WhatsApp, Signal and five other messaging services have joined forces to attack the Government’s Online Safety Bill, threatening to leave the U.K. market over fears that the bill will kill end-to-end encryption and open the door to “routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages”. Matthew Lesh in the Spectator has more.
Encryption provides a defence against fraud and scams; it allows us to communicate with friends and family safely; it enables human rights activists to send incriminating information to journalists. Governments and politicians even use it to keep their secrets from malicious foreign actors (and their colleagues). Encryption should not be thrown away in a panic.
The Government has responded to these concerns by declaring that the bill “in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption”. This is technically true but deceptive. The bill gives Ofcom the power to require services to install tools (called “accredited technology”) that could require surveillance of encrypted communications for child exploitation and terrorism content.
Advocates claim this is possible without undermining encryption – by installing tools for scanning for certain content on a user’s device. However, just as one can’t be half pregnant, something can’t be half encrypted. Once a service starts reading messages for any purpose the entire premise of encryption disappears. A paper from fifteen computer scientists and security researchers in 2021 explained it is “moot” to talk about encryption “if the message has already been scanned for targeted content”.
With respect to child exploitation material, messages could be checked against the PhotoDNA database. But that only contains historic photos and videos and cannot be stored on devices. It means creating a software vulnerability, that could be exploited by malicious actors, and sending data back to a central database to check whether it is a match. Alternatively, companies could use machine learning to detect nudity, which would need to be reviewed by authorities. But that has a high rate of failure. Just last year, a father lost his Google account and was reported to the police after sending a naked photo of his child to a doctor.
Some contend that privacy should be sacrificed in the fight against child abuse. But there are clearly limits to this logic. Few would consent to the state putting CCTV in everyone’s bedroom to crack down on the abuse of children. But that is effectively what a technology notice could mean: a CCTV camera in everyone’s phones. Ofcom could even be able to require the use of scanning technology without independent oversight (unlike the Investigatory Powers Act, which at least requires authorities to seek permission from a tribunal and is, generally, targeted against a specific individual rather than mass surveillance).
Message scanning is open to serious mission creep. There will be enormous pressure to scan communications for other purposes, from ‘disinformation’ in the U.K. to any unsanctioned material in authoritarian countries. This is why platforms, who do not want to create a vulnerability in their product or set a global precedent for their billions of users, really could leave the relatively small U.K. market because of the bill. The shutdown of WhatsApp in particular would be a political disaster for any Government, and not just because ministers and MPs would lose their main communications platform; millions of people who use it across the country will also lose theirs.
Worth reading in full.
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Well yes, but what about the billions spent on furlough that damaged the economy and people’s work ethic, the billions spent on poisonous “vaccines”, the billions spent on paper “masks”, the hundreds of millions spent on covid propaganda, the billions spent on “track and trace” and “covid testing” etc etc
All for a “pandemic” that did not in fact exist, for an entirely fictitious “public health emergency”.
Absolutely spot on..
Now now tof, you and I both know that the real purpose of throwing billions of pounds about was to increase public debt and further screw the economy. It worked a treat didn’t it? And all under the cover of “help.”
Yes indeed I should have written “all supposedly for a pandemic that did not in fact exist”
Well said Sir!
Why Was £125M Given to Domestic Abuse Agencies During Lockdown Despite Data Suggesting a Decrease in Domestic Violence Incidents?
Probably because someone was in the right place at the right time to make a nice little earner out of it. Just like the billions spewed on Covid..
Same as it ever was.. insider criminality..
Interesting article and, like probably most people, I never thought to question the received wisdom. However, a couple of issues spring to mind: 1) on scanning the figures by region, I’m not entirely sure I’m seeing huge statistical differences year on year (showing a marked fall) although I’m definitely no numbers person, and 2) what does that additional £125 mill represent as a percentage of the dosh already received? Is it big, small, middling? Finally 3) didn’t just about everyone – including the WHOs pre-existing pandemic plan – point out that domestic violence and child abuse were known side effects of lockdown, that’s why it wasn’t recommended to begin with? While I don’t want to play down any egregious claims these organisations may have made, TOF points out the much bigger fish fried to perfection in the plandemic scam.
