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I think this is an unquestionable overreach on the UK's part. If you live in any country that isn't the UK, you should feel the threat from this: the UK government believes that it is entitled to a backdoor on your hardware, even if you've never stepped a foot on UK soil or intend to. Mass surveillance is a threat to everyone, but this is not an instance of that, which has guards against it, like encryption. This is the UK asking for an encryption backdoor to everything, including for phones that never traverse its soil or internet boundaries, or even cross anywhere near FVEY collection devices.

This is a dramatic overreach of authority.

Here's the BBC report on the matter: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20g288yldko

It applies to content stored using ADP, Apple's E2EE tech. A backdoor into that would mean applying a backdoor into iOS on the phone itself, which is a much larger attack surface than anything centralised.

All of which highlights the clownish nature of these regulations. They are so easy for bad actors to circumvent (eg using their own E2EE), resulting in the ridiculous situation where the innocent get their data stolen and the very people you're targeting being completely unaffected.

Since it seems to be illegal to even reveal if one of these requests was received, it's also worrying that, by extension, it would be illegal to declare a data breach once the backdoor was inevitably exploited by another bad actor.

So, how would anybody know that a foreign government was spying on them? Nothing would stop them installing Pegasus on your phone and exfiltrating even your 'secure' data.

The stupid thing is that these laws always find a way to say that people in government are exempt from the provisions, and everybody except them is allowed to be spied on, but they are obviously going to be the first people to be targeted. Not some randomer hoarding CSAM.

This is exactly the problem. The logical outcome is so bad that the only risk mitigation is to not use their services at all.

This is a government that believes in thought crimes. They will likely arrest people for having illegal memes on their phones or for texting messages to friends of which the government does not approve. If there was prequal to 1984, it would look something like this.

By "thought crimes", would you mean firing people for holding positions responsible for DEI policies which were assigned to them and which there was a legal obligation to enforce?

Because that would NEVER happen in the US, certainly no government agency would fire its own people for having following legally enacted government policy just because that policy was no longer in fashion (though still legal government policy, because Congress hadn't yet changed the law).

The people in the UK actually go to prison though

those are government workers

> They will likely arrest people for having illegal memes on their phones or for texting messages to friends of which the government does not approve.

It's a country that raids people over "illegal" anime artwork on anime artwork websites.

I really don’t like the UK governments stance on cyber security / counter-terrorism / et al either. In fact, as a UK citizen I’ve actively campaigned against a great many of their policies.

However this “thought police” and “arrested for posting memes” comment that often gets pointed on here is itself a nonsense meme.

What actually happened was people were arrested for instigating riots. This is no different to what happened in the US regarding the Capital Hill riots — people who helped organise it online were arrested too.

The UK has a long history of shitty policies invented to “protect people” but we need to be clear on what’s actually fact and what’s fiction. Otherwise you end up wasting energy protesting against things that are imaginary.

You are focusing on one set of incidents. There are lot of others not connected to any violence at all. People arrested for standing still because of what they admitted thinking and their motive for doing so. Police investigations of 'non-crime incidents'. Hate speech laws that can be very widely interpreted. Increasingly restrictive laws on public protests.

Just link to a report of an incident that you think proves your point. It’s impossible to have a sensible discussion about this issue when comments are so vague.

People have been arrested for perfectly legal anti-royalist propaganda, and threatened with arrest for such things as protesting by holding a blank sheet of paper, so I don't agree.

Citation needed

> In London, a barrister who held up a blank piece of paper in Parliament Square was asked for his details by Metropolitan Police officers, and told that he would be arrested under the Public Order Act if he wrote "Not My King" on the paper.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_paper_protest

Already commented on here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43040546

In short, he wasn’t charged yet when similar protests happen in the US (for example) then people do get charged.

Several examples, including blank piece of paper: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62883713

Nothing actually happened to the guy with the blank sheet of paper (or at least, if it did, that’s not reported in the article).

Certainly you can find examples of the British police overpolicing protests, and that’s something that people rightly get angry about. It’s just that there’s a huge distance between that kind of thing (which happens pretty much everywhere from time to time - do US police forces have an exemplary record of policing protests?) and the kind of wild claims you can see in this discussion that the UK has become an Orwellian police state.

Perhaps, but I am not comparing it to American forces. I'm Swedish and while I have some things to do with America, mostly indirectly, it's not my centre of reference.

Sweden’s got its own fair share of problems at the moment too.

Arguments around citizenship. Problems with gun violence (which the UK and most of countries solved decades ago).

It’s not like you couldn’t draw a Mad Max parallel just by looking at the headlines in Swedish news.

> the kind of wild claims you can see in this discussion that the UK has become an Orwellian police state.

It feels like it's always slowly getting closer to that. It certainly seems one of the least free developed or 'allied' countries.

Every country is moving in that direction. Thats just how politics is shifting at the moment.

I’m not happy about it but you can’t really single the UK out for it.

It feels like the UK is in many ways leading the charge, though. The only other country that would be a contender is Australia. It was the UK for example that introduced that barbarian law that conceivably allows imprisoning people that genuinely forget the passwords to their encrypted volumes, and that was I think over a decade ago.

How many people have been imprisoned for that? If we’ve had a decade of being an Orwellian police state, it should be quite a few people, no?

The fact that you have the law itself is pretty troubling.

And some of the protestors at the coronation of Charles were pretty blatant.

And all the examples of police showing up because of a tweet, often not even hateful just not falling in line sufficiently with rightthink.

Lots of things are troubling. I am complaining about wild exaggerations, not saying that there is nothing to worry about or that the UK is perfect.

Unfortunately a lot of people are getting their news from Twitter, from accounts that are obsessed with painting a particular picture of the UK. Have you spent any time in the UK yourself? The impression of it that you’d get from reading HN is unrecognizable to anyone who lives here.

I don't disagree that there are wild exaggerations being made, my point was just that the UK seems further along the path than its peers.

> Have you spent any time in the UK yourself? The impression of it that you’d get from reading HN is unrecognizable to anyone who lives here.

I lived in Scotland for a while and have been to London often enough. It's it's mostly just a normal country, but things can change slowly until all of a sudden it's unavoidable. The cops showing up to peoples houses for opinions tweets is certainly frequent and concerning.

You say that but I’ve shared several examples of the same things happening in other countries like America too.

So I don’t think the UK is any further along in that regard.

There are other areas where the UK is further along though. Such as CCTV surveillance in London. There are also areas where the UK is far less Orwellian, for example our open-mindedness about abortion and gender identity.

The UK’s legal system isn’t just defined by what Musk tweets about. ;)

> You say that but I’ve shared several examples of the same things happening in other countries like America too.

You've shown some protestors getting arrested, but I don't believe you can show any equivalent of cops acting as thought police for tweets.

> for example our open-mindedness about abortion and gender identity.

Funny you say that, because there isn't so much open-mindedness as a forced viewpoint. I'm trans, FWIW, but I don't at all agree with sending cops to peoples houses because a ciswoman has doubts about accepting a transwoman completely as a woman.

I'd also say it's other western countries being compared to here, and I don't think the UK is particularly further ahead than other first world nations, aside from the US where it is very much a red/blue state issue.

> You've shown some protestors getting arrested, but I don't believe you can show any equivalent of cops acting as thought police for tweets

I have elsewhere.

> Funny you say that, because there isn't so much open-mindedness as a forced viewpoint. I'm trans, FWIW, but I don't at all agree with sending cops to peoples houses because a ciswoman has doubts about accepting a transwoman completely as a woman.

I wouldn’t say it’s a forced viewpoint here either.

Quite the opposite in fact, there’s a lot of really vocal people in the UK who publicly denounce transgender people.

> I have elsewhere.

Could you relink them? I don't see anything, and I don't think you could show it is to the same extent as in the UK.

> I wouldn’t say it’s a forced viewpoint here either.

Then why do cops keep showing up for wrongthink?

> Could you relink them? I don't see anything, and I don't think you could show it is to the same extent as in the UK.

No. I’ve said my piece and I’m done.

And it isn’t even happening to extent you keep claiming. There’s been lots of evidence posted to prove that point.

> Then why do cops keep showing up for wrongthink?

They don’t.

And I know you’ll follow up with some unverifiable linked to highly disreputable sources which are several years out of date.

So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK nor reading either up-to-date nor reputable sources.

And this is precisely why this meme of the UK policing thought persists: because people form an opinion based off silly headlines and then are too singleminded to listen to the full facts.

I honestly can’t be bothered any longer on this. I’ve been actively involved in politics around precisely these kinds of issues, but of course you know better than me because it fits your own narrative about how your own country can’t also be going down the shitter.

> No. I’ve said my piece and I’m done.

You said this, but then continued to go out of your way to reply to another unrelated comment. Copying and pasting some links would have been less effort.

> And it isn’t even happening to extent you keep claiming. There’s been lots of evidence posted to prove that point.

Actually my llast reply showed quite the opposite. The scale is much larger, about 2,500 incidents.

> They don’t.

They do, at least 2500 times. See a recent reply for sources.

> And I know you’ll follow up with some unverifiable linked to highly disreputable sources which are several years out of date. > So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK nor reading either up-to-date nor reputable sources.

It's a shame here to see you assuming bad faith. This reeks of tribalism, not objective argument.

The source I found was from the UK government, so I think that you preemptively dismiss that really shows who is being rational and objective and who is not.

> So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK

You keep looking for reasons to dismiss my argument fro reasons other than merit of the argument. This is telling.

I lived in the UK for years, actually, and the evidence speaks for itself, no personal experience is necessary.

> I honestly can’t be bothered any longer on this.

Maybe. You say and wrote this, yet you have a second reply you posted after this that I am about to respond to.

I won't be surprised if I end up responding yet again.

> It's a shame here to see you assuming bad faith. This reeks of tribalism, not objective argument.

Because your comments are bad faith.

And I’ve addressed all your other nonsense already.

What you’re not grasping is the cultural differences between our two police forces.

In America, the police go relatively unchecked. They buy ex-military hardware, lie in interrogations, literally kill their own innocent citizens because of their skin colour, and at no point face any repercussions. So laws in the US need to be water tight to prevent abuse — and even then, they still get flouted by those who should be upholding them.

Whereas Europe have a hell of a lot more checks and balances for our police forces. Bad cops get struck off. Good cops cannot place charges without approval from a whole other department, and thus not emotionally connected to the case. If police lie or exaggerate in those reports then they’re up for a plethora of serious charges themselves. So UK law often feels more ripe for abuse but that’s because we have stronger processes in place to protect against abuse.

Coming back to your original point, you don’t know the seriousness of the comments shared. We’ve already given examples about how online comments can have real and damaging physical consequences. Such as organising riots. People in the US have been charged for doing just the same thing. In the UK the law is called “hate speech” but that’s doesn’t mean that people are being investigated just for saying “I hate x”. Just like how there are multiple different names for different types of reasons and severity of killing someone, “hate speech” is just a term that covers a wide plethora of circumstances. And if — and when — those “hate speech” laws are abused, the police are raked over the coals for overreach.

So when you claim “whataboutism” what’s actually happening is I’m demonstrating the cultural differences that you seem oblivious too.

When you claim “thought crimes” you’re completely missing the nuance in these cases.

And when you’re claiming the police are abusing their powers you’re being, at best, deeply ironic. At worst, deeply ignorant.

In fact this whole argument and your single mindedness can be entirely summed up as “deeply ignorant”.

So why do UK citizens defend this claim against “thought police”? Because it literally isn’t happening. It’s just some bullshit concocted by right wing media (the same people who talk about rigged elections, “out of control immigration” and other made up bullshit) and Americans who want to feel better about their own shitty police force.

> Because your comments are bad faith.

No, they are not. I thought you were done? Why are you still replying just to insult?

I'm sorry my view offends you, but unlike you I'm not trying to offend you, it's my honest view and I thin the evidence supports it.

If you think I'm an idiot, fine, but could you maybe just stop replying at this point instead of violating HN guidelines just to let me know? I'm down to have a civil discussion, but that clearly isn't happening at this point, and it isn't because of me.

> And I’ve addressed all your other nonsense already.

It's not nonsense, and you haven't addressed the desire not to handshake being reported, nor the 2500 or so incorrectly reported NCHIs.

---

You edited your comment to add a lot after I replied, so I'll address it here.

> What you’re not grasping is the cultural differences between our two police forces.

You forget I lived in the UK for a fairly long time. Also, while I live in the US, I'm not from the US.

> In America, the police go relatively unchecked. They buy ex-military hardware, lie in interrogations, literally kill their own innocent citizens because of their skin colour, and at no point face any repercussions. So laws in the US need to be water tight to prevent abuse — and even then, they still get flouted by those who should be upholding them.

