This letter is a "nice try", but pretty late and lacking media-awareness. People certainly won't read a 4-page PDF. They should have led with:
> There is no technological solution to the contradiction inherent in both keeping information confidential from third parties and sharing that same information with third parties.
But would that be a part of the population that actually partakes in the discussion to begin with?
If you cannot say something more simple without making a mess of it, don't.
Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam. None of his opponents had ever served.
>...On October 25, the Act passed the Senate with a vote of 98–1. Russ Feingold (D-WI) voted "no"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#:~:text=The%20thre....
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38201636/max...
The public tend to believe what they've been informed and the press tend to be inept when it comes to Gov surveillance.
The history of editors and journalists is 1) they reprint Gov Natsec claims w/o analysis or a single thought about Gov's history and 2) will only report surveillance wrongdoing when their nose has been dragged to it and they've been booted from behind.
And to clarify here, NatSec and Child Safety are just different food colors in the same poisonous water.
The public have largely been sold nothing and are completely, blissfully, ignorant of this legislation. The legislation is being pushed through by politicians who have been sold two lies:
1. The legislation, and 2. the idea that the public care.
The people are always sold a lie. But in a democracy, it is the responsibility of the voter to identify when they are being lied to and to search for the truth.
As much as you claim that media isn’t free and isn’t good, I look around and see the opposite. Now is the best time in the history of the world to get amazing journalism. You are just too focused on the media you dislike to admit that with selection comes lots of terrible choices.
The fact that people don't pay attention means that they're vulnerable to accepting the framing that they get the first time they're forced to hear about it.
In this case it will be from slightly rewritten press releases sent from the people pushing the bill to the kind of UK papers and TV stations that can't find a single journalist who objects to censorship or surveillance.