Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved Encrypted chat service Signal says it will stop operating in the UK if the British government goes ahead with its Online Safety Bill. The Online Safety Bill contemplates bypassing encryption using device-side scanning to protect children from harmful material, and coincidentally breaking the security of end-to-end encryption …
I don't think government cares whether people will be using some Signal or not.
Government is fixated on spying on people and becomes paranoid.
This should be a huge red flag for everyone and the fact that this bill is even taken seriously by journalists should reveal you the level of corruption in this country.
After all, how are they going to calculate your social credit score if they don't have any data on you?
After all, how are they going to calculate your social credit score if they don't have any data on you?
Quite easy... they will be making it up as they go. It is the best "calculated" score one can get. Just like always, they "calculate" your next move and adjust their moves. It is only "calculated" to hit those that must be hit, honest.
And, by the way, it is dark in the daytime and light at night. Just so that you know the answer to the next calculated questionnaire.
This concept of young people having to get their first credit card to go into debt and showing they can pay it off is one of the most mind boggling things.
I even heard things like - if you are going to apply for a mortgage, get some credit card first, max them out and then keep up with payments for a few years, that will show the bank you are reliable.
When in reality they just make money on interest and foolishness of people.
Close, but not quite.
If you deposit money in the bank they reward you slightly by paying a small amount of interest.
To own the bank you have to be a shareholder. And to wield any kind of power your stake has to be big enough to affect the outcome of votes on the directors' remuneration.
I suspect that you were thinking of building societies, or other forms of mutual society.
-A.
This concept of young people having to get their first credit card to go into debt and showing they can pay it off is one of the most mind boggling things.
I'm repeatedly told I have a terrible credt score because I have no loans or credit cards. Weirdly, things didn't improve once I took out a morgage.
When I wanted to hire something for a few months, I had to pay a massively increased deposit because of my "poor" credit score.
If you want a mortgage which doesn't cost you anything then get an offset - arranged without fees. I have one where the value of the savings account = the amount of mortgage, so no interest is charged.
The mortgage is paid by DD from my current account and the same day a SO is made from the savings to the current account. This keeps the balances equal.
It also means I've had £100k (now down to 50) of free money, a perfect credit rating of 1000, and an emergency pot in case of the unknowns.
The mortgage was originally taken out for home improvements which came in under budget so that portion was paid off quickly.
I also buy as much as possible on reward credit cards but always (this is absolute especially with Amex @ 70% apr) pay them off.
I'm repeatedly told I have a terrible credt score because I have no loans or credit cards.
My scrore dropped at one point because I was using too much credit (at half the credit limit on an AmEx card, I put a holiday on it to get the extra protection). A few months later it dropped again because I'd paid off that card & was then criticized for not using enough of my available credit.
The solution from the banks & credit card companies was to offer them even more credit!
Are you really surprised? it's not rocket science you know...
Have a look: The Secret History of the Credit Card (full documentary) | FRONTLINE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mHsTKvAuZc
Try this on for size.
It doesn't have to be like that.
In France, where I live (in case you didn't know) we don't have credit reference agencies. The robust data protection laws here make their immoral and nefarious business model impractical. Imagine that!
There are, of course, consequences. The big one is that lenders have to carry out their own due diligence. This can be irksome: for example, to get a mortgage* I had to provide bank statements (and explain every single payment noted there), contract of employment, tax returns, contracts governing existing credit facilities, you name it. On the other hand there is no black box "computer says no", and banks tend to know their customers. Had my own bank at that time offered mortgages themselves I would not have had to jump through so many hoops.
-A.
* Given that "mortgage" is clearly French in origin it might come as a surprise to discover that they don't exist in France. Instead you get a long-term unsecured loan from whoever will grant that to you. Since it's unsecured, that represents a sizeable risk to the lender. In Britain this would mean a sky-high interest rate. In France you have to take out insurance against defaulting.
The robust data protection laws here make their immoral and nefarious business model impractical.
You have got to be kidding!
I lived there for many (20+) years, there may be rules but as always in France they're a joke.
- A received a letter in work labelled Private & Confidential. I was out, so the admin opened it to see 'if it was important'.
- Before our marriage my wife & I had separate accounts. When we married we kept them & opened a joint account. If I logged on to my internet banking I could see my account, the joint account, and all of my wife's finances. She could only see hers & the joint one, not mine. This was because I was considered to be the "head of the household".
- Someone submitted planning permission to build on a vacant lot beside us. We went to the Mairie (town hall) to look at the plans, and were just handed the complete dossier from the prospective houseowner, which included all their financial details, bank info, salary, mortgage, etc. No-one seemed to care when I expressed surprise that they'd hand us all the info, the response was the usual gallic shrug and "Bof!"
Given that "mortgage" is clearly French in origin it might come as a surprise to discover that they don't exist in France
Yes they do. There are several ways to secure a loan, one is through an "hypothèque" which is a lien taken by the bank on the property allowing them to seize and sell it if you default (foreclosure). An alternative, until last year, was the "Privilège Prêteurs de Deniers (PPD)", a very similar measure that's a bit cheaper for the borrower if you want to pay off the loan early but less versatile, it allows the bank to auction off the property if you default. Both are essentially mortgages. The insurance is usually just a simple life assurance which will pay off the loan if you die before the end, it's a legal requirement. No French bank that I've dealt with will provide an unsecured loan for anything above a trivial amount, and even there they prefer to secure it against life assurance savings.
You must have been living in a different France.
In the one I inhabit lenders will only offer a "crédit immobilier", which is unhypothecated, but requires insurance against default. I borrowed 98% of the purchase price of my house that way. No one I know has "une hypothèque".
Maybe it's different out in the sticks.
-A.
lenders will only offer a "crédit immobilier", which is unhypothecated, but requires insurance against default. I borrowed 98% of the purchase price of my house that way. No one I know has "une hypothèque".
Interesting. I've not heard of any banks offering unsecured housing loans, they generally want a guarantee of some sort, usually a hypothèque or PPD, a 3rd-party guarantor ("caution"), or a lien against something else, like a life assurance policy that already has enough money in it to cover the loan ("nantissement"). The latter is what we used for a buy-to-let property, but for our main house it was a hypothèque. I'd check your paperwork very carefully.
