[HN Gopher] UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after p...
___________________________________________________________________
UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US
Author : azalemeth
Score : 388 points
Date : 2025-07-21 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| sylware wrote:
| UK does not want to pay for US backdoor access?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Paid backdoor access is kinda risky though, make sure to do it
| safely!
| esafak wrote:
| tl,dr: "Vance argued that free speech and democracy were
| threatened by European elites."
|
| edit: Don't shoot the messenger.
| gruez wrote:
| Broken clock is right twice a day.
| Arubis wrote:
| This tracks. Vance is probably a potential supporter of strong
| crypto insofar as it's demanded of him by the VC class.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| To be clear in this case, this is not Europe or the EU, its
| solely the UK government wanting a backdoor for themselves.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Of course because the UK isn't even in the EU anymore.
| They're no longer any part of EU policy.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Still European though.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Geographically, yes. But they've made it clear they don't
| want anything to do with us. Also, the 3-year period
| after brexit with all the whining about their 'deal'
| (knowing that what they wanted was legally impossible)
| was so annoying I'm kinda done with them. Too much drama
| for too long.
|
| So I've stopped buying UK products and services (eg
| raspberry pi) and don't consider traveling there anymore.
| Just like I'm doing now with the US although the latter
| is more difficult to do.
| andyferris wrote:
| I think from the point of view of the US and elsewhere,
| the UK is in Europe and is European. They are aware they
| are not in the EU, but that doesn't matter as it's
| inappropriate to make EU synonymous with Europe. (The
| distinction is much like North America vs USA; if you
| said the former you definitely don't mean _just_ the
| latter).
| vixen99 wrote:
| Very much a matter of defining 'themselves'. Our data in
| their hands. How do we know these people aren't the same
| incompetents who emailed a spreadsheet containing the
| personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghan asylum
| applicants (who had risked their lives to help the Brits) to
| someone outside the Ministry of Defense.
|
| The government says the individual thought they were sending
| a list of about 150 names, not the whole set.
|
| Meanwhile the Taliban have been taking revenge: https://press
| way.org.uk/news/300408-hunt_for_tranclators_tal...
| esafak wrote:
| > A spreadsheet containing the personal information of
| about 18,700 Afghans and their relatives - a total of about
| 33,000 people - was accidentally forwarded to the wrong
| recipients by email in February 2022, Healey told lawmakers
| in the House of Commons.
|
| This is why authorization matters. Don't send the
| spreadsheet; send a link to it, because e-mail doesn't
| implement authorization. Then you can revoke access at any
| time, and even prevent accidents by setting up access rules
| and monitoring at the org level.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/17/how-were-
| identities...
| GrayShade wrote:
| To be clear, the EU is also pushing for encryption and
| hardware backdoors.
| tokai wrote:
| To be clear US does not need to push for hardware backdoors
| and more because they already got them.
| veeti wrote:
| To be clear in this case, the UK is a country in north-
| western Europe.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Last I checked the UK was in Europe and what you are replying
| to only mentions Europe, not the EU.
|
| Regardless, the EU is also pushing for the same stuff.
| duxup wrote:
| I really sort of expected that by the time I reached my age that
| we'd have more policy makers that understood tech a little
| better. I feel like in the last say 25 or more years ... the
| needle hasn't moved.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Yeah unfortunately we live in a gerontocracy so it's the same
| people in charge today that were 25 years ago :(
| pjc50 wrote:
| UK not quite as bad as the US age wise, but the real issue is
| the media who demand all sorts of illiberal things.
|
| Rupert Murdoch is 94.
| hinkley wrote:
| And living on pure spite.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think this illustrates that in the UK its that the
| plutocrats like Murdoch are still the same people as 25
| years ago
| Hypergraphe wrote:
| I don't think it is a matter of really understanding the tech.
| It has to do more about how you envision the society regarding
| privacy and individual rights. It is indeed a political point
| of view on how much you want to control everything.
| petre wrote:
| Larry Wllison is advocating the same invasion if privacy
| mechanisms or worse and he clearly understands the tech.
| omeid2 wrote:
| Your subtle idea that the comprehension and understanding is
| the shortcoming of political apparatus is overlooks the million
| issues as basic healthcare not being addressed. The problem is
| not understanding, I can assure you of that.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| It does seem to me like the US Vice President is advancing a
| pretty tech savvy policy. He's pushing for privacy. Am I
| missing something?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| He's associated with Palantir. He can't be pushing for
| privacy.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Sure he can. In an ideal world (from the US gov't's
| perspective), all communications everywhere would be
| encrypted, and only they'd have the workarounds to access
| the data anyway.
|
| I'm not being sarcastic. For real, what major government
| _wouldn 't_ want that in their favor?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| They have to know that there's no monopoly on those
| workarounds.
|
| Unless they're even more hubristic than we imagined.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Even if other nations have access to the plaintext, that
| beats _all_ nations having that access.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I don't think they much care about _all_ nations.
|
| They care about maybe a maximum of five having that
| access, and I'm sure they realize that #1 on that list
| (PRC) won't need much time to become a peer on any given
| technology.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> they 'd have the workarounds to access the data_
|
| That is the opposite of privacy.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like the federal government continuously consolidating
| all data available under groups like DODGE or ICE or Palantir
| is about as anti privacy as it gets.
| f4c39012 wrote:
| i read from this that he wants US control, nothing to do with
| privacy
| ascorbic wrote:
| I think the non tech savvy policy makers in question are the
| British ones.
| setgree wrote:
| This article is explicitly about how J.D. Vance (age 40) &
| others at the White House are forcefully advocating for
| preserving E2E encryption. Arguably not for the right reasons,
| but still.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by "more" but what you are asking
| for is in fact happening.
| duxup wrote:
| They're arguing with foreign countries. Meanwhile the federal
| government continuously working consolidate all data
| available under groups like DODGE or ICE or Palantir. Arguing
| to preserve a tech in a given situation but with other goals
| ... not sure the first part matters at that point.
|
| Perhaps he likes the idea of E2E, but just for himself and
| his friends. I duno, but whatever it is, it's not about the
| important things after the fact.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| While Palantir is a private company and shouldn't have
| access to government data, why shouldn't in theory all
| government data be accessible to the government?
|
| DOGE is clearly operating illegally for other reasons - not
| distributions funds that were appropriated by Congress for
| instance. But data sharing isn't the root issue. It's
| spineless Republicans in Congress and a sycophantic Supreme
| Court.
|
| And it's possible to say both that if you are here
| illegally you should be deported and that it's currently
| being driven by animus, cruelty and it should be easier to
| obtain legal residency especially in areas where we do need
| more workers and implement another program like Reagan did
| in the 80s
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like you answered much of your own questions.
|
| Beyond that many of the departments that this data is
| being extracted from have rules about who can access (no
| not everyone in the IRS has free reign) and what they can
| do with it. For good reason, IRS's job is to focus on
| what the law says they should do, not say punish
| political enemies and so on.
|
| But transfer it to DODGE, ICE, Palantir, there are no
| laws at all regarding what they can do with that data.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The problem is the laws - not the data sharing.
|
| In some countries, tax data is available to everyone.
| Norway, Finland and Sweden in particular. There may be
| others
| duxup wrote:
| They're not just gathering IRS data. I'm not sure you
| read what I wrote at all.
| strbean wrote:
| Different data requires different access controls, and
| government agencies that collect / deal with a given
| piece of data on a regular basis are equipped to enforce
| those access controls.
|
| You don't want your local dog catcher to be able to look
| at your medicare records just because "he's the
| government, and medicare records are government data".
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > While Palantir is a private company and shouldn't have
| access to government data, why shouldn't in theory all
| government data be accessible to the government?
|
| Shouldn't everybody have access to government data, with
| a few exceptions?
| pyrale wrote:
| They are forcefully pushing for whatever the position of US
| companies is in conflicts between US companies and EU
| regulators.
|
| The position of the US executive on encryption is well
| summarized by the Lavabit case.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| The UK is not in the EU.
| blitzar wrote:
| The UK left the EU so we could persue a far stuipider set
| of regulations.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| UK: "Parkour!"
| pyrale wrote:
| Close enough :)
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The U.S. also attempted to force Apple to add a back door
| just a decade ago.
|
| > Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, which has been ordered to
| help the F.B.I. get into the cell phone of the San
| Bernardino shooters, wrote in an angry open letter this
| week that "the U.S. government has asked us for something
| we simply do not have, and something we consider too
| dangerous to create." The second part of that formulation
| has rightly received a great deal of attention: Should a
| back door be built into devices that are used for encrypted
| communications?
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/a-dangerous-
| all-...
| reactordev wrote:
| If you think law enforcement doesn't have access to your
| iPhone, you're sorely mistaken. I'm not at liberty to
| explain but there are companies that can extract your
| smartphone contacts, messages, cell phone call logs,
| voicemails, apps, and emails. Law enforcement has been
| using them for a while now.
| hobs wrote:
| I mean Cellebrite has been a public name for a long time
| now, and LEO pays for that and similar devices which
| basically launder zero days and physical exploits to get
| your stuff.
| reactordev wrote:
| Correct, they are one _known_ actor...
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think anyone's surprised by that. Our emails have
| literally been used to target ads at us since like 2006.
| Cell phone carriers are happy to mine voicemail, call
| logs, SMS, etc. in the hopes of finding a revenue stream
| that doesn't involve them having to do irritating work
| like running fiber to cell phone towers.
|
| This leaves contact mining as the odd one out, but given
| how many apps want to see your contacts, you know that
| those are being sold by at least one of those apps.
|
| None of this stuff has ever been end-to-end encrypted, so
| there can't be any way people expect it to be private.
| xorcist wrote:
| That's not a revenue stream at any cell phone carrier
| I've seen. They do what they are legally obliged to do,
| and while they do get paid for it, it's a fraction of the
| actual cost of providing the data. The state tends to
| drive the hell of a bargain. The service providers, such
| as Facebook, Google and Apple though, that's entirely
| different.
| jrockway wrote:
| Verizon silently opted everyone into sharing their
| browser history (based on DNS I guess) with advertisers:
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2021/12/veriz...
|
| I have to imagine that the other companies are doing this
| as well.
| reactordev wrote:
| Warmer, think of the other vector, from the data broker
| point of view...
| shakna wrote:
| Almost all telcos in the US sell data to brokers.
|
| Like for example, when they got caught selling location
| data they were required to protect. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/fcc_telecom_fines/
| kingnothing wrote:
| It's called Pegasus.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
| reactordev wrote:
| That's old patched spyware. I'm talking about something
| entirely different. No device install needed.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| No-one is surprised by the existence of the security arms
| race.
|
| It's the reason that Apple and Google recently started
| rebooting devices that haven't been unlocked in a while.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| With physical access to the device or not?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You're 'not at liberty' to post wikipedia links? Or you
| have knowledge of programs wikipedia doesn't?
| reactordev wrote:
| The latter. Wikipedia doesn't know everything. NDA's are
| enforceable.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If
| you really have access to secret information of that
| significance and you really are under an NDA that
| prohibits you from talking about it then why are you
| casually posting innuendo about it on HN?
| reactordev wrote:
| To point out that your data isn't safe from law
| enforcement. Quite the contrary. I think everyone should
| be aware of the state we are in. And while I can't go
| into detail about how I know, I want others to be aware
| that anything on their devices is fair game. Now a day's
| with or without a warrant. Three letter agencies are
| operating with impunity. Using this very tech.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Again - extraordinary claims require extraordinary
| evidence.
|
| It's no secret that there are groups actively looking for
| new exploits and that sometimes vulnerabilities are
| discovered that become zero days. It's a good bet that
| police and security services take an active interest in
| those vulnerabilities when they are found.
|
| But that's very different to claiming the police can
| easily unlock any device any time they want to and there
| is a range of private companies around who provide that
| service to them.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's nothing extraordinary about the implications of
| what was said.
| Silhouette wrote:
| There is nothing extraordinary about a claim that
| multiple commercial organisations routinely and reliably
| defeat the security of modern devices on behalf of law
| enforcement - something that would clearly undermine
| numerous public claims about the security and privacy of
| those devices made by their manufacturer? You and I have
| very different ideas of what is extraordinary!
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Multiple vendors advertise and sell devices and software
| to crack iPhones, they have for years. In the US, any
| decent size city or county sheriff has access to one.
| State level forensics labs probably have several types.
|
| The manufacturer provides the means to bypass many of the
| cheaper tools, but few people use them.
|
| There are more exotic tools that can bypass security
| controls. These are more niche and not generally
| available to law enforcement. There may be some crossover
| when counter-intelligence interfaces with law
| enforcement. (Ie. FBI, DEA, RCMP, ICE, etc)
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's not extraordinary at all. Ron Wyden, a US Senator
| subject to special briefings, basically repeated the same
| thing when asked about federal backdoors:
| "As with all of the other information these companies
| store for or about their users, because Apple and Google
| deliver push notification data, they can be secretly
| compelled by governments to hand over this information,"
| Wyden wrote.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-
| to-...
| yalok wrote:
| Push notifications for e2e messaging apps carry e2e
| encrypted payload, which can't be decrypted unless Apple
| reads the private keys from those apps sandboxes...
| bigyabai wrote:
| In the case of iMessage/iCloud, it seems like that
| already happens: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2
| 1114562/jan-2021-fbi...
| Silhouette wrote:
| That document appears to be over 4 years old, predating
| the availability of Apple's Advanced Data Protection
| system that claims to provide proper E2EE on most iCloud
| back-ups. The latter was controversially the subject of a
| specific legal attack by the British government using the
| Investigatory Powers Act resulting in Apple withdrawing
| the feature entirely from the UK market rather than
| compromise the security of their system - according to
| public reports anyway. Before ADP much of the data stored
| in iCloud backups was not fully end-to-end encrypted and
| Apple itself did not claim otherwise.
| xorcist wrote:
| Those apps generally distribute keys, and E2E is if no
| help unless you validate those keys out of band. Do you,
| really?
|
| Then there are all the ways, both white and varying
| shades of gray, of installing software in the end
| devices. That's your primary threat right there.
| philg_jr wrote:
| I'm going to assume they are referring to any cloud
| backups of said devices. Since they are stored on servers
| managed by not you and are unencrypted, able to be
| accessed for "national security reasons".
| fluidcruft wrote:
| There are a lot of things that are publicly known but if
| he's signed an NDA he can't point at them or acknowledge
| their authenticity. Anyway Pegasus isn't even the correct
| ballpark lol.
| handedness wrote:
| Cellebrite, on the other hand...
|
| Edit: And Magnet, and the internal capabilities of an
| acronymical agency or three...
| Silhouette wrote:
| Just about every confidentiality clause or NDA I've ever
| signed had a provision specifically excluding information
| independently in the public domain from its scope. I find
| it strange to the point of lacking credibility that
| someone working in a security-related field would have an
| NDA that required them to pretend to ignore even public
| domain information yet permitted them to post the kind of
| innuendo seen in this discussion.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Yeah, I agree but it could be his thought process.
| andrepd wrote:
| Emails and GSM calls yes, obviously. But e.g. Signal
| communications? You need a Pegasus-tier exploit for that,
| which means that unless you're high profile enough you
| should be safe.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You need to think about what they don't say with these
| matters.
|
| He said Apple does not have and won't create a backdoor.
| That was well crafted and means exactly what he said, any
| implicit meaning is an artifact of your brain.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I might postulate that while Rhubarb LTD absolutely
| doesn't hold and will never create a backdoor, Celery Inc
| does. Ignore the fact that Celery is staffed by some of
| Rhubarb's senior engineers working part time. Ignore the
| fact Celery are contracted to do security assessments so
| have access to all the source code, radio firmware and
| schematics...
|
| I absolutely don't actually know anything about Apple,
| but I've seen some of the ways even small companies
| legally split themselves up to avoid tax or various forms
| of liability. Multiple phone numbers to the same phone,
| multiple domains and email providers to the same laptop.
| Multiple denials that you've ever heard of the other
| company let alone happen to share the same office
| space...
|
| There's a massive difference between a truthful statement
| and an honest one; anyone that works with code should
| understand that.
| bigyabai wrote:
| The US succeeded, according to American lawmakers:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-
| to-... Apple has since confirmed in a
| statement provided to Ars that the US federal government
| "prohibited" the company "from sharing any information,"
| but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated
| its transparency reporting and will "detail these kinds
| of requests" in a separate section on push notifications
| in its next report.
|
| Apple's hidden _at least_ one warrantless backdoor in
| their systems for the purpose of federal surveillance. I
| have no reason to believe the exploitation stops there.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Apple and Google had no choice but to comply with the
| National Security Letters demanding access to user's push
| notification data.
|
| They also can't refuse to comply with warrants demanding
| any such unencrypted data that is stored on their
| servers.
|
| That's not the same thing as adding a back door to allow
| access to encrypted user data that is stored on the
| user's device.
|
| It's also different than storing encrypted user data on
| your server, when you have purposefully designed a system
| where you don't have access to the user's encryption key.
|
| Encrypted user data backup is the feature that Apple
| disabled access to in the UK rather than comply with the
| order to insert a back door in the OS.
| bigyabai wrote:
| You'd better hope you're right. Nobody is auditing Apple
| who can hold them accountable. The lack of transparency
| is how we ended up on this slippery slope in the first
| place.
|
| Good security models typically don't hinge on being
| lucky.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Nobody is auditing Google to prove that they aren't
| selling user data to third party data brokers.
|
| Should we disbelieve them when they say they don't do so?
| xorcist wrote:
| To clarify: When you get an NSL, not only is it
| impossible to refuse and stay in business, it is also
| impossible to _talk about_ it. That 's the scary bit.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Certainly. At least with a normal warrant you can
| publicly speak out and notify the user(s) involved.
|
| I would also point out that it was Senator Wyden who
| initially informed the public of how much the government
| was already spying on their unencrypted communications.
|
| His record on civil liberties is excellent.
| Zak wrote:
| The position of the US executive on encryption can easily
| shift depending on who holds the presidency and certain
| cabinet positions. I'm not sure the Trump administration
| actually has a coherent position on the subject.
| bsimpson wrote:
| > I'm not sure the Trump administration actually has a
| coherent position
|
| That seems to be the most salient property of his
| presidency. His position on any issue is whatever he just
| said, with no regard to what it might have been
| yesterday.
| freedomben wrote:
| For anyone that wants a good (and fair) example of this,
| check out his positions on the debt ceiling going back to
| 2012 (and then on every time it's come up since). When he
| isn't in power raising the debt ceiling is Unamerican, a
| political ploy and bad. When he is in power, it should be
| scrapped entirely and should be above politics. He was
| remarkably frank about it in an interview a year or two
| ago when he was running for president when he was pressed
| by the interviewer about the flip-flop, he smiled and
| said approximately "I wasn't running for president back
| then"
| Hikikomori wrote:
| That's just regular old two Santas playbook republicans
| been running since Reagan.
| Spivak wrote:
| Hey, even the worst person in the world is owed their right
| to privacy. Determining if someone is doing evil with their
| right necessarily undermines privacy for everyone.
| petre wrote:
| I'm sure the police can catch child abusers the old
| fashioned way: by infiltrating cp networks and posing as
| kids online. This snooper's charter is in fact overreach
| and an invitation to build something like the Stasi.
| standardUser wrote:
| If devoted half the resources to catching child abusers
| as we do to stop people from getting high after work,
| we'd have a whole hell of a lot fewer abused children.
| But, priorities!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If devoted half the resources to catching child abusers
| as we do to stop people from getting high after work,
| we'd have a whole hell of a lot fewer abused children.
|
| There are two problems here:
|
| (1) We devote _more_ resources to catching child abusers.
| There are all kinds of legal "if you see something, say
| something" requirements that make every doctor, nurse,
| and schoolteacher in the country part of the effort to do
| this.
|
| (2) I see no particular reason to believe that additional
| resources would lead to a noticeable increase in
| detections. There are many, many circumstances where
| you're free to devote double the resources to something,
| but you'll see at best a trivial improvement in results.
| standardUser wrote:
| > We devote more resources to catching child abusers.
|
| You make this statement but provide no evidence. Because
| there's laws on the books, we "devote more resource"
| than, say the entire DEA, which unlike these laws has a
| gargantuan budget? That's nonsense.
|
| > I see no particular reason to believe that additional
| resources would lead to a noticeable increase in
| detections.
|
| Look harder? Read up on the topic? String operations
| work. More would work more often and catch more abusers.
|
| Let alone the resources we could be pouring into
| children's mental health services (instead of kicking
| families off health insurance like the current
| administration has accomplished).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> We devote more resources to catching child abusers. _
|
| The Epstein list proves we do more to protect child
| abusers.
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| not after we find him
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| > In a combative speech at the Munich Security Conference in
| February, Vance argued that free speech and democracy were
| threatened by European elites.
|
| > Trump has also been critical of the UK stance on
| encryption. The US president has likened the UK's order to
| Apple to "something... that you hear about with China,"
| saying in February that he had told Starmer: "You can't do
| this."
|
| > US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also
| suggested the order would be an "egregious violation" of
| Americans' privacy that risked breaching the two countries'
| data agreement.
|
| I think that's exactly why I want encryption.
| bsimpson wrote:
| He's proven himself to be more of an asshat than I'd hoped
| (see the Zelenskyy meeting), but he did come up in Silicon
| Valley venture capital. There's a lot about this
| administration that causes concern, but I'm glad to see him
| on the right side of encryption.
| monetus wrote:
| It feels like hearing Diddy advocate for various legalized
| recreational drugs, sadly.
| kingkawn wrote:
| because Vance and his colleagues are breaking federal law for
| the retention of government records and as long as they don't
| invite anymore journalists into the group chat they will get
| away with it
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| And also about who is really running the show in the UK.
| andybak wrote:
| And who is that?
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Well duh how do backdoors benefit Thiel?
| upofadown wrote:
| It's possible that their advocacy is well thought out but not
| based on the stated reasons. Say, Apple is actually under the
| control of the NSA and there are hidden back doors in the
| form of exploitable weaknesses as per Crypto AG. Then
| preventing the introduction of public backdoors would
| preserve the value of the current setup where Apple is widely
| considered trustworthy with respect to their customers.
| caycep wrote:
| UK has a hx of pushing this - OP probably referring to
| efforts by the brits to put backdoors in comm standards like
| GSM and others back in the 80's and 90's
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| In the distant past technical skill and knowledge was
| increasing as more and more people used personal computers.
| Then Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. This caused the world
| to get dumber and dumber.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Then Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. This caused the
| world to get dumber and dumber._
|
| Preposterous. Did the invention of the calculator make people
| dumber? A smartphone is another tool. Not Steve Jobs's fault
| people use it for TikTok or gooning instead of studying
| programming, math, medicine or whatever. Stupid people are
| gonna be stupid with or without smartphones.
|
| Plus, we already had smartphones before Jobs, they were Pal
| OS, Windows Mobile or Symbian based.
| pests wrote:
| It's a difference in kind I think. Creation of any type of
| work - art, writing, programming, modeling, deep research,
| etc is much more accessible on a PC than on a smartphone.
| Not only because of the input devices available, but also
| the restrictions of the platform and OS.
|
| Maybe it wasn't intentional, but the form factor of the
| modern smartphone discourages creation.
|
| When I was a young child me and all my friends would "use
| the PC together" just to open MSPaint and create shitty
| drawings. I don't see anything similar today.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> the form factor of the modern smartphone discourages
| creation_
|
| Ever take photos or videos with your phone? Is that not
| creation?
|
| _> When I was a young child me and all my friends would
| "use the PC together"_
|
| Same, but this is more "old man yells at clouds".
| Children today have their own way of creation, now using
| AI.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The people in office now were already old by the time the
| Internet and especially Mobile took off.
|
| But it's not like many young adults today who grew up with
| mobile phones understand computers either. At 51 growing up
| with computers in the 80s, I find myself explaining what I
| think should be simple computer concepts to both my parents
| generation and my adult children.
|
| My 80 year old mom is not a stereotypical old person who
| doesn't know how to use a computer. She is a retired math
| teacher and has actively been using computers since we had an
| Apple //e in the house running AppleWorks in the mid 80s.
|
| When she was tutoring teenagers mostly as volunteer work after
| she retired, she had to teach them how to use Office/Gsuite.
| nemomarx wrote:
| There was a very idealistic move in education to believe that
| younger students would be "digital natives" and self taught
| on typing, computer programs, etc. So we deemphasized classes
| on this, and now kids grow up on consumption oriented devices
| and can't type again. So it goes in circles I guess
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think idealistic is the wrong wording. Maybe optimistic
| or naive?
| nemomarx wrote:
| Optimistic is probably the kindest, yeah. I don't think
| it was strictly a bad argument - it was easy to think of
| the classes as outdated and taught by a generation who
| knew less than the students. It just turned out to be a
| very short state of affairs. Hard to expect schools to
| have predicted the iPhone, right?
