[negus]

Not surprised, considering UK's ridiculous key disclosure law (United Kingdom The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), Part III, activated by ministerial order in October 2007, requires persons to decrypt information and/or supply keys to government representatives to decrypt information without a court order.) that makes anyone with high-entropy random data (which is undistinguishable from the crypto-container) a criminal for "not providing the keys to decrypt"

[Chance-Device]

This is the way that the UK has passed laws for a while now, make them so broad that they potentially criminalise everyone, then selectively prosecute. This is a very obvious setup for future totalitarianism. I’m surprised that the British public stands for it, but I guess they must not care.

[filcuk]

People here are very passive and used to being pulled around. It's insane how far people's rights have eroded already. No right to protest, no right for privacy - what's next on the chopping block?

[yesco]

Future totalitarianism? Is the UK's government restricted in anyway right now? What line have they not crossed yet?

[varispeed]

This is fuelled by notion that law enforcement is incompetent and doesn't work.

If law enforcement won't catch criminal even if you had them all the details, evidence, witnesses, then average person thinks there laws are dead anyway as there is no one competent to enforce them.

[doublerabbit]

> I’m surprised that the British public stands for it, but I guess they must not care.

I can educate people but it always comes back to "I've not got anything to hide". What are we suppose to do, go out to the streets and protest? Start a petition, right to a PM who has no idea what encryption is?

Mentioning Linux to my family opens a can of worms. We are naive to think protesting actually changes something, it's old fashion. Those with power just don't care so unless people attack with their wallets nothing will come from.

It's not 1995 so unless you have £ for lobbying surrounded by people in suites there is nothing public of any nation can do against anyone in power.

[trallnag]

I'm not surprised at all

[tim333]

Brit here. Yeah from my experience people don't care. Hardly anyone gets prosecuted and those who do have often done something bad.

Most day to day complaints are they don't prosecute enough, often related to the bastard that snatched your phone. We have approximately zero people sitting in jail for failing to decrypt and similar.

>This is a very obvious setup for future totalitarianism.

No it really isn't. If they are planning a totalitarian takeover they are being very sneaky about it. There is a strong anti totalitarianism tradition here including elections since 1265, writing books like 1984 and bombing nazis.

[cbeach]

I've tried to explain the issues with the UK government's stance on digital privacy to my friends. The responses I get:

* I have nothing to hide, I don't care

* Oh come on, our government doesn't care what I'm up to

* The UK will never be totalitarian. I'm not scared of the government

* The UK civil service is incompetent and could never pull this off (fair point, although I worry about the safety of my personal data in the hands of such people)

Let's not forget we had a hard-left (Corbyn) socialist regime come close to power, whose cabinet members called for "direct action" against political opponents, just a few years ago.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/watch-john-mcdonnell-s-c...

I don't think people realise how quickly things could go wrong with these surveillance mechanisms in place, and spiteful, authoritarian politicians taking power.

[varispeed]

It seems like perfect case to make multi-container encryption as default. That is different data will be revealed using different key and there is no way of knowing how many containers there are in the blob of data and not possible to prove someone is hiding a key.

[wuschel]

Not if the state can access your super secret containers while you access them with your software. Because state backdoor either in hardware or in OS level

[globular-toast]

You could try but you might find it/you get "disappeared" like Truecrypt.

[ChrisKnott]

It's incumbent on the prosecution to prove that you know the key they are claiming you are withholding. It is a defence to say you forgot it, or that the data is random. The prosecution would have to prove that you didn't forget it and that the data is not random.

In most cases it requires a court order as well.

[ninalanyon]

> It is a defence to say you forgot it,

Do you have a source for that assertion?