Re: Not that I'm condoning this ...
>So what else am I missing?
Well, firstly, the big picture. If you set up an infrastructure that allows the government to monitor all your external communications constantly, you might as well put government cameras in your house too - in fact you will likely have one by default whether you know it or not.
However, even assuming you think that's all fine and dandy, exactly how are you going to stop the "bad" people (who at that point are likely to be the "good" people, but let's not get hung up on morality) using different keys and different applications to the ones on the government list. Are ISPs going to have to inspect every packet to make sure it's part of a legitimate authorised protocol? Do they have to have to hand every image in every e-mail and on every web site over to a team of cryptographers in case they contain a stegonographically-concelaed message?
It patently can't work - it only ever did work because we were all pathetically naive and trusting and it was mostly only the Five Eyes doing it. As we now know we can't trust our government, and every other state actor is aggressively trying to get into the same game so any central repository of UK communication keys would be their first target, there is no scenario in which the UK government can be a useful contributor to our necessary privacy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
