662
Creating apps like Signal or WhatsApp could be 'hostile activity,' claims UK watchdog (www.techradar.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
95 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 58 points 9 months ago (9 children)

What the fuck happened to the UK? Is Trump president there too?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Meta happened. UK, US, all over the world there is a correlation between the adoption of Meta's products and the corrosion of basic human rights.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    Could you elaborate? Or maybe this is just a joke idk my brains not braining rn

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    To be totally clear, the UK has been a fucked up place for centuries, I don't think Meta fundamentally changed the culture.

    Having said that, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc are tools that enable political influence over the population at levels that were previously unimaginable. Look into Cambridge Analytica a bit or borrow Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America by Christopher Wylie from your local library for details.

    Starting as early as 2012 we have evidence that Facebook was pivotal in stoking racial tensions in Myanmar, leading to a genocide.

    There's evidence that Meta was a major factor in Brexit, which more specifically relates to my claim with respect to influence in the UK.

    The US election in 2016 was clearly influenced by Meta platforms, including taking Russian money to stoke racial tensions in line with the Russian Manifesto, The Foundations of Geopolitics.

    I'm currently reading through Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which is a memoir about how these systems were conceptualized and built at Facebook, and so far I'd recommend it.

    Obviously Meta isn't the only problem, Tiktok is clearly a problem of similar size and scope, and other social apps have their own challenges (X being owned by the richest man alive and actively influencing the algorithm, for example), but in many ways Meta is the OG, and blazed the trail for others.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

    People pretend not to know but mass immigration creates…issues, and so the UK became a hotbed of espionage and influence operations. With a certain demographic there’s also a high risk of breeding terrorism and social unrest to say the least, that cannot be defused through typical means at such a high rate of immigration. While these particular measures are draconian, in the end something similar would be done. You see the same trend playing out in other European countries with Chat Control, so to say it is a UK thing is naive. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US probably already can break into these apps because of their technological superiority, and other countries like China straight up demand a back door, so privacy is well and truly dead in modern times.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (1 child)

    The USA and UK are both Five Eyes members and routinely share intelligence. If the USA had compromised secure apps, wouldn't the UK be privy to intelligence gathered via that method?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    they want to preserve their sources, so they only reveal information that is possible for other countries to obtain with their lesser capabilities. Five eyes only existed because some laws prevented countries from spying on their own citizens, but times are changing and those laws have been or likely will be neutered.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent