(20.08.2024)
The UK‘s new Online Safety Bill, which is set to take effect next year and aims to curb speculative news and online hate speech, has gained renewed attention after far-right groups used social media to incite violence.
(20.08.2024)
The UK‘s new Online Safety Bill, which is set to take effect next year and aims to curb speculative news and online hate speech, has gained renewed attention after far-right groups used social media to incite violence.
Starmer‘s Labour party had said it would seek a security and defence treaty with Germany if it won the July 4 general election, which it did by a landslide — propelling him to the premiership.
(29 Jun 2021)
· Leaders in Australia, the UK, Indonesia, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Singapore and other public and private sector members have come together to collaborate and share best practices to reduce the spread of child sexual exploitation and abuse online, violent extremist and terrorist content, and health misinformation
(29.09.2023)
Ich komme gerade aus dem Vereinigten Königreich, das an der Spitze der Kampagne gegen Verschlüsselung und das Recht auf Privatsphäre steht. Was ich dort gesehen habe, ist alarmierend. Anti-Intellektualismus und Propaganda bestimmen sowohl die populäre als auch einen Großteil der sogenannten Expertendiskussion. Ein Hauch von Hysterie und Bedrohung liegt über jedem Versuch, eine sinnvolle Diskussion zu führen – einschließlich der Diskussion über bewährte Ansätze zur Unterstützung von Kindern, die sich von der Fixierung auf die Online-Überwachung unterscheiden. Es wird beängstigend und schwierig, die Menschenrechte zu verteidigen, wenn der Eindruck entsteht, dass man damit Dämonen und Monster verteidigt. Unter diesen harten Bedingungen war eine demokratische Beratung über diesen unglaublich schwerwiegenden Verstoß gegen Rechte kaum möglich. Und ich glaube nicht, dass dies ein Zufall war.
Dieser Hauch von Hysterie verdeckt die unangenehme Tatsache, dass die Technologie für das, was sie vorschreiben wollen, in keiner praktikablen Form existiert. Entgegen den Behauptungen der Organisationen, die sie vermarkten, ist es nicht möglich, die Ende-zu-Ende-verschlüsselte Kommunikation aller sicher und privat zu scannen, um verbotene Äußerungen zu kennzeichnen. Das Gegenteil zu behaupten, ist magisches Denken.
A Meta spokesperson said: „The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
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„We don‘t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.“
Although friction from policymakers has clearly made the “pivot to privacy” which founder Mark Zuckerberg announced all the way back in 2019, when he said the company would universally apply E2EE on its services, slow going.
Finally, though, this August, Meta announced it would enable E2EE by default for Messenger by the end of the year.
(19.09.2023)
The bill could empower the government to undermine not just the privacy and security of U.K. residents, but internet users worldwide.
A clause of the bill allows Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, to serve a notice requiring tech companies to scan their users–all of them–for child abuse content.This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy. As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor.
Das rund sechs Jahre lang verhandelte Gesetz ist inzwischen auf gut 300 Seiten angewachsen und trifft nicht nur große Online-Dienste wie Facebook oder Google. Schätzungen der konservativen Regierung zufolge sind rund 20.000 kleinere und nicht-kommerzielle Anbieter wie die Wikipedia betroffen. Viele davon machen sind nun Sorgen, ob sie die Vorgaben überhaupt umsetzen können, für manche kommt sogar ein Rückzug aus dem Internet für britische Nutzer:innen in Frage.
(Feb 5 2004)
The Government Secure Intranet (GSi) project means that central and local Government employees will have restricted access to email, internet, remote working and a regularly updated central directory.
Government Secure Intranet (GSi) was a United Kingdom government wide area network, whose main purpose was to enable connected organisations to communicate electronically and securely at low protective marking levels. It was known for the ‚.gsi.gov.uk‘ family of domains for government email. Migration away from these domains began in 2019[1] and will be completed in 2023.
(15.05.2023)
WIRED contacted nine of the UK’s internet service providers and telecom companies asking about their abilities to create and store people’s internet connection records. Eight did not respond to the request for comment. TalkTalk, the only one that did, said it will “meet its obligations” under UK law but couldn’t “confirm or deny” whether ICRs existed.
(23 December 2013)
Through secretive negotiations with ISPs, the coalition has divided the internet into ‚acceptable‘ and ‚unacceptable‘ categories and cut people off from huge swathes of it at the stroke of a key.