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Part of that is US policy makers have barely changed, they are
| just older now. Very troubling trend that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Policy makers change frequently and often radically. Federal
| lawmakers less so, but lawmakers are a small subset of
| policymakers, and not the ones who create international
| pressure; those are political appointees in the executive
| branch, and they change frequently.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| A reason why my first vote ever (20 years ago) went to the
| pirate party. We needed people with digital understanding 30
| years ago.
|
| "Das Internet ist fur uns alle Neuland" Angela Merkel (2013)
| during a press conference with Obama.
|
| "The internet is uncharted territory for us"
| CJefferson wrote:
| I don't see why you think they don't understand the tech.
|
| This is going to be heresy here, but honestly I think it's a
| reasonable position. Not one I would take, but reasonable.
|
| For the first time in human history there can be large scale
| communication it is mathematically impossible for governments
| to have any access to. If you believe that governments are
| doing the job of protecting their citizens (and many do), it's
| entirely reasonable for them to want this type of access.
|
| They have it with the postal service, and analogue phones and
| the world didn't collapse, and many criminals got caught.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| But also for the first time in human history, it's possible
| to do large-scale surveillance without large-scale human
| effort. The power of the network goes both ways.
|
| Phone wiretapping (until recently I suppose) and mail
| inspection required a human to take some action to listen in;
| you couldn't just monitor _everyone 's_ communications. Now
| you can.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I agree, there are many complex issues involved here. But I
| get annoyed at tech people (not saying you!) that it is
| self-evident that any kind of law enforcement methods of
| access is obviously wrong.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> I get annoyed at tech people (not saying you!) that it
| is self-evident that any kind of law enforcement methods
| of access is obviously wrong._
|
| I don't think anybody is saying that the motivations are
| bad. We all want safety, right?
|
| The closest thing I hear is, they feel that the cons
| often outweigh the pros. I think this correlates with
| their trust in authorities, given the _countless_ abuses
| we see authorities perpetrating when granted power.
|
| There's a reason _" think of the children!"_ is literally
| a joke mocking safety-based pretexts for reductions in
| rights.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Sadly, UK Parliament is made up of political careerists and art
| students, which is probably similar to most Western
| democracies. There's a saying 'those who can do, those who
| can't teach', it probably needs a final 'and those that can't
| teach, go into politics'.
|
| Every time ukgov tries to make some sort of tech policy, it's
| embarassingly wrong, or naive, or both.
|
| This comes from a country that effectively gave away ARM.
|
| https://studee.com/media/mps-and-their-degrees-media
|
| The most popular subjects for MPs who won seats in the Dec 2019
| election Politics - 20% History
| - 13% Law -12% Economics - 10%
| Philosophy - 6% English - 4%
| eamonnsullivan wrote:
| I'm a principal software engineer with a degree in history.
| You don't need a science degree to understand most of these
| issues sufficiently to legislate them. But you need humility
| and a willingness to learn. That, sadly, is lacking in too
| many governments and civil services.
|
| Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's
| equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police
| departments) understand these issues perfectly well.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K
| 's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level
| police departments) understand these issues perfectly
| well._
|
| Surely some of them understand the technical details. That
| doesn't necessarily mean they understand or respect the
| wider implications of a policy. This is why it's important
| to have a government that sets policy - taking into account
| all of the competing influences and potential consequences
| - and politically neutral technicians who then implement
| government policy.
|
| No-one would dispute that if the government could examine
| every communication everyone ever sends then it could catch
| more very bad people and prevent more harm to innocent
| people. The problem is all the other stuff that also
| happens if you give a government that kind of power over
| its own people.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The leader of the opposition studied computer engineering
| (before going on to law). Sadly she used the knowledge gained
| to hack the website of the deputy leader of Labour Party.
| sealeck wrote:
| > Sadly she used the knowledge gained to hack the website
| of the deputy leader of Labour Party.
|
| If by "hack" you mean she guessed the password, then yes.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| It has always been politics, not technology. Politicians and
| bureaucratic always want more power, and they rarely relinquish
| power they gained temporarily.
|
| It has nothing to do with their technical knowledge. It has
| everything to do with human nature.
|
| If you want to push back, the law is not on your side.
| varispeed wrote:
| They understand the tech and so their advisers. You are
| assuming they want to do some do gooding in some sorts of naive
| and clumsy matter. No. They want control and they know
| perfectly well the implications.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| You'd have to convince politicians they shouldn't be trying to
| die of old age in office before we started getting people who
| know tech
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > before we started getting people who know tech reply
|
| The politicians might not know tech, but the NSA, GHCQ, etc.
| that push for these anti-encryption laws most definitely do
| know technology, and is the main lobby against encryption.
|
| It goes beyond just getting politicians that understand tech.
| We need politicians willing to rein in the intelligence
| apparatus put in safeguards, and checks and balances on their
| power.
| terminalshort wrote:
| They do understand the tech. They understand that allowing
| everyone to use E2E encryption gives them less power.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I don't think it's that nefarious. I mean, for some of them
| it might be, but for MOST of them they see a "law & order"
| issue that will resonate with stupid people ("cops can't get
| access to terrorist data / child molester info / human
| trafficking communications!"), and they just run with it
| without regard to downstream effects.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I think this is a very dangerous deception. They understand.
|
| When politicians say "we need a special key for police to stop
| child abuse" it's not that they don't know this means "a
| backdoor with no technological way to limit its use". On the
| contrary, they know it very well and it's exactly what they
| want to achieve under the guise of children protection. It's
| the public at large that don't understand it -- or so they
| hope.
| kypro wrote:
| I thought this too, but I think we misunderstood the extent to
| which various calls for censoring and regulating the internet
| where driven by a lack of understanding of the technology...
|
| The scary thing about the UK regulators is that they seem to
| understand the stupidity of what they're doing, but believe
| it's worth it. You see this attitude everywhere in the UK - in
| our hate speech laws, our blasphemy laws, mass surveillance -
| the argument isn't that these things don't limit freedom and
| personal privacy. They'll agree that they do, their argument is
| that you shouldn't care.
|
| With this encryption backdoor most wouldn't deny that it could
| be compromised, they just didn't think you should worry about
| it because they thought the benefits were worth it.
|
| I think people on the internet in the 90s and early 00s were
| just weird people to be honest. We're very libertarian for
| whatever reason, and we wrongly assumed people our age were all
| as pro-freedom as us.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think the ironic thing is that although everyone uses
| powerful technology on a practically constant basis, it is
| sooooo much more complicated that less and less people have
| even a clue. How many adults would know how to change their oil
| today versus back in the 70s? Changing spark plugs used to be a
| 30 minute task but now you have to take apart half the engine
| just to even gain access. Even though of us who make our living
| in tech are not immune. How would we verify that there isn't
| spyware or similar in the firmware or hardware on the computer
| we use daily?
| jackgavigan wrote:
| We've had a serious problem with policy-making in this country
| for a loooooong time, stretching right back to when RIPA was
| drafted, nearly three decades ago.
|
| With a few notable exceptions, the level of knowledge,
| expertise and understanding amongst government advisers and
| policy makers is _abysmally_ low. c.f.
| https://jackgavigan.com/2015/11/23/how-well-advised-was-the-...
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I mean, yes many policymakers still struggle with the nuances
| of modern tech, but claiming that "the needle hasn't moved" in
| 25 years is an exaggeration. In the late 90s/early 2000s,
| encryption debates featured lawmakers who barely understood
| email. Since then, there are committees focused specifically on
| tech policy, even some lawmakers with backgrounds in CS or
| cybersecurity... and far more nuanced public debates about
| encryption, surveillance, and privacy.
|
| I recently listened to some clips from a hearing with questions
| about zero-knowledge proofs, algorithmic transparency,
| etc...this was pretty unthinkable two decades ago. Some
| agencies and legislative bodies also now have technical
| staffers and some advisory boards with technologists. So, yeah
| it it slow and sometimes frustrating, but it's not static.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| Thank goodness for that - a UK citizen.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I assumed they'd only have asked for it if they'd already OKed it
| with the US, and that it was probably part of a plan to give US
| access too via 5-eyes sharing.
|
| Turns out it was not 4D chess after all...
