Citizens of the World Wide Web are pretty mad about the British government’s plans to spy on everyone’s internet use.
Okay, so Edward Snowden says the security services have already been doing that on the sly, but now it could become actual law under Theresa May’s controversial Investigatory Powers Bill.
But the good people of the internet are not happy at the prospect that spies, police and even local councils could be looking at all the stuff we all search on the internet. Yes, even that stuff.
One internet luminary in particular is seething about part of the new bill targeting online encryption – founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales.
Jimmy says the draft bill is ‘stupid’ and believes that if it’s passed into law Apple should stop flogging us all shiny iPhones.
He is serious too.
I would like to see Apple refuse to sell iPhone in UK if gov't bans end-to-end encryption. Does Parliament dare be that stupid?
— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) November 3, 2015
The reason is that Apple’s iMessage uses on strong end-to-end encryption. Other internet giants like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp offer, or are in the process of offering, similarly strong encrypted messaging services.
But the draft law would require these internet firms to hand over communications data to the Government.
So technically this would mean either apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat or the iMessage function could be rendered illegal, or the encryption would have to be breakable (which undermines encryption).
