[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by t...
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Ask HN: Online activities to be made impossible by the UK Online
Safety Bill
I thought it might be interesting to compile a list of things which
it might be impossible (or at least very difficult) for a private
individual to do under the Online Safety Bill. Starters for ten:
1) Minecraft / MineTest server 2) IRC server 3) Mastodon server 4)
BBS 5) ... please continue I'm not fully sure about all this - as
I understand it, if you allow chat or user generated content, you
become a private service provider, and then have a host of
responsibilities including annual audits of whether a significant
proportion of your users are minors. If they are then you need to
use a (commercial?) age verification tool and monitor everything
assiduously. Difficult to see most people being able to satisfy
those requirements.
Author : b800h
Score : 164 points
Date : 2023-07-29 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
| ta8645 wrote:
| Comment section on your personal blog?
| jonatron wrote:
| Exempt under "Schedule 1 -- Exempt user-to-user and search
| services"
| ta8645 wrote:
| Is a comment section user-to-user, though? On its face, it
| seems more user-to-public, since it's not a private user-to-
| user transmission. If blog comment sections are exempt, it
| would seem Reddit is exempt too.
| jonatron wrote:
| Reddit is user generated content, so isn't exempt.
|
| "provider content" means content published on a service by
| the provider of the service or by a person acting on behalf
| of the provider.
|
| It's unclear if there's a difference between hosting your
| own blog, or using a blogging service, because the bill is
| terrible.
| pmlnr wrote:
| One scenario is that Whatsapp and Apple leave the UK market,
| another is that nobody going to do anything about the "law",
| which is rubbery enough to be ignored. I'm quite curious how it's
| going to go down.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Why isn't VPN to an out of country relay a solution?
|
| At any rate situations like these are what partially motivated me
| to write something like this:
| https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master...
| OJFord wrote:
| I assume:
|
| 1) we're talking about the legal situation, not what would be
| physically possible;
|
| 2) that it applies to citizens, not server location (otherwise
| affected companies wouldn't be saying they'll exit the UK
| market, they'd just serve UK users from a further away but
| friendlier 'edge')
| tm2t wrote:
| I don't think it would be legal either since VPNs require
| encryption, too. Maybe some kind of proxy?
| b800h wrote:
| It's important to distinguish this from the encryption
| provisions of the bill. This part of the bill is distinct and
| means that social sites will need to verify ages of users and
| fill in lots of forms while they're at it.
| loufe wrote:
| ...for now.
| tm2t wrote:
| I see. Thanks for the explanation :)
| [deleted]
| yuumei wrote:
| Because of cloud flare and the like. If you have spent any time
| on a VPN you know the issues with captchas destroying the
| internet
| rovr138 wrote:
| Costs would be one. That's yet another cost you have to take
| on.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| My understanding is that the OSB creates a responsibility for
| Ofcom to create a regulatory system for discouraging online
| harms.
|
| Has Ofcom actually said what these regulations will be?
|
| Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you
| predict? The interim codes of practice that the government
| published don't even apply at all to individuals. They also
| acknowledge that smaller companies should not be expected to be
| subject to the same level of regulation as large companies.
|
| My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent
| dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely
| overblown. Hopefully that's true this time as well.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you
| predict?_
|
| Previous laws relating to policing and investigatory powers
| have been widely criticised by civil rights groups for their
| overreach and lack of effective oversight and safeguards. We
| now know that some of those laws have in fact been abused in
| ways the critics predicted.
|
| Secondary legislation has been widely criticised when used as a
| vehicle for government ministers to make rules with statutory
| authority while bypassing the usual requirements for
| Parliamentary scrutiny and approval of new laws. Our Home
| Secretary is currently attempting to use secondary legislation
| to implement controversial immigration policies after
| essentially the same measures were already explicitly blocked
| by Parliament when they were put forward via primary
| legislation.
|
| So yes - there are unfortunately plenty of precedents both for
| broad legal powers being abused and for secondary legislation
| being used to circumvent our normal democratic processes for
| scrutinising and approving controversial measures.
|
| There also seems to be no good reason to assume that the
| regulator that would be given these new powers and
| responsibilities actually has the necessary resources or
| expertise to understand the issues and perform their new role
| properly.
|
| None of this looks encouraging and for rules that could have a
| profound effect on (among other things) our personal safety and
| the democratic integrity of our country it seems fair to
| question whether passing a very broad law that delegates the
| implementation details to a regulator that may or may not be
| competent to regulate these areas is really a good idea.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| > _" Previous laws relating to policing and investigatory
| powers have been widely criticised by civil rights groups for
| their overreach and lack of effective oversight and
| safeguards. We now know that some of those laws have in fact
| been abused in ways the critics predicted."_
|
| What are you referring to here?