There is a requirement for insurance, but that generally just covers the loan if you're unable to pay it due to illness or death, and sometimes it can cover limited unemployment. I've never seen anyone offer a simple insurance against default, how would that work? You just tell the bank you can't pay & they leave you with the house & claim the loan on insurance? Seems unlikely.
Still, I was really just disagreeing with your assertion that mortgages don't exist there, since credit + hypothèque (or PPD) is a mortgage in form, if not in name.
Maybe it's different out in the sticks.
Maybe. I was just outside a large city, with a mainstream bank (part of the Credit du Nord group).
I have to admit that I was surprised by your assertions (assuming that you are the same anonymous coward).
I raised the idea of "une hypothèque" with my broker and he described it as something which existed in the past. Certainly I wasn't offered one. Contrarily, when I needed a property loan in Andorra all I was offered was "una hipoteca", and my bank advisor explained that this was indeed completely unlike the situation in France. And, as I mentioned, I don't know anyone in France who actually has "une hypthèque", or even really understands what one is.
For what it's worth,. Wikipedia reckons that 40% of French property loans are proper mortgages. I don't know how to reconcile that with my personal experience. Maybe I've just been had. Though given the low and fixed (for term) interest rate, that seems unlikely.
-A.
It's mindboggling because it's fictional. You do build score by showing that you can pay what you agree to pay, but that applies to all contracts and credit agreements, not just cards. The easiest way for a young person to build initial credit score is to do something that most of them are doing anyway: take out a mobile phone contract. If they don't miss a payment, they'll get score - even if it's just a £10 a month PAYG.
The credit score has never been a measure of how trustworthy you are with credit... it's a measure of how much interest/money the lenders can hope to make of you.
My current credit score is a measly 578... up from 514 18 months ago... because until 18 months ago I never had anything on credit since the 90's aside from a 30k mortgage that I paid of last year... They keep telling me I can improve my score by increasing my credit limit to at least 4500, but won't increase my limit because my score is too low and credit limit on 3500... but how about a 7k loan at a low rate.... because the 60k in my savings isn't a factor in my credit worthiness. Then punish me and drop my score because I actually used my credit card to buy a new bed & some furniture for the new house and went over 50% of available credit... even though I pay my main CC in full each month and my 2nd card is just a 1k buy now pay later in 4 instalments virtual card for online shopping..... and punish me again because I'm not on the electoral register at the new house months after I fill out all the forms to be put on the electoral register.... but it's positive towards my credit that I have an account to pay my water bill... but not positive for my gas/electric bill because I'm the second named person on that account... so it doesn't count.
It's all made up bollocks.
It is, on a the face of it, a compete con. Only because one needs to understand what a credit score actually measures.
The "pinnacle" of good money management, to most, is to be able to live "debt free". But that is NOT what credit scores assess.
Credit scores assess your ability to manage debt, not money.
Ego, if you have no debt there is nothing by which your ability to manage it can be assessed, so zero or very low credit score.
Plus, they don't make anything like as much profit from people who are good at managing money. They make it from people who are in debt.
Go figure...
I'm afraid that your cynicism is not nearly strong enough.
All the while that credit reference agencies exist and offer their assessment to anyone willing to pay, it's impossible to know for sure what their judgement is used for.
But in the case of rapacious credit card vendors there's a body of evidence showing that they target people who are right on the edge and thus tempted by (relatively) easy credit at usurious interest.
Equifax, Experian and the like are facilitators of loan sharking.
Ban the lot of them.
-A.
A Zero Credit score simply states that the credit reference agencies do not have enough information to provide a credit rating this means that there are no electronic transaction trails available. Any system developed since the early 90's when we first started doing online credit scoring validation should take account of this. I still rember the merriment caused by the system insisting that 'self made millionaires' were put on gas pre-payment meters when they tried to switch to the new Gas Retailer I was working for at the time.
We adjusted our system fairly quickly to move to a manual credit referencing process for zero scores.
I do have to wonder if a zero credit score should be notifiable to HMRC and the Serious Crimes agency at this point. If someone owns a million pound house, drives a supercar and yet has no electronic transaction trail, no credit accounts for energy, internet etc then they are either fiddling their taxes or are involved in heavy criminal activity
Those are just rumors bellowed by anonymous cowards.
No proof exists that Facebook has ever intercepted E2EE messages for any LEA or three-letter agency. There is written proof that Facebook has threatened (just like Signal is doing today) to pull WhatsApp from the market if they're forced to put in backdoors.
the chat app MI6 agents use in the field to securely communicate with head office? if not... why not?
And besides ... as has been pointed out lots of times.
If I'm a child pornographer... I'd be hosting my services on a secure FTP server, rather than sending cp via farcebook messaging
And if I was a terrorist, There would be innocent sounding messages posted in a forum somewhere... trainspotting+timetables.com for example(dunno if this is a real site)
"I'll be at Paddington at 3pm to see the King off, bring camera" takes on a whole new meaning......
I wonder what messaging app MPs will be using and will they be aware the government can read ALL their messages as a result....
"I'll be at Paddington at 3pm to see the King off, bring camera" takes on a whole new meaning......
I posted this a few years back about phrases someone I knew would deliberately use on emails, such as "I was bombing along the Queen's highway"
He'd have to update that now to "I was bombing along the Queen's[King's] highway"
You can still do good old key exchange and use steganography so that the key exchange looks like a normal conversation and then use the same method to conceal the encrypted messages.
It means that the next step for the government will be that people should communicate in a way that one can make sense of.
So next time you will be sending a drunken message at 3am to your ex, this could be misconstrued as a key exchange and get you charged with an offence.
Given the nature of cryptography it will be circumstantial whether you actually wanted to exchange keys or it was just a hopeless cry for help.
That being said, it is clear that government is backing themselves to a corner and this Online Safety Bill has been mandated to be made into law regardless of consequences.
It has a chance to take the crown of most stupid legislation after IR35 changes.
If MI5 had all along concentrated on threats to British society we would never have heard the names Boris Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings, Nigel Farage, etc.
Instead they focus all of their attention on threats to the status quo, that hasn't been preordained by the 1922 committee.
