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Comment by ArchReaper | Hacker News Reader

>And she said she did not need to understand how they worked to know they were "helping criminals".

>She insisted she does not want "back doors" installed in encryption codes, something the industry has warned will weaken security for all users, nor did she want to ban encryption, just to allow easier access by police and the security services.

>"I understand the principle of end-to-end encryption - it can't be unwrapped. That's what has been developed. "What I am saying is the companies who are developing that should work with us."

Well I hate to "sneer" at her and reinforce her perception of tech people, but Jesus Christ, what a moron. If you refuse to learn how it works then you cannot reasonably expect to be capable of offering any kind of input on how to change it.

All she's capable of understanding is "WE MUST STOP THE TERRORISM"

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She well understands that being a member of Five Eyes is of huge value to UK industry, as the point of dragnet surveillance is using competitor nations' secrets for economic advantage, not for fighting terrorism.

These people aren't stupid.

They aren't stupid, but I'd suspect they've drunk their own kool-aid, which seems to be the standard operating procedure at organizations gone awry. Especially towards the top where you get selection pressure for confidence.

The ability to think rationally is tightly coupled to the ability to rationalize so smart people aren't actually less likely to participate in collective madness.

> These people aren't stupid.

"These people have selfish reasons for what they're doing" is different from "These people aren't stupid."

> as the point of dragnet surveillance is using competitor nations' secrets for economic advantage, not for fighting terrorism.

Source / examples? Seems like a rather extraordinary claim.

This has been going on for decades, and was an issue before 9/11/2001.

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/30/news/mn-16631

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/feb/24/news/mn-2072

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/30/airbus-coul...

Private Eye have covered this kind of thing since the 80s and various aerospace, arms, middle eastern infrastructure deals etc. All the countries do this - an explicitly stated aim of security services is to protect economic interests as well as security.

Likely difficult to find proof or definitive examples of it happening, but Intelligence Services Act 1994[0] states:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/13/section/3

> [GCHQ shall] monitor or interfere with electromagnetic, acoustic and other emissions and any equipment producing such emissions and to obtain and provide information derived from or related to such emissions or equipment and from encrypted material; [... said functions] shall be exercisable [...] in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom in relation to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands

There's very similar language for SIS.

[0] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/13/section/3

Some of them can be surprisingly stupid. Not everyone is a canny deep-state actor.

Bonus points for using words without knowing what they mean!

> "we don't get that help - although we sometimes get it in a fulsome way after an event has taken place".

(I can't even guess what she thinks it means ….)

Probably she means that they don't get assistance - although sometimes there comes an excessive rush of help on occasions when the bad shits already gone down.

I understand the principle of two plus two equals four and I'm not saying we should make two plus two equal three, something mathematicians have warned would harm everyone's ability to do basic math, nor do I want to ban math all together.

I simply want people who are doing arithmetic to help us make two plus two equal three when criminals try to use math.

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