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founded 1 year ago

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UK backed away from breaking end-to-end encryption in its new Online Safety Bill. Although privacy advocates are celebrating, their victory is far from complete. (cepa.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In the physical world, the limits are clear: no democratic government is permitted to monitor citizens in their homes without a court order, even to prevent domestic violence or child sexual abuse. In the digital world, though, the answer remains unresolved. Child safety advocates believe that governments must be able to unlock private messages, while tech companies and privacy activists see a smokescreen for mass government surveillance.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah totally agree in the technical sense but if they want to spy on your banking they can go to your bank. If they want to spy on your instant messaging they can't.

The bill doesn't mention encryption at all, it only creates the ability to compel service providers to grant them access on request. Breaking the encryption is the only way they could do that. The law isn't telling them not encrypt traffic directly.

Up until the last decade, law enforcement could access pretty much any communications with that appropriate warrants. They could intercept mail, tap phones, get access to emails. E2E being so widespread is fairly new and I vaguely remember messaging platforms implementing it to avoid all the potential legal problems with law enforcement around the world and and international user base. I have no source for that though.

I can imagine it's a potential minefield that they don't want deal with so removing their own access solved that problem.

Don't get me wrong, I believe people should have access to private communications and I think all the rhetoric about protecting children is BS. It's just an easy way to quiet the dissenters then they expand those powers later on.