Seems like the bill is a posture joke and no longer the monster it was. But these bills keep coming every year, relying on laziness of citizens to get passed.
Oh this is done for the money. What wouldve been better is age restriction to the whole net, hopefully finding a way to make parents responsible for their children and what they do. But that means way less views and traffic for ads. Yes there’s “YT Kids” and such but what being on the internet has taught me is absolutely every type of online service can be exploited and attacked.
I can understand parents wanting some help from official sides. They are hated no matter what they do: Controlling internet access, especially of their teenagers? Helicopter parenting, or parents on a power trip. Letting their children use the internet? Neglecting assholes. Sitting next to their teenagers while they use the internet? Overbearing creeps smothering their children and possibly jobless leeches.
Parents have to at least be able to trust content filters.
After bouncing back and forth between the house of lord’s and the house of commons This bill is a shadow of it’s former self. I’m glad to say.
Three things that were massively damaging for privacy and security have, as far as I can see, been scrapped.
The bill no longer requires tech companies to control ‘harmful but legal’ content. A blurry, ill defined concept that would have been impossible to regulate.
The bill no longer requires all end to end encrypted communication channel’s (WhatsApp etc) to have a backdoor for governments and enforcement agencies to access unencrypted messages between people. Something that would have broken effective security in every way.
The bill no longer requires porn to only be accessible to UK citizens after they have proven they are an adult. This was by providing bank details or ID to porn websites (lol no thanks), possibly through a third party company that is supposed to assure some privacy ( lol still no thanks).
And what’s left in the bill is going to be regulated by Ofcom, a toothless underfunded shell of a regulatory body.
re your 2nd point, that’s most certainly not been scrapped. The language has changed to basically say, they’re aware thetech doesn’t currently exist to do this but as soon as it does, it must be done. It’s a temporary reprieve at best.
Of course it will. As soon as quantum processing becomes a reality, which is getting nearer and nearer to happening, encryption will be simple to crack.
And enough room to be justifiably concerned about it being reintroduced whenever they decide. The point remains however, it’s most certainly not been scrapped.
Only a very specific and unfortunately common encryption protocol will be affected by quantum computing.
Prime factorization based encryption is hosed, Elliptic curve cryptography is already the promoted standard and it’s not susceptible to the same issue.
Age verification isn’t so clear cut but there’s room for a lot of hope. What ‘age verification’ is going to be in the bill is yet to be determined by Ofcom.
… Which is law makers kicking the can down the road… or passing the buck. Probably because it’s unenforceable and a technical/ privacy nightmare. Maybe it will amount to something, in which case we should be afraid, but I think most likely it will amount to not much.
I would never trust Wired’s interpretation on a matter such as this.
I did read the Tech Crunch article, and I understand that users must be given tools now to filter instead of Parliament dictating what is legal but harmful - which does sound like an improvement -, but somehow I am even more concerned about the law due to how untrustworthy I found the authors’/supporters’ rhetoric to be. I think there might be some truth to this, though:
“Nothing is getting watered down or taken out when it comes to children,” she argued. “We’re adding extra in. So there is no change to children.”
And that makes everything else sound like a spin to me. I think this bill is too expansive to be transparent, and I do suspect that is in some part intentional.
Sorry wired just came to hand. You can find it referenced elsewhere.
But it did change from ‘have to’ to ‘have to, if possible’ which is a massive climb down. It’s basically not possible to have a backdoor in e2e encryption so I think it’s dead in the water. It may even make other companies shift to e2e to avoid this legislation, which would be ironic.
And I think the quote is from the minister in charge of the bill, so he/she would talk it up.
The bill is awful. But at least it’s weak(er) and awful.
It’s basically not possible to have a backdoor in e2e encryption
That depends on the encryption method. No one is publicly aware of the standards having backdoors (with a few exceptions), but proprietary encryption implementations can definitely have backdoors.
This has occasionally been a requirement for export-controlled technology (e.g., a mandated maximum key size). And it has occasionally led to the unintended side effect of creating backdoors in the full-strength/domestic/non-export models due to poor implementation.
We recently passed a law that enables the UK to indefinitely detain adult and children refugees and asylum seekers. I’m sure they’ll be building camps next.
Well, people have actively been trying for decades. National Front, British National Party, UKIP, anything Nigel Farage touches, they all have elements of white supremacy, various other forms of bigotry, or “Traditional British Values”.
Unknown at this stage. I suspect it’s being kept intentionally vague so they can shutdown whatever they like but leave up the GB News/Daily Heil type propaganda.
VPN subscriptions in the UK will be a lucrative market then for people wanting access to, let's see, Wikipedia...
I'm interested to know what the Signal President meant when she said she's much more optimistic about working with the government than she originally was.
The thing is it obviously does come from good intentions, and it's very rare you'll find me saying that about something to do with the Tories. But it's so obviously the wrong approach and yet here we are. Thanks for nothing. Yet again.
The original intent - to stop kids accessing harmful content on big tech media sites was the sole original intent. That’s now morphed into the legislative tool for mass surveillance that’s just been passed. That original intent wasn’t a Tory idea as such, but two researchers. The addition of more and more draconian elements most definitely was from the Tories. Including the red Tory currently leading the Labour party.
I feel since she took over, Signal has been on a steady downward trajectory. Increasing the barriers to use, more centralization instead of federation, and the stupid fucking Stories feature.
Which barriers to use has Signal implemented? How is the App more centralized now than before, and have they ever expressed interest in federating their service before under Moxie? And how is implementing an optional feature that a lot of people like an argument for an assumed “downward trajectory”?
SMS support - signal went from being a one stop shop for messaging to yet another standalone messaging app that suffers from a lack of network effect unlike its competitors. The all in one approach was it’s single greatest asset in getting people onto the platform.
There were desires to open up the platform prior, now it almost entirely forces you onto Signal exclusively and any discussion of other clients is expressely forbidden in its official support channels AND in it’s unofficial (yet run by foundation members) channels like it’s reddit sub
And yes, hopping on a shitty bandwagon of features its competitors have is a massive waste of dev hours and indicative of its downward trajectory
Completely irrelevant to any point you made previously.
There were desires to open up the platform prior
This article from Moxie himself in 2016 shows they had no intention of expanding/implementing federation at all. This was way before the current President took over.
hopping on a shitty bandwagon of features its competitors have
The fact that you don’t differentiate between objective degradations of a service and implementing a feature you don’t care about because you are not the target audience for it just show that you don’t argue in good faith but just want to push an agenda.
I've been using a VPN, blockers, all sorts in the UK to disguise some of my online activity from Google and other companies so if I'm just doing the same thing to avoid the government there's not much difference.
The fact that I still use Google products is a lapse and due to laziness on my part...
Of course it could be a vote winner for Starmer at the next election to say he'll repeal it on free speech grounds of he played it right. But then the opposition could spin it as him not wanting to protect children online so he probably won't have the guts to risk it.
They are using the “good intentions” as cover for their ever expanding surveillance state. It is absolutely not the intention of this bill to provide “safety” for the citizens. It’s to make sure that the citizens don’t get too uppity and threaten their masters.
Do they not realize there are messaging services that don’t even have a central server or even an entity responsible?
Or companies that don’t even have a presence in the UK, and thus no responsibility to comply with their laws?
Pedos will just download and install something like Keet or Signal or Session while the privacy and security of law-abiding citizens are irrevocably compromised…
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