Fantastic article, and a real concern for UK Citizens.

Interesting, the government can demand creating a backdoor and doesn't let anyone tell about it. Basically, outlawing E2EE.

I'm guessing they could, in theory, attack open source projects, but it would not be very effective as those could be infinitely forked. That's the reason why governments will actually support an encourage an oligopoly of proprietary platforms via regulations (e.g. mandatory automated scanning) which only companies can practically comply with.

There's no way to obtain root access on GrapheneOS without making your own builds (which won't be affected by many of the apps adding support for GrapheneOS, who likely would only whitelist the official signing keys) or keeping the bootloader unlocked in perpetuity (because AFAIK there is currently no way to recalculate verified boot hashes on top of a systemless root like Magisk -- not that I even know if that works on GOS in the first place). Some years back I was actually working on calculating AVB2 hashes from a live system rather than ONLY through the Android build process, until TWRP wiped my phone without consent or confirmation due to an OpenRecoveryScript that I absolutely did not put there and I basically stopped tinkering with Android root due to that. I have an iPhone nowadays.

Since Epstein is no more, the governments became crazy about going after people's private data, perhaps hoping to find some spice. Like some politicians lost their source.

To an extent. My account is on a different country. Even using a VPN, I was still asked to verify my age to access certain websites. The only explanation I could think of is that iOS abused my consent to them using location data for that.

Yeah, good point. I wonder what would happen if someone without ADP in the UK changed over the region settings to the United States, switched ADP on, and then switched the region back to the UK. I wonder if anybody's tried this?

Off topic - but I am not sure that is true in the UK/EU - did it happen elsewhere in the world?:

Before the COVID restrictions, airlines were required to use their allotted spots at least 80% of the time.[6] During the pandemic, the European Commission temporarily suspended Europe's airport slot rule for a short period.[citation needed] Due to travel restrictions, many flights were cancelled or had limited capacity, which made it difficult for airlines to fulfill all the requirements for possessing an airport slot. The suspension of the slot rule was reinstated in October 2021. After the slot rule was reinstated, the rule only required European airlines to use 75% of their flight slots for the winter season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_%28commercial_avi...

I changed countries a few months ago. It took me about two months with all the roadblocks, while I already had government issued proofs from both countries about the change and new address.

I've not looked into it but I suspect this uses eligibilityd, the same thing that does the location based checks to see if EU users can use 3rd party app stores.

From what I remember it uses a combination of things like your current GPS location, your SIM cards reported country and more to determine what country you're really in to restrict certain features.

So it's not as simple as swapping your location in settings, or even traveling to somewhere in the EU, theres a certain sticky-ness to what your device thinks is your current country.

Edit: bit more info on eligibilityd here https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Eligibility#eligibilityd

Heres a favourite of mine. Apple & Google were/still are syphoning off all mobile device push messages to US government. They flat out denied it for years until it got leaked from another source, as soon as it was out in the open they admitted and said they were doing it all along but weren't allowed to tell anybody due to government NDAs.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...

These aren't conspiracy theories, these types of secret agreements happen all the time.

EDIT: it seems the original poster I was replying to has deleted their post, and so this may not make as much sense in the thread now.

Well in theory more people use an insecure software, the more FBI can monitor

It was 1984 when I left in 1998. Not missed.

Border agents in America can search your phone or laptop without a warrant or sufficient suspicion at the border.

Jeff Gray is a man who regularly gets arrested and/or trespassed from public places for holding up a sign saying "God bless the homeless vets". Seems to happen nearly every time he does it at various locations.

Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.

There’s a general regression towards fascist and right wing ideologies in the last few years

The “fascist” part (authoritarian/totalitarian tendencies) came long before the resurgence of the right, but most people seem to approve of those methods as long as they target those they dislike, so I won’t be shedding any tears for them when it’s their turn at last.

Very well written article

It is self-evidently written by AI. You can tell from both tropes such as “To bring this into sharper focus” and the fact that it is entirely without an opinion or argument for most of the piece.

