“Apple and the rest of the world’s largest tech companies have launched a sweeping attack on the Government’s spying bill, arguing that it still has huge flaws that must be corrected before it passes into law,” Andrew Griffin reports for The Independent.
“The company — along with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo — has sent written evidence to the bill considering the law adding that major parts of it needs to be re-written,” Griffin reports. “While the note acknowledges that the new legislation is necessary, it presents major criticisms of the powers that are enabled by the bill.”
“Apple and the rest of the companies argue that those writing the bill have misunderstood the way that encryption works, and that breaking into encryption once would ‘damage’ security as soon as they are forced to break into it,” Griffin reports. “The submission also criticises the bill on a number of other fronts …”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Airstrip One, er… the UK — which may already be too far gone, what with a camera or three up each and every Brit’s arse — gets it right.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Apple could have met its match with Teresa May, who despite several rounds of criticism both from within and outside Parliament keeps recycling the same mess while adding more draconian clauses that (it is claimed) there is no time to debate.
The terrorists of the world have to love this, because even when they lose, they still win by making us slaves to our own governments.
*EXACTLY*
And of course, there are loon-level politicians in every country who’d love to feed their control issues by making us all bow and scrape at the mention of the name of their psychopathic selves.
Hello Paul Ryan! 💩
That was really good. Good bird to you!
But it’s for the children!
Mr Franklin was a British citizen when he made that statement.
We in the USA are suitably up in arms about attempts to wreck our First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
But we haven’t noticed that ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is already well on its way in the UK. It’s super scary shite going on over there right this minute. You’d think they’d be more adverse to the totalitarian tactics…
(Whistles cheerfully like Roger Miller)
England swings like a pendulum do
Bobbies on bicycles two by two
Westminster Abbey, the tower Big Ben
The rosy red cheeks of the little children
Notes courtesy of my late mother, the film collector.
In the 1984 film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Welshman Richard Burton famously portrayed O’Brien, the Ministry of Truth bureaucrat who tortured protagonist Winston Smith, played by John Hurt. It was Burton’s final film; he was ruined by pain and medication, and needed dozens of takes to finish his penultimate scenes. He died that very year.
His more illustrious predecessor in name, Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) translated the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, amongst other linguistic feats, and dared to travel in disguise to Mecca and chronicle that forbidden experience. He was a champion of indigenous people, writing ethnological treatises describing their societies, and defending them against colonial exploitation.
Creatives and reporters; — both the people who made the cautionary films, and the explorers of uncharted territory, all had the same objective: to illuminate the human condition in detail, from every angle, so that all of us could watch, read, and learn, and in so doing, achieve two things: better ourselves as fledged members of a global tribe, and prepare us for what is likely coming our way.
If the Brits keep this shit up they will end up communicating with tin cans and string because high tech firms will simply stop selling their wares in England.
And it forces people who want to retain records as personal items to consider going to another country to buy the equipment they need … just like the criminals and terrorists do.
Governments look for magic bullets to solve what is an age old problem of catching bad guys. Sun Tzu noted about 3000 years ago, that in war against the bad guys, he would rather have 1 good spy than 10,000 good soldiers.
Spying is a messy and dangerous and lying business full of errors and frauds but is absolutely necessary if a country is going to protect its citizens against outside forces from disrupting or overturning your nation. Governments want an easy way out that is “clean,” but the only way that can be done is to lock everyone in little paddocks and surveil them constantly like cattle.
I was there in the UK back in the 90’s when they started with their all-watching surveillance network. They were OBSESSED with watching everything, everywhere, ALL the time… I believe Sepco was one of the early ‘specialist’ firms GCHQ contracted with and today all you have to do is walk on ANY street in London or other UK large cities and they are watching you constantly.
WHY , they will ask as will most others around the world, ‘why are they still able to move freely around the UK ?? ‘ The real answer is that they are actually smarter than most ‘intelligence’ operatives and surely more cunning. Over-surveillance of the masses results in some very creative ways to circumvent the GCHQ programs but there is a limit.
Here’s hoping this group of providers slam the GCHQ and their counterparts into submission that AVERAGE CITIZEN’S are NOT the issue and will protect them any way they can…
We’ve already seen illustrations of how GCHQ will BLACK OUT their video feeds from public viewing when it is inconvenient to THEM. That’s what criminal nations do. That’s totalitarianism.