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Leaked Document Reveals UK Plans For Wider Internet Surveillance (zdnet.com)
The UK government is planning to push greater surveillance powers that would force internet providers to monitor communications in near-realtime and install backdoor equipment to break encryption, according to a leaked document. From a report on ZDNet: A draft of the proposed new surveillance powers, leaked on Thursday, is part of a "targeted consultation" into the Investigatory Powers Act, brought into law last year, which critics called the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy." Provisions in proposals show that the government is asking for powers to compel internet providers to turn over the realtime communications of a person "in an intelligible form," including encrypted content, within one working day. To that end, internet providers will be forced to introduce a backdoor point on their networks to allow intelligence agencies to read anyone's communications.
That's OK. Being part of the EU means us Brits can take it to the European courts and even if that doesnt work we can up sticks and move to another EU country if we don't like how our government is behaving.
Hang on, someone's whispering something in my ear......
This just in, we're f*cked.
I think that's dangerously overconfident. By passing laws they can in fact make tech companies add backdoors and vulnerabilities. That will make the vast majority of the population, outside a tiny number of people who take extreme and possibly now illegal measures, even more subject to mass surveillance. It also grants permission for any level of governmental snooping, and can criminalize people found in possession of "circumvention technologies". Possession of GPG can be criminalized with the stroke of a pen, if it interferes with mass surveillance.
Furthermore it normalizes the entire idea that people should be allowed no privacy. A whole generation grows up with that as "normal". Do not underestimate the capacity of human beings to normalize reprehensible things.
It's foolish to think that just because there exists some encryption technology where the math can't be broken, that everything is OK. Everything is not OK.
US citizen here, not a Brit, but I am under no illusions. On this side of the pond we have just as many in our government who look at Orwell's warning as a thing to aspire to, rather than to avoid. If UK citizens allow this to stand, it's only a matter of time before it comes here too. Our countries have a long and rich tradition of adopting each other's worst and most harmful ideas. (We had American knockoffs of the Spice Girls, for instance).