End to End Encryption Ban
The UK government are on the attack against E2EE again. I’m sick and tired of out of touch politicians trying to get these draconian bills passed. They don’t seem to care how much harm bills like this can cause against companies and their users.
But They Aren’t Banning E2EE
In some sense they are but overall no they aren’t because it’s even worse than that. They argue that they are not banning E2EE because the messages can still be E2EE from device to device but that doesn’t really mean anything. What matters is that the plaintext is only able to be controlled by the people in this interaction. E2EE isn’t just a tool for device to device encrypted messaging.
If they are forcing people who develop operating systems or app developers to provide backdoors to the government, they are going to go after open source software developers for not putting in a backdoor. This bill is incredibly egregious.
It Won’t Even Work
The government passing this bill won’t solve any real problems. People that want their communications to stay private will just move to other software and if you try to censor such open source software, people will just smuggle that software into the country for the people to use. The crypto anarchist manifesto still holds true today therefore they will not win this war.
EU
FYI, the EU are working to pass something similar. Written here Tor by Mullvad Tor.
A Copy Of The Manifesto
A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy.
Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re- routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.
The technology for this revolution–and it surely will be both a social and economic revolution–has existed in theory for the past decade. The methods are based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction, authentication, and verification. The focus has until now been on academic conferences in Europe and the U.S., conferences monitored closely by the National Security Agency. But only recently have computer networks and personal computers attained sufficient speed to make the ideas practically realizable. And the next ten years will bring enough additional speed to make the ideas economically feasible and essentially unstoppable. High-speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards, satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips now under development will be some of the enabling technologies.
The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to be trade freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy.
Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.
Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!