The U.K. Parliament is pushing ahead with a sprawling internet regulation bill that will, among other things, undermine the privacy of people around the world. The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force backdoors into messaging services, which will destroy end-to-end encryption. No amendments have been accepted that would mitigate the bill’s most dangerous elements. If it passes, the Online Safety Bill will be a huge step backwards for global privacy, and democracy itself.
    • itsmikeyd@lemmy.mlEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      Oh believe me we will, but we have to wait for them to call an election (likely autumn 2024). They’re roundly despised and they know it. They’re just milking as much as they can before they’re flung out of Parliament.

      They’re a disgrace.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Which makes you wonder what the point in this bill even is. They will barely get an opportunity to make use of it.

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Is there any indication that Labour would be any better on this particular issue?

        • itsmikeyd@lemmy.mlEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          Idk. Im very pessimistic that this county is capable of any reasonable decision making tbh.

        • WeThePilgrims@sopuli.xyz
          4·
          1 year ago

          Very very very little indication they would be better, and I’m very left of center in politics.

          Starmer is very suss as far as I’m concerned, I’m not at all comfortable with his purges…if he gets in, we’ll see.

      • MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I might be cynical af but I believe China is a market they can’t ignore, but the UK, well…they can afford to send a message there. With some quick google-fu it looks like Apple sells more iPhones about every 8 days than it sells in the UK in a year. That’s comparing 2023 numbers for China to 2019 numbers in the UK for the record, I’m too lazy to look past the first few links really, and doubt that math would change enough to ruin the point.

        They also wouldn’t pull out of the UK, they would likely just revert to SMS there in the messages app rather than give the UK a back door into their encryption.

    • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
      13·
      1 year ago

      In a selfish way… I’d like for the UK to do this and for it to go horribly horribly wrong for them. Maybe that would finally get the US reps to get their heads out of their butts so l don’t have to keep signing petitions and writing essays about why weakening encryption is a horrible idea.

      • immibis@social.immibis.com
        4·
        1 year ago

        @Dark_Arc this is generally referred to as accelerationism and I think it’s a cromulent ideology.

        If you think the only way to get to a sane world is to achieve and pass through the insane one first, then doing it as quickly as possible makes sense.

  • birdcat@lemmy.ml
    19·
    1 year ago

    Oh wow, the great UK really seems to love to show the world how advanced they are. Decrypt this then 🙄

    Password is only 8 characters.

    -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----

    jA0ECQMIg4RgH82c4/j+0sC6ASlYlE5UsjX2pJ7EL+c/XvjBdn2sfeaWyVZQenMW h+eMDp4vCSbhvVHpzVjwo0mJVKyLnINzjelRVQH0mPBuvs8wsGPitJ04xkixBrEI j/BDvunCqQHKh2rDSbqubuA64+74Zg2FqGsAgnTrxfK/78AFPfL1jM4GODxLt5IT duxVd06lE/zqJmhBL0uInovdKRsOjDoueHJBeXOSFpfYCoUcQsNkcOCZ7XiaaQus CUKVs1nCHWQZtjlRTxUzBRjkNFFVumXY+XI2S35ER8FveB6LdL0bqWCsJxSVUCMb +G3v5ckD/dvxVCrjxfeA4Xlvvk5ivZwsmkaWLz0KUl8tooxD3LBmbU3OTZ27sRxW SgTwGewFgxDTAlcbKaW46WI/Stbs3knYc2rQbMpu/DHqjz2GsYBENXOZEMYCnNtB tgRj6I5IqPieP2ZHUBXu8/ijL6Kl6UxKRtit7m0kttCfFWY8a1yhRfXGn57ZByxi Tj8jFHypznwgpSTE =cl6h -----END PGP MESSAGE-----

    • freddo@feddit.nu
      23·
      1 year ago

      Oi M8 do you have a loicense for that Encryption? No? Well then, pay the foine or be branded a terrurist within the Five Eyes. /s

        • yetAnotherUser@feddit.de
          10·
          1 year ago

          This is a random string of emojis btw, there’s nothing to see here.

          🙃💵🌿🎤🚪🌏🐎🥋🚫😆😍🕹ℹ😁🎈🏎😂☂😊📂☀🙃🌉🔄💧🐅😂🌊🍎☂👣😊😊👁🍵🎅👉🚫💧☺🍌🏎🎃🗒

        • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          The law laws will be written so that they don’t need to prove it. The suspicion will be enough, and innocent people will be punished for transmitting or storing unintelligible data.

