> Breaching encryption is like Watergate but without all the tedious need to physically break into a hotel.
I don't agree. When I'm in a hotel room, I'm supposed to enjoy some privacy. If this bill passes, you will know a priori that electronic communication is under judiciary control. As I said before, it will be the same as it has always been with telephone.
Really, absolutely-private remote communication didn't even exist before the advent of computers. And now it looks like it's a fundamental human right and no discussion is possible. I don't think that such a bill should be forced on UK (or any other) people, but fighting criminality is at least as important, and I'm not shocked that compromises are being proposed and discussed.
Remote communication other than by courier didn't exist at all prior to the 19th century and the telegraph. That's why it was left out of the construction of the 4th Amendment.
You can make an argument for crimefighting, but then you have to stay within the judicial boundaries: limited access, requiring a warrant, limited use, requirement for basis for suspicion. The crimefighting process is there to produce evidence which is then presented to a court in public.
The problem with the IPbill is that it comes from the military intelligence point of view instead. The process produces intelligence which is then classified and is illegal for the public to see. There are warrants to be issued under the IP bill: it is a criminal offence for the people on whom the warrant is served to "to disclose to any person, without reasonable excuse, the existence or contents
of the warrant." This provision does not come with a time limit. You can be ordered to hack activists or opposition parties or human rights lawyers and not allowed to whistleblow, ever.
There are some extraordinary little subclauses like 154.(9):
"Any conduct which is carried out in accordance with a bulk equipment interference warrant is lawful for all purposes"
You make a sensible point against this particular bill.
I just can't understand why any resemblance of a limitation of the privacy over electronic communication is greeted with such outrage. I do understand that encryption can be either controllable XOR secure. But my point is that secure encryption has never been a right: actually, the discussion has just started, due to the recent spread of its usage.
Again, telephone and (thanks for reminding) courier have always been controllable, thus not secure. Deciding whether a non-controllable medium of remote communication should exist, and who may use it, is a social and political question (like, for example, cloning: it is technically possible, but drastically controlled by laws). I understand it's quite natural for us HN-ers to stand on one side, but the world is bigger that HN.
And that's partly why the mistrust exists. Law enforcement agencies are not given the benefit of the doubt on this because of previous abuses. There's a history here which is too long to #include every time the subject comes up.
Deciding whether a non-controllable medium of remote communication should exist, and who may use it, is a social and political question
"Controllable" is a word shift from "secret", and that's what the US 1st Amendment guarantees: the existence of non-controllable means of remote communication. After all, one of the founding heroes of the US was a ""terrorist"" who brought messages to the other members of his anti-government cell.
The UK situation is much worse, and a full discussion would have to involve the abuses of the last generation of antiterrorist police and military action in Northern Ireland.
I don't agree. When I'm in a hotel room, I'm supposed to enjoy some privacy. If this bill passes, you will know a priori that electronic communication is under judiciary control. As I said before, it will be the same as it has always been with telephone.
Really, absolutely-private remote communication didn't even exist before the advent of computers. And now it looks like it's a fundamental human right and no discussion is possible. I don't think that such a bill should be forced on UK (or any other) people, but fighting criminality is at least as important, and I'm not shocked that compromises are being proposed and discussed.