You're generalizing a country far more than diverse than the UK here in terms of differences in smaller government reigons and their police forces. What you've said here is not universally true for the US by any means, just for certain states.

> So UK law often feels more ripe for abuse but that’s because we have stronger processes in place to protect against abuse.

In this case, clearly not. The problem is not police abuse, it's police showing up at all because someone didn't want to shake hands or expressed a non-hateful thought on Twitter.

> Coming back to your original point, you don’t know the seriousness of the comments shared.

We do, because the people that get harassed by the cops report them.

> We’ve already given examples about how online comments can have real and damaging physical consequences.

Yes, they can, but that tends to be mobs or cyber bulling, outright insults. The cases that have been reported are not anything like that. If anything, it's UK cops being used, manipulated and unwittingly used as weapons, which isn't a much better look than if they are being malicious.

> Such as organising riots. People in the US have been charged for doing just the same thing.

That doesn't come under hate speech, but some other laws. Plenty of riots have nothing to do with hate speech, and the issue isn't the same. There may be crossover sometimes, but not necessarily.

Therefore, people being arrested in the US for organizing riots is entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing.

> In the UK the law is called “hate speech” but that’s doesn’t mean that people are being investigated just for saying “I hate x”.

Yes, it does, and that's exactly the problem! There was literally an article in the Telegraph of that exact thing happening, twice!

How is this not blatant denial on your part?

> So when you claim “whataboutism” what’s actually happening is I’m demonstrating the cultural differences that you seem oblivious too.

How incredibly disingenuous.

You mention cops killing black people, which has nothing to do with cultural differences unless you consider racism and lack of training in rural areas in red states cultural differences.

No, cultural differences is in no way a justification for your blatant whataboutism. A cop killing an unarmed black man in the US has NOTHING to do with cops showing up at peoples doors in the UK for sharing non hate thoughts online, holding up a blank piece of paper or refusing to shake hands. Honestly it's a really crappy thing to try and reduce the killing of an innocent black man to any of those things just to try and save your crummy argument.

> When you claim “thought crimes” you’re completely missing the nuance in these cases.

No, what's happening here is you are giving the benefit of doubt to your government even when there are blatant examples that don't warrant it. What is the nuance for the examples in the Telegraph article that would defend against the notion they were thought crimes?

> And when you’re claiming the police are abusing their powers you’re being, at best, deeply ironic. At worst, deeply ignorant.

More insults. No, I'm being honest and objective, while you're bending over backwards to be tribalistic like the worst examples of Americans, and then because you can't actually support your point and I'm not conceding, resorting to insults and personal attacks.

You have no argument, and your attempts to defend your point trying to justify Orwellian actions in the UK by accusing me of cultural misunderstandings (which is funny since I bet I've spent more time in the UK than you've spent in the US) and and likening the UK incidents to the unarmed shooting of a black man are desperate and easily dismissed.

> In fact this whole argument and your single mindedness can be entirely summed up as “deeply ignorant”.

NO, you're simply being deeply arrogant and disingenuous. Your examples you've provided don't map to the UK incidents, and when pressed you outwardly make excused to not provide them when asked, despite writing an essay to make the ridiculous argument you did above.

You keep accusing me of being ignorant, yet I've lived in the UK for about 5 years, how long did you spend in the US? And except the evidence supports my claims, while you need to reply on interpretations, speculation and bs claims of cultural misunderstandings.

> So why do UK citizens defend this claim against “thought police”? Because it literally isn’t happening.

Some do, the patriots, others understand the issue and are out protesting against it fighting to keep or regain freedoms. That clearly isn't you though. Why fight for an issue when you can deny it and whatbaoutism any attempt to point it out?

> whataboutism

You keep using that word but I don’t think you understand what it means.

In this conversation I’m making comparisons. Comparisons are important ways to gauge the effectiveness of policies.

What you’re doing is saying comparisons don’t matter because your argument only works if you look at it from a shallow view point.

And then you have the audacity to say everyone else is acting in bad faith apart from yourself.

> That doesn't come under hate speech, but some other laws. Plenty of riots have nothing to do with hate speech, and the issue isn't the same. There may be crossover sometimes, but not necessarily.

Exactly. US police has the same powers and arrests people for the same things but those laws are named differently.

So what you’re banging on about is a misconception based purely on the naming of things.

> You keep using that word but I don’t think you understand what it means.

I understand exactly what it means. You might not given how strenuous and unsuccessfully you've been trying to defend yourself against the accusation.

From Wikipedia: "Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about ...?") is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense against the original accusation. "

An example would be a British patriot attempting to defend the UK against claims of government overreach and potential thought crime policing by bringing up US cops shooting unarmed black men.

> What you’re doing is saying comparisons don’t matter because your argument only works if you look at it from a shallow view point.

No, I'm saying you should defend against the claims made instead of deflecting.

> And then you have the audacity to say everyone else is acting in bad faith apart from yourself.

Only the people I think are engaging in bad faith, although I don't really think that about the other user, and think that far more intensely of you at the moment.

> Exactly. US police has the same powers and arrests people for the same things but those laws are named differently.

This has to be a deliberation misinterpretation, no other explanation.

The laws are not named differently in the US, they are named differently in the UK as well. Laws about organizing riots are not hate speech laws in the UK or the US. Your comparison was nonsense.

> So what you’re banging on about is a misconception based purely on the naming of things.

Not at all. You've completely lost track of what you're talking about and don't appear to understand the differences between the US and UK whatsoever, you're reaching and thus your bizarre attempt to justify a whataboutism by claiming cultural differences to someone who has a better cultural overview of both countries than you do is failing in a rather embarrassing fashion.

I'll remind you you said you were done several posts ago and refused to provide sources when asked because you were 'done' and/or it was too much work, yet you continue to put in more effort in your replies. It brings the credibility of your position into question for any objective readers.

You said you were done. Just be done. Walk away. Get on with your day, go enjoy a nice cup of tea. Let's just agree to disagree, eh?

Are you not wildly exaggerating when you suggest that the ‘cops’ frequently show up at people’s houses based on things that they’ve tweeted? There aren’t even enough police officers in the UK for this to be feasible if they wanted to do it.

I didn't mean to imply that it's happening any time anyone tweet something, but there have been an alarming number of cases of cops showing up at peoples houses for tweets they've made. A far greater number than anything happening in other western countries, which doesn't even have anything close to compare it to.

Just to be clear, even 20 times is significant here, I think the actual number is much higher, but even a low number as 20 is concerning when the tweets don't promote violence, terrorism, CSASM or anything illegal.

What exactly is it that you are saying has happened 20 times? Described in objective terms, not using vague and emotive language like “thought police”, etc etc.

People in the UK tweeted something online that didn't break any laws.

Police showed up to question them.

Many of the tweets in question were around gender identity, but were not directly hateful let alone offensive to the point cops need be involved.

It’s still not clear where you’re getting the number 20 from or which incidents you’re talking about. But it sounds like these are cases of people being questioned by police and then…not getting arrested because they weren’t committing a crime. I’m not sure what is supposed to be concerning about that in the abstract. Maybe there’s something concerning about the specific incidents, but you don’t seem inclined to give any details about them.

> It’s still not clear where you’re getting the number 20 from or which incidents you’re talking about.

Eh, I think it's been abundantly clear enough that a quick search would fill in the blanks, but here is one such example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6636383/Twitter-use..., and it doesn't matter that it's from the DM in this case.

> But it sounds like these are cases of people being questioned by police and then…not getting arrested because they weren’t committing a crime.

The problem is cops showing up at all for people sharing an opinion. The tweets were visible at cop HQ. Sending cops out reads like intimidation which is something cops do in authoritarian societies.

Were you not aware of the subsequent court judgment in favor of the guy in the 2019 article? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-59727118.... No country can prevent all police officers from doing stupid things at all times, but it’s painting a very one-sided picture to leave out this important context.

Incidentally, the Daily Mail is not a news source.

> Were you not aware of the subsequent court judgment in favor of the guy in the 2019 article?

It. Doesn't. matter. The article linked is but one incident. There's been plenty others, some involving public figures. Cops are literally acting like thought police and no, that isn't hyperbole.

The problem that this occurs in the UK far more widespread than it does. I get you want to defend your country but I think you're taking it a bit far here. Denying the issues out of a sense of patriotism is how they worsen.

> Incidentally, the Daily Mail is not a news source.

As I said, the fact that it was a DM article is irrelevant here.

Erm, it matters because the police were required to change their approach in light of that court judgment, as explained in the article that I linked. How can it possibly not matter that the checks and balances provided by the court of appeal succeeded in preventing future police action infringing on free speech? It’s because of this court decision that your Google search turned up a Daily Mail article from 2019 and not something more recent!

You’ll have to remind me of the Chapter of 1984 in which the actions of the Thought Police are reined in by a system of legal checks and balances…

> Denying the issues out of a sense of patriotism is how they worsen.

You’re way off base here. Complaining about the UK is the UK’s national sport. I’m still bitter about Brexit and could write an essay about everything that’s wrong with this silly country. But it’s not a sinister Orwellian police state. If you want something genuinely sinister, look to the motivations of the people posting nonsense about the UK on Twitter.

> Erm, it matters because the police were required to change their approach in light of that court judgment, as explained in the article that I linked.

It's a UK wide problem seemingly and has happened numerous times since the DM article incident, so clearly not. Maybe one little police dept did, but it's a systemic problem or seems to be.

> It’s because of this court decision that your Google search turned up a Daily Mail article from 2019 and not something more recent!

I pasted the first result I found. I'm not interested in finding every. single. incident so you can dispute it one by one to keep trying to defend the UK. You either acknowledge there is an issue or you don't, for me, the numerous incidents of this happening are a problem, not just isolated incidents being blown out of proportion. You clearly disagree.

> You’ll have to remind me of the Chapter of 1984 in which the actions of the Thought Police are reined in by a system of legal checks and balances…

Heh. There were building blocks before Big Brother was introduced, and it was no accident the story was set in the UK either.

> But it’s not a sinister Orwellian police state.

I never said it was. My claim was that it's closer to being so than any other first world country. Downplaying cops acting as literal thought police (in that they are literally policing thoughts) is a problem and despite your assertion that your willing to be critical of the UK (which I don't doubt but don't tae as absolute), reads to me like being patriotic to the point of denying the issues being discussed.

Indeed, it is probably not a coincidence that George Orwell set his novel in the country that he's from. I think you might be onto something there!

> I'm not interested in finding every. single. incident so you can dispute it one by one to keep trying to defend the UK

When I Google, pretty much every instance of the police interviewing people about transphobic tweets (that aren't actually hate speech) occurred before the court judgment I linked to. What you're saying in effect is that you want to go with the vibes about the UK you get from Twitter but don't want to look into the specifics and check their basis in fact.

If you think there are numerous instances of this happening following the court judgment, and that these instances are easy to find by Googling, then it should be easy to provide sources. I am willing to change my mind if you do that, but if you continue to just assert that this is happening frequently without providing evidence, then I won't respond further. I personally was able to find exactly one incident by Googling (which I would not entirely trust the Telegraph to report accurately): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/police-drop-hate...

> It is probably not a coincidence that George Orwell set his novel in the country that he's from. I think you might be onto something there!

Not so much that it just happened to be where he was from but more that he saw issues in the government of the day, some of which still persist since they seem to be cultural.

> When I Google, pretty much every instance of the police interviewing people about transphobic tweets (that aren't actually hate speech) occurred before the court judgment I linked to. What you're saying in effect is that you want to go with the vibes about the UK you get from Twitter but don't want to look into the specifics and check their basis in fact.

I'm aware of several incidents happening after the DM article linked which was six years ago. I'm not particularly motivated to find incidents and link them here because I think you're in a mode to dismiss anything found to try and defend against the notion the UK is less free than it's peers. I apologize for not being able to take you at your word that that isn't the case.

> then I won't respond further.

I appreciate that, and think that's for the best for both of us. Cheers.

Even if you don't want to have an evidence-based discussion with me, I hope that you will check more carefully before making sweeping claims about the UK on HN in future.

I'm confident in the claims I've made, not feeling like it's worth the work to convince you personally is quite a different thing.

Not being funny, but you’re the one being closed minded here.

The other commenter has cited evidence that’s backed up their claims and you’re consistently responding with rhetoric.

This is a constant theme when people argue about freedom of speech being worse in the UK. They cherry pick a couple of headlines from hugely unreliable sources like Twitter (the land of vocal twits) and the Daily Mail (which most people here have nicknamed The Daily Fail because it’s so often wrong) and overlook what’s actually happening in their own countries too.

But if it makes you feel better that your own country isn’t also going to hell in a hand-basket because you’re too busy doomscrolling the UK news, then keep at it. ;)

> The other commenter has cited evidence that’s backed up their claims and you’re consistently responding with rhetoric.