| Silhouette wrote:
| Take RIPA for example. Local authorities have literally
| deployed drones for covert surveillance. They have invoked
| powers under the Act in trivial cases such as fly tipping,
| dog fouling and deciding which school catchment area a
| child fell within. In some cases they were subsequently
| criticised for it or even found to have acted unlawfully
| but that obviously doesn't mean that the intrusion didn't
| happen or that the victims of that intrusion weren't
| distressed and possibly harassed as a result prior to some
| formal legal action going their way often at a much later
| date.
|
| There is absolutely no legitimate justification for local
| authorities dealing with those kinds of issues to have
| access to the kinds of lawful surveillance and intrusion
| powers that RIPA is primarily concerned with. Even if you
| accept that those powers are justified and necessary in
| cases such as imminent national security threats or
| investigating organised crime that still doesn't explain
| why so many organisations that are not the police, security
| services or perhaps HMRC need them.
| b800h wrote:
| The bill itself doesn't appear to exempt anyone. From Taylor
| Wessing:
|
| "[following amendments] The OSB continues to apply to any
| service that enables content generated, uploaded or shared by
| one user to be encountered by another user (user-to-user
| services) or that allows users to search more than one website
| or database (search services)."
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| It actual exempts several categories (email servers etc).
|
| My point is that there is no reason to think the regulations
| that eventually come into force for services which aren't
| exempted will be as ridiculous as you suggest.
|
| I agree that the OSB gives Ofcom the power to regulate
| Minecraft servers, but those regulations must be reasonable
| and proportionate so I don't believe that it will affect a
| private individual running a private server, as you appeared
| to suggest.
| b800h wrote:
| Yeah agree about point to point services. Email and SMS and
| voice.
|
| What I don't see is the bit where it says that the audit
| responsibilities are limited to certain people or
| companies.
|
| If you could point to the "reasonable and proportionate"
| bit in the legislation that would be interesting to check
| out.
| rovr138 wrote:
| > My experience with online activists' predictions of imminent
| dystopia is that they generally turn out to be extremely
| overblown.
|
| The questions in my opinion then become,
|
| Is it the law preventing these? Is it some people not yet
| seeing why they should do it? Are they purposefully not doing
| it initially to calm people?
|
| If they don't want to be able to do it, it could be rephrased.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| By way of analogy, the government might make a law that
| allows, in secondary legislation, the setting of a driving
| speed limit.
|
| These activists are claiming that the government is secretly
| intending the speed limit to be 1mph. The government are
| trying to ban driving!! The activists are demanding the
| _enabling legislation_ be amended so that the speed limit,
| when set, must be no lower than Xmph.
|
| But all this does is force all regulation to be done in
| primary legislation.
|
| The debate about what the regulations should be is separate
| to there being a regulatory system at all.
|
| It is right that the primary legislation just lays out in
| broad terms that the regulations must be "reasonable" and
| "proportionate" etc because it's only real purpose is to
| allow those regulations to be challenged in court in future.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Like unreasonably low speed limits, the purpose of
| legislation like this isn't to be enforceable against
| everyone. It's to be enforceable against _anyone_.
| LocalH wrote:
| I'd like to offer a different analogy.
|
| Encryption in communication is, to me, akin to the locks on
| the doors of your residence, on safes or other secure
| containers. It protects your privacy from prying eyes who
| want to snoop on what others are doing.
|
| The activists are claiming that the government wishes to
| require that all locks be unlockable by one of a range of
| secret "master" keys, so that they can ensure you're not
| privately doing anything illegal. Not only that, but the
| government also wishes to institute a compliance regimen to
| ensure that all locks are indeed actually openable by these
| master keys.
|
| Given the historic behavior of _all_ governments, I don 't
| trust them _not_ to claim the most powerful interpretation
| of the laws and regulations that are instituted. Maybe not
| at first, but it _will_ happen, because it has _always_
| happened this way.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| What the government actually wants is for service
| providers (as in, social media companies, not ISPs) to
| monitor everything happening on their service to make
| sure that no one is coming to any serious harm. How
| providers do that is up to them.
|
| The government doesn't care about the technology; it's
| all about corporate processes, and they're going to
| regulate it one corporation at a time. If you're not
| important to be asked to appear before a House of Commons
| Committee, you're not going to come to Ofcom's attention.
| janoc wrote:
| > How providers do that is up to them.
|
| Sure. You are either demanding the impossible - or
| effectively banning encryption use because there is no
| other way how to comply with what the law demands,
| despite it ostensibly not banning anything.
|
| So that's rather disingenuous argument, IMO. The problem
| is that the governments not only don't care about
| technology, they don't understand it either. And tend to
| imagine and demand things that are about as realistic as
| a square circle - but it is a law, we don't care how you
| do it, it is your problem!
