this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
32 points (100.0% liked)

United Kingdom

82 readers
5 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] smeg@feddit.uk 3 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Can't law enforcement already read those messages by getting a warrant to seize the suspect's phone and attempting to break into it? Why do they suddenly need to preemptively break into everyone's phone?

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 1 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I guess I think of it like bugging a phone. The technology for bugging phones has been around for a long time, but that doesn't mean the authorities are bugging everybody's phones all the time. Even if they can theoretically listen to everyone's conversations, that doesn't mean they are always listening. There would be too many conversations to listen to.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Bugging a phone involves applying the bug to one phone, right? Backdooring encryption is bugging everyone's phone in advance and then hoping that the bug only ever gets used lawfully.

Also as computing power increases then it becomes more plausible to actually process all of everyone's messages. Maybe they start by automatically flagging certain words, then if you're detected using them you're automatically flagged and a warrant issued to read everything you've ever said.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Maybe I should read more about encryption. I was thinking maybe a company like Apple could just keep the encryption keys stored somewhere. So if needed they could decrypt particular messages. There could be big punishments, prison time, for anybody within Apple who decrypts messages without a court warrant.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You can probably get a better explanation by reading up on encryption, but I think most security people would say that encrypted communications where you don't hold the keys may as well not be encrypted at all. You still have to trust that someone doesn't (accidentally or deliberately) access your data, leak your keys, or otherwise break the process that keeps everything safe.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 2 points 5 days ago

Fair enough. I will try to read more stuff about encryption.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)