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.
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.
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.
If one outlaws encryption, only outlaws will have encryption.
Couldn't we just ban politicians from making laws about shit they have no clue about? I'm aware that this means we'll get WAY, WAY fewer laws but then, you take a look at the laws we've gotten recently and try to tell me with a straight face that it would be a bad idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The only people who can get into the backdoor'd encryption are good governments stopping crime and terrorism, and every dictatorship out there intending to keep their own people down for ever and ever.
And good governments won't ever abuse it secretly to aid those in power, nor fall from freedom to dictatorship, because we have no historical examples of that ever happening.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I guess we all know by now that these power grabs have nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with consolidating power. ....wait....
I wonder, do these dip-shits every stop to think what would actually happen without encryption? For fucks sake, your average basement dwelling hacker already has a relatively easy time of it, may as well just open everything up.
Sure, out credit cards will be stolen every other week, but at least we will can finally end the 10's of thousands of deaths every year in the UK by terrorism
We've only had an elected Primeminster for 1 year out of the last 10, that should be a ridiculous enough situation to bring about some politcal reform and actually have some representation but we're apparently stuck with First Past the Post regardless of it not working for over a decade now.
I've voted every time I've had chance to, been strategic too knowing the failings of our system. It's in a spirallng stall hurtling towards the ground now our country. Tempted to leave.
She may just as well ban fire that can harm people and mandate that alcohol be only capable of affecting people who aren't minors.
The attackers were known to police and MI5. Oops! And PM May is responsible for firing 10000 police officers. Oops again! So this anti encryption and controlling the internet BS is simply a red herring to soothe people.
Or perhaps she does, but the information in the article in no way supports what the headline says, without a hell of a lot of speculation.
Doesn't make a lot of difference. She's managed to engineer a situation where she doesn't have the ability to do so, and will probably be out of a job in a few weeks.
People don't kill, encryption does.
In Soviet Englandistan, the encryption is in YOU.
How do we stop homegrown encryption?? Homegrown encryption is a serious problem that effects the UK at a fundamental level. If you suspect your parents of homegrown encryption, please report them to the police.
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!
Wouldn't banning encryption be to the detriment of the government as well as their own citizens' personal data that any terrorist would now be able to exploit to say, fake their ID or steal government clearance info and intel?
What could they possibly be thinking?
Twinstiq, game news
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.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Yeah well, in the UK (and the US too?) I believe they can order you to give yours up if they bump into anything they can't decipher.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"British Prime Minister Theresa May has used last Saturday's terrorist attack to again push for a ban on encryption,"
Yes, that will undoubtedly stop all the terrorists cold. Fer sure. I mean, it's a proven fact that one could commit an act of terrorism without encryption. It's impossible.
Maybe she could ask that they make adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing illegal while they're at it, because that makes just as much sense. And of course she'll make it illegal for government officials and security forces to use encryption too, right? Right?
Clearly, Theresa May is an imbecile of epic proportions.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
No, you've had an elected prime minister for 0 years out of the last 10.
That's because in the UK the public doesn't elect the prime minister. They elect ministers, the ministers chose a prime minister amongst themselves.
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.
Well, you did it U.K.
Yes, but not JUST the UK. Here in the US, our politicians are making the same kinds of noises. Not only that, but a large percentage of the populace would go right along, because terrorism. I think it is only a matter of time.
That doesn't even mention all the other countries that are drooling a the very thought.
Yes, it cannot be anything but a clusterfuck in practice, but that won't stop it.
That's all very techically true but what I meant is;
2007-2010 Gordon Brown become PM when Blair resigns,
2010-2015 David Cameron PM but his party didn't have a sole majority casuing the coalition,
2015-2016 David Cameron spends 1 year as PM who's party has actually won a majority then resigns after EU Membership referendum,
2016-2017 Teresa May becomes PM after all competition withdraws from Tory Leadership Contest,
2017 to Present Teresa May possibly to remain PM after losing majority and seeking to form a new coalition with the DUP
You description of the system we have is accurate on paper... but not in public perception or what actually happens. The majority of the campaigning focused on the leaders not on the local representatives and has for some time now. The average voter picks based on party rather than candidate because it's parties that have power, not our representatives.
For starters, revoke the driving license of any asshole who is or who has ever been a "person of interest" and all of their known associates. That would give police perfectly valid reason to arrest them if caught driving, and prevent them from hiring white vans and 7.5 ton lorries.
They would be reduced to using stolen vehicles which can easily be detected by ANPRS.
To quote another famous British character:
"Something must be done.
This is something.
