It’s the same way as Microsoft’s infamous study on filesharing from 2005. They commissioned real experts to write it and it came out with the end summary that filesharing will remain irrespective of the legal status of that phenomenon.

Microsoft weren’t best pleased. Neither, I suspect, is OFCOM.

Err…you need to check your facts. There is no loophole to be closed.

If you aren’t allowed to send undecipherable data EVERY online transaction will have to go. Bank transfers, confidential email, online purchases, point-to-point data transfers in general. You’d even have to abolish the ATM machines. Abolishing encryption means taking EVERY business in the world off the internet and force every government and private enterprise to communicate everything in readable text. If you want to break the modern market this is the way to do it.

That, incidentally, is why China has such problems with dissidents running darknets. There is no way to prevent encrypted connections for just a few.

You’d also have to re-build most of the internets infrastructure according to new forms of industrial standards – and to ensure those standards are abided by, to somehow prevent every and all open-source applications as well.

Even then you’d be screwed trying to detect and impeded if there is even one reachable connection anywhere in the world where you could tunnel an encrypted data transfer under the guise of being, say, raw data downloaded through the use of “ordinary” http/streaming/ftp/etc.

To summarize – if you can communicate at all you can do so in secret. There is no way around this. None.

The only factual way to rephrase your statement is like this:

“…once 95% of the population are monitored, the internet which allows “terrorists, pedos, hackers and criminals” to evade detection will be closed and the majority who already have all their communications spied upon will cheer.”

I’m sure you can see how likely that is to happen.

“Non-believers”? It’s worse than that, we’re talking about the clergy who rejected Galileo’s demonstration of the Moon’s appearance through a telescope. At that time their reason was that Aristotle claimed all celestial bodies were perfect spheres and so mere observation of reality wasn’t valid in their world-view.

No doubt Lawyers belonging to the RIAA/MPAA will try to claim that what the OFCOM report says is irrelavant and the legal demand for a magical solutions is an absolute necessity.

Perhaps we should refer them to contact Hogwarts?

True, and once 95% of the population are monitored, the VPN “loophole” that allows “terrorists, pedos, hackers and criminals” to evade detection will be closed and the majority who already have all their communications spied upon will cheer. In China, if over a small amount (5%?) of your traffic is encrypted then the authorities come and take a very close look at you. They don’t care if you’re pirating media, messaging your girlfriend or a political activist. All that matters is that you have something to hide. If you have multi-gigabyte use that’s 95% encrypted then you’ve earned yourself a trip in the paddy-wagon.

My point being that we should make a stand when everyone’s neck is on the chopping block. If we wait until we are the last 5% using end to end encryption then there will be no one left when they come for us. First they came for those who did not use encryption etc.