(Mar 4, 2014)
Britain has come under fire for its Internet filtering program, which can inadvertently block sensitive culture topics that overlap with common porn terms. The program accidentally “led to the creation of filters that not only cover hardcore pornography, but hate speech, self-harm, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, dating, nudity, violence, gambling, social networking, file-sharing, games and more,” explained Wired UK.
Despite the embarrassing arrest, there is no announced plan to revise the Internet filtering program.
(12.09.2023)
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan insisted that nothing had changed in the long-awaited legislation, after privacy campaigners earlier this month claimed a victory following widespread reports of a shift in the Government stance on encryption.
(25.04.2023)
– child porn
– animal porn
– spy shit
– illegally and arbitrarily stolen communications, secrets, private information and other intellectual, creative, spiritual and personal property (formely called thoughts, identity, mind and soul, and stuff)
– deceitful law drafts, that potentially could be talked into parliamentarian dummies, in order to sell those laws on the other hand to a bunch of idiots as some kind of aid, protection or rescue for anybody, so that everybody´s applauding when they are subjected to an electronic colony, police state and feudalism.
And remember: if they are progessives, they let you do it!
The bill would empower the U.K. government, in certain situations, to demand that online platforms use government-approved software to search through all users’ photos, files, and messages, scanning for illegal content. Online services that don’t comply can be subject to extreme penalties, including criminal penalties.
Main debate: MPs consider Lords amendments to the extensively paused and re-written Online Safety Bill.
(…)
The government now says that the tech regulator, Ofcom, would only require companies to scan their networks for harmful material, like child sexual abuse and exploitation content, when a technology was developed that was capable of doing so – thus kicking the issue into the very long grass.
(01.09.2023)
„You know, the long-standing technical consensus, and this goes back before the 90s, but really flared up in the 90s during the first iteration of what we call the crypto wars, where you had the US government wanting backdoors into encryption algorithms. And the vast majority, I would say, of the technical community showing over and over again that technologically, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a backdoor that only the good guys can access. Either it’s broken for everyone, or it works to preserve meaningful privacy.“
(Mar 27, 2021)
In the short term, Europe may be able to shrug off the illegality of its data-sharing practices under the GDPR, and please privacy advocates with adequacy reviews, but in the long term the violation of Europe’s own data privacy crownpiece is sure to harm its international credibility.
(April 8, 2021)
To much of the rest of the world, however, this competition is little more than evil versus evil. The U.S. government has also practiced mass surveillance; big U.S. technology companies have adopted a surveillance-based business model, exploiting people’s data in the name of free service; and the Five Eyes, an intelligence coalition comprised of the United States and Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, has sought to undermine encryption by pressuring companies to give governments backdoor access to all digital communications. In this dismal global race to the digital bottom, the biggest losers are ordinary technology users all over the world.
The agreement came after the European Union, which participates in the G7, inched closer this month to passing legislation to regulate AI technology, potentially the world‘s first comprehensive AI law that could form a precedent among the advanced economies.
„We want AI systems to be accurate, reliable, safe and non-discriminatory, regardless of their origin,“ European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.
Lucy Crompton-Reid, the chief executive of Wikimedia UK, said it was “definitely possible that one of the most visited websites in the world – and a vital source of freely accessible knowledge and information for millions of people – won’t be accessible to UK readers (let alone UK-based contributors)”.
Lucy Crompton-Reid, chief executive of Wikimedia UK, warned the text of the bill could compel the website to introduce age verification.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the free encyclopaedia, said it would refuse to verify the age of UK readers.
Failure to properly comply with the Online Safety Bill could create a situation where the site is fined, or even blocked for UK users entirely.
Additionally, the FBI and Interpol both recently spoke out against encrypted chat apps and lawmakers in the U.K. and European Union are considering laws like the EARN IT Act that could also decrease the availability of encryption.
All these developments could open the next front in the war over encryption that has flared up over the past decade, often pitting law enforcement against civil liberties groups in the U.S. and abroad.
(April 25, 2023)
WhatsApp and Signal, two of the largest privacy-focused messaging apps, have joined forces to petition against the United Kingdom’s proposed Online Safety Bill due to privacy concerns. They are accompanied in this effort by several other smaller privacy apps, such as Viber and Wire, who have signed on to an open letter directed to UK legislators.
(30.03.2023)
The anomaly is that if the government can access the content, criminals and foreign governments will almost certainly be able to use the same backdoor. (…)
This law will already affect US firms. The real danger is its arguments may spread like a contagion to be used by other governments.