Weird that you think it was legal for people to say "kill the king" back then.

And I'd argue that human dignity shall be inviolable

Why are we comparing Switzerland? Do you want to try again with the United States?

Let me give it a go; Switzerland has higher gun homicides than the UK.

I don't know, but the UK has criminalized expressions of support for Palestine Action.

They're dragging grannies off to prison just for holding up signs, and literally accusing them of supporting terrorism.

If 27/30 meet the bar for "bad" is that an acceptable level of policing speech? 19/30?

Considering they arrest people for saying "there are only two genders", I'm fairly certain the bar is incredibly low. I'm not sugar-coating this by the way, saw a Youtube video of this happening a week or so ago on one of those police watch videos. Someone in a pub was having a verbal debate with someone about genders, then a bystander told the police and had them arrested for "hate crime" for saying "there are only two genders".

I dislike harassing, threats, hate speech and everything wrong that people yell to other people.

But I dislike even more that we decide that the solution to it is to pass laws prohibiting speech, and even more that the ones in charge of passing those laws are very incentivised to prohibiting criticism to themselves or their policies or their ideologies.

What did she say?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2910vrrygo

I don't have time to dig up her post - but she was calling on people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers - she had around 10,000 followers, and her post was read 300,000 times: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po

UK abortion clinic laws go a lot further than banning demonstrations.

1. Holding up a sign offering help to any women being coerced into an abortion is illegal. 2. Standing silently on the road near one can be illegal. 3. parking a car with a bumper sticker near one can be illegal.

The whole paragraph about Musk and rape gangs is nonsense, of course. The biggest rape gang ever convicted in the UK was entirely white. Musk and his ilk only care about rape when the rapists are not white. On average immigrants are slightly less likely to commit sexual assaults (obviously averaging across many different groups).

What did she say? The article does not elucidate.

She called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be burned. I think she is a nasty racist but I also think the sentence was excessive and I am not convinced it was a serious incitement to violence (and that was not what she was convicted of).

US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.

Not American, and I entirely support the right of anyone to make unkind comments about anyone else. You are right that many people apply different standards to their own side, but right wing Americans are are from alone in that.

This is a deeply deranged opinion piece. The author ties himself into knots to conflate a tiny number of high profile instances involving social media posts with harassment and other negative behavior involving electronic communication.

The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.

Pretty sure she called for the murder, by arson, of asylum seekers although the article missed that bit out.

Everyone should read the case of the IT consultant getting arrested in the UK because he posted a photo of him doing some target shooting during a trip to the US: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-s...

Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.

[delayed]

Maliciousness.

The quantity and quality of communications that have been externalized and become effectively searchable and retrievable has increased by many orders of magnitude since paper mail was invented. I think even if you agreed that the State might have had that right then (which not everyone would), it would be good to reconsider what that means with the communications and information systems of today.

The only thing where they tried to push back very hard was the EU's DMA, beyond that they folded quickly to absolutely everything else.

A non-trivial reason I bought a fairly closed device (macbook) was that Tim Cook, at least publicly, told the FBI to get bent when asked to create a backdoor. Exactly what I want to see, a fight in court.

I would hope to see Apple pull out of the UK market over this, and certainly to stop selling Apple devices to the UK government and to remove the UK government entities from Apple services.

Faced with a legal order that would have required it to change the security architecture on which ADP depended, Apple found a third option: stop offering the feature that made this dilemma exist in the first place. It reverted affected UK iCloud data to Standard Data Protection, where Apple does hold the keys and can respond to lawful legal procress (except the baseline categories that stay end-to-end encrypted either way). This satisfied the underlying legal requirement without ever building a ‘backdoor’.

Maybe Apple should withdraw all encryption support from all UK government accounts. The Prime Minister can use a Huawei or some chunky thing from a military contractor.

Strange and hypothetical thought: could Bill purchase a US or international model of the iPhone with US or international iCloud account capable of ADP to activate ADP? Would this allow somebody living or working in the UK the ability to use ADP?