It's a little unclear, but my reading of this is that the power to do it will still be in the law, requiring at most secondary legislation to put into effect (perhaps not even that) if they think they ever have enough leverage over messaging providers, or are willing to spend the political capital. Not a great place to be in really, but better than it actually being deployed.
I’d bet my life we start to see a massive influx of bad press aimed at messaging providers, focusing on how criminals are using their services, over the next few years.
When the general sentiment of the average Dave is ‘encryption === bad’ this BS will rear its head again.
Seems to have been the standard play for governments of this country for decades now.
The place has a CEO, made communication to Tim cook, been featured in Wired, put up massive scare mongering examples of bad people, made vague claims of a large organization. (collective effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates) [Prior instance of their page claims researchers, experts, and advocates].
All this and they're solely focused on a small corner case of 1 business and somehow their google presence is just not there.
This whole thing with the heat initiative is straight up bizarre. Their entire dialog is just so over the top.
I'll briefly summarize the back and forth heat had with apple, condensing it makes the weirdness really shine through:
Heat Initiative: "Listen up! We DEMAND that the private data of iCloud users be made accessible for CSAM scans. You are to remove it all. The guilty must be punished."
Apple: "woah, slow down. We already decided against policing iCloud like that, it'd get way too Orwellian way too fast. We can use on-device Communication Safety systems to make our environment safer while respecting privacy. With features such as detection of potential nudity, we can start cutting off CSAM images and video at the source and work to prevent abuse in the first place."
Heat Initiative: "apple, you make stupid money off anything you touch, you employ geniuses, you have responsibility to design a safe, privacy-forward environment that allows for the detection of known child sexual abuse images and video. Also, we really, really demand scanning iCloud."
Apple: "did you just ignore what I just said or is there some deeper issue like not knowing words good. this obsession you have with scanning iCloud makes me suspect you have ulterior motives.
Heat Initiative: "It's not that I ignored you, I just don't really care about this shit and can't keep up this farce. Either you let the government access iCloud or we'll say you're running 'instagram for kiddy rapists.' we will destroy you."
Apple: "yeah, this conversation is over."
It's either terrorism or child pornography. In my country (Romania) they use to call football hooligans whenever a protest is being made on a bigger scale just so they can put us all in the same boat and have an excuse to use armed forces and disperse everyone on the basis that the event was not peacefully done.
Most of the people I talk to are brainwashed anyway and will happily accept it - just give it time. The discussions over privacy always end-up with something like "I have nothing to hide anyway".
Some anonymous entity has been putting up posters in my neighborhood decrying Apple for "allowing" CSAM to be stored on iCloud. Very creepy propaganda campaign.
Those posters are almost certainly plastered up by someone who genuinely believes in the cause. They have been manipulated by corrupt media, but it is a tactical error to assume that a political party is directly paying for such poster campaigns.
It's also guerilla marketing 101, and they wouldn't be the first company, interest group or marketing agency that used those tactics to promote their products, interests, etc.
This isn't the same ad as described in the article, but is a government funded Saatchi one from around the same time:
https://www.noplacetohide.org.uk/
> The campaign is funded by the UK Government and has been developed by a steering group of child safety organisations with support from M&C Saatchi.
I agree. And they're intelligent (pun intended), so they'll select demographics from those of us who opposed them and illustrate extremist scapegoats most outrageous to us.
I think this is too often not understood or forgotten.
Their problem is that they lost a lot of influencing power. Only old people are still watching the TV or trusting the old media. And although they do vote more, their days are numbered.
News cycle perpetuates bitcoin == bad so everyone you know just repeats "scam" and points to criminals.
Meanwhile the largest institutions and richest people are investing heavily due to its revolutionary nature. Just look at all the ETFs coming out (Blackrock, Fidelity, etc).
Once they are fully setup you'll see the news cycle change sentiment. Rinse, repeat, with any technology.
Not the patent but... incredibly environmentally destructive by design. Utterly privacy violating as you're publishing every transaction you make for the world to see on a public ledger so now your neighbour (and government) get to know about your badger fetish. Non reversible transactions are an invitation to fraud and theft and make routine errors like overpayments and payments to the wrong address potentially disastrous. Not to mention the "problems" it claims to fix like instant, fee free transactions and easy international transfers have been fixed for many years in countries with modern banking systems (i.e. not the USA) Etc. Etc. Etc.
Yeah that was my reading as well. The legislation isn't being changed. The statement even says "We know you can develop [the methods to access], and we still have the authority to order it."
