King Charles III opened and addressed UK Parliament on 7 November 2023, with the announcement that the UK intends to pass laws that require tech companies to tell them if they plan to introduce new security technologies and how to disable them. His Majesties Government is keen not to lose its access to communications and associated data. This may seem an outrageous intrusion into the privacy of private citizens. However, it may be interesting to look back to the history of state interference in communications. It was the current King’s name’s sake, Charles I in 1634 who set up the Post Office in the UK, partly to deliver letters but also to “discover wicked designs against the state”. In other words – intercept mail. The power to do this was deemed a Royal Prerogative. Fast forward to the 20th Century and many of your will be familiar with the story of Alan Turin cracking the German Enigma code by building the first programmable computer. The machine was actually built by a Post Office engineer – Tommy Flowers. In those days the Post Office also provided the telephone network before that was spun off into British Telecom. Although Alan Turin has passed into history as a hero, it was his colleague in Hut 6, Gordon Welchman, whose analysis of German Luftwaffe radio message transmissions provided an early breakthrough. Although the content was encrypted, the volume, velocity and location of the transmissions enabled Welchman to predict when the Luftwaffe was about to launch an air raid. His methodology of traffic analysis is a now widely used with cell-phone Call Data Records to penetrate Organised Crime Groups. So, is it outrageous that the UK’s intends to pass laws enabling them to access communications and its associated data? No, it is just business as usual.

The Wild West of the internet is the target of new laws to tame the nasty stuff.