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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

They want to crack down on people traffickers advertising their services.

This is still not the way to do it. There are other of methods of law enforcement[0] that don't require any given message to be available for interception. Something like ANOM is more difficult to pull off but it's also less prone to error, which is a more important thing to optimize.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANOM

Yes... but how many times can you pull off ANOM? It worked really well once - but by the time there's the 5th, or 6th, or 7th security company that criminals have never heard of and a long string of dead companies, they'll be quite wary.

I'm sure dedicated people can be more creative than to just do ANOM 7 times but I do get your point.

Anyway, I realized after I wrote the comment that ANOM is a bad example for arguing in favor of ubiquitous end-to-end encryption (E2EE). ANOM is only attractive to criminal organizations because other forms of "E2EE" are not resilient to government snooping. It's kind of an interesting point but I do personally land on a preference for ubiquitous E2EE.

Ultimately, I suspect the resources of law enforcement would win out given enough creativity from officers but, unfortunately, the current ecosystem does not require them to be creative.

I read an article recently about how easy small boats are to obtain here in Germany, as in the people hiring them out look the other way. They could be made more expensive, or better regulated, and this article was of the opinion that would go a long way to combating that. Because the boats are a one off thing, they can't be retrieved from the UK side.

They also want to crack down on crack, but talking positively about crack is not illegal

Open up safe legal routes then, the lack of which is the main reason why the boat smugglers even have a business.

But doing so would get asylum seekers out of the collective conciousness, which has been politically advantageous to the incumbent party.

I don't see how it has been advantageous to the incumbent party since they have conspicuously failed to prevent the problem.

If they fix the problem that removes a reason to vote for them.

In several places in the world, the local Conservative party incites / leverages "fear of the other" to the mainstream. If the problem were to either be fixed or go away, they would lose major, major recruiting impetus.

I'm not necessarily interested in following through the more tenuous links. But illegal immigrants are an absolute boom to Conservative parties. It's a recruitment, it's a distraction, it's an effective and frequent emotional lever.

What happened to good old infiltration? Or put a bounty on traffickers. Trade passports or permanent residence for information leading to an arrest.

presumably they can do that without criminalizing speech

How many traffickers selling overpriced dinghy rides across the Channel advertise within the UK, where the UK law can actually reach?

No, that amendment was clearly intended to prevent lefty liberals like me from saying that the asylum seekers themselves are in any way decent or good or deserving of support.

Same party used similar language for a thing called "Section 28", so they don't get to pretend they don't know what effect it would have.

That's not true at all. The Online Safety Bill simply designates as a priority content that breaks an existing prohibition against aiding, abetting, counselling, and conspiring to carry out offenses under the Immigration Act 1971. Lefty open-borders types can continue to say what they like.

The connection to section 28 is spurious and deserves no rebuttal. The two things have nothing to do with each other.

> an existing prohibition against aiding, abetting, counselling, and conspiring to carry out offenses under the Immigration Act 1971

I could believe that's a thing (although I'd appreciate a reference if you've got it). I couldn't, however, believe "posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light" counts as any of those things.

> We will also add section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 to the priority offences list in schedule 7. Although the offences in section 24 cannot be carried out online, paragraph 33 of the schedule states that priority illegal content includes the inchoate offences relating to the offences that are listed. Therefore, aiding, abetting, counselling, conspiring etc. those offences by posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light could be an offence that is committed online and therefore falls within what is priority illegal content. The result of this amendment would therefore be that platforms would have to proactively remove that content.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-01-17/debates/230...

Many thanks.

It's actually section 25. That confused me for a bit. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/77/section/25

I don't see how anyone can get from what's written there to "aiding, abetting, counselling, conspiring etc. those offences by posting videos of people crossing the channel that show that activity in a positive light". It just says "facilitates". But I know nothing about law.

> the asylum seekers themselves are in any way decent or good or deserving of support

I think the many generally feel the same way about refugees but just that a lot of the people arriving are not validly refugees. People boating out of France to the UK are, by international definition, not refugees. They've already escaped persecution in their home countries.

My parents jumped a border while emigrating to avoid a war so I empathize but I wish we could discuss the topic without emotionally loading it by calling people asylum seekers when they are not or implying that others don't care about people in general. There are resource and fairness issues that emotional appeals won't make go away.

> People boating out of France to the UK are, by international definition, not refugees.

Which international law do you think does that? (I'm assuming from your username that you're a lawyer; I'm not, though I do try to read the texts of statutes sometimes).

I remember hearing a lot about the Dublin Regulation, but that's an EU rule that no longer applies because of Brexit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation

(I tried reading the legal text for this even though the UK is no longer in it, but a casual skim didn't get me anything that did what it's usually claimed as doing, the claim being that it requires asylum seekers to claim in the first safe country).

> There are resource and fairness issues that emotional appeals won't make go away.

This particular point I vehemently disagree with. The resource and fairness issues with regard to these people is, IMO, caused by their demonisation in the public eye and as such will be fixed by emotional appeal.

This is because their status legal status means they are by default actively prevented from working and covering their own costs, and this only has some limited exceptions: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/handling-applicat...

> > by international definition, not refugees.

> Which international law do you think does that?

I used the term 'international definition' intentionally. I'm speaking about the common definition of the word not including people in the situation of crossing multiple large friendly countries to go to another as refugees at that point. The immediate threat to life and limb is over and now others are in more dire need.

And yet, it's not as simple as entry to the first country either, because we can both acknowledge that if someone escaping from Syria crosses the border into Iraq or Lebanon that they should keep on walking until they find an actually safe place.

But the point is that you're talking to people, using emotional terms, but trying to use legalistic reasoning to make them do something they feel is not only needed but benefits the wrong people. They're using their eyes and judging the conditions of the refugee claimants and finding them wanting.

> > emotional appeals won't make go away.

> caused by their demonisation in the public eye and as such will be fixed by emotional appeal.

I have a feeling that this has already been tried and that there's probably some misalignment preventing that from working - maybe making it backfire. Maybe that you may feel that this isn't a valid political opinion on the values of the refugee system but a comment on the race of the claimants or something...?

Thankfully in my country many of the questionable refugee claimants are the same racial group as many current legal immigrants and this is defusing that would otherwise be a nasty race-baiting angle to the debate.

Otherwise, I would ask what more demonization you think is needed other than for them to be shown to be jumping a queue meant to save lives?

> their status legal status means they are by default actively prevented from working and covering their own costs

If they really are fleeing for their life we can cover the costs and would be glad to.

To the last point: until their claim is processed in the UK, which can take years, they have no right to work and have to rely on meagre public handouts or work under the table to survive. This makes them a drain on taxpayers despite being able to support themselves if they were allowed, and paid employment promotes integration. I think it stays the way it is because of "taking the jobs" of natives and it also allows politicians to demonize them as a drain on the public purse (which they are but through no fault of their own) as a distraction/othering.

> This makes them a drain on taxpayers despite being able to support themselves if they were allowed

I hear this from people who seem to be promoting using the system as a back-door way into a permanent work visa. I'd rather avoid perverse incentives and just support people.

> I think it stays the way it is because of "taking the jobs" of natives

This sounds like something a privileged knowledge worker can sneer at the low-brows for. I think it's as valid a consideration as any other import/tariff type issue and should be examined honestly. Again though, we can avoid the issue by simply paying to help refugees and that's probably the kindest.

If we allow them to work then we're essentially requiring them to work and if they just escaped with their lives they probably have other priorities for a while. The economic benefit for us from more workers is minimal enough that we can forego it to make a better and less exploitative system.

> allows politicians to demonize them as a drain on the public purse

I think there are enough obviously false claims that people are upset about that they're not worried about the costs of the honest claimants.

If only the UK had some sort of naval tradition and could send their own ships into the channel to enforce the UK's will, rather than trying to fix the problem by arresting people for saying shit online.

Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the... net. Britons will never be... Hmm, this song will need a lot of changes.

The traffickers aren't in the UK.

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