So the terrorists will setup a chat system that look like payments.
In the mean-time, the UK government will use our chat to identify harmless political dissidents, groom them online and then fail to incite them to violence. Given previous performance, they will meet some of their targets, get a few pregnant and then get sued 20 years later when someone reports on how idiotic the police and spies really can be while everyone sane scratches their heads about the targeted pro-solar-power "terrorists", who happened to piss off Lord McOil who had a quiet chat with his Eton buddy in GCHQ which got them classified as dangerous.
After 5 years, Boris, our new PM, will decide to give government departments access to find benefit cheats and illegal immigrants. The system they'll build will cost more than they recoup and will be a drop in the bucket compared to what they could have recovered if they had spent 1/10th of that money chasing rich tax dodgers.
A couple of years later, they will give councils access to the whole country's chat to try and catch some fly-tippers.
In this time, the civil servants will actually use the system to stalk ex-girlfriends, random crushes and celebrities or spy on wives and husbands.
Eventually, some civil servant will accidentally leave a hyper-storage-cube on the bus containing the last 5 years of everyone's chat and it'll turn up on 4chan.
The resulting misery and damage will be justified by the government because they once caught a "terrorist" who was standing in the street screaming "Allah is great" and stabbed a policeman. In reality he was a normal guy who had suffered from Bipolar Disorder but the NHS couldn't afford to treat him and classified him low risk, so ended up having a breakdown.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police...
It smells unconstitutional to me because it is an attack on individual sovereignty and the right to privacy. I would love to hear an expert or two give their opinion on the matter.
> 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
> 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
[Note the exceptions, which are (by design) wide enough to drive a bus through]
An Act of Parliament restricting end-to-end encryption for the expressed purposes of preventing crime and preventing terrorist atrocities would fairly clearly be constitutional, I think. Even if it was ruled incompatible with the ECHR, the courts have no power to overturn primary legislation - just to punt it back to Parliament with a declaration of incompatibility.
If a minister tried to do it without Parliament under the royal prerogative or secondary legislation, I think the chance of it being overturned as unlawful are somewhat higher.
I'm a political scientist, not a lawyer, mind.
So you're saying that watching most hentai is borderline illegal in the UK? That's crazy.
Even for the most battle-hardened politician near the end of their career, this issue is a minefield.
The idea that the UK parliament would abolish courts doesn't really need addressing, it's so absurd. I take it you're also aware that we regularly (some would say too regularly) democratically elect parliament? That's usually consider a check if not a balance.
The problem isn't the lack of a UK constitution or any of the other specious arguments. The problem is that a large number of people, very probably the majority, either agree with this idea or simply don't care. At the very least they don't care enough to make it an important issue in a general election and we've just had a couple.
Amber Rudd's "experts" couldn't prevent a simple brute force attack on her own parliament that would have easily been mitigated with 2FA (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/26/parliament_email_ha...)
lol what a terrible argument.
> suggesting that E2E encryption hinders usability
> points to the massive number of WhatsApp as proof
They aren't either OK or not OK. The overwhelming majority of WhatsApp users simply don't know. They don't even think about it. In fact, the average user doesn't even know that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, or even that it used to be a paid subscription
And she's alarmingly right in that regard.
i.e. backdoors. Trust us, we are the government!
But I don't expect you to understand your own responsibilities so let's just wait until Vladimir Putin hacks into any server containing your private information. Then UK politicians will understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Milly_Dowler#Voicema...
It will simply destroy the privacy of ordinary people who set up a dinner or buy a birthday present for their kids
"Real people" just use ROT13...
http://www.independent.co.uk/News/uk/home-news/london-attack...
That is a huge oversimplification.
Terrorists do harm because they see a political value in harming others. For proof, look no further than the domestic terrorists who have bombed abortion clinics and shot doctors who worked there, or who have threatened to do same. All while being backed by religious organizations, who are just as culpable for the results.
Sure, these people might not be called terrorists, because the FBI has to abide by laws of free speech, etc., but they are just as much a terrorist as any person looking to wage jihad.
----
See this article for the FBI's explanation of not calling a terrorist a terrorist: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-terrorism-label_us_5...
How does the saying go? "The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
Forced to choose between the agencies and big business who do you think the legislators will choose? Sure they can side with the agencies but if business isn't on-board with that checks will get written and there will be new legislators.
I hope the agencies force the choice. It gives the legislators a chance to do all the things they should have done after Hoover left.
Staggering double speak from Orwell's own land. Who would have thought.
Question: Is a terrorist more a threat to civilization or these closet totalitarians crawling out of the woodwork?
The cat is out of the bag. End to end encryption that is very easy for the average user to use exists. There's no going back. These terrorists that they are so worried about are going to use it (if they have any common sense), even if it is outlawed somehow. Making it illegal or extremely difficult to use is the same as gun control - the criminals are still going to break the law because their end goal is a crime far worse and if they are willing to commit that crime then they are surely willing to commit the lesser crime of not getting a license for a weapon or possibly using end-to-end encryption.
In the US we supposedly have the 4th amendment to protect against this NSA spying criminality. The 4th amendment protects against both search and seizure. The giant dragnet they use to sweep up all communications over private channels is supposed to be a crime without a warrant. And when done in bulk it should be easily considered a mass, rank violation of the 4th amendment. For example, in the case of your cell phone, you agree to allow a private business to forward your data and communications. They theoretically can access it all, including your GPS because of the cell tower triangulation. That should be understood as necessary to providing the base service. But your agreement is only with the telecom provider, not the government. The government just decided to stick it's head in and declare itself to have a national security interest in the data of not just you, but everyone in the entire nation, and demanded access to it all.
What's worse is that these programs have not been proven to actually stop terrorists: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha... http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/nsa-program-stopped-no-ter...
In fact, based on my memory, every instance of a thwarted attack has been the FBI actually communicating directly with alleged terrorists using undercover agents. This is how actual investigative work has historically been done. They followed up on tips, evidence, etc. and followed the leads and performed a real investigation and followed the proper warrant protocols. And doing it "the hard way" has yielded them more terrorists in handcuffs than the NSA.
The results are so abysmal for the PRISM program and it's siblings, that it begs the question whether or not stopping terrorists is even the real purpose. Personally, I have never thought it was the main goal. Sure, they might catch some, but I think the real purpose is to make sure no one poses a political threat. If anyone starts to get out of line or cause too many problems, they can just rifle through all their data they have on you and find something to use against you. How many people are clean enough to escape that? Ever, even once, downloaded an illegal mp3? Ever watch a movie on an illegal, streaming tube site or use torrents? Ever cheated, even a little on your taxes? Ever cheated on your spouse? Have a porn fetish that others may find unsavory? In the closet? Are you fully in compliance with every housing regulation? Have permits for every little thing that legally requires a permit? Have any secrets that aren't illegal but may be embarrassing? Done anything that isn't illegal but people would look upon with disdain? It might just be used against you.