I was talking about the fear tactics being employed by the right to instigate culture war issues in lieu of actual policies. I'm not aware of the story you're referring to but my god the manufactured culture war issues are being plastered all over our screens and print media.
That is a fake issue. A bit like the 'reproductive healthcare' in the US. It is a smokescreen to distract from the real issues.
The extreme left is playing the game of how far can we push things to get a reaction. They are baiting the right so they can play the victim card.
The teachers and 'experts' are also just using the 'current thing' diagnosis.
Back in the 80s it was E numbers and hyperactivity.
Then it was ADHD
Then it was autism
Now it is gender issues
Parents get a quick answer, its not 'their fault', there is 'a fix', simples.
> The manufactured culture war is not coming from the right. The left are out to provoke a full on civil war at this point.
TBH I think the manufactured culture war is coming from outside. i.e. Russia, China et al. It's not really a left vs right thing, it's just another attempt to divide and fracture western society using an army of social media trolls and bots. It was the same with Brexit imo.
I'm "on the left" of the traditional "socialists vs the landed class" argument, yet I could be described as centre-right of things like whether or not biological sex is important in society or whether Britain should be emptying its museums or tearing down statues
One reason for my unusual combination of relatively balanced views might be because I don't use social media at all, and so don't get brainwashed into one extreme corner or the other
It's interesting how your argument focuses right down to a personal attack, as if previous comments have pierced your very soul, when they were nothing more than a general observation, pushed out there in a quasi-satirical manner.
Is this a hint at the desperation one might feel when there is no arguing against the facts?
If there's one thing that has not been off the world's agender since the rise of Fox news, it is hate.
Hate, Hate Hate! It's almost as if the 2% have recognised how distracting and useful a tool hate really is.
"Don't look at the billions my left hand is stealing, look at my right hand sticking two fingers up at you all"
The only way the Royal Mail can sift through all the mail, is to discourage the huge volumes that currently go through the system, as it isn't yet possible to automate steaming the envelope open and reading the contents, often written in a font only intelligible to a lesser mind.
Oo. hang on I see now why the government have been chopping away at the service now.
I'm sure they can automate the process of opening envelopes and resealing them. I doubt they can automate the process of reading all the mail. I've used OCR software and it has enough trouble with printed text in a normal font. Handwriting is not something it will scan through very well, and people with stuff to hide can always make their writing more sloppy if they need to. Of course, mail isn't very good at allowing recipients to hide or to be mobile, so depending on what communication needs hiding, it's still not a great option from a number of perspectives.
I remember reading (many years ago!) about a case where a doctor had left his car at a repair shop for investigation into an irritating fault.
He'd left a handwritten description of the symptoms on the front seat.
The poor garage mechanic couldn't make head or tail of the scrawl, so he took it to a local pharmacy for translation...
The new 1st and 2nd class stamp also have QR codes
"Barcoded stamps were introduced in February to make deliveries more efficient and improve security. "
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63367733
deliveries more efficient and improve security
Indeed
I'm not totally across UK politics but this looks to me like the mirror of the DCMA. The former seeks to make breaking encryption illegal while this proposal seeks to make encryption illegal.
Bet'cha those nasty pedos use DRM to hide their kiddie porn viewing from the authorities. Won't somebody think of the children!
Next they'll get the idea that all digital imaging devices (cameras, scanners etc) will need to be uniquely identifiable/registered to an owner/internet connected and have software running on them to flag potential breaches - so that the act if taking image can be stopped at source
Seriously, I thought already *was* possible to prove that a particular printer had been used to print a particular page (at least, perhaps, if you already suspected the printer in question. I don't know whether the watermarking uniquely identifies devices down to serial numbers).
I don't know if cameras generate similarly watermarked images, and if they do, whether there is any post-processing software to erase the stenography before you distribute the image. If there is, there is probably a custom ROM out there that "wraps" the camera device, or soon will be.
So as usual, the serious crims will be ok and the only folks affected will be Joe and Josephine Public. Or at least, that willl be the case until someone takes an image posted by an unsuspecting government official and extracts the watermark and applies that mark to incriminating images. *Then* we'll be told that *of course* it is possible for Bad Guys to "crack" the software that "protects" us all and (in response) even more draconian measures will be required.
It only stops when the public finally wise up to what we are creating and put the good of civil society back above the convenience of law enforcement.
tldr: Won't someone think of the adults?
For many, if not most colour printers, the Machine Identification Code, encoded as yellow dots on the print-out links the printed page to the particular printer that printed it. There are technical means by which similar identification patterns can be incorporated in monochrome output e.g. by varying character spacing, typeface geometry or greyscale intensities/dot sizes. Putting a low-density, low-intensity speckle pattern on the printed output is relatively easy and can be made hard to identify.
For cameras, I'm not aware of digital watermarks that formally link an image to the camera, although it is obviously technically possible. On the other hand, each image sensor has an effectively unique noise pattern which can be extracted from images and used to determine that two images were taken by the same camera.
Multimedia Forensics: Sensor Fingerprints: Camera Identification and Beyond
Preprints.org: Testing Robustness of Camera Sensor Fingerprint (PRNU) Identification on Smartphones
Related to this, the intelligence agencies are working on a global location lookup database - feed in an image and get told where it was taken. CIA/NSA want a photo location finder (2011). In the time since 2011, I expect progress has been made - cf the recent news story of the American hunter caught by the Canadian authorities.
The BBC have a couple of articles:
BBC Future: Why printers add secret tracking dots
BBC Future: The hidden fingerprint inside your photos
It was ever thus. Typewriters have distinctive 'fingerprints' that allow forensic investigators to determine if two texts have been produced on the same typewriter.
Wikipedia: Samizdat - Techniques
NN
My nice new Pixel7 comes with a "free" VPN. Now, while this is of dubious effectiveness, it should at least make the type of communication I am using unclear to my provider.
I suppose that banning working VPNs will be part of this. But this would mean the back door would have to be passed from the government to the phone providers.
Are we all going to have to set up our own?
Police doing stop and search will have another reason to stop someone.
Copper: "Oy mate, what are you typing there? Why the app look blueish? Is that Signal? Set your phone aside and put your hands above your head slowly and don't move!"
*puts phone aside and takes hands slowly above head*
Copper: "I said don't move!"
