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Comment by setq | Hacker News Reader

Signed but I suspect this will be treated with as much contempt as other petitions have.

I think the best way of handling this is to have a private code of ethics in the IT industry in the UK. If you are involved in any collection infrastructure, do like a government IT project, and make a complete fucking mess of it I.e. make it cost a fortune and bring bad publicity for any sponsors. Use O(n!) algorithms, use IO heavy storage patterns, piss all over cache lines, spend the entire budget having meetings in Wagamamas, write yourself a new minivan, overestimate everything and play solitaire.

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Contempt is the word. I emailed my local MP about this, highlighting how it put us all at risk and did nothing to stop "the bad guys".

She ignored all my points and just said "we cannot let the terrorists and pedophiles communicate".

edit: http://pastebin.com/THvjAvAL

That's exactly the nuanced discussion I like to see from my elected representatives...

The exact quote is:

> I do not believe that it is reasonable to allow terrorists, paedophiles and criminals to be able to use these same services out of sight to perpetrate criminal acts which harm UK citizens.

Unsurprisingly they forgot politicians in the list of people who aren't qualified to hold secrets.

Stick the reply on pastebin with a note explaining how it doesn't stop pedophiles and terrorists, explain how it protects incumbent pedophiles in the political class as per pizzagate, then post it on reddit, 4chan and to the opposition (actually forget the latter as they're just as bad).

Time is up for this attitude.

Sure. I'll see if I can dig out my initial email too.

I sent it via one of those "contact your MP" forms so I don't have a direct email chain.

I do wonder (perhaps naively) whether this is a genuine misunderstanding of the argument for privacy/encryption or something more malicious. Is it that politicians haven't spent enough time thinking about this or are they willfully ignorant of the wrongness of their argument?

I think it's a cross between both depending on what suits the current audience.

That distinction doesn't really matter. Willful ignorance by anyone in power should definitely be classified as malice. Remember that as your representative, they should be able to explain their actions to you.

A very valid and often ignored point.

It's an interesting point. If they are ignorant (perhaps without the wilful), then perhaps when you present them with facts and information, they might change their mind. If they are malicious, they won't change their mind in the face of any facts or information, because their motivations are underhand and cannot be reasoned with.

I suspect in cases like this it's probably a bit of both (and perhaps in the case of this particular MP, she might just be toeing the party line).

Here is the paste: http://pastebin.com/THvjAvAL

They already are communicating, on huge services like Twitter, that are constantly monitored. ISIS & JaN Surrogate accounts, as well as Assad Regime Loyalists (Which for some, count as Terrorists) freely use online services under the radar.

The time to stop encryption is gone. TOR & Signal have seen to that.

Oh god that must be so much fun. Working on projects with the intent to deliver the worst in every aspect. I'd like to add terrible UI and UX, deliberately throttling any connection to anything and the prerequisite for users to learn obfuscated regex for any simple old search query. Make a ton on teaching absolutely useless knowledge in the process.

In any other circumstances this would be fraud and unethical, sure. But is it when you're preventing digital fascism?

I'd love that job too really.

Well you can just point at Capita and say "it works better than their shit did".

Every population has its members who don't care for group goals.

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