The only relevant part of from op is the govt acknowledging that 2+2 = 4. But it fails to acknowledge that if they want to get 5, they can still order the equation to be 3+2.
Through most of history government always has the power, but the
question is whether it has the legitimacy.
In this case it has the legitimacy, but lacks the power.
This is an unusual turn.
We need online safety for kids. The aims of this bill should obtain
widespread support from everyone.
But instead of carefully researching and implementing difficult ideas,
framing it properly and obtaining permission from the people - a remit
to empower us to embrace online safety on our own terms - it's taken a
strictly 20th Century "Mother knows best, think of the children"
approach and made this a battle with Big Tech.
It is laughably "Yes, Prime-Minister" in its clumsiness. We have
anachronistic throwbacks in charge.
People might be more receptive if the UK government had shown any real intention of going after pedos before this. But the number of scandals and coverups indicate they dont. And this is little more than an excuse to make it easier to spy on their subjects.
It also has a recent history of racial discrimination targeting minorities as a result of false accusations of child abuse, so it's worth making sure there isn't an overcorrection particularly in a society where people sometimes still attribute random individuals together based on perceived ethnic origin. See https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/04/how-eleanor-... for one example.
You've sleight-of-handed out "government" for "the UK" and linked two stories which don't really involve the UK government.
Furthermore if you read your own links, you will see that the "recent history" of the Rotherham offending is that there is an enormous police investigation costing tens of millions of pounds and a large number of people have been convicted, and the "recent history" of the fallout from Jimmy Saville is that another extremely well-funded enquiry was conducted (IICSA).
The general idea that the UK is particularly accomodating to paedophiles, or that an unusual number of powerful people in the UK are paedophiles, is not supported by evidence.
This meme mainly comes from a serial liar, Carl Beech, who's lies were credulously reported by people who should have known better.
Local police is a part of the government as far as the laws in question are concerned; it's them who will be using or abusing the surveillance powers granted by the law. And the Rotherham scandal took two decades to be addressed, due not least to fierce political interference.
Just yesterday it became clear the foreign office will not release files relating to Prince Andrew until 2065 - long after he's dead. Seems like a pretty obvious cover up.
It seems like "a pretty obvious coverup" to you because you are conspiratorially minded. It's actually just the FCDO explaining what the law has always been.
Should the law be changed? Yes. Is this evidence of a "cover-up"? No.
This question is really too broad to answer. What sort of thing are you looking for? For a general overview of the whole system, this strategy is the best place to start.
Thanks. I guess I meant either new primary legislation that improves something tangible, but more importantly, provided more resource.
As far as I can see, it's still funded from local authority budgets.
I worked briefly in children's homes a long time ago. Kids were placed in assessment centers where they were supposed to be evaluated and sent on to an appropriate home. But there were no places for them, and they stayed in this temporary place for years.
For example, the offence of "Sexual communication with a child" aka "grooming" was created in 2017 (by Serious Crime Act). Enforcing this law is one of the main causes of the arguments over the OSB.
We need road safety. But no genius in gouvernement has created a law that’s says it’s illegal to sell cars that CAN have accident. Generally the government goes after bad drivers instead of car companies.
I really don’t understand why Big Tech should magically stop every crime on earth: child abuse, racism, harassment, etc…
I think the supreme Zuck is a dick, but pulling out of the UK market was the right move.
Of curse, but it's not terribly easy for the average person to put
sophisticated filters into multiple content pipelines on every child's
device (imagine having 4 or 5 kids of different ages and needs).
So a solution I think we brainstormed on the show was mandating open
interoperable APIs that allow easy insertion of (presumably commercial
or open source) plugins into the system, within the user's end-to-end
digital estate, under the control of the user (parent) and completely
rejecting the MITM and endpoint compromise via back-doors that the
government naively proposed.
In many ways that would take a much bigger stick to Big Tech,
It also transitions the definition of "online harms" to those defined
by the guardian/parent rather than problematically allowing the State
to define harms and control the selectors.
What that says to me is that the government are dishonest about the
real aims of the bill.
And further, as a consequence, it crushes my belief that the
government even truly care out child safety except as a vehicle to
greater tyranny.
> So a solution I think we brainstormed on the show was mandating open interoperable APIs that allow easy insertion of (presumably commercial or open source) plugins into the system, within the user's end-to-end digital estate, under the control of the user (parent) and completely rejecting the MITM and endpoint compromise via back-doors that the government naively proposed.
What you're proposing would likely enable the creation of some fairly invasive stalkerware. Don't forget that 1) just because a feature says it's for use by a parent on their child's device doesn't mean that it can only be used in that context, nor that 2) not all parents have their children's best interests in mind.
