Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

> The U.K. Parliament has passed the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which says it will make the U.K. “the safest place” in the world to be online.

You think the UK is safe, go to China or Russia! They have _really_ 'safe' internet. Even better, just cut the internet off, it couldn't be any safer!

The politicians passing this stuff are literally the least qualified people to discuss anything tech related. They literally do not understand (or possibly don't care) that a backdoor for them is a backdoor for any motivated attacker.

> A clause of the bill allows Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, to serve a notice requiring tech companies to scan their users–all of them–for child abuse content.

This is Apple's CSAM [1] all over again. I'm sure it won't be used at all for out-of-scope reasons... Firstly expanded to terrorism, and then generic crime, then extreme political views, then hate speech, etc.

Can somebody in 'Big Tech' please remind them that this includes _their_ messages too? I want you to email them on a regular basis something like: "We have scanned all of your files and private communications as per the requirement of the OSB, and found nothing currently deemed unacceptable by the current government. This is a reminder that any content sent now or any time in the past will be retroactively scanned and reported based on continuously evolving guidelines."

> This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy. As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor.

It looks like I will be moving to E2E via private servers.

[1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Expanded_Protections_...

Hate speech is just whatever they don't like such as opinions outside the Overton window. Even the law enforcement people are scared of being labeled hateful. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit... The UK's BBC also knew about kiddy fiddler Jimmy Saville but they kept calm and carried on letting him fiddle.

Given that the terminology comes straight of Orwell's 1984 they're barely even trying to hide the blatant power grab with a few cliche excuses (children, terrorism).

I don't really understand the relevance of Jimmy Savile here.

I think the point was - if the BBC (closely tied with the political establishment) cared so much about children's safety they would have acted against Saville before they were compelled.

The establishment never acted against Saville in his lifetime. All the public allegations and investigations happened almost a year after his death.

Right. So the UK elite are not to be trusted.

What exactly were we talking about again? OP seemed to be saying "cops and the BBC don't care about child abusers, therefore hate speech isn't a real problem," which...seems to be missing several critical links.

I think they're trying to say that "hate speech" was invented by a hypocritical government to control people and it's not a real concern for regular folks, but that's obviously not true; it was born out of civil rights campaigns in the '50s and (eventually) adopted by governments due to popular demand.

'Please sir, control and regulate the contents of our speech' - smacks of astroturfing to me

> Even the law enforcement people are scared of being labeled hateful. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

I think you're trying to say that the police and the council ignored the rape gangs because they were scared of being called racist, but your link doesn't bear that out. IIRC it's an excuse they've tried to use to justify their staggering, inexcusable failures in this case--"it's not our fault, it's those nasty progressives!"--but it doesn't really make sense.

The Rotherham case is an example of selective focus. There is no notable difference between how abuse cases were handled in Rotherham versus other towns and cities in England.

It's that bad nationwide? That's disheartening.

I don't like the argument that backdoors are bad because they could fall in the wrong hands. It implies that one would be fine with backdoors if they could be made perfectly secure. Backdoors are bad simply because the government should not spy on their own citizens en masse, and it will still be bad when hypothetically perfect surveillance tech is invented.

It's the same argument if you consider the government also to be bad hands - but point taken.

Government are the wrong hands.

I blame the populace

The people always get the government they deserve.

No. Government grows like a cancer and keeps little options for people to do much about it. Voting by choosing between 2 cheeks of the same ass does not accomplish much either.

I tend to say 2 wings of the same bird, but that is an even more vivid image! Cheers

>"I tend to say 2 wings of the same bird"

Birds are offended ;)

>"Cheers"

My pleasure

Yes. If you are ruled by a government that does not have your best interests at heart, that is on you to change.

Government derives its power from the people it rules. There is no other source of that power.

I suggest you read the dictator’s handbook.

Government derives its power from some percentage of the population it rules.

That percentage can be measured and is extremely low in most present-day democracies.

The more powerful weapons become, the smaller that group can be.

Dictators power depends on the peoples fear .. this is why it always takes courage to remove a dictatorship.

ah, the illusion of people power. i would say the political parties have the power, and while they are "elected", clearly they're not working for the people but for the financial benefit of a few.

This is only true in countries where the people had any say in the establishing of power. Before 1776, that was just about nowhere.

Today, there are still many lands and 100s of millions of people who give no consent to be governed, and yet governed they are.

When the system is heavily stacked against you, such that you cannot change it meaningfully through legal means, what other options are there? If you want to totally reform the entire government, you can start a rebellion.

A military may be more merciful if it's just a small insurrection, but if the government is in real danger, a military has far, far more power than needed to put down any rebellion. So what, do you expect the citizens to storm the Bastille? The only reason any uprisings are successful is because the military allows them to be.

Sure, we can absolutely make smaller changes with votes, but when it comes down to it, if you have the support of the military, you have all the power. And because of that, citizens have relatively little power.

I'm not advocating for an insurrection against any government, but "that is on you to change" is nonsense.

It only takes an insurrection if you leave the problem to fester too long ..

What's stopping you standing for election?

Make a wild guess

Let's see, no political support, no financial support, not enough spare time, a specific desire to avoid politics because it's almost always a shitshow, absolutely zero charisma... what else?