Not the way I see it.

I'm not willing to cite every single instance of a trend so a commenter can pick apart each one to try and dismiss it, when the problem is the trend itself, and not specific instances.

That user also wants to try and pretend that the issue magically stopped after the local police were apparently counseled on the matter, and yet, hark!- another instance less than 4 months old![0]

> This is a constant theme when people argue about freedom of speech being worse in the UK.

I think the bigger issue is tribalism and feeling the need to defend country (and thus tribe) instead of acknowledging hey, maybe there really is a problem?

> They cherry pick a couple of headlines from hugely unreliable sources like Twitter (the land of vocal twits) and the Daily Mail (which most people here have nicknamed The Daily Fail because it’s so often wrong) and

I'm well aware of the reliability of the DM, but when they are just posting basically an interview with someone, it's sufficient as a source. Unless you want to dispute anything factual in the DM article that was linked?

> overlook what’s actually happening in their own countries too.

I think this is mostly a whataboutism.

> But if it makes you feel better that your own country isn’t also going to hell in a hand-basket because you’re too busy doomscrolling the UK news, then keep at it. ;)

I'm deeply concerned with what is happening in many countries, but that doesn't mean I can't be more concerned and critical of a country that is doing more wrong in some contexts than others.

[0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/16/tweets-free-spee...

> Not the way I see it. I'm not willing to cite every single instance of a trend so a commenter can pick apart each one to try and dismiss it, when the problem is the trend itself, and not specific instances.

And here lies the problem. You have formed an opinion and are unable to accept counter evidence.

> I think the bigger issue is tribalism and feeling the need to defend country (and thus tribe) instead of acknowledging hey, maybe there really is a problem?

That’s an idiotic comment given I’ve listed plenty of issues with the UK already. My opening comment even stated how I’m loathed to defend the uk government. I’ve also talked about how I’ve had literal arguments with MP over stupid policies regarding information technology.

The literal one point I’m defending is that the police don’t arrest you for thought crimes / posting memes online. And the reason I’m defending the government on that one point is because it’s flat out wrong and those who claim otherwise are spouting ignorant horseshit.

> I think this is mostly a whataboutism.

Bullshit. You’re the one making comparisons and claiming the UK is the worst offender. Then when evidence is shared about how the UK isn’t you ignore it.

Are you sure it’s not yourself who’s suffering from tribalism?

> And here lies the problem. You have formed an opinion and are unable to accept counter evidence.

Pot, kettle. Upon discussing things further, the evidence I found completely supports my point.

> That’s an idiotic comment given I’ve listed plenty of issues with the UK already.

Wow, resorting to insults. Nice. I should probably point out that's against the HN guidelines.

The issues you listed are different types of issues. You're going out of your way to deny the issue we are discussing is an issue.

> The literal one point I’m defending is that the police don’t arrest you for thought crimes / posting memes online.

Not arrested, but they show up to intimidate which itself is the problem.

> And the reason I’m defending the government on that one point is because it’s flat out wrong and those who claim otherwise are spouting ignorant horseshit.

Seems your defending against a strawman and not the actual issue being discussed.

> Bullshit. You’re the one making comparisons and claiming the UK is the worst offender. Then when evidence is shared about how the UK isn’t you ignore it.

It's not bullshit, and subsequent discussion and investigation has only strengthened my point.

I don't ignore anything, it's just that the evidence presented doesn't support your position.

Thought crime policing is still going on as of 2024, and 25% of the roughly 13,000 "non hate crime incidents", many of which are thought crimes, were incorrectly reported. [0]

Jesus, they recorded an issue as a hate incident because someone didn't want to shake hands. Ignoring and excusing that is akin to burying your head in the sand IMO.

> Are you sure it’s not yourself who’s suffering from tribalism?

Reasonably, since I'm not resorting to insults and strawmen.

[0] https://theweek.com/crime/nchis-the-controversy-over-non-cri...

That’s a 2024 article about an incident that happened in 2019. You can see the date mentioned in this non-paywalled write up: https://freespeechunion.org/i-too-had-visit-from-police-over...

This is why it’s important to show sources so that (understandable) mistakes like this can be pointed out. If you keep posting sources that have been misinterpreted or that lack important context (which again is understandable - I don’t expect people outside the UK to obsessively follow UK news) then we can’t really take your word for it that you’ve Googled and found lots of better examples.

> That’s a 2024 article about an incident that happened in 2019.

That page isn't rendering at all for me in Firefox for some reason, but I can read the text and it appears the Bindel incident was in 2024, and the Pearson incident which is referenced was in 2019. So, no, the 2024 incident happened in 2024.

I'll also note that in the Telegraph article I linked, the prominent author also describes the experience as Orwellian, so the view is hardly as niche or exaggerated as you want it to be.

> then we can’t really take your word for it that you’ve Googled and found lots of better examples.

Maybe, but at this point it seems your looking to dismiss incidents without reading them properly yourself.

Have some more links to incidents that happened after 2019 though, feel free to put each one under a microscope and find reasons to dismiss them, while continuing to ignore a trend and not see the forest for the trees:

- https://unherd.com/newsroom/why-is-the-met-police-investigat...

- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13233691/Scots-Tory...

- https://freespeechunion.org/police-log-hate-incident-for-ref...

And in case you want to continue to insist that the issue was resolved due to that one case in 2019, I'll leave you with this excerpt from an article on this very issue[0]:

----

Is the new Code better?

It sets a higher threshold, stating that NCHIs should only be recorded against individuals if there is "a real risk of significant harm" or crime. But problems remain: the police inspectorate HMICFRS found that 25% of recent NCHIs and hate crimes were wrongly recorded. Police reported being confused by attempts to train them in the Code; many still struggle to distinguish between a crime and an NCHI. This confusion is clear in the most famous recent case. The Daily Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson said that Essex Police visited her in November, wishing to record an NCHI against her (because on X/ Twitter she had mistakenly described two protesters as "Jew haters"). Essex Police denied it was an NCHI case, saying Pearson had been investigated for a public order offence. Either way, the case was dropped after an outcry.

[0]https://theweek.com/crime/nchis-the-controversy-over-non-cri...

Nope, the Bindel incident was in 2019. Here (God help me) is GB news saying the same thing: https://www.gbnews.com/news/feminist-writer-julie-bindel-tra... There's also a Times article behind a paywall that I think confirms it. The Pearson incident happened more recently but had nothing to do with trans issues: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/15/allison-pearso...

One of your links is the incident that I myself already linked. I will look at the others.

Edit: Ok, the other specific incident is about a Conservative MSP who was not actually contacted by Police as part of their investigation. The Police just logged someone's report of one of his tweets under a specifically non-criminal category. They're required to do this because someone reported the tweet and they have to keep a record of that. The freespeechunion article similarly seems to be about cases where the police have correctly recorded someone's complaint and then correctly done nothing about it (as happens all the time with nuisance complaints about noisy neighbors, etc. etc.)

> Nope, the Bindel incident was in 2019. Here (God help me) is GB news saying the same thing: https://www.gbnews.com/news/feminist-writer-julie-bindel-tra... There's also a Times article behind a paywall that I think confirms it.

Fair enough, appreciate the clarification.

> The Pearson incident happened more recently but had nothing to do with trans issues

It's still what can be described as thought policing. As I keep saying this is part of a trend in your country. How many incidents would it take for you to concede that? These types of examples you are working to dismiss are flat out not happening in other western countries.

> The Police just logged someone's report of one of his tweets under a specifically non-criminal category. They're required to do this because someone reported the tweet and they have to keep a record of that.

That's still very much a problem. Now we have thought cataloging for use against people later on. His tweet was logged as a 'hate incident' - that's not nothing.

> The freespeechunion article similarly seems to be about cases where the police have correctly recorded someone's complaint and then correctly done nothing about it

They are logging incidents as 'hate incidents', again, that's not nothing.

And the fact the the police are involved at all and showing up to talk to people who shared their thoughts is the problem here. The fact that no action was taking is basically completely irrelevant to the problem of people being intimidated by cops for sharing thoughts, and yes, cops showing up is enough to count as intimidation.

"In Warwickshire, a suspect was recorded by the force for refusing to shake a person’s hand,"

That should be completely unacceptable and you should agree that that alone is Orwellian or uncomfortably close to it.

And it's not like there are not still more incidents. Gender critical feminists moved to their own platforms but still report such issues - not every issue gets a newspaper story (and I see a lot of these posts which is why I've said there were at least 20 incidents), but given 13,200 incidents were logged in the year from June 2023 to June 2024 and 25% of those were wrongly recorded, that seems like a lot of unnecessary intimidation and intrusion.

Meanwhile in your country, the police kill people just for being black.

I know what I’d consider more worrying and it isn’t the police recording things (which literally just mean they’ve investigated a complaint) and deciding those frivolous complaints don’t deserve any action.

lol, more whataboutisms.

Yes, race issues in the US are a huge issue. That doesn't mean thought policing in the UK isn't also a huge issue.

The difference is I don't deny the issues you mention, nor do I try to deflect by referring to, say, the growing bladed weapons epidemic in the UK.

For someone that said they were done when asked to provide sources, you're participating in this discussion more than I would have expected. Is this what you consider 'being done', writing low-effort fallacious comments?

> (which literally just mean they’ve investigated a complaint)

It means they showed up to grill people over thoughts, and it's baffling how you don't see that as an issue.

We’ve demonstrated how that doesn’t actually happen though. You’re the one refusing to accept the evidence.

And my point about your police force is saying perhaps you should spend more energy addressing your own country’s problems before making incorrect judgments about others.

I thought you were done?

> We’ve demonstrated how that doesn’t actually happen though. You’re the one refusing to accept the evidence.

The other user stated nothing had happened since 2019, and there was an incident in 2024. The examples you've provided are not equivalent to the examples in the UK you are trying t o map them to.

You showed no equivalent to people being arrested for white paper protests, the last examples in the US were in the 70s.

Additionally, 2500s NCHI were incorrectly reported, and you haven't addressed that as well.

That someone has to talk to cops at all for not wanting to shake hands is as scary as it is ridiculous, and its frankly bizarre you want to downplay and dismiss it.

Exactly what evidence is it you think I am refusing to accept? If you can be clear (and I expect you won't be able to because you've only been vague so far and frankly I doubt your claims have substance, which is why out of frustration your resorted to vulgarity and insults, and why when I asked you for links you claimed it was too much effort but here you still are replying...), then I can tell you exactly what issues I have with each item and there can be some productive discussion on the merits of my arguments.

> And my point about your police force is saying perhaps you should spend more energy addressing your own country’s problems

Yes, that's exactly what a whataboutism is. It's literally a perfect example.

> before making incorrect judgments about others.

So far, the evidence supports my claim, and the evidence from the both of you has the other user falsely claiming there were no incidents after 2019 and you equating unrelated non-equivalent incidents in other countries to incidents in the UK. Not at all convincing, and frankly seems rather desperate. If your searches are failing to turn up sufficient evidence, you should maybe consider that your point doesn't have the backing you assume it does.

Having the government show up at your door for non-threatening things you've written online is very concerning.

There have been some instances of people being inappropriately contacted by the police over things they wrote online. I think that this has largely stopped following the court judgment that I mention downthread. I think there's broad agreement here on what the police should and shouldn't be doing. The issue is whether it's actually accurate to paint a picture of the UK as a country where the police regularly harass people about their online postings. If people in the UK strike you as unduly unconcerned, consider the possibility that it's because this isn't actually happening to anything like the extent that some people on Twitter would like you to believe that it does.

By the way, you seem to be using 'the government' in a very broad 90s internet libertarian sense. The police in the UK are operationally independent of the government of the day. As Wikipedia explains:

> Police officers [in the UK] hold office and are not employees. Each officer is an independent legal official and not an "agent of the police force, police authority or government". This allows the police their unique status and notionally provides the citizens of the UK a protection from any government that might wish unlawfully to use the police as an instrument against them.

That’s not really the same as what’s being discussed though it’s still troubling.

Thankfully common sense prevailed and those people weren’t convicted. meanwhile in other “less Orwellian” counties people are getting charged for similar actions:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/protester-int...

Where’s your freedom of speech there?

I’m not saying I agree with Met. But I also don’t agree it proves the UK are charging people for posting internet memes. Which was the original claim.

> That’s not really the same as what’s being discussed though it’s still troubling.

GP mentioned anti-royalist protester arrests and threats of arrest, you asked for a citation, I provided a link to a BBC article discussing those. How is it not "what's being discussed"? (At least in the context of this subthread.)

Fair point. But as I said, there was more to that story. And under relatively similar circumstances people are charged for protesting under similar laws in other countries too. Including ones that have freedom of speech written directly into their constitution.