Joe: "But with all due respect, office, you told me to put my hands above head, slowly"
Copper: "Are you questioning my orders? I said are you questioning my orders?"
Joe: "I am just trying"
Copper: "That's it smart arse! You are under arrest!"
> Stop operating? What does this mean?
Signal scoring a number of home goals on that front. Previously my goto recommendation for a combined messaging app. Now they seem to spend their time trying to be a social platform and the rest of the time removing actually useful functionality like SMS
I ride a bicycle, some of the time. Don't hate me for that: I also walk, drive and ride far too powerful motorcycles.
Occasionally, on my bicycle, I pass traffic lights at red. This is wrong, but I do so in the same circumstances that pedestrians cross while the red man is showing -- i.e when it's completely clear and there is no risk or inconvenience to anyone. To know that there is no risk or inconvenience to anyone I have to be super-aware of everything that is going on around me. So, on one occasion while approaching a red light, I was slowing down to stop (but ready to continue) when I spotted the Paris police officer standing next to the lights. This, obviously, would definitely mandate a stop whatever else was going on, but, lo! the lights turned to green, so I continued. He flagged me down.
I explained that I had seen him and that I would have had to had been stupid to then run the red anyway. He took this as an insult. "Are you calling me stupid?". Cue several minutes of abject grovelling on my part.
-A.
Unless France has Jaywalking laws
As far as I know "jaywalking" as you guys seem to define it is very much a USA and nobody else thing.
If you want to randomly walk across a busy road, that is simply unwise!
A US tourist once asked me "what do you call jaywalking here?"
After he explained it, all I could say was "we call that crossing the road".
. They have it in Israel too (or at least, they did in the 90's)
My first knowledge of such a thing even existing was when I crossed a quiet road on "red man" outside a busy police station. The Israeli girl I was with flipped her nut at me for apparently taunting arrest.
None of them saw me, and nothing happened (and I didn't get run over(!)) but I was strongly told by her never to do it again!
By the way, as an aside, for anyone who didn't know,, Jaywalking laws in America were not to protect pedestrians. Early on in the development of the car, people kept getting run over and suing the car manufacturers, so the car manufacturers lobbied for the law so they'd no longer be liable.
This looks like fun... decades ago on a bus in Liverpool, I saw this fine warning ...
The inspector will push for the heaviest penalties against offenders.
With the following letters scrapped off, from these words: 'for the heaviest penalties' ...
for t e heav e t alt e
These days the parent (singular) has outsourced that to the government.
Sorry, but that's too broad a generalisation: I've met single parents who go to the ends of the Earth for their kids and I've met married couples who would barely give their kids the time of day.
I think you missed my subtext. There are more single parents now than when I was a kid by choice rather than circumstance. Even in two parent households, parenting has been outsourced or at least the government would like to take that task over without any implied warranty and it's being welcomed.
There were plenty of parents that mucked right in during lockdown to make sure their children kept up to grade standards, but many more that didn't and whinged about how they would feed their kids without free school lunches. These parents looking like they've spent thousands on tattoos and piercings. Some parents are still complaining that their kids are now a couple of years behind. That wouldn't have happened with me. I'd have received a set of books and assignments from my parents. I was already encouraged to read rather than watch TV and video games weren't yet a thing outside of arcades that ate up coins like a Wyvern. It didn't matter what I read (but not comics) as long as I was stuck in a book. I believe that my spelling and comprehension has always benefitted from that.
Utterly ridiculous statement. It's been many years since "the government" has had the slightest interest in supporting anyone in society, be they child or parent. Pensioners, maybe; they do tend to vote Tory, after all.
Me, I remember when parents didn't have to assume sole responsibility for their childrens' safety because the neighbours all looked out for kids. I suspect that they still do.
-A.
We've been down this route many times. RIPA was intended for the usual "terrorists and serious crime" purpose. Then it was used to catch parents trying to get their children into a better school. The congestion charge cameras were intended for that purpose. Then they were changed to a full time police surveillance system. Then it turns out that most police officers are corrupt, while the "good honest officers" (how many of them are there really? 2%?) are busy turning blind eyes to the crimes committed by their colleagues.
How much the establishment hates the people of this country. How much they do not being at the business end of a camera. Go and have a look on YouTube for people pointing cameras outside police stations. The police turn out in force for that despite it not being an offence. But if you are burgled, they are too busy to get off their arses.
"At least Northern Ireland and Scotland will be spared. The Home Office legislative proposals, if adopted, will apply only to England and Wales. ®"
I mean its already failed then, as what is to stop someone setting up a business to sell such devices based in Scotland or NI where it is perfectly legal to do so and selling them to people from England and Wales, after all they don't check your phone for compliance as you cross from one part of the UK to another.
Plus what about none UK residents who visit the UK, is their none compliant device going to get seized by border patrol if they landed at Heathrow but they are allowed to keep it if they arrived via Belfast or Edinburgh?
I wonder which muppets come up with these schemes? I expect people who are just trying to justify their jobs by spending time and tax payers money coming up with legislation which has no chance of working in the real world, to keep the won't someone thing of the children brigade happy.
Plus what about none UK residents who visit the UK, is their none compliant device going to get seized by border patrol if they landed at Heathrow but they are allowed to keep it if they arrived via Belfast or Edinburgh?
Looks like there is an opportunity for another mates contract. Ensure only government approved phones can sign in to the mobile network. When someone arrives at the border, they will be able to deposit their phones in the storage and will be given a government approved phone as a loaner, that you could exchange for your own phone when leaving the country.
Bonus point that you could transfer your contact list and approved apps to government approved phone and government would make a copy of all your data.
This has more to do with stupid people in high office, lacking the capability that the post requires, focussing on laws which make no sense so it looks like they are doing something worthwhile.
It will also be used as a critique of the opposition (Labour, Lib Dems et al) when they oppose it in any way.
You seem to have conflated "left-wing" and "authoritarian". They are far from the same thing.
The current government is right-wing and authoritarian.
I should like to see a government which is left-wing and liberal. I have serious doubts that the current opposition will deliver that if elected.
-A.
Spanners,
Thanks for the link to 'www.politicalcompass.org'.
Very interesting, entertaining and informative.
