The article is talking about the UK's RIPA and demanding backdoors into encryption. My comment was not in response to anyone else's, and I never mentioned OSA, although that is also problematic as a censorship vector.
As an aside, all this demonstrates the UK's lack of a Bill of Rights. And no, the ECHR is not one due to the pernicious doctrine of Parliamentary as opposed to popular sovereignty, and the lack of independence of the Judiciary. No Parliament can bind future Parliaments, which could abolish the Human Rights Act 1998 with a single vote, and indeed many UK politicians are calling for precisely this, versus the complex and deliberately cumbersome procedure the US Constitution has to amend itself. Any Bill of Rights that is subject to the forbearance of the legislative body it is supposed to protect you from is not worth the paper it is written on.
Obviously, if journalists cannot have encrypted conversations with their sources and whistleblowers don't have anonymous channels to blow the whistle, considering the draconian penalties of the Official Secrets Act (another OSA, coincidence much?) neither will happen, which is exactly by design. Ironically, when the boot was on the other foot like revelations about Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak's own illegal use of WhatsApp to hide activities covered by public records laws, they backed off.
As an aside, all this demonstrates the UK's lack of a Bill of Rights. And no, the ECHR is not one due to the pernicious doctrine of Parliamentary as opposed to popular sovereignty, and the lack of independence of the Judiciary. No Parliament can bind future Parliaments, which could abolish the Human Rights Act 1998 with a single vote, and indeed many UK politicians are calling for precisely this, versus the complex and deliberately cumbersome procedure the US Constitution has to amend itself. Any Bill of Rights that is subject to the forbearance of the legislative body it is supposed to protect you from is not worth the paper it is written on.
Obviously, if journalists cannot have encrypted conversations with their sources and whistleblowers don't have anonymous channels to blow the whistle, considering the draconian penalties of the Official Secrets Act (another OSA, coincidence much?) neither will happen, which is exactly by design. Ironically, when the boot was on the other foot like revelations about Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak's own illegal use of WhatsApp to hide activities covered by public records laws, they backed off.