> When pressed on what kind of metadata she wanted, she replied: “I’m having those conversations in private.”

Well I would like to know who she's having those conversations with, when she's having them, and how long they last. I think it's important that she share this information with us. So that we can catch criminals.

There is a growing misconception that it is the role of the government to "keep their citizens safe".

Although that it is often the intention of legislation to prevent behaviour which may lead to unsafe situations. For example, making it illegal to drink and drive. You can arrest someone for breaking the law, but never can you arrest someone right up to the point of breaking the law. For example, You cannot arrest someone for being drunk and having their car keys in their pocket, or even being asleep in the car while drunk.

This is the problem with the government demanding to read all communications... the idea that they have the right in order to prevent you committing a crime. Its not only impossible to prevent someone committing a crime (anyone can snap and do truly horrible things without prior communique), its insane to think that you can arrest someone for pre-crime.

The role of the government is to pass laws. The role of the police and the justice system is to enforce these laws. It is not their job to spy on all their citizens for events which historically kill fractions of a percent compared to something as trivial as car accidents.

I feel like the people who understand encryption and privacy advocates (myself included) are not engaging enough (or maybe effectively enough) with the public in communicating the concerns around trying to 'backdoor' encryption or giving up more of our privacy.

While I think these political statements are often ridiculous, they actually have widespread public support, if my cohort of friends and family are anything to go by.

Do we have people who are better communicators? I don't think even Cory Doctorow's posts/talks are aimed at the non-technical audience.

Oh god, I despair of this country. After a decade of conservative I have never been so disillusioned. I feel like I am stuck in a rut or like, I don't belong here. It is a horrible feeling. Deep down I know that the government is stuck in 1740 and by the time that millennials walk the halls of power, their parents will have signed away all their rights.

The very last thing I love is my country, that is for sure.

ah more security cluelessness from the UK Government.

The frustrating piece is that they're ignoring their own internal experts on this. The people running the National Cyber Security Centre are very bright and have stated that they think backdoors are a bad idea

from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/05/problems-end...

"Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security, told the New Statesman's Will Dunn earlier this year: "Nobody in this organisation or our parent organisation will ever ask for a 'back door' in a large-scale encryption system, because it's dumb." "

As was circulated recently on HN, this basically stems from the government thinking computers are appliances.

"Hey! Your device creates and sends packages, could it just not create and send packages of this type? We'll even help with the quality control if you can't do it yourself! All we need is a backdoor!"

How is this not the same as messing with people's mail?

"Hey, you know this pen, paper and stamp thing? Can you just make the pen not write these kinds of letters, that terrorists usually writes? Ok, but can't we have a human (in lieu of AI) read through people's mail to make sure these types of letters aren't sent around with the intent to provoke violence? If you can't do it, we'll gladly send some agents to help you with quality control!"

The tale of The Orwellian Kingdom continues...

No really. I've written about this before, but I sincerely refuse to believe that the government are doing this out of ignorance anymore.

There's been too many people telling them how it actually is, but they persist.

That leads me to conclude that either they're severely mentally dysfunctional, or there's another reason for doing this. PR maybe? Votes? Something more sinister?

Ah, great lie of metadata. What those in power don't want us to know is that metadata is just a weasel word for incomplete data. It tells a story about you and those with whom you associate or intersect. What's worse is that incomplete data cannot tell the whole story by design. All incomplete data lies as all summaries, to some extent, do. Some would like us to believe that this incomplete data is somehow less harmful. It is not. Incomplete data can only accuse, it can never convict nor can it exculpate - it can only implicate and paint false pictures on massive scale. To filter the false positives and turn incomplete data into data, I seriously doubt that less work than traditional police work is required to process the output. It is only a benefit to those who wish to retroactively target known and presently target unknown individuals, matching a particular signature, and assassinate them unjustly. As such, at its worst, a danger to every one of us and, at its best, a lethal distraction to those who would otherwise protect us. When they say they only gather incomplete data they lie. They gather all of it - would you believe someone who tells you "just the tip and only for a second"? I wouldn't.

> "However, there is a problem in terms of the growth of end-to-end encryption. "It’s a problem for the security services and for police who are not, under the normal way, under properly warranted paths, able to access that information.”

What surprises me about this argument, is that their stance is that terrorists are accidentally starting to use encryption. So, by consequence, that in the past terrorists simply did not bother with encryption?

In that case, I wonder whether the terrorists have been triggered by the simplicity of current day cryptography, or simply by the knowledge that the governments are always listening in on everything everyone is saying.

It seems to me that someone started an arms-race, be it government or terrorists, and both are willing to cause massive amounts of collateral damage in order to keep one-upping the other.

> Ms Rudd is meeting with representatives from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and others at a counter-terrorism forum in San Francisco.

Well, these will simply be the companies whose tools we won't be using anymore. The World does certainly not depend on any US companies or the UK government's approval to securely use encryption.

It's like Rudd and Abbott are competing in which will come up with more ridiculous notion. And you'd think they would choose someone competent for bloody home secretary and shadow home secretary respectively.

There's something deeply dysfunctional in the UK Home Office. People who've been through that mill seem to come out with a really weird myopic perspective on the world, May included.

The Paris attacks were coordinated over plain old encrypted SMS. Didn't see that coming.

The Australian PM thinks the laws of mathematics can be bent to those of Australia.

Now this genius.

