Summary
The UK Parliament has passed the Online Safety Bill (OSB), claiming it will enhance online safety but actually leading to increased censorship and surveillance. The bill grants the government the authority to compel tech companies to scan all user data, including encrypted messages, to detect child abuse content, effectively creating a backdoor. This jeopardizes privacy and security for everyone. The bill also mandates the removal of content deemed inappropriate for children, potentially resulting in politicized censorship decisions. Age-verification systems may infringe on anonymity and free speech. The implications of how these powers will be used are a cause for concern, with the possibility that encrypted services may withdraw from the UK if their users’ security is compromised.
On the tangent of quantum factorization, I feel like a reality of modern encryption at risk is still very slim. At least if the wiki article is anything to go by. I think we are sooner to have backdoors in encryption algorithms than we are quantum messing everything up.
NIST already has recommendations for quantum resistant algorithms. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/07/nist-announces-first-four-quantum-resistant-cryptographic-algorithms
This is very good news, I’ve never been more happy to be wrong.
Most applications, like your internet traffic, aren’t using public key encryption.
Doesn’t an https website use a public key?
