UK Government to Launch PR Campaign Undermining End-to-End Encryption
Rolling Stone is reporting that the UK government has hired the M&C Saatchi advertising agency to launch an anti-encryption advertising campaign. Presumably they’ll lean heavily on the “think of the children!” rhetoric we’re seeing in this current wave of the crypto wars. The technical eavesdropping mechanisms have shifted to client-side scanning, which won’t actually help—but since that’s not really the point, it’s not argued on its merits.
Winter • January 18, 2022 7:03 AM
The basic point is that they will or can not protect us against criminals, spies, and foreign agents, but they want to make it illegal for us to protect ourselves.
It is not different from the municipality outlawing bicycle locks because they cannot easily remove stray bicycles. Or outlawing door locks to allow the police to enter your house without fuss[1], “because of the Children”.
The basic point is that this is a very bad “deal”: We have to give up our right to secure our online life, while they refuse to protect us.
[1] The story has been told before, but the Belgian police (Rijkswacht) had a service for the public. If you were planning a vacation, you could warn your local police office and they would keep an eye on your house because of all the burglaries. They stopped it when it became public it was the police that did the burglaries when the owners were on holiday.