[Not often you get all three !!!]
:)
Also led by accident, as browsing the 'Interwebs' so often does, to the Climate docs that the Oil companies had kept secret on https://www.climatefiles.com/collection-index/
Many thanks for that also.
:)
It's orthogonal because left or right discard the human nature and their ideas typically don't match the real world and how people behave.
People who crave power will have certain traits that will manifest themselves regardless if that person becomes the leader of the left or right.
They most likely will be authoritarian and will adjust their messaging according to which ideology they managed to attach themselves.
This will then create cognitive dissonance among the supporters.
Classic example is the Tories. This is probably the most left wing party (in its current incarnation) we had for decades and yet most people call it right wing.
She was brought down by the entire left wing establishment pretending that going back to the top rate of tax Labour had for all but the last six months of their last stint in office was extreme.
If you aren't going to think for yourself you might as well go along with their "Truss is thick" narrative.
Well, sort of.
The Conservative Party ( which is mostly centre-left. They don't call Cameron the Hair To Blair because he plays the guitar ) and the media which is all centre-left nowadays.
I was a Times subscriber at the time. They repeatedly openly lied in order to contribute to restoring the centre-left consensus. If The Times is lying to push a left-wing agenda, what hope does the public have? Obviously the BBC, Sky, et al are all centre left.
Luckily !!! :)
Left-wing or right-wing is the least of out worries now !!!
In the UK., we need to be more concerned by a simple but important factor .....
Fit for Government or Not fit for Government !!!
I mean this at the most basic sense of are they:
fit intelligence wise,
socially aware,
able to think outside their own immediate life-experience and
capable of formulating and following a plan to improve the economy for ALL peoples benefit not just the people who work in the city of London.
Not very much to aspire to !!!
:)
You're making the mistake of thinking that politician is a job where the right man can succeed, if only they have the moral compass, right coloured tie or if they knew how much a pint of milk is.
Governments are a terrible way to do things, so we should restrict them to doing only what can't be done elsewhere. Neither is a popularity contest isn't a good way of determining who is a competent administrator. Unfortunately it's the best option available so we should do our best to keep those popular people from administering more than they have to.
@Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
"Unfortunately it's the best option available so we should do our best to keep those popular people from administering more than they have to."
How on earth do you get a downvote for that comment never mind 7? With the amount of complaining people do against government how can they mistake government as not terrible at their job?
Sure.
Left wing hatred for small business and the working class person becoming a filthy capitalist going their own way rather than giving up their life in a factory? Check.
Tories have taken Labour's IR35 to the next level, where it is practically not possible to run small service based business anymore (now it applies only to b2b, but you mentioned Overton window).
Plus added progressive taxes with threshold set so low to ensure that working class stays working class and can't climb the social ladder, while at the same time asset stripping of the middle class.
There is more. If you go on British communists forums, they are over the moon about Brexit, coming CBDC (finally able to control the rich and the banks), Online Safety Bill (total control of communication like in the "good" Soviet times), Digital ID (easier to tell an enemy of the revolution).
Other things like same sex marriage, legalisation of cannabis (it is legal from 2018 for medicinal purposes and if you have prescription).
That's why many people have been calling Labour weak opposition, because they can't really oppose things they would want to introduce themselves, so they largely resort to "Tory bad" critique.
The small business thing is easy to understand. The Tories' biggest donors are now from the financial sector, they want tax cuts and fewer regulations and that's what they get. The welfare state is sacrificed, small business is taxed to make up the difference. That is not left-wing.
The things you list that you claim communists are over the moon about are also things that authoritarians are over the moon about.
In practice it is impossible to get an NHS prescription for cannabis. It seems to have been a law made for just for two children who needed it in 2018 to get the public off the government's back, since then the NHS won't fund or prescribe it.
Finally same-sex marriage was passed into law relatively late compared to neighbouring countries and opposite-sex couples couldn't even enter into a civil partnership until 2019. It took a long time for the UK to allow something as common sense as civil partnerships and marriage for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Nothing particularly left-wing about that.
When Truss had her mayfly-like premiership an FT study found this:
Study names Tories as ‘most right-wing government’ in the world
Since then the Tories have inched back, but only because they realised they were boiling the frog a little too quickly.
So making left wing policies for different reasons make them right wing? Okay.
Regarding the medical cannabis, thousands of people are now using it as it is possible to get a private prescription - not ideal and that excludes many disabled from much needed help, but then read what happened to disabled and homeless in the left loving Soviet Union.
The linked FT "study" is simply bollocks, as they are just parroting the WEF narrative without substance. Like the link to "slashing tax for the rich" - typical clickbait. The threshold for 45% tax rate is so low, that is catching aspiring working class who after working hard and climbing corporate ladder in their 40s finally get a position where they get a salary someone in the US would laugh at and is now hitting the 45% rate. FT and other outlets like this like to engage in such misinformation. The rich don't pay income taxes, so dropping 45% rate wouldn't make much difference to them.
'Left wing' and 'right wing' are clearly concepts that have now completely jumped the shark and are functionally meaningless, i.e. they mean whatever the speaker chooses them to mean at that particular moment, so it is now impossible to use them—might just as well make a grunting noise.
I agree with you, although I'm not sure they ever worked as concepts. There are so many different political philosophies that a one-dimensional sorting process does not work in the slightest. At one point, my university friends and I were making a diagram that we thought better represented the variety of viewpoints so you could more easily describe where someone was politically. We started with the two-dimensional model of authoritarianism to libertarianism, then split the liberalism to conservatism dimension into two perpendicular dimensions: willingness to operate and fund services (fiscal policy, in other words) and government's action on social, moral, or religious issues (itself easy to split into several). Then we added another one for international interventionism or isolationism. Then we came to the realization that it wouldn't help anyone if we described a politician's views in terms of a point somewhere within a tesseract and that we weren't done naming dimensions that were orthogonal to others.
As far as I can tell, some people just choose one wing they think is better, and then if they disagree with something, they say it's from the other one, as we've seen in above comments.
So making left wing policies for different reasons make them right wing? Okay.
Different parties with different places on the political spectrum can have have the same policy for different reasons, yes.
Regarding the medical cannabis, thousands of people are now using it as it is possible to get a private prescription
That is right, and using the law to carve out a new market just for the private sector is definitely not a classic left-wing policy.
