Here’s What Happened On Twitter After The U.K. PM Said He Wants To Ban Encryption

Yesterday U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron was dubbing a Fox News commenter who had made ludicrous claims on a topic on which he was entirely mis-informed “clearly an idiot“.

Today Cameron has been branded a dunce of similar proportions after making a speech calling for encryption to be banned on national security grounds.

From #FoxNewsFacts to WebCameronClangers (or #CameronCryptoBollox as one tweeter put it)… How long is a day in politics!

The back story here, as I wrote yesterday, is that European politicians have been calling for increased surveillance of online activity to combat terrorism, in the wake of last week’s terror attacks in Paris. This is the usual trigger response of Western politicians striving to look tough on terrorism.

However the U.K. PM, who is notably on the re-election trail right now — with a General Election coming up in May — singled himself out for the most hawkish pronouncements on this front, effectively calling for a ban on end-to-end encryption.

“Are we going to allow a means of communication between people which even in extremis, with a signed warrant from the Home Secretary personally, that we cannot read?” said Cameron in a speech yesterday attacking encryption. “No we must not. The first duty of any government is to keep our country and our people safe.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_kqM0gn63M&w=853&h=480]

So — presumably — Cameron is calling for a ban on mainstream messaging services which use encryption, such as Apple’s iMessage or FaceTime. Not to mention PGP. He’s likely also not comfortable with consumer services that deliberately delete messages after the intended recipient has viewed them, such as Snapchat — unless they offer backdoors to U.K. security services. And what about the entire banking industry, which clearly relies on strong encryption to function? Is that going to be banned or not?

Helpfully the EFF did a security review of messaging services last year. And gave gold stars to ChatSecure, Cryptocat, Signal/Redphone, Silent Phone & Silent Text (pictured at the top of this post running on the security-focused BlackPhone smartphone) and TextSecure.

Such strongly secured comms services would presumably be first up against the wall in a Cameron-led Tory Britain.

The alternative is that Cameron is not actually so stupid as to think it’s possible — or desirable — to erect a great ‘encryption-banning firewall’ around the U.K. that somehow outlaws all sorts of essential technologies and sandboxes the country from the rest of the connected world. (For some granular detail on what might be required to deliver a Cameron encryption ban read this excellent Boing Boing debunking.)

Rather he just thinks the British public is so stupid — so is making absurd claims in the hopes people vote for him. That, folks, is politics.

Whatever the truth — whether he’s just blowing hot air and indulging in a spot of totalitarian posturing because he thinks being a blowhard will play well with voters in the wake of a terror attack, or whether he genuinely thinks he can outlaw maths and that that would somehow be a good thing — happily the Twittersphere did not disappoint in its mockery of his latest digital policy proposals.

Heck, even Marc Andreessen called Cameron’s plan lunacy.

And the U.K.’s Information Commissioner isn’t exactly over the moon about the consumer services havoc the PM is proposing ushering in if he gets back into Number 10…

https://twitter.com/cg_williams/status/554969156945469440

Far for me to suggest Cameron’s comments have made him a laughing stock online — I’ll let the below tweets speaking for themselves.

(NB: Dave, there’s no need to ban encryption to read these unvarnished truths.)

Politicians: The kind of people who think they can ban math.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

Can you imagine the number of times David Cameron used and relied on end-to-end encryption during the day he suggested it be outlawed?

— Jeff Waugh (@jdub) January 13, 2015

Hello to my British followers.
Enjoy HTTPS while your government still lets you use it lol

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

Well, @Number10gov, this is awkward. pic.twitter.com/JSjUBYTYES

— Stuart (mostly gone) (@stuartgibson) January 13, 2015

Don't worry, Britain – if your oppressive government takes away encryption, the USA is ready to drop some of our freedom bombs on you.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

New @David_Cameron policy: replace SSL with Enigma machines, as our boffins already know how to read their messages.

— Kevin Marks 🏠kevinmarks.com xoxo.zone/@KevinMarks (@kevinmarks) January 13, 2015

I hope the British remember how to use telnet because pretty soon SSH is going to be illegal there.

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

@benlinaeus @doctorow Cameron's understanding of role of encryption resembles Fox News guy's understanding of Birmingham #foxnewsfacts

— #WikiParty@michaelgraaf@cheeseburger.social (@michaelgraaf) January 13, 2015

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you on my encrypted phone – are you British?"

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

Not that he's got a snowball in hell's chance of preventing end-to-end encryption, anyway. Dave's tech advisers are smoking the good stuff.

— Barry Collins (@bazzacollins) January 13, 2015

"If only we could break this encryption, then we'd know who to arrest for using encryption!"

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

https://twitter.com/onetruecathal/status/554916719027036160

USA NSA: Subverts encryption standards, employs cryptanalysts, hacks the planet.
UK GCHQ: "Just make everyone use plaintext."

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

Nick Clegg sounded this morning like he was in no rush to sign up for Cameron's vague new drive to snoop on all internet content

— Alan Travis (@alantravis40) January 13, 2015

The British talk about making people use plaintext, the NSA actually did it by sabotaging the IPSec standard 😬

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) January 13, 2015

@gigaom @iothacker you'll have to pry my private key out of my cold, dead hands.

— Bill Thompson (@billt) January 13, 2015

0th Law of crypto policy: at any given time amongst "policymakers" and "stakeholders", only 5-15% will understand asymmetric crypto

— Caspar Bowden (@CasparBowden) January 13, 2015

https://twitter.com/pzarandy/status/554918321125330945

UK’s Cameron won’t “allow” strong encryption of communications – https://t.co/EX6E8Tzo3o UK banks will love that… #crypto

— Glyn Moody (@glynmoody) January 13, 2015

https://twitter.com/mpesce/status/554828708150652928

https://twitter.com/rigow/status/554770398014107650

If the second amendment were written today, it would protect the right to bear encryption.

— Startup L. Jackson (@StartupLJackson) January 13, 2015

=> magnifico @doctorow best evisceration of #CameronCryptoBollox so far http://t.co/o3R7tEadXm

— Caspar Bowden (@CasparBowden) January 13, 2015