Theresa May Tries To Push Forward With Plans To Kill Encryption, While Her Party Plots Via Encrypted Whatsapp
from the so-about-that... dept
As we’ve discussed a few times, Theresa May and her colleagues have been pushing to break real encryption as part of the party’s manifesto. And they’ve used recent terrorist attacks as an excuse to ramp up that effort — even though the perpetrators of recent attacks were already known to law enforcement and there’s no evidence encryption played any role. Earlier in the year, Home Secretary Amber Rudd had insisted that encrypted communications were completely unacceptable, and specifically namechecked Whatsapp:
It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide.
We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don?t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.
Of course, as you’ve certainly heard by now, last Thursday’s general election in the UK (understatement alert!) didn’t quite go according to Theresa May’s plan, and she’s now left in a much weaker position with many people expecting she will not survive long as Prime Minister. And yet, showing her uncanny ability to double down on the absolute wrong thing, May is insisting she’s moving ahead with her plans to regulate the internet, which will require vast censorship and a breaking of encryption. On the encryption angle, she’s already got some Parliamentary support given that (as we and others warned at the time!) the Snooper’s Charter (“Investigatory Powers Act”) included a bit that would require anyone offering encrypted communications to unencrypt those communications (which is impossible if the encryption is strong end-to-end, and only possible with broken, insecure, fake “encryption”).
This is both dumb and… hilarious. Because while all of this is going on, Theresa May’s own party has been trying to figure out what the hell they’re going to do. And, of course, the way they’re communicating with each other is with the encrypted Whatsapp software that Amber Rudd was trashing just months ago:
Former minister Ed Vaizey told the BBC that he supports May staying on, but that Tories were discussing possible replacements. Asked whether members were calling one another to plot May?s ouster this weekend, he denied it.
?That?s so 20th century,? he said. ?It?s all on WhatsApp.?
Indeed, soon after this came out, one of the possible candidates to replace May, Boris Johnson, claimed that he was sticking by May and… released screenshots of his own Whatsapp conversations to prove that he was supporting her.
NEW: @itvnews has seen WhatsApp messages sent by Boris Johnson to Tory MPs urging them "to calm down and get behind the Prime Minister". pic.twitter.com/43oizi2ZE7
— Daniel Hewitt (@DanielHewittITV) June 11, 2017
So, there you have it. Theresa May is pushing forward to break encrypted chat apps like Whatsapp, while her own party is using encrypted chat apps, like Whatsapp, to discuss whether or not to keep her in place as Prime Minister.
Filed Under: backdoors, boris johnson, encryption, privacy, theresa may, uk
Companies: whatsapp
Comments on “Theresa May Tries To Push Forward With Plans To Kill Encryption, While Her Party Plots Via Encrypted Whatsapp”
"But that's different, we're the ones in charge!"
Ah good old blatant hypocrisy, claim that encryption is a tool of terrorists and attempt to undermine it for the general public, while using it yourself to keep your communications secret and secure.
Hopefully the public and other politicians in the UK give her and her hypocritical supporters a swift boot to the backside and remove them before they can do even more damage.
Hmmmmm ........
does this mean that the Tories are terrorists, and should be locked up?
Re: Hmmmmm ........
No no, no.
All they have to do is show their ID to prove they are not Terrorists.
Re: Hmmmmm ........
Silly Gorshkov, terrorists are only ‘scary’ looking foreigners.
If a domestic citizen does something bad, then it’s not terrorism! They’re just some poor person in need of mental healthcare.
Re: Re: Hmmmmm ........
"Was with you there right up to the "mental healthcare" bit. Mental health is all an imaginary ailment that wastes billions of my… uh… taxpayers money and people should jolly well get over it!" – Theresa May (probably)
Re: Re: Re: Hmmmmm ........
Well, she is trying to emulate Thatcher, who was a noted fan of Reagan, who did get rid of mental healthcare in the States under the guise of money saving… Not so far-fetched.
Re: Re: Re:2 Hmmmmm ........
