[HN Gopher] UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite...
___________________________________________________________________
UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite tech world
opposition
Author : rntn
Score : 186 points
Date : 2024-04-26 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| rasengan wrote:
| King Charles has cancer so he won't have to deal with the
| backlash of this.
|
| It is truly ridiculous that this has become a law in the UK.
|
| The internet is weakening and fracturing at intense speed -
| faster than it grew.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > King Charles has cancer so he won't have to deal with the
| backlash of this.
|
| What backlash? Are you going to go lobby in Westminster? Or hit
| the street and riot/direct action against it?
|
| The reality is most people don't care, and complaining on a
| forum online does nothing.
| rasengan wrote:
| > The reality is most people don't care, and complaining on a
| forum online does nothing
|
| It has to start somewhere. Last time the King faced adversity
| from the people, it was due to an anonymously distributed
| pamphlet.
| robxorb wrote:
| > complaining on a forum online does nothing.
|
| This _probably_ isn 't true.
|
| Forums are voluminous online and regularly contain such
| complaints, partly as the anonymity gives people a feeling of
| being more free to express themselves, versus other types of
| social group interactions.
|
| Given that cohesive and cooperative direct action from
| organised groups is relatively rare, it could be seen as
| statistically likely direct action at least sometimes
| resulted from a group unifying over discussion on a forum.
| switch007 wrote:
| The monarch signing a bill in to law is just a formality.
| Nobody holds them accountable for it.
|
| Agree with your other points
| hgyjnbdet wrote:
| Pretty sure even without cancer Charlie wouldn't be aware of
| any backlash, even if there was one. His role is ceremonial at
| best.
|
| I agree the law is ridiculous though. I hope big internet
| companies boycott the UK, speaking as a UK citizen. This law
| won't catch anyone remotely tech sazzy.
| pch00 wrote:
| > I hope big internet companies boycott the UK
|
| So at least there's a potential bright side for people in the
| UK :-)
| basisword wrote:
| >> King Charles has cancer so he won't have to deal with the
| backlash of this.
|
| It has nothing to do with him in reality. The monarch has to
| give ascent to new acts of parliament and by convention always
| does. They don't (overtly) interfere politically.
| stoobs wrote:
| The government creates these laws, not the reining Monarch.
|
| Royal assent is a ceremonial process at this point as the
| powers to refuse a bill are very, very rarely exercised.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| _Royal assent is a ceremonial process at this point as the
| powers to refuse a bill are very, very rarely exercised._
|
| From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_assent):
|
| "The last bill that was refused assent was the Scottish
| Militia Bill during Queen Anne's reign in 1708."
|
| Even that was only done on the advice of government ministers
| who had second thoughts after the bill was passed.
| gnuser wrote:
| "Ceremonial" etc:
|
| Behind Closed Doors: Oaths to the Monarch (who, by the way, was
| besties with necro-pedo-murderer Jimmy Saville)
|
| Gtfo of here brits - the Irish were on the right side of
| history and it's high time for a revolution and you know it's
| true!
| adammichaelc wrote:
| What you say is triggering. Triggered by the darkness. It's
| okay to be afraid of the unknown.
|
| But it's also time to take a look within ourselves and see
| that we are co-creating something.
|
| Do we want it?
|
| Is this the best we can do as a human race?
|
| The Irish people have a bit of luck on their side. They
| follow their hearts and speak up.
|
| The ancient Celtic DNA knows. It's a magical people, and I
| mean that in the sense of the Magi; enlightened men and women
| of knowledge who brought the sciences and the arts to
| humanity.
|
| The Irish were conquered, but the power and wisdom within the
| DNA cannot be conquered.
|
| It's all within. Like an ancient quantum computer.
|
| It sits. Waiting to be tapped by the brave one who dares to
| look outside the program.
| dogleash wrote:
| > The internet is weakening and fracturing at intense speed -
| faster than it grew.
|
| The writing was on the wall a decade ago. You'll get Cable TV
| 2.0 and you'll like it. An army of sycophants and chumps are
| working to ensure it.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Is anyone still surprised the UK doesn't respect the privacy of
| their citizens?
|
| If the UK still was in the EU, this would have never happened.
| switch007 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...
