Whatever happened to making governments regulate their own citizens? I remember a time on the internet where if a government wanted this sort of control they had to implement it themselves. Something happened at some point where Twitter, Google and Facebook began to comply and now it's the status quo. Why can't we go back to telling governments to go fuck themselves? Police your own fucking people, if you don't want them using our services then block them from doing so. I can't even run an XMPP server with OMEMO now without having to have a fucking legal department to respond to emails from these bureaucrats. I'm absolutely tired of this shit, and the meek response. I am not subject to your god damn jurisdiction.
>Something happened at some point where Twitter, Google and Facebook began to comply and now it's the status quo.
Monopolistic practices happened. How does any regime force people to comply? First you have to make people you want to comply criminals by passing certain laws. Then you selectively enforce these laws on a whim of gov officials. Presto, you've now created a system where you may tell the gov to fuck off, but you'll get prosecuted for something that wolill ruin your day tomorrow.
Mind that I'm not making a value judgement that anti monopolistic laws are bad. No, I'm just stating a fact they can be used to coerce monopolies like Google to do whatever regulators want. Incidentally this is why these laws are so selectively enforced.
The internet happened and made every service – no matter how local – available everywhere in the world. And then companies happened and turned every online service into a business.
Governments often want to regulate business involving entities physically present in the country. If foreign companies refuse to comply, governments could in principle just block them. But they often don't want to, because they benefit more from continued business on their terms. They would prefer that the foreign companies just comply "voluntarily". For example by realizing that the company could lose access to any financial institution that wants to continue operating in that country. And the companies often comply, because they are amoral profit maximizers without any real principles.
In a democracy, the government represents the will and the interests of the citizens in that country. If UK citizens don't want such laws, they can always protest, at the voting booth or in the streets.
It's not the job of multinational companies to have principles regarding the citizens of a country. And indeed, they can comply with the law, or GTFO. And in case they get out, it won't be because of principles, but rather because users of other countries may leave them in case they install backdoors. It's simple economics, and that's good actually, as people in general don't want to be governed by multinationals.
> If UK citizens don't want such laws, they can always protest, at the voting booth or in the streets.
Protest has been restricted [1], and neither the Conservatives or Labour offer different positions. For example, Labour have pledged to "toughen" the OSB [1].
The issue is, much like the us, the UK is a representational democracy.
You vote for officials who you hope represent you and they often don’t.
Also you’re assuming that users leave platforms because of security issues and that’s obviously untrue for most people. I mean… just look at almost any social media platform
Unless you are physically present in the UK or do business in the UK, just tell them to screw off. Treat their demands the same way you would an Iranian or Russian government bureaucrat demanding that you compromise the rights of your users. If they want authoritarian control over the internet, make them build their own great firewall.
Big tech companies are vulnerable to financial pressure, but a one admin Matrix server or XMPP server hosted in the US has no reason to comply.
Unfortunately that's not true. "Do business in the UK" means that a single British user has an account on my server. All the western nations have mutual agreements to enforce their civil laws in each others jurisdictions. Look at Kim Dotcom. I feel the same way as you: make them all build their own firewall. But unfortunately these governments don't see it that way anymore.
But no one cares about your server anyway let alone nation states so it’s not a realistic worry anyway at that level. Once you’re at the point of having relevance then you’ll probably find nation states have levers to pull.
Man, one day there's gonna be a news article on the front page of HN about a hobbyist or medium sized forum admin in the US being sued in federal court by the UK government (that's a thing now BTW) for not blocking UK IPs. Before that there's going to be one about a FOSS chat app maintainer from somewhere getting in trouble even though he runs no infrastructure that UK citizens use.
I don't want to fly under the radar with an ambiguous sense of my own safety.
Too vague - the number one fear of any government is noncompliance. From citizens, bureaucrats, and enforcers (military + police).
There's an important concept in the military wherein you should never give an order you think might not be followed, because it collapses the illusion of authority. Authority is, after all, an illusion. The same is true for governments.
It's why governments that want total surveillance and police states must tippie toe their way there with bills like this, or, do things in total secrecy like the NSA. Try to push the overton window too quickly and you risk noncompliance from a tech company, non compliance from juries, sometimes even (extremely rarely) non compliance from cops, at which point you're facing a governmental crisis of the highest degree.
Wait what? Governments don’t mind noncompliance, they need a little and if we look at legal cases involving tech companies where they are being regulated we can see that tech companies are often noncompliant. Not to mention the whole police and judicial infrastructure.
The Military also expects noncompliance which is why there are military equivalents.
What both need is majority consent and general noncompliance is only a symptom of that being removed. Authoritarian regimes often force compliance even without consent.
I also expect that it would take an awful lot more than regulation like this to get anyone in a western country to rise up enmasse to replace the government. The mess that is this regulation being created just demonstrates how bad the current UK government is at governing.
> we can see that tech companies are often noncompliant
To a degree, sure, but only because of the fluidity of the US justice system. Tech companies, like anyone, always in the end bow to the whims of congress. Consider how much information Google has or could have on any given member of the government - it could begin blackmailing, but hasn't dared take that step. Consider the actual power over money the banks have - they are one of the primary mechanisms the US government uses to regulate the economy, set interest rates and etc. They twist the law to serve them but no bank has ever outright disavowed a law, despite it being as simple as making the numbers be what the bank wants them to be.
Yes, laws aren't the only pressure mechanism affecting banks, google, etc, but my point is that true noncompliance is representative of a rejection of a given authority. It's more than just breaking a law. The US government remains a competent enough authority to acknowledge, but if congress came out and amended the constitution to remove all term limits, and the supreme court put out a statement that it will interpret these changes as written, and then the three branches went from there to establish an overt authoritarian regime, at that point you'd start seeing true non compliance.
I use the extreme example to show the balance that has to be struck by authority to maintain the illusion of authority. The US government maintains authority so long as it's useful to those others with extraordinary power (banks, tech companies, the People in their entirety, the military-industrial complex, big oil, etc). It can't risk pushing against those interests too far in any direction.
We have a highly coupled world, which means that the Brussels effect, the California effect and now the London effect all combine to produce the lowest common denominator.