Ergo, this must be done."
The public are afraid. They demand action to stop the terrorists. Politicians are obliged to provide action, if they value their careers - even if there is no good action they can take within available resource constraints, that just means they need to come up with a bad idea. At least if they put into force a bad idea, they will be seen trying - a better option then to be seen as uncaring or dismissive.
What leads May or her advisers to believe that this attack might have been thwarted if they had the powers that they ask for? This is just another tick-mark on the Five Eyes agenda. Conceivably any event could be used to support their argument, no mater how weakly related.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
This is what happens after every "terror" event: "We want more power, to keep you safe".
However, in this case they already knew about this guy and claimed they had not enough man power to follow up on this group.
So obviously encryption was not the issue.
The west is in chronic denial about a "religion" that is a disguise for a repressive revolutionary political system, which has zero respect for everything else.
Wake up and smell miasma from the middle east. Treat these people as westerners would be treated in Mekka.
Outlaw encryption and only outlaws will have encryption.
A guy I went to college with implemented a split-key encryption type system as his senior project. What's to stop terrorists from rolling their own encryption?
Surely a bunch of guys who can make a remote detonated IED can write some software.
The attack was horrible yes, but we are talking about a couple of deaths per year in a country of 50 million. Automobile safety, antibiotic resistant bacteria/viruses, air pollution, and many more kill several orders of magnitude more people and are a far bigger real threat to human safety and well being - not even mentioning long term issues like the environment. This obviously about easily hyping up a tragedy so the government can stick its spyglass wayyyyyy up where the sun dosent shine.
But why, one might say, is this so important if it won't help terrorism? The answer is simple - when you have full access to every humans detail in your entire country, you can far more accurately hold snap elections at key times to grab PM seats, you can shut down activist groups by getting or planting dirt on them or creating an effective smear campaign targeted to the right people. You can do just about anything with that much information, no oversight, enough computational power and resources, and enough time. It's happening in the USA and Europe right now.
Criminals are no less likely to use encryption if it's made illegal as they are to commit murder, which is already illegal.
The MPs of the ruling party choose the Prime Minister, not just the ministers.
We don't elect ministers either. Ministers are MPs chosen by the Prime Minister (or the Leader of the opposition for shadow ministers) for particular roles.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
"country wide CCTV, that didn't help crime statistics at all"
Fake news.
BTW regardless of the size of the impact, one of the greatest benefits of CCTV is objectivity. When minorities commit more crime on camera you can simply show the images, avoids all the social justice systemic X lies and stupidity.
BRB, going to watch V for Vendetta now.
If you are not doing anything wrong: why do you shut the door when you have a shit in some public toilets ?
Actually, just to nit a little further, the party with the most seats gets to *nominate* a PM, who then has to ask for the Queen's permission to form a government - hence May's visit to the Queen on Friday morning. That's generally a formality - the party (or coalition) with the most MPs gets to ask for permission first and gets it - but the Queen could in theory decline the request, which is partly why there was also some talk of Corbyn also making a request. You've also got corner case scenarios, such as the party with the most MPs is prevented from forming a government by two smaller parties forming a coalition with a greater number of seats and gaining the Queen's assent, or the chaos of Wilson/Heath in 1974.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It only gets better
Next up: The police demand copies of your house keys, lockers, safety deposit boxes and business. Just in case.
I say we let them do it. Politicians have been banging this drum pretty consistently for a while now, independent of any common sense or...you know...intelligence. I say we give them what they presume they want. Give them precisely what they want, then rub their noses in it and smack them with a newspaper when it's shown to be impossible.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
To clarify, being against strong encryption is definitely NOT a liberal thing. In 8 years, Obama didn't propose anything of the sort. Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, or almost any other liberal I can think of would not support it. This is specifically Dick Cheney / Hillary Clinton / Donald Trump garbage.
Look, PGP source, uncompromised, is out there. Anyone that is too stupid to compile it and run presumed secure encryption is simply too stupid to live anyway.
As long as we keep electing mouth breathing idiots to our government, we should expect ass hat policy. All we can do is be smarter than a worm and take our security into our own hands, and avoid "security" that is "supervised".
The root of this issue is the voters that think this is a good idea. As I like to say "Just the tip, and only for a minute." If you vote based on party rather than policy, you are part of the problem. I'm a wild eye'd liberal that voted for Kay Baily Hutchinson many times because while she was a conservative, she supported policy I supported. I don't care what drawer people are in. I care about people.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
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.
No. it is not the final phase.