| pjc50 wrote:
| The UK home office has really, really wanted this for decades,
| through all sorts of technologies. Institutional paranoia.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> Turns out it was not 4D chess after all..._
|
| It never is. I'm guilty of thinking there's a secret master
| plan sometimes and there never is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
| EasyMark wrote:
| For me it's not so much a conspiracy as the natural flow as a
| society becomes more fascist (as most Western government are
| leaning) and more "police state". It's inevitable, they want
| to be able to spy on every aspect of our lives and keep it
| recorded indefinitely as technology and public sentiment will
| allow. Cops want to make their jobs as easy as possible,
| politicians want to be able to get as much dirt on everyone
| as they can.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think if we'd had a "normal" administration, this probably
| would have been pushed by the US government. The US services
| have been gunning for this for _decades_. But we have an
| administration that seems extremely disjointed in what it wants
| to do and why it wants to do it. I 'm kind of curious about the
| internal conversations that must be happening on the other side
| of 5-eyes nations services as they're trying to accomplish
| their ends with such an unpredictable ally.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| > The UK official added, this "limits what we're able to do in
| the future, particularly in relation to AI regulation." The
| Labour government has delayed plans for AI legislation until
| after May next year.
|
| What did they mean by this
| doublerabbit wrote:
| The UK AI bill included a proposal to create an AI authority,
| forcing third party to align with their approaches to AI.
|
| They've been looking to use AI for consumer surveillance; AI
| user monitoring essentially.
|
| "We can't have a backdoor so we can't use AI to monitor the
| user"
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| AI and encryption are technically orthogonal. But they'll use
| any guise to further their agenda.
| chatmasta wrote:
| They're closely related for some use cases, like client-
| side content screening. If they can't have a backdoor then
| maybe they'll push for a local LLM to spy on the user's
| activity and phone home when it sees something bad.
| mzajc wrote:
| Presumably without alerting the user and with thresholds
| set by the police. That's just a backdoor with extra
| steps.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That surprises me, honestly. Makes you wonder what the British
| government got in return for forgetting about the encryption
| loicence idea.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Probably nothing. they have neither leverage nor negotiating
| talent.
| jajuuka wrote:
| That's my thinking. With all the people who are a part of this
| story why would the UK government back off and no longer want
| to spy on iPhone users.
| dsign wrote:
| Things got so out of control because the UK doesn't have heavily
| muscled tech emporiums that can spend time in bed with their
| politicians. US does. But it's a sad world the one where citizens
| are so helpless against their governments and the corporations.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > But it's a sad world the one where citizens are so helpless
| against their governments and the corporations.
|
| Helpless indeed - but, government still requires the consent of
| the governed. It's just that we are all very comfortable, with
| a lot to lose and easily distracted, so that consent to be
| governed is too easily given nowadays.
|
| If we do anything together as a society it should be making
| sure to preserve E2E Encryption as it's one of the most
| important tools to organize a resistance should we wish to
| revoke our consent to be governed.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm by no means a Trump fan. But I thought it was negligent how
| the Biden administration didn't fight for American tech companies
| internationally and how the prior administration was actively
| hostile to them.
|
| Then people wonder why tech embraced Trump.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Trump will do a lot more harm to US tech companies than Biden.
| A lot of us here in Europe are moving away from US tech, and as
| we are building more of our own it's very unlikely we will come
| back.
|
| Right now there aren't too many EU alternatives yet which is
| why you don't really notice yet. But the damaged trust in the
| US as a 'partner' will outlive Trump for decades. As they say
| "trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback".
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Just seems very unrealistic wishful thinking that Europe
| would suddenly become good at these kinds of software after
| spending the last few decades being bad at it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's a lot easier now because there's a huge demand all of
| a sudden for local services.
|
| Previously it was hard to compete with the US because the
| lack of regulation there and investors in the EU having
| more expectations rather than just throwing money at the
| wall and hoping it sticks.
|
| But with the exploitative business models like Google's
| consumer tracking and now with Trump and his trade wars the
| US is no longer viewed as a friend or a country to look up
| to. I think it will only increase the EU's push for more
| privacy and ethical business models.
|
| There's a big grassroots movement like "BuyFromEU" to cut
| US products and services out of our lives. I think that
| trade balance is only going to get worse. And really it was
| actually not bad at all, the problem is that Trump was only
| counting products not services when looking at the trade
| balance. I guess because his voters are primarily blue
| collar workers.
| lenkite wrote:
| After the local EU services/products all have Brussels
| Mandated encryption back-doors and permit free decrypting
| of your private data, I will bet there will be a surge
| back to non-EU services.
|
| https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/eu-pushes-for-backdoors-
| in-...
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| I mean a lot of EU would prefer EU backed backdoor to US
| backed backdoor. EU backed backdoor still sucks but I
| don't get this argument
| scarface_74 wrote:
| There is no such thing as an "EU backdoor". Once you have
| any kind of backdoor it will be exploited by spy agencies
| worldwide through hacks
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes, this is a big worry indeed, though not really
| something the US doesn't have (but they are more
| secretive about it). Snowden made that very clear. We
| just have more government transparency here.
| terminalshort wrote:
| You think that the EU, which is also pushing for a
| backdoor just like the UK, is somehow actually against
| tracking and data collection? You gotta pick one or the
| other.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This is not the same thing. They trust themselves to
| track and monitor us, but not commercial parties.
|
| I of course trust neither, but I do have to say they are
| doing good stuff limiting bad actors like Google and
| Microsoft. I just wish they would do more (e.g. ban third
| party cookies and tracking outright rather than forcing
| us to choose every time).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The EU is not going to build its own Google, Facebook, Apple,
| Microsoft, AWS etc.
|
| Anytime the lack of "influential European tech companies"
| come up, the best anyone can do is money losing/barely
| profitable Spotify.
|
| And the data doesn't back your idea up that Europe is moving
| away from any of those companies. The EU is moving its
| dependence away from the US military industrial complex
| admittedly.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I guess not no, but we don't need those, really. We
| definitely don't want carbon copies of those companies
| because they are causing a lot of what's wrong with this
| world. What we need is more ethical companies that
| understand the EU market. No paying with our data, no
| manipulative algorithms. We've been pushing for that for
| years but Trump has been the turning point, now people are
| really on board with the idea that leaving US services is
| better.
|
| It will take time to build local alternatives but I'm sure
| they will come. We have time. You can see that companies
| like Microsoft are really shaken up when they're starting
| appeasement projects like those vows to actually protect
| our data (though those promises are weak because they
| remain bound to US law)
|
| And this goes hand in hand with the defense initiatives. IT
| is important though to society to be considered a critical
| asset.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared
| off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be
| lost.
|
| And even a simplified version of AWS shouldn't be
| impossible to build that's "good enough" [1] or another
| search engine that's good enough (Google) and Google
| search sucks these days anyway.
|
| But Europe is not going to be able to replicate the
| ecosystem of Android like China did and definitely not
| Apple on the high end or MS for operating systems.
|
| [1] before anyone replies that I don't understand the
| complexity of AWS, I have been working with AWS
| technologies exclusively for over 7 years including a
| former 3+ year stint at AWS.
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| What I am wondering is if the complexity of AWS is
| required for 99 percentile. There are a lot of niche
| services and duplicated ones on AWS and a targeted
| replacement for the most popular ones would be enough for
| most.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| You only require AWS if you build something to run on
| AWS. That's the thing. You can easily run it on something
| else, just build it for that specifically. Now, AWS-style
| services have become somewhat of an industry standard
| (e.g. S3 offered by countless operators). But still, I
| think offering AWS style services is a weakness because
| you can never become better than the original.
|
| And cloud is only really cost-effective when it comes to
| startups that have not much cash flow but expect/hope to
| explode rapidly by going viral. Cloud gives them that
| kind of infinite scaling and the ability to pay as they
| go (the uptick in clients will pay for the increased
| hosting when they do make it).
|
| In Europe this kind of business model is very rare
| though. We don't just spin stuff up like a weather
| balloon and hope it floats.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Netflix as the canonical example would beg to differ as
| would Apple who hosts plenty of its services between AWS,
| GCP and I believe Azure. I only know first hand about AWS
| since Apple talked about it during ReInvent.
|
| There are plenty of large private corporations and
| governments who host on AWS. Maybe they didn't do it
| naively?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Netflix mainly runs from caching boxes at ISPs though.
| Most of their content comes from there. AWS is way too
| expensive to serve all that content from.
|
| I see a lot of dumb implementations. At work we're
| picking up all our physical servers and moving them to
| AWS compute boxes that run 24/7. Purely statically, just
| because our idiot CIO wants to be a "cloud-driven
| company" so he can spout the buzzwords. We're spending a
| lot more money to get the same only on someone else's
| computers and get none of the actual benefits that cloud
| can offer.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Meta subsidizes a very large proportion of the world's
| communication (in the form of
| Whatsapp/Instagram/Facebook).
