Another hint at attacking right to encryption

[ik9000]

When the BBC starts pushing stories like this it seems to be to help prepare the public for forthcoming policy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57050689

If you read through it's a bit of a non-article, with some people saying encryption is a good thing and its veto won't stop the bad guys, but as expected, the first headline is what people have predicted a while back, "outlaw encryption because...the children." And a lot of people won't read the article to get the nuance.

Notice also the lack of BBC articles on a lot of other worthy topics. Proposed building planning overhauls and what they will actually mean for the average person, NHS data grab as CatV's links this morning etc.

The BBC is a shadow of what it used to be and I find myself increasingly bypassing it for other providers now.

[kalniel]

Just had a quick look, but it doesn't seem like the BBC is pushing one side or another. The title of the piece is phrased as a question, and they include arguments on both sides, for eg. enabling backdoors would be bad, and that encryption has prevented a lot of crime. And the article ends on a pro-encryption note.

Seems like a good topic for an article to me.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Didn't one of our ministers said encryption needed to be stopped? They didn't seem to appreciate you can't get rid of encryption otherwise everything from banking to playing back Netflix 4K would go to crap!

[Ttaskmaster]

As already outlined in articles on a previous thread, privacy protection is all good and well to protect the average user from criminals nicking their stuff... but that same protection is enabling criminals to vastly expand their networks and empires.

More importantly, if even half the statistics are to be believed, child abuse massively increases the chances of those children becoming criminals later on.
Child abuse is socially costly in a great many ways, but the fact that it shapes our future and that something like 55% of children already suffer abuse, wth that number only ever increasing due to privacy protections enabling it and law enforcement being constrained by resources - Surely it makes more sense to focus on shutting down as much of that abuse as possible and reducing the number of criminals in the first place?

If there are alternatives to ripping up encryption, I'd obviously be interested, but they'd have to be at least as good and ideally much better than the steamroller approach. So until we start seeing impressive results, there is no other option.

[Corky34]

Didn't one of our ministers said encryption needed to be stopped? They didn't seem to appreciate you can't get rid of encryption otherwise everything from banking to playing back Netflix 4K would go to crap!

And paper and pens.

Always makes me laugh when people call for an end to encryption when something can be encrypted with a one time pad (a pen and paper).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

And paper and pens.

Always makes me laugh when people call for an end to encryption when something can be encrypted with a one time pad (a pen and paper).

The issue here is you have control centric MPs,who also have a very poor knowledge of technology. "Stop Encryption" is another stupid empty buzzphrase which means nothing.

If the government forced that through,we would be sued for 10s of billions of USD by multiple banks,companies and other providers for massive losses from literal state sanctioned threat. It would literally mean online banking,cellular networks,TV,etc would actually not work properly. Look at something like VPNs - many companies use this for offsite working to make sure confidential data and IP is protected via the companies servers. What are they meant do?? Broadcast everything via unsecured connections,via unsecured wifi for the whole world to see??

You only have to look at their backgrounds to appreciate this. Career politicians who are have a job for life. So as a result they come up with weird suggestions which actually don't seem to take into consideration how the realworld works.

[spacein_vader]

You can't ban encryption, the banking and payment system would grind to a halt overnight. Enough encryption is open source that a ban wouldn't stop criminals anyway. So all a ban would do would be to stop private individuals (so the banks can still do it,) who aren't criminals (because they'll use it regardless.)

Doesn't sound to me like it'll work for stopping child abuse but it'll do a great job of enabling mass surveillance without inconveniences like judges and warrants.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Maybe the government could do something much easier - actually tell parents to parent. Many of these problems happen due to parents who don't give a damn about their children,and leave their children unattended with social media and the internet as a nanny. So the kids get sucked in by strangers who appear to show affection for them,that they don't get from their own parents.

Then the other metric about child abuse - a lot of is done by family members. Dads,mums,uncles,aunties,etc. Again comes down to poor parents,etc.

Poor parenting is not going to be solved by stopping encryption,because guess what?? As indicated in the previous post criminals,will still use the tools as they are available internationally. It's not like criminals respect national boundaries!