I wouldn't give up. When it gets to the level of mandatory government rootkits there are bound to be underground organisations circumventing this and/or trading old hardware.

I'd even go as far to say that if things become this authoritarian, certain "direct" acts would be justified in preventing or fighting it.

▲ matheusmoreira 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

An illegitimate underground scene running on life support, using old unlocked computers which are a finite resource they will eventually run out of. Utterly depressing... We used to be free...

If this passes, the only strategic move available is to somehow develop the ability to make our own computer processors in our garages. Billion dollar fabs are single points of failure and they will be exploited, subverted, regulated and controlled. The only possible solution is to democratize and decentralize semiconductor manufacturing to the point anyone can do it. We must be able to make free computer hardware at home just like we can make free computer software at home.

Anything short of this and it's over.

▲ pjc50 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

In practice, import them from China like we used to with region unlockable DVD players.

> democratize and decentralize semiconductor manufacturing to the point anyone can do it.

Physics makes this completely unrealistic.

▲ Gud 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When did the UK use to be free?

Seems to me this is a cultural issue that runs deep. You are his majesty’s loyal subject, like it or not, and more importantly, you are a subject of his bureaucracy. The US works in a similar fashion, except the deep state has slightly different excuses to exist.

I work extensively in the UK(past 5 years, I’ve worked there maybe two years in total). Nothing gets done without endless approval from people with cushy office jobs in the bureaucracy.

It’s in the bureaucracy’s interest to extend its power, and who is going to stop them?

CSAM is an excellent excuse to control the digital world. I wonder what took them this long.

▲ matheusmoreira 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not british. "We" refers to computer users worldwide. The UK is just the beginning, this will spread to other countries. My country loves to copy whatever Europe is doing.

	▲	Gud 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Europe is not a homogenous thing. There are wast cultural differences (although the Americanisation has been in full swing for a long time).

▲ qcnguy 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The obvious answer (that HN hates) is that the right can stop them. The only party in the UK against the Online Safety Act is Reform. The only party that wants to shrink the state is Reform. Every other party is supportive of this kind of thing. This makes sense because every other party in the UK is left wing.

This isn't a problem of one country's specific culture. Australia and Canada are doing the exact same thing, the Democrats would absolutely do the same thing if the libertarian Constitution weren't in their way. The rest of the EU is doing the same thing. It's a left vs right thing.

In fact everywhere is going the same way except the USA, because the USA has a constitution that encodes libertarian values (a minority position) in such a way that it requires a supermajority to overturn.

▲ ben_w 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> This makes sense because every other party in the UK is left wing.

Definitionally not. Left and right are always relative to the local average, "left wing" and "right wing" are nothing more than a seating arrangement turned into a badge.

The Conservatives are, famously, right wing by British standards. If you think the Tories are lefties, you're so far to the right you can't even see the UK's Overton Window from where you are.

The votes I seen on parliament.uk about the Online Safety Bill show the split being usually the Tories vs. everyone else: https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons?SearchText=Online+...

> In fact everywhere is going the same way except the USA, because the USA has a constitution that encodes libertarian values (a minority position) in such a way that it requires a supermajority to overturn.

I have bad news for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hybL-GJov7M

▲ cbeach a day ago | parent [-]

It’s mostly the Tories that were responsible for the drafting of the Online Safety Bill, and let’s not forget the downright evil Investigatory Powers Act. Another Tory creation.

The OP was correct. The Tories were left wing and authoritarian. They raised taxes, and failed to shrink the UK’s bloated state and civil service.

Only Reform have made a stand against the Online Safety Act and other creeping dystopian measures.

I don’t know if I fully trust Reform to deliver, but by a country mile, they’re a safer choice than Conservatives, Labour or Lib Dems in 2029.

The next General Election cannot come soon enough.