| cjs_ac wrote:
| There's a subtle but crucial difference. Service
| providers are free to offer end-to-end encrypted chat,
| but have to take responsibility for anything that's
| transmitted through that service. This means that
| services like Signal and WhatsApp will have to leave the
| UK, but I'm free to run my own service for just myself,
| my friends and my family.
|
| I would prefer the bill not to be enacted, but I can live
| with it.
| b800h wrote:
| That's not my understanding of the legislation. I see no
| exemptions from the child access provisions. The criterion
| is "any site with a significant number of child users" or
| where _additionally_ OFCOM decides to intervene, and where
| significant is not defined.
|
| And of course you seem to have to perform an audit to
| determine how many child users you have in order to be
| exempted.
|
| Again, this is my reading of the very complex bill. The
| article from Taylor Wessing seems to concur though.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| But all the provisions service providers are expected to
| implement have a "reasonable" or "proportionate"
| qualifier, no?
|
| And the actual, practical meaning of these
| responsibilities will be defined in a yet-to-be-published
| Code of Practice...?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| If you operate an online service, you don't have any actual
| obligations under the Online Safety Bill until Ofcom taps you
| on the shoulder. Considering that Ofcom is also responsible
| for regulating ISPs, all broadcast media, the EM spectrum,
| the telephone network and the Royal Mail, I don't think
| they'll have the resources to go after anyone but the social
| media giants.
| cvwright wrote:
| > I don't think they'll have the resources to go after
| anyone but the social media giants.
|
| Or anyone who criticizes those in power
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Unless there's a political advantage in enforcing the rules
| against opposing party news sources, online forums,
| critics, etc. Tell me with a straight face that Boris
| Johnson's government wouldn't have done this given the
| opportunity.
| SXX wrote:
| > Is there any reason to expect them to be as dystopian as you
| predict?
|
| Bill description on UK Parlament website:
|
| https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2022/april/have-your...
|
| >The Bill has five policy objectives:
|
| > to increase user safety online.
|
| > to preserve and enhance freedom of speech online.
|
| > to improve law enforcement's ability to tackle illegal
| content online.
|
| > to improve users' ability to keep themselves safe online.
|
| > to improve society's understanding of the harm landscape.
|
| I guess UK government has solved all the issues include
| salaries inflation and ever rising price of living so they can
| finally go "preserve and enhance" freedom of speech.
| endigma wrote:
| Source code hosting; Gitea or Gitlab or Gogs etc all have UGC.
| The interesting part to me is I'm not sure how this helps the UK
| citizens who are using the internet be any safer, all you'd have
| to do is access the rest of the internet to circumvent this.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Certainly the online activities that the bill is meant to address
| will still continue. Criminals don't care about following the law
| unfortunately.
| IshKebab wrote:
| While I think this law is bonkers, "then only criminals will
| have guns" style arguments are _terrible_ counterpoints.
|
| They depend on a 5 year old's view of the world where there are
| "good guys" and "bad guys" and nobody is a bit in-between. They
| also use the same oversimplification that economists are famous
| for - that everyone has perfect information, acts completely
| rationally, has infinite motivation, etc. etc.
|
| In the real world, criminality is a spectrum and difficulty is
| a real thing.
| pas wrote:
| offtopic: economists use these models in places where even
| these oversimplified ones work pretty well
|
| and usually the issues with results are not because
| information asymmetry
| amriksohata wrote:
| I read the title and thought that the legislation had gone
| through already! Might be worth tweaking
| b800h wrote:
| Good shout, I'll try to squeeze in something within the
| character limit.
| mellosouls wrote:
| (Ask HN: List...)
| b800h wrote:
| Good point. Done.
| intunderflow wrote:
| Does it matter? The UK can't enforce anything outside its
| borders. Just putting another nail in the coffin of UK tech
| startups that aren't in Financial Services.
| b800h wrote:
| It matters if you're in the UK and you're a tech hobbyist.
| intunderflow wrote:
| In my opinion the UK has always been against that group and
| others who stick out, and that's not going to change in the
| future.
|
| Unfortunately if you're a tech hobbyist in the UK your best
| option is to leave, especially if you're any good with
| technology. There are plenty of other countries that will
| treat you far better than the UK ever would.
| b800h wrote:
| Absolutely not true historically. We were brilliant in the
| early 80s, largely thanks to Mrs. Thatcher.
| timsneath wrote:
| Agree. She was a polarizing figure in the UK, but the
| newly-installed Conservative government of the early 80s
| certainly moved fast to respond to both the threat and
| the opportunity of the coming information revolution. In
| partnership with the BBC, they instituted the Computer
| Literacy Project which comprised education, television
| programs, subsidized computers for schools, and of course
| the BBC Microcomputer.
