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End-to-end encryption; the will of the British people (element.io)
submitted 1 year ago by Spudger to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Today marks the first day of the Report Stage of the Online Safety Bill. As this Bill progresses through the Houses of Parliament, we hope to (once again) raise the alarm around the risks to encryption posed by this Bill.

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[-] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Is the bill mandate everything the runs(any program) needs to be decrypted by official? or just program offered by service provider?

Cause if it's former, then good luck enforcing it as people can just compile and install "extensions" or alternate programs that aren't from corporations. If it's later, the corporate needs to open up the encryption by law, but they can also open source the encryption part and make it possible for community that use it to develop their own encryption extension.

I think our modern phone/computer has enough storage to keep more than life's worth of messages. ie. I have photos/videos dating all the way back to 2009 on google photo and only consumes 11.5GB, with their compression of course. modern phone have 32GB/64GB/128GB storage by default. There really is no need for any corporation to store your "data", you can encrypt your own things and then upload the encrypted archive to a cloud service for back up. With google reducing the storage capacity, you are gonna need to have alternative back up plans anyway. :)

[-] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I suspect it might be "decrypt this message, or you're going to jail".

[-] Spudger 1 points 1 year ago

Or rubber hose decryption.

[-] Spudger 1 points 1 year ago

Or just download the full fat version from an overseas server run by the company making the product. Expecting the general populace to compile stuff is a little bit optimistic. We're talking about a country where most people don't know what a socket outlet is called or the difference between desktop wallpaper and a screensaver.

[-] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

You don't need everyone to know how to compile, just enough to do it and can share the compiled one. Like some auto build daily release you can download from github. As long as it does not belong to a company.

[-] Spudger 2 points 1 year ago

As someone who has spent years extolling the virtues of Matrix/Element to family members I can assure you that there is no known rebuttal to the phrase "but I don't care about privacy". All it needs is to visit a site and sign up. No software required whatsoever. Good luck with GitHub and your ageing aunt or gobby nephew.

[-] PenguinTD@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, they will not adapt and that's not the target audience worry about privacy anyway. They'd give it out for free donuts.

You can also simply provide a host of links to download and install extensions, just like Firefox. People that don't care already gonna sign up stuff and give away personal info for free.(take this survey for a chance to win $5000, but input these personal info so we can contact you if you win.) For people that do care a bit about privacy end to end is like bare minimum. (Like https eventually became standard.)

[-] Spudger 1 points 1 year ago

The problem with people that can't be arsed about privacy is that they're happy to give away your privacy as well as their own. The lesson is that if they don't get it immediately then they probably never will.

[-] dunestorm@vlemmy.net 2 points 1 year ago

Privacy is a human right not a nice to have. If this somehow passes, they cannot enforce it as long as you can still create a VPN tunnel.

Sounds like the gov are either delusional or do not understand how the internet works. Probably a bit of both!

[-] Spudger 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly. If this passes we'll see more than a few services leave the UK. It wouldn't surprise me to see Matrix/Element relocate.

this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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