The Politics Thread 3.0

[Moggy]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

[Moggy]

Losses feel even worse when you're used to backing the winners

Either you moved to Bristol West recently or you're much older than I thought. Bristol West hasn't sent a Tory to Westminster since 1992.

[captain red dog]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

Well the intelligence agencies have sighted apps like whatsapp so presumably they have detected a few?

[That]

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

If criminals weren't using one-time pads before the Internet then my hypothesis would be that there are even easier ways to organise a crime without the authorities being able to listen in -- like secretly meeting up in a park, or mailing each other vague instructions that don't make sense if you're not in the group, or buying a new burner phone every week... that's just off the top of my head!

It's possible some serious crimes have been plotted using WhatsApp - maybe we won't ever know - but that doesn't mean taking WhatsApp away will foil them. There are ways to exchange messages over the 'deep web' and all that stuff which I think should be of more concern to authorities than mainstream chat apps.

Rather than erasing privacy - by breaking encryption, legislating for transparent envelopes, putting a GCHQ mic in every phone, or bugging every lamppost in every park - it would be better, I would imagine, to invest in human intelligence to infiltrate and monitor the communities that are producing radicalised people.

That's the ideological argument against it. The practical argument is that breaking encryption breaks the Internet's usefulness. If ordinary people can't use encryption then we can't have online banking, or shopping, or government websites, or NHS interfaces for your local surgery, or communication with your solicitor, or a great many of the other applications of the Internet that enhance our lives. If all of those communications have to be 'breakable' then hackers will raze our Internet infrastructure. It'll be a cyber-bloodbath.

[Moggy]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

Well the intelligence agencies have sighted apps like whatsapp so presumably they have detected a few?

That's not quite the same thing is it?

[Knoyleo]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

[captain red dog]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

Well the intelligence agencies have sighted apps like whatsapp so presumably they have detected a few?

That's not quite the same thing is it?

What do you mean? The intelligence agencies have asked for the ability to be able to monitor these kinds of apps as presumably they have detected a risk that they are being used by terror cells. The government are trying to react to that. I just think it is an issue worth considering provided there isn't wide scale monitoring and there are rigorous control measures.

If the plan is wide spread trawling then I agree that's wrong.

[Moggy]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

Well the intelligence agencies have sighted apps like whatsapp so presumably they have detected a few?

That's not quite the same thing is it?

What do you mean? The intelligence agencies have asked for the ability to be able to monitor these kinds of apps as presumably they have detected a risk that they are being used by terror cells. The government are trying to react to that. I just think it is an issue worth considering provided there isn't wide scale monitoring and there are rigorous control measures.

If the plan is wide spread trawling then I agree that's wrong.

The security services wanting access to Whatsapp is not the same thing as terrorists using Whatsapp to plan attacks.

Of course MI5/MI6/GCHQ/police/army/etc want to access the messages. That's not the same thing as there being a threat or that terrorists have actually used it.

[That]

What do you mean? The intelligence agencies have asked for the ability to be able to monitor these kinds of apps as presumably they have detected a risk that they are being used by terror cells. The government are trying to react to that. I just think it is an issue worth considering provided there isn't wide scale monitoring and there are rigorous control measures.

If the plan is wide spread trawling then I agree that's wrong.

Targeted interception can already be achieved by either physically or digitally bugging a particular smartphone. This is a better solution than legislating against encryption from all the perspectives relevant to a citizen: it allows the investigation to proceed, it lends itself better to oversight & warrants, and it is more difficult for a criminal to abuse or replicate the system (they would have to reverse engineer these 'bugs').

Mass collection and surveillance of plaintext communications over the Internet already happens. GCHQ monitor every plaintext email you send, and every non-secure website request you make. It would be possible to solve crimes without doing this, so I suspect it's more about the agency recognising that knowledge is power and stockpiling knowledge. The push from the government against ordinary people having access to encryption in their chat apps is much more about expanding and 'perfecting' the already-existing mass surveillance programme than it is about solving some particular crime or criminal scenario. The present goal of the people constructing this panopticon is presumably to keep us safe, in good faith, but once the panopticon is made it will be beyond our power to unmake it, and eventually it will be applied against us. It is better, I think, to tell the government to protect us in other ways.

And even if you don't care about your privacy, breaking encryption will make blackmail and fraud much more easy and the Internet much less economically useful in the long term.

[7256930752]

The present goal of the people constructing this panopticon is presumably to keep us safe, in good faith, but once the panopticon is made it will be beyond our power to unmake it, and eventually it will be applied against us. It is better, I think, to tell the government to protect us in other ways.

So the same as giving Government total control over anything?

[Eighthours]

Losses feel even worse when you're used to backing the winners

Either you moved to Bristol West recently or you're much older than I thought. Bristol West hasn't sent a Tory to Westminster since 1992.

I wasn't being serious, Moggy. (FYI, I've only been in Bristol West since 2013.)

[Moggy]

Losses feel even worse when you're used to backing the winners

Either you moved to Bristol West recently or you're much older than I thought. Bristol West hasn't sent a Tory to Westminster since 1992.

I wasn't being serious, Moggy. (FYI, I've only been in Bristol West since 2013.)

You lost, get over it!

Move if you don't like it!

[captain red dog]

It is a difficult situation though. Before the Internet it was very, very difficult for citizens to send completely coded messages,

It actually wasn't that difficult. One-time pads are one of the conceptually most simple forms of encryption, and they are unbreakable.

Doesn't appear to have been used widespread by citizens, certainly not by the likes of the IRA or other domestic terrorist cells from what I can see. Whatsapp is a game changer in that respect.

How many terrorists planned their attacks using Whatsapp?

Well the intelligence agencies have sighted apps like whatsapp so presumably they have detected a few?

That's not quite the same thing is it?

What do you mean? The intelligence agencies have asked for the ability to be able to monitor these kinds of apps as presumably they have detected a risk that they are being used by terror cells. The government are trying to react to that. I just think it is an issue worth considering provided there isn't wide scale monitoring and there are rigorous control measures.

If the plan is wide spread trawling then I agree that's wrong.

The security services wanting access to Whatsapp is not the same thing as terrorists using Whatsapp to plan attacks.

Of course MI5/MI6/GCHQ/police/army/etc want to access the messages. That's not the same thing as there being a threat or that terrorists have actually used it.

Well I suppose I look at it that intelligence experts are calling for powers to be able to access those kinds of messages so you can only assume that is in relation to a threat they have detected. Its not a comfortable prospect or has an easy answer (this proposal isn't necessarily the answer) but the government has a responsibility to respond.

Presumably with the small majority, greater influence of left wing/Liberal parties, they won't be able to get anything particularly intrusive through.

[KK]

Andrea Leadsom today, talking about Jane Austen: "one of our greatest living authors"

[Tineash]

I bet she was smiling inanely when she said it, too.

[Knoyleo]

I bet she was smiling inanely when she said it, too.

twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/887996769371652097

[Return_of_the_STAR]

First Chester Bennington and now I find out Jane Austen is dead, what a horrible day

[That]

[Squinty]

Andrea Leadsom today, talking about Jane Austen: "one of our greatest living authors"

She's no JK Rowling.

[Rex Kramer]

Essentially then, all the Brexit MPs were either blatant opportunists or dumb as a rock?