Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Surveillance strategies in the UK and Israel often go global
So literally everyone in the UK using any website that uses TLS is now a hostile actor?
Essentially everyone's a criminal which is a huge boon for the government. They can now get rid of anyone they want at any time, legally.
That's what the governments in 1984 could do as well.
These people are clueless
they are evil, not necessarily clueless.
They don't care how it affects normal people's lives or what we sacrifice to pay for their incompetent leadership.
It doesn't affect just normal people, but when you make encryption weaker, the foreign state surveillance also benefits.
It denies normal people the ability to retain their privacy from corporate and government surveillance.
Its quite explicitly malicious. If you do anything they think is not in national security interests: treason.
No way this lasts or holds up to basic scrutiny. End to end encryption is a de-facto standard for so fucking much technology.
Like fucking HTTPS.
Well if they commit to this, it will never affect "e2ee" options that collaborate with feds e.g. whatsapp, imessage. If you can kill Refaat Alareer with it rest assured you will be able to keep it in your phone anytime
Yes, the trick is to outlaw it entirely then enforce the law selectively against those whom you find politically awkward.
What document is this from?
It's a screenshot of this report from a review of the UK's security and terrorism legislation, published in December.
TechRadar article discussing the specific encryption issue here.
I was skeptical given the grammar issues others have pointed out but it seems legitimate.
I would like to know too please
I found it:
It's an independent review of some UK laws concerning national security, and the reviewer is warning that the laws could be used against people unfairly. Note the last sentence of the section: "Serious responsibility is put on police to use the power wisely."
Engagement in Hostile Activity
6.16. Under Schedule 3 a person may be engaged in hostile activity even though unaware that their activity is hostile activity[footnote 428].
So a person could be examined on account of their wholly inadvertent and morally blameless conduct.
Examples could include a journalist carrying confidential information whose significance to national security he did not understand, or the victim of planted material. The examining officer could act if there was no possibility that the person was aware that its dissemination might be in the interests of a foreign state, or even that they were carrying the material.
The Code of Practice to Schedule 3 refers to the innocent dupe, who “…may believe that they are working for a legitimate business, or charity, which is in fact being utilised specifically for the purpose of espionage”[footnote 429].
6.17. Since hostile activity does not require any knowledge or tasking by a foreign state[footnote 430], the phenomenon of double-ignorance could arise. A person may be engaged in hostile activity if they do something which, unknown to them threatens, national security and which is in the interests of another State, also entirely in the dark. For example:
The developer of an app, whose selling point is end-to-end encryption which would make it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications. It is a reasonable assumption that this would be in the interests of a foreign state even if though the foreign state has never contemplated this potential advantage.
The lobbyist for a foreign firm, who seeks to persuade an electronic chip manufacturer to build its factory in France rather than the UK. This would engage the UK’s economic well-being in a way relevant to national security even though France is entirely unaware of the lobbying and the lobbyist is only doing his normal day job.
A journalist carrying information that is personally embarrassing to the Prime Minister on the eve of an important treaty negotiations affecting UK security interests.
6.18. In each of these cases the motive of the app developer/ lobbyist/ journalist may be more sinister than first appears, so permitting an officer to examine whether the individual is a witting or unwitting agent of a foreign state might be described as necessary in the right circumstances. Serious responsibility is placed on police to use the power wisely.
hold on hold on, it's in my bookmarks somewhere I just saved a screen and prioritized alarmism
I found it and posted a link in this thread.
what the fuck mate. Just take a shit on your citizens and wonder why the largest empire in the world now sucks off an orange paint face micro dick to make sure people still recognize they might be someone...
Considering how trivial it is to build, and the plethora of working examples on github, I expect anyone is one chatgpt prompt away from running afoul of this.
That's often the point of this kind of legislation. The review from which this comes points out that the law is very broad and a lot is left up to the discretion of the police about how to apply it. In other words, they implement a law that just about everyone is breaking, then enforce it against environmentalists, critics of Israel, privacy advocates, socialists, anarchists and human rights campaigners, while leaving Meta execs, MPs, banks and the far-right untouched.
Was this written by a native English speaker?
It's hard to take seriously with so many grammatical errors
It’s called legalese.
No, beyond the legalese. For example, the comma placement in:
which, unknown to them threatens,
The comma should go after "them", because "unknown to them" constitutes the entire aside.
If you delete the aside in this, it reads "which national security", whereas it should read "which threatens national security".
This is just the first one I found; I didn't go hunting for them. It's one of those grammatical mistakes that actively ruins the cadence of the sentence as you read it in your head.
And worse mistakes:
where there must be at least possibility that
I have complete sympathy for non-native speakers writing papers, but it also raises the question of whether they properly understand the source material they're referencing.
I will inform you that this excerpt is correct English. There needn't be an article like "a" or "the" before "possibility". It reads awkwardly in everyday language, but that really is just innocent "legalese" phrasing.
Thanks for the correction. Rereading it I can kind of see if they mean possibility as an abstract concept, so I'll take the L on it.
But I still maintain it's a pretty fucked way of phrasing it.
That is perfectly grammatical English, especially in legal texts.
Can't wait to hear about all the upcoming data breaches. RIP all your medical records...
Does the government have the right to monitor any and all communications corporate, private or political?
No. Whether they believe otherwise or not.
"...would make it more difficult for UK security and intelligence services to monitor communications..." As if they have a right to do so already.
This is such a stupid law. A lot of things require encryption, even the government itself need end-to-end encryption. Are they going to ban Signal and Briar next?
These laws are made by people who have the slightest knowledge about the subjects they're making the laws on. Oppressing the people is their only concern, everything is else anti-nationalist activity.
This is the first biggest step towards a totalitarian society: cut all (end-to-end encrypted and private) communications across citizens. I hope the people there realise this and protest against this law or something. U.K. is literally becoming Oceania.