Comment by azalemeth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by azalemeth | Hacker News Reader

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Quite. It's very cold-war-esque. It has a definite soupçon of publicity about it, and mostly supports the government's narrative about them vaguely being competent – we did pre-plan a trip to navigate around Crimea [a place where the British haven't traditionally had the best time!] and we also plan to keep a toe in the fort in Afghanistan -- allies be damned. Conveniently, it also comes as Borris has just lost a Tory safe seat, his philandering and "hopeless" health secretary has just been forced to resign, and people across the political spectrum are fed up with him.

I am 99% sure Russia would rather have the leaks that highlight the crippling lack of ability in Britain's armed forces, caused by austerity, or a true impact assessment of Brexit. I also think it's very odd that the only papers leaked were these two: it's a strange thing to specifically print out these reports. I also think it's downright odd that they're printed --- most high-level classified documents seem to exist on secure, airgapped, immobile computer systems.

> it also comes as Borris has just lost a Tory safe seat, his philandering and "hopeless" health secretary has just been forced to resign

The UK population as a whole seem ok with how the COVID response has been managed (see below link).

I know that an opinion on the UK COVID response doesn’t necessarily have to match an opinion on the competency of the health secretary, and even that both can be independently rubbish.

The below link does appear to show a disconnect between what was achieved and what people think was achieved.

There seems a whiff of nationalistic exceptionalism about it. If the response was good, it would be weird to sack the architect.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/06/23/people-in-adva...

> If the response was good, it would be weird to sack the architect.

Calling Hancock hopeless is almost certainly a reference to text messages sent by the Prime Minister calling Hancock "totally fucking useless" and the fact jilted former adviser Dominic Cummings [2] said Hancock "should have been fired for at least, 15-20 things"

Of course, you might very well ask if Hancock is so bad, why did the PM keep him as health secretary during perhaps the biggest health crisis of all time?

It's possible Hancock isn't all that bad, and we're just seeing political manoeuvring here to make Hancock take the blame for the lack of PPE, the failure to keep even a single new variant out of the country, the failure to protect care homes, the cheating to hit testing targets, the inept track-and-trace effort run by cronies, the insistence on keeping borders wide open and allowing foreign holidays, the dodgy supply contracts given out to friends and family, and so on.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/16/cummings-te... [2] https://youtu.be/dpAwUaL7JcQ?t=27

Sounds like most countries. Apparently even the advanced countries were ill prepare for a pandemic.

This was a particularly bad one though and everyone is failing to contain it, it’s easy to blame health leaders.

Well, the UK also had about double the deaths per capita of similar nations (Germany, France).

I've never been convinced that per capita was a sufficient metric on it's own. I've been following the country numbers (globally) for the last year and the trendlines have been similar almost across the globe with few exceptions:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda759474...

To me this says the tolerance for local deaths rates -> lockdowns doesn't seem to be per capita but "bad enough" compared to other countries around them, or just hospital tolerance in general. With some exceptions like Brazil who ignore the international reputation or Peru who doesn't have the financial (or more likely leadership) capability to make a difference.

My feeling was more that it related to how independent the media was, and how powerful the opposition is. The UK is going through a sort of low point on both counts, so there wasn't really anybody to make a fuss (aside from the occasional scientist).

In countries like India, where the per-capita death rate is a tiny fraction of the UK's, the media creates a sense of pandemonium. Of course, it is pandemonium in India at the moment - but it was also pandemonium in the UK when NHS staff were wearing bin bags, except, in the UK, the PM is married to the ex of the most powerful newspaper editor, the opposition is on holiday, and everybody is anxious to avoid asking any awkward questions (aside from, amusingly, Dominic Cummings).

Yes, as a Canadian I didn’t get sense the UK was doing a particularity bad job from the media. Other than the usual insincere partisan bridades.

It was the weirdest thing - I'm english, so I was watching the UK news, while also watching the graph of cases/deaths on a daily basis (my mum was in a high risk group). I was literally sending them emails of the statistical risk of dying of covid vs other dangerous things, because the media set this tone of complete normalacy, when it was actually a very high risk enviroment. It led to basically nobody wearing masks, for instance.

This account is a liar promoting misinformation.

Madk usage has been very very high in the UK, and the risk of dying from covid has never been high, it has always been the aggregate effect on medical infrastructure causing a collapse in treatment availability, nit just limited to covid treatment, that has been the danger.

> I also think it's downright odd that they're printed --- most high-level classified documents seem to exist on secure, airgapped, immobile computer systems.

I think it's pretty common to print classified documents, since as you say the electronic copies normally live on specific airgapped networks. If you'll need them somewhere without access to that network (e.g. most meetings) printing is the easiest option.

But the printed copies are supposed to come with a cover page that says "Burn Before Reading".

That’s perhaps a US specific thing.

GCHQ used to use banners and footers that said:

SECRET//NOFORN

There was a bunch of other classification criteria on the cover such as declassification date (if any) and under who’s authority it was classified.

Another armchair classification expert?

GCHQ (being a British intelligence agency) has never used NOFORN as that’s an American handling caveat.

The old equivalent would be UK Eyes Alpha (UK nationals, no contractors or embeds) or it’s modern equivalent UK Eyes Only.

And no the UK rarely writes “other classification criteria” on the front of documents. Again you’re thinking of the USA. Along with double slashing // also an American thing though occasionally used this side of the pond.

What does that mean?

Light the cover page on fire before reading the document? Light the document on first instead of reading it? Try and read it while it is burning? Pack it in a pile of pages, light them on fire, and read it after it burns (surprisingly, that actually sort of works)?

I suppose any of those would work, but I like that idea of lighting it and frantically trying to read it while it's burning. Or maybe a sophisticated read-while-burning machine that continuously burned that page you had just finished along with something to stir the ashes.

Foreign intelligence agencies would develop their own discrete sniffer machines to detect faint traces of soot on people to identify potential intelligence personnel. Counter-intelligence would work on psyops campaigns to promote the health benefits of soot & encourage people to use new deodorants and other body grooming products laced with soot to throw them off soot sniffers. The most advanced burn-while-reading devices would have intricate ventilation and ash-isolation chambers with furnaces that burn hot enough to vaporize the ash to the sub-micron level. Portable versions would occasionally malfunction and spontaneously combust the bearer, fueling that particular subset of the tinfoil hat community.

It would be an entire soot-based intelligence community arms race, hilariously ridiculous and immensely fascinating.

If you've lived around government circles for long enough (in my case, merely existing in Canberra for a decade) you inevitably hear stories of senior public servants running through airport terminals, briefcase with classified documents in hand, because the Minister is going to get a plane in ten minutes and their signature is needed on an order for some critical law enforcement or defence matter that has arisen in the last couple of hours.

(I've also been told by government friends that there are plenty of very significant government locations where you would assume they have a Top Secret classified, airgapped network, but they don't, even though they have appropriately classified rooms for storing and reading Top Secret print documents.)

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