UK Government Says App Developers Won't Be Forced To Implement Backdoors (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: The UK government is sending mixed messages about how it views privacy and security. Fears have been mounting since Prime Minister David Cameron wondered aloud 'in our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?' — his view obviously being that, no, we don't want to allow such a thing. Following the revelations about the spying activities of the NSA and GCHQ, public attention has been focused more than ever on privacy and encryption, Cameron having also suggested a desire to ban encryption. Today, some fears were allayed when it was announced that the government was not seeking to require software developers to build backdoors into their products. That said, the government said that companies should be able to decrypt 'targeted' data when required, and provide access to it.

Comments

David Cameron is not very intelligent

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, Mr Cameron lacks even basic knowledge of technology, so is unable to appreciate that his expectations of making encrypted data readable by the NSA/GCHQ/Stasi, are completely unrealistic. Cameron should keep his slimy far right persona out of areas that he can't understand - since that appears to include most areas of government, maybe he'd be better seeing employment that is more fitting for his level of ability - perhaps as a clown or jester.
And, to answer Mr Cameron's question as to whether we want to allow means of communication between people which can't be read by the secret police - I think anyone supporting of democracy will be screaming 'yes - of course we do'. This is fundamental to any democratic society. Cameron might want some kind of despotic right wing regime, but most people here don't. Remember - Cameron was elected by a very small minority of the British people (~20%), because of the way the antiquated electoral system has failed. He most certainly has no democratic mandate to rule.

Re:David Cameron is not very intelligent

[Jamu]

24% of the electorate voted for a Conservative candidate. 0.08% voted for David Cameron.

Re:David Cameron is not very intelligent

[AmiMoJo]

Don't underestimate Cameron. The upper class twat persona is just a mask. He is extremely careful to be bland an inoffensive at all times, speaking only in generalities and vague benign sounding ideals.

For example, on this issue he always talks about safety. No-one opposes safety, right? Safety is good. He avoids being too specific or saying anything too ideological.

He is a dangerous opponent, because he turns people to apathy. They vote for him because he stands for nothing specific, so they fill in the blanks themselves and assume he agrees with them.

Bottom line

[93 Escort Wagon]

The politicians deciding these rules have no idea how this stuff works. "We're not asking for back doors. Back doors are bad. We just want a way to access the contents of encrypted messages when we deem it necessary."

It'd be funny if the stakes weren't so high.

Re:Bottom line

[dkasak]

Your data passing through someone else's servers doesn't automatically imply they have means of decrypting that data. Clients can generate keys themselves (or negotiate them securely with each other, in the case of asymmetric encryption) and keep them secret. Data encrypted in such a way can be stored wherever you want without the party owning the infrastructure being able to read it.

This has always been a big pile of hysteria.

[91degrees]

David Cameron made a speech. He said the government wants it to be impossible for terrorists to hide from the security services.

Tech media sites assumed that Cameron knew exactly what he was talking about while at the same time having no idea what he was talking about. They concluded that the only way this would be achievable would be to ban encryption. In fact, given that pretty much everyone who talked about it mentioned WhatsApp and Snapchat, and no other services, it makes it pretty obvious they were getting this from each other.

Of course people took this speech as gospel and completely ignored other statements saying this was not going to happen, just like they'll ignore this

Nobody thought that Cameron didn't have a clue what he was asking for. Nobody considered that he does actually have the option to compromise; Cameron's actually pretty good at that. Everyone assumed that this vague speech was explicit unwavering government policy to ban WhatsApp and Snapchat based on a stupid echo chamber and ridiculous assumptions.

Not forced

[Anonymous Coward]

NO developers were forced to add back doors to these apps, but most of them voluntarily chose to live peacefully with their families.

Re:This haiku's about another kind of backdoor

[Dr_Barnowl]

Clearly you don't follow the news about our PM.

A better haiku would be

The Turgid Member,
Slipped into a dead pig's mouth,
Like he fucks the poor

Not stupid

[FrozenGeek]

The majority of the public won't understand that "should be able to decrypt on demand" is the same thing as a back door. To them, what he said was good and fair. This is just another case of a politician playing with words in order to manipulate the electorate.

The government wants systems to be secure

[DickBreath]

As long as they are insecurely secure.

In classic government oxymoronic style. Governments are full of oxymorons.

Some government "adult male" in their "arrogant humility" engaged in "a just war" wants us to "agree to disagree" to introduce "astronomically small" insecurities into our "insecurely secure" systems so that "military intelligence" can "read unreadable" messages.

It all makes sense.