Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to under the Investigatory Powers Bill
Internet and social media companies will be banned from putting customer communications beyond their own reach under new laws to be unveiled on Wednesday.
Companies such as Apple, Google and others will no longer be able to offer encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a requirement on tech firms and service providers to be able to provide unencrypted communications to the police or spy agencies if requested through a warrant.
But if this thing passes, does that not mean they have done the SAFE technology a favour, ie no secure products for them, massive opportunity for an autonomous network? Have they just shot themselves in the foot?
shot themselves in the foot and painted a bigger more aggressive bulls eye on any product/network wishing to go for unbreakable encryption .
so it might put maidsafe in a even more negative light in the media in the early days of the network. but really that doesnât matter so much.
just like when silk road was mentioned on the news , it didnât scare people off, you just had thousands of people thinking âholy shit you can buy drugs on the internet and they actually arrive and are of consistent quality?â in turn there was a huge rise in users on the dark web after the news articles came out.
Same would likely happen to maidsafe âholy shit there is actually a super secure network that keeps my data private and secure and doesnât track me and i can also earn money from it?â
Given the frequent news of businesses and Governments who cannot keep their data safe, itâll be interesting to see how the balance of perceptions plays out. People and businesses want and need tools that provide security and privacy; Governments on the other hand want no privacy or security but they do not need that. Needs beats wants; and the People are more important than their Governments.
TBH I donât think they seriously expect to get these draconian parts of the bill through. The Telegraph article says councils and the tax man will be able to view peopleâs browsing history. And the idea they can weaken encryption is the old âbackdoorâ issue again, which Obama caved on recently, so Iâm not convinced they expect to be able to stand up to the tech industry on it when the US failed to - despite the same kind of fear mongering and lobbying from FBI, CIA etc.
I think these measures are there to defend the core of the bill - to be taken out as concessions to get as strong a bill as they can through.
Its strange, because I once thought I lived in a democracy! Amazingly naive huh
They keep trying⌠and those behind it are of a type that get very twitchy when they are at a disadvantage. They want to âknow all the thingsâ⌠itâs the sort of thinking that follows a dull academic mindset that knowledge is everything. The trouble with their persistence is that any weakness or letup in the defence of privacy and they will slip through something nasty. I just wish they would do it right - they are even neglecting to make statements about intent to do right by all the people; itâs all about what they want and no mention of what the people need. The way that Cameron and others in politics are cowardly in the face of ânational securityâ is alarming⌠example was Cameron unable to justify the UKâs support of Saudi Arabia to the UKHRC.
Government are not logical, they are not empathetic to society, they are not always smart and they do things for other reasons.
So you could see a situation where this assists MaidSafe in the beginning and then a few years later Governments enact bills and laws that make it illegal to offer up computing resources to encrypted decentralised networks and they will sell it as âstopping terrorism or paedophiliaâ and the masses will support them because they do not even understand what they are talking about.
Fear is a powerful motivator. And when you combine this with the obsession with governance, power and control it could get real bad for MaidSafe. On the other hand I see no way for them to implement this and act on this law should they do it.
I envisage a SAFE Network with an ever increasing number of front doors. Every app, browser extension, OS, Mobile OS, IOThings âŚwill be a door into the network.
The Gov will need to ban âtechnologyâ if they hope to shut this thing down, from an endpoint view of the network.
If you believe in cycles, the âtrust in governmentâ cycle is nearing the bottom, just as they start going bust. This is all about tracking the money flows in an effort to scrape every dollar that the Gov deems theirs and the loss of freedom is a byproduct.
SAFE has an important role to play, demonstrating how humans can organize without the need for central control or âblockchainsâ. Probably something along the lines of replacing coercion with cooperation.
Breaking news! 99% of all terrorists and criminals wear shoes!
MI5 recently released a related statment:
Banning shoes that utilize soles will both hinder terrorist and criminalâs maneuverablilty as well as their ability to hide trackers and/or bombs in the soles of innocent women and childrenâs footwear.
Itâs easier to distribute information than distributing shoes. My concern is that with unbreakable encryption huge organizations of organized crime and terrorist networks can start to spread unhindered under the radar of law enforcement.
Would you care to explain the advantages of whatâs known as âtargeted surveillanceâ and to what extent it was successful in times before the internet?
What in fact happens is that the crims end up being the ones with unbreakable encryption and the public are beaten down a notch being told âwe are watchingâ.
And the crims just use anon methods to transfer their messages.
So remind me again what good is having breakable encryption for UK companies.
But how can possibly millions people spreading criminal activities behind unbreakable encryption be sufficiently targeted? It could be a real danger. I donât know.
Itâs tricky to use unbreakable encryption such as one-time pads. And even if criminals use such encryption they can be tracked via IP addresses etc (TOR isnât secure enough I have heard). So the use of special encryption will stick out like a sore thumb. If unbreakable encryption becomes widespread and used by the general public, criminals and terrorists can use it without easily being tracked.
My concern is that with unbreakable encryption huge organizations of organized crime and terrorist networks can start to spread unhindered under the radar of law enforcement.