So while I don’t agree with the UK arrests, it doesn’t prove that the UK is any more Orwellian than any other country.

> Thankfully common sense prevailed and those people weren’t convicted. meanwhile in other “less Orwellian” counties people are getting charged for similar actions:

> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/protester-int...

Jumping over a barricade and disrupting a speech doesn't seem remotely comparable to holding up a blank piece of paper.

>However this “thought police” and “arrested for posting memes” comment that often gets pointed on here is itself a nonsense meme.

Are you for real? These accusations are not merely memes.

While I don't endorse terrible people, it is note worth sometimes awful people are the target of even more awful laws. For example, you can do research into a person named "Adam Smith-Connor" who was literally convicted for standing in public while introspectively praying silently. The conduct of standing while appearing to pray was deemed as a form of illegal protest too near an abortion clinic. The same exact thing happened to another person "Isabel Vaughan-Spruce" who was not convicted.

There are also well documented incidents in the UK involving the prosecution of people making remarks online, which could arguably cross into thought-crime territory. I'll leave it to you to actually research these incidence, Google is your friend.

The event you’re referring to is actually a bit of a non-story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo.amp You’re not allowed to protest right outside an abortion clinic: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/abortion-service-protecti... You can protest against abortion as much as you like. Someone spent a long time trying to politely get this man to leave the protected zone, but he refused, which is why he was then arrested.

As usual in these HN threads on the UK, there’s a reasonable point that could be made about whether or not this restriction correctly balances the right to free speech against women’s right to access healthcare. But instead we see a lot of wildly exaggerated talk about “thought crimes”, etc. etc.

The concept of restricting the time and place of protests is not exactly unknown in the US either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

> For example, you can do research into a person named "Adam Smith-Connor" who was literally convicted for standing in public while introspectively praying silently. The conduct of standing while appearing to pray was deemed as a form of illegal protest too near an abortion clinic.

Those people are not trying to genuinely prey, but to intimidate women considering or wanting to get an abortion.

> There are also well documented incidents in the UK involving the prosecution of people making remarks online, which could arguably cross into thought-crime territory.

On this I agree.

So, loitering with intent, like this guy was arrested for 120 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering#/media/File:Gilbert_...

Or in fact a specific crime of hanging around abortion clinics.

>However this “thought police” and “arrested for posting memes” comment that often gets pointed on here is itself a nonsense meme.

>What actually happened was people were arrested for instigating riots. This is no different to what happened in the US regarding the Capital Hill riots — people who helped organise it online were arrested too.

According to: https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-jail...

One of the "instigators" was sent to prison for tweeting "every man and his dog should smash [the] f** out of Britannia hotel (in Leeds)". While I agree such tweet might be illegal under US law (it plausibly meets the "imminent lawless action" standard), it's a stretch to equate that to "organise [the Capital Hill riots] online" (whatever that means). A tweet by a nobody who got 6 likes isn't "organising". It's shitposting.

Did you actually read that article. In there it even stated there was a pattern of behaviour and that his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands and directly resulted criminal damage. Not only that, that his comments were intended to cause criminal damage and result in physical attacks against immigrants.

What you’ve done is selectively quoted a small subset of portions from that article to misrepresent the full trial.

Which is exactly why I had to write my comment defending the UK government earlier. Believe me, I really don’t want to defend the government.

The UK government get a lot wrong when it comes to legislation regarding technology. In fact they get nearly everything wrong and I’ve frequently had to have words my MPs about it (not that that’s done any good). But they categorically do not lock people up just for shitposting. At best that’s just an exaggeration. At worst it’s an out right misrepresentation of the facts.

>Did you actually read that article. In there it even stated there was a pattern of behaviour and that his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands

Are you talking about this?

"The initial post received six likes. However, it was sent to your 1,500 Facebook friends and, because of your lack of privacy settings, will have been forwarded to friends of your friends."

"shared" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and likely used in a misleading way. Given how facebook uses algorithmic timelines, and the wording (the judge was seemingly unwilling to use a stronger word like "seen" or "read"), my guess is that was the upper bound of people who could have seen his post, not how many people actually seen it. It certainly doesn't mean 1,500 people actually clicked the shared button next to his post (or otherwise make a conscious effort to disseminate the post), as "his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands" implies.

> and directly resulted criminal damage.

Is there any evidence that people who has committed crimes even seen his post? Or are you simply claiming that because he made such tweets, such tweets called for riots, and riots happened, that those tweets "directly resulted criminal damage"?

>Not only that, that his comments were intended to cause criminal damage and result in physical attacks against immigrants.

This doesn't contradict my prior comment, which specifically admits his behavior is illegal under even US law. My complaint was with the characterization that his tweets counts as "organising".

His comments were all shared on Telegram too.

And let’s not forget that the Capital Hill riots were just a small few who took things out of hand - like with this guy. So it doesn’t need to be thousands to be a criminal offence.

There’s more about the wider debate here (the BBC is a lot more impartial than Sky News too) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr548zdmz3jo

And the notes of the arrest here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...

The guy in question pled guilty too. So he clearly admits responsibility for the attack on the hotel. And that in itself should indicate that there’s more to this story than just “shitposting” on Facebook.

The problem here is folks like Elon Musk are focusing on the “freedom of speech” aspect (and if course he is, he’s got a vested self interest to) and given Elons media reach, this story gets skewed into a different debate.

The ironic thing is the biggest voices arguing that the UK is Orwellian don’t even realise that arrests have been happening in their own county for the same things and for much longer than in the UK.

For example in America, 2 years ago: https://teslatelegraph.com/2023/11/14/a-man-has-been-sentenc...

Or how about 10 years ago: https://www.mic.com/articles/54961/8-social-media-users-arre...

And that’s my biggest complaint about this discussion on HN: The UK is singled out when this is happening in every country. And the cases people refer to in the UK are being distorted to sound like it’s harmless memes when the actual comments are far from what any sane person would call “shitposting”.

>His comments were all shared on Telegram too.

1. source?

2. Given the issues I outlined above with the word "shared", can you clarify what exactly is meant by that? Are we talking about the act of him posting to a group chat, or that other people made an conscious effort to disseminate his post?

>And the notes of the arrest here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...

This doesn't provide any information to refute the points I presented in my prior comment.

>The guy in question pled guilty too. So he clearly admits responsibility for the attack on the hotel.

Don't confuse pleading with guilt. He faced years/decades in prison, along with any fines/legal bills. Pleading out could be a rational choice even if he was innocent.

>And that in itself should indicate that there’s more to this story than just “shitposting” on Facebook.

This is circular reasoning. If the thing being discussed was whether prosecutors were overzealous in prosecuting such tweets, you can't use the fact that he was prosecuted in arguing that arguing prosecutors weren't overzealous.

>The ironic thing is the biggest voices arguing that the UK is Orwellian don’t even realise that arrests have been happening in their own county for the same things and for much longer than in the UK.

>For example in America, 2 years ago: https://teslatelegraph.com/2023/11/14/a-man-has-been-sentenc...

>Or how about 10 years ago: https://www.mic.com/articles/54961/8-social-media-users-arre...

I'm not sure why you're still trying to argue such acts are criminal, when a few comments ago I specifically agreed with the possibility that such acts are criminal.

>[...] I agree such tweet might be illegal under US law (it plausibly meets the "imminent lawless action" standard) [...]

It's not that bad. I think the demanding a backdoor from Apple is over the top / stupid. But I haven't heard mention of thought crimes yet (brit here).

Where would you have expected to see that?

I'm entirely against what the UK government wants, however I would say:

Although you're right that tech people would still be able to choose secure encrypted options, the fact is that the majority of criminals by pure numbers are not very sophisticated - so while this sort of backdoor obviously wouldn't be a guarantee that every criminal conversation could be snooped on, it would work on the 90-99% (I'd guess towards 99) who aren't both cautious enough to try to be secure and tech savvy enough to make the right choices.

(But it's still a terrible idea, both for the sake of general privacy principles, and for the risk that current or future governments or personnel will abuse the access, and for the risk that criminals outside government will be able to take advantage of the same backdoor.)

The idea that criminals are not sophisticated is a weak excuse for this system.

Once the government starts mining data from iPhones, criminals will quickly adapt while every law-abiding citizen gets caught in the crossfire. It opens the door for abuse: officials could easily spy on their partners, dig up dirt on rivals, or target those they dislike without breaking any laws. Meanwhile, cybercriminals will have an easy target since every phone comes with this built-in vulnerability.

This system is likely to snag small-time offenders, not the real masterminds behind organized crime. This isn’t a smart solution for crime. It just sacrifices our privacy for a few token arrests.

Criminals don't need to be all sophisticated anyway. They just need to know how to reach one of the sophisticated criminals and pay them to extract whatever they need.

Incidentally, as a non US and non UKer, my data with the major tech firms has no protection anyway. Welcome to the club, US citizens :)

Very weak considering we have a criminal in the White House

He is not sophisticated and did not needed to be sophisticated to be in the White House. And untouchable by the law.

Most GSW victims are killed by one or two bullets, not hundreds of them.

You don't need a "vast majority" of criminals to break down a system and exfiltrate data when just a single, possibly state-backed, criminal operation can break your system down and do the job.

Realistically most criminals probably don’t even turn on ADP, so it will probably move the needle not at all.

For three whole minutes until everyone knows it's totally compromised and stops doing that

SMS is already known to be insecure and easily snooped on with a warrant, and has been used by police around the world in many cases, yet a surprisingly high number of criminals still use it.

The majority of criminals have no idea that their their iMessage encryption keys and iMessages are synced into the cloud and available to law enforcement with a warrant. No need to break devices security, no need for back doors.

There are already replies with sound arguments against the ideology that 90 of criminals arnt that sophisticated.

Secondly, I will also point out that criminals in general watch whats happening to other criminals. If people start going to jail because there mobile communications are being targeted, others will catch on and stop using mobile tech altogether for criminal activities.. People copy what works successfully, you don't need to be smart to do that. So yeah this argument is complete bullshit.

We should not normalize the idea that it's acceptable within a country's borders either.

It's a massive overreach to demand a backdoor to phones within the country. Don't allow the even bigger overreach to move the Overton window and make it seem like it should ever be acceptable.

I think it's reasonable here to differentiate between acceptable and legal. It's completely unacceptable, but the British people have proven time and time again they're more than happy to make horrifically unacceptable things completely legal in the pursuit of "safety."

As with the US, I would not equate "British lawmakers passed" with "British people are happy to". British people are not given direct referendum on this issue specifically, and all of the mainstream British parties currently support the Snooper's Charter.

Mate, the "take all steps necessary to root out paedophiles" referendum would be won with 95% of the vote. It's all in the framing, you know that.

> It's all in the framing

Yeah, that's the root of the problem, I think.

It's easy to sell people that "we just need this one more bit of access to your private data, it helps us stops paedophiles and terrorists", but each step takes us further down a bad path.

I'm sure everybody would agree that having full camera surveillance inside every UK home is too far, but no oversight at all is also bad.

There is a point along that line where society would say "no, that's enough", but successive governments have realised that they can slowly push that point further right and nobody seems to notice, or care.

I'm not aware of British people rioting in the streets over living in a society with multiple cameras on every corner of every street, where police knock on your front door based on social media posts. They seem to accept it, even welcome it.

If the people were strongly against the Snooper's Charter there would be politicians willing to stand against it. The parties do not impose their will on the people, they do and say what they must to gain and keep power.

How is this different than FATCA? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Complian...

(Note: nothing in this message should be construed as support for the US thinking that non-US accounts or non-US income of US citizens should be any of their business.)

There's a large difference between backdooring end-to-end encryption and accessing financial records that are already by design available to the financial institution.

Why would the IRS need to access my records? Or need to impose non-US citizens to sign affidavits outside the US?

FYI I am not a "US Person", whatever that means, yet when I signed up with my bank account in an EU country I had to sign an affidavit claiming I am not a "US Person", although that designation has no meaning in the local laws.

(Note: this is an explanation, not an endorsement or any form of support.)

These requirements are in place in part because the US wants to tax the income of US citizens no matter where they are in the world. So, they make requirements like FATCA and make requirements on foreign banks that amount to "we won't do business with you unless you impose these requirements on all US citizens (which inherently also means asking everyone if they're a US citizen)".

These decryption requirements are being put in place in part because the UK wants to find potential criminals no matter where they operate from in the world. So, they make requirements like back doors and make requirements on companies that amount to "we will fine you a % of your global revenue unless you impose these requirements on all potential criminals" (which inherently also means decrypting everyone's messages)".

Totally OK, given the precedent?

1) Not at all, and I did explicitly note a key difference.

