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[News, Call for Action] The U.K. Government Is Very Close To Eroding Encryption Worldwide (www.eff.org)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You'd need Microsoft/Apple/Google to agree to this to get these client side message scrapers on devices.

You'd need commercial/closed source e2e messaging services to agree to add a backdoor.

Why would they? Not that they care about end users, but corporate interests will take issue with it too. And it's a bad look. UK is just one market for these global companies. I'm not an expert in such things so I'm basically talking out of my ass, but I think it makes sense.

But even if they somehow manage it, people will learn how to circumvent it. And then there's open source operating systems and e2e messaging which are immune to this.

Edit: grammar.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Several players have said they'll exit the UK rather than exit encryption.

Apple: https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/apple-threatens-to-pull-imessage-from-uk-iphones-rather-than-weaken-its-security/ar-AA1e8kgo

WhatsApp: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/08/whatsapp-could-disappear-uk-over-privacy-concerns-ministers-told

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Several players have said they’ll exit the UK rather than exit encryption.

rightly so.

I'd assume any worldwide player couldn't be caught in compliance with this, as long as alternatives exist that don't.
This might have been enough to push EU people away from WhatsApp for example.