UK Orders Ofcom to Explore Encryption Backdoors

[cedws]

Nobody voted for this.

I'm pretty cynical about both the current and previous government, but it feels like there's been a shift since Labour came into power. Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back. There was chatter but it was met with resistance. Now it feels like the discussion is being squashed and there are invisible forces at work.

If by some miracle the UK and EU agree on a new Youth Mobility Scheme I'm out of here.

[michaelt]

> it feels like there's been a shift since Labour came into power. Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back.

I had hoped Labour would roll back the anti-protest legislation, snooper's charter, internet censorship and voter ID laws.

After all, it was mostly left-wing climate protesters getting arrested, and young (more left-leaning) voters being prevented from voting.

Turns out no, quite the opposite - if anything, Labour thinks these laws didn't go far enough.

With hindsight, it was naive of me to think the former Director of Public Prosecutions would share my scepticism about expanding the powers of the system the Director of Public Prosecutions stands at the head of.

[Tepix]

> Historically this overbearing surveillance has been held back.

That‘s not my impression at all about the UK. They are known for mass CCTV surveillance since more than a decade. There’s even a wikipedia page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>If by some miracle the UK and EU agree on a new Youth Mobility Scheme I'm out of here.

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy...

[JCattheATM]

> Now it feels like the discussion is being squashed and there are invisible forces at work.

Hanlon's razor applies here. The truth is most people simply don't care because they don't understand, and don't care to understand.

[hulitu]

> Nobody voted for this.

Lol. That's how democracy (doesn't) works. The elected people only care about the wishes of the NGO that pushed them in power.

Better luck next time.

[harel]

I don't know what happened that the UK got to the state it is in. It's not just a war on "general computing" as someone said here. It feels like a war on the "general population".

[Flere-Imsaho]

A term I learnt recently:

"Anarcho-Tyranny"

From Gemini:

"The concept was coined in the early 1990s by political theorist Samuel Francis. He described it as a state where the government performs its basic duty of public safety poorly (allowing "anarchy" among criminals) but creates a web of bureaucracy and surveillance to control the innocent (imposing "tyranny" on the law-abiding)."

This is exactly I how feel.

[OgsyedIE]

There's a kind of new aristocratic class developing a broad ideology of anti-populism in power in the UK. The majority of politicians are drawn from backgrounds, or familial backgrounds, in the British news media and get careers there for themselves or their spouses after leaving government. The majority of senior news media personnel, in journalism or management, are drawn from the political establishment in the same inverted way. They organised the Tory leadership elections to install Johnson and later Truss on the belief that low-tax austerity would improve the country and then, facing a continued decline of London relative to the UAE by the policies they championed, coordinated to give Starmer the most complimentary media presence possible from mid 2023 to until the day of the election, conditioned on his continuing their policy platform.

One example of this is how the most recent interview Starmer has been given at the time of writing was to the newly-promoted politics correspondent of Sky News, the spouse of one of his most loyal Labour MPs, formerly an assistant editor of The Spectator, a popular politics magazine that promotes the abolition of inheritance tax, reductions in the age of consent, the introduction of qualified immunity from war crimes for the armed forces, the introduction of civil forfeiture, the return of the death penalty and holocaust denial. Unless an outside force compels other factions in UK politics to act, the media faction will likely replace Starmer with some other NEC loyalist who avoids flubbing line delivery on camera sometime this year. After all, the Starmer government has set a record in UK politics for the fastest decline in polling numbers and Starmer has personally put out the message in news briefings that removing him from office in 2026 would be a grave mistake for the party.

[Xiol]

> It starts with child abuse material, because who’s going to defend not catching that?

After the recent X CSAM generation arguments and the potential for X to get blocked in the UK, it seems like more people than I expected will defend it.

[ryandrake]

There were people on HN defending it. Although I'm sure they're 99% defending Musk, and only because they reflexively jump into defense mode any time one of his companies' wrongdoing is discussed. If it were Adobe's or Microsoft's products generating CSAM, you wouldn't hear a peep out of them

[Canada]

The same pretext has been deployed in Australia as well. I'm not sure if the Carney government will also try.

I don't think anyone is defending it. It's all astroturf.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

> After the recent X CSAM generation arguments

X installs went UP the in UK when the gov said "X allows you to generate child porn, lets block it". Thousands of brits go "free child porn on X better check it out"

[hardlianotion]

How does the government seek to differentiate itself from authoritarian regimes?

[betaby]

They don't. Why would they?

[wakawaka28]

By lying about their motives, of course. The (other) authoritarians are doing the same things but they do it for self-serving reasons as opposed to "for the children", to "fight disinformation, hate speech, organized crime, terrorism", etc.

[13415]

That's only a problem for communication between UK and non-UK users. You can still offer communication services for UK users, just disable all encryption, fulfill other Ofcom requirements, and display a large red "UK UNSAFE VERSION" banner on all windows.

[ExoticPearTree]

Wanna bet that the next day a new law will be passed making that marking illegal? :)

[JCattheATM]

The war on general computing is ramping up.

[glawre]

What are Ofcom realistically going to do when providers refuse to comply?

We've seen the X/CSAM issue this week and both the government and regulator are clearly unwilling to stand up to American big-tech.

[wmf]

The next step is the National Firewall and then the VPN ban.

[halJordan]

They do what they've been doing. Get another law passed, that gives them what they want. Thats the best part of having a parliament, you just pass new laws

[puppycodes]

For a while now traveling to the UK should be treated like visiting China or similar.

Leave your devices at home and expect zero privacy rights.

[oliwarner]

The Land of the Free is similarly unwelcoming at its borders.

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-searc...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dz0g2ykpeo.amp

[alfiedotwtf]

Oh, has it been six months already (… since their last attempt)

[ekjhgkejhgk]

All the "GPG is unsafe" posers, watch them pull out GPG the second a government mandates their comms backdoored.