Technology

I'm not disagreeing with you but what would happen back then is that they simply wouldn't stop the crime.

At some point we need to decide if giving up all semblance of personal privacy is worth stopping some of that. I vote no enthusiastically. We just have to accept that some of that crime won't be stopped and law enforcement will have to work harder.

You'll love this!

I deployed an open-source chat system at work, just for convenience. Boss was concerned that it didn't do any logging and we couldn't tell who said what.

"You don't have any records of what we say verbally. What's the difference?"

"...Oh. Well, you're right."

He was coming from a legit concern. We didn't point fingers when someone screwed up, zero blame, but we needed to know exactly what happened so we could fix it.

That they can is what has changed. They didn't have sufficient information to put pressure.

They still had microphones and inquiry drugs, including those causing memory loss. So they knew plenty of what people were saying to each other.

Anyway. Everything has changed a lot, not just technology, and one can't really make a chain of causation to all this. There are plenty of feedback loops.

The rules now are "we are stronger, so we are forbidding everything we don't want". Losing leverage does that.

Until you learn of some way to hit them back, such questions are no good, because not answering them doesn't cost anything.

I think its a mixture of lazy and inexperience.

I believe if someone in a position of authority who understands how vital E2EE is in order for the internet to work, this suggestion wouldn't even be on the table.

its a case of just kicking destroying E2EE down the road for another generation to deal with, I believe. not sure what the solution is, either

They cut costs by firing the people doing the legwork and passed the savings along to billionaires who promised sustainable models. Now they can't hire people to do real legwork anymore because, "no one wants to work anymore for their grandparents' wage in an economy and society designed to turn people into voluntary slaves and the only way to escape is to become homeless and go off the grid, but the laws are being molded to prevent anyone from escaping the system."

I'm pretty sure that's how the old adage goes.

While casually performing hostile activity

Ah its not so bad if you get so drunk your critical thinking skills go out the window.

I thought we were unique in this but frankly everywhere in the "western" world is talking about the same things. EU has chat control, Australia has similar efforts, USA aren't pushing for privacy at all so it's not a uniquely British problem.

Honestly everywhere sounds like an awful place at this point. Freedom is a thing of the past. A thing from a time whence literally everything we did wasn't tracked, and in order to exist in society, you're expected to submit to the tracking.

Hey, did you use a secure encrypted connection to make that treasonous remark? I've got 999 on speed dial, I'm on to you, you encryption terrorist!

The right wing fascism wave is a world trend my guy. This is just the start.

Meta happened. UK, US, all over the world there is a correlation between the adoption of Meta's products and the corrosion of basic human rights.

We even had a huge reminder with V for Vendetta, but maybe that was too subtle.

That's europe, this is just UK. Brexit didn't work out in a lot of ways they planned

They aren't left. Starmer and chums undermined the left-wing leader of Labour. They're the pro-business wing of the party. New Labour folks were always dreadful for this sort of thing. Many authoritarian changes are coming from the centre, in UK, France, Denmark etc.

It all feels co-ordinated as states and their representatives squeeze down on working people.

Truly. This global push towards mass surveillance is extremely alarming.

People ran so hard from the Tories that they didn't consider Blue Labour would be dreadful also. Right now Labour and Tories are politically in danger and Reform and the Green Party are surging. Folk are fed up of parties not representing them. They just haven't fully cottoned on that that also applies to Reform. Greens are probably the main hope right now. Membership trebled to 180k. Polling close to Labour.

I think part of this is lawmakers not understanding the gravity of what they’re suggesting. Besides, most of these apps have some sort of backdoor built-in so they can decrypt messages if required in legal proceedings. Ripping E2EE out of everything is an insane assertion to make, and would make the Internet an even more dangerous place than it already is.