Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Is encryption the next thing to be criminalised?

Not content with age-gating online content, demanding digital IDs and ramping up surveillance of the internet, some governments now look as if they are preparing to make encryption a crime.

Leading the charge is the UK government which, earlier this year told Apple, by way of a Technical Capacity Notice that it must provide a back-door capability that would let authorised agencies take a look at stuff stored in the iCloud by Brits.

Apple responded by giving the finger and removing their Advanced Data Protection from UK accounts so as not to be in breach of the UK directive. As a result of this change, iCloud data uploaded by Brits does not have end-to-end encryption any longer.

And this is just the start.

An interesting piece on the UK Internet Society's website highlights how encryption is under threat in Britain, as a result of government idiocy.

It's almost as if having an IQ smaller than your shoe-size is a mandatory requirement for any job in government these days. These clowns do not understand that the phrase "secure backdoor" is an oxymoron of epic proportion.

I strongly fear that we're, once again, seeing the UK leading the way in the lunacy stakes, just as it did with the age-gating of online content and the need for users to submit ID to avoid the implications of that. Trust me when I say that other countries, almost certainly Australia and perhaps New Zealand, will soon follow suit and also demand that any service offering end-to-end encryption also makes a back door available to government agencies.

Oh, what's that -- Australia's already well down the path with the likes of Signal threatening to withdraw service from that country?

Knock me down with a feather!

After all, it's all about protecting the children, isn't it?

And if you believe that, I have a bridge that connects the Auckland CBD to the North Shore that I can sell you for $50, email me for details.

If the NZ government tries this on then perhaps I could point them at a page on their own website which reveals how some 13.4 percent of all Kiwi kids are living in poverty. Maybe, if they want to "think of the children" then here would be a great place to start -- before you commence to stripping us of what little privacy we have left.

However, I'd like to think/hope that our politicians have just enough intelligence to see the mandatory inclusion of back-doors in encryption systems as the bad idea it most certainly is.

All of these restrictions, regulations, crack-downs, intrusions and anti-privacy measures on the part of governments speaks poorly to the job they're doing. When a government is so afraid of the people it serves that it feels it must constantly surveil them and restrict their rights to free speech then they need to start looking in a mirror to find the real problems.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font