The linked FT "study" is simply bollocks, as they are just parroting the WEF narrative
... and yeah, I can tell this is going to be a productive thread. I'll get off here if you don't mind.
Pretty much. This won't work to catch any actual criminals for exactly the same reason the piracy URL bans didn't work. Not that these laws are ever really used against CSAM or terrorists. The German government passed laws years ago to allow search histories to be acquired by court order, only 2% were ever used for underage porn cases, over 60% were used for drug cases.
If it covered all the UK, then they would be able to block registrations with a +44 phone number. Since it's England and Wales only, they can't do that (unless they mess up, which is always an option). They could block numbers with local dialing codes, but that would probably have a lot of false positives. Most likely, what would happen is that they wouldn't block anyone, but they would explicitly refuse to deal with the UK authorities and see what the authorities do in response, possibly including legally-enforced blocking efforts and ensuring that no Signal developer will come to the UK anymore for fear of being arrested.
Almost certainly by using the location of the base station you were currently connected to.
None of this has to make sense or be effective. It's just another tool in the box when either law enforcement wants to go on a fishing expedition or law enforcement have already decided they want to pick on someone but don't have any grounds yet.
"You don't need to be in the UK to buy or use a UK phone number."
Correct, but it could be enough for the UK to decide that what you do with that phone number is something their laws can regulate, so if you were from abroad but operating that number, you would still have a chance of having UK law enforcement asking for information. Signal could, if this law covered all of the UK, decide that this is enough reason to block all UK numbers, even if they're operated from outside the country.
Signal does retain the phone number used for registrations. They do get the complete, unhashed number at account registration because they need it to send a verification message to confirm that it is your number. They keep it afterward to serve as an account recovery mechanism. The hashing comes in when they scan contacts lists for Signal users, with the hashes serving as a method of maintaining the privacy of any person who doesn't use Signal and making it harder to associate a user with the numbers they looked up. They don't need to retain the numbers if they reject the ones they wanted to at registration time. Still, I don't think they will end up using that method. It would be possible if they chose to.
Are you sure there's an account recovery mechanism on Signal? If you mean setting a PIN so other people can't register using your phone number, they don't store your phone number to do that.
You could, if you wanted, register Signal using another phone number.
They can just remove the app for UK users, you wont see it in the app store.
And yes, Signal needs a phone number to register. All mobiles in the UK will have a +44 number, that will be enough.
Foreign mobiles roaming may be spared but roaming is pricey anyway.
They cannot police the streets
They cannot stop boats from France
They cannot stop abuse images being sent
What makes anyone think they will be able to police this at all
Next new Law
“Don’t do crimes”
Next headline
“The problem of crime has been solved”
Politicians are truly useless
God help us all
@AC
"Yea, 'cos vast, monopolistic corporations never do that, do they."
Entities under the rules of the land set by government and regulated by market struggle to do so. THE monopoly that is the state with all its powers of regulation, application of laws and ability of force (even lethal) is not to be mistaken for a cuddly toy.
"If Signal withdraws its services from the UK, it will particularly harm journalists, campaigners and activists who rely on end-to-end encryption to communicate safely."
I think....that is the whole point anyway.....to harm journalists/activists, and other irritating people who believe in 'freedom'
"If Signal withdraws its services from the UK, it will particularly harm journalists, campaigners and activists who rely on end-to-end encryption to communicate safely."
I think....that is the whole point anyway.....to harm journalists/activists, and other irritating people who believe in 'freedom'
The chances of a government being able to keeping a backdoor key secret are quite simply zero. Nul. Nada. Zilch. Zip.
To give you some practical evidence of this, hit a search engine for TSA keys, that gives you a physical example of wonderful any government is at keeping a secret - you can get images, pre-cut keys (heck, even on Amazon for key 2 and 7 as they're near identical) and even 3D print templates. Implement this idiocy I give it a week, max, before mainly criminals will have their hands on it and ecommerce on the Net is in essence wiped out.
It's interesting that these backdoor attempts keep showing up every couple of years ago. The US is quite keen on this too - again - because the lessons learned when the Clipper chip idea was mooted have clearly been forgotten by now.
Lunacy, thy vehicle is politics.
"hit a search engine for TSA keys,"
When I used to fly, the TSA would just lop off the locks and toss the pieces in the luggage with the notice that we are all safer now that my bag has been throughly rummaged, my toiletries and first aid kit dumped out and mixed in with my clothes and anything of value removed. They can't be bothered with using the approved keys as they have too many bags to toss to meet their quotas to mess with using a key.
Quote: "The Online Safety Bill contemplates bypassing encryption ... and coincidentally breaking the security of end-to-end encryption..."
Network Service == Single Point Of Failure ..... have I mentioned this before?
*** "bypassing encryption"....but who's encryption would that be?
Suppose a group of citizens use encryption/decryption implemented by their group, where the private group encryption/decryption is implemented ONLY ON GROUP END-POINT DEVICES?
Then it doesn't matter what happens on the network!! Gmail will be an adequate delivery mechanism. Really!!
And if the group happens to use Signal (or Telegram), the snoops who break E2EE will find......PRIVATE ENCRYPTION!!
Online Safety!!! Ha!!!
I am guessing that this is the reason that they also want to make possessing a device makes encryption easy illegal, with strict liability. They don't want to have to prove that you are doing anything illegal - just that you own a device that they have put on a list!
@Graham_Cobb
Quote: "...ONLY ON GROUP END-POINT DEVICES..."
Really? Ban unknown software packages on who knows how many end-point devices?
Yup.......I'm sure a law can be written to enact the ban.......but how to enforce that law? Inspect every laptop in the land every month? Even the air-gapped ones?
Current laws can't even stop the AMG Mercs doing 70 miles an hour on my neighbourhood roads!!!
So.....yet again.....our lawmakers in Westminster propose to "do something".......which can never be enforced!! Your taxpayer dollar at work!!!!
Signal!! Ha!! The nice folk in Cheltenham (or Fort Meade) are welcome to figure out this message....crafted especially for them.
