I think there was a misunderstanding. DRM requires encrypting the content and the “secure device” has the keys to decrypt it. There is no DRM without encryption.
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I think the best way of explaining it to grandma is to explain that banning encryption is like banning envelopes and forcing everyone to write only on postcards.
Yes it would allow the police to read what people are writing, but there would be a one or two obvious downsides…
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Long as I remember the rain been comin’ down
Clouds of mystery pourin’ confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages tryin’ to find the sun.
And I wonder still I wonder who’ll stop the rain.
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1% seems way, way, WAY overestimated. So every 100th ‘communication’ would be something by a criminal or terrorist?
There was just now a report in the Netherlands about causes of death over the last 10 years. Of all the deaths, 0.0000732% were related to terrorism (even with the extended modern definition of it).
I’ll concede that terrorists probably communicate more than kill, but normal people also communicate more than die. So I’d estimate that the 1% estimate is overestimating by a factor of about 100000.
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The risk of terrorism stays roughly what it was before any of the attacks - pretty much nil.
Now, how to beat this into the thick skulls of my fellow citizens, obediently running scared at the drop of the mass media hats, is a rather pressing question.
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Hey didn’t we just hear that over 125% of the darknet is child porn? Those are criminals too!
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I doubt Cameron is very serious. I think there’s an election coming and he probably wants to appeal to his probably technically illiterate base supporters. It’s another bridge to nowhere. “Fear the new technology,” he says, “vote for me!” Standard conservative play.
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Hopefully yes. But We the Engineers can use it as motivating/rallying for designing and deploying of more govt/corporate will resisting technologies, and We the Consumers can take (one can dream…) the advice of the engineers of what will be easiest to reconfigure in the future when such restrictions are actually pushed through. Because the frogs they are a-boilin’…
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nah, that would be against the spirit of the law.
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Not bad. I would just add that, as well as not being allowed to use an envelope, Gran also has to run off multiple photocopies of her letter/postcard, and send one to
- the police
- her insurers
- Tescos
- the local chemist
- Auntie Ethel
- your sister
- Uncle Bob, who she’s never forgiven for that unfortunate incident at the funeral
- her doctor
- the local MP
- all the local opposition MPs
- her husband
- the local yoof
- some random chav
- David Cameron
- Ed Milibrand
- Nigel Farage
- Natalie Bennett
- each of her neighbours
- each of your neighbours
- etc
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Dammitohell I’m out of 
s 
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Technically, she doesn’t have to do the copies. The post office will make and send (and store) them, for her security.
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Technically, I know. But by making that her responsibility it forcibly brings home the point that every time she sends something, she’s also sending it to everyone else. If that’s left to the post office … meh. Out of sight, out of mind.
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And proposal for openness fails if it’s not open to everyone. Governments like two way mirrors over glass. They also prefer having guns when they take away guns, and fiat currencies where they don’ t can hide their actions.
It’s the nature of power. As soon as one gets it, there’s a tendency to do anything to keep it, and get more.
Fortunately, the toothpaste is out of the tube on this one. Freedom encrypted will not go back in the tube 
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It’s hitting the big media now.
Judging from the comments, there will be a quite sizeable population segment willing to do the good ol’ civil disobedience.
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Policeman: Sir, I see you repeated the full stop at the end of your email to your wife last night. Please decrypt that message for me.
Me: Sorry, it’s already in plain text?
Policeman: Come now sir, there is no grammatically correct reason for using two full stops at the end of a sentence. “…” is clearly some kind of code
Me: Oh, that, I’ve no idea, must have been a typo.
Policeman: That’s just not going to cut it. Either you tell us what those two dots mean, or you’re coming with us…
I’ve always wondered what happens in these cases when someone reads all of the ones and zeros to the court when ordered to decrypt their hard drive…
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I suspect that all it will take to kill this is for the finance industry to explain the extent to which it depends on strong encryption.
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Nah, they will just buy themselves an exception.
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An open letter to John Whittingdale MP, Chair of the House of Commons Department of Culture Media and Sport Committee about this can be found here