|
| For those who want to read more, there's a great archive
| site here: https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/history and an
| interesting book from MIT Press
| (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262034036/now-the-chips-
| are-dow...) which covers this period.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| While I'm not a supporter of the Online Safety Bill, I do find
| that the opprobrium that it has inspired is consistently
| hyperbolic.
|
| The Online Safety Bill bans _nothing_. What it does do is create
| a regulatory framework for the Office for Communications (aka
| Ofcom, HM Government 's regulator for the communications
| industry) to operate and enforce. The regulatory framework is
| based around risk assessments, and sets out specific risks (of
| the sort that most people would agree need to be minimised).
| Ofcom is empowered to decide that internet services are within
| scope, and then demand to see policies relating to ameliorating
| those risks within a service.
|
| The regulatory framework does specify that end-to-end encryption
| is incompatible with the reduction of these risks. However, we do
| have to play the ball and not the person of unspecified gender
| here.
|
| We are, after all, talking about the UK here. The phenomenon of
| 'those whom the law protects but does not bind, and those whom
| the law binds but does not protect' is still very much in effect
| here. This legislation has also been proposed by a government
| that responds to increasing crime (caused by insufficient police
| officers) by giving those police more powers (that they don't
| have the resources to exercise).
|
| Ofcom has wide-ranging responsibilities: it regulates the press
| and broadcast media, it allocates EM spectrum bands, it regulates
| the telephone network, and regulates the Royal Mail. Like all
| organisations in the Home Civil Service, it is staffed by a core
| of 'generalists' with humanities degrees, assisted by a small
| cadre of 'specialists', who are put back in their cupboard once
| they've given their opinion.
|
| What this all means is that the bill will only have the effects
| that the government has said it will in its press releases. Ofcom
| will go after the big social media companies and the likes of
| 4chan. Your Mastodon server or your Gitea server or your corner
| of the Tildeverse or whatever will never appear on their radar.
| Ofcom won't have the budget or the resources to go after
| individuals or small communities; they won't even know you exist.
|
| In the UK, an energy bill or council tax bill is an important
| identity document, necessary for opening a bank account, because
| any time someone starts talking about identity cards, the readers
| of the _Daily Telegraph_ start muttering about the Gestapo. Ofcom
| isn 't going to audit your homelab for online harms.
| GordonS wrote:
| It sounds like you're chiding others for complaining about the
| bill, and excusing this because the bill "only" _enables_ mass
| surveillance and anti-privacy measures, rather than stipulating
| them. Might be I 'm reading you wrong on this, but that's what
| I'm taking away.
|
| > What this all means is that the bill will only have the
| effects that the government has said it will in its press
| releases.
|
| I don't really believe that for a second. Whenever sweeping
| powers are introduced, there is scope creep. Just look at how
| anti-terrorism laws have been abused. And it seems Apple and
| others don't believe it either.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I am chiding people, not for complaining, but for
| misunderstanding the surrounding context. Legislation is only
| as powerful as those enforcing it.
|
| > And it seems Apple and others don't believe it either.
|
| Yes, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Signal, Meta, and all the
| other big players else who has turned up to the committee
| hearings will have their activities curtailed. Individuals
| running Minecraft and Mastodon servers for their friends
| needn't worry.
| ac2u wrote:
| IMO your analysis has a massive flaw.
|
| >Legislation is only as powerful as those enforcing it.
|
| While this is generally true, it doesn't necessarily stop
| the provisions within the bill being used as a political
| weapon to wield against someone.
|
| In other words, just because it's _generally_ not used
| against small fry, doesn 't mean it won't be used as a club
| against a particular small fry that's a thorn in the side
| of someone politically or judicially connected.
| candiodari wrote:
| You even forget the danger here. Like in France, where
| they voted in the right to let Macron and the police
| forces delete someone's French citizenship without
| judicial oversight. And that's ... kind of OK? I still
| don't agree with it, but yeah _these_ people have shown
| that they 're not going to abuse it on a large scale.
|
| But with 10% more votes, this power will go into the
| hands of Le Pen ... and everyone, including Macron, knows
| what will happen.
|
| (hell, I kind of suspect this is intentional on Macron's
| part. He wants to get re-elected by making the
| alternative to electing him catastrophic. It worked last
| time, sure, but obviously it needs to become more
| catastrophic if he's to be reelected)
| generalizations wrote:
| > Individuals running Minecraft and Mastodon servers for
| their friends needn't worry.
