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action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home4/scienrds/scienceandnerds/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6114Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/07\/05\/uk-online-safety-bill-risks-e2ee\/<\/a><\/br> Nearly 70 IT security and privacy academics have added to the clamour of alarm over the damage the U.K.\u2019s Online Safety Bill could wreak to, er, online safety unless it\u2019s amended to ensure it does not undermine strong encryption.<\/p>\n Writing in an open letter<\/a>, 68 U.K.-affiliated security and privacy researchers have warned the draft legislation poses a stark risk to essential security technologies that are routinely used to keep digital communications safe.<\/p>\n \u201cAs independent information security and cryptography researchers, we build technologies that keep people safe online. It is in this capacity that we see the need to stress that the safety provided by these essential technologies is now under threat in the Online Safety Bill,\u201d the academics warn, echoing concerns already expressed by end-to-end encrypted comms services<\/a> such as WhatsApp, Signal and Element \u2014 which have said they would opt to withdraw services from the market or be blocked by U.K. authorities rather than compromise the level of security provided to their users.<\/p>\n Last week<\/a> Apple also made a public intervention, warning the Bill poses \u201ca serious threat\u201d to end-to-end encryption which it described as \u201ca critical capability\u00a0 protection\u201d. Without amendments to protect strong E2EE Apple suggested the bill risked putting U.K. citizens at greater risk \u2014 counter to the \u201csafety\u201d claim in the legislation\u2019s title.<\/p>\n An independent legal analysis of the draft legislation also warned last year<\/a> that the surveillance powers contained in the bill risk the integrity of E2EE.<\/p>\n The proposed legislation has already passed through scrutiny in the House of Commons and is currently at the report stage in the House of Lords \u2014 where peers have the chance to suggest amendments. So the security academics are hoping their expertise will mobilize lawmakers in the second chamber to step in and defend encryption where MPs have failed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understand that this is a critical time for the Online Safety Bill, as it is being discussed in the House of Lords before being returned to the Commons this summer,\u201d they write. \u201cIn brief, our concern is that surveillance technologies are deployed in the spirit of providing online safety. This act undermines privacy guarantees and, indeed, safety online.\u201d<\/p>\n The academics, who hold professorships and other positions at universities around the country \u2014 including a number of Russell Group research-intensive institutions such as King\u2019s College and Imperial College in London, Oxford and Cambridge, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Manchester to name a few \u2014 say their aim with the letter is to highlight \u201calarming misunderstandings and misconceptions around the Online Safety Bill and its interaction with the privacy and security technologies that our daily online interactions and communication rely on\u201d.<\/p>\n Their core concern is over the bill\u2019s push for \u201croutine monitoring\u201d of people\u2019s comms, purportedly with the goal of combating the spread of child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSEA) content \u2014 but which the academics argue is a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach that will cause massive harm to the public and society in general by undermining critical security protocols that we all rely on.<\/p>\n Routine monitoring of private comms is \u201ccategorically incompatible with maintaining today\u2019s (and internationally adopted) online communication protocols that offer privacy guarantees similar to face-to-face conversations\u201d, they assert, warning against \u201cattempts to sidestep this contradiction\u201d by applying addition tech \u2014 either client-side scanning<\/a> or so-called \u201cno one but us\u201d crypto backdoors \u2014 as \u201cdoomed to fail on the technological and likely societal level\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology is not a magic wand,\u201d they emphasize, before offering succinct summaries of why the two possible routes to accessing protected private messages can\u2019t be compatible with maintaining people\u2019s right to privacy and security of their information.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no technological solution to the contradiction inherent in both keeping information confidential from third parties and sharing that same information with third parties,\u201d the experts warn, adding: \u201cThe history of \u2018no one but us\u2019 cryptographic backdoors is a history of failures, from the Clipper chip to DualEC. All technological solutions being put forward share that they give a third party access to private speech, messages and images under some criteria defined by that third party.\u201d<\/p>\n On client side scanning, they point out that routinely applying such a tech to mobile users messages is disproportionate in a democratic society \u2014 amounting to surveillance by default \u2014 aka \u201cplacing a mandatory, always-on automatic wiretap in every device to scan for prohibited content\u201d, as the letter puts it.<\/p>\n Nor is client-side scanning technology robust enough for what the bill demands in their expert analysis.<\/p>\n \u201cThis idea of a \u2018police officer in your pocket\u2019 has the immediate technological problem that it must both be able to accurately detect and reveal the targeted content and not detect and reveal content that is not targeted, even assuming a precise agreement on what ought to be targeted,\u201d they write, warning that even client-side scanning tech that\u2019s been designed to detect known CSEA has accuracy issues.<\/p>\n
\nSecurity researchers latest to blast UK\u2019s Online Safety Bill as encryption risk<\/br>
\n2023-07-05 21:53:36<\/br><\/p>\n