<story><title>UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption</title><url>https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/uk-threatens-end-to-end-encryption.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>afavour</author><text>I’m sorry but this is a very simplistic take. The King has no meaningful power at all, MPs have power over the Lords and they are democratically elected.&lt;p&gt;I’m not for a second saying the system is wonderful and beyond reproach. But suggesting it’s equivalent to an autocracy or something is just flat out wrong. If you want to complain about the U.K. political system complain about first past the post or the creeping anti-democratic forces pushing things like voter ID laws. The House of Lords and the King aren’t anything comparatively.</text></item><item><author>ly3xqhl8g9</author><text>The fact that we regard as &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; (because they are good guys, or so we&amp;#x27;d wish) a country with king and lords (even a House of Lords, or even &amp;quot;Lords Spiritual&amp;quot; [1]), is the greater joke.&lt;p&gt;[1] Just a random click &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_members_of_the_House_of_Lords&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_members_of_the_House_o...&lt;/a&gt; on the Bishop of Chichester &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_bishops&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_b...&lt;/a&gt; reveals a list of bishops going back as far as 681, the year 681. Particularly funny is how the majority of the bishops seem to have &amp;quot;died in office&amp;quot;. To call a land with 1,300+ years of hegemony &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; is beyond satire.</text></item><item><author>derelicta</author><text>The fact that every &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between state actors to do so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ly3xqhl8g9</author><text>It was just a quick quip how we regard as &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; a country (?) called &amp;quot;United Kingdom&amp;quot;, language is funny like that.&lt;p&gt;Sure, UK is a great place to live for many of their citizens, and a great country overall, culture and so forth. It&amp;#x27;s not for nothing we are speaking their language and not Esperanto or something. But it&amp;#x27;s not a democracy, and that is fine.&lt;p&gt;If you ask me (I know you didn&amp;#x27;t, but just in case), not even the Nordic countries or Switzerland pass the main test of democracy: not being able to vote for everything, but being able to vote &amp;quot;No&amp;quot; to anything and everything. That should probably be the hallmark of a democracy. Even the toga-wearing Greeks did not have democracy to such an extent.&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, every ballot would have as a first option the option &amp;quot;No&amp;quot;. I said in some other HN comment [1], a second point would be to tie the duration of the mandate to the voter turnout, if 30% vote, then the mandate is not 100%, but 30% also of the 4&amp;#x2F;5 years mandate.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=35300083&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=35300083&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption</title><url>https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/uk-threatens-end-to-end-encryption.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>afavour</author><text>I’m sorry but this is a very simplistic take. The King has no meaningful power at all, MPs have power over the Lords and they are democratically elected.&lt;p&gt;I’m not for a second saying the system is wonderful and beyond reproach. But suggesting it’s equivalent to an autocracy or something is just flat out wrong. If you want to complain about the U.K. political system complain about first past the post or the creeping anti-democratic forces pushing things like voter ID laws. The House of Lords and the King aren’t anything comparatively.</text></item><item><author>ly3xqhl8g9</author><text>The fact that we regard as &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; (because they are good guys, or so we&amp;#x27;d wish) a country with king and lords (even a House of Lords, or even &amp;quot;Lords Spiritual&amp;quot; [1]), is the greater joke.&lt;p&gt;[1] Just a random click &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_members_of_the_House_of_Lords&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_members_of_the_House_o...&lt;/a&gt; on the Bishop of Chichester &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_bishops&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bishop_of_Chichester#List_of_b...&lt;/a&gt; reveals a list of bishops going back as far as 681, the year 681. Particularly funny is how the majority of the bishops seem to have &amp;quot;died in office&amp;quot;. To call a land with 1,300+ years of hegemony &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; is beyond satire.</text></item><item><author>derelicta</author><text>The fact that every &amp;quot;democratic&amp;quot; superpower seeks to criminalize or prohibit E2EE at the same time gives the impression there is some sorta coordination between state actors to do so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>monocasa</author><text>The king has veto power over any acts he believes affects him, and him and the queen have apparently used the threat of this many times in order to shape UK legislation before it&amp;#x27;s argued on.  Apparently almost all legislation is passed by the royal family&amp;#x27;s office for edits before it goes up for debate.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;uk-news&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;royals-vetted-more-than-1000-laws-via-queens-consent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;uk-news&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;royals-vette...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This idea that the royal family has no meaningful political power is not congruent with how the British political system works.</text></comment>