“We submit that you should look into the payments that the U.K. Government handed over to domestic violence agencies during Covid lockdowns. In our view, those hand-outs are among the most unwarranted of that period.” A mere drop in the ocean. Chicken feed. What about the £37,000,000,000, yes that’s £37 billion of taxpayers’ money, or more likely debt for their children and grandchildren to pay off spaffed up against the wall for the track and trace projects. For no good reason. And then there’s the £10,000,000,000 or so of lockdown support payments that Rishi mislaid.
Blimey, of all the “gravy trains” you could have pointed the finger at it’s kind of strange to point the finger at this. Just to say if I was a victim of domestic violence, I might not have antagonised my abuser (particularly if I had children) by getting the police round only to find that they’re not interested because “it’s just a domestic” and all at a time when my other escape routes had been shut down. The data may not reflect what actually happened here.
This article shows a lack of awareness both of how the police respond (recently failing to come out when a young man was threatening passers by with a baseball bat in the sleepy neighbourhood I live in) and a real lack of understanding of domestic violence and the psychology of victims and abusers (both of which can be men or women).
I know, right? Sounds like something that controlled opposition would say. Especially since it makes lockdowns somehow look good.
Are you sure you want to concede that domestic violence went down during lockdown? With the implication that it was not only in spite of, but possibly even *because* of lockdown? Because that would only give ammunition to the pro-lockdown zealots.
Most domestic violence is nonlethal though, albeit grossly underreported. And the best evidence shows a significant NET increase during lockdown in many countries, including the USA. If the UK really did see a net decrease, then the UK would truly be an anomaly.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/06/shadow-pandemic-of-domestic-violence/
https://counciloncj.org/new-analysis-shows-8-increase-in-u-s-domestic-violence-incidents-following-pandemic-stay-at-home-orders/
Don’t fall into the trap of inadvertently shilling for lockdowns as a good thing.
Oh, and child abuse likely increased as well:
https://bmjpaedsopen.bmj.com/content/6/1/e001553
And yet infanticide involving abuse increased by 20% between 2020 and 2021? Someone make it make sense. https://dailysceptic.org/2023/08/05/covid-lockdowns-used-as-cover-by-abusers-to-inflict-tragic-child-abuse-experts-warn/
As someone who has worked in the field of child and adult abuse for 40 + years I find it hard to understand the motivation behind this article.
whilst I would agree with the need to criticise the waste of money on needless lockdowns test and trace and vaccines I do not think that spending money on trying to ameliorate the impact of enforced social isolation was all a waste although better they had not created the situation in the first place.
I continued working during the lockdown remotely offering telephone counselling to those who have been abused and suffered domestic violence during the lockdowns. One example of a single mother who had been subjected to 5 years of all types of abuse including gaslighting to the point of illegal sectioning was struggling to work through the aftermath of that experience some 2 years after having eventually summoned the strength to leave the abusive partner.
She was confined to a small flat with no garden and a 5 year old who had just started school who had to adjust to ‘zoom’ teaching.
The pressure of that those restrictions is difficult to describe let alone have any real idea as to its effect. How she did not murder her child is testimony to the tenacity of mothers and their sometimes innate instinct to care.
Thus was just one example of the unique pressures that were put upon those who had already been abused – there are countless others.
The agency I work with operates with a small number of paid staff approx 15 and 30+ volunteers.
The demand for the service increased at one point when there was a two year waiting list, (currently down to about 12 months.)
the implication of this article that money was wasted on an unnecessary service and somehow fed some greedy fat cats is so far from the truth. As a result of some grants received, I did receive payment in order to increase my caseload to help meet the demand. I know of private counsellors who charge £120 per session – I was paid £15 per hour.
other comments have pointed out the use of statistics quoted is over simplified and does not present a true picture. Increased surveillance by controlling partners may well have reduced the opportunity for the most abused, to report or seek refuge. The draconian restrictions on movement adding to their difficulties.
I whole heartedly agree the reaction to Covid has probably generated the biggest waste of money in my lifetime but this was not.
I thought child abuse went up?