2) As stated, I don't support either. But I also think there's a meaningful difference between the two.

A similar law passed in Australia a few years ago; various Australian law enforcement agencies can request or even demand companies to make changes to their code (read: introduce backdoors).

Until people and companies start treating Australian-made software as dangerous to the extent that it affects the economy, other countries will probably follow with similar laws.

That should include being hesitant to use American software as well. There's a good reason EU companies aren't allowed to store data on American servers.

Current state of this, as far as I can tell: https://www.firstattribute.com/en/news/eu-data-boundary-for-...

Note that it's seemingly unclear whether it's OK for EU companies to store data even on EU servers of US parent companies. Although very little has actually been done about this and everyone, governments included, is still using Microsoft 365.

In principle as long as a state has legal hooks into a large enough part of the business it’s probably ok. Data centers are less tricky than phones because they don’t move.

I’m also not sure there’s so much practical difference between a company headquartered in the EU vs USA. The relevant thing would seem to be where operations happen, and what legal and practical hooks each side has into the company, including physical location of servers and the people who operate and write code for them.

It’s not just at Australian made hardware or software. You think Australia won’t try to assert this against a global company with presence in Australia?

More context: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/09/australia-thr...

With a warrant a company can be forced to implement this capability for a specific case. Is it the same?

"TCNs are orders that require a company to build new capabilities that assist law enforcement agencies in accessing encrypted data. The Attorney-General must approve a TCN by confirming it is reasonable, proportionate, practical, and technically feasible."

It's a step above a warrant, as an order, when building a new capability. But yes, its focused in on one case. As to "reasonable" - our current AG is a strong supporter of expanding government powers as a way to fix any new problem that appears. He's done some good. And some bad. It isn't hard to see him rubber-stamping these, if someone across the hall needs it done.

Also... If a TCN order comes through, you're not permitted to tell the business that you've been ordered to create a backdoor in them. And they can order random anyone in the company to comply - it doesn't have to go to the C-level.

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

"What assistance can be provided"

> Note: private communications and data may only be accessed with lawful authority pursuant to the existing warrant framework

> Until people and companies start treating Australian-made software as dangerous

Atlassian?

I'm from the UK, and I completely agree.

The general public either don't know about growing mass surveillance and privacy invasions, or don't care. "Terrorism and child abuse = bad, and if this prevents it and I have nothing to hide then why would it be a problem for me?"

> This is a dramatic overreach of authority.

Well, the rest of the world lives with the USA constantly doing this. Hopefully you dont support that as well.

The US does not require Apple to make a backdoor to its encryption.

How do you know that? Similarly to the UK, USA has a process to force companies to add back doors. For all we know it might the USA wanting access and using its five eyes allies to get it done.

Compelled speech, and compelled work, are both disallowed by the US constitution.

Apple successfully used this argument several years ago when the FBI tried to demand that they break a phone for an investigation.

If there is more recent news or legislation, perhaps I'm not remembering it?

> Compelled speech, and compelled work, are both disallowed by the US constitution... Apple successfully used this argument several years ago when the FBI tried to demand that they break a phone for an investigation.

I'm not sure this is how the San Bernardino case actually panned out:

"Apple declined to create the software, and a hearing was scheduled for March 22. However, a day before the hearing was supposed to happen, the government obtained a delay, saying it had found a third party able to assist in unlocking the iPhone. On March 28, the government claimed that the FBI had unlocked the iPhone and withdrew its request."

The arguments were never actually tested in court, the whole thing was quietly put away once the FBI found another way to unlock the phone.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...

Yes, in this case: successfully used this argument to delay until the FBI gave up.

If it had gone to court, the argument was considered strong, but of course no one knows until a verdict is reached and appeals are exhausted.

This is a gross simplification of the many factors that lead to the FBI dropping the demand against Apple, in my opinion.

But it is everything we know.

The expectation was that FBI would lose in court. But that was not guaranteed, certainly.

FBI had multiple reasons to abandon the effort, but one was that if legal precedent was established at that time, for that case, it would be harder to bypass in future cases.

I expected the FBI to win in court because the FBI had precedent on its side. The judge had asked Apple to provide reasonable technical assistance to access data on the phone, and modifying one line of code fits well within the judge's request.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Apple is not in scope for CALEA requirements. But point taken.

Point to the law that requires them to do it and keep quiet about it. The US law.

I'll wait.

Heres an example of when Apple got caught giving the US government all users push notifications, and then quite openly said they had been bound by law to keep quiet about it.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve...

> "In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information,"

It wasn't the US government, and it wasn't all users.

There does not have to be a law for the US government to do something.

Remember the NSA spying scandal?

CALEA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

Apple has a history of giving the US government whatever user data they want, lying about it, then when it leaks publicly they are able to say 'Well we couldnt tell you because it would have been breaking the law, sorry about that'.

Have an example, of when it leaked that apple was secretly syphoning off all push notifications to the US government:

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve...

Fundamentally not the same thing. Notifications aren't encrypted. Apple has made no claim that they're secret from the govt.

Apple has very loudly and prominently and specifically stated that their encrypted is ecrypted and not even available to apple. They list which portions of icloud this applies to and not.

Huge different between an omission and a large, positive lie.

They reason they have 'very loudly and prominently' proclaimed that they will never break encryption, is to make the general public believe their data is safe with Apple. Its purely a marketing stunt. The push message syphoning to governments is only one of many ways they willingly hand over data to governments on request.

But the US demands data from non US citizens stored in non-US countries aka CloudAct.

But it is greatly in the interest of US agencies to perpetuate conspiracies that they have access to all data, all the time, with no court needed.

Well there is still a HUGE difference between some backroom dealing that blows up in government’s face in the most scandalous, generation defining way when it gets exposed, and a bunch of power-hungry troglodytes saying they want to play Orwellian villains in the open.

The US, through the Intel ME software, already got a backdoor in most laptop. Using PRISM, it also had one on most big Saas, and now that it's over, it probably has a similar one we don't know about given Snowden's revelations about xkeyscore and how it works.

It's very likely they also have a backdoor in Apple phone with a gag order, given Apple was part of PRISM and we can't check their proprietary system.

We also know China has backdoors to any software or hardware product you want to sell there.

So it is a problem that the UK is asking for this for us, but from their perspective, they are just catching up with the current horrible state of things.

> very likely they also have a backdoor in Apple phone with a gag order, given Apple was part of PRISM

People keep repeating this as if PRISM was a voluntary, or even secretly cooperative, program.

PRISM was no such thing. PRISM was the US govt snarfing up whatever data they could (under questionable legal authority), but no one has ever alleged that the data they were snarfing was provided willingly or knowingly by Google, Apple, etc.

These companies are also victims of PRISM, not participants.

All have explicitly refuted claims of any backdoor into their systems. There is no evidence that they are lying, or being forced to lie.

> People keep repeating this as if PRISM was a voluntary, or even secretly cooperative, program. PRISM was no such thing.

Wheres the evidence to say they had no idea about it and it was purely an external hacking effort?

> All have explicitly refuted claims of any backdoor into their systems. There is no evidence that they are lying, or being forced to lie.

Except all the previous times they have lied because the government asked them to. Like the time they willingly gave all users push notifications to the US government and then lied and said they didn't, until it leaked and they admitted they did and then openly spoke about how the government had forced them to keep quiet about it.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve...

Wikipedia clearly states:

PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC and Apple under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

They were actively providing the data on request.

Sorry, I should have been more explicit. Of course all US companies comply with US court orders.

The controversial new revelation re: PRISM, via Snowden, was that NSA was also snarfing everything they could including unencrypted comms over frame relay/etc networks comprising, e.g., Google's internal inter-site networks.

To which all mentioned companies said "we were not aware of this, we never authorized a backdoor for LE at any level, this is a breach of trust and probably not legal, and now we'll encrypt everything between our internal systems too".

1 + 1 = 2

If they can ask whatever they want (they had secret courts that could provide any legal request), they have a massive data acquisition apparatus, they had many backdoors they actively used, and big companies complied while being silenced by a gag order, assuming they have direct backdoors provided officially today that we don't know about, and that companies with proprietary systems we can't check can't talk about, is just common sense at this point.

Why would you give them the benefit of the doubt when the 2 last decades of track record have given you all the reason not to, and that the next step is the logical conclusion?

Lions kill gazelles. But not this specific gazelle because I like this one?

But anyway, the point is moot, they don't even need to for this particular debate. They already have a lot. The UK therefor not matching them exactly is just them using a slightly parallel road for the same result.

It's a terrible thing either way for us. But I get the logic for them.

Oh, I don't trust any of the actors. But I trust the encryption math.

If the argument is that the encryption is compromised by weak factors or key escrow etc, then that is a really interesting conversation, on which I'd like to hear more informed opinions.

But if all we can do is speculate, my trust remains in the mathematics.

https://xkcd.com/538/

This applies to corps as well.

Right. Who would be the first country the US might go to if it wanted to spy on it's citizens from abroad? Perhaps one who already does this for them using other methods such as wire tapping?

Are you suggesting that the UK government isn't snoopy or creative enough to initiate this idea on their own??

No. Maybe it was their idea, maybe it was the US's. One thing's for sure though we wouldn't be pushing ahead with this without the tacit support of the US, particularly in the current environment.

Tenuous. The UK did not need US approval to make all of its existing privacy-violating laws. Nor did Australia, or parts of the EU.

Don't get me wrong. The only thing holding the US government back from growing all the more monstrous is a patchwork of sketchy laws that might have teeth.

But I don't see any reason to assume that the stupidity of Brits is the fault of Americans. This time.

So they have us intercept internet traffic and pass it on to them, but they wouldn't want access to data in iCloud? Right, ok sure.

I don't know, or care, if we initiated it or the US - but I find folks from the US acting like it's some shocking thing is quite galling.

FWIW, the US govt does not have a back door into the encrypted data held by US companies. A US company is not obligated to create a way to decrypt customer data to respond to a court order.

So this is different, and worse. Not everything stupid in the world can be blamed on the US, as it seems you're trying to do. Plenty can! But not everything. Some stupid is home grown. See also: Brexit.

Kind of like the EU overreach on privacy. Whether it’s for a good cause or a bad one, these sorts of overreach are to be opposed.

It'd be kinda like GDPR if the EU has demanded that non EU companies apply GDPR to non EU citizens

As described by the parent post it's nothing like EU "overreach" on privacy (whatever that even means)

How am I supposed to put up a website intended for US citizens onto the world-wide-web, without worrying about GDPR?

So you track your website vistors?

I run multiple Discourse sites. You can spin that however you want. People have personal data on my sites for sure. Is that “tracking” in your book? What about in the EU’s book? Anyway, I’m not going to read the GDPR to find out whether that’s “illegal,” no matter what they say.

IP blocking if you really can't live without tracking your users unnecessarily

If you're aware of any such website which has been investigated under GDPR I'd be happy to know

In other words, the EU mandates that I follow their law, even though they have no jurisdiction over me. I can follow it by refusing to track PII, or I can follow it by “blocking” Europe on the WWW. I can’t be bothered to figure out how to do either of those things, so I don’t bother. I just spin up an instance of Discourse and move on. Because their claim that I must follow their laws is just as bogus as the UK’s claim, even if I think the EU had admirable goals and the UK has terrible goals.

You only need to worry about GDPR if you are harvesting and saving personal and identifiable information on your users.

If you are not doing that then you dont even have to think about it.

This always gets trotted out, usually by people who seem to have never run any web service before. IPs are apparently PII, and all default server configs log them. If you don’t, good luck complying with any security audits that will require you to keep them to make forensics possible.

This is just one of the things that makes GDPR, in practice, an “if we don’t like you, we’ll investigate you and will definitely find something” law.

I am a data controller for multiple companies, I have read the GDPR legislation cover to cover multiple times, I have been through multiple audits. You only need to care about it if you are storing personal data, end of. Downvote me if you like but thats the cold hard truth.

> IPs are apparently PII

It always pains me when people spout stuff about GDPR that they think they know but dont. Go talk to an auditor like I have many times, then you wont need to use words like 'apparently' and you will actually know what you are talking about.

> > IPs are apparently PII

> It always pains me when people spout stuff about GDPR that they think they know but dont.

Are you trying to suggest end user IPs are not PII? There is judgement from CJEU (Patrick Breyer v Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ECLI:EU:C:2016:779) regarding the older Data Protection Directive that IP address is personal data if the service provider can give the IP address to competent authority and that authority has a way to connect it to user. As most (all?) EU countries mandate that ISPs keep logs that match IP address to subscriber and competent authority can get this information, the IP address is almost always PII.