I remember some people at the time, who voted for Reagan and had loved ones with mental health problems, being upset when the Reagan republicans actually did like they said they would and cut "welfare" spending on mental health. Of course, they had only expected it to be applied to "other people". And it didn’t even actually save money because they just started putting people into the more expensive prison system instead. Reagan hypocrites.
Re: Re: Re:3 Hmmmmm ........
This seems to be a theme, especially on the right wing. Plenty of stories about people who voted to get rid of welfare, healthcare and other social safety nets – then publicly whining when they realised that it affects them and not just “those people”.
I think it’s a lack of empathy and connection to the real world, like when some politicians have been vehemently anti-gay rights, only to suddenly reverse their position when a family member comes out. They either cannot empathise with the victim elsewhere, think they deserve it somehow or literally only care if their tribe is affected. None of these things are good in a diverse society and it seems it’s easy to get people to vote against their interests if you can convince them of a single issue they care about (see Kentucky re: healthcare)..
Re: Hmmmmm ........
You don’t mean Toryrists do you?
“There should be no place for terrorists to hide.”
And yet nearly every single terror event in your country has happened in the open & your services have been to busy with the haystack to follow up on actual leads.
They were known to officials, yet they were busy looking for the guy actually wearing a black hat to show he was a bad guy.
The problem isn’t encryption, the problem is you are enjoying spying on everyone & you hope to eventually stumble over a plot to support the insane narratives you keep spinning.
The failures to deal with actual intelligence & warnings from the communities while trying to expand surveillance because it will be the panacea that finally solves it.
The repeated failures of the current system are a dead canary in the coal mine, stop trying to staple it onto the perch. So much money & effort is wasted looking for boogeymen you can’t even see the real bad guys people point out to you.
Re: Re:
But I bet they could tell you all kinds of juicy private things about the majority of non-terrorist people in the country.
Yep.
I honestly do not see anything wrong with this, aside from Masnick making his usual anti-authority mountains out of molehills. And I’ll bet he’s going to get Leigh and PaulT to censor me, too.
Re: Re:
“I like it when the government tells me how to live my entire life! It makes my life so much easier. Why, just today, I had a hand shoved up my ass by a police officer who told me they needed to do a cavity search on everyone on this block. I don’t know what they were looking for, and I didn’t see anyone else getting searched, but hey, agents of the government would never lie to us!”
Re: Re: Re:
Some people like that hand up their ass.
Re: Re: Re: Sock puppet
Some people like that hand up their ass.
Yes, that’s the hand of their puppeteer.
Re: Re:
Oh honey, get down off the cross… someone needs the wood.
Re: Re:
Oh, so now I’m personally censoring you? Wow, I’m flattered you think I have that much power.
You’ve already fixated on a random Techdirt staffer to whine about censoring you (even though I’m able to read and respond to your hidden drooling, so it’s not censored). Why do you need to drag random commenters in?
Is it because the only way you can deal with large number of people telling you how much of a trolling idiot you are is to invent a conspiracy, rather than accept the fact that you are indeed a trolling idiot?
Please continue, the further breakdown of your mental faculties and expansion of your paranoid fantasies are quite entertaining, especially on a dry Monday afternoon. At least you’ve worked out that the commenters here are not secretly the same person, that particular delusion was starting to move from funny to concerning.
Re: Re:
horse with no name just hates it when due process is enforced.
Re: Re:
“anti-authority mountains”
Just wth does this mean anyway?
There’s no irony here. She needs to break encryption precisely because her party members are using it when discussing what to do with her. Plotting to oust your leader, that’s terrorism right there.
Re: Re:
Like the supposed terrorists, the ones plotting against her will simply switch to a non-compromised chat service…..
Re: Re:
Any anti-encryption law will have an exception for use by government officials, just like anti-telemarketing laws. The way to fight back might be to prove the GCHQ is breaking the encryption on May’s messages. I’m sure they are, I just can’t prove it.
Panopticon
I remember spending New Years Eve 1999 watching a documentary about the rise of the CCTV surveillance state in London and being disgusted by the trend even then. The dreams of Jeremy Bentham are alive and well in England (and here in the US, as well).
This is not now, nor has it ever been, about catching terrorists. It’s about total control of the populace, the dream of every tyrant. They just can’t seem to figure out that even if they had the tech to see, hear, and read everything, they don’t have the manpower to do so and make sense of the intel, but I have no doubt they’ll keep trying.