|
| We were in the EU in 2000
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016
|
| And in 2016
| echelon_musk wrote:
| RIPA 2016 was to legalise practices exposed by Snowden. The
| "regulation" part in the title is just newspeak smokescreen.
| They regulated themselves.
| basisword wrote:
| >> If the UK still was in the EU, this would have never
| happened.
|
| I wouldn't be so sure about that. The original act passed in
| 2016 and was already an abomination.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The EU court ruled against this law in 2020:
|
| https://www.blueprintforfreespeech.net/en/news/eu-court-
| rule...
| tgv wrote:
| Indeed. A state can pass whatever legislation, but it's not
| the highest authority in EU member states. States still
| have to obey the various agreements, treaties and rulings,
| although enforcing that falls back onto the member states
| themselves. So a sufficiently determined government
| (Poland/PiS, Hungary) can still get away with a lot.
| ben_w wrote:
| Indeed; that even the Welsh Ambulance Service was ever given
| nationwide no-warrant-needed access to internet connection
| records still irks me.
|
| However, the 2016 act was ruled incompatible with EU law:
| https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/2018/975.html
| duxup wrote:
| Is there something about the EU that would prevent government
| spying?
|
| Most privacy efforts I've seen in the EU are commercial facing
| legislation that I find kinda of piecemeal and naive (granted
| I'll take naive over nothing, sometimes...). I don't know that
| I've seen efforts that would seriously curtail government
| surveillance.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Is there something about the EU that would prevent
| government spying?
|
| Limit, rather than outright prevent.
|
| """Respect for private and family life
|
| Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and
| family life, home and communications."""
|
| -- Chapter II, Article 7, Charter of Fundamental Rights of
| the European Union,
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf
|
| Which is part of the Treaty of Lisbon.
| duxup wrote:
| Has that prevented any laws? Been used in a challenge?
|
| Honest question as I really don't closely follow this area
| in the EU.
| ben_w wrote:
| The principle certainly has, but without being a lawyer I
| can't be more detailed than "this sounds like the right
| vibe". Off the top of my head, it's connected to all of:
|
| 1) the 2016 act being ruled incompatible with EU law:
| https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/2018/975.html
|
| 2) all the GDPR popups people seem to hate even more than
| thing GDPR is trying to get under control
|
| 3) an ongoing battle over transatlantic data sharing by
| private corporations:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Is there something about the EU that would prevent
| government spying?
|
| Presumably you mean laws and treaties; those exist. But I
| wouldn't expect government spies to pay excessive attention
| to the law.
|
| The problem is the clauses about requiring distributors to
| get state clearance before deploying an update [ahem - nooo,
| that disables our backdoor], and increased costs and
| obligations on ISPs. Thwy won't ever try to enforce the law
| against the spooks, but for big tech companies, it's just
| regulatory clutter. They have staff lawyers out the wazoo,
| all specializing in regulatory clutter.
|
| Not good for small ISPs and tech companies.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _If the UK still was in the EU, this would have never
| happened._
|
| Why do you think people in the government wanted them to leave?
|
| The UK has never squared the "free speech, even when it's
| inconvenient to those in power" circle.
| hgyjnbdet wrote:
| Are you aware of sone of the proposed laws the EU wants to
| enact?
| graemep wrote:
| Hardly anyone is. One of the problems with the EU is that
| because the media focus on national governments, and because
| the EU often acts indirectly (through directives, requiring
| national governments to pass legislation, rather than direct
| legislation) people really have little idea of what the EU
| does legislatively.
|
| I am aware of the current attempts to push surveillance laws,
| although AFAIK the EU parliament did reject the worst of the
| legislation the commission tried to push.
| chmod775 wrote:
| The UK is still subject to the European Court of Human Rights,
| which is distinct from the EU.
|
| Relevant past rulings:
|
| https://dpglaw.co.uk/european-court-of-human-rights-declares...
|
| https://privacyinternational.org/press-release/5120/judgment...
| EGreg wrote:
| Lest you think it's just the UK, we have such laws in USA now
| making their way through Congress, and already in place around
| the world: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-
| end-en...
| anonzzzies wrote:
| It's just a matter of time for it to happen everywhere
| unfortunately: it's possible, it's easy, most people don't know
| or care or understand, so keep trying and it'll happen.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Truly, I believe we live in the medieval era of the technological
| adoption curve. Such laws should be seen as barbaric by future
| governments.