|
| Even if 98% of it is unnecessary garbage, the
| functionality for that last 2% has provided a ton of
| utility to billions of people.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Except they make money so they don't subsidise it. They
| get paid for it but through our data. Which is what we
| don't want here in Europe anyway.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Subsidy in this context was meant to convey that all the
| bandwidth and infrastructure that allows for global
| communication for billions of people is paid for by the
| advertising Meta sells, money that obviously disappears
| if Meta disappears.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That doesn't mean we won't have money to pay for it
| though. All that advertiser money comes from the consumer
| too. Companies pay it to sell things, and to make a
| profit they factor it into the price. We're paying for
| it, we just don't pay Meta directly.
|
| If meta would disappear we would either buy less and have
| more money to pay for communication (and doing more
| towards saving the planet as well!). We'd probably choose
| things to buy more on actual need and quality rather than
| marketing BS.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it
| disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of
| value would be lost.
|
| Well yes and no. Facebook, no. The concept of facebook as
| it was when it was first released was an interesting one
| to me. Staying in touch with your friends, I've lived in
| several countries so I have friends all over the world.
| This is nice. However they perverted it when they dropped
| the old timeline and moved to the algorithmic feed. It
| became useless to me then.
|
| I do see a benefit to facebook-like services though, just
| ethical ones.
|
| But what I do like about facebook, or rather meta now, is
| the investment they have done in VR. It's still full of
| data collection I'm sure, but to me VR is a very
| interesting tech and it really needed that to get off the
| ground. Right now it's not really moving along because
| "AI" stole all the hype limelight but it will come again,
| just like AI has had some false starts itself.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| The US was never a trusted partner, Europeans just didn't
| have a choice. No one company was able to spend the amount of
| money required to compete with American technology, so nobody
| did.
|
| Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower, the "friendship" is
| nothing more than economic interdependency. French aircraft
| carriers are not using Windows because they trust the US
| government, their diagnostic software just doesn't work on
| anything else.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Maybe not fully trusted but they were certainly fairly well
| aligned to our interests. Until trump obviously.
| bsimpson wrote:
| This is my fundamental problem with Elizabeth Warren et. al..
|
| They act like the choices are omni-powerful US tech companies,
| or a plethora of small companies building utopia. They say "we
| need to hamstring our most successful companies to make space
| in the market for smaller players."
|
| The problem is that it isn't making space for smaller players;
| it's making space for countries with worse perspectives on
| human rights to try to catch up/fill the void. The world isn't
| a better place if we replace Google and Meta with ByteDance and
| Yandex. It's not even that those are bad companies (from what I
| hear, they're pretty similar internally to their US
| counterparts); it's that they are under the jurisdiction of
| administrations that are hostile to human rights.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > The problem is that it isn't making space for smaller
| players; it's making space for countries with worse
| perspectives on human rights to try to catch up/fill the
| void. The world isn't a better place if we replace Google and
| Meta with ByteDance and Yandex.
|
| I mean, the foreign companies taking that space can be solved
| with sanctions, or digital services taxes, etc.
|
| What would you propose? Maybe Google, Apple, Meta, etc. are
| the lesser of the big evils but we definitely have a monopoly
| problem in the US, and there is very little space for
| competition, which only continues to harm consumers.
| atmosx wrote:
| Did this approach ever actually work out in the history of
| humanity? Like, we're fine with massive corporations spying
| on us because otherwise the Chinese/Russian/Aliens might? In
| the name of protecting freedom, we're violating it ourselves
| and we brag about it?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The EU has similar nefarious plans as well, under the Orwellian
| name "ProtectEU".
|
| https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/the-european-commissi...
|
| I wonder how this clash is going to turn up. I would hate this
| development. This proposal is worthy of the Chinese Communist
| Party, and I am aghast just how many member states are fine with
| the concept of a preemptive surveillance state and breaking
| privacy left and right.
|
| Of course, that is what we get for giving Ursula von der Leyen a
| second term (why??) She already has a reputation from her career
| in German politics, having earned the nickname Zensursula
| (censoring Ursula).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Of course, that is what we get for giving Ursula von der
| Leyen a second term (why??)
|
| To answer your question: because the Conservatives just
| couldn't be arsed to put up an alternative.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| UvdL is the last remnant of Merkel's era, her only
| qualification for such a high job was her blind loyalty to
| Mutti.
|
| IIRC current Kanzler, Friedrich Merz, is not at all her
| friend and will complicate things for her on purpose. So we
| will see.
| elric wrote:
| Also because the people aren't the ones doing the voting. I
| doubt most citizens even know who she is.
| drnick1 wrote:
| What this type of news shows is that you really can't trust any
| government or company with your data. So don't give them any data
| -- only store data on your own hardware and set up your own
| servers if you really need a "cloud" for your data.
| isodev wrote:
| The specified policy aside, it's kind of sad to see - the UK
| after Brexit just doesn't carry the same weight. It would've been
| a different story if the UK as part of the EU were moving forward
| with a piece of legislation.
| jjani wrote:
| > Apple did not respond to a request for comment. "We have never
| built a back door or master key to any of our products, and we
| never will," Apple said in February.
|
| This must be some "technically correct" weasel words bullcrap, as
| without at least equivalent access there is no chance Apple would
| be operating in China.
| kingkawn wrote:
| They may not have built it, but it doesn't mean they didn't
| implement something built for them.
| mzajc wrote:
| > This must be some "technically correct" weasel words bullcrap
|
| Is that even necessary? A gag order means they can't reveal
| backdoors, and their entire stack is so locked down that
| discovering them is hard and unlikely.
| ok123456 wrote:
| "We have never built." ok, so then who built it?
| EasyMark wrote:
| Is it a big deal though? Context matters. Everyone knows you
| don't do business in China without bending a knee to the
| government in all things. If you don't you are shut down
| completely if you're lucky, imprisoned if not. Of course CCP
| has access to every device in China approaching very close to
| 100%
| bhelkey wrote:
| Apple stores Chinese users' iCloud data and encryption keys to
| that data in China in a datacenter run by a state owned firm
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-
| st...
| rs186 wrote:
| Basically, there is no backdoor. The front door is wide open,
| the government just needs to ask. Or not even that -- just
| take whatever they need themselves.
| dvtkrlbs wrote:
| I mean they just disabled advanced data protection which
| allowed normal law enforcement requests to access the data
| since they are not e2e encrypted if you don't use advanced data
| protection. I really don't think they needed to implement a new
| backdoor. They would just need implement a procedure that would
| fast track UK requests.
| tempodox wrote:
| > US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also
| suggested the order would be an "egregious violation" of
| Americans' privacy
|
| This is extremely ironic ("Americans' privacy" basically does not
| exist), but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.
| crtasm wrote:
| ORG are fundraising to have a presence at the hearing:
| https://action.openrightsgroup.org/make-our-voice-heard-appl...
| mass_and_energy wrote:
| "Last month, Meta-owned WhatsApp said it would join Apple's legal
| challenge, in a rare collaboration between the Silicon Valley
| rivals".
|
| Apple makes home computers, mobile devices, AV equipment and
| productivity/multimedia software.
|
| Meta makes social media platforms, and vr headsets. What exactly
| makes them "rivals"? WhatsApp vs iMessage? They're two big
| companies in the same sector, sure, but do they really compete
| against each other in a major way?
| cbeach wrote:
| Say what you will about JD Vance but he has passionately
| confronted the European elites on their surveillance overreach
| and clearly it's had an impact.
|
| We may not like everything about the current American
| administration, but credit where due.
| basisword wrote:
| If you really believe that the propaganda is working well.
| crmd wrote:
| I'm struggling to square Vance and the administration's position
| here with the fact that the US IC uses GCHQ to collect on US
| persons since they're not allowed to do so directly. Why wouldn't
| they want it to be easier for NSA to spy on Americans?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| They probably already have a backdoor, and making one known and
| easy to access by UK provides an opening for other adversaries
| to spy on American iPhones.
| crmd wrote:
| Thanks, that makes sense.
| miohtama wrote:
| What could go wrong?
|
| The UK is the same country that arrests 12,000 people a year for
| posting online.
|
| > Now every force in the country has a team sifting through
| people's posts trying to determine what crosses an undefined
| threshold. "It is a complete nightmare," one officer admits
|
| Britain's police are restricting speech in worrying ways
| https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police...
| From The Economist
| HPsquared wrote:
| 12k a year?!? That is a staggering number. I wonder what the
| stats were in East Germany (though they may have had harsher
| punishments.. that can be ratcheted up later though once the
| system is in place)
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Per gpt: Estimates vary, but roughly 250,000-300,000 people
| were imprisoned for political reasons over the GDR's 41-year
| existence--an average of ~6,000-7,000 annually.
