Before I go any further I will say that this is my last post on this subject.

I’m not aware of the UK government using torture to crush dissent.

This is a so-called straw man argument, I never said the UK government used torture to crush dissent. If you expect me to go to the trouble of a response, frankly, do better.

The social contract is not "I give up the freedom to murder without legal consequence in order to not be murdered" in a civilised society. Is in 1025 or 2025? (This is a rhetorical question.)

I don’t think the public should be spied on all the time. But if there is some way that illegal communications (like planning murder) could be intercepted, without spying on others, that would be good.

We do not particularly disagree. Except that due to information security being an interest of mine, I know that it isn't technically possible to weaken encryption for one without weakening encryption for everybody.

Being something like a specialist interest of mine, I also know that weakening encryption is one part of the creation of a total-surveillance state that is taking place - much like the explicit oligarchy we see forming now in the US has taken decades to build. This environment is certainly one in which fascism will thrive - something I don't want to see, seeing as how I still remember people talking about the second world war and all that.

I also know that this snooping capability will be placed in the hands of future, and some current, political and business leaders who don't have the interests of the public at large at heart, and who even might actually might be prepared to murder people: the US is now aligned with a Russia that has committed war crimes in Ukraine. If I mention Gaza and war crimes there is some (presumably small) chance I might be arrested under the Communications Act 2003, which defines illegal communication as 'using public electronic communications network in order to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety'.

Here is a letter written by experts regarding removing end to end encryption:

https://haddadi.github.io/UKOSBOpenletter.pdf

Take note of the 2003 communications act. Here are a few articles from a very quick search that explicitly show the kind of society that is being built, brick by brick:

https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/press-releases/big-brother-watch-condemns-uks-first-use-of-city-wide-facial-recognition-in-cardiff/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/business/london-police-facial-recognition.html

https://www.verdict.co.uk/most-surveilled-city/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68274090

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/11/britain-leads-the-world-in-cracking-down-on-climate-activism-study-finds

As I said, I am done with this thread now. Thanks

Couple of things: I am sure that the likes of GCHQ get the messages of specific individuals who threaten the UK without any court orders right now. This cartoon sums up the limits to encryption's effectiveness in this sort of context: https://xkcd.com/538/ And it has been red Tory v. blue Tory, one party, since 1994. I assume you disagree on this my second point - I am always happy to agree to disagree.

Regarding encryption, surveillance, and snooper's intrusion: I was brought up being told the stasi were the bad guys. The stasi would blush at the surveillance foreign corporations and the British government now engage in as a matter of course: it is beyond their wildest dreams.

But spying on all of the public all of the time comes at a cost to society I would rather not pay. It quells dissent in the short and maybe mid term, but that extreme intrusion, ultimately drives otherwise moderate people into the hands of extremists (on every side). The terrorists win when we sacrifice liberty for temporary security (or whatever that quote was).

I saw it called "end to end encrypted icloud backup" in the news. I guess it is that, in that it is encrypted at rest on apple's servers, then between those servers and the end-user's device. But that is a bit different to what signal does. Signal doesn't store anything at rest on any servers they own as far as the experts I rely on for information on this (and who signal allow to audit them) say.

It seems to be the case that as long as apple offer any products at all to the UK market, the UK government have the right to ask, in secret, for apple to provide encryption backdoors into their products for all of apple's customers whatever the nationality. It seems likely that the UK will share this information with five eyes countries', allowing those countries to circumvent their own legal processes.

It isn't clear if that has happened or is going to happen but it seems likely that they will, if they can get away with it without it becoming public knowledge. Which has pissed off, for instance, US information security professionals who like iphones whose data now can't be considered secure.

It might be the case that apple has had to withdraw this particular product from the UK for public relations purposes because somebody whitleblew. But as long as apple wants to sell products in the UK it seems the snoopers charter allows the snoopers to request backdoor access to their products globally.

The Chinese have done the same. People here call them totalitarian for doing so.

I understand where you are coming from, but the encryption is not secure if somebody else holds your password.

Then there is the other issue of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, or Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, or some other entity the likes of Russia, and now America promote, and bang goes journalist's and activists' anonymity. It would be great to have it both ways, but it isn't possible.

There are always best and worst case scenarios.

We are currently comprehensively losing the battle for 3C@2100 (which comes with increasingly harmful-to-devastating impacts in the intervening years and decades: future climate refugees will make the current not-far-off-a-London a decade seem like a picnic. A situation fascists will no doubt exploit).

It looks like the only way to prevent 4C plus and, a future Earth only described in science fiction, is mass civil disobedience.

But the UK government appears to be the worst in any civilised country in terms of squashing dissent, and most of the public appears to be more concerned with not being delayed on their commutes.