| graemep wrote:
| > the medieval era
|
| You mean the era in which we got things like the Magna Carta,
| rights of due process, habeas corpus, the gradual abolition of
| slavery (at least in western Europe), the gradual transfer of
| power from monarchs to parliaments etc.
|
| I think our direction of travel is a lot worse now!
| ben_w wrote:
| Magna Carta, which was about the relationship between a king
| and his own feudal lords, which was violated by both sides
| and annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First
| Barons' War -- one of the many UK civil wars besides the one
| commonly known by the title "The" Civil War?
|
| > the gradual abolition of slavery (at least in western
| Europe)
|
| Even with that caveat, didn't that really only happen _after_
| the medieval era?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > things like the Magna Carta, rights of due process, habeas
| corpus
|
| I think Habeas Corpus is one of the few clauses of Magna
| Carta that still has legal effect (the former is part of the
| latter).
|
| And remember that Magna Carta was a deal between the "barons"
| and King John; the rights that Magna Carta purported to
| confer, only applied to barons (landowners, basically). In
| the time of King John, the law as most ordinary people
| encountered it was simply the local baron.
|
| I think it wasn't until Henry II that there were royal courts
| set up, to deliver the same law everywhere.
| bluescrn wrote:
| It's not just about tech. People simply don't care about
| freedom or privacy any more. They're happy to give it all up if
| it means that an ever-expanding nanny state will care for them
| and protect them from all harm, whether it be international
| terrorism, cigarettes, or insults being hurled online.
|
| The campaign to brand freedom ('freedumb') as a far-right ideal
| certainly isn't helping.
| ben_w wrote:
| The UK's left/right split is very different to that of the
| US.
|
| In particular, surveillance is extremely popular with both of
| the big UK parties. Well, I say "big", we'll see if the
| Tories even manage to win a single seat at the next election
| -- I think they're currently expected to get just under 100
| seats, but they're so dysfunctional that total disintegration
| is absolutely possible between now and then.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _People simply don 't care about freedom or privacy any
| more._
|
| I don't believe that's true. Our younger generations are way
| more savvy about those things than our older ones.
|
| What I do see is a sense of hopeless inevitability. People
| don't feel they can escape the surveillance and other
| technological dangers because everyone is at it. Both of our
| major political parties are generally supportive of the
| police and surveillance state and no-one else has any
| realistic prospect of forming a government at national level.
| Unless you give up a large part of modern life and decide not
| to participate in large parts of our society you have little
| real choice but to pick your poison from the big tech firms
| as well.
|
| So people resist in less obvious ways like moving between
| services and creating new accounts frequently with false
| details. People from younger generations hardly ever commit
| to any single account on any service the way their parents or
| grandparents did. They have no time for terms and conditions
| that require real identities. (Or the service will do what
| exactly? Terminate the account they didn't really care about
| or expect to use for long anyway?) I imagine a lot of young
| people already know how to use a VPN and probably more will
| start doing so over time. I wonder how many phones the
| average teenager really has today.
|
| Of course this attitude creates other problems of its own.
| With modern tech but little personal accountability we see
| issues like cyberbullying becoming real problems for our
| schoolkids for example. Unfortunately the only answer the
| politicians can seem to think of to deal with a problem like
| that is trying to be even more authoritarian. We need to do
| better than that.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Young people these days do NOT know how to use VPN, they
| barely know how to even use computers outside of their
| walled garden app based devices.
| kimixa wrote:
| I think some of this is selection bias - for many their
| local peers of similar age are often in the same
| industry, and of similar education backgrounds. I assume
| on a site like this it's likely tech-aligned.
|
| _Most_ people do NOT know how to use a VPN, and barely
| know how to use computers outside of their walled garden
| app based devices. I 'm not sure if there's really much
| of a difference by age.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Oh brilliant, I am sure our utterly fucking incompetent and inept
| security services having more data will lead to better outcomes.
|
| _choke_ Salman Abedi _choke_.
|
| (for anyone not in the UK, he was _already_ well known to the
| security services [MI5] and managed to kill 22 people in a
| suicide bombing)
| Akronymus wrote:
| If I had a buck for every time someone like that was "known to
| the authorities" I'd have quite a bit of money.