Re: Panopticon
And just in case anyone argues – but if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear because we are the good guys – just transpose this whole debate into the context of Pakistan:
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40246754
Now note that "Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has described blasphemy as being an "unpardonable offence" and then take Amber Rudd’s words and create the Pakistani version:
It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for blasphemers (otherwise known as humanists [1] or Christians [2]) to hide.
We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for blasphemers to communicate with each other.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-39603126/pakistan-blasphemy-the-student-lynched-for-being-a-humanist
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26901433
But then, given Amber Rudd’s attitude to Saudi Arabia maybe she is on side with the Pakistani version too.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/amber-rudd-saudi-arabia-speech-shut-down-claims-nicholas-wilson-a7774126.html
Re: Panopticon
“It’s about total control of the populace, the dream of every tyrant.”
True. People tend to think of the Brits as easy going, urbane, and polite folk, who queue up for their cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey tea, forgetting that in the recent past they have formed spontaneous riots over issues such as having a dreadful poll-tax foisted on them and their detestation of vile and loathsome political figures such as Margaret Thatcher.
Back in the day Hitler never stood a chance. Today, May is doe-eyed, staring at the headlights of the approaching shit-storm. But she is no Churchill.
The irony here is delicious. If we know one thing about governments is that they do ALL of their planning in public, and never though closed, back room meetings.
The defeat of her party in the ballot should have sent her a message that people aren’t approving her actions. The beauty of Parliamentarianism is that she can be replaced before she completes her term. Sadly the alternatives aren’t much better.
Re: Re:
dont worry, May is just a single neck to choke.
But I do love all of the other anti Tories running around liek their parties are not just as bullshit as May. I don’t see anyone running around taking down the CCTV that is up.
Here is how it is going to go down. May is going to sink her ship on the anti encryption issue. Not because she actually gives a fuck, but because she has the man behind the curtains support for it. And you can damn well bet that whatever she gets on the laws, the replacement party will be sure to “take advantage of” a-la Trump and the repeal of Obamacare which is anything but situation.
Remember boys and girls, May will be well taken care of in her pursuit to fuck your liberty over. Sure she will publicly lament having a bad life, but only in the same way that the Affluenza kid Ethan Couch is having a bad life.
Re: Re: Re:
“But I do love all of the other anti Tories running around liek their parties are not just as bullshit as May”
It’s not hypocrisy to not have a perfect house before pointing out the fundamental structural problems with your neighbour’s. In politics, this goes double when talking about the party in charge – a minority party with major issues won’t cause the same level of damage as the one with power.
By the way, how do you know which party the people talking actually support? Do you ever bother to find out, or just assume?
“I don’t see anyone running around taking down the CCTV that is up.”
That’s part of the reason some of us are against weakening privacy & security – once it’s happened, it’s difficult to get it reversed. Even if you have the desire and political muscle to backtrack, you’ll just attacked as a terrorist sympathiser/weak on crime/etc., so many don’t attempt it even though they know it’s the right thing to do.
Although, if you’re literally asking why ordinary people aren’t running around and physically taking the things down, it’s probably because they’ll end up in jail and the rules that demand such things won’t have changed. Nice bit of civil disobedience, but it doesn’t really do anything.
“May is going to sink her ship on the anti encryption issue”
No, she’s sinking based on the woeful handling of Brexit, attacks on the NHS, social policies that attack the weakest of society and attempts to reintroduce highly unpopular things such as fox hunting and literally negotiating with terrorists to prop up her majority. The encryption issue is not going to be a blip on the radar for a lot of people.
Which is itself a problem. If they get another Tory leader who promises to rehire the police that May fired, promises to look after the NHS and continue the fox hunting ban, they might gain enough public support to allow them to push this sort of crap through the back door.
Remember, May was voted into her position by the Tory party. Getting rid of her won’t stop her policies, because there will still be people behind her who want the same things.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Remember, May was voted into her position by the Tory party. Getting rid of her won’t stop her policies, because there will still be people behind her who want the same things.