|
| Because they're too insignificant to matter, or because
| they won't be covered by the law? It sounds like the
| former, but you seem to imply the latter.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| It's a bit of both. The law states that Ofcom has to ask
| you for your risk assessments, and they can't ask you for
| those if they don't know you exist.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _The law states that Ofcom has to ask you for your risk
| assessments, and they can 't ask you for those if they
| don't know you exist._
|
| Good lord! That's the same logic one may employ as a
| criminal, say.. an inside trader!
|
| Well of course you won't get nabbed, if they don't know!
|
| So as soon as you do anything interesting, protest, stand
| up for a right, displease a cop, upset the wrong
| neighbour, you'll be noticed, eh?
|
| What a great law!
|
| Congrats, you made my neighbours wonder why I'm yelling
| at myself(seemingly) again.
|
| "Poor bbarnett, yelling in his empty house again, wonder
| when they'll take him away Marge?"
| janoc wrote:
| You do realize that you "don't exist" only until one
| pissed off neighbor complains to OFCOM about you after
| your cat has pooped on their lawn one too many times?
|
| This is a rather incredible mindset to have, IMO. Even
| for me who doesn't quite subscribe to the constant Big
| Brother panic.
|
| This law gives the government a huge loaded gun that they
| can use to blast pretty much anyone they please with. But
| no worries, they aren't going to use it on you because
| you are too unimportant?
|
| And that still completely ignores the various collateral
| damages - such as if encryption is effectively outlawed
| because the regulatory hurdles associated with it are
| simply too high to bother with (just look at how many US
| websites rather block access from the EU instead of
| having to deal with GDPR compliance), then even if you
| aren't a target for the enforcement of this law your life
| could be very badly affected when your service provider
| gets hacked or your data get intercepted and some account
| of yours gets hijacked.
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| I don't know if I'm missing some British humor here,
| that's absolutely not bit of both, that's squarely
| "because they're too insignificant to matter"
| hanniabu wrote:
| That's not a legitimate defense
| mrd3v0 wrote:
| I am amazed by how okay you seem with this. Wow.
|
| Maybe it is me, who has already lived under a very
| similar set of laws and know that corporations are always
| the least hit by such laws. These are instruments that
| infringe on basic individual rights such as right to
| privacy. These instruments create systemic significant
| incentives to corruption, totalitarianism, (corporate and
| international) espionage, and so on.
|
| Rights groups, activists, whistle-blowers, prosecuted or
| rather marginalised minorities, and other legitimate
| groups and individuals are going to be impacted by this.
|
| Underplaying this is incredibly naive and downright
| dangerous.
| dharmab wrote:
| This comment reads like a Yes, Minister scene.
| hau wrote:
| >Your Mastodon server or your Gitea server or your corner of
| the Tildeverse or whatever will never appear on their radar
|
| Of course it will when your gitea or mastodon instance is in
| the right crosshair. Do we just surrender rights on a hope this
| time we can stay under the radar? If you are not a terrorist or
| a pedophile you have nothing to worry etc. When you disagree
| enough you will become a terrorist. That's the reality in my
| country because it works an have worked for centuries.
|
| >Ofcom won't have the budget or the resources to go after
| individuals or small communities; they won't even know you
| exist. >Ofcom isn't going to audit your homelab for online
| harms.
|
| Pinky promise?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I've read the bill, and know what it stipulates. Of course,
| if you don't want to take my word for it, you can download
| the 302 pages of legislation and check it yourself:
| https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137
| AlbertCory wrote:
| [flagged]
| golergka wrote:
| I don't agree with this comment, but I upvoted it because it
| brings a different perspective to HN, and therefore, improves
| the quality of discussion.
| collaborative wrote:
| You seem to know more than me. I host a fringe e2ee messaging
| system in the UK that I run under under an LTD. Am I affected?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, just someone who read the bill
| a couple of months ago because I was checking to see whether
| the idea I have in the back of my head for a social media
| platform was still viable. Heather Burns[0] is an actual
| lawyer who's a leading authority on this.
|
| The basic principle is that what people do online can have
| negative consequences in the real world, and the bill
| basically holds online service operators (such as yourself)
| at least partially responsible for those negative
| consequences. Operators need to demonstrate that they're
| mitigating those consequences risk assessments and policies.
|
| Judging by your profile, you're offering e2ee to family
| groups, so your intended users are low-risk for sending
| harmful content. However, your service is freely available to
| anyone with the app, so it could potentially be used by
| terrorist organisations, gangs or CSAM sharing groups. e2ee
| services like this are pretty much the only service that is
| outright incompatible with the requirements of the bill, so I
| think you'll be in trouble as soon as Ofcom comes knocking,
| if they do so. I think the chance of them doing so is small,
| but that's just my personal opinion, and you will have to
| make your own decisions.
|
| The family tree and calendar features look like they're low
| risk, and could be adequately covered by risk assessments,
| but the file and photo sharing features are also problematic,
| because (I think) they're encrypted.
