Slashdot Mirror
British PM Seeks Ban On Encryption After Terror Attack (boingboing.net)
"British Prime Minister Theresa May has used last Saturday's terrorist attack to again push for a ban on encryption," according to ITWire. Slashdot reader troublemaker_23 shared their article, which quotes this strong rebuttal from Cory Doctorow:
Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the "good guys" are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption...
Theresa May doesn't understand technology very well, so she doesn't actually know what she's asking for. For Theresa May's proposal to work, she will need to stop Britons from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of her jurisdiction... any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in 'golden keys' that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.
Well, you did it U.K.
First, massive monitoring of your citizens with country wide CCTV, that didn't help crime statistics at all, so you extended that with the worlds most advanced facial recognition system.
Second, laws on what you look at, what you view and thought crimes, congratulations, you're now only ONE step away from draconian laws Orwellian surveillance state.
Third phase, Brexit - no one comes in, no one goes out. We decide who does what in OUR country, the mindless sheeple will do what WE say. Sip your tea and shut up sir. Pomeroy.
Fourth and FINAL phase - Total monitoring of every citizen, forbid all encryption, have anything to hide? You are hereby found guilty by the court of LAW until WE say otherwise.
How did you guys manage to let all that slip past you? Are you this desperate? My God - England! You're letting them take every ounce of dignity and freedom you had left.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Despite the Conservatives being the largest part in 2010 under Cameron who was then PM via the LibDem coalition through 2015, then on their own merit until 2016 (almost six years), the UK has *never* had an elected Prime Minster. We elect MPs to the House of Commons and the party with the most MP then gets to put forward whoever they want to be Prime Minister and form the government. Normally that's the leader of the party at the time of the election, but that doesn't actually have to be the case, and couldn't be the case if the party leader in question had lost their seat for some reason.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
If you want to compare European politics to the US... you can't. Even our far-right parties would be on friendly speaking terms with the US far-left.
Can you imagine a serious politician in the US suggesting the government establish a national system of hospitals and healthcare providers, almost free of private sector involvement, operated by government employees and funded with tax money? They would be laughed out of office. But that's the normal thing in most of Europe. In the same way you rarely find European politicians who proudly lead religious ceremonies to win support and try to argue that gay marriage is an existential threat to civilisation, because that's just not going to go down here. Well, maybe in Poland.
The modern internet runs on encryption. Any time you send a login you (hopefully) are using encryption, otherwise it's trivial to steal credentials. Any time you enter your credit card information into a website you (hopefully) are using encryption, otherwise it's trivial to steal your card number. The modern world absolutely requires encryption for day-to-day activities, even if you're not using encryption on files/messages/whatever to avoid others looking at them you ARE using encryption to power your modern life.
Anybody that thinks an encryption ban isn't something to worry about doesn't know how or where encryption works. Your ignorance is obvious to anybody even slightly in the know. If you're not alarmed by the fact that your government is even considering an encryption ban then obviously you're exceptionally uneducated on the subject and you should sit down and shut up while the grown ups are talking.
You may have heard of the UDP. They're forming a coalition with the Tories as we speak.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Some of the Nazis (like Georg Strasser and Ernst Roehm) were socialists. They were all butchered by Hitler in 1934.. Hitler was an absolute anti-socialist and anti-communist, this is why he was supported by all the big business in first place.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap