Posted on 09/07/2023 2:44:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A surveillance authority in the country’s troubling Online Safety Bill won’t be enforced, officials say. But for how long?
The U.K. government finally acknowledges that a component of the Online Safety Bill that would force tech companies to scan data and messages for child porn images can't be implemented without violating the privacy rights of all internet users and undermining the data encryption tools that keep our information safe.
And so the government is backing down—for now—on what's been called the "spy clause." Using the justification of fighting the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), part of the Online Safety Bill would have required online platforms to create "backdoors" that the British government could use to scan messages between social media users. The law also would've allowed the government to punish platforms or sites that implement end-to-end encryption and prevent the government from accessing messages and data.
While British officials have insisted that this intrusive surveillance power would be used only to track down CSAM, tech and privacy experts have warned repeatedly that there's no way to implement a surveillance system that could be used only for this particular purpose. Encryption backdoors allow criminals and oppressive governments to snoop on people for dangerous and predatory purposes. Firms like Signal and WhatsApp threatened to pull their services from the U.K. entirely if this bill component moved forward.
Today, The Financial Times broke the news that the House of Lords will announce that tech companies do not have to implement these backdoors until a technology exists that can scan messages only for child porn.
According to Wired, Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker sees this announcement as a win for them: "It commits to not using broken tech or broken techniques to undermine end-to-end encryption."
But unfortunately, it's not as much of a win as Whittaker wishes it were. Wired notes that the problematic "spy clause" actually remains in the legislation. The government is just promising not to enforce it right now. In reality, all the powers will remain intact. Wired reports:
"Nothing has changed," says Matthew Hodgson, CEO of UK-based Element, which supplies end-to-end encrypted messaging to militaries and governments. "It's only what's actually written in the bill that matters. Scanning is fundamentally incompatible with end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. Scanning bypasses the encryption in order to scan, exposing your messages to attackers. So all 'until it's technically feasible' means is opening the door to scanning in future rather than scanning today. It's not a change, it's kicking the can down the road."
Ultimately, this is a victory only in the sense that the U.K. government is now finally publicly admitting that encryption backdoors inevitably violate the privacy rights of innocent people and compromise their safety. The government had, up until now, been focusing on a campaign that stoked fears of child sex-trafficking as a way of deflecting criticism and attempting to steamroll over those who warned about the dangers of this surveillance.
The acknowledgment is a cheap consolation prize given that U.K. lawmakers are about to pass a privacy-violating, speech-suppressing, authoritarian bill. Yes, they are promising not to enforce the broken parts of the law, but only after vehemently insisting that the law was perfectly good and necessary. Social media users trust them at their peril.
Anyone who likes child porn is a disgusting excuse for a human being.
Why would their own personal hard drives violate anyone’s privacy?
Just do a house to house search for Pron, guns and drugs. It’ll be fine.
Just gotta repeal that fourth amendment thingee 🤣
I think we all agree on that. I don’t think that’s the issue here, though. The UK, Canada and other parts of western civilization don’t have the US constitution to protect individuals. If they can convince the people “enough” that a certain issue is an exception, they can violate rights all over the place.
“think of the children” is always the excuse for commies
It was never really about child porn. That was just the excuse.
“Using the justification of fighting the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM)”
Must be FAR WORSE than I thought in the UK, if they already have an acronym for it.
I’m wary of making the possession of anything a crime.
Even Microsoft can’t guarantee I don’t have a virus on my PC.
The real reason is probably they don't want the public to find out about their politician's viewing habits.
I suspect both President Biden and Chief Justice Roberts are being controlled based on laws meant to protect children.
We should not allow government to be highjacked on the basis of protecting children. Laws that protect a child should have a statute of limitations that ends at the child’s 19th birthday. All other laws except murder should have at most a 10-year statute of limitations.
...The acknowledgment is a cheap consolation prize given that U.K. lawmakers are about to pass a privacy-violating, speech-suppressing, authoritarian bill...
The leftists are grooming children in schools many of us are forced to support and the leftists are complaining about mere images instead of children’s physical beings!
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137/stages
Link to the 70 page bill above.
Pay particular attention to Clause 39.
New York State can find out the females that got money from Epstein’s estate.
New York State can compile a mug book of contemporaneous photos of people known to have visited Epstein’s residences.
The females can be asked by New York’s child protective services to describe their victimizers and then to point out any victimizers in the mug book.
If any government states they are worried about privacy concerns, it most likely means they are actually worried about the exposure of government officials.
I’m looking a mind-boggling 260-page bill:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0220/220220.pdf
“Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal
“In August 2014 the Jay report concluded that an estimated 1,400 children had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by British-Pakistani men. Confirmed victims of the abuse in Rotherham were predominantly white. It is speculated that British Asian girls might not have come forward due to social isolation and fear of dishonour. A “common thread” was that taxi drivers had been picking the children up for sex from care homes and schools. The abuse included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and younger sisters, as well as trafficking them to other towns.”
“I think we all agree on that. I don’t think that’s the issue here, though. The UK, Canada and other parts of western civilization don’t have the US constitution to protect individuals. If they can convince the people “enough” that a certain issue is an exception, they can violate rights all over the place.”
Of course we all agree on that particular topic. But something to remember is that there are a whole bunch out there who feel that anyone who believes in God or supports Trump “are disgusting human beings”. And they are now the majority. Do we really want to hand them the legal power to use this against us in the same manner?
We really do need to be cautious what we ask for, What privacy violations we support now can and will be used against us in a court of law later. And it will not be selective or applied rationally.
I’m sure it is possible for me to type something that would have government agents at my door within hours.
It took about five minutes before Notepad would load complete documents on my computer this morning.
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