Archived version: https://archive.ph/2Y3u6

It was difficult to maintain a poker face when the leader of a big US tech firm I was chatting to said there was a definite tipping point at which the firm would exit the UK.

I could see my own surprise mirrored on the faces of the other people in the room - many of whom worked there.

They hadn’t heard this before either, one told me afterwards.

I can’t tell you who it was but it’s a brand you would probably recognise.

I’ve been doing this job for long enough to recognise a petulant tech ego when I meet one. From Big Tech, there’s often big talk. But this felt different.

It reflected a sentiment I have been hearing quite loudly of late, from this lucrative and powerful US-based sector.

‘Tipping point’ Many of these companies are increasingly fed up.

Their “tipping point” is UK regulation - and it’s coming at them thick and fast.

The Online Safety Bill is due to pass in the autumn. Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk.

The NSPCC children’s charity has described encrypted messaging apps as the “front line” of where child abuse images are shared, but it is also seen as an essential security tool for activists, journalists and politicians.

Currently messaging apps like WhatsApp, Proton and Signal, which offer this encryption, cannot see the content of these messages themselves.

WhatsApp and Signal have both threatened to quit the UK market over this demand.

The Digital Markets Bill is also making its way through Parliament. It proposes that the UK’s competition watchdog selects large companies like Amazon and Microsoft, gives them rules to comply with and sets punishments if they don’t.

Several firms have told me they feel this gives an unprecedented amount of power to a single body.

Microsoft reacted furiously when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) chose to block its acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard.

“There’s a clear message here - the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business than the United Kingdom,” raged chief executive Brad Smith. The CMA has since re-opened negotiations with Microsoft.

This is especially damning because the EU is also introducing strict rules in the same vein - but it is collectively a much larger and therefore more valuable market.

In the UK, proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act, which included tech firms getting Home Office approval for new security features before worldwide release, incensed Apple so much that it threatened to remove Facetime and iMessage from the UK if they go through.

Clearly the UK cannot, and should not, be held to ransom by US tech giants. But the services they provide are widely used by millions of people. And rightly or wrongly, there is no UK-based alternative to those services.

Against this backdrop, we have a self-proclaimed pro-tech prime minister, Rishi Sunak. He is trying to entice the lucrative artificial intelligence sector - also largely US-based - to set up camp in the UK. A handful of them - Palantir, OpenAI and Anthropic - have agreed to open London headquarters.

But in California’s Silicon Valley, some say that the goodwill is souring.

“There is growing irritation here about the UK and EU trying to rein in Big Tech… that’s seen as less about ethical behaviour and more about jealousy and tying down foreign competition,” says tech veteran Michael Malone.

British entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, has chosen to locate his new company InflectionAI in California, rather than the UK.

It’s a difficult line to tread. Big Tech hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory with past behaviours - and lots of people feel regulation and accountability is long overdue.

Also, we shouldn’t confuse “pro-innovation” with “pro-Big Tech” warns Professor Neil Lawrence, a Cambridge University academic who has previously acted as an advisor to the CMA.

“Pro-innovation regulation is about ensuring that there’s space for smaller companies and start-ups to participate in emerging digital markets”, he said.

Other experts are concerned that those writing the rules do not understand the rapidly-evolving technology they are trying to harness.

“There are some people in government who’ve got very deep [tech] knowledge, but just not enough of them,” said economist Dame Diane Coyle.

“And so [all] this legislation has been going through Parliament in a manner that seems to technical experts, like some of my colleagues, not particularly well-informed, and putting at risk some of the services that people in this country value very highly.”

If UK law-makers don’t understand the tech, there are experts willing to advise.

But many of those feel ignored.

Professor Alan Woodward is a cyber-security expert at Surrey University whose has worked various posts at GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency.

“So many of us have signed letters, given formal evidence to committees, directly offered to advise - either the government doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to listen,” he said.

“Ignorance combined with arrogance is a dangerous mix.”

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said that it had “worked hand-in-hand with industry and experts from around the world to develop changes to the tech sector”, including during the development of the Online Safety Bill and the Digital Markets Bill.