Or is your auditor suggesting that GDPR is less strict than the older directive regarding this case? From my reading the only real difference was that GDPR added a bit more precision on what reasonable actions are ("such as the costs of and the amount of time required for identification, taking into consideration the available technology at the time of the processing and technological developments"). At least to me the example given in the court case would be reasonable when taking those in account.

You can, of course, have legitimate interest to collect it (like many other forms of PII as well), even for cases where the data subject cannot object to it. It doesn't change the fact that it's almost certainly PII.

It’s your job, and you’ve put more time into this than I will ever put into it. True. You (hopefully) understand the law better than me and the commenter you replied to. But you certainly haven’t convinced me to read the GDPR legislation cover to cover multiple times to decide whether and how I can comply! The EU can’t tell me what to do with my Discourse website. I put it online. They can block it for their residents if they don’t like it. That is not my responsibility.

It isn't just UK. This isn't the first time a Nation decided that any company operating on its soil, would have to comply with an order that reach world wide operation and failure to do so would be fined on worldwide revenue.

This is just absurd.

Its for your safety and security /s

Do you remember when Theresa May had to tell the US no when they wanted to profile UK citizens of certain ethnic backgrounds for US travel?

I keep saying this, and nobody believes me, but I'm just going to keep trying:

These things happen because so often we focus the privacy conversation on corporations, which is exactly where the governments want it to be.

My controversial but strong opinion is that privacy from corporations matters very little, but privacy from governments matters very much.

We need to stop allowing the conversation to get distracted by talking about cookies and ad-tracking and whatnot, and always bring it right back to privacy from governments.

Yes, corporations and the government are often in cahoots here - but even then we should be talking about how wrong it is for governments to be buying/taking/demanding data from corporations - keeping the focus squarely on the government.

The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments) is to sell you something. That's all they want. They collect data so they can make money off you. That's not so scary to me. Governments want to put you in jail (or freeze your bank account, etc) if you get out of line.

> The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments)

There, you said it. If we want to keep data out of the hands of wrong governments, we better keep it out of the hands of corporations.

Thank you. If governments have more restrictions than corporations, all that will happen is that corporations will immediately spring up to exploit this arbitrage opportunity.

To be fair, Apple seem to try really quite hard to keep users data out of its hands

Non E2E encrypted on by default iCloud backups say otherwise..

And remember that enabling advanced data protection just means they'll get your conversations from the other partys' iCloud backups.

Most users' "threat model" is loss from actually losing things, or doing dumb things to themselves. They expect Apple to fix that.

Apple understands this, and in most markets there's a Genius Bar somewhere near the user, with technology letting Apple help them.

If your model is something else, they also have your back.

> remember that enabling advanced data protection just means they'll get your conversations from the other partys' iCloud backups

Conversations may have a counterparty not using ADP, your data storage probably doesn't.

And yes, who else can see things is very important. People show others "your" messages on their phones all the time, the more unfortunate the message, the more likely they are to overshare. Very much worth remembering they have copies of the same discussion, for this, and for backups.

While ADP won't solve betrayal of trust through analog sharing or digital resharing, Apple DO have a way to ensure your message is only between you and a personally verified counterparty:

- iMessage Contact Key Verification: https://support.apple.com/en-us/118246

After that, trust is up to you, or use a different app – knowing it can still be shown.

On one hand, I get the business reasons for not using E2E by default (it’d make data recovery more difficult for probably the vast majority of their users, which would be a customer service headache). Hell, even some experienced users would be more inconvenienced when something goes wrong. But if they won’t enable it by default, the option to enable it needs to be MUCH more clearly presented to users. The current implementation leads users to believe their data is more private than it is, which imo is just asking for trouble down the line.

That’s not the worst thing a corp can do. The worst things a corp can do is sell your private data to someone else, monopolize a critical function and squeeze you dry, or block you from a monopolized utility that is critical to modern society.

The focus need to be on both

Plus the common privacy threats: stalkers in the company accessing your private information, technical gaffes or breaches or unconcern exposing your private information, both of which could derail your life depending on what sort of marginalized groups you're a part of.

A stalker in LEO is bad, yes, but so is a stalker in your apartment lock managing company or at any other number of non-government companies you're forced to interact with.

Is there an example of this happening? Seems like a stretch.

On the other hand there are examples of people in the UK expressing racist sentiments in DMs and being jailed for it.

This was the first example that popped to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...

Not having Google accounts isn't the end of the world, but given the amount that many (most?) of us rely on their services (I think of all the accounts I have tied to my @gmail email and cringe, but still I'm there), this is fairly disasterous.

I can hold my government accountable via the polling booth

I have no control over Apple or Amazon or Alphabet. I can petition the government through the court system if it tries to put me in jail, the government functions with a massive series of checks and balances.

I can't petition google, they are an unelected uncontrollable unaccountable entity that not even the government has power over

It's easier to not buy an iPhone than it was trying to prevent a politician I didn't trust from getting in office.

In either case, collective action is, at best, the best you're going to have.

Do regulations not have meaning?

You might think you're safe because you don't carry a phone, never upload a photo, etc. You drove across the country in a car you paid cash for while bemoaning cameras that catch you speeding, in the name of "privacy". Meanwhile meta knows exactly where you are as their face recognition attached it to your shadow profile when someone took a selfie with you in the background, you were seen on a ring doorbell by amazon as you walked down the street

This "individualism" and "I'm alright jack" approach is a fallacy the world can't afford.

My government doesn't have a copy of my family tree or a good idea what my DNA is. Ancestry.com does.

> My government doesn't have a copy of my family tree

They absolutely do, your parents were on your government issued birth certificate, and the government issues marriage certificates and official name change paperwork too. I'd be a bit surprised if they don't some idea of your DNA as well, though I'd agree not to the level of Ancestry.

They all do though. Do you think the government isn't tapping the genetic databases of 23andme and Ancestry? Or the bottomless data out that is Gmail. Or iCloud. Or Gmaps location data.

I'd rather not decide who is the worse privacy offender, companies or governments, and best restrict both to a need-to-know basis.

They wouldn't be able to tap those databases if those private companies didn't make them in the first place.

Until the gag order comes in to set those databases up. We need to hold both entities, private corporations and governments, accountable.

No you can’t.

If you live in California, with a population of 39.43 million, you get the same representation in the Senate as Wyoming with a population of 538,486 residents. Not to mention gerrymandering, the electoral college, etc. Your vote even as part of a collective doesn’t represent the will of the people.

We are seeing right now with President Musk that the President can complete ignore the constitution and the laws with “qualified immunity”. Is what we ste seeing now “accountability”?

Citizens aren't represented in the Senate. Citizens are represented in the House of Representatives. That's why California has 52 representatives and Wyoming has 1. The Senate represents the state itself, which is why each state has 2 senators. This misunderstanding of the difference between the House and the Senate needs to end.

Indeed, California has 52 times the representation but about 80 times the people. That disconnect is why the cap on the size of the House needs to be lifted.

Who confirms judges and heads of various departments? The House is powerless compared to the Senate.

Without the Senate, the United States of America would have taken a lot longer to congeal than it did. If it ever did.

The popular election of senators fundamentally changed a lot about how American government works - senators elected by state legislators (which was the usual method prior to that) are beholden to a very different pressure group with very different interests than the populace at large.

Now, they did go about the change properly. So points there. But at the time of the amendment, nobody really anticipated the Farm Bill (or, for that matter, Herbert Hoover getting into the positions of power he held prior to his election to the Presidency - where his performance was sufficiently strong to get him elected to the top job).

> I can hold my government accountable via the polling booth

Yes, but elected officials have used private information to disenfranchise groups of people before. Europe's right to privacy is in part a reaction to abuses that occurred in Nazi Germany.

Private information gathered, processed and stored by private companies

There are large numbers of laws about the data that my government can gather, hold and use on me. No they aren't perfect.

There are pretty much zero laws about what Elon or Zuck can gather, hold, and use

I'm far more worried about the second set of data

I think this is partially correct but as the center moved rapidly to the right I’d say you need to study early 20th century governments and the arc of the US government as they decline into fascism. This is characterized primarily by privatization (and ofc surveillance and militarization of police.) In practice this means that the corps become a government just one that has zero accountability so people can’t use words like “authoritarian”

> The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments) is to sell you something. That's all they want. They collect data so they can make money off you. That's not so scary to me. Governments want to put you in jail (or freeze your bank account, etc) if you get out of line.

It depends what government and what corporations. If it's a healthy functionally representative government then it's rules and laws can be to a certain extent controlled by the public. It may be harder to influence corporations. If a bank wants to close your account, or Visa stops accepting your payments or airlines don't let you fly, you can't complain, they'll just "well tough luck, it's our bank, our airplanes, our payment system, go create your own if you disagree". So I agree with you that this should be a worrying thing for the U.K. citizens, they should ask their government why the heck does it want all that data and maybe it should stop.

> Yes, corporations and the government are often in cahoots here - but even then we should be talking about how wrong it is for governments to be buying/taking/demanding data from corporations - keeping the focus squarely on the government.

Very much in cahoots. They hide behind each others backs, too. "(Apple): Sorry, government made us do it, our hands are tied". "(Govt): Sorry, _we_ are not spying on you. We just bought some data from Google or Apple".

In a democracy, the government is an outcome of elections, however they represent the majority and you may not be in that majority. This is why you can't talk about democracy without a strong culture focusing on the individual's rights, aka liberalism, otherwise all you have is a tyranny of the majority.

You're also deeply wrong. The fundamental difference between a state and corporations is that the state has a monopoly on violence and anything that a corporation is doing, and that harms individuals, can only happen with the complicity of the state. For example, there is no such thing as a natural monopoly, all monopolies are granted by the state in one way or another.

And the differences should be obvious, given the state can deprive you of freedom, it can starve you, it can inflict physical violence, and can even kill you. Corporations can't do this, unless the state commands it, obviously.

> It may be harder to influence corporations.

Actually, depriving Apple of the money you'd pay for an iPhone has more impact that your democratic vote. And even if you disagree with this, consider that you can vote for politicians promising to regulate Apple. And switching to Android or Windows has a lower cost than switching countries (and yes, that's an oligopoly, but that's because your state granted it via IP laws).

> This is why you can't talk about democracy without a strong culture focusing on the individual's rights, aka liberalism, otherwise all you have is a tyranny of the majority.

That's still all democracy is, though. A tyranny need not be absolute to be a tyranny.

> For example, there is no such thing as a natural monopoly, all monopolies are granted by the state in one way or another.

I don't see that. They could just not care. As I said it depends on what state you mean. Are you thinking a particular one? Because the state could be busy or care about other stuff than handling monopolies. Maybe there is a war going on, political in-fighting, military coup, etc. If a company buys every other competitor and is now the sole electric toaster maker some governments could just care less.

> This is why you can't talk about democracy without a strong culture focusing on the individual's rights, aka liberalism, otherwise all you have is a tyranny of the majority.

Of course. So it depends. Again, are you talking about a particular instance or in general. You can certainly talk about anything you want. The "culture of individual's rights" may not last long if a large majority of the citizens decided to either directly vote against or elect officials who are against it. Can the citizens effectively influence the government to change or can't?

> You're also deeply wrong. The fundamental difference between a state and corporations is that the state has a monopoly on violence and anything that a corporation is doing, and that harms individuals, can only happen with the complicity of the state.

I don't think you've shown the depth of wrongness here. It would take a bit more convincing.

> anything that a corporation is doing, and that harms individuals, can only happen with the complicity of the state

So, there is a way to the citizens to influence the state? And the state then has to influence or control the company, and then company would change its behavior, because it's forced to. Ok, then why the extra level of indirection, and not just influence the government to not harvest private citizens data and stop there?

> Actually, depriving Apple of the money you'd pay for an iPhone has more impact that your democratic vote.

So someone has to already be wealthy enough to buy iPhones to affect some change. Sure, that could work in some countries/corporations it might not work in others. In a healthier environment citizens should aim to influence their government instead. In the model you're proposing citizens try to influence a corporation by boycotting products, that in turn would indirectly influence the government, so it can then again influence the laws, which influence the corporations? That seems like a less healthy and more convoluted dysfunctional scenario. Certainly possible, one may argue that's what's happening in US or Western Europe, but one can image a better a different scenario than that.

> privacy from corporations matters very little, but privacy from governments matters very much.

Historically perhaps, but if you notice what's been happening in America then the line between government and corporation is getting very blurry.

Also historically, when you have a fascist government then companies/corporations are quick to join the party if they want to survive.

I agree with your point that government overreach is more serious.

Which is why I want to emphasize that various government police (like FBI) notoriously buy data that they would need a warrant for otherwise.

I’m aware that you’re saying it, but I think you’re underestimating the extent to which preventing spying from the corps == preventing spying from the govt.

> I keep saying this, and nobody believes me, but I'm just going to keep trying:

You’re the top comment currently and you are repeating the hegemonic American belief for the last half century+. Although focusing narrowly on the government has become less popular lately

> The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments) is to sell you something. That's all they want. They collect data so they can make money off you. That's not so scary to me.

Coca Cola has allegedly murdered trade unionists.[1]

> That's not so scary to me. Governments want to put you in jail (or freeze your bank account, etc) if you get out of line.

Yes. And corporations want to fight against you if you unionize. It’s not like it can sell products in order to fight unionization.

[1] (progressive source apparently) https://prospect.org/features/coca-cola-killings/

[2] (does not blame any corporation) https://www.amnesty.org/ar/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AMR230...

We should have privacy from both. In fact I very much dislike the framing of privacy as being from something — my privacy is for me.

> The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments) is to sell you something

And squash unions:

https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...

https://www.newsweek.com/they-were-spying-us-amazon-walmart-...

And steal tips: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...

And make sure you don't block ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaUv7mwdBUs

Or use "their" products (they retain ownership even after you "buy" them) in unapproved ways:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-bans-consumer...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/musk-bans-tesla-drive...

Or catch whistleblowers: https://www.aspca.org/improving-laws-animals/public-policy/w...

These are just off the top of my head, I'm sure I've missed plenty of ways. We also have personalized pricing to look forward to in the near future.

I've also neglected how they abuse surveillance to squash competition and smaller firms. Consumers rarely care about this, but the private and business spheres are not hermetically separate - when there is only one telecom or supermarket or other company left (or just a handful, and they collude), because they've killed competitors with anti-competitive practices, consumers and employees will feel the consequences. When they won't be able to run their own e-mail, and farmers will see supermarkets take all the profits, and be forbidden from 'unauthorized' tractor repair, and innumerable other abuses.

> The worst thing a corporation is likely to do (other than giving your data to governments) is to sell you something. That's all they want.

That's not all they want.

Just look at some recent scandals, like Cambridge Analytica. Harvesting and analyzing the right data makes it possible to influence democratic elections and referendums.

Selling you stuff is great, but tricking you to vote for lower taxes for their trillion-dollar corporations or tariffs/other negative effects for their competitors is better.

Corporations can also kill you, enslave you, steal your property, start wars, and take over your country. Think of something like Pinkerton, United Fruit, Wagner, or the East India Company.

Governments, corporations, and criminal organizations are not disjoint categories. There is a lot of overlap near the boundaries. You should focus more on what the organization is actually doing than on its nominal classification.

FYI, it's widely known that the US government has being buying citizen data from data brokers.

Corporations are legally allowed to collect much more and more varied kinds of data than governments, in general.

Governments are not barred from purchasing data from private corporations, and it's unclear what an actually-enforceable and -effective regulation on that activity would look like.

Governments can do a lot more damage than corporations when they have that kind of data, true. But nothing stops them from acquiring it by issuing money (fiat currency in the US -- practically unlimited!) and employing it for their own ends.

So it seems like focusing on the collection of which kinds of data, irrespective of who is collecting, is the real concern here.

The next step of this is when you realize that these entities are more intertwined than people give then credit for. The line between government, companies, and people gets very fuzzy very fast (especially on the levels below national governments)

Privacy from government === privacy from companies === privacy from anything else. We need not split them into their own distinct groups, we can (and should) create software, policy, etc. to protect from all at once.

>My controversial but strong opinion is that privacy from corporations matters very little, but privacy from governments matters very much.

The majority of people saying this just don't want ads at all in my opinion, since usually the argument comes up on the topic of targeted ads.

When you're right, the only thing you are to google is a number, likely some uuid in a db. To them all other identifying info is just metadata to shove into an algorithm.

Others are addressing your point about governments buying data from corporations also being bad.

But also, you think companies like Twitter, Facebook, etc which are increasingly activist and distorting truth and public discourse aren't also privacy threats?

And there is danger of it getting worse. So, your points have merit, but we cannot dismiss the threat of abusive corporations either.

Corporations can steal your work, etc. and thereby cause enormous problems that do not fit governments.

For me I think they're a much greater danger than at least my government. My government has no reason to care about what's on my computer. A company however, has an incentive to use every scrap.

Wait until you speak out against your government or try to organize a protest.

More realistically, if you are a women trying to get an abortion in Texas and message someone to help you leave the state to get one see how much more you should be worried.

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/09/texas-abortion-trans...

The government has guns and policemen that can take away your freedom, your property without a trial (civil forfeiture), etc.

Google can serve you ads

Google can kill your digital identity for completely arbitrary, unknowable reasons. Especially if you are all-in on their system, as many, many people are.

How many people have ran to social media begging for help because every avenue offered for appeals are simply automatically rejected?

My “digital identity” isn’t tied to Google.

When Reddit started acting crazy, I deleted my Reddit account and didn’t look back.

When Facebook, went full MAGA, I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

I use Gmail. But if it disappeared, there are a million other email providers.

Google Photos is just one of many services my photos and videos sync to - iCloud, OneDrive, Amazon Drive (photos only) and my local Mac.

It would be an inconvenience for the few places that I use Gmail for. But I have use Apple’s Hide My Email feature since it’s been a thing and that’s connected to Yahoo address and I could change iCloud to forward to another email address.

It’s a lot easier to remove my dependence on Google than get from under the thumb of the US. I know, I’m seriously thinking about a “Plan B” to get out of the US after retirement with the way that the US is headed under President Musk with the dismantling of the health care system and trying to undermine Medicare and probably the ACA where I won’t be able to retire early and buy insurance on the public market.

Yes, but my government wouldn't care if I organized a protest. It's even likely that if I did, the police wouldn't even show up, and in the end, I have democratic control over it.

Meanwhile, I am in literal competition with basically all other people's companies.

You think you have control over what police do? In major cities not even the civilian government would dare piss off the police.

Besides, the police have qualified immunity according to the Supreme Court to do all sorts of nastiness.

They literally will not come unless there's indication that somebody will show up to throw rocks at me etc.

I'm Swedish. Qualified immunity is just not a thing at all.

Your post is reminiscent of Rogaway's paper "The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work"

https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1162.pdf

The way the law in the US works, it's much easier for the government to get your data once you've given it to a company first. So it's very much intertwined.

Prior to the Progressive Era of American politics, corporations used to act a lot more like organized crime - the state sans the legitimacy. What we're seeing with governments and corporations working together is a slow return to this era. As the second Trump administration solidifies, we're going to learn the hard way that we're long past the point of corporations just wanting to sell you something.

If the companies are selling, then the government can always buy, or just ask.

Apple gives data to the United States government on over 70,000 user accounts per year without a warrant.

Anything Apple knows, the FBI can know, without probable cause.

To be clear, tech companies provide subscriber metadata (e.g., billing address, real name) with a court order or subpoena. They provide actual user data (e.g., voicemail) only with a warrant.

Or has something changed since the last time I requested user data from a tech company by subpoena? Or are you talking about intelligence collection as distinct from law enforcement?

Also worth noting that LE frequently has PC without having a warrant (for example: every time they ask a magistrate for a warrant and secure one, we can infer they had PC first). In fact they perform many searches with only PC (see: exigency, eventual discovery, etc).

It would be more apt to say any subscriber metadata Apple knows, the FBI can know without a warrant.

This is false. FAA702 collection provides full content.

This was disclosed by Edward Snowden; the internal codename for such collection is PRISM.

The line between foreign intelligence collection and domestic law enforcement no longer exists. This is why parallel construction is so common today.

Outrageous and (obviously) unconfirmed claims. But again, and as an American whose private data should never fall under the purview of FISA or FAA or any other IC intelligence gathering activities, I don't seriously doubt domestic US spying/surveillance capabilities.

That LE has to feign the need for a warrant should the need arise to make lawfully admissible that which they already know and are in possession of is the most likely scenario. Encryption really is the only safeguard.

I do not agree with your last two sentences but greatly appreciate the quick reply.

Not doubting this whatsoever, but what are you citing here?

Apple’s own transparency report. Look at the FISA (FAA702, aka Prism) section.

Per the Snowden slides, this (FAA702 collection) is the #1 most used collection method by US spies.

They can basically read approximately every camera roll and iMessage in the country with a few clicks.

So, seems that E2E is a total bullshit then?

Only if it's backdoored (or otherwise breakable).

iMessage e2ee is bullshit because iCloud Backup e2ee is opt-in, and approximately 0% of Apple’s user base has turned it on, making iCloud Backup non-e2ee in practice.

All of the iMessage access data (either the iMessages themselves or the iMessage sync key for “Messages in iCloud”) is stored in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup.

This means that the iMessage service e2ee is meaningless because the iMessages themselves are not e2ee.

Note well that turning on iCloud e2ee is insufficient, as everyone else that you iMessage with will still have it off, and all of your iMessages will still be backed up non-e2ee to Apple in their device backups.

Having iCloud e2ee available is the best of both worlds for Apple: they can say that it’s available for privacy-conscious users to opt into, while still being able to turn over basically 100% of all iMessages to the feds whenever they ask.

Sorry. Didn't get it. So, if iMessages IS e2ee (supposedly) and someone properly makes iCloud backups e2ee (supposedly), how the Feds will break it?

I do understand the counterpart party problem, it is not someone can control. Sent once, it's free to be seen by anyone.

Nobody has suggested that anyone, Feds included, has the present technical capability to break any of the security levels that are in widescale E2EE usage today.

If both you and the iMessage counterparty both have e2ee enabled for iCloud Backup, it's unlikely at present that the feds can read the messages without a warrant under FAA702 "foreign" intelligence collection (which as we now know thanks to Snowden is routinely used against even Americans).

With an actual warrant or wiretap order, there is no guarantee that Apple can't or won't insert additional endpoint keys into the conversation.

But, that said, 99.9%+ of users don't have e2ee enabled for iCloud Backup, so the e2ee in iMessage is mostly irrelevant, and it's available in full to the feds at any time, no warrant required.

tl;dr: use Signal.

> we focus the privacy conversation on corporations

Focus on government, cool. Is the government tracking me with cookies, offering cloud services, tracking me with ads, and whatnot?

Sorry, but we should talk about privacy at the source of where we are losing it.

In fact, it might even be easier to make the case that corporations want our focus to be on privacy at the state level and not their brand.

>Is the government tracking me with cookies, offering cloud services, tracking me with ads, and whatnot?

The ops point is that the 'risk' of the corporation having that data is that the government could get it.

Otherwise the damage to you is what, an embarrassing ad if your sharing your screen? How does an ad on reddit having context of what you googled an hour ago actually hurt you?

Yes it's 'privacy' but there's no human involved here. The companies involve don't actually care what you're viewing (unless again, they're required to report it to the government).

Corporations are the nice guys now? Please. We need privacy, period.

Not to be cynical, but if anyone has looked at anything revealed about security agencies in the last few years it's very clear what's happening here - whenever US wants to do something unpopular/straight up illegal, it just asks the UK(or any other partner country) to do it instead. American government can't ask Apple for data on any American citizen, but if UK obtains that data and then it happens to be shared between agencies......that's all fine. It's been happening already for years.

UK governments have been pushing for this for years, usually invoking some recent terrorist event as justification.

I'm not suggesting you're wrong, but I don't think this is _just_ the UK being a US puppet, there is very much an appetite for it in the UK parliament too.

I highly doubt that considering this article is about US complaints towards the UK demand.

Why? Obviously in public they have to say they are outraged by it. The collaboration and intelligence sharing between UK and US is not really up to debate, it's been going on for decades.

Yes, officially since 1946.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes (look also for Nine and Fourteen Eyes on this page)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

You are right... I hadn't put that together.

I wouldn't go full-on conspiracy, because I expect the impetus came from the UK, but... I doubt it would have gotten this far without tacit US gov support.

Governments are huge and constantly changing things.

The cops think this is great, more power in their hands.

The feds think it'll help them out, but those local cops will try to abuse it for sure, let's hope the courts keep on top of the warrants.

The spies already have access that's almost as good by illegal means, without the need for any of those pesky warrants. But it'll be useful not to have to keep their access secret.

The judges think this is a Fourth Amendment bust-up waiting to happen, why would you even... ugh.

The defensive cyber-security types think this is very obviously a bad move.

The diplomats think the Brits are OK and will do their warrant stuff properly, but for sure there will immediately be a request from some oil-rich middle eastern dictatorship for the same access. That will make for some awkward conversations.

The elected politicians in power want to get votes, and are safe against this power being used against them. Being tough on crime and Backing The Blue might be a vote-winner. 95% of voters don't know the difference between "encrypted end-to-end" and "encrypted in transit and at rest" so getting this right might not win you many votes. On the other hand, if this takes off in the public consciousness as snooping, or intrusion, or an expansion of state power, could lose you a lot of votes. Maybe wait and see how the public reacts?