Hinzu kommt laut der Bürgerrechtsorganisation auch ein neuer zivilrechtlicher Anspruch, der Privatklagen gegen Internetunternehmen und App-Stores wegen der „Förderung oder Erleichterung“ der Ausbeutung von Kindern, des „Hostings oder Speicherns von Kinderpornografie“ oder des „Zugänglichmachens von Kinderpornografie für jedermann“ ermöglichen soll. Dies geschehe alles auf der Grundlage eines sehr niedrigen Fahrlässigkeitsstandards, so die EFF.
Außerdem wird ein Benachrichtigungs- und Löschsystem geschaffen, das von einem neu geschaffenen Ausschuss für den Schutz von Kindern im Internet beaufsichtigt wird und von den Anbietern verlangt, Inhalte auf Anfrage zu entfernen oder zu deaktivieren, noch bevor eine administrative oder gerichtliche Entscheidung vorliegt, dass es sich bei den Inhalten tatsächlich um CSAM handelt.
Damit geht das geplante Gesetz lange nicht so weit wie die europäische Chatkontrolle oder der britische Online Safety Act, welche derzeit von den Anbietern verlangen, die Kommunikationsinhalte und gespeicherte Dateien vor der Verschlüsselung zu durchsuchen. Dennoch sieht die EFF in den Formulierungen des Gesetzes große Fallstricke:
Ms Whittaker said the video offered “scientifically unsubstantiated claims”. But she said that the video had also “pulled the veil off the intentions behind this bill”, and that it had made clear the legislation “really is attacking encryption”.
“It appears to me that there’s a little bit of desperation – and now they’ve taken the gloves off,” she told The Independent. “And they are saying the quiet part loud, which is that we don’t want more encryption.”
(19.04.2023)
(19.04.2023)
Mr Hodgson, of UK company Element, called the proposals a „spectacular violation of privacy… equivalent to putting a CCTV camera in everyone‘s bedroom“.
Mr Cathcart has told BBC News WhatsApp would rather be blocked in the UK than weaken the privacy of encrypted messaging.
Ms Whittaker has said the same – Signal „would absolutely, 100% walk“ should encryption be undermined.
(18.04.2023)
Es könne kein „britisches Internet“ oder eine Version der Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung geben, die speziell auf das Vereinigte Königreich zugeschnitten ist. Die britische Regierung müsse das Gesetz deswegen dringend überarbeiten.
Der offene Brief enthält keine Ankündigung, was die Messenger machen würden, sollte die britische Regierung den Forderungen nicht nachkommen. In der Vergangenheit hatten aber einzelne Messenger-Anbieter aufgezeigt, in welche Richtung ihre Reaktion gehen würde. So will Threema es auf einen Rausschmiss ankommen lassen, und WhatsApp hatte einen Rückzug aus Großbritannien ins Spiel gebracht.
(18.04.2023)
Global providers of end-to-end encrypted products and services cannot weaken the security of their products and services to suit individual governments. There cannot be a “British internet,” or a version of end-to-end encryption that is specific to the UK.
The UK Government must urgently rethink the Bill, revising it to encourage companies to offer more privacy and security to its residents, not less. Weakening encryption, undermining privacy, and introducing the mass surveillance of people’s private communications is not the way forward.
Signed by those who care about keeping our conversations secure:
Matthew Hodgson, CEO, Element
Alex Linton, Director, OPTF/Session
Meredith Whittaker, President, Signal
Martin Blatter, CEO, Threema
Ofir Eyal, CEO, Viber
Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp at Meta
Alan Duric, CTO, Wire
Das clientseitige Scannen ist ein faustischer Pakt, der die Prämisse der Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung zunichtemacht. Denn dieser Pakt schreibt eine zutiefst unsichere Technologie vor, die es einer Regierung ermöglicht, buchstäblich jede Äußerung zu überprüfen, bevor sie ausgesprochen wird.
The UK government has announced a proposed digital government identity verification system under the banner ‘GOV.UK One Login’. This new system will replace the number of existing ways we log into government websites to access public services online. It could give the government a blank cheque to share the personal information of millions of users between government departments.
Seven decades after Winston Churchill’s government scrapped ID cards, we cannot accept plans that will take us closer to becoming a database state now. It is vital that we respond with our concerns.
(24.02.2023)
Critics say companies could be required by Ofcom to scan messages on encrypted apps for child sexual abuse material or terrorism content under the new law.
This has worried firms whose business is enabling private, secure communication.
Element, a UK company whose customers include the Ministry of Defence, told the BBC the plan would cost it clients.