Parliamentary petition against 'backdooring' e2e encryption

Rainmaker said:
or weakening and undermining the encryption I use to bank
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Backdoors don't have to be enabled across all applications though, you can license banks etc. to keep records of their communications (well they do do anyway?)
and just backdoor communications used by many criminals ie 80/20 rule.
 
jpaul said:
and just backdoor communications used by many criminals
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Those criminals with the brain cell required to use an encrypted communications platform in the first instance will simply switch to one unaffected by the backdoor. Again, what did we gain versus what we lost? There's already murmurs about restricting access to VPNs and weakening TLS and widespread adoption of HTTPS.

As a further example, the UK is the one country where Mozilla aren't rolling out DNS over HTTPS by default, because the government, spy agencies and ISPs complained so much that it'd be harder to spy on the wider population and hoard their communications and web browsing habits. Tell me again, when did we decide it was OK to have our very move logged and spied upon, without prior reason? Since when did Snowden's revelations stop being shocking, and start being something we actively wished for 'because paedos, killers, terrorists and Middle East Wackos' (spot the reference)?

It's all a (very thin) veneer to adopt an even wider warrantless surveillance dragnet. Why are people so keen to agree? I honestly don't get it. We already have tools, personnel and the ability to directly target those we (strongly) suspect of wrongdoing. That doesn't encompass the need to weaken wider platforms and protocols. You don't need to break into Aunt Maggie's messenger to plant a bug in Terry O'Wrist's appartment or plant a RAT on his PC. The difference, of course, is judicial oversight, a warrant and an active reason to do so.
 
Dolph said:
So, what alternative proposition do you (or indeed the petition creator) have to ensure encryption technologies aren't used to aid, facilitate or hide criminal endeavours?
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they will just use encryption thats not compromised by a backdoor, they already exist anyway how are the gov going to stop people using them?

any real criminals arent going to be using whatsapp or whatever,


what I see in the future is AI and big data reading everyone's info and making profiles on them like china
 
You only have to look at how the current crisis is being exploited to monitor and track normal people to see what the governments obvious wider interest is. I've said it before but compare what's being proposed with China's social credit system and rapidly expanding mass surveillance apparatus and see what life is like when privacy is essentially wiped out.
 
Rainmaker said:
As a further example, the UK is the one country where Mozilla aren't rolling out DNS over HTTPS by default
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It's just a few delivery network servers that offer this anyway, cdn?, and that's a forwarding service, plus, why make it easier for the perverts accessing child porn/other to get anonymity; Company firewalls are also not adapted to filter/monitor such access.
 
This will pretty much break internet security and make using a VPN a requirement.

You only have to look at this to see how bad things are now. Add in even more vulnerabilities and it will get far worse: https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/

mmj_uk said:
You only have to look at how the current crisis is being exploited to monitor and track normal people to see what the governments obvious wider interest is. I've said it before but compare what's being proposed with China's social credit system and rapidly expanding mass surveillance apparatus and see what life is like when privacy is essentially wiped out.
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Yea well the UK has "credit score" which allows corporations to bully, threaten and ruin people's lives on a whim.
 
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jpaul said:
if we permitted backdoors some of this activity might be supressed ( ... but tiktok appears to be a significant facilitator)
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No it won't. It's mostly on the "dark web" which won't be affected.

If anything this law will push more people on to it and it turn in to a replacement internet, which can't be monitored at all.
 
jpaul said:
if we permitted backdoors some of this activity might be supressed ( ... but tiktok appears to be a significant facilitator)
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How?

Ransomware/viruses/spyware etc don't use asymmetric encryption.

Asymmetric encryption is only used for communication purposes.
 
I seem to remember the NSA phone spying program costing over $100 million of tax payers' money and only producing two significant leads.

This isn't going to be used to catch terrorists. It'll be used to control everyone.
 
Randomware uses software which just runs and encrypts everything locally, then needs a key to unlock. It won't have any affect on that at all.
 
Nasher said:
Randomware uses software which just runs and encrypts everything locally, then needs a key to unlock. It won't have any affect on that at all.
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No, but maybe the ***** that make a living from it may be tripped up or caught (or shot).
 
"Network providers must also “take measures to prevent activities that unreasonably restrict monitoring, analysis and investigation.”"

Welp, looks like that's the end of internet banking then!
 
Haggisman said:
"Network providers must also “take measures to prevent activities that unreasonably restrict monitoring, analysis and investigation.”"

Welp, looks like that's the end of internet banking then!
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"Unreasonably". It's a terrifyingly open-ended and subjective word, isn't it?
 
Dolph said:
*pulls on devils advocate hat*

So, what alternative proposition do you (or indeed the petition creator) have to ensure encryption technologies aren't used to aid, facilitate or hide criminal endeavours?

This isn't to say there aren't massive problems with the government proposal, there are, but it is also trying to fulfill and maintain a legitimate policy requirement.
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I'm not sure it's a good argument, frankly.

What proposal do you have to make sure that knives aren't used by terrorists? Or baseball bats? Or ball bearings?

Should we make knives less sharp to hinder their use as weapons? People could just sharpen them after... like terrorists can just use their own software to make encrypted comms regardless of your Apple/MS backdoors. Heck they can use Raspberry PIs and roll their own entire OS if they have to.

This whole proposal will stop terrorists using e2e encryption like selling blunt knives will stop them being used as weapons. It's daft.
 
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