The U.K. Parliament is close to passing the Online Safety Bill, which threatens global privacy by allowing backdoors into messaging services, compromising end-to-end encryption. Despite objections, no amendments were accepted. The bill also includes content filtering and surveillance measures. There’s still a chance for lawmakers to protect privacy with an amendment preserving encryption. A recent survey shows the majority of U.K. citizens want strong privacy on messaging apps.
I mean, imagine if non-british companies just went “well, no encryption for you, then.”
And disabled TLS too.
Online Banking would probably just have to… stop.
And a lot of other pages wouldn’t load on most browsers requiring httpsOnline Banking would probably just have to… stop.
What will happen is usually what happens when the UK government introduces a brain melting stupid law (basically any time they do or say anything).
The government will suddenly find out that all the people that said that their stupid law won’t work, were right, and that it doesn’t work. Shockingly.
Then it will end up getting hastily revised into something moderately functional which will necessitate modifying it to the point at which it effectively doesn’t exist, and we all get on with our lives. Repeat process ad nauseum.
See the porn age verification law. Which never ended up happening.
Or just not support the UK anymore.
Current world politicians are so tech illitirare it’s bewildering. Supposedly they have experts and think tanks at their disposal to help them in these sorts of endeavours, for what? It’s insane how much survailance has been ranked up in the past decade.
It’s not just politicians, it’s so many of the older people running the companies and pulling the strings.
My own boss is an absolute nightmare for not understanding that technology that could make our jobs here so, so much easier - and crucially much much more efficient. And yeah, I get that we could endlessly chase the promises of tech, but I’m forever being told to wind back my reliance on online tech because the boss won’t spend the money needed on some computers and would rather do things on paper. I just nod, agree, then carry on doing things my way, because it has proven results. There’s a bunch of us here who rely on Google Docs for collaboration software, because the boss refuses to spend any money on anything better suited. He didn’t need it back when he set up the company 20 years ago, so he doesn’t need it now!
Drives me fucking mad.
As to your point on experts; our government ministers actively reject experts who actually know about the issues, choosing instead to listen to people who’ll tell them what they want to hear.
Narcissism and confirmation bias runs rampant in our governments and top executives.
People glady give up privacy under the guise of helping children, while nothing is actually done to protect children. More at 11.
Actually, politicians give up public privacy under the fiction of helping children, repeatedly.
I cringe every time “online” and “children” are uttered in the same breath.
I’m getting really close to just not using the internet anymore. I only use it to stream movies, and doom scroll lemmy right now, anyway. The only reason I have an email is for spam. Take awake the only facade of privacy I have and I may as well hang it all up and walk away.
Still internet is important for many people to talk and come together, to discuss and fight against power abuse. So we all should care.
U.K. civil society groups have condemned the bill, as have technical experts and human rights groups around the world.
Has there been pushback from banks and other big businesses whose activity fundamentally depends on secure encrypted communications? Has there not been pushback from the intelligence services? Or would they be exempt?
Who do you think has been pushing for the back doors? The intelligence community and law enforcement. They want EASY access to everything so they don’t have to take the effort to break encryption after getting a warrant (if they even both with a warrant). You can bet your bottom dollar they are exempt from this law for “public safety.”
