HUGE oof. Get your grandparents out of office and put some people who know how technology works in
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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I thought they pushed this back a few weeks ago when they realized it wasn't plausible?
Or is it a case of 'the law is here for when it is plausible', which it never will be?
You sadly are correct. All they said is the tech doesn’t exist….but we are still making this the law. Dark times…
So they've basically made a law saying we must all bow down to The Almighty Dragon when he's eventually discovered?
It'll be a cold day in hell before I bow to a Welshman!
Oh no. They might actually make it onto the flag
I dont think monkey D dragon wants to restrict internet he is too busy fighting the government
The absolutely hilarious thing about this is that all of these MPs that clamoured for this bill because "Won't somebody think of the children!" are up to all sorts of terrible behaviour and a whole bunch of them are on Signal.
Why all internet users and not "just" those in the UK?
A clause of the bill allows Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, to serve a notice requiring tech companies to scan their users–all of them–for child abuse content.This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy. As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor.
I am willing to bet that the overwhelming response from tech to "build a back door into every internet user's E2EE communication globally for us to use" is going to be a big fat "No". The UK market isn't big enough to be making these kinds of demands.
The reaction is more likely 'It's still impossible. Just like we told you all the other times. Idiots.'
It's technically not impossible, it would just get rid if the entire point of E2EE, which is mentioned in the open response from WhatsApp, Signal, and others:
if implemented as written, could empower Ofcom to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services, nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users
...this would make E2EE effectively meaningless, because no amount of encryption will protect against getting scanned at the entrance and exit.
AND it would probably break laws in other countries that actually value privacy or security. It's not like they'd be making a UK-only client for every fucking app or device that uses encrypted communications
Yeah exactly, it's very, very stupid and not something any service that actually bothered to enable E2EE in the first place would ever seriously consider.
VPNs: exist
At more length: the internet is incredibly complicated and interrelated. It’s actually extremely difficult to draw clear national boundaries in terms of one web service or another, and the result is honestly never going to be 100% accurate.