My understanding of this is a bit ropey so please confuse any ignorance. The government have a re-hashing of their surveillance bill in the works and it seems to have some of the usual ‘we want to watch everything you do’ stuff in it. Have noticed that they’re basically saying that tech companies can’t fully encrypt anything as the security services need a back door.

Guardian article

If we can’t encrypt our communications on the web, will e-commerce still be able to work? I thought that relied on some kind of mega-encryption (like using invisible ink AND writing backwards). Is this law completely unworkable?

If you’d read some news articles today, then you’d know that most of this won’t happen for the very reason that online banking, etc, needs robust security, as does other financial transactions, so it’s impossible to untangle secure banking and transaction apps from communication apps.
The security services are just going to have to suck it up and find other ways of hacking terrorist communications.

I haven’t followed the story in detail – as I am waiting to see what it actually says rather than the speculation. However my expectation is that it will be OK to encrypt data “in transit” provided you provide access to that data “at rest”. ie. you can encrypt your credit card details being sent to XYZ.com because a warrant to XYZ.com will reveal what it was you bought, and with which card. What they don’t like the idea of is that ABC.net passes data between user1 and user2 in a form than nobody can read, and they can’t ask user2 what was sent because he is not going to cooperate.

Thanks, poly – just the kind of clarification I’m after.

Some more info here at The Register As usual the comments page will be worth a trawl for alternative tech views on what could happen (EDIT) and has with current legislation.