Pointless Backdoors

Excellent, the snooper's charter has now passed in the UK!
Given the implications, it doesn't seem to be getting much coverage in the media.

The now released details of the bill allow the government to not only indiscriminately intercept and monitor all your data, but also insist software contains deliberate back-doors and security weaknesses, such as using weak encryption. Who's going to buy or want to use UK software with these restrictions.

It's like the reverse of back when the first encryption methods were being hobbled by the US government for use outside of the US. Microsoft realised that they needed to create different versions of products for use inside the US where proper levels of encryption were allowed and expected. However, they weren't allowed to export products with anything other than weak encryption. At least this made some kind of sense.

These new rules mean that using VPNs may become pointless if they have weak encryption that can easily be broken not only by the government, but anyone who wants to see the traffic within. Most companies use VPNs between sites to securely pass data. It's not clear whether using VPNs with end-points abroad will be illegal, although by the strict terms of the charter released, they will be.

As someone pointed out "It's like DRM, it will make no difference whatsoever to the criminals, and will just inconvenience and criminalise ordinary people".