Britain Admits Defeat in Controversial Fight to Break Encryption
Britain Admits Defeat in Controversial Fight to Break Encryption
The UK government has admitted that the technology needed to securely scan encrypted messages sent on Signal and WhatsApp doesn’t exist, weakening its controversial Online Safety Bill.
Although the UK government has said that it now won’t force unproven technology on tech companies, […] the controversial clauses remain within the legislation, which is still likely to pass into law.
the continued existence of the powers within the law means encryption-breaking surveillance could still be introduced in the future.
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
The implications of the British government backing down, even partially, will reverberate far beyond the UK
“It’s huge in terms of arresting the type of permissive international precedent that this would set […]. The UK was the first jurisdiction to be pushing this kind of mass surveillance. It stops that momentum. And that’s huge for the world.”
Next up: the US.
Celebrate today friends, but I encourage all of my privacy-valuing friends in the US to join and donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the advocacy group who has our backs on matters like this.
Yup, the US. Actually, no anti-cryptography anywhere, please. Didn’t we already do this like 20 years ago? As in, the “Cryptography is a weapon, which you can’t freely export, so you can’t download Netscape from the US” nonsense.
It’s slightly humiliating that, unlike the Tor Project, the EFF does not accept Monero donations while they do accept Zcash for some reason. BTC, ETH are of course accepted.
In case someone does Monero-to-other-coin at Trocador for whatever reason, consider using the affiliate link on the front page https://monero.town/ which is supposed to help Monero.town a bit (your rate shouldn’t change at all).