorous. And parents and schools don't have the equipment to deal with it - there is no parental rule or technical solution that can't be bypassed, and, if there were, it would separate teens from their peers. (At some point, children require their peers for their social development, and they need to get out from adult supervision.) And I'm merely describing online bullying amongst children. I could go into the normalisation of throatfucking and gangbanging, or ideological grooming (which is also a problem amongst soft-headed adults such as boomers and incels). For clarity - I don't like children, I don't have them, and this is not a problem close to my heart. I'm trying to see the other side's perspective here.
- DerekBickerton 3y agoI hope other countries don't copy the UK. With the Internet we have choice of jurisdiction and can happily avoid any cryptography projects operating out of the UK. I don't care if WhatsApp will become wiretapped in the UK. My beloved Matrix operates out of there, that's what concerns me. And I have to use WhatsApp because of its network effect (all my friends and family are on it). I have tried recruiting them on to Signal and Matrix, but the mental fatigue for them of doing that; means I have only have three friends on Signal, and ~100s stuck on shitty WhatsApp. Hopefully the more tech savvy friends of mine will ditch WhatsApp and choose Signal. And I'm not saying Signal doesn't have its issues (meatspace identity tied to your number etc) but it's far superior to WhatsApp which collects too much metadata like, it knows your contacts, when you talk to them, IP and other metadata. Does anyone else have this issue of recruiting friends and family onto more privacy-respecting messenger apps?
- barrysteve 3y agoHalf don't care about privacy. Branding a privacy app "as a privacy app" is a mistake. We need the next messenging app to be private by default AND better at making people popular and giving attention and securing relationships for the end user and all the rest of it.. The people who care about privacy are "trying to get away" and going to "get off the map". In the eyes of some average joes. That's basically anti-marketing.
- jacooper 3y agoAt this point matrix will have to move out from the UK, along with Element too.
- autoexec 3y ago> And I'm not saying Signal doesn't have its issues (meatspace identity tied to your number etc) but it's far superior to WhatsApp which collects too much metadata like, it knows your contacts, when you talk to them, IP and other metadata. Signal also collects your contacts and it permanently stores that data in the cloud along with your name, photo, and phone number. If didn't know they were doing that, that alone should tell you how much you can trust Signal.
- dwroberts 3y agoDoes anyone have a link to the full text of the bill? The House of Lords site only seems to list the amendments without context. I’m interested to know if it passed with the (ridiculous) requirement of a third party age verification service
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- crtasm 3y agoI think it's the file dated 19 July 2023, plus the two amendment documents since then? https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137/publications https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137/publications
- dwroberts 3y agoWhich isn’t the full text of the amended bill that has actually been accepted
- itsnotabtmoney 3y ago[flagged]
- Affric 3y agoIt’s interesting. This gigantic legislation is misconceived at the same time I think it’s easy to see why it has been deemed electorally popular enough for the government to proceed with. Tech companies do not provide a carriage service. It’s something more than that. The behaviours they permitted, and even encouraged, on their platforms have incurred large amounts of harm on individuals and society as a whole. There can be no compromise on the government with encryption but they are able to do this because online companies are yet to figure out how to best protect the vulnerable that use their services. With that said I think the existence of the unregulated internet was likely anomalous. If ever you wanted privacy, you always have had to ensure the only two beings with access to the information communicated were yourself and the intended recipient. Is it really possible for a society to permit the existence of any large organisation for private communication without eavesdropping?
- mattnewton 3y ago> With that said I think the existence of the unregulated internet was likely anomalous. If ever you wanted privacy, you always have had to ensure the only two beings with access to the information communicated were yourself and the intended recipient. Is it really possible for a society to permit the existence of any large organisation for private communication without eavesdropping? It wasn’t feasible to open up every letter and scan it before resealing it outside of prisons then or now, but it is for electronic communication, and it will be done in the name of safety. The same is true of monitoring every conversation you have with friends; impossible before outside prisons, easy now electronically. This is what is entirely anomalous.
- Affric 3y agoWe have seen large letter censorship apparatus before. We have seen mass spying before. Implementing these systems (with just humans) has been done more than once at large scales (think Second World War, East Germany). But regardless secure communication had to be undertaken between individuals. If the state wished to spy on people who did not have the ability to encrypt and decrypt their communication securely all they had to do was target them. Now the computer has made encryption into a technology rather than a skill. I would suggest that’s just as anomalous as the ability to monitor electronic communication.
- jacooper 3y agoThey didn't ban E2E, did they?
- jacooper 3y agoApparently they did, it was just talk, the law didn't actually change. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/today-uk-parliament-undermined-privacy-security-and-freedom-all-internet-users https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/today-uk-parliament-un...
- flanked-evergl 3y agoUK is all in on Dystopia.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Jigsy 3y agoI am personally curious to see if Signal will honor their promise to leave the UK or if Meredith was simply blowing smoke.
- t0bia_s 3y agoSo what will happen if I'll travel in UK and use Signal or Element on my phone with VPN?
- jacooper 3y agoThey dont have to comply then, as in that case both aren't operating officially in the UK.
- octacat 3y agoOh, we had something like that in Russia, they've extended the list after. Also "to protect children" initially. Once you have a convenient framework, it could be useful to remove any info the government does not want. The next step would be declaring some organisations and groups as "harmful" and removing their info.
- Zuiii 3y agoI can't help but feel sorry for the children and the adults of the UK. People around the world will mostly ignore this bill (and rightfully so) but the people living there will have to live with this broad, poorly defined mess.