        • Ricaz@lemmy.world
          6·
          1 year ago

          Actually I just made up my own written language that happens to consist of 64 case-sensitive characters in one string. This is how I communicate

    • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
      11·
      1 year ago

      Sure, the title sounds like clickbait, but the point is: if a big enough player passes these laws, then the other countries may follow.

    • renormalizer@feddit.de
      0·
      1 year ago

      If they force messengers to implement backdoors into the protocol, I doubt they will limit it to UK users. Also, conversations with UK users won’t be private anymore even if the other party is from another country.

      Client-side scanning might not be enforced for other accounts but when the infrastructure is there other governments will want to use it, too.

      • Steeve@lemmy.ca
        1·
        1 year ago

        That definitely won’t happen. Full E2EE apps like Signal, iMessage, and WhatsApp aren’t going to risk the worldwide backlash that would come with implementing backdoor access. The UK market isn’t that big and definitely not worth it, they’d pull out of the UK entirely first.

        • renormalizer@feddit.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          I hope they will. My guess is that a nonprofit like Signal will pull out. They have nothing to gain and a reputation to lose. The others will probably comply by implementing some form of client-side scanning.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      3·
      1 year ago

      especially with the rumors of Scotland getting independence.

      Yeah, that’s not how it works.

    • jibbist@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      Scottish Indy movement has been put back by 10+ years after the political and possibly illegal financial fuckups of the main indy party SNP.

      They still have control over most of Scotland, but their political power in Westminster is still fairly small, this might change next election though

  • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
    14·
    1 year ago

    There are so many trends with technology that seem to favor another 1930’s Europe situation. The 1940 film “The Great Dictator” describes it pretty well, and it is sad how much love and compassion seem to be out of favor as people march more and more towards mechanized hate-driven systems of society. I really hope a pro-humanism civil rights movement takes hold, like Martin Luther King Jr’s kind of teaching, but it seems to not happen that a popular person like that comes to the top. Even a Carl Sagan type person with mass popularity to much of what Sagan shared in his books and speeches would be a good direction.

  • Certainity45@lemmy.ml
    9·
    1 year ago

    Just two years ago the politicians fearmongered that quantum computers will break every encryption without delay. This bill speaks quite different story.

    • TriStar@lemmyfly.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      They will… when they finally get invented. For now though, law enforcement will have to do annoying things like “following the word of law” and convincing judges who clearly do not understand the national security implications of kids going to the wrong school to give them warrants.

  • paulcdb@kbin.social
    6·
    1 year ago

    Or we could all just vote for people that aren’t corrupt… or at least, yet!

    If you don’t know who isn’t corrupt, vote for independents that understand technology. I know it’ll never happen so things will continue to go downhill but gees, what do governments have to do to get people to wake up? 🤬

    Hell, i’ll be happy if people just stopped believing ‘for the sack of the children’ crap and realise its all about controlling the population! 🙄🤦‍♂️

    • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      we could all just vote for people that aren’t corrupt

      Audiences who flock to liars and deceivers seems to be trending in bad direction. Business leaders, politicians. What Cambridge Analytica unleashed as mass psychology tactics in 2014 may be very difficult to undo.

      corrupt… or at least, yet!

      Things like term limits seemed to help stop some of the problems of people corrupting once they got into positions of power. But now it seems crowds of more and more people are choosing pre-corrupted, cheering on corruption.

    • birdcat@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      Yea voting is great, but when was the last time the UK had a prime minister that anyone voted for?

      • glue_snorter@lemmy.sdfeu.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        We’ve had four unelected PMs in seven years. (Although TBF two of them did then won elections.)

        The answer to your question is Boris Johnson, this time last year.

    • honk@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      No. It‘s the opposite of a new world order.

      It‘s the old order doing everything to preserve its power.

  • OrkneyKomodo@lemmy.sdf.org
    4·
    1 year ago

    I get the importance, but the global implications are being slightly overstated. It may be the thin end of the wedge in terms that it may lead other governments to follow suit. But all that will happen in the short term is that many IM clients will withdraw from the UK. Apple will probably just disable iMessage in the UK.