Theresa May is trying to make encryption illegal in the UK. She wants Content Service Providers to use Deep Packet Inspection to analyze the data sent over provider networks using probes embedded in the packet flow over the network. The Home Office seemed confident that this was technically possible. Other witnesses questioned whether it is technically feasible to extract meaningful and helpful information from third party services. One of the primary technical challenges would be dealing with encrypted data. Like a VPN or TOR tunnel over a standard Internet connection. OpenVPN allows an encrypted tunnel to be setup, and this is hard to monitor if the service is properly setup. But this is troubling. If the UK is to monitor the Internet usage of their citizens to this extent, then they will just use TOR or OpenVPN instead. If you use OpenVPN over Port 443, this is harder to detect, than if you use the default port. As Port 443 is used by HTTPS to access your banking site for example. Gmail is encrypted, and Google search.
But they will hand over data about a user if they have broken the law. If a user comes to the attention of the authorities, and a valid RIPA request comes in or UK law enforcement goes through the MLAT, receives a court order and in turn gets Gmail user data, we will obviously provide that data decrypted. If it was to use a third-party provider to gather the encrypted data, I think it very unlikely that Google Inc would provide anyone outside Google Inc with that key. That is the problem, this will just drive the terrorists to use a VPN and other methods to avoid detection by authorities. So this will not work. The UK is also banning carry-on laptops and tablets on flights from certain Middle-east countries in a bid to avoid a terrorist attack. The US electronics measure, announced late on Monday, affected nine airlines flying from 10 specific airports in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar and the UAE, including Dubai, the world’s busiest airport for international travelers.
An incident last year appears to have caused particular alarm, after al-Shabab smuggled an explosive-filled laptop on a flight out of Mogadishu. The explosion was small, but the bomb was particularly placed by the extremist so as to blow a hole in the side of the passenger cabin. So if you are flying from Dubai to the UK, leave your laptop in your luggage.
Read the Draft Communications Data Bill here: http://securitronlinux.com/lc/Draft%20Communications%20Data%20Bill.pdf. (PDF).