If a country like the UK decided to ban end-to-end encryption, how would they even enforce it? I understand that they could demand big companies like Apple stop providing such services to their customers and withdraw certain apps from the UK App Store. But what’s stopping someone from simply going online and downloading an app like Session? I mean, piracy is banned too, yet you can still download a torrent client and start pirating. What would a ban like this actually prohibit in the end?
Easy. They would block traffic they can’t decrypt.
They would force a root cert to be accepted that they use to decrypt-inspect all encrypted traffic.
Couldn’t be done something like a reversed book encryption? Something that is plain text and perfectly readable but that you can use to decrypt a message?
Wouldn’t binary transfer in base64 be undescifrable as they could be files in a proprietary format?
You’d be surprised at how much an off-the-shelf firewall can see and categorize. A purpose built application that regulates/controls the physical network would have no issue with that type of traffic.
They can’t but also by banning it having the banned software makes it a crime. So if they stop you and see you have the banned software installed they can add charges. It’s like a seat belt law most are not going to catch you wearing a seat belt or not but if they pull you over they will add that charge to your ticket. Also making something illegal that everyone will keep doing. Allows the government to charge people it doesn’t like. Speak out in ways powerful people don’t like jail. Help the homeless jail. Be homeless jail. Try and run against me in an election jail.