	▲	ben_w a day ago \| parent [-]
		> It’s mostly the Tories that were responsible for the drafting of the Online Safety Bill, and let’s not forget the downright evil Investigatory Powers Act. Another Tory creation. Read enough of my old comments, and you'll know that the Investigatory Powers Act is a big part of why I left the UK. The other half was how I expected Brexit would be used as an excuse to leave things like the European Court of Human Rights and thereby make it harder to fight such things. Pleasant surprise that the UK is still bound to the human rights stuff, especially given Theresa May's opinion of such things and prior reputation the Home Office. > The Tories were left wing and authoritarian. No, they're right wing and authoritarian. Or at least, there's enough of an authoritarian streak in it to be a problem. > They raised taxes, and failed to shrink the UK’s bloated state and civil service. You didn't notice all the austerity policies, I take it? Their approach to the civil service was basically a government self-lobotomy, reducing state capacity to be competent. Not that size of government is hugely important to the left-right split in the UK; that seems to be a much more American dividing line, from what I see in the American stories that make it across. > I don’t know if I fully trust Reform to deliver, but by a country mile, they’re a safer choice than Conservatives, Labour or Lib Dems in 2029. The other things Reform (or, given that it's owned by the leader, he) have called for include, to quote the Wikipedia page: `leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and replacing it with a new law; disapplying the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (ECAT); creating detention powers without Hardial Singh constraints;` To be against these things is not the indication of someone who dislikes authoritarianism. The only thing I see him calling for that I actually agree with is basically an example of "left wing" by UK standards: the nationalisation of the steel plant in Scunthorpe. Not that I expect him to succeed. His experience of politics combines is much the same as Jeremy Corbyn: to be the one who opposes everything, not the one who has to take responsibility. Look how bad Corbyn was for Labour, that's my median for how bad Farage would be for the UK.

▲ Gud 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Your obvious solution is wrong, though. The right wing is just as eager to implement a police state.

The correct answer is decentralisation of power, and put the government back in the hands of the people. That means frequent voting(multiple times a year), by an educated population.

Works well in Switzerland.

▲

ben_w 2 days ago | parent [-]

> The correct answer is decentralisation of power, and put the government back in the hands of the people. That means frequent voting(multiple times a year), by an educated population.

Sufficiently well educated and also willing to read carefully and without partisan (or other) fear of favour.

How many of us read the terms and conditions before clicking "I agree"? How many support a side only because it's their own side?

I don't know how to fix this. The "obvious" solutions (seen in various government systems over the world and the centuries) all have demonstrable problems.

	▲	Gud 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. Like I said, this works well in Switzerland, where stupid decisions are at least made jointly, not by some career politicians. Makes it easier to slowly make changes. The key point is to keep things local - what works in Zürich doesn’t necessarily work in Appenzeller.

▲ autoexec 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> If this passes, the only strategic move available is to somehow develop the ability to make our own computer processors in our garages.

How feasible is this really? I'd feel a lot better if it were possible to produce chips free from backdoors even if the resulting CPUs weren't even as fast as an old Pentium III, but my guess is that any effort to do this at scale will be quickly shutdown by the government

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matheusmoreira 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

No idea how feasible this is. When it comes to electronics in general I'm pretty much beginner level.

Here's an example that was posted here recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178789

Lithographically fabricated integrated circuit in a garage. Whatever this is, we need a lot more of it to stand a chance at resisting governments.

> any effort to do this at scale will be quickly shutdown by the government

The whole idea is to make this so easy and ubiquitous that they can't shut it down completely. They can shut down some but not all. I believe this is the only way a law like this can be resisted. Promote civil disobedience by making it easy.

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digdugdirk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not. And any effort to do this at scale would be quickly shut down by physics and economics, not the government. Modern computing technology is a wildly complex supply chain, with extremely specialized manufacturing equipment and facilities. Billion dollar fabs are worth billions of dollars for a reason, and it's not for the real estate or the views.

Trying to determine the best "diy chip" sounds like a fun project and an admirable goal, but if you actually wanted something useful I'd wager you'd be better off buying esp32's in bulk so you'd have all the spares you might need.

	▲	autoexec 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Anything that's got wireless/bluetooth integrated is probably backdoored already, but the esp32 certainly has been (https://www.techspot.com/news/107073-researchers-uncover-hid...) The entire point of of designing your own chip is so that you know there won't be any surprises. Nothing undocumented.

▲ ianmcgowan 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like the plot of "Big Brother" by Cory Doctorow

▲ ThrowawayTestr 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Don't worry, they'll make it a crime to open devices that don't have the rootkit.

	▲	GaryBluto 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I meant underground as in the Samizdat, not attempting to operate under the law.