A look at potential issues in the UK's plans to revise its Investigatory Powers Act, including blocking end-to-end encryption and slowing down security updates
Ioannis Kouvakas / Just Security : X: @sailingbikeruk , @rodolfor , @mer__edith , @misanthropegirl , @alecmuffett , @jjaron , @jsrailton , @jsrailton , @jsrailton , @jamesrbuk , and @gazthejourno Forums: r/unitedkingdom and r/ukpolitics X: Ian Davies / @sailingbikeruk : In short. We're fucked. After years of telling folk to patch to stay safe, the government is now more worried about their survellience than your safety. This will only increase the number and effort of attacks against British people and infrastructure. We are governed by idiots @rodolfor : This is exceptionally stupid. The only outcome is that companies will build software engineering teams outside the UK Meredith Whittaker / @mer__edith : In addition to the spy clause in the Online Safety Bill, the UK is working on updating its Investigatory Powers Act with similarly alarming, misguided, and ultimately unsafe provisions. See 👇 Clarissa / @misanthropegirl : Just when you thought the Online Harms Bill couldn't get any more stupid... Alec Muffett / @alecmuffett : It is not an understatement that software companies which have an engineering base in the United Kingdom will henceforth have suspect code quality with delayed fixes for security vulnerabilities. Public bug bounties and holding corporations to account will be ever more critical. Jacob Aron / @jjaron : Not only does the UK government want to break encryption, it wants to break everything John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : IPA Hypothetical: Cybercriminals find iPhone vulnerability. Use it hack *any iphone.* Apple discovers & fixes with a rush patch. ...but now they must ask UK! After a bureaucratic delay UK decides patch might slow down spying. Instructs Apple to not secure a billion users. [image] John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : The UK wants the ability to stop companies from patching vulnerabilities. Catastrophically shortsighted. Any tech product that stays will be suspect in the global marketplace. The sector will flee. Goodbye tech investment & jobs. By @IoannisKouvakas https://www.justsecurity.org/ ... [image] John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : You can't be globally competitive when you need a UK bureaucrat to OK emergency updates fixing an actively exploited flaw. And you can't be trusted when the #UK Government can secretly stop you from securing your users. Expect a #Techsit. James Ball / @jamesrbuk : This proposal is so jaw-droppingly stupid it makes the nonsense in the Online Safety Bill look reasonable. We desperately need a tech savvy minister or permanent secretary to root out the draconian and deeply incompetent bit of the security state that comes up with this stuff. Gareth Corfield / @gazthejourno : On the one hand, this seems overblown and at direct odds with govt-backed statements about better securing the UK online. On the other, there are lobbyists spreading disinformation in the safe knowledge nobody in UK public life has the subject knowledge to challenge them. Forums: r/unitedkingdom : Changes to UK Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law r/ukpolitics : Changes to UK Surveillance Regime May Violate International Law
Context & Ripple Effects
The proposed Investigatory Powers Act changes extend a recurring UK policy conflict over private communications. Earlier coverage showed the government challenging Meta’s plan to make Messenger encryption the default, while the Online Safety Bill was also being discussed as a route to platform monitoring of encrypted messaging.
The stakes reach beyond a single service: Apple later warned that related UK powers could enable a secret veto over user-protection releases, reinforcing concerns that a domestic surveillance mechanism can affect globally shipped security features.
First-order effects
- Messaging and security-product providers could face demands that conflict with end-to-end encryption, forcing them to reassess which protections they can offer UK users.
- A power to delay or approve security updates could hold back patches for UK users, leaving known vulnerabilities unremediated for longer.
Second-order effects
- Companies would have to weigh bespoke UK compliance against deploying one global security architecture; the reported risk of moving engineering work or reducing UK investment follows directly from that trade-off.
- A slower or less secure UK software environment would raise operational risk for organisations that depend on prompt vendor patches, not just consumer messaging users.
Third-order effects
- If such powers become durable, the UK could become a test case for whether national surveillance rules can shape security features distributed globally rather than only within national borders.
- The policy direction intensifies the structural conflict between lawful-access mandates and security-by-default product design; providers may increasingly resist market-specific exceptions that weaken a common security baseline.
The trend: Governments are increasingly testing whether platform and update controls can make encrypted, globally distributed software more accessible to national surveillance regimes.