Honestly, why do people think that a terrorist attack like this requires any dramatic changes to society? The fact is that some guys got guns and shot up a building, in the name of a currently popular, violent ideology. When will we ever be able to completely eradicate this? The number of people killed per year in the Western world due to terrorist attacks is incredibly low. Perhaps we don't need a routing of our security apparatus and freedoms to prevent what, without the inclusion of radical Islam, would be seen as an violent crime.<p>We got two wars in the wake of 9/11, and I don't think there was any actual increased terrorist threat.
I'm surprised to find that this story has hit me pretty hard emotionally. The stuff Cameron and Theresa May are saying these days is really quite extreme. I feel totally abandoned by politics and genuinely, deeply frightened about the direction our legislature is headed. Is this a part of growing up? The mainstream is so far away from my own views that I don't have any voice. I'm really starting to see why a lot of libertarians in the US are so hyperbolic and full of panic.
David Cameron wasn't just arguing against encrypted messaging apps; he would like to ban secret online communication in general. It will be interesting to see how he squares this with bolstering cybersecurity, which he'll be discussing with Barak Obama later this week.<p>How can we explain to politicians the extent to which modernity is built upon tools like encryption? How can we explain the brute fact of the possibility of secret communication, whether they approve or not? And can we guess how much damage they'll inflict in these Canutian escapades?
This after attending the march in France for liberty and freedom of speech. Hypocrite.<p>It's also worth mentioning the Mayor of London's thoughts on this:<p>"I'm not particularly interested in this civil liberties stuff when it comes to these people's emails and mobile phone conversations. If they are a threat to our society then I want them properly listened to."
I don't anticipate Brits will be hitting the streets in the name of right to privacy and net neutrality as the French have done for right to free speech, though. We are a cowardly, dull bunch, with little regard for our liberty, I'm afraid. We are matched in this only by our leaders' outmoded worldviews.
> Yet in a sign that tech companies are coming under increased scrutiny, British lawmakers blamed Facebook in November for failing to tell the country’s authorities about specific online threats made by two men, who later killed a soldier in London in 2013.<p>That seems misleading. From what I remember they were accusing Facebook not of "refusing to give them the info", but for "not warning them" about those guys' communications. So they essentially wanted Facebook to do the policing for them, because they failed to do the policing themselves.
According to Snowden and subsequent whistleblowers considerable resources are tasked to obsessing over political opponents , groups such as Occupy , anti-fracking and even competing business interests are targeted.<p>In Britain the Security Forces have long been seen as a bit too obsessed with lefties.<p>There is inneffective Security Theatre at airports - a political sop. What else is inneffective? Are there innefective secret things ?<p>I would like to see any journalist ask : Are the security services watching radical Islam enough or wasting their resources on what the electorate would consider the wrong targets ?<p>Will the Security Services having decryption keys to my communications make them more insecure to non-government agents ?<p>Will how secure the keys are be secret ?<p>What other governments , agencies and contractors will the keys to our communications be shared with ?<p>What oversight will there be ?
I wonder if I were to locally encrypt a message using AES and then send it via email to a friend, using a pre-shared key, whether I would be breaking the law or not, in Cameron's Brave New World?<p>If the answer is yes, then how about the Vigenere cipher? The Caesar Cipher? 1337 speak? Writing my message backwards? Making spelling mistakes?
Already discussed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874624" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874624</a> although I think that one is being negatively scored for the high number of (low upvote) comments.
This sort of thing seems a bit like banning Napster. Eliminating the products doesn't eliminate the technology - although I expect the bigger players like Facebook to push back on this so as not to be out competed by smaller companies that care less about adhering to such 'blunt force' laws.
It'll never get any traction, the porn filters got through because pretty much no voting adults were bothered by it.<p>Very different scenario when it's something that people actually use, especially with elections coming up.
This is good news!<p>By watching which messaging tools are banned in the UK, we will have a canonical list of which messaging tools GCHQ cannot breach.<p>Thanks David!