|
| You're very unfortunate to be at the intersection of the
| three factors that could make Ofcom care about you:
|
| * service freely available to the public; * arbitrary user-
| to-user communication; and * no means of checking for harmful
| conduct on your service.
|
| The only way forward that I can see for you is to make the
| backend a selfhost-only affair, which would make your UK-
| based users responsible under the bill.
|
| [0] https://webdevlaw.uk/about/
| [deleted]
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| While I support some more measured analysis to counter the
| hyperbole, you're making some strong assertions about what this
| bill will and won't mean, and I don't think you can have any
| more certainty about these than those people who are assuming a
| far worse outcome.
|
| Context matters, and given the context of where we are as a
| country at the moment, how trustworthy our current government
| has (not) turned out to be, and even where they are in the
| election cycle - currently heading for being out of office for
| a decade - not to mention them pushing to leave the European
| convention on human rights, I'm a lot more concerned about the
| potential dangers of this bill than I might have been in a
| different context.
|
| Even if you're right and I'm wrong, this statement seems a bit
| naive! (with respect):
|
| > the bill will only have the effects that the government has
| said it will in its press releases.
|
| Edit: I tend to put a lot of stock into analysis put out by the
| EFF [0]. I think they said it well here:
|
| > If it passes, the Online Safety Bill will be a huge step
| backwards for global privacy, and democracy itself. Requiring
| government-approved software in peoples' messaging services is
| an awful precedent. If the Online Safety Bill becomes British
| law, the damage it causes won't stop at the borders of the U.K.
|
| [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/uk-government-very-
| clo...
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Perhaps I am being naive, and I will confess that I'm not
| entirely sure that the future will be as I predicted (but I'm
| not going to edit my initial comment, out of respect for
| those disagreeing with me).
|
| But I will think this quote from one of the bill's most
| dogged critics is illustrative[0]:
|
| > ... this Bill, whatever DCMS and its ministers may claim,
| is not a "fixing" Bill, one which has been designed to be
| constructive and positive in order to fix problems. It is a
| "getting" Bill, once which has been designed to be vindictive
| and negative in order to get specific companies. OnlyFans in
| this particular example, the usual suspects in others.
|
| > The second is that this Bill has been designed by people
| who are so out of touch that OnlyFans is their idea of the
| average small digital business.
|
| > And the third is that this Bill has been designed by people
| who are so out of touch that they think the harms issues
| raised by OnlyFans are the harms issues in the average small
| digital business.
|
| As for your distrust of the government, my opinion on this
| comes from that same position. My complacency rests not on
| their goodwill (because I don't think they have any) but on
| their disinterest in actually understanding anything.
|
| [0] https://webdevlaw.uk/2022/07/13/heres-why-your-project-
| is-in...
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > As for your distrust of the government, my opinion on
| this comes from that same position. My complacency rests
| not on their goodwill (because I don't think they have any)
| but on their disinterest in actually understanding
| anything.
|
| Ok we definitely share common ground on this point then :)
|
| I think it's worth remembering the equal amounts of - what
| could have been described as - "hyperbole" by remainers
| about what Brexit would really mean for the country,
| leading up to that vote. Much of the concern expressed was
| dismissed or downplayed, and though I voted to remain, I
| too actually thought the case against Brexit may have been
| made too strongly at the time. Well I was wrong about that
| - and many leave voters would also agree now that a lot of
| those forewarnings turned out to be correct, and in some
| cases, worse than predicted.
|
| Brexit has had the negative impact on the UK that it has,
| due to two things. One of those is debatable; whether it
| was actually a bad idea from the beginning - (I personally
| think it was) and the second reason is not debatable at
| all: its very poor implementation by the Government.
|
| The Online Safety Bill also may turn out to be a terrible
| decision for one or both of these same reasons: a) it was a
| poor concept b) it was implemented badly by the government.
| We only need one of those to be true for things to go
| badly. I worry that both will turn out to be true.
| jrmg wrote:
| I'm reminded of the hyperbole - which I fell for - around the
| Regulation of Investigatory Powers act around the turn of the
| millennium.
|
| It provides a legal mechanism for authorities to require that
| individuals disclose encryption keys for encrypted data that
| was legally obtained or intercepted (i.e. with a warrant) by
| those authorities, and there are penalties (jail time) for
| refusing to do so.
|
| The worry at the time was that random data is indistinguishable
| from encrypted content, so there might be times when people are
| jailed when they don't even have the keys because there's no
| encrypted data - just random bytes! Or, what happens if you
| lose the keys?
|
| The reality is that there's a court system that 'regulates' all
| this. No-one is going to be jailed unless the courts find that
| they are not providing keys they really do have. Of course, in
| a conspiracy where the authorities and the courts are all
| colluding, they could jail people pretending that they knew
| they had the keys - but there are far easier ways for the
| authorities to do this than some elaborate scheme with fake
| encrypted data.