Unfortunately the same authoritarian streak runs through Labour too. Not that long ago the Labour government looked bad – with its plans for ID cards and the digital economy bill.
In the main parties its down to individuals. David Davis and Tom Watson – usually good – Theresa May and Jack Straw usually bad. However even Theresa May has had her good moments – like when she told off the police.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePXmFcswjpg
The only parties that are consistently good are the Greens and the lib dems (in the latter case not without the occasional blip) – but neither of them is likely to have meaningful power in the foreseeable future.
Actually I’ve got an idea – send Theresa May over to the US and put her in charge of the police there!
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I may be on the wrong side of the Atlantic to judge, but it certainly seems like Corbyn represents a pretty big shift in Labour compared to Blair and Brown.
Though I realize most of the rest of the party leadership doesn’t seem to like Corbyn very much.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I may be deep within the bowels of Europe to judge (eww), but it seems Corbyn is a return to old Labour principles that support the working classes, the trade unions, and the generally disenfranchised. Blair/Brown were “Tory light”, popular because they span themselves as the friendly smiling faces that were slightly to the left of the evil that was Thatcher/Major.
The grass-roots love Corbyn.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
it certainly seems like Corbyn represents a pretty big shift in Labour compared to Blair and Brown.
Compared to Blair – yes – compared to Brown – less so.
However his generally left wing policies don’t necessarily preclude authoritarianism in the civil liberties space.
I haven’t seen his personal opinions on these issues so I can’t judge – however both parties have consistently turned more authoritarian when in government.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Nail, meet head.
This is totally correct, Richard. The trouble with taking an ideological stand on anything is that authoritarianism is right behind it. Even Liberals do it — in the name of protecting $group from offence.
So, just like in the States, we end up voting for the least worst party. Right now the UK’s religious right, the DUP, looks set to assist May in an informal quid pro quo arrangement to get her policies through but this means throwing Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement under the bus. Don’t we have enough terrorism as it is?
Personally, I think we don’t just need a shift to the left to get the middle back, we need a rethink about the axis on which political discourse should rest. Right now it’s capital V labour. I’d rather have it as individualism V collectivism or personal V corporate rights and responsibilities — that idea. As it is there are people I know who vote against their own best interests in the name of a principle that is actually detrimental to them in real life. I don’t understand the dogmatism that underpins this craziness but I see it all the time here in Britain.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
The problem is that somewhere close to half of the UK electorate are actually just tribal. They are only slightly
more likely to change their vote than their football team* and the reasons for the original affiliation are even less rational.
Even when people do change their vote the reason is rarely rational or logical. I remember someone voting for the Liberal candidate (Bill Pitt) in a byelection in the early 80’s and claiming that it was because (she thought) he would bring back hanging!
*as you may know that is the most difficult thing to change – more difficult than changing spouse, your religion or even your gender.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Right now the UK’s religious right, the DUP, looks set to assist May in an informal quid pro quo arrangement to get her policies through but this means throwing Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement under the bus.
I’m not quite so pessimistic on this one – for two reasons.
I do wish that Sinn Fein would take their seats though – I can’t see any good reason not to – after all Nigel Farage took his seat in the European Parliament – which he wanted to be free of!
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
“Corbyn represents a pretty big shift in Labour compared to Blair and Brown.”
Compared to Blair, sure. But, Blair represented a major shift to try and attract back voters from middle England after Kinnock and other predecessors were deemed to left wing. Corbyn is a shift back away from trying to cozy up to people who didn’t really agree with a lot of their policies anyway, or toward people who felt betrayed by the party’s actions under Blair/Brown.
“Though I realize most of the rest of the party leadership doesn’t seem to like Corbyn very much”
They’re interestingly less vocal about that after their predictions of doom were not realised and he regained public support for the party.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Oh, I realise that. But, at least Labour are at least trying to reverse regressive social & economic policies while they try such things. Tories have no qualms attacking the most needy in society while helping the rich and dismantling the safety nets that many need to survive.