  • @[email protected]
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    7510 months ago

    Here we go again.

    Lawmakers: put back doors in end to end encryption.

    Tech sector: we can’t.

    Lawmakers: think of the children.

    Tech sector: it’s math, if we weaken the tech, nothing is private.

    Lawmakers: yes, or leave the market.

    Tech sector: ok.

    This has been playing out since the Clinton administration and the idea there, which failed was key escrow. Key escrow still isn’t a solution becase the code is, now, open source.

    The lawmakers want the public to have less privilege than the criminals, or they want the entire population to act as criminals by using freely available software. This shows no forethought.

    • @[email protected]
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      2110 months ago

      Governments like to assume that once something is illegal , it’ll just stop within their borders

      • @[email protected]
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        1110 months ago

        More to the point, voters assume that to be true. They’ll enthusiastically vote for the politician who promises easy solutions over the one stressing the ambiguities and complexities every time.

      • Paradox
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        10 months ago

        Governments like to make things illegal so they can have greater control over their citizens. Eventually they are no longer citizens, but subjects, as in subject to the whims of their rulers

  • @[email protected]
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    10 months ago

    Clearly the UK cannot, and should not, be held to ransom by US tech giants. But the services they provide are widely used by millions of people. And rightly or wrongly, there is no UK-based alternative to those services.

    Looks like the UK is in no position to do jack shit, and continuing to spiral to a point of irrelevancy.

    Brexit really is a giant cluster fuck, eh?

    • @[email protected]
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      3110 months ago

      They had literally the best deal in the EU and pissed it away because 50%+1 of their voting base are racist morons.

      Zero pity for anybody who voted Leave. Sadly, I know more than a few Remainers who are stuck in the bed their countrymen shit in.

      • Eavolution
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        1110 months ago

        Rather annoyingly NI (where I’m from) didn’t vote to leave, but its affecting us the worst (and sort of best) by far. A lot of Unionists won’t accept being treated differently to the rest of the UK, and won’t accept any kind of even theoretical border in thr Irish sea.

        However we cannot have a border at all across Ireland. Funny enough the solution was an area of free movement, trade, and common laws.

        Much like the EU.

    • @[email protected]
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      1510 months ago

      As a British person, a “Techsit” of foreign tech companies from Britain would be huge pain. But it would also be a painful lesson I think the country really needs to learn.

    • Jake Farm
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      310 months ago

      What are tyou talking about? The EU is trying to read people’s texts and emails just as much as the UK.

  • BananaTrifleViolin
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    10 months ago

    I think the article summarises the problem well; we have a conflict between big tech and regulation but at the same time the regulatory side is driven by ignorance and arrogance.

    I’m in favour of regulating the tech sector to enable competition, but I am definitely not in favour of the nonsense draconian snooping powers the UK government wants to have in the name of “protecting children”. There is a right wing obsession with the use of tech to enable child abuse; some of that is valid but it is also paired with extreme ignorance of how technology and encryption works. Basically you have secure encryption or you have nothing. Anything with a backdoor into it is by definition not encrypted or secure.

    There are plenty of ways of protecting children - the problem is not encryption, the problem is a failure of social services, schools, parents and families to protect children from abuse. Breaking encryption entirely in the UK will be a marginal benefit in making it easier to catch a few individuals after the abuse has taken place, at the cost of the polticial freedom and personal privacy of nearly 70m people as well as severe damage to the UKs place in the Tech sector.

    The tech industry hasn’t allowed China unfettered access to their systems (encrypted comms giants have largely exited China or been banned there); exiting the UK to protect the global norm would be an easy choice. The real concern is if crazy ignorant rightwingers in the US follow the lead of the ignorant rightwingers in the UK driving this nonsense.

    • @[email protected]
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      610 months ago

      From what I could see with the latest TikTok dust-up here in the US, the first thing lawmakers tried to use the situation for was to reduce online privacy.

  • @[email protected]
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    2710 months ago

    strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

    The dream.