|
| At the time I was fully convinced that it was a step down a
| slippery slope to authoritarianism. Really, it was just
| bringing the 'virtual' world into line with the physical one.
|
| [I suspect there are a few here who were also around at the
| time and still believe it's all a nefarious governmental plot -
| I'd ask them to show where, in the 23 years since it passed,
| harm - or suspicion of harm - has happened].
|
| Now, maybe this is different. I certainly don't want end to end
| encryption to be banned. But there's a bit of a 'cried wolf'
| happening in my brain.
| jl6 wrote:
| An interesting RIP case here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
| england-11479831
|
| A person received a 16 week prison sentence for not
| disclosing a password. In the context, it's possible that had
| he disclosed the password, police would have discovered
| material that would have attracted a far more severe
| punishment.
|
| So one might argue that the RIP was too weak, and failed to
| compel disclosure of the password (four months in jail is
| light in the circumstances).
| amiga386 wrote:
| This guy went to prison for a year and 2 months, for not
| disclosing his Facebook password:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-45365464
|
| He was accused of murder. Ultimately, he was found guilty
| and sentenced to 33 years: https://www.hampshire.police.uk/
| news/hampshire/news/news/201...
|
| And then there's the other direction, which I must confess
| I thought would have involved the RIP Act but ultimately
| didn't, instead it used anti-terrorism legislation.
|
| A French employee of radical French publishing house that
| the French government is very cross with, arrived in
| Britain for a book fair. He was arrested and held for 24
| hours using anti-terror legislation. The cops also
| confiscated his phone and laptop, and held onto them for
| more than 10 weeks, and they threatened him "with never
| being able to travel overseas if he failed to hand over a
| password to his confiscated iPhone and MacBook":
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/21/police-
| watch...
|
| The general concern is that France is not allowed to do
| that, so asked Britain to do it for them, and Britain did
| it. There wasn't even a hint that he'd broken the law in
| Britain, and all that was wanted was for the French
| government to get ahold of the contents of his phone and
| laptop. Perhaps this is the only reason (that they had
| absolutely nothing on him) that they didn't twist the knife
| and use the RIP Act to imprison him simply for not
| unlocking his devices for them:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/19/french-
| publi...
| pacifika wrote:
| This might be useful from June, can't vouch for correctness.
|
| https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/interface/2022/the-online-s...
| b800h wrote:
| Very useful, thanks.
| darkclouds wrote:
| My TLDR of that law firms info which could be a wrongful
| interpretation, in priority or execution order.
|
| Any Non Specified Entity uploading any data which could be
| accessed by another Non Specified Entity with or without public
| access is bound by this bill.
|
| Can be used or accessed from the UK. This might be the UK
| expanding beyond its borders here, because its a given if it
| not geo restricted it it could be used in the UK. VPN's/Tor may
| not be able to offer privacy from the state which is my opinion
| anyway.
|
| Applies to all services with a "significant" number of UK
| users. No definition of significant so dont know if this is the
| same use of the word significant found in medical studies or
| not.
|
| Definition of search engine is a service which can search more
| than one website or database.
|
| Largest players now have a legal duty to prevent paid-for
| fraudulent adverts on their service and other regulated
| content.
|
| Clarification on identifying the users of the service, ie
| profile pics and other identifying data.
|
| Exempt specified entities:
|
| --------------------------
|
| Software like antivirus, antispam cloud/online submissions
| where said data is never likely to be used for communication
| purposes but might be analysed to improve the performance of
| said software function, ie reverse engineering stuxnet, latest
| spam techniques.
|
| Published Content with commenting for the content, ie online
| newspaper comments. Posting a link, with or with comments,
| including like, dislike buttons and emojis of Published Content
| to another Non Specified Entity.
|
| SMS & MMS messaging.
|
| Services solely used for specific tasks like education,
| childcare and possibly health care.
|
| One to One Aural (realtime speech and sound only guessing
| telephone) communication with identifying data allowed with no
| additional data communication functionality like visuals, text
| messaging. No mention of recording said Aural data.
|
| Any public body carrying out their public duty.
|
| Any internal business resource or tool, like company message
| boards, company chat facility's in all forms. No mention of
| recording data, would assume business includes official
| organisations like charities, but not clear.
|
| No mention of private paid for programming language groups
| which can be accessed using a password of sorts and costs
|
| Case by case reviews and changes made by the secretary of state
| so the exemption list will probably grow.
|
| So my opinion on the above is if you are a big (US) tech
| service, you can self regulate, but little users will be
| watched by the UK state as no one can be trusted. Other laws
| apply where applicable.