Or too busy? In plenty of families both parents have to work hard to make ends meet.
Not helped by the fact that children are growing up in a completely different environment to the one their parents remember. Familiarizing myself with TikTok or whatever the kids are into these days would fill me with dread. And the way platforms work means my experience of them would differ dramatically from a child's anyway.
>> Familiarizing myself with TikTok or whatever the kids are into these days would fill me with dread.
You don't need to. Don't give them devices until they're 16, and then implement the built in parental controls that come on every smartphone. When they are 18 and can buy their own, they can do what they want. I'm guessing your actual issue isn't familiarizing yourself with TikTok etc, but is instead facing conflict. I'm not saying it would be easy but pretending the above isn't a workable solution is self-deception.
No, I'm just trying to empathise with busy parents rather than write off parents who struggle with this stuff as lazy.
I know some parents give their children devices for safety reasons. For others, I guess they don't want their children to be socially isolated if all the other 14 year olds are chatting on messenger.
My only point was that it can be hard, and that not everyone who fails at it is lazy. It sounds like we are mostly in agreement.
Oh yeah I get that. My point was more that there is a simple solution that requires almost no time investment (i.e. a good option for busy parents). It might not be for everyone but it’s a solution that is to easily dismissed very often.
Wish I could upvote this harder lol. Parents really dont have enough time/energy to do this better than people who are trained in software/legislation. Especially if they have more than 2 kids/are single parents
Sounds like we need a cultural shift away from governments involving themselves in parenting to governments ensuring parents have adequate time to parent.
Id say i trust the competence of government in this arena more than that of parents on average. If someone is working on policy day in and day out for tech related things, they will have a better lay of the land than the average parent. However, you bring up a good point about ethics. A parent will definitely be far more acting in the best interest of their child compared to the government. An interesting quandry, good point
The other test is what can the “other” party do with any power you give the government. I define “other” as the party with viewpoints you are opposed to.
Modern devices are chock full of features that will work hard for parents while they aren’t even thinking about it. If the can’t be bothered to turn those features on, they shouldn’t be providing the devices in the first place.
This is just as lazy a take as the UK government though.
Many societal problems would be trivial if you could get perfect compliance from the population. You can't, so if you're interested in solving problems you need to be willing to grapple with the world as it is. So far as I can tell online safety has not meaningfully improved since the late 90s - "enforce safety at home" has been the advice for all of that time and it has never worked.
I don't have a solution but "blame the parents" seems to be a very clear non-answer without some plan for how to make creating safety at home more easily actionable.
I started using the Internet in 1998, and the only advice my parents gave me was "Don't reveal anything about yourself online." (Thankfully I heeded their warning and still to this day I'm very guarded about disclosing any form of PII.)
Whilst admittedly a lot has changed in the last 25 years, I'd say only half the parents will actually try to keep their kids safe online.
The other half will sit around watching crappy reality TV shows getting angry at their five-year-old children finding porn on their own personal smartphone* because they don't want to look up how to prevent them from doing that, and instead absolve that responsibility to the gov't...
...who in turn use that as an excuse to censor the Internet.
*not entirely sure why a five-year-old needs a smartphone, but anyway.
They said its technically unfeasible right now. A backdoor key is really not feasible for E2E Encryption. So, that would mean it would only become technically feasible when they ask companies to send over all encrypted packets and break the encryption themselves.
Maybe that's why they want to keep a provision for it in the law, but develop the technology to break (current) public-key encryption schemes themselves?
But then they'll always be chasing, as the world moves to post-quantum encryption and they won't be able to break it anymore. So it'll always remain technically unfeasible.
Its likely that from a political standpoint, it was easier to deem the bill as technically unfeasible now rather than kill it completely.
Setting my personal opinion on this law proposal aside, I think that the UK legislation lost its teeth with Brexit. It's just loud barking for the sole purpose of getting CEOs on the table.
Imagine their influence if they would have stayed in the EU, and if France would have joined them (which they usually do when it comes to more governmental oversight of the executive branches of the government).
What scares me a little now is that there was a loss of balance, which is important for any democracy to make progress. And if Big Tech's reaction is always "well then we just pull out of your market(s)" then it's gonna be an empty threat after the third time.
I don't know how the reactions to these events will be like, but most likely we'll see an increase of propaganda press statements on "how bad secure messaging" is, trying to push the narrative into a different direction.
Nah, this nonsense popped up at EU level also and got slapped down by the Parliament and Council suggesting that enough politicos understand why this is important, for now at least.
