[BleepingComputer] UK Passes the Most Extreme Surveillance Law in the History of Western Democracy

Associate
Joined
10 Dec 2012
Posts
206
The law passed yesterday by both UK legislative houses (the House of Commons and the House of Lords), and officials expect the Royal House to sign it into law by the end of the year.

Here is just a small list of all the new surveillance regulation included in the IP Bill's approved version:

  • Internet Service Providers must log every user's web browsing history for a year.
  • Police and other law enforcement agencies can access this data through a specialized interface and search for suspects or general profiles.
  • Security services can access and analyze public and private databases.
  • Government agencies can still collect communications data in bulk, just like through RIPA.
  • Police and other law enforcement agencies can, under certain circumstances, hack into users' devices.
  • Communications operators must remove their side of encryption and help state agencies access data or devices.

For the past years, human rights groups, tech companies, politicians, and regular UK citizens have criticized the new law, which grants the UK government the same powers Chinese authorities have.

Source
 
but it says Communications operators must remove their side of encryption and help state agencies access data or devices.

Yeah, "Communications Operators" is a bit vague, but we can only assume it means OTT ("over the top") services such as Signal, Skype, WhatsApp etc. With Skype it's likely easy - Skype is now client/server (used to use a hybrid client/server/P2P model where the actual voice streams were between clients only) and doesn't use end-to-end encryption (as far as I know, the data is plain but sent along an encrypted channel between client and server), so tapping the server for voice streams and metadata is likely quite possible.

WhatsApp and Signal use end-to-end encryption, so even the servers can't decrypt the messages or voice streams.
 
Back
Top Bottom