The DMZ

7:30 AM

Is Debit card black strip actually a magnetic tape which holds your account information?

4 hours later…

12:00 PM

Did the Uk really voted a law in to require backdoors in all encryption... That's insane.

@Arperum they still won't be able to decrypt what's app chats.

@user334283 Won't that just mean that whatsapp becomes illegal? or be forced to build in a backdoor.

12:17 PM

no-one (AFAIK) really knows how far it'll go, the general powers are there now, but the technical implementation isn't known

so it could be either massively invasive and insecure OR totally useless

take your pick of those two stellar options

Journeyman Geek

or both

or they could just refuse to store data.

cause pretty darned sure monitoring and decrypting everything in realtime will get pricy fast

Tinned_Tuna

@JourneymanGeek I don't think so, they'll just hand the responsibility down the chain to the comms providers, much like they did with internet connection records (ICRs)

12:34 PM

@Arperum The one possible backdoor what's app can be forced to build in their app is if application itself copies and sends client messages to the government without the user knowledge.

can anyone explain in short words how 2 users agree on one symmetric key to encrypt/decrypt messages?

@user334283 No, the thing is that if the governments requires it, WHatsapp will be legally required to be able to provide exactly what two users are sending to eachother, regardless if that's possible now or not. (I sure hope it's not)

12:56 PM

@Arperum That's the problem for government. Even what's app can't read what you are sending or receiving. I'll check what algorithm what's app is using else I won't be able to know why what's can't read.

Government may not read your chats but they can ask what's app to give them your chat logs of with whom you are talking to and when and for how much time.

1:13 PM

@user334283 No. The new law allows government to force companies to give a way to read encrypted messages. So they can force a company to build in a backdoor, or to fuck the hell out of the UK;

1:36 PM

@Arperum the question is whether large providers of software will actually comply

if it were the USA asking they'd likely have no choice

however with the UK I could see someone like Apple just refusing

@RоryMcCune Yea, I assume bigger companies will just be like "We'll just stop doing any and all business in the UK then."

well they'll threaten that, then it will be down to the UK.Gov to call their bluff or not

That will be interesting to see how it develops.

but for Apple et al the risk is if they give in once, they'll get asked again and again

and the security of their products will be ruined