If you’re a single issue voted on the security/privacy issue, there might not be a lot of difference. But if you’re voting for what’s best overall, it’s false to say they’re both equal.
and this is one of the terrible reasons she’s plumbing for this, so she knows what everyone else is doing, saying, reading, listening to, looking at, but no one knows what she and her ilk are up to! anyone who thinks what the UK and every other government, including the USA, is trying to get rid of encryption under the guise of stopping terrorism and child pornography, forget it! the real reason is to have the ability of knowing when everyone is pissed off with governments, the rich and famous, have had enough and want to stop what they are up to!!
It’s so weird how spies, terrorists and people up to no good were ever able to exist and do their thing in the age before the Internet…
So I’m guessing that the convenience of the Internet has made it the de facto method of nogoodniks to ply their trade and they all decided to sign an agreement with each other to never again use hand passed notes, secret codes and other traditional methods…
Oh… Then her arguments makes total sense.
And plus 10 for the hypocrisy.
I think their goal here is to disrupt the communications capability of the internet as it allows dissemination of all those things they should not have done. Things were so easily covered up in the past and they yearn for a return.
Boris Johnson has the solution
Boris Johnson has the solution. Don’t require companies to weaken encryption. Instead, require people to take screenshots of their plaintext messages before they send them over encrypted channels.
Theresa May is the most dangerous terrorist in the world.
Inconcievability?(?)
Can we suggest that these people have NO IDEA of the Needs of Encryption? Even the uses of are beyond their reasoning..
Then trying to apply it to 1 WHOLE nation..
THEN you THINK you can apply it to a region..
Any and all intercepts into and OUT OF an area on this planet?? FORCING other areas to BREAK and decrypt ALL communications??
THEN WHAT? Any person could listen in and all communications and discover that the world leaders are Idiots??
(didnt someone already do this??)
Re: Inconcievability?(?)
When I SEE that KIND of RANDOM word CAPITALIZATION in a COMMENT I don’t even BOTHER reading the REST of it!
AnD ReMEmBeR wHeN RaNdOm LetTer cApITaLiZaTiOn WaS pOpUlAr?
Re: Re: Inconcievability?(?)
Haha! That second paragraph actually made my eyes bleed.
Banning encryption.
If you ban encryption then only terrorists will use encryption.
The next step is to ensure the law is being followed by searching everyone’s phone without any probable cause or a warrant.
Re: Banning encryption.
FTFY.
You won’t stop the use of strong encryption with anything less than full consumer lockout of the devices, enforced by the devices themselves. So long as the consumer can tell the device what to do (and compile code for it that they found in a book….) strong encryption will prevail. Hence, the consumer must be stripped of that ability.
Yes, there will be the few that can bypass those device enforcement measures. Those are also the ones who will be getting a nice long visit from Anti-"Terrorism" forces.
Yet another freedom about to die. Are you safe yet?
Re: Re: Banning encryption.
Re: Re: Banning encryption.
That is a great FTFY!
And I mean that in all sincerity.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Theresa May Tries To Push Forward With Plans To Kill Encryption, While Her Party Plots Via Encrypted Whatsapp
This reads like a bad skit from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Ending terrorism will require more than banning encryption it will require leadership. Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s policy prescriptions have been measured/weighed and found sorely lacking.
Ending England’s unconditional and militaristic support of Pax Americana would be a good place to begin.
T. May really Will. Expand a dill to follow this policy
At the same time as brexit. The big component of the British economy is financial services. To continue operating in financial services you need secure communications. I don’t think May is firing on all cylinders, first go to an election to get an increased majority to negotiate better in brexit, then deliberately cripple encryption, with many negative effects. Bye, Bye financial services.
Re: Re:
Brexit has already seen banks move their personnel and operations to different countries. Financial services in the UK will soon be restricted to whoever is willing to deal with a shrunken market since we used to be seen as the Anglophile gateway to Europe. I can see my native Ireland taking that job on.
AAAAAAAA
OK Look,
Most of the people that actually care about encrypting their own life, aren’t going to be using Whatsapp. There is this thing called Free Software (Free as in freedom) that one can look and check the source code for back doors.
That’s also if you use a software solution. For me, I prefer classic index cards and Thumb Drives. Are we going to ban Thumb Drives too?
It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for activists to hide.
We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for activists to communicate with each other.