    One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement

    The nightmare. It would probably catch some people out, but I imagine most criminals who aren’t idiots would just find another way to encrypt messages if they’re doing some seriously illegal stuff.

    They can’t stop people from generating PGP keys, so really it only undermines the data privacy of the average person.

  • @[email protected]
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    1810 months ago

    This whole encryption debacle is crazy.

    I dislike the users-exploit techniques of US Big Tech as much as the next guys, but if they really leave, that could be a good signal.

  • @[email protected]
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    710 months ago

    “WhatsApp and Signal have both threatened to quit the UK market over this demand.”

    I’m curious - how would that be done in practice?

    And wouldn’t it just mean that people would adopt another protocol, like Tox or Matrix, in stead?

    • BananaTrifleViolin
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      910 months ago

      It would potentially mean WhatsApp and Signal disappearing from the App Stores in the UK, and UK based accounts being shut down. Whatsapp could concievably just switch off encryption for the UK users or make a UK only version with no contact to the rest of the network (but that would be a major back down), but Signal would never be able to accept that and would likely exit. However Meta may still decide it’s better to exit WhatsApp completely than stay if the regulatory burden and risks are too high.

      It is possible however that these bills won’t make it through parliament either at all or in there current form. We’re about 1 year away from a general election (the latest the election can be held is Jan 2025 but they desperately want to avoid a christmas election campaign, so late autum 2024 seems likely) - that means campaigning effectively starts soon and controversial legislation like this can become quickly toxic to MPs desperate to hold their seats. It really depends on what the general reaction to this is - at the moment most people don’t seem to care but the social media companies do have the power to drum up public opposition should they wish to fight this.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      Block all services to the various telecoms in that area. Do IP blocking too. Tech savvy folks can get around it with TOR, but the vast majority will not. And a tech company won’t get in trouble with the new UK laws, the citizen who be.

      If the UK makes it illegal for a multinational to do day to day business, they are more likely to build around the problem than submit.

      As for the people… Well, best of luck mate!

    • @[email protected]
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      610 months ago

      Preventing access from UK IP addresses, I guess. Same way as some US websites refuse to provide content to EU addresses due to GDPR

        • @[email protected]
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          710 months ago

          Yes, but in that scenario the end user is circumventing the policy, no fine for the tech company.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          Of course, but good luck explaining this to the UK lawmakers.

          From the company perspectives, they need to comply with the law. The law will probably be along the lines of what I said earlier.

          I guess nobody in the UK lawmakers have the slightest idea on how to implement it.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    210 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

    One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk.

    The NSPCC children’s charity has described encrypted messaging apps as the “front line” of where child abuse images are shared, but it is also seen as an essential security tool for activists, journalists and politicians.

    Microsoft reacted furiously when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) chose to block its acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard.

    Also, we shouldn’t confuse “pro-innovation” with “pro-Big Tech” warns Professor Neil Lawrence, a Cambridge University academic who has previously acted as an advisor to the CMA.

    Professor Alan Woodward is a cyber-security expert at Surrey University whose has worked various posts at GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @[email protected]
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    210 months ago

    “Threatening”.

    Threatening to make that place a lot cooler, sounds like.

    Researching the situation regarding work visas…

  • @[email protected]
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    18 months ago

    If this gets passed, we are on our way to VPNs etc. being considered illegal, everything being monitored like some other countries we know of… Fucking dictatorship move.

  • Throwaway
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    -810 months ago

    So the British tech sector will get a chance to grow?

    • @[email protected]
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      2510 months ago

      With these law changes I think “grow” is the opposite of what the UK tech sector will be doing.

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      That would take Britain to start properly believing in its tech sector, especially in Westminster.

    • @[email protected]
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      -510 months ago

      I’m rooting for this! Countries shouldn’t be relying on the whims of a few companies. Twitter is a huge example of what happens when a country relies on a service.

      And this also grows open-source.

      • @[email protected]
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        910 months ago

        If this was about data collection on users I’d agree, but the UK government is saying “remove encryption on private messages”. That only increases the ability to harvest data