Potential ban on WhatsApp and Snapchat in the UK

Panda_Turtle · 13-01-2015 02:39PM #1

Fascinating that these services could be banned in the UK due to security reasons (the messages cannot be read by the security services),

They are so big surely they will have to come to an agreement with the companies?

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/40129-uk-pm-threatens-to-ban/

mickydoomsux · 13-01-2015 02:45PM

How will i send pictures of my balls to women now?

Damn terrorists.

ancapailldorcha · 13-01-2015 02:48PM

It'll never happen. There are too many tech companies in the UK and such a move could frighten them off.

seamus · 13-01-2015 02:52PM

There's no way it'll happen, the implications are too big.

The reasoning is that because the connection is encrypted, you cannot see what's going on, even with a warrant. Which can be logically extrapolated to say that any form of encryption (physical or digital) should be banned.

Blowfish · 13-01-2015 02:54PM

For a start, he's incorrect in what he said, there has always been ways to communicate which the government has no access to, 'in extremis' or not.

Secondly, he's a politician, giving a soundbite with no idea what the actual implications are of what he's saying, i.e. it can't realistically be done without crippling his own economy.

Bruthal · 13-01-2015 02:58PM

mickydoomsux wrote: »

How will i send pictures of my balls to women now?

Damn terrorists.

Polaroid, envelope, stamp

auldgranny · 13-01-2015 03:00PM

Bruthal wrote: »

Polaroid, envelope, stamp

So last millenniun.

TimeToShine · 13-01-2015 03:01PM

A fine way to throw away votes from the under 30 population.

smash · 13-01-2015 03:01PM

Facebook own WhatsApp. Are they going to ban facebook and facebook messenger too?

Fcuking morons!

BeerWolf · 13-01-2015 03:03PM

He can say what he wants, don't mean it'll happen.

Beefy78 · 13-01-2015 03:09PM

It's just a bargaining chip to use in coalition negotiations, like it was five years ago.

darkpagandeath · 13-01-2015 03:10PM

If they stay in the EU they will find it very hard to do, They are pretty close to HR violations atm with ahem "It's for security Reasons".

My name is URL · 13-01-2015 03:10PM

seamus wrote: »

There's no way it'll happen, the implications are too big.

The reasoning is that because the connection is encrypted, you cannot see what's going on, even with a warrant. Which can be logically extrapolated to say that any form of encryption (physical or digital) should be banned.

No need to extrapolate anything from what he said. He clearly did say that he wants an end to meaningful encryption methods.

Britain’s intelligence agencies should have the legal power to break into the encrypted communications of suspected terrorists to help prevent any Paris-style attacks, David Cameron proposed on Monday.

The prime minister said a future Conservative government would aim to deny terrorists “safe space” to communicate online, days after a warning from the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, that the intelligence agencies are in danger of losing the ability to monitor “dark places” on the net.

Gotta hand it to them though. They didn't wait very long before using what happened in France to drum up support for taking more rights away from citizens. The hawks in the US would be proud.

I wonder how many people (apart from the Tories and Cameron) coming out in support of CH and free speech would be in favor of limiting the ability of people to communicate freely and privately. Quite a lot I'd say...

darkpagandeath · 13-01-2015 03:14PM

My name is URL wrote: »

No need to extrapolate anything from what he said. He clearly did say that he wants an end to meaningful encryption methods.

Gotta hand it to them though. They didn't wait very long before using what happened in France to drum up support for taking more rights away from citizens. The hawks in the US would be proud.

I wonder how many people (apart from the Tories and Cameron) coming out in support of CH and free speech would be in favor of limiting the ability of people to communicate freely and privately. Quite a lot I'd say...

True but I thought the French listened into there mobile phone conversations. There was no need to break encryption of apps and so on. It's more and more scary they want to be able to look at everything for ahem "security reasons" Will joe public be able to look at Mp's private emails to then ?

the nikkei is rising · 13-01-2015 03:16PM

We should encourage a campaign where women (and men I suppose) send topless photos with some creative hashtag that Cameron will see every time he intercepts a snap, it will highlight our plight and I'll finally get to see a breast

keithclancy · 13-01-2015 04:16PM

Just take a picture of the Jacks in Coppers and stick #dirtybomb in the message.

Delirium · 13-01-2015 04:24PM

Panda_Turtle wrote: »

Fascinating that these services could be banned in the UK due to security reasons (the messages cannot be read by the security services),

They are so big surely they will have to come to an agreement with the companies?

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/40129-uk-pm-threatens-to-ban/

Cameron clearly hasn't considered the scale of what he suggested. Although others have.(via boing-boing)

This, then, is what David Cameron is proposing:
All Britons' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software

All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked

Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

Kim Kardashi Un · 13-01-2015 04:26PM

mickydoomsux wrote: »

How will i send pictures of my balls to women now?

Damn terrorists.

Those were your balls??? You have bigger/smaller things to be worrying about that this ban

Beefy78 · 13-01-2015 04:53PM

It was a similar story after the London Riots when all the stories were about kids organising on their Blackberries to go down to Curries to steal TVs and PlayStations.

darkpagandeath · 13-01-2015 06:13PM

Beefy78 wrote: »

It was a similar story after the London Riots when all the stories were about kids organising on their Blackberries to go down to Curries to steal TVs and PlayStations.

And putting photos up with bags of rice on FB :pac:

13-01-2015 06:34PM

You would have to add iMessage to the list which is one of the best designed end to end encryption messaging platforms. Even apple cannot decrypt the messages if forced.

Larbre34 · 13-01-2015 06:54PM

Im afraid all the money in the world couldnt put the genie of social media back in the bottle and the powers that be know it too.

Lets say they ban Whatsapp and Viber etc tomorrow. A new app comes out within the hour call WhatsUpp or Wiper. Kids in bedrooms with PCs are always ahead of the grey suit brigade.

end of the road · 13-01-2015 06:58PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

And putting photos up with bags of rice on FB :pac:

for which they got 100 years in prison for

KomradeBishop · 13-01-2015 07:07PM

You would literally break a large portion of the Internet if you tried to ban encrypted services like that. It would be totally unworkable.

It's a Sean Sherlock level of basic technical incomprehension and stupidity.

Call Me Jimmy · 13-01-2015 07:11PM

How the hell did the UK Prime Minister get to the point of actually saying that? Dumb, dumb dumb

My name is URL · 13-01-2015 07:12PM

Larbre34 wrote: »

Im afraid all the money in the world couldnt put the genie of social media back in the bottle and the powers that be know it too.

Lets say they ban Whatsapp and Viber etc tomorrow. A new app comes out within the hour call WhatsUpp or Wiper. Kids in bedrooms with PCs are always ahead of the grey suit brigade.

Presumably if they're serious about it then rather than just banning a list of already existing apps, they'll introduce some arbitrary all-encompassing and over-reaching law which makes the software and encryption methods used by all such apps illegal.

Amusingly, Iran have just made a load of such apps illegal

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/iran-blocks-communication-apps-line-whatsapp-tango-1.2176978

It's a funny auld world at times.

Blowfish · 13-01-2015 07:31PM

My name is URL wrote: »

Presumably if they're serious about it then rather than just banning a list of already existing apps, they'll introduce some arbitrary all-encompassing and over-reaching law which makes the software and encryption methods used by all such apps illegal.

They can't ban the encryption used though as that would require banning SSL/TLS, which would effectively make online banking, online purchasing, webmail, corporate VPN's and in fact pretty much any site which has a username/password login (including boards) illegal.

My name is URL · 13-01-2015 07:39PM

Blowfish wrote: »

They can't ban the encryption used though as that would require banning SSL/TLS, which would effectively make online banking, online purchasing, corpporate VPN's and any sort of secure site impossible.

They can restrict its use for certain purposes. Some places already require companies to obtain a licence to encrypt data, they could easily introduce such a system and not grant licences to companies that encrypt public communications. They could even just require decryption keys to be stored or made available.

Zebra3 · 13-01-2015 07:40PM

Hang on a second.

I thought all these great politicians were in for free speech!

Or are they two faced hypocrites who'd jump on any bandwagon to divert attention away from their own policies? :rolleyes:

BetterThanThou · 13-01-2015 07:50PM

All this would do is pretty much spy on the average citizen who isn't planning anything malicious. They could never ban old school methods of encryption, such as secret codes, which someone planning a terrorist attack is probably likely to use anyway. Overall, terrible idea, such a terrible idea that it would destroy any desire I had to ever visit the UK again. In addition to the fact that computer programmers/hackers will always find ways around things, there's really no point other than spying on innocent citizens.

Blowfish · 13-01-2015 07:52PM

My name is URL wrote: »

They can restrict its use for certain purposes. Some places already require companies to obtain a licence to encrypt data, they could easily introduce such a system and not grant licences to companies that encrypt public communications.

That's impossible to police though. To point out the obvious, how exactly are the government supposed to identify what's 'legitimate' traffic and what's chat traffic? If it's encrypted, they can't see what's in it.

i.e. How do you distinguish between a web server serving https pages and me going 'ncat -l 443 --ssl'?

This is ignoring the fact that using a license system, they'd have to block most of the internet anyway as the vast majority of encrypted sites would be outside of the UK and hence outside of their remit.

Potential ban on WhatsApp and Snapchat in the UK

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