Raphael Stevens

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    Government revive push to make apps like WhatsApp and iMessage weaken protections so they can read messages

    End-to-end encryption lets users use messaging services without the owners of those services being able to access the conversations.Government representatives, including Home Secretary Priti Patel, US Attorney General Bill Barr, and others, said they are concerned that “encryption is applied in a way that wholly precludes any legal access to content”.The governments say they “support strong encryption, which plays a crucial role in protecting personal data, privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and cyber security.”However, with regards to certain crimes, such as child exploitation, the government should be allowed access to private channels.This access would:”Embed the safety of the public in system designs, thereby enabling companies to act against illegal content and activity effectively with no reduction to safety, and facilitating the investigation and prosecution of offences and safeguarding the vulnerable;”Enable law enforcement access to content in a readable and usable format where an authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportionate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight; and”Engage in consultation with governments and other stakeholders to facilitate legal access in a way that is substantive and genuinely influences design decisions.”WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are all end-to-end encrypted, while other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, and text messages are not.However if end-to-end encryption is ‘broken’, by allowing a backdoor for law enforcement agencies as these governments have suggested, it could allow malicious individuals the ability to access private conversations.Read moreMany large technology companies, advocacy groups, and the general public have criticised the use of backdoors.Earlier this year, when Zoom said that its free video calling service would not be end-to-end encrypted so it could work better with law enforcement, over 19,000 internet users signed a petition from Mozilla and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) to Zoom in protest. Zoom eventually reversed the decision.“We reiterate that data protection, respect for privacy and the importance of encryption as technology changes and global Internet standards are developed remain at the forefront of each state’s legal framework”, the governments’ statement concludes.“However, we challenge the assertion that public safety cannot be protected without compromising privacy or cyber security”. More

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    Daniel Ellsberg: The nuclear war planner who knew too much

    Suppose a grave-looking man, after approaching you on the sidewalk, announced that the government had contingency plans to annihilate the bulk of humanity and most large non-human species to boot. Odds are you would offer a nervous grin or grimace and pick up your pace. Imagine this same man kept track and informed you he had once served in the highest reaches of the national-security bureaucracy as a nuclear war expert when such plans were being hatched, and not much has changed since then. At this point you might search for a convenient storefront or cafe to make your prompt escape. But what if your unwelcome interlocutor then grabbed you by your cuff and warned of “a catastrophe waiting to happen!” What then?It is an uncomfortable hypothetical, although not as uncomfortable as the fact that someone like this man does exist, and everything he has to say is credible. His name is Daniel Ellsberg. In the introduction to The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, the historic whistleblower of Pentagon Papers fame cuts to the chase: “The hidden reality I aim to expose is that for over 50 years, all-out thermonuclear war — an irreversible, unprecedented, and almost unimaginable calamity for civilisation and most life on Earth — has been, like the disasters of Chernobyl, Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, and before these, World War One, a catastrophe waiting to happen, on a scale infinitely greater than any of these. And this is still true today.” More

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    Coronavirus: Women leaders acted more quickly and decisively to save lives, study finds

    Female leaders acted faster and more decisively to save lives from the oncoming threat of the coronavirus, a study has suggested.

    Early lockdowns have been considered a key element of an effective initial response to the Sars-Cov-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, with the UK’s professor suggesting shuttering society a week sooner could have halved the UK’s death toll.

    Now researchers at the University of Liverpool have suggested female leaders – like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Germany’s Angela Merkel – made quick decisions that resulted in “systematically and significantly better” outcomes for their citizens. More

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    What Kamala Harris's memoir reveals about her politics and personality

    Senator Kamala Harris mentions Joe Biden only once in her memoir, The Truths We Hold, and she does so in passing. “I was sworn in on 3 January 2017, by vice president Joe Biden during his final month in office.” That’s it.

    But if Harris had been somehow gaming out her own veep prospects under a potential Biden nomination when her book was published in 2019, she could have done no better. In her book, Harris praises Biden’s eldest son, the late Beau Biden – who served as Delaware’s attorney general while Harris held that post in California – as “an incredible friend … a man of principle and courage”. They worked together during the great recession, she recalls, investigating banks involved in the foreclosure crisis and seeking more money for struggling homeowners. “Beau and I talked every day,” she writes. “We had each other’s backs.” When Harris and Joe Biden made their first public appearance as running mates, they both invoked the memory of Beau in bringing them together.

    The Truths We Hold, published in advance of Harris’s failed run at the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is a conventional political memoir – a mix of biography, reflections and policy prescriptions. Even its title and subtitle are a generic combo of American civics and political speak. Its most memorable moments are those personal touches: Harris’s recollections of family, friendships and, above all, of her late mother, an Indian immigrant and cancer researcher who raised Harris and her younger sister. More

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    China and Iran draw up military and trade partnership in defiance of Trump administration

    Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government because of its nuclear and military ambitions.

    The partnership, detailed in an 18-page proposed agreement, would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects.

    In exchange, China would receive a regular — and, according to an Iranian official and an oil trader, heavily discounted — supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years. More

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    UK selling spyware and wiretaps to 17 repressive regimes including Saudi Arabia and China

    The British government is providing more than a dozen repressive regimes around the world with wiretaps, spyware and other telecommunications interception equipment they could use to spy on dissidents, public records show.

    Despite rules saying the UK should not export security goods to countries that might use them for internal repression, ministers have signed off more than £75m in such exports over the past five years to states rated “not free” by the NGO Freedom House.

    The 17 countries include China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as the United Arab Emirates, which was the biggest recipient of licences totalling £11.5m alone since 2015. More

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    'Some girls have already married early': Young women at risk of never going back to school in Africa and Asia amid coronavirus crisis

    Half of girls are at risk of never returning to school in Africa and Asia in the wake of the coronavirus emergency, a troubling report has found.

    The study, which polled 24,000 girls, warns that families will prioritise pushing their daughters into marriage at a young age or making them do child labour over returning to education once schools can safely open up.

    Room to Read, which helps children in low-income communities develop literacy skills, said teenage girls had already dropped out during the Covid-19 crisis and this was likely to be the direct result of economic hardship. More