|
| Just wow. I wonder if we will study this in history textbooks
| about downfall of UK
| AnnikaL wrote:
| The population of East Germany in 1990 was 16 million,
| while the population of the UK today is over 4 times larger
| at 68 million.
|
| (I still don't think the UK should jail people for being
| hateful online, though.)
| jansper39 wrote:
| As a resident of the UK I can safely say, no we will not,
| as we are categorically not arresting 12K people a year for
| simply posting things online.
|
| I would be more likely to include some sections about the
| current US administration though.
| immibis wrote:
| It depends what you count as political reasons. Plausible
| bullshit could be generated to support the idea that arrest
| for any particular crime is political, or just as easily,
| to oppose that idea.
|
| I draw the bar for "political arrest" at somewhere like
| "arrested for opposing the incumbent in an election". I
| don't think "arrested for saying it's time to gas the
| muslims" - which is the sort of thing happening in the UK
| and getting counted in these numbers - should be called
| "political arrest". That's just called committing a crime.
| That would only become a "political arrest" if gassing the
| muslims was a politically acceptable viewpoint, equal in
| value to not gassing them.
| rpledge wrote:
| East Germany fell in 1990 - I doubt there were even 12,000
| people online in East Germany at that point in time.
| mtmail wrote:
| Nobody was online. TLD .dd was registered but no domains
| registered. Two universities had a small intranet.
| slater wrote:
| > 12k a year?!? That is a staggering number.
|
| (i think OP might be speedrunning a "what opinions, mfer?"
| goose meme thing. i bet the reason is "for posting right-wing
| nationalistic garbage likely to incite hatred", or similar)
| Fluorescence wrote:
| It's mostly far-right shit-stirring because it's a much
| broader set of crimes than you are being led to believe. It's
| basically every possible crime "by communication":
|
| "A spokeswoman for Leicestershire police said crimes under
| Section 127 and Section 1 include "any form of communication"
| such as phone calls, letters, emails and hoax calls to
| emergency services."
|
| I expect it's mostly domestic abuse cases because what was
| once screamed through a closed door is now messaged online.
|
| When a family member starts threatening others, an arrest is
| probably the necessary intervention to prevent actual
| violence. It's a similar story in cases like e.g. community
| racial tensions and gang violence. Once the threats are
| happening online, real violence is imminent and action
| warranted.
| tolien wrote:
| [citation needed], your Economist article [0] quotes 30 a day
| (which would be <11k a year) but muddies the water pretty
| significantly:
|
| > Under these laws, British police arrest more than 30 people a
| day for online posts, double the rate in 2017. Some are serious
| offenders, such as stalkers.
|
| How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which
| nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the
| likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up
| racial tension when there were already race riots going on)?
| Who can tell, because the article didn't seem to bother asking.
|
| 0: For anyone curious,
| https://archive.ph/vaCkJ#selection-1287.0-1298.0
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Ridiculous thing to say when any number north of 0 is too
| many. But go ahead, muddy an otherwise extraordinarily simple
| argument.
| tolien wrote:
| Muddying the "simple argument" would be lumping stalkers in
| with people inciting violence against foreigners and
| posting nasty comments about the Prime Minister, to make
| some kind of point about the police. That would be
| ridiculous.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Stalking: Already a Crime
|
| Inciting Violence: Already a Crime
|
| Posting nasty comments: Not a crime.
|
| Glad I could clear things up for you.
| tolien wrote:
| Yet implying people are being arrested for the latter,
| while showing examples of the first two. Clear as mud.
| Xss3 wrote:
| It's slightly more nuanced. Attacking people for
| protected characteristics such as race, religion,
| disability, gender, sexuality, is also an offence.
|
| You can be a cunt all you want, just make sure you're
| being nasty about them as a person not their religion or
| race or whatever group you might feel they belong to
|
| All cases I've seen have been cut and dry in this regard.
| Racist or homophobic usually.
| tolien wrote:
| Indeed, I didn't mean to imply those three were the only
| categories of things within "online posts"! Rather, that
| it's disingenous to lump all of that under one umbrella
| and suggest great swathes of people are being arrested
| for a tweet.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I think Connelly was sentenced with inciting violence,
| rather than nasty comments.
|
| The medium she used to incite violence was a comment on a
| website. But she still incited violence, and was charged
| accordingly.
| immibis wrote:
| Except, in some countries, it is a crime. Why do you
| think it's not one? Are you familiar with UK law?
|
| In Germany there are even stricter laws. Insulting
| someone is a crime, even if the things you say are
| factually true.
|
| And then you have repressive dictatorships, like the UAE,
| USA and China, where you can't disagree with the
| government on anything. It's definitely a crime there, to
| say the president looks like Winnie the Pooh.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > How many of those 30 were for "online posts" (and of which
| nature - Lucy Connolly is a favourite example cited by the
| likes of Vance, but she was arrested for trying to stir up
| racial tension when there were already race riots going on)?
| Who can tell, because the article didn't seem to bother
| asking.
|
| I googled Lucy Connolly out of curiosity. It indeed appears
| that she got 31 month of jail for a single tweet? You don't
| think this counts as "arrested for online posts"?
| basisword wrote:
| The fact it was a "single tweet" is completely irrelevant.
| It's the content of the tweet which is relevant.
| tolien wrote:
| > You don't think this counts as "arrested for online
| posts"?
|
| You've definitely missed some context. For example, and
| fairly significantly:
|
| > Connolly previously admitted intending to stir up racial
| hatred.
|
| If you plead guilty to a charge, there's not much defense
| left.
|
| The offence she admitted to doesn't even take account of
| whether it's committed online - it's law that was passed in
| 1986. An aggravating factor that led to the sentence she
| got was that she had in fact posted multiple times in the
| same sort of way.
|
| Details of her appealing the sentence as excessive,
| rejected by the appeals court https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/05/Lucy-Con...
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| So the context: she posted similar things online multiple
| times, she pleaded guilty, and the law in question can
| apply to offline activity as well -- all right, but all
| this still literally translates into "arrested for online
| posts".
|
| She didn't throw rocks, she didn't set things on fire,
| she didn't stab anyone -- it was her speech that got her
| a multi-year jail term.
|
| This alone makes free speech proponents upset, regardless
| of whether there were riots ongoing or not, or whether
| they agree or disagree with her political position.
| tolien wrote:
| I wasn't saying the context I gave was an exhaustive
| list, I was suggesting that having Googled her name and
| maybe skimmed a couple of news articles, you might need
| to do some more reading before forming too much of an
| opinion.
|
| > She didn't throw rocks, she didn't set things on fire,
| she didn't stab anyone -- it was her speech that got her
| a multi-year jail term.
|
| Your contention seems to be that incitement shouldn't be
| an offence?
|
| That's at odds with legal systems all over the world,
| including the US, where Brandenburg v Ohio [0] holds that
| if inflammatory speech is "directed to inciting or
| producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite
| or produce such action" that is an exception to the First
| Amendment and can be prosecuted, which seems to be at
| odds with "regardless of whether there were riots ongoing
| or not".
|
| The original point of my first post in this thread was
| that lumping together arrests for stalking, incitement to
| violence and other forms of harassment to produce a big
| scary number makes the argument seem utterly dishonest.
| The fact that so many "free speech proponents" fixate on
| one example when, if the stated number is true, there
| should be thousands of examples every year is a good
| demonstration of that.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
| yesco wrote:
| > That's at odds with legal systems all over the world,
| _including the US_
|
| Not true. The US has a much higher bar for prosecuting
| speech than the UK.
|
| Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) - 395 U.S. 444
|
| -
| https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/107965/brandenburg-
| v-o...
|
| - Speech must be "directed to inciting or producing
| imminent lawless action"
|
| - AND "likely to incite or produce such action"
|
| - General statements like "burn them all" typically fail
| both prongs
|
| The "imminent" requirement is key. Connolly's Facebook
| post lacked:
|
| - Specific targets or locations
|
| - Timeframe for action
|
| - Direct instructions to specific individuals
|
| - Any indication people were prepared to act on her words
| immediately
|
| Here are cases with far more explicit threats that were
| protected:
|
| United States v. Bagdasarian (2009)
|
| - https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/221261/united-
| states-v...
|
| - Citation: 652 F.3d 1113 (9th Cir. 2011)
|
| - Posted that Obama "will have a 50 cal in the head" with
| racial slurs
|
| - Result: Conviction reversed as crude political
| statement, not true threat
|
| United States v. Turner (2013)
|
| - https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/904120/united-
| states-v...
