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UK Orders Ofcom to Explore Encryption Backdoors
- Xiol 8mo ago> It starts with child abuse material, because who’s going to defend not catching that? After the recent X CSAM generation arguments and the potential for X to get blocked in the UK, it seems like more people than I expected will defend it.
- Canada 8mo agoThe same pretext has been deployed in Australia as well. I'm not sure if the Carney government will also try. I don't think anyone is defending it. It's all astroturf.
- ryandrake 8mo agoThere were people on HN defending it. Although I'm sure they're 99% defending Musk, and only because they reflexively jump into defense mode any time one of his companies' wrongdoing is discussed. If it were Adobe's or Microsoft's products generating CSAM, you wouldn't hear a peep out of them
- dmitrygr 8mo agoI will defend absolute freedom of all speech by Musk and against Musk. By Adobe and against Adobe. My Microsoft and against Microsoft. By you and against you. By me and against me. Unlike many who merely theorize about this from their armchairs, I've lived in a place without free speech and I know what that leads to, how fast, and how hard it is to get out of that hole. There is no such thing as "let's just have a little less freedom of speech". It either exists or very quickly it does not.
- Symbiote 8mo agoYou should be explicit here; Should it be legal to (1) create and (2) distribute an AI generated sexual image of a (1) 18 year old, (2) 12 year old? (In both cases without their consent.) What about a real photograph?
- dmitrygr 8mo agoSexual abuse (of adults and of children) is abhorrent, illegal, and should remain so. A number cannot be illegal.
- overfeed 8mo ago> A number cannot be illegal. Why equivocate? Go ahead and own it, tell us what you think about AI-generated CSAM using plain language. gp had helpfully numbered questions that you could have said yes/no to.
- overfeed 8mo agoUnbelievable. Caping pedophelia on main - no throw-away. Is this were society is now?
- ryandrake 8mo agoAbout as unbelievable as electing one president.
- dmitrygr 8mo agoUnbelievable. People pretending not to understand something stated very clearly just to insult someone they don’t even know. Is this where society is now?
- overfeed 8mo ago>>> If it were Adobe's or Microsoft's products generating CSAM, you wouldn't hear a peep out of them >> I will defend absolute freedom of all speech by Musk [...] By Adobe [...] [B]y Microsoft Your support of the "absolute freedom" of "all speech" is very clear. If you somehow didn't mean the words you chose, then the lack of clarity is on you, and needs no pretense on my part.
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo ago> After the recent X CSAM generation arguments X installs went UP the in UK when the gov said "X allows you to generate child porn, lets block it". Thousands of brits go "free child porn on X better check it out"
- cedws 8mo agoNobody voted for this. I'm pretty cynical about both the current and previous government, but it feels like there's been a shift since Labour came into power. Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back. There was chatter but it was met with resistance. Now it feels like the discussion is being squashed and there are invisible forces at work. If by some miracle the UK and EU agree on a new Youth Mobility Scheme I'm out of here.
- ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago>If by some miracle the UK and EU agree on a new Youth Mobility Scheme I'm out of here. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/eu-immigration-portal/eu-blue-card_en https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...
- movedx 8mo agoUK isn’t an EU member state.
- monooso 8mo agoThat's the entire point of the EU Blue Card. From the linked website (emphasis mine): > An EU Blue Card gives highly-qualified workers from outside the EU the opportunity to live and work in an EU Member State...
- cedws 8mo agoThank you, I'll look into it.
- michaelt 8mo ago> it feels like there's been a shift since Labour came into power. Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back. I had hoped Labour would roll back the anti-protest legislation, snooper's charter, internet censorship and voter ID laws. After all, it was mostly left-wing climate protesters getting arrested, and young (more left-leaning) voters being prevented from voting. Turns out no, quite the opposite - if anything, Labour thinks these laws didn't go far enough. With hindsight, it was naive of me to think the former Director of Public Prosecutions would share my scepticism about expanding the powers of the system the Director of Public Prosecutions stands at the head of.
- hardlianotion 8mo agoHow does the government seek to differentiate itself from authoritarian regimes?
- betaby 8mo agoThey don't. Why would they?
- wakawaka28 8mo agoBy lying about their motives, of course. The (other) authoritarians are doing the same things but they do it for self-serving reasons as opposed to "for the children", to "fight disinformation, hate speech, organized crime, terrorism", etc.
- glawre 8mo agoWhat are Ofcom realistically going to do when providers refuse to comply? We've seen the X/CSAM issue this week and both the government and regulator are clearly unwilling to stand up to American big-tech.
- 13415 8mo agoThat's only a problem for communication between UK and non-UK users. You can still offer communication services for UK users, just disable all encryption, fulfill other Ofcom requirements, and display a large red "UK UNSAFE VERSION" banner on all windows.
- ExoticPearTree 8mo agoWanna bet that the next day a new law will be passed making that marking illegal? :)
- JCattheATM 8mo agoThe war on general computing is ramping up.
- harel 8mo agoI don't know what happened that the UK got to the state it is in. It's not just a war on "general computing" as someone said here. It feels like a war on the "general population".
- OgsyedIE 8mo agoThere's a kind of new aristocratic class developing a broad ideology of anti-populism in power in the UK. The majority of politicians are drawn from backgrounds, or familial backgrounds, in the British news media and get careers there for themselves or their spouses after leaving government. The majority of senior news media personnel, in journalism or management, are drawn from the political establishment in the same inverted way. They organised the Tory leadership elections to install Johnson and later Truss on the belief that low-tax austerity would improve the country and then, facing a continued decline of London relative to the UAE by the policies they championed, coordinated to give Starmer the most complimentary media presence possible from mid 2023 to until the day of the election, conditioned on his continuing their policy platform. One example of this is how the most recent interview Starmer has been given at the time of writing was to the newly-promoted politics correspondent of Sky News, the spouse of one of his most loyal Labour MPs, formerly an assistant editor of The Spectator, a popular politics magazine that promotes the abolition of inheritance tax, reductions in the age of consent, the introduction of qualified immunity from war crimes for the armed forces, the introduction of civil forfeiture, the return of the death penalty and holocaust denial. Unless an outside force compels other factions in UK politics to act, the media faction will likely replace Starmer with some other NEC loyalist who avoids flubbing line delivery on camera sometime this year. After all, the Starmer government has set a record in UK politics for the fastest decline in polling numbers and Starmer has personally put out the message in news briefings that removing him from office in 2026 would be a grave mistake for the party.
- sph 8mo agoJohnson and Starmer are from a "broad ideology of anti-populism"? Utter nonsense. They are the very definition of populism. Johnson appealing to the hoi polloi with the wishful thinking of Brexit, Starmer running his government on opinion polls rather than pragmatism and a modicum of consistency, to the point of turning Labour into Tory-lite selling its soul just to capture a little more mind share, but effectively becoming hateful for both sides.
- alfiedotwtf 8mo agoOh, has it been six months already (… since their last attempt)
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoAll the "GPG is unsafe" posers, watch them pull out GPG the second a government mandates their comms backdoored.
- puppycodes 8mo agoFor a while now traveling to the UK should be treated like visiting China or similar. Leave your devices at home and expect zero privacy rights.
- oliwarner 8mo agoThe Land of the Free is similarly unwelcoming at its borders. https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-search-electronic-devices https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dz0g2ykpeo.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dz0g2ykpeo.amp
- DANmode 8mo agoIt’s almost like there’s a war on, or something, the way these major powers are acting…