|
| This is a pretty blatant power grab, rather than anything
| actually positive.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Instead of admitting blame failures are used to increase
| budgets.
|
| The simple arguments of "we didn't have enough funding" or
| "we weren't allowed to collect more data" will be used. More
| tax payer money is then spent to cement power through mass
| surveillance and the cycle repeats.
| balderdash wrote:
| It's all about competence - it's why a couple have of
| competent programmers can stand up and website/program/app
| for orders of magnitude less time and money than government
| or large corporate IT can. I'm sure the same is true in law
| enforcement / intelligence, more power/money is simply the
| crutch for the incompetent to be more productive
| tgv wrote:
| OTOH, new mass surveillance in combination with optimistic use
| of new tech will lead to ruining thousands of innocent lives.
| It's as if they thought that the Horizon scandal was just a bit
| of bad publicity for a good idea.
| francis-io wrote:
| "Additional safeguards have been introduced - notably, in the
| most recent round of amendments, a 'triple-lock' authorization
| process for surveillance of parliamentarians ..."
|
| Thank god, I'm glad the politicians that passed this law will be
| protected from it /s
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I bet you in 10 years there will be a scandal where the Tories
| spied on an opposing party MP, or vice versa. Doesn't even need
| malicious intent because the mere act of doing this carries the
| stench of malicious incompetence.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| It brings to mind the fact the Inner Party of Oceania had the
| privilege of turning their telescreens off.
| causal wrote:
| This, and requiring tech companies to consult the government
| before rolling out security updates, make it seem evident that
| safety isn't really the motivation.
| hogepiyo wrote:
| UK leading the way on this draconian bullshit as usual.
|
| You know its bad when your hope rests on big tech throwing down
| the gauntlet.
| cjk2 wrote:
| We do indeed lead the way in draconian bullshit. We also lead
| the way in making it utterly unworkable and useless through
| incompetence, cost cutting and cases getting shot down by ECHR
| though. Think of us as an example to the rest of the world on
| how to do a shitty job of consultation, legislation and
| implementation!
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > cases getting shot down by ECHR though.
|
| Weren't the Tories going to get the UK out of the European
| Convention on Human Rights? And thus remove the possibility
| of appealing the the European Court of Human Rights.
| cjk2 wrote:
| Yes they are. They have a valid point leaving it regarding
| immigration, but the side effects of it are far more
| advantageous to them personally and this is not being
| discussed.
| xyst wrote:
| USA is not too far behind. FISA was reauthorized despite outcry
| from many people.
|
| https://archive.is/3vKoO
|
| In a post-911 world, the people leading this country still
| leading by fear.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| The UK government seems hell-bent on the control and
| micromanagement of its own population.
|
| Their recent smoking ban -- which is sure to make cigarette
| smoking cool again with young people -- was a joke. This hyper-
| surveillance measure is a lot less funny.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| The smoking ban is incredibly popular and supported by most
| people across all generations, also given we have tax payer
| funded healthcare this is a clear win for the nation.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| Popular but stupid. Surely we've learnt by now that
| outright prohibition is only good for funnelling money to
| criminals?
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Only if smoking is seen as cool, which it isn't any more.
| Vaping is the way to go for kids these days and whilst
| still not great it seems like it's better than smoking.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Spare some thought as to why it's no longer "seen as
| cool."
|
| That's about to be turned on its head. Banning smoking
| will make it seem edgy, transgressive, and alluring.
| Still worse, banning it only for people below a certain
| age will make it seem mature and sophisticated to those
| below the cutoff. The forbidden fruit.
|
| The UK Govt couldn't possibly devise a better way to
| popularize cigarettes with young people. And they'll
| create a nice little black market, to boot.
| nmca wrote:
| suppose we design a reasonable experiment here, like
| taking a random sample of teenagers and mitigating for
| anonymity concerns. are you seriously claiming that this
| would show an increase after the ban?
|
| or to put it another way --- the phenomenon you point to
| is real but completely swamped by the more direct impacts
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| If we were talking of the USA, or of a European nation
| like Croatia, I'd bet that smoking rates in youth show a
| slow but gradual increase in the years following a UK-
| style ban.