You forget step 5: Lock up anyone who is a "terrorist suspect" (And who is deemed a suspect? Why, anyone we say we suspect, no proof or even evidence needed because, you know, national security) and tear up any human rights legislation that prevents you from doing so.
Quote:
“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”
-- https://www.theguardian.com/po...
If I lived in the UK, which I don't, I would have this to say to PM May:
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v2
owE7rZ7EEGkjP8EpPycnPzm7WKEkX6Eyv1TBNzElMVdHIQkqrMcFAA==
=VEDs
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
Meanwhile, countries that refuse to accept Musims are enjoying a terror-free life and civil liberties at the same time.
If you took all the money and time spent on ineffectively fighting terrorism's tiny blip in the homicide rate and directed it to really saving lives, how many additional people would be alive today? Even if you focus it strictly on preventing homicides, those billions could've achieved significant crime reduction through detective/beat work alone and certainly through better mental health care.
This space intentionally left blank
It's our own fault. We were offered the Alternative Vote, a vast improve on First Past the Post. We rejected it, because many of us are too stupid to understand such a simple scheme. People seemed to think that "the loser could win" and even seemed comfortable admitting on national TV that there were too thick to grasp such a simple concept as ranking your preferred candidates.
Things are crap and that's how we like it. Seriously, the UK is incredibly conservative and rejects many improvements just because we have always done things the stupid way and get easily confused by the unfamiliar. That also explains why we don't like to travel, and when we do seek out British pubs and cafes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Goodbye online banking and eCommerce.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Two entirely unrelated things. Are you sure you're not a yank?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
CCTV is a lot like fingerprint and DNA evidence. Superficially seems great, if there is video who can argue with it, right? But in practice it shows events from one angle and often without context or even sound. And when it is really needed the tapes magically go missing or the machine was broken that day.
I'm not saying it isn't useful, but it isn't really objective or infallible either. As an example, there was a case police were prosecuting people for dangerous driving based off CCTV evidence showing them rushing through a narrow junction with oncoming traffic only metres away. Turned out that it was just the angle that the video was filmed at, combined with a zoom lens, making it look close when in fact there was plenty of room.
Also, how is CCTV a good measure of if minorities commit more crimes or not? Surely convictions is the metric to use, not this "rationalist" crap.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
See? That's why we should keep encryption but ensure the government has the keys to decrypt all messages. The government will keep those keys private and will only decrypt the messages after getting a warrant and due process will be maintained.
It's obvious, people!
(Do I need to point out that this post is in jest? Yes, yes I do.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Gun, ban the truck, ban the knife, ban the bomb, you can even ban the message, whether encrypted or not.
But you will never achieve your goal until you ban the gun user, ban the truck driver, ban the knife welder, ban the bomber, and ultimately since all of these heinous terrorists acts are "messages" you must ban the messenger.
Until then you are wasting your time.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Wow people think I might be from the US because I feel the ruler of my country should win an election,,, in fact I don't even really believe that, I think have one party rule over the others leaves a lot of people with no representation. All goverments should be coalitions if they can win without aiming for 51% of the votes. The last election in 2015 they got a majority of the seats but only ~36% of the votes. That a lot of people not represented by the ruling party.
... is that people are not allowed to talk in a language that the powers that be don't know, and talking in such a language is criminally punishable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes, you'd think she might have asked one or two bankers about the feasibility of this.
So perhaps she doesn't know any. I mean why would a Tory MP have any connection with them at all?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Agreed. How much money would the City of London's financial corporations lose as companies moved their funds to banks in other countries that protect their accounts with strong encryption? How much money would May's government be willing to throw at the City of London to keep those banks afloat? How many of those banks are "too big to fail"?
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
So that people with possibly nefarious intentions cannot monitor you. Even ignoring the nonzero possibility that the government itself might be anything less than 100% benevolent, if the government can decrypt your content, then so can others... in fact, if there was any real ability to stop this, then they would have been able to stop unauthorized monitoring in the first place
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
is banning math and math education. You know, math underlies all encryption algorithms.
First, massive monitoring of your citizens with country wide CCTV, that didn't help crime statistics at all
As others have said, fake news. Researchers counted the CCTV cameras on a mile of a busy high street and multiplied my the total miles of road in the UK, including rural lanes.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You know, the comment pretty much is just the title
Or rather, they cannot go along with this. For starters, they would use all permission to process credit-card bookings. SOX compliance may also go out the window. And there are other problems, namely that the "security" services never have been able to actually keep backdoors secure on their side.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
An example of the first phase is the level of surveillance and tracking as seen in Torchwood is actually real, at least for the cameras everywhere part.