No E2EE.....just a nice message courtesy of El Reg:
== Begin ==
OdQb85WRm1cJy7OPmZYFml8TsvOBEpip61Gh4xqRsB69wvgH4xqbsB6PyFcn85YRcjk1UrUTmlA1
ARSzOpAdqbm74xs5sB6vmZKR4xsDsB87EtWbKTax4xsTsB8JYNMZ4xsZsB8T4F65Sb0D4xsjsB8r
0T6D4xsvsBA14xszsBA50T6T4xu5sBADinad4xuJsBAPmfA7MVqp4xuZsBAb6FYvQFElCZk1c5qT
2FYHy3e1oroHqnArcvmX4xwJeJYxi34t4xwReJa54xwdeJaHSBmz4xy3eJaT4xyDeJaZ8hWH4xyP
eJaf4xyZeJapi36h4xyxeJaz4z01eJcFSBov4z0FeJcL4z0LeJcP8hY34z0VeJcX2RWb4z0hsBEp
mZUL4z0vsBEx8ze5gRqdUVcN4z2PsBGBmZUz4z2dsBGP4z2nsBGTmZWH4z2vsBGh4z49sBGpmZWb
4z4LsBI74z4RsBIBmZWt4z4bsBIJ
== End ==
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
We're talking about something A BIT MORE SOPHISTICATED than base64. Still..............maybe you could look at AES or samba20..............
== Begin ==
Its the time of year
Now that Spring is in the air
When those two wet gits with their girly curly hair
Make another song for moronic holidays
That nauseate-ate-ate
In a million different ways
From the shores of Spain
To the coast of Southern France
No matter where you hide
You just can't escape this dance
Hold a chicken in the air
Stick a deckchair up your nose
Buy a jumbo jet
And then bury all your clothes
Paint your left knee green
Then extract your wisdom teeth
Form a string quartet
And pretend your name is Keith
Skin yourself alive
Learn to speak Arapahoe
Climb inside a dog
And behead an eskimo
Eat a Renault Four with salami in your ears
Casserole your gran
Disembowel yourself with spears
The disco is vibrating
The sound is loud and grating
Its truly nauseating
Let's do the dance again
Hold a chicken in the air
Stick a deckchair up your nose
Yes you'll hear this song in the holiday discos
And there's no escape in the clubs or in the bars
You would hear this song if you holidayed in Mars
Skin yourself alive
Learn to speak Arapahoe
Climb inside a dog
And behead an eskimo
Now you've heard it once
Your brain will spring a leak
And though you hate this song
You'll be humming it for weeks
Hold a chicken in the air
Stick a deckchair up your nose
Buy a jumbo jet
And then bury all your clothes
La la la la la
La la la la la la la
La la la la la
La la la la la la laaaaaaa
== End ==
"We're talking about something A BIT MORE SOPHISTICATED than base64"
Remember, it's the government we're talking about. Base64 is sophisticated cutting edge encryption that is clearly being used by hardened criminals who are after children and bitcoins...blah blah etc.
(extra points if you get the reference to what I posted)
This post has been deleted by its author
Thing is the bill is such a unworkable mess that it is likely to collapse under its own weight just look at the last UK age verification law that was delayed over and over again until it was quietly scraped.
There also the fact that the UK is about to enter a recession meaning Ofcom is likely to be super underfunded and unable to enforce 90% of the bill.
RIPA - its for your safety....however with over 150,000 'snoops' by people who just want to find out what the lady down the street posted to facebook, this is going the same way.
Basically a bill to cripple encryption for citizens, banks and companies. All with "officials" allowed to access data without a warrant.
So like the 25,000+ "council inspections" into peoples data to see if they admitted putting their wheelie bin out a day early.
or the 10k+ local authority searches into whether or not people they fancied had posted to tinder, grindr, e-harmony etc.
or the fact that BIN MEN were allowed RIPA access to people data, and used it big-time for basically shits n giggles.
I was wondering about that. I assumed the obligate v. obliged has more legal (statutory) force in the UK.
Oblige to me has a certain voluntary or optional or conditional sense - sans noblesse sans oblige. Obligate < obligation would convey a stronger sense or complusion.
I would use require or mandate or compel etc instead.
A prior comment used a conditional like "If I'm a xxxx pornographer...." which omitting the "if" is pretty much admitting guilt. I for one would use the archaic subjunctive :) "If I were a xxxx pornographer" would not fly without the "if" but I suppose the self tasering plod would not notice.
The Scots must feel like the Canadians - if the Scots could dig a very deep trench along Hadrian's wall and attach a humungous outboard motor to their side, they would motor away to perhaps sunnier climes - just south of Tasmania might be suitable for the Caledonian temperament ;)
"I was wondering about that. I assumed the obligate v. obliged has more legal (statutory) force in the UK"
Strictly (referring to its etymology) oblige is a verb and obligate is the associated adjective. But as etymology has not been part of language education for a long time, the distinction has become blurred. And by the way (speaking as someone who deals quite a lot with legislation) I note that the precision of the language used in framing law has declined quite markedly over the last 20 years or so -- just as it has in other areas of social communication (probably to a great extent because etymology is not taught any more).
The UK government can basically go 'F' itself --- I will just produce multiple high end encrpted chat and file transfer applications with source code and just release it all completely OPEN SOURCE with no restrictions OF ANY SORT put on them
aka they will be set as completely COPYLEFT !!!!
And since I am really good at coding, I can make the source code in Basic, C/C++, JAVA, Pascal, Python, RUST, even just pure HTML and nothing can be done!
SO SUCK IT !!!!!
V
I believe putting the source in pseudocode is all that would be required. Then you must arrange for it to be printed on t-shirts. Politicians' heads may rapidly expand beyond the cranium's ability to hold grey matter. Please do not mistake that statement as a suggestion of the presence of grey matter.
... or archives with serious encryption (+obfuscation) that governments would choke on. This isn't about stopping child porn, organized crime or terrorism, it's about spying on the populace.
They'd have to make it a crime to root your devices too. What about non-mobile devices, like laptops and PCs, you'll never stop anyone from installing software. Criminals could write their own encrypted, peer to peer communications programs, even.
Don't try to argue with logic against this bill.
If there was any ability for logical thinking in the group of morons that came up with this bill they would have abandoned this quite swiftly once they worked out the consequences.