|
| In the UK, however, the way to bet is that the government
| enforces the ban with maniacal zeal, so smoking rates
| will probably go down slightly in the near term. (For
| better or worse -- usually worse -- the UK has more state
| capacity to enforce a ban than the US or indeed the vast
| majority of other countries.) But smoking will become,
| once again, a prestigious activity. All the cool kids
| will smoke, if only for the social signaling benefits.
| Over more than a decade, youth smoking rates might
| surpass what they were before the ban.
| posix_monad wrote:
| The taxes paid on nicotene products more than offset the
| cost of the healthcare.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| If it were additive to the base cost of healthcare for
| the nation but it's not, taxation isn't ring fenced like
| that.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| The Postmaster debacle is the biggest example of this I have
| ever seen. Something has dramatically changed when people are
| not being held accountable for their crimes.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I smoke 40 a day. I don't want my granddaughters to do the
| same. I strongly support the ban. All the smokers I know
| agree with me.
| FredPret wrote:
| Sometimes, when I read the news, I can hear the theme music to
| Deus Ex
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I've been playing cyberpunk recently and I can't help the
| feeing of "this is just our current world with more biotech."
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I'd way rather live in the cyberpunk dystopia.
| tetris11 wrote:
| one good thing about these dystopias is that crime is high
| enough to keep the rent low, or at least keep the landlords
| from collecting regularly.
|
| Silver linings.
| er4hn wrote:
| All good fiction is a statement on reality.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I'm actually reminded of the movie Children of Men, which seems
| much more of a realistic view of a dystopian landscape in UK
| over the next 20-50 years.
| logicchains wrote:
| Or V for Vendetta, we're practically already there.
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Tor is about to become a lot more mainstream in the UK.
| azalemeth wrote:
| Honestly, although VPNs get a bad rep, there's (in my opinion)
| a good argument for using one here on privacy grounds. Use two
| or three-hop routing to frustrate correlation attacks, route
| your entire internet traffic to one or two other places chosen
| at random, use DNScrypt / DOH and have the freedom to choose
| who gets to slurp your data -- and the ability to change them
| easily. Mullvad's move towards open firmware, diskless servers,
| and proving verifiability to end users is something I can get
| towards. [C.f. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/system-transparency-
| future]
|
| I'm sure nothing wrong will happen with delaying security
| updates if they ever actually use that clause...
| londons_explore wrote:
| I have little confidence in the security of TOR. I believe
| any competent adversary can do packet timing correlation
| attacks, and it turns out just 30 seconds of web browsing
| gives enough timing data to narrow down to just 1 tor user,
| since the tor userbase is fairly small.
|
| I'm guessing there are ~10 nation states who can deanonymize
| tor, and I strongly suspect the UK is on that list.
| tetris11 wrote:
| ref for the timing attacks, please
| hazeii wrote:
| Check out VPN's in Australia (Australian citizen currently in
| the UK)
| Lio wrote:
| As far as I can tell most UK media has hardly covered this.
|
| It's sad but expected that the BBC have ignored this.
| cjk2 wrote:
| They probably don't want to draw attention to the fact that
| they use RIPA legislation to catch TV license evaders.
| deepsun wrote:
| I don't understand, if BBC is a government agency, why cannot
| they be sponsored from taxes? Why the hassle of TV licences?
| lozenge wrote:
| History. It was a way of letting people who don't have TVs
| not pay a license. There was also an extra charge for
| colour TVs.
|
| Edit: Oh, the BBC isn't a government agency, it's
| operationally independent. But always becoming less so, as
| the board is mostly appointed by the government now.
| TillE wrote:
| Mostly for dumb historical reasons, currently justified as
| slightly protecting them from the government cutting their
| funding.
|
| Objectively European TV licenses are just a terrible
| wasteful idea, basically creating an entire parallel tax
| collection system. Of all the important, vital things a
| government funds, I'm not sure why a public broadcaster
| should have any special insulation from the usual
| democratic decision making.
| ben_w wrote:
| The UK TV license is much less tax-like than the German
| one. I never paid for the UK one, by the _cunning and
| devious_ scheme of... never buying a TV once I moved out
| of my parent 's home.
