#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! 🔒💪👇

https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/uk-undermine-encryption

@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 @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.

@Mer__edith @aral @Tutanota OK, but can you clarify why the options are "stay" and "walk" rather than "comply" and "ignore a hostile totalitarian regime and help people find proxies" like you did for Iran and Russia?

@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 of the article, even though they chose an incendiary headline. OF COURSE we would set up proxies and etc before "walking". And what "walking" would actually entail is not straightforward.