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British PM Seeks Ban On Encryption After Terror Attack (boingboing.net)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the May-or-may-not dept.

"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.

4 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. real world by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the real world, people just buy a set of knives from Lidl, rent a van, and discuss the plans in someone's living room. Banning encryption isn't going to stop any of that.

    1. Re:real world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In the real world, people just buy a set of knives from Lidl, rent a van, and discuss the plans in someone's living room. Banning encryption isn't going to stop any of that.

      You, as many people, are assuming that she's getting this wrong through stupidity. Even if she is stupid, the people asking for this aren't. They know that every terrorist involved in the recent attacks was reported, by the British muslim community, five or more times over. Less encryption means only more data that the police have to, but aren't able to follow up. For these people terrorism is a pretext, in fact I would't be surprised if they don't want to encourage more of it.

      Theresa May is a typical (though extremist) European Christian "Democrat". What she wants more than anything else is to spy on and control the normal people of her country.

  2. Silly, just silly. by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Two things about this...

    A) This will not stop terrorism or terrorists, and it will not make it harder for them to communicate in any meaningful way. They were able to "get it done" before encryption, and they are motivated to the extent that they will get it done without.

    B) It's irrelevant anyway because there is simply no way to ban encryption or even require "back doors" because there are too many absolute requirements for encryption in numerous systems and situations, and people will not stand for back doors. More than that, if encryption was banned, people would do it anyway.

    Remember in the early days of PGP? To download and install the software you had to "certify" you were an American on American soil? And of course anyone on American soil or with a VPN could do all that, or download it in the US and burn it to a CD and send it off to whoever, as many did. You just can't "ban" something that is already out in the wild, it doesn't work that way.

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  3. Re:I don't see a problem with this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Okay then you go and login to your bank's website unencrypted.

    Oh wait, you don't want to do that? So you are saying that you DO have something to hide.

    Got it.

    Also we'll be requiring you to deposit the keys for your house and your safes in your home, in case we need to see what is inside there. Then we won't need to worry about "warrants" since we have your consent since you "voluntarily" handed over the keys to us.

    Gotcha.