Fact is, communications are ubiquitous now, and even if every byte was unencrypted, they won't be able to catch every crook.

In UK, Murdoch's "News of the World" hacks into the phones of hundreds of people and politicians continue the debate about privacy as if it doesn't matter.

In US, Russia hacks into Hillary's email server and politicians on Capitol Hill start using Whispering Systems' Signal and begin to understand why strong encryption is necessary.

Don't worry too much, someday Vladimir Putin will show to the UK government why strong encryption is a good idea.

IIRC the Bataclan terrorists didn't use any crypto at all.

Using crypto makes you stand out, and doesn't really complicate traffic analysis.

Corollary: not using crypto makes it easier to look like hay in a huge hay pile, even if you're a needle.

Ad-hoc-but-disciplined plaintext comsec for small committed teams is not that difficult to establish and master, and can work very well for them.

But for the rest of us, plaintext comsec just doesn't work. And defending privacy relative to state actors, foreign and domestic, is a legitimate activity within the bounds of due process (e.g., your affairs can get searched with a legal warrant, and so on).

It's important to understand that when the State wins the crypto wars, not only does it ensure for itself access to people's data pursuant under Due Process, but also without Due Process at all. It's like making all houses and walls out of glass just so people can't hide from the police: it's insane.

And worse than that: the State winning the crypto wars does not make it easier to prevent attacks. If anything it can make mounting attacks easier for terrorists, depending on the particulars of the crypto war outcome.

The civil liberties in the UK are a big joke. It's like they are in a race with China on who will have the biggest censorship and on the control of their citizen's internet activities.

“Legislation is always an alternative.”

Yeah, sure. Because people who actually have something to hide will follow all the rules.

I wonder what they are trying to redirect the media coverage from with ideas like this.

I love the footer with the author's contact information!

> "You can reach Dave securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +1 (628) 400-7370"

Felt like a small little needle pointed at the UK's government.

Western identity has become so enmeshed with liberalism, progressiveness and democracy that few are willing to step out of that safety zone to question the reality on the ground while those in power continue to rehash tinpot ideas and hysteria about safety.

A similar statement from a third world official would be met with an unequivocal flood of ridicule and accusations of backwardness.

Too many value the comfort of easy judgements. This will be met with apologism, muddying the waters and sophistry.

Meanwhile people can support ISIS and advocate for attacks in plain sight and that apparently isn't a problem

So I see how "worried" they are about that

This is another statement that is part of a trend in many countries, and it is worrying to be sure. But I suspect that the aim of these audacious statements is not to actually ban the technology of strong end-to-end encryption. Rather, it is to force the Google, Apple, and Facebook to provide backdoors in their popular messaging platforms (e.g., WhatsApp) that can be used by law enforcement.

They don't care about someone using GnuPG to mail someone something private (because that would be impossible to legislate effectively), but they do care about the big honey-pot of always-on end-to-end encryption offered to anyone with an off-the-shelf smartphone.

The call for legislation and a ban on strong encryption is meant to put pressure on Google, Apple, and Facebook to cooperate with the Five Eyes without too much fuss, and simply let them in. I can't see it making any sense otherwise.

Whether that access is to act on signals of religious radicalisation and planned acts of terrorism or something much more encompassing (big data predictive crime analysis and other scary stuff) I don't know.

It sounds to me like she believes throwing legislation at an issue will fix it. I mean, everyone obeys the law right?

This is absolutely horrific. The path the UK is on is terrifying. On the bright side they are quite far ahead down this road compared to other Western countries, so when the UK inevitably collapses first, other governments can learn their lesson.

See also: envelopes considered 'a problem' by tyrannical government.

It's only a problem if you insist on knowing everything, leave people alone to mind their own business and the problem magically disappears. We all know who the "real" terrorists are.

https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis

>extremists should not be allowed to upload content at all.

If this is what they want, then they should convict the extremists first, and then make sure they don't have internet behind bars. Until then, they are still citizens, and you have no right to treat them specially.

I wonder if the only reason we have unrestricted access to good encryption tech now is because politicians don't understand it and underestimated how inconvenient it would be for governments, and are only now realizing their error.

Now we finally have the complete comparison on how different governments try to tackle terrorism:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14827837

>Home Secretary Amber Rudd wants harmful content to be auto-blocked

What IS harmful content exactly?

It's only a problem for Orwellian / Brave New World type states.

Get rid of all government programs. Instantly a huge amount of wealth will be gained and productivity will skyrocket. It is very important to remember: nothing the government does is good. What is the minimum amount of manipulation and lies it takes to cover up a problem? This is the question every government worker ponders every day of their job. Every one of these people are lying, scheming, delusional people. They manipulate and they lie, they shuffle things around and create busy-work for disgusting twisted crab-people.

If something decreases the power of the state (e.g. Encryption) you can bet state officials will be against it.

How about a GoFundMe to pay for crackers to accesses the politicians' personal data and distribute it?

"how will we issue ASBOs automatically if our computers can't read everyone's texts?"

No secure communication AND Brexit ?

Hope Europeans bankers will enjoy their new offices in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris.

"I'm having those conversations in private"

Ah yes, the old "Fuck you, we got ours" mentality.

how about arresting known terrorists first, then focus on what normal people are doing.

If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.

Home secretary a 'problem' - me.

“I’m having those conversations in private.”

The irony.