I mean that's the whole point, if you don't like who's running, change it.

> It implies that one would be fine with backdoors if they could be made perfectly secure.

No, I don't see how that's implied at all.

The arguments against back doors isn't that someone bad _might_ use it, it's that there is no need for the backdoor in the first place and there is no such thing as a secure back door that only intended people can use.

Authentication is not identification -- a client passing a secret to the server doesn't mean the person sending the secret should have this secret/be allowed to use this secret, it just means that they have the correct secret to get authorization from the server.

Thus, there is no such thing as a backdoor that only the "good guys" can use, this is an absurd statement (I am not implying you said this, but it seems to be the goal of governments and many tech companies for some reason...)

Technology is already chatty and insecure enough, we don't need yet another way for someone to get access to our personal devices.

The argument against back doors isn't misuse of the backdoors, it's that they shouldn't exist in the first place. There is no way to have a "safe" backdoor if any attackers with enough intent want to get access to whatever has the backdoor.

Perhaps some persons argue they'd be "okay" with the theoretical "good" backdoor, but I don't think that such arguments have been taken to their logical conclusions to explain how such a backdoor would ever ensure that only a person who really should be using it could be using it.

A secure communication backdoor has the same logic as a two-sided triangle.

> * It implies that one would be fine with backdoors if they could be made perfectly secure.*

No, it implies that perfect security is impossible. Which is philosophically true.

    Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Ben Frank may or may not be talking about Rust with this quote.

Maybe he will be correct here too. I think that isn't even too unlikely in the long run.

Yes the only chance we have is big tech to massively boycott the UK

https://open.substack.com/pub/rakkhi/p/big-tech-vs-governmen...

Having been involved in this directly for 3 years, as a search company CEO and based in the UK, I would say some (if not all) big tech companies were broadly supportive of this bill. It is almost certain that regulatory compliance will fall disproportionately on challengers. With one exception major exception, there is no indication whatsoever that they will boycott the UK because if it, nor has there been much resistance to it in public at least from big tech. The exception is about the potential threat to E2EE services.

Fascinating. That reminds me that Sheryl Sandberg was one of the strongest proponents of FOSTA/SESTA in the US. Awful setback for safety and rights of actual sex-worker as well as trafficking victims, but excellent for creating a compliance-moat that would protect Facebook/Instagram against challenger apps.

It doesn’t always include _their_ messages too.

Forms of this legislation mandate exclusions for politicians and public figures.

Apologies for the vague statement - on my phone, short of time.

> The politicians passing this stuff are literally the least qualified people to discuss anything tech related.

That kind of ranting goes too far. Why the exaggerations? I count three. It only serves to drive the dislike against politics, and thus anti-democratic tendencies.

Politics are driven by dishonest narcissist liars so the default correct stance is no trust.

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

I see what you did there.

For the uninitiated: https://youtu.be/ZggCipbiHwE?si=xPe3SQI_lI309h6j

Yeah holy cow. I couldn't tell if parent was being sarcastic or not.

I could literally explain to any old person, common man or child why this is bad quite quickly. I maintain this stance.

> It only serves to drive the dislike against politics, and thus anti-democratic tendencies.

I'm pro-democracy (in the sense that I don't have a better alternative). You can still disagree with the actions of politicians without being anti-democratic - in fact open disagreement is absolutely fundamental to democracy.

If you think you can explain to anyone and convince them easily, you’re likely wrong. Unless you’re some god of charisma.

Try and make someone have your opinion, it’s incredibly hard. If they disagree they won’t say so openly but they will vote for politicians trying to make the internet safer

C'est le ton qui fait la musique.

You're not disagreeing with the actions of politicians, you're calling all of them "literally the least qualified people to discuss anything tech related". That is an incredibly big lie, and you know it. Yet you wrote it anyway. It's ranting, and the target is representative democracy.

Saying that a particular function in democracy is not best handled by bureaucrats (non-expert representatives) and would be handled better by subject matter experts or a pairing of the two with equal power is not anti-democratic. It's just saying out loud that certain functions within government require expertise over representation.

I know what you meant, but minor correction: subject matter experts are bureaucrats. They work in an office (bureau), and in a well-functioning government are appointed on the basis of merit and credentials. Politicians are elected, non-expert representatives.

> It only serves to drive the dislike against politics, and thus anti-democratic tendencies.

Let them be driven. I find it curious how these "democratic" states have a tendency to turn into tyrannical surveillance police states. At least in a literal dictatorship people know they are powerless instead of having this delusion that they have "democratic" power.

The CSAM scan has been going on for years, at the server.

The Apple issue was Apple doing it on the handset.

Not for E2E, this would mean data could also be decrypted in transit for inspection.

That’s not strictly needed; it could be scanned by the E2E messenger app itself using an offline database of hashes, before sending.

Then it's not server side is it?

Where did any authority say the scanning had to be server-side?

> China or Russia! They have _really_ 'safe' internet. Even better, just cut the internet off

There's a huge difference between the cutoff and what happens in reality, in both of these countries.

The politicians are aware their messages are being read already. This just opens up existing practice and levels the field.

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