Britain’s controversial online safety bill will make Britons more vulnerable to internet harm than ever, the Internet Society says, while data from other countries suggests surveillance is mostly not used to target online child abusers, although this is linked A key citation justification measure.
The Internet Society said this week that the government’s efforts to describe end-to-end encryption as a hazard that needs to be designed from the Internet as it exists today will lead to an increase in “fraud and online harm”.
Founded by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, the Internet Society is one of the oldest and most respected organizations guiding the path of the public Internet today. Its call for a tough Online Safety Act, aka the Online Harm Act, should get policymakers’ attention.
“Today, encryption is an essential part of digitally connected objects such as cars, doorbells, home security cameras and even children’s toys, also known as the ‘Internet of Things’,” Robin Wilton, the association’s director of internet trust, said in a statement. It is also critical to national security by protecting highly sensitive systems such as power grids, citizen databases and financial institutions such as stock markets.”
the government has Make it clear that you want to ban end-to-end encryption, incorporating willing and eager police forces Public campaign to demonize safety and security technology.
The Internet Society’s Wilton dismissed the calls, saying: “Despite access to world-leading cryptography expertise, governments have been unable to come up with a reliable, secure backdoor that meets their requirements because it doesn’t exist. Instead, governments have It’s trying to make companies feel insecure by default.”
Citing the government’s campaign around the Online Harm Act, he added: “This is not a way to ‘take advantage of the benefits of a free, open and secure internet’, it is a recipe for fraud and online harm.”
“It prevents spies, terrorists and hostile governments from accessing and exploiting classified communications of government officials, and protects highly sensitive systems intrinsically linked to national security, including power grids, databases and financial institutions, from hackers,” he concluded .
Who is the government really most keen to surveil?drug dealer
Meanwhile, a growing body of data shows that despite the Online Safety Act and police claims that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) will turn social media into a pedophile haven.
Germany-based encrypted email company Tutanota published a study this week showing that surveillance orders were first used to target drug offenders.
“Most of the orders issued to telecom providers are related to drug offences,” Tutanota told registerJudging by the data released, the company said that about 80 percent of wiretapping orders issued in the United States, one of the more heavily surveilled Western countries, were for drug-related crimes.
“Child sexual abuse and child pornography have played only a marginal role in telecommunications surveillance in practice in recent years,” write a blog Matthias Pfau, founder of Tutanota.
The same is true in Germany, where the category of warrants granted specifically for child abuse imagery offences accounted for just 0.2% of surveillance applications in 2019 – a paltry level that has remained at this insignificant level for a decade.
In snooping Australia, the situation is slightly different, with 50% of search warrants granted under the country’s Telecommunications Interdiction Access Act 1979 focused on drugs: Child abuse imagery crimes in 2020, Tutanotta says Surveillance of those involved accounted for only 0.4% of applications.
“Unfortunately, the Home Office has not provided data on this,” Pfau added, but there is no reason to think the UK is very different from its sister democracies.
The Online Harm Act continues its parliamentary tour. ®