|
| Now I'm in Germany, and here we have to pay for a TV
| license regardless of if we have a TV or not. (Also, my
| partner here has a TV).
| iknowstuff wrote:
| lol Germany. Do you all still live off 1GB of mobile data
| there too?
| ben_w wrote:
| For the very cheapest (EUR4.99/4 weeks) Vodafone pre-pay
| rate, sure, 1 GB.
|
| The discount supermarket Lidl does 30 GB/EUR18.99/4
| weeks.
|
| O2 has a bunch of different "unlimited" offers with
| various caveats and extras at various different price
| points.
|
| Now, the actual mobile network coverage? That's still all
| over the place, even in Berlin.
| tetris11 wrote:
| LIDl Talk Smart XS package, representing...
| toyg wrote:
| In Italy it's now a part of your energy bill, by law.
| Basically too many people were opting out (legitimately
| or not), so they made it non-negotiable: "if you have
| energy, you must be powering screens! Pay up!"
|
| Meanwhile, mainstream TV (both state-run and privately
| owned) is more and more unwatchable, and more and more
| people just tune out - but they are still taxed.
| alfiopuglisi wrote:
| You can still opt out, just fill out a declaration that
| you don't have a TV. It can be done online in two minutes
| (it must be repeated every year tho).
|
| The difference is that before it was basically opt-in,
| with spotty enforcement, and as a result about 30% of the
| population was not paying anything. Today it requires
| lying on an official form, making it much more serious.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The BBC is a "quango": quasi-autonomous non government
| organisation. And the TV license .. well, it's really a
| tax, as much as vehicle excise duty is, but with outsourced
| collection. I think it's unsustainable long term but the
| BBC is still pretty popular for its non-news output.
| pipes wrote:
| Also it allows for endless pointless online arguments
| about it not being a tax!(I think it is a tax in
| everything but name).
| robertlagrant wrote:
| In 2024 it's a subscription service with the world's
| worst UX. I only have internet-delivered TV, and so I'd
| be very happy with an iPlayer that just unlocks more
| content behind a subscription fee.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| They wrote about it last month, and in January.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68625232
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68128177
| random9749832 wrote:
| Well that's ok, I guess they don't have to report on it
| anymore.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| The bar set by GP comment is that the BBC "ignored this".
| _Any_ amount of coverage proves that to not be the case.
|
| Have they reported on it _enough_? No. But that's not what
| was being claimed.
| lupusreal wrote:
| That claim was preceded by the language "hardly covered
| this". You're being uncharitably literal.
| slackfan wrote:
| Soviet media _hardly_ covered Soviet labor camps, but it
| absolutely covered them!!11
| Supermancho wrote:
| Hey it's mentioned here on HN. That counts as being
| reported!?
| ode wrote:
| I haven't seen any TV coverage of this at all.
| pera wrote:
| Unfortunately this sort of news rarely show up in the home
| page though:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240322155020/https://www.bbc.c.
| ..
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240323161503/https://www.bbc.c.
| ..
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240129162322/https://www.bbc.c.
| ..
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240130140028/https://www.bbc.c.
| ..
|
| Maybe because they are categorised as "Technology" instead of
| "UK" | "Society" | "Politics"
| walthamstow wrote:
| The front page is too full of reality TV, US news/sports,
| and garden variety human interest stories to fit this kind
| of thing in
| permo-w wrote:
| slightly tangential, but at this point I think BBC News
| just needs to spun off into a visibly separate body from
| creative production. I wish it wasn't the case - I
| personally have no problem with BBC News - but it's just
| too big of an attack surface, and it's not worth
| sustaining if it risks the loss of probably Britain's
| greatest cultural asset for the sake of fucking _news_.
| amputate the limb before it kills the host
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Indeed. I hadn't noticed it. I'm angry.
| stranded22 wrote:
| What are people's thoughts around vpns for select devices at home
| for nafarious activity?
|
| So most traffic goes through open net, and tv (for example) goes
| through a privacy first vpn provider with an exit in, say,
| Switzerland. And Proton mail for a small amount of email with the
| rest via apple.
|
| Essentially - would it be less of a flag.
|
| And would they even care about a bit of streaming
| azalemeth wrote:
| I do this the other way around. All my traffic goes through a
| privacy-first multi-hop VPN provider, and data from things I
| don't trust and don't care about (set-top boxes, smart TVs
| [which I detest!], games consoles, house guests, etc) goes
| through the clearnet and provides a reasonable degree of cover.
| Literally everything else gets onion routed to some degree, to
| frustrate correlation analysis. I know that TOR users are
| logged specifically; I don't know about VPNs directly. All I
| want is for people to not spy on me. I'm not a criminal and I
| do nothing wrong(!) -- apparently an impossibly hard ask!
|
| Something someone on HN might be able to answer is this: is
| there a reason why you couldn't try to configure Wireguard to
| have a constant bandwidth mode? Continually transmit UDP
| packets and again frustrate timing or correlation analysis --
| if every client spoke to the server on one of a predetermined
| number of speeds continually then the burstlike connections
| coming from that server to a potentially identity leaking
| service (e.g. gmail.com) could not easily be correlated with
| the origin of the traffic. I imagine that would make it easier
| to have some stronger degree of privacy protection in
| aggregate.
| tomxor wrote:
| Interesting idea. It would only be effective against timing
| analysis if _all_ clients connected to the wg server use this
| constant bandwidth mode (otherwise your traffic could be
| identified through negative correlation against other
| connections).
|
| It would also have to be aggressively rate limited to make it
| practical for anything with a battery over wifi, even a
| constant 2Mbit is not ideal for wifi and will cause a lot of
| battery drain since radios are most efficient when they can
| do burst communication. Or maybe it could be limited to
| bursts at some interval for better bandwidth, or better
| efficiency (but not both)... that would also make it easier
| to manage the traffic since it's no longer real-time.
|
| I doubt there is any way to configure wireguard to behave
| like this, it has quite a specific purpose and wireguard's
| design focus is performance and security rather than
| obfuscation from traffic analysis. Maybe it's not necessary
| to modify WG if the traffic can be manipulated just before
| the WG interface...
|
| [edit]
|
| Talking of timing analysis, this was the side channel in
| specter/meltdown that was demonstrated to extract
| cryptographic keys from JS in the browser. Browser responded
| by just lowering the resolution of JS timers and introducing
| noise.
|
| Maybe this would also be sufficient for a wireguard
| connection at the cost of slightly worse latency performance.
| The tricky part is how the timing resolution would be tied to
| activity on the WG server, i.e you would need the packets to
| be spread out further and further the less activity there is
| on the server, so you actually end up with better performance
| the busier the server is.
|
| It would also come at a performance cost to routing which
| would be forced to hold on to packets artificially.
| pipes wrote:
| I'm thinking about ditching my VPN sub. It just looks
| suspicious. Sad times.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Who cares if it looks suspicious though? You're still
| innocent unless proven guilty. I'm not giving up mine (and to
| be fair I do use it for Torrents mostly :) )
|
| I'm not in the UK though, and I refuse to even visit it for
| work now since Brexit. Google had some convention there a
| while ago and I just refused to go. If they don't want us I
| don't want them.
| csmattryder wrote:
| > "These changes mean that not only will our citizens be better
| protected from serious dangers such as terrorism and child sexual
| abuse online [...]"
|
| Sometimes you just love it when the band knock out one of their
| classics.
| Silhouette wrote:
| The Conservatives who have been in government for a long time
| will most likely lose a general election within a year so we
| should also be looking at the opposition Labour party's views on
| this kind of legislation.
|
| Perhaps surprisingly given they are currently led by a former
| human rights lawyer the Labour side also seem to be authoritarian
| when it comes to technology and surveillance.
| dmix wrote:
| > Perhaps surprisingly given they are currently led by a former
| human rights lawyer the Labour side also seem to be
| authoritarian
|
| That distinction was lost long ago in the west.
|
| Canada's left wing liberals/NDP are doing it under the guise of
| hate speech and protecting kids:
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/10317040/online-harms-bill-canada...
|
| Conservatives more stereotypically spin it for national
| security/terrorism. But it will come in some form or the other
| each administration like clockwork.
|
| Generally it seems the intelligence services get a free pass
| from the entire political class on all sides, regardless of
| pretence, as we've seen in every Five Eyes countries, including
| Australia.
