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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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
If you are not doing anything wrong: why do you shut the door when you have a shit in some public toilets ?
The thinking goes back to Defence of the Realm Act 1914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Breaking Enigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . The Uk looking at all other nations 1910 to 2017 embassy codes.
Every call in the Soviet Union, East/West Germany, France, Japan been looked at for things of any interest to the UK.
Crypto was great for the UK in the Falklands War too. The UK could read everything in real time. Except some South African hardware, but that was solved too.
That was all hidden away from the wider public and interesting people kept chatting away thinking that call could never be detected.
The first changes to that was a policy shift between the UK and USA.
The USA wanted to share results within the USA, to allow police, mil, contractors to use raw collection results and get results.
More people looking, more results.
The UK knew results would leak to lawyers, police, human rights groups, spies, criminals and bad people would just understand not use phone/internet again.
The US policy finally won and now collect it all and using the results in public.
Courts, police, mil, gov can share results and the public soon knows its been collected on 24/7.
So who is right? The US with collect it all, sort it all, study it all, police it all?
Or the UK method of the 1970-80's? No courts, no police, no lawyers, no human rights groups, no media, no political groups working out methods.
Just groups like the UK mil, GCHQ and RUC Special Branch worked with raw material. Action was then taken and nobody knew anything or could request any details.
Was it an informant? A phone call? A copied paper file? A computer file? Something in the funding from the USA to Irish groups? The UK police was kept away from any and all raw information, the UK press did not know who to ask, UK lawyers did not see anything in any type of courts. Telco workers did not see changes to the amount of police/court requests.
Its a generational change between a US view of more contractors, the private sector, courts, police, lawyers, telcos been fully trusted. Collect it all, use it all.
Or the older UK view of only trust the UK mil, GCHQ and RUC Special Branch.
Breaking encryption only works if nobody ever knows and the UK mil, GCHQ and RUC Special Branch could then go get results.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"If one outlaws breaking laws, only people who break laws will be outlaws."