|
| - Citation: 720 F.3d 411 (2d Cir. 2013)
|
| - Posted that three federal judges "deserve to die" with
| their photos and addresses
|
| - Result: Conviction overturned as protected political
| hyperbole
|
| Connolly's "set fire to all the hotels" would likely be
| viewed as angry hyperbole in the United States, not
| meeting Brandenburg's strict standard.
|
| The distinction: The US prosecutes actual incitement
| (directing a mob to attack a building RIGHT NOW). The UK
| prosecutes offensive speech that merely might inspire
| someone, somewhere, someday. Your Brandenburg citation
| actually proves this difference rather than refutes it.
|
| You want thousands of examples? Check Twitter during any
| US political crisis - they're not prosecuted precisely
| because Brandenburg protects them.
| tolien wrote:
| Point taken, but incitement is still an offence in other
| countries. That the US has specific, and particularly
| permissive, laws around what constitutes speech is
| neither here nor there.
|
| > You want thousands of examples?
|
| Of people people prosecuted for innocuous speech in the
| UK, the original claim in this thread. Brandenburg
| doesn't apply there.
| yesco wrote:
| I misunderstood what you were trying to imply but still
| think your premise is mistaken. My reply is merely
| directed at anyone implying the US's free speech-laws are
| somehow comparable to the authoritarian anti-free-speech
| laws the UK has.
| tolien wrote:
| Do expand on that point then.
|
| Edit: If I remove the reference to Brandenburg, I'm not
| sure my point substantially changes:
|
| Incitement _is_ an offence in the UK and also in other
| countries. You can argue whether that should be the case
| or not but that 's completely orthogonal.
|
| Gathering a whole lot of offenses which happened to
| include online activity to produce a big number of people
| who you can claim were prosecuted for something that you
| can claim is as innocuous as "online posts" is dishonest.
| yesco wrote:
| You're playing a shell game with definitions to justify
| authoritarian speech laws.
|
| > lumping together arrests for stalking, incitement to
| violence and other forms of harassment to produce a big
| scary number
|
| But that's exactly the problem - the UK defines
| "incitement" and "harassment" so broadly that ordinary
| political speech becomes criminal:
|
| UK "Harassment" includes:
|
| - Misgendering someone online
|
| - Posting offensive jokes
|
| - Retweeting protest footage
|
| - Criticizing immigration policy "grossly"
|
| UK "Incitement" includes:
|
| - Lucy Connolly's Facebook post (31 months)
|
| - Jordan Parlour's "every man and their dog should smash
| [hotel] up" (20 months)
|
| - Tyler Kay's "set fire to all the hotels" retweet (38
| months)
|
| NONE of these would meet Brandenburg's standard in the
| US. They lack:
|
| - Directed at specific individuals
|
| - Imminent timeframe
|
| - Likelihood of producing immediate action
|
| > if the stated number is true, there should be thousands
| of examples every year
|
| There ARE thousands. In 2023:
|
| - 3,537 arrested for online speech
|
| - 1,991 convicted under Section 127 Communications Act
|
| - Hundreds more under Public Order Act
|
| You don't hear about most because "UK citizen arrested
| for offensive tweet" stopped being newsworthy years ago.
|
| You're using the word "incitement" to equate UK thought
| policing with legitimate US restrictions on speech that
| creates immediate danger. That's like defending China's
| censorship because "every country bans fraud."
|
| The definitions matter. The UK criminalizes hurt
| feelings. The US criminalizes immediate threats to public
| safety.
| tolien wrote:
| > There ARE thousands.
|
| And here you're getting in on the dishonesty.
|
| How many of those were examples of "hurt feelings" and
| not "put a whole lot of foreigners at risk of their
| lives" or any of the other classes of "online posts"? We
| don't know because in their rush to say "the UK's
| arresting 30 people a day for posting things online", the
| Economist didn't bother breaking that down.
|
| > NONE of these would meet Brandenburg's standard in the
| US.
|
| None of them happened in the US so that's irrelevant. My
| misunderstanding of the precedent around incitement isn't
| central to my point.
| yesco wrote:
| 'We don't arrest people for speech, we arrest them for
| crimes we've defined as speech' is not the defense you
| think it is.
| immibis wrote:
| The USA doesn't arrest people for speech, but for crimes
| it's defined as speech, right?
| immibis wrote:
| The US has about the most extremist speech laws on the
| planet. They are a significant outlier, and shouldn't be
| used as a benchmark.
| andybak wrote:
| > it was her speech that got her a multi-year jail term.
|
| Are we really going to have to have the "shouting fire in
| a crowded theatre" conversation?
|
| I think there is some nuance to the conversation about
| this woman - but you are avoiding it with incredible
| agility.
| dmix wrote:
| I guess no one ever claimed authoritarianism was imposed
| on the British unwillingly. Seems to have lots of
| defenders.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Fortunately in the UK it is illegal to lie on the internet...
| belter wrote:
| > The UK is the same country that arrests 12,000 people a year
| for posting online.
|
| I though it could not be true, but actually it is...WTF?
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2025-0022...
| geek_at wrote:
| In Europe we don't value free speech as high as the US.
|
| There is "forbidden speech" (around lying about Holocaust
| related topics and insulting people online) and I think it's
| a good thing in total. You spew out the worst of the worst on
| the internet you should be able to be held accountable
| giantg2 wrote:
| US has plenty of arrests for terroristic threats and
| similar. Many of these are online now. 12k arrests per year
| related to online posts doesn't sound all that high.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Making terrorist threats are different than insulting
| some's religion, complaining about illegal immigrant
| crimes or shitting on politicians online. It's
| disingenuous to argue they're in the same ballpark that
| EU and US speech is similarly policed because it's not.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Always good to peel away at least the surface layer ... and
| ideally more ...
|
| https://archive.ph/xBtFI#selection-3249.145-3249.167
|
| A spokeswoman for Leicestershire police said crimes under
| Section 127 and Section 1 include "any form of communication"
| such as phone calls, letters, emails and hoax calls to
| emergency services. "They may also be serious domestic abuse-
| related crimes. Our staff must assess all of the information
| to determine if the threshold to record a crime has been met.
| "Where a malicious communications offence is believed to have
| taken place, appropriate action will be taken. Our staff must
| consider whether the communication may be an expression which
| would be considered to be freedom of speech. While it may be
| unacceptable to be rude or offensive it is not unlawful --
| unless the communication is 'grossly offensive'.
| cmsj wrote:
| On the one hand, freedom of speech is great. On the other hand,
| you have whatever the fuck is going on in America these days,
| and that is not great.
|
| So... I dunno, neither option is good.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| there was twitter cancelling before, and people that aren't
| fine with America now were fine back then
|
| that's normal
| Xss3 wrote:
| Is it surprising that 12,000 out of 60,000,000 post illegal
| things like calls for violence (burn migrants to death, etc)
| per year?
|
| Reminder that incitement is a crime in the USA too and there's
| nothing in the constitution that says it's okay just because
| it's on twitter not irl.
|
| So far every story ive seen about arrest has been pretty cut
| and dry, they were blatantly hitler level racist, homophobic,
| or calling for others to attack people for their protected
| characteristics (eg race or sex).
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would bet the US arrests a similar number for online posts. A
| common one that comes up over here is a kid posting a picture
| at a shooting range, without any threat, and the police
| questioning/arresting the kid and/or parents. Same thing for
| kids talking about a video game and stuff.
|
| Edit: why disagree?
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| We need to apply sanctions, and end all intelligence sharing
| with the UK until they stop this nonsense.
| bigfudge wrote:
| I think Trump has guaranteed that European countries have
| ended all real intelligence sharing pretty much unilaterally.
| jansper39 wrote:
| How do you expect to spy on US citizens if you don't get the
| five eyes to help out?
| andybak wrote:
| Or we need to do a tiny bit more research before jumping to
| conclusions.
|
| UK law in this regard is far from perfect but this thread is
| mainly uninformed knee-jerking.
| caycep wrote:
| I don't get why the UK always does this. it's like GSM encryption
| all over again. Is it a particularly snoop-ey culture stemming
| from GCHQ or something?
| amelius wrote:
| Why should US have a monopoly on intelligence?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| ha should have stayed in the EU if you wanted that kind of
| negotiating leverage with the US
|
| now _sod off_ , as they might say
| luxuryballs wrote:
| After Citizenfour and Lavabit I always assume the "backing down"
| publicity means they have secured the access.
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