The government is suggesting that it might ban some Apple security updates. Under the latest plans, tech companies would need to notify the British government before rolling out a security fix but might be refused permission if it blocks a vulnerability that’s being exploited by security services.

  • theinspectorst@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Totally. We’ve had a few decades now of successive governments that have taken increasingly centralising attitudes towards privacy and civil liberties - essentially going back to the 1980s.

    But the one bright spot in there was the 2010-15 Coalition, who abolished Labour’s biometric ID scheme (people forget now, but the Brown government had passed legislation that meant that, if they’d won the 2010 election, then we would all have needed to register for these), deleted innocent people’s DNA records from the police DNA database, halved the maximum length of time the police could detain people without charging them with any crime (from 28 to 14 days - after Labour has earlier tried to increase it to 90), etc. The Coalition was the one truly liberalising government of my lifetime and that’s entirely a consequence of the Lib Dems’ role in driving its agenda.