"Hey, let's put cameras everywhere to stop the TERRORISTS!!!"
*doesn't work*
"Hey, let's ban encryption to stop the TERRORISTS!!!"
*doesn't work*
"Hey, let's arrest people for things we think they might do in the future!!!"
*doesn't work*
Lather, rinse, repeat. The only thing that this kind of stuff will ever accomplish will be getting citizens of the world so pissed off they will revolt and cause a revolution.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I think it's far beyond a "loose money" situation...the UK would have to implement some RADICAL restructuring of all their internet traffic. From what May wants, they would have to strip off all HTTPS traffic, put everything back into plain text. They couldn't use cellular tech like CDMA, SSL, PDFs, and would need to develop all new systems that incorporate this "back door". It would be a colossal undertaking that would take years and millions of manhours. They basically would be cutting themselves off from the rest of the planet electronically. Their economy would collapse, identity theft would run rampant, and basically "the sky would fall" as soon as this backdoor is compromised (which it quickly would be). This idea is on the same level as Trump's wall but 100x more idiotic.
Fewer.
Her party just got creamed, why is she still she prime minister?
Rejected on the basis that it was too expensive (albeit a million times cheaper than Brexit) and that it helped the newly-hated LibDems.
I haven't trusted the electorate since.
Corbyn "won", even though he didn't, because social media wanted him to win.
Politicians are so stupid. Why force computer scientists to make programs with no encryption. They should force engineers to make magic wishing wands. Then they could wish the problem away. Duh!
Even if they were this stupid, they've been told half a dozen times why they're stupid. So one has to assume they have other reasons.
May's advisor who resigned today, Fiona Hill, is shagging Charles Farr and designer of the Investigatory Powers Act. He also designed the IP Act's 3x defeated predecessors over the last 9 years.. It's incredibly likely it all comes from him.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Let me laugh harder. Hahahahaha!
This is the only idea she has to stop terror? Now thats the scary part. The Uk used to have a problem with the IRA and terror, until 911 then we found out that the IRA had empathy for people... thus they stopped. These extremists have no empathy whatsoever... I cant see this ending any time soon.
[($)]
On the encryptionhay.
Have gnu, will travel.
I thought parliament had dissolved on 3rd May. Why are they still around when the new government hasn't been assigned yet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ask me about repetitive DNA
And let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that government doesn't know what it's doing. It knows exactly what it's doing by not using INTRINSICALLY VAULUALALALBLALBLABLBLE rHodium as the one true currency that it is.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Why would a law abiding citizen ever need ssl or wpa2?
lose != loose
I wonder if there is a secret book like fascism 101? Every fascist wants to ban encryption first.
Can someone provide more datails on the prime ministers deisre to ban encryption. All I can find is this quote from the prime minister:
"We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet—and the big companies that provide internet-based services—provide," May said Sunday night outside 10 Downing Street.
In the UK, you can leave to join ISIS, then come back to the country. At least that is my understanding.
Japan and Poland do not have all these terror attacks. I wonder if anybody will ever figure out why?
You could replace FPTP past the post with any other system. For example, superconstituencies - have all of Nottinghamshire elect X number of MPs by PR. How does that affect the system by which MPs, party activists etc choose their party leaders?
Alternatively, elect the PM directly, presidential style. You could elect the MPs by any method in parallel with that.
FPTP != Unrelcted PMs. QED.
You clearly don't understand how the system works, but you think you do. That or you're atrocious at marshalling and expressing your thoughts.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
repeatedly. Does she not see that this huge loss of youbger voters that wiped out her party was totally due to the internet restrictions she wants to implement??
I don't think it was. Alternative vote was a sop from the conservatives, which would have simply cemented their power because it would lessen the call for actual meaningful reform. Most constituencies manage an absolute majority already, so alternative vote would have little effect on the outcome.
Vote reform is certainly needed but AV would only help in a marginal constituency. The current problem where support for a party is distributed around the country is the big one and would not have been solved. Neither of the two major parties are interested in meaningful reform since it would lose them significant power.
I do agree about the stupidity of the voting population though.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Even if you ignore reality and call winning the election electing a PM we still had an "elected" PM from 2010-2016 and again now in 2017...at least until they boot her out. In 2010 and in 2017 the Tories won the election by being the party with the most seats and the largest share of the vote. They may not have had a majority but they still won. All this illustrates is why thinking of our PM as elected does not really work because the reality is that they are chosen by the MPs whom we vote for.
Sad to see ignorance of security technology flourishing in the UK. Bad enough here in the colonies..
Spot on! FYI, don't blink or the USA will be there soon too.