| b800h wrote:
| Interestingly, if you run a BBS through the telephone system,
| you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet", but:
|
| 1. I think the lines have jitter now they're over IP anyhow.
|
| 2. Bit niche...
| darkclouds wrote:
| > you'll be immune, as the bill specifies "the Internet"
|
| UK POTS is switching over to an IP based network, so does the
| bill specify the internet or ip based network?
|
| If you submit a GDPR to your local constabulary, every phone
| call in the UK has a unique call identify much like a GUID now.
| Its quite insightful seeing just how much info is given out
| regarding the phone system capabilities via GDPR requests.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Has anyone designed a modem to work over VOIP? It would have to
| cope with audio compression, jitter, dropouts, and so on.
|
| On the other hand, it could assume much less noise than an
| analogue phone line.
| ozfive wrote:
| This guy has a tutorial on running modems over VoIP.
|
| https://area-51.blog/2021/01/16/getting-a-dial-up-modem-
| work...
| timthorn wrote:
| Yes, making fax machines work over VoIP was important in the
| early days. The G.711 codec was designed to support endpoints
| that needed a full 64kbps datapath.
| Denatonium wrote:
| I've had much better success having fax calls work over
| VoIP then I have getting data modem calls to work. My best
| guess as to why is that fax calls have much less back and
| forth, and as a result, they are less latency-sensitive.
| Fax calls also usually negotiate at 14.4kbps, whereas data
| modem calls often try to train at faster rates.
| patmcc wrote:
| This is a hilarious idea, I love it. Internet Protocol over
| Voice over Internet Protocol.
|
| Call it IPOVOIP.
| bityard wrote:
| Sure, it could be made to work, and it might even be able to
| keep up with your reading speed.
|
| VoIP codecs are heavily optimized for human voice and have
| just a few kilobits of bandwidth. The analog phone network,
| before it went entirely digital, had a much higher bandwidth
| which is why modems were able to reach 56kbps. Phone calls in
| the 1980s were often crystal clear, almost on par with a
| broadcast radio station. Cell phones today along with VoIP
| are a muddy unintelligible mess in comparison.
| abwizz wrote:
| the quality of analog phone calls hung on the quality of
| the equipment, mostly the cables (and distance), whereas
| the quality of voip (or volte for that matter) depends
| mostly on the quality of the codec used.
|
| ime both can be shitty or "crystal clear" but i totally
| agree that having a cell phone call today, with worse
| quality than an cross-continent analog connection in the
| 80s is very depressing
| janoc wrote:
| >had a much higher bandwidth which is why modems were able
| to reach 56kbps
|
| That is actually completely false. The way that speed was
| achieved was by using multiple bits per symbol encoding
| (bitrate != baudrate), not by having some mysterious unused
| bandwidth available. This was the case for speeds above
| 4800bps up to 33kbps (V.34).
|
| 56kbps (V.90) was only possible with PCM (digital)
| modulation, while the actual symbol rate on the line was
| still only about 8000Bd - i.e. about 8kHz, which is about
| the maximum for a typical landline.
|
| This is all due to how a typical phone line works and that
| there is a very strong attenuation of higher frequencies
| due to parasitic capacitance and inductance of the wiring.
|
| I am not sure where do you live and what kind landline
| phones you had but modern digital cell phone codecs are
| light years ahead of the sound quality we had on land lines
| in 80s, esp. when calling long distance.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Cell phones inject noise on purpose so you don't notice the
| gaps in transmission when the other end is silent.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Say I wanted to communicate with others in the best
| possible quality, which platform is best?
| toast0 wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by quality, how much you're
| willing to pay for it, and what's actually available.
|
| If quality means low latency and low jitter, and you can
| get T1/E1 digital telephone service, circuit switched end
| to end, that's almost certainly the lowest practical
| latency and jitter. It'll cost real money and you might
| not like the 8000Hz 8-bit sampling. ISDN calling is
| pretty much the same thing, but you only get two voice
| lines instead of 24 or 25.
|
| If that's not an option, but low latency is still
| important, a solid wired connection with g.711 SIP is
| pretty close, but packets are 20ms of samples, so that
| adds to your baseline latency. G.711 is basically the
| same codec as used for t1. And internet jitter is
| probably not zero, but if your connection is well
| provisioned it's often not that bad.
|
| If you want a wider audio band, maybe try to get SIP with
| G.722.2 (AMR-WB), this is the same codec used for 'HD
| Voice', and I don't think it adds too much delay.
| b800h wrote:
| Should add MUDs, website guestbooks?
| scandum wrote:
| MUDs are easily hosted abroad. Problem solved.
|
| This reminds me of UK's 90% tax rate, which caused many multi-
| millionaires to leave the country.
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