Controversial opinion: maybe it's a good thing to allow law enforcement to access communications when necessary (e.g. with a court warrant)
Do we want serious criminals like terrorists and paedophiles to be able to plan their crimes with impunity?
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming you don't know that likening anyone who doesn't want to have all of their personal information viewed to terrorists and paedophiles is the classic "what do you have to hide?" authoritarian argument to spy on everyone all the time.
- There have already been plenty of cases of data collected without a warrant just because they could.
- Do you still want that data to be collected and used to prosecute you if whichever political party you don't like get in and make something you like doing illegal?
- It is impossible to make a backdoor that only goodies can use. The actual terrorists and paedophiles will use a non-backdoored system, meanwhile every criminal organisation and rival nation state will eventually find out how to use the backdoor and get everyone's information.
I'm not comparing privacy fans to paedophiles and terrorists, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that I want serious criminals to be caught.
I think properly private technology is good to protect yourself from an authoritarian government for example. You could use something like Signal for messaging (I've not used it, but apparently it's good).
But the big popular platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage, which many laypeople use just because they're popular - on those platforms I think it makes sense for law enforcement to be able to access messages, but only in certain circumstances. So maybe Apple could keep the encryption key and they could decrypt someone's messages if a court warrant is issued.
I'm not saying end-to-end encryption should be entirely outlawed. Hopefully services like Signal would still exist. Sure, some criminals might jump to those platforms, but you could still catch some at least, who use big services like iMessage.
If that means compromising encryption, which it does, then the benefits to everyone of end-to-end encryption and the protection it affords against both government overreach/abuse and third-party intruders tend to outweigh the benefits of government surveillance through encryption backdoors.
Maybe only the biggest companies should be required to be able to decrypt certain messages if a court warrant is produced. Privacy fans could use services exempt from this requirement, like Signal. But there are laypeople who just use iMessage because it's the default, and you could catch criminals sending bad stuff over iMessage.
I think there are valid concerns on both sides of the argument... but I am just imagining if you have a group of violent people planning an attack over iMessage, I want law enforcement to be able to read those messages.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fair enough. I will try to read more stuff about encryption.
Word would just get out that you should only use the secure services to communicate anything sensitive. We already have plenty of messaging services that are insecure, but enough people are preferring to use a secure option that it's worrying the UK Government.
Maybe people just use what's popular. Telegram is pretty popular in some countries even though I don't think they have end-to-end encryption by default.
Anyway I guess I don't know what the answer is. Personally I would probably still use iMessage and WhatsApp even if I knew the companies behind them could potentially read my messages by decrypting them. If there's a proper system in place so that messages are only read when there's a court warrant, it's probably unlikely my boring messages to friends and family would be spied on by anybody.
Maybe I need to send more interesting messages and then I would care about the privacy of them a bit more.
The question is do you want serious cyber criminals, and whatever authoritarian government shows up at some point and starts tearing up the already increasingly authoritarian UK rule book (hi America) to have access to all communications? Should they have access to journalist's sources, and other activists' communications? Should cyber criminals have access to all financial data?
You don't get one without the other. Encryption either works or it doesn't. And you can certainly assume that dedicated nation state actors (who will and do work with people that do not want a liberal open society in countries across the world including the UK) will quickly develop the capability to circumvent any exploitable encryption.
In this case the increasingly authoritarian/data-totalitarian UK government and secret services has been trying to do it in secret. They want their eyes on everything at all times and damn the consequences for an open society. They sure are doing their bit to end the 20th century idea of a free, open, tolerant society I grew up being told existed.
Then again, I watched some sort of parliamentary enquiry more than a decade ago where somebody from gchq nonchalantly admitted they abuse UK citizen's human right of privacy as a matter of course and everybody in the room just shrugged. It caused no ripple at all in the press. No doubt the likes of gchq face all sorts of threats we the public are not aware of, but they appear to operate with no checks and balances whatsoever, and they are playing right into the hands of extremists who want to see the end of an open society in order that their extreme views become more acceptable.
It must be said that personal privacy is a cornerstone of a civilised society. You either have that or you don't. For many people, particularly those that pay attention to this stuff, we have already gone too far. There is a lot an individual can do to mitigate the intrusion of US tech corporations, but destroying encryption, in a world where so much can only be done online, affects everybody regardless of personal choices they have made. To try and do it in secret is even worse.
I don't want end-to-end encryption entirely outlawed. But for the biggest platforms from massive corporations, maybe those corporations could keep their encryption keys stored with high security somewhere, so they can decrypt particular messages if a court warrant is issued.
People who are uneasy about that could go to a more privacy-focused platform like Signal. Some criminals would do that too, but at least something would be done to catch criminals on the popular platforms.
I understand where you are coming from, but the encryption is not secure if somebody else holds your password.
Then there is the other issue of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, or Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, or some other entity the likes of Russia, and now America promote, and bang goes journalist's and activists' anonymity. It would be great to have it both ways, but it isn't possible.
Fair points. Also I guess practically big companies like Apple would never allow a situation where their encryption is compromised while encryption on smaller platforms like Signal isn't. Apple etc would spend billions lobbying so such a situation never happens.
I saw it called "end to end encrypted icloud backup" in the news. I guess it is that, in that it is encrypted at rest on apple's servers, then between those servers and the end-user's device. But that is a bit different to what signal does. Signal doesn't store anything at rest on any servers they own as far as the experts I rely on for information on this (and who signal allow to audit them) say.