No, this is a group of people trying to (again) execute their own agenda, it has zero to do with logic or even the stated goals. As soon as you hear "think of the children" or "we need to stop terrorists" you already know that there is a 99% chance someone is cooking up some giveaway money or influence for his or her mates instead of having any actual concerns that need to be addressed.
An old Blackberry would probably be caught by this.
In AU they wouldn't work anyway as 2G is long gone, 3G goes in 2024. My small Nokia Asha 300 will soon be ewaste :(.
One simple hack would be dual booting phones - the hardware is up to it. Two roms (the dodgy one could be "volatile" as in thermite rom for those annoying law enforcement nuisances.)
An interesting option would be to run a hypervisor on the phone's hardware and run both a conforming and non-comporming version of Android, IOS etc on the phone.
Even with one OS a container technology like Docker could pull down an ad hoc "Signal" instance as required and would evaporate on completion.
I thought the UK had a clown for PM with Boris but it is quite clear they really have the full Ding-a-Ling Brothers three ring circus. I mean bloody turnips - there should be an eleventh circle of Dantes hell under satan's arse for such fools.
"UK risks being listed as a ‘human rights abuser’, NGO warnsHuman Rights Watch warns UK has ‘very short window’ to reverse legislation, including restrictions on the right to protest
The UK government could soon make the list of countries that abuse rather than protect human rights with its “outright assault” on the rights of its own citizens and aggressive roll-back of protections such as on the right to assemble and protest, according to the international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW)."
Someone in government must have a donor in the burner phone business.
I think the UK has the stupidest government it’s ever had in all of history.
It’s like they believe their own anti-experts mantra and that governing is simply making up unenforceable laws and then expecting someone else to enforce them.
Shambolic.
That is the mindset of politicians in power. Kneejerk actions to show they care (without actually doing so) and passing laws that their own gov employees/civil service noted is either unenforceable or has bad consequences (not even unexpected ones) but their political advisors (ignorant idiots that they are) think their voters will appreciate or their corrupt partners desire. They do expect them to be enforced but are unwilling to spend the cash that might make it possible to do so. Then they blame the gov employees / civil service for the fail.
Sometimes the Fail is their aim; so they can say 'they tried and others prevented them' so so they can repeat and do worse things
If those legislators are logical, then they should ask the same thing to Royal Mail, Fedex, UPS and al. They should open every letter and every parcel to be sure there's no harmful and/or illegal content in it, or be made legally responsible if they don't. Starting by the ones sent to the legislators, of course.
At least Northern Ireland and Scotland will be spared. The Home Office legislative proposals, if adopted, will apply only to England and Wales.
Until Humza Yousaf takes the reigns of power in Scotland as the new SNP leader.
This guy wanted to criminalise people's private conversations, conducted in their own homes, if they breached his definition of "hate speech".
Will this legislation be honest to its word or just big brother wants to control everything, child protection is a rouse, because people will always support it.
what's app says it use encryption but we all know, if the government wants they will get access to it.
Stop child abuse as well children's wellbeing like anyone else is important,
Catholic Church, government officer involved in children's degradation can be hushed away.
I abandoned Signal since they dropped SMS support.
Sure SMS is insecure, but I preffered to have Signal as me default SMS client as it was more trustworthy. I preferred to have that upgrade path to a Signal chat that was useful for getting others onto the platform.
Alas after 10 years of using Signal, nobody joined me. They stayed on SMS or Whatsapp or any other number of esoteric options. They have no care to install yet another app, just to chat to me. Whatsapp is good enough for them and as it also uses the Signal protocol, well it will do for me too.
And now, to find that if the UK reduced the effectiveness of encryption, instead of working to make Signal work for me like they did in Iran etc when Iran cracked down on whatsapp, Signal will simply walk?
That new president of theirs is a piece of work I must say. Not only has she dropped one of the good features Signal had (SMS integration) but she also will just leave a whole country in the dust. A country of users who dont make anyone any money through the use of Signal. The Government probably wonders who the hell Signal are, what do they care if some tiny little group of developers walk away, thinking somehow they are big and mighty and that if they were to walk away MP's would shed tears!
The president of Signal is a maniac. Killed the project dead by dropping SMS, thinks her company is bigger than it is so that a whole Government will worry about them walking away and abandoning a minority of users.
I saw her profile photo on her blog, she looked half awake and she loves bed-hair. She is playing the hard line, but without the strong foundations behind her needed to actually mean it! It's like a wooden toy manufacturer making toys that are sold only at local craft fairs trying to hold the Government to ransom :D
I loved SIgnal a lot. Steve Gibson introduced me to it when it was still called TextSecure. I've been using it as a GPL'd SMS app with full encryption upgrade path for over 10 years and no sod has bothered to join me. I rejoiced as the Signal protocol was incorporated into Whatsapp and FB messenger, because it worked and was good! Signal may be small I thought but at least their protocol is gaining acceptance! Whoohoo.
Then they dropped SMS, leaving me with god knows what written by god knows who. They banned me from the message boards as I posted a nice and polite thankyou but farewell post, which was really polite and congratulatory and merely said I have to leave but maybe I will be back. And they bloody banned me as a troll because they were tired of getting angry messages about SMS. And now the bed-hair ridden pretentious president says that even if I were still a user, even a donating one, they will abandon me to my snooping government rather than find a way to let me keep being secure.
Well F**K you Signal. Enjoy your decline into irrelevance. Sorry you dont like to hear it but the ONLY reason many people used you was because of the SMS integration helping replace untrustworthy default apps and someone would have succeeded in getting a contact or two to install Signal too. You think you are bigger than you are.
It's just really sad.
Blocking all those companies run by Johnny Foreigner and all that nasty encryption. People will still be able to post comments on edgy sites like mumsnet and El Reg - their posts will simply be checked by civil servants, manually, before they are forwarded to the official mail address of the relevant web site by Royal Mail.
All UK web sites (the only ones remaining visible in the UK) will need to be manually checked by a government regulator to ensure they won't offend anyone, each time they are updated. This might take a while, but patience is a virtue.
And a world-beating way of protecting children: The internet will only function between 9pm (the watershed) and 6am, when all of Britain's under 18s have had their cocoa and are tucked up in bed.
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