The elected politicians who aren't in power think ooooh boy, this is not a power I want used against me, and not an administration I'd trust not to use it against me.

Not only would I not be surprised if this was a US demand on the UK, but I'd think it highly likely that the law which the UK passed to allow this was also a demand from the US.

[dead]

In case you're wondering why there hasn't been any reaction from the EU, it's probably because EU has long waged war on encryption and would like to have access too.

"Anonymity is not a fundamental right": experts disagree with Europol chief's request for encryption back door (January 22, 2025)

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/anonymity...

EU anti-encryption crusaders seek to turn your digital devices into spyware (June 12, 2024)

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/eu-anti-e...

As a brit I would find it amusing if Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft jointly announced that privacy is a hill to die on, and they'd rather collectively withdraw their businesses from the UK than accede to demands like this. My government would cave within the hour.

100%. We have very little power to demand this in my opinion.

Honestly I don't think Apple would even need to work with other tech giants on this (although that would help). The UK makes up a few percent of Apple's total revenues so while Apple would take a hit, they can afford to pull out of the UK and it could be worth doing if they're serious about proving how important privacy is to them.

Apple will face some reputational harm should they choose to put a back door in their products at the threat of an authoritarian government, and that harm will need to be weighed against the cost of pulling out of the UK entirely.

And realistically Apple announcing that they're going to pull out of the UK will result in panic in confidence in UK tech. How the hell are we going to build competitive tech companies if developers can't even access Apple products? And after 14 years of economic stagnation it's not like we have excess growth we can give up...

Apple should be very firm in their response to this. The UK are over playing their hand.

Exactly, the UK’s number one priority right now is growth, otherwise we’re headed for austerity and possibly an election victory for Reform/Nigel Farage. I don’t think entering into a standoff with Apple over this is going to do much to give the impression the UK is great for business.

You mean, like the rest of the world'd financial institutions do for the US? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Complian...

Probably Apple will refuse to comply then the UK govt will threaten fines and then nothing much will happen.

http://archive.today/ujbf8

It's only a threat when non US countries demand it, otherwise it's just a safety measure.

Said nobody ever.

So why does the CloudAct still exist?

So they want this even after Salt Typhoon?

That would be the Salt Typhoon that allowed the Chinese to take over the USA's law enforcement agencies taps, and spy on the politicians, police and probably the spy's themselves. The outcome of that was the US government to plead with everyone to use the communication apps they hadn't broken, like Signal and Whatsapp [0]?

It was only two months ago, and they've forgotten already?

[0] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366616972/Government-age...

It is only safe to assume that every security vulnerability will eventually be discovered, and exploited by a bad actor. Knowing that, willfully creating more vulnerabilities, however well intnded, is just reckless.

That's why they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

How does this political story stay up but not the ones about DOGE? What gives?

There was a huge story with 1600 points three days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756

We don't need new stories daily.

And stories about encryption back doors are as much technological as political.

The story[0] I'm referring to is about the Technology Transformation Services, which I think is also apt. Also, I would argue that the actions of government are more political than technological or, actually, that making such a distinction is naive.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43037426

There are at least 60 recent DOGE stories on HN with comments on. I guess people get a bit DOGEd out.

It's probably part of the Trump/Musk strategy. 'Flood the zone' with so many things people can't follow it.

(on zone flooding https://youtu.be/iTSgL_R1CC4)

It happened a lot more with DOGE

What the UK is asking for is largely already provided to them by Apple: Apple can already read everyone’s photos and notes, and the so-called e2ee iMessage because the messages are included in the non-e2ee backups.

Approximately nobody has enabled the optional e2ee for iCloud, so the five eyes have warrantless access to everything Apple has.

This is mostly posturing and reinforcement of the status quo.

U.K. demand for a back door to Apple data threatens Americans

Shoe, meet other foot.

Limit it to UK persons of interest and the Americans will be ok with it, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Complian...

You can't limit an OS level encryption backdoor at the point of manufacture to some intended target later down the line. This allows mass surveillance on everybody's private files. Stop posting that stupid link on every thread it has nothing to do with this.

It's the same, local laws impacting foreign companies.

UK here. All my data has been removed from iCloud and other public cloud services now. I cannot trust the UK government, the EU or the US government to do the right thing for my data. I also can't trust the cloud vendors to handle my data either on this basis as they are subject to the laws and as indicated recently intimately involved in political matters.

The only option left is to draw a hard line and stay behind it and of course withdraw the only minuscule stick I have which is my investment in their business.

This is basically the reverse of the Microsoft Safe Harbor case. Europeans should be safe from US spying, Americans should be safe from UK spying, and so should everyone else.

Don’t confuse EU with Europe.

And the EU citizens aren’t safe from US spying, so why should US citizens be?

Trash paywall media.

Read this article for free from another website: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/02/13/uks-iphone-spying...

Also, response from Tulsi Gabbard: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/tulsi-gabbard-told-crush-uk-155712...

agreed, thank you

Why is it ok that the American government have a backdoor & have access to all non-American's personal data, but when the UK/EU wants something similar, suddenly it's a massive outrage. Is it just "we're stronger than you", so it's ok when we do it?

Define "backdoor". US authorities being able to demand data service providers have access to (eg. your gmail account) is nowhere comparable to an encryption backdoor, which is what's proposed here.

Because the US don’t ask for a backdoor in encryption, they build it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

Your own article admits it's basically used nowhere. That's important, because OP specifically claims that the US government has"access to all non-American's personal data". Moreover it was widely condemned, contrary to OP's claim of "but when the UK/EU wants something similar, suddenly it's a massive outrage. Is it just "we're stronger than you", so it's ok when we do it?".

At least UK demands it openly.

The US spied on EU’s industry with ECHOLON, 9/11 prevented further investigations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

And the US and Germany sold backdoored crypto hardware to allies per Crypto AG in Switzerland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

My point is: the UK demands are bad but I‘m sure the US agencies have similar demands and also backdoors, I‘m looking at you Cisco, just not openly.

The UK is playing with open cards, the US don‘t. I trust neither but the US are more devious.

>The US spied on EU’s industry with ECHOLON, 9/11 prevented further investigations.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

>And the US and Germany sold backdoored crypto hardware to allies per Crypto AG in Switzerland.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

From a quick skim it looks like in both cases surveillance was bilateral? In other words, European partner countries also got access. Again, I'm not claiming US doesn't do any surveillance, that would be absurd. I'm specifically arguing against OP's claim that "American government have [...] access to all non-American's personal data", and that their access was somehow exclusive. All the source you presented so far only points towards the US having access to some data (in other words, they have an intelligence agency), and that they cooperate with foreign governments in some cases to get data.

>My point is: the UK demands are bad but I‘m sure the US agencies have similar demands and also backdoors, I‘m looking at you Cisco, just not openly.

Do you have evidence for US having backdoors in cisco hardware other than being "sure"?

https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities...

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-a...

Either Cisco is the most incompetent security company and should be excluded from any state use or at least some of the „errors“ are one purpose.

The US believes whatever the US does is morally right and justified

Yes it's might is right

Was Snowden not a massive outrage?

Has apple responded to this? Are they going to comply with the UK demand?

Tell the U.K that Apple will cease operations in the country if such a law is ever passed. The voters will then decide who they value more.

Once you start this, every country will want the backdoor. The mere presence of it guarantees continued hacking attempts.

publicly asking for a backdoor is like telling a pirate "we buried treasure here, please don't dig"

More like "we buried treasure, please don't dig".

More like, “we buried treasure in any one or more of a handful of viable burial locations, please don’t dig”.

Has anyone seen any indication the UK might be demanding similar backdoors in Signal?

Is Signal likely to be compromised too?

For a long time, the US wanted such back doors too. When did that change?

European countries and the USA have an increased misalignment as the USA becomes more radicalized and less willing to work with other countries.

In this specific case: good. I don’t want USA companies cooperating with UK’s extremist policies like this one.

Companies cannot really stand up to governments. Unless another government gets involved, Apple will have to follow UK law if they want to keep doing business in that country.

By the way, the US is not a stranger to that kind of overreach, either (e.g. CLOUD act).

A large part of what enables huge multinational companies like Apple to be successful and resist stuff like this is a friendly administration and threats by the largest economy in the world.

Apple is being sufficiently friendly with the current administration that lawmakers are going to go to bat for them and prevent this sort of stuff from happening. Apple is a pawn on a global stage and the governments are the true players. It’s always been this way, it’s just more obvious now. The big sea change has been the last four years big tech has been a target of its own government as well as foreign governments. That’s largely why you’ve seen big tech jump ship to a political party that better serves their interests and doesn’t constantly investigate them. I’m not being political here, it’s just a fact of life.

Apple is going to be protected as they bent the knee and kissed the ring, just look at the name of the large Gulf to the southeast of the United States in Apple Maps.

The official name in the GNIS for that body of water is the Gulf of America. So what name should Apple and Google Maps use for US users?

What do the map companies call the Islas Malvinas? Or the East Sea? How about the Gulf of California? Or the Sea of Cortez? How about Mt Everest?

If a Mexican mapping tech company wants to call it the Gulf of Mexico, that’s their right.

> Companies cannot really stand up to governments.

That’s only valid for non-US companies or the US or Chinese government

I mean apple could just sell unlocked phones that work in any country, and let people smuggle them in however they want.

Apple just happens to operate their buisness in a way that's very vulnerable to government overreach. Their OS is dependent on centralized, easily firewalled services. They have a lot of brick and mortar stores, and so on.

I believe that corporations can operate paralegally when need be.

Whatabout.

Apple’s market cap is greater than UK’s GDP. Giant companies have a long tradition of flouting British authority.

market cap is not comparable to GDP. GDP is comparable to value added or profit.

Apple doesn’t need the UK business, but many people will get upset if their iPhone stops working.

That’s pretty big leverage.

> their iPhone stops working

Reminds of when UK regulator blocked Microsoft from buying Activision.

It was suggested by some that Microsoft has lots of power of UK and can threaten to pull out of UK and disable every single Windows PC and server in UK and destroy data belonging to UK businesses held in Azure, etc.

Shame it didn't happen, would have loved the reaction from Macron/French/EU given their hatred of US big tech.

> Apple doesn’t need the UK business,

I think shareholders would disagree. Several billion in sales and all assets in the UK are not insignificant. On top if that would be the reaction of other governments to seeing a business successfully defy a government. ait could be them next.

>That’s pretty big leverage.

True and it shows how foolish governments are to allow such reliance on foreign suppliers.

But how would shareholders react if Apple complies?

This is pretty clearly against EU principles. If anything this is more like a US alignment than a EU alignment.

It's pretty in line with their online protection act though, which is threatening jurisdiction over worldwide websites, no matter the size and with no clear guidance as to what a significant audience in the UK means.

After Brexit, EU principles are less relevant.

If every country starts demanding a backdoor, and also banning companies for being backdoored by other countries, what are companies to do? So dumb.

At least now we know that they don’t have a backdoor yet (unless this is a charade and they already do, but that’s probably less likely).

Paywall posts should not be allowed imho - not very inclusive.

Paywall posts should not be allowed imho - not very inclusive.

There are posts on HN all the time about tech companies that require you to sign up and pay a fee to use their services.

Should HN never discuss Cisco, or Intel, or Samsung? Why is a newspaper any different?

Maybe they can both demand a different backdoor so their adversaries don't even need to ask for one. /s

[flagged]

> What is the problem? If Elon and a bunch of randos can have access why the UK cannot? Surely if they make a large enough donation to the west wing a deal can be made!

Are you really implying that Elon has a back door into encryption in the US? You probably better cite a source for that one cause that's deep conspiracy theory territory

What encryption ? He is given the keys to confidential federal documents, systems and lists.

Which is not the topic we are discussing here, and is therefore a complete non sequitur.

Do you have anything to say about the topic at hand?

The topic is the bar for revealing your citizens data. My thesis is that Elon sets the bar. UK as a longtime vetted ally easily clears it.

Patriot act and cloud act threatens everyone else. More news at 11.

Uk should demand Tulsi send back to Russia

If US have a backdoor, why not others? Privacy is a myth and a mobile can be secure only after a hammer touch.

US has backdoor to icloud ADP?

Folks should stop playing with words, and call it what it is. I feel like this should be called an act of war. It is espionage. UK against is people, UK against the world. And yes, the same goes for the US, China, Russia, and anyone else that does it. It doesn't mean if you're country does it it's right. It's wrong everywhere, some are just OK with it, but it still doesn't make it right.

This is not an act of war, mate. War is a whole world nastier than breaking crypto.