It seems to be the case that as long as apple offer any products at all to the UK market, the UK government have the right to ask, in secret, for apple to provide encryption backdoors into their products for all of apple's customers whatever the nationality. It seems likely that the UK will share this information with five eyes countries', allowing those countries to circumvent their own legal processes.
It isn't clear if that has happened or is going to happen but it seems likely that they will, if they can get away with it without it becoming public knowledge. Which has pissed off, for instance, US information security professionals who like iphones whose data now can't be considered secure.
It might be the case that apple has had to withdraw this particular product from the UK for public relations purposes because somebody whitleblew. But as long as apple wants to sell products in the UK it seems the snoopers charter allows the snoopers to request backdoor access to their products globally.
The Chinese have done the same. People here call them totalitarian for doing so.
I would probably argue that China is a little different to the UK, given that China is a one-party state.
Yeah maybe the UK government shouldn't be able to spy on Apple messages sent anywhere in the world. But maybe UK agencies like GCHQ should be able to get the messages of specific individuals who threaten the UK, with a court warrant, like how law enforcement has been able to bug the phones of criminals with a court warrant.
I dunno. Maybe I should educate myself more on encryption and how it all works.
Couple of things: I am sure that the likes of GCHQ get the messages of specific individuals who threaten the UK without any court orders right now. This cartoon sums up the limits to encryption's effectiveness in this sort of context: https://xkcd.com/538/ And it has been red Tory v. blue Tory, one party, since 1994. I assume you disagree on this my second point - I am always happy to agree to disagree.
Regarding encryption, surveillance, and snooper's intrusion: I was brought up being told the stasi were the bad guys. The stasi would blush at the surveillance foreign corporations and the British government now engage in as a matter of course: it is beyond their wildest dreams.
But spying on all of the public all of the time comes at a cost to society I would rather not pay. It quells dissent in the short and maybe mid term, but that extreme intrusion, ultimately drives otherwise moderate people into the hands of extremists (on every side). The terrorists win when we sacrifice liberty for temporary security (or whatever that quote was).
The stasi would blush at the surveillance foreign corporations and the British government now engage in as a matter of course
My understanding is that the Stasi were very repressive - "using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent". I'm not aware of the UK government using torture to crush dissent.
But spying on all of the public all of the time comes at a cost to society I would rather not pay. It quells dissent in the short and maybe mid term, but that extreme intrusion, ultimately drives otherwise moderate people into the hands of extremists
I don't think the public should be spied on all the time. But if there is some way that illegal communications (like planning murder) could be intercepted, without spying on others, that would be good.
The terrorists win when we sacrifice liberty for temporary security (or whatever that quote was)
There's a quote by Benjamin Franklin which apparently is: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". I always thought that quote was a bit weird though, because humans do give up some form of liberty in return for safety. E.g. we give up the freedom to murder other people without legal consequences, because in return we get some safety: protection from being murdered by others.
Before I go any further I will say that this is my last post on this subject.
I’m not aware of the UK government using torture to crush dissent.
This is a so-called straw man argument, I never said the UK government used torture to crush dissent. If you expect me to go to the trouble of a response, frankly, do better.
The social contract is not "I give up the freedom to murder without legal consequence in order to not be murdered" in a civilised society. Is in 1025 or 2025? (This is a rhetorical question.)
I don’t think the public should be spied on all the time. But if there is some way that illegal communications (like planning murder) could be intercepted, without spying on others, that would be good.
We do not particularly disagree. Except that due to information security being an interest of mine, I know that it isn't technically possible to weaken encryption for one without weakening encryption for everybody.
Being something like a specialist interest of mine, I also know that weakening encryption is one part of the creation of a total-surveillance state that is taking place - much like the explicit oligarchy we see forming now in the US has taken decades to build. This environment is certainly one in which fascism will thrive - something I don't want to see, seeing as how I still remember people talking about the second world war and all that.
I also know that this snooping capability will be placed in the hands of future, and some current, political and business leaders who don't have the interests of the public at large at heart, and who even might actually might be prepared to murder people: the US is now aligned with a Russia that has committed war crimes in Ukraine. If I mention Gaza and war crimes there is some (presumably small) chance I might be arrested under the Communications Act 2003, which defines illegal communication as 'using public electronic communications network in order to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety'.
Here is a letter written by experts regarding removing end to end encryption:
https://haddadi.github.io/UKOSBOpenletter.pdf
Take note of the 2003 communications act. Here are a few articles from a very quick search that explicitly show the kind of society that is being built, brick by brick:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/business/london-police-facial-recognition.html
https://www.verdict.co.uk/most-surveilled-city/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68274090
As I said, I am done with this thread now. Thanks
Fair points. That open letter is interesting. I didn't mean to be annoying with my responses, I was just giving my view.
I do think the oligarchy in the US is pretty worrying. As for encryption, I should probably learn more about it. I guess my understanding at the moment is only pretty basic.
WTF?!? No way am I ever voting for Labour now. I hope the next election gets them out.
Which party promises to defend end-to-end encryption? I thought there were no good options.
The Monster Raving Loony party seems like the best option right now.
When I eventually have my own place, I’ll have to put up something during political season to show what my main issues are.
Wasn't this law started by the Tories?
Average Brit right there
In what way?
Not you, the guy you replied to