| chaz6 wrote:
| I have forewarned my employer that if this bill passes I will be
| considering my position as I am idealogically opposed to being
| forced to comply with state surveillance.
| kypro wrote:
| I wish there were more people like you. Big respect for this.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| Unfortunately, someone _not_ like them will happily take the
| job, possibly with a lower pay as bonus.
| pacifika wrote:
| The possibility of state surveillance, I think that is a
| distinction worth making.
| smashah wrote:
| It's funny how our next PM will be the person who let off Jimmy
| Saville yet this bill claims to care about CSAM (signed into law
| by the brother of a known peadophile).
|
| 1st amendment is being killed in America, privacy rights are
| being killed in the UK.
|
| Freedom? Democracy? Will of the people? Lol.
| roody15 wrote:
| The older I get the more I see these bills and trends are really
| based on economics. Politics is more a less a controlled
| narrative to maintain this style of wealth distribution.
|
| The wealthy elite class draws most of its income by exploiting
| labor. This is done in a variety of ways but essentially most UK
| Billionaires make their money in private equity (over half.. same
| in US)... which really means they don't actually do much real
| labor.
|
| Instead they need to extract wealth which often means creating a
| system where people's labor is exploited. To keep this system in
| check a control of the narrative is required so you can keep a
| lower class of workers "occupied" so they don't wise up to the
| reality of the situation.
|
| One common theme is fear.. war on terror, axis of evil states..
| some sort of plague..Y2K.. you can probably pull up many themes
| from the past.
|
| The other theme is divide by culture.... you see this today with
| gender issues.. gay rights, etc. For example in most modern
| western states... the vast majority of citizens don't really care
| if people are gay .. they may or may not approve personally but
| honestly don't mind what people do with their private lives
| etc... So the narrative has to flipped and made more extreme ..it
| doesn't matter the issue it has to something that gets people
| riled up enough that they don't have much mental or emotion
| energy left to focus on the small group that is exploiting their
| labor. (So gender issue has to get extreme to the point where we
| talk about surgical altering children for example)
|
| Notice both parties... somehow keep migrants flowing into Europe
| (and US).. Almost like pressure needs to be kept on keeping wages
| low.
|
| In the US the federal reserve openly states this as the goal
| ..(https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/us-federal-
| reser...). Little coverage is given to this and instead a strange
| spin is attached on how somehow the worker class will actually
| benefit by being paid less.
|
| This is the same with survelliance bills. We must keep an eye on
| the worker class to make sure they don't organize and wise up to
| the reality of their situation.
|
| My two cents
| Pfhortune wrote:
| You're right for the most part, except for maybe the
| transphobia bit in the middle. No one wants to surgically alter
| kids.
| Dig1t wrote:
| >"Additional safeguards have been introduced - notably, in the
| most recent round of amendments, a 'triple-lock' authorization
| process for surveillance of parliamentarians
|
| What does this mean exactly? I'm not familiar with UK government
| terminology.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| It means spying on members of parliament requires a
| significantly higher level of authorisation than spying on a
| normal citizen.
|
| One law for them, another for us.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| That clause stood out to me too.
|
| This sounds like a huge step back towards Spycatcher
| territory, where MI5 thought it was their job to undermine
| the Labour Party, because they were all communists.
| mrandish wrote:
| When I was kid I read Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein while
| dreaming of how by the time I was "old", I'd for sure be living
| in a sci-fi future. Humans had landed on the moon only the decade
| before, NASA had launched Skylab (a REAL space station) and was
| developing a space shuttle that could go to orbit anytime.
| _Personal_ computers with modems were actually a thing in stores.
|
| Sadly, I now realize I was correct except that I was reading the
| wrong sci-fi authors. I should have been reading Orwell and
| Huxley.
| cantagi wrote:
| UK resident here. The original version gave me the push I needed
| to get a rPi 2B+, subscribe to a VPN, and use it as a wifi AP
| that routes all traffic from my house through it.
|
| Can you trust a VPN who say they don't log? No, but more so than
| an ISP who might be legally required to at any moment without you
| ever finding out.
|
| Also, I will now never start a tech company in the UK, and this
| is because I will never put myself into a position where I am
| forced to add backdoors to a product.
| will0 wrote:
| Do you exit the vpn in the UK, or somewhere else?
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