Tuta
#Signal threatens to exit the UK if the Online Safety Bill weakened encryption.
But we will not make it so easy: We will not 'walk' from the UK.
If Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his government want to stop people in the UK to use strong encryption, he must block access to Tutanota - just like Russia and Iran.
The UK would be on the same level as authoritarian regimes like Russia & Iran.
Read our full statement & fight for strong encryption with us! 🔒💪👇
Aral Balkan
@Tutanota Are you talking with the Signal folks? If not, please do. A unified response would be best.
CC @Mer__edith
(PS. We left the UK eight years ago as we could see this coming and I wanted to do so on our own terms before we were forced to: https://ar.al/notes/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/ – happy to lend our voice if there’s a united response in the works.)
Aral Balkan
@Mer__edith @dalias @Tutanota Agree. This isn’t a marketing opportunity. It’s an existential crisis for what we’re all working towards. Tutanota folks, I’d highly recommend getting whomever is in charge over there to give Meredith a call (if you have time, that is Meredith and are open to it, don’t want to add more to your plate) and come up with a common strategy. And, ideally, with an eye towards involving other organisations that are similarly affected. Again, I’m happy to help any way I can.
Meredith Whittaker
@dalias @aral @Tutanota Honestly, it's a bit annoying to see an org that allied with ours in terms of values and is also facing down the misguided regulatory landscape overindex so hard on a headline in what appears to be an attempt to set themsleves apart as a more moral/strategic actor. We are clearly all fighting the same fight, and Signal will of course do whatever we can to get people everywhere access to private comms. As we always have.
Meredith Whittaker
@dalias @aral @Tutanota Because the journalist interviewing me asked a hypothetical: if you had the choice between staying and weakening encryption or walking, which would you choose? And obviously the choice -- in the context of that hypothetical -- is to proverbially walk. This is clear in the body AND abstract of the article, even though they chose a headline w less nuance. OF COURSE we'd set up proxies and etc before "walking". And what "walking" would actually entail is not straightforward.
Rich Felker
@Mer__edith @aral @Tutanota OK, but can you clarify why the options are "stay" and "walk" rather than "comply" and "ignore the ridiculous demands of a hostile totalitarian regime and help people find proxies" like you did for Iran and Russia?
Meredith Whittaker
@aral @Tutanota Let's be clear -- Signal would choose to walk if the choice were between staying and weakening our privacy commitments, or leaving. Until then, we will do everything we can to ensure people have access to Signal and meaningful private communications.
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