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Comment by lijok | Hacker News Reader

We could outlaw math. Or the police could start doing their job.

That would require the UK government to fund the police properly. And the courts. And the judiciary. And the prisons.

For a political party that likes the cliché "tough on crime", it's kinda surprising how far on the path to accidental anarchy they are.

They're hoping people will start hiring rent-a-cop type security firms for their areas. Not joking.

Speaking from experience, they work pretty well.

Unlike the metropolitan police which is utterly useless.

I want my tax money back.

It's the same party that's tough on immigration, yet keeps importing lorry drivers, health workers and building contractors because they apparently can't be found inside the country.

Off topic: there's almost no better word to immediately identify someone as British than 'lorry'.

I love it.

I'll see that and raise you "bloke" :-)

Nah, Australians say bloke just as much as the Brits!

Ah, got me there!

Suddenly bought back the first gig I went to a Sheffield's Leadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lorry_Yellow_Lorry

> kinda surprising how far on the path to accidental anarchy they are.

"Anarchy" is not a synonym for "chaos". It is the opposite.

Triggered am I!

> For a political party that likes the cliché "tough on crime"

Labour also likes that cliché too [1].

They're all the same.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/27/labour-evok...

They do indeed also like the cliché, but as they're not in power they have no role in the undermining of those things.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...

Australia tried that. This must be resisted wherever it appears.

I wrote this about 6 years ago when the then PM was trying to do the same thing - http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/

>We could outlaw math

'We' don't call it 'math', who's 'we'?

>We could outlaw math.

Maybe that's why math education is being sabotaged.

They already are. They imprison journalists under terrorist acts if they criticise the gov or they come knock on your door if you put mean things on twitter.

But corrupt politicians? That's not a bug, it's a feature.

> They imprison journalists under terrorist acts if they criticise the gov

Is that fair? The English state is not doing that are they?

Some examples are suitable to back up such a claim.

The most obvious one is Julian Assange.

Then they detain people such as https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/30/journalist-kit-klarenberg...

Or David Miranda (late husband of Glenn Greenwald).

Surely we believe that UK and USA are the good guys and they don't do evil stuff. That's left for Russia and China who are evil. Not like US and UK who invade and depose governments for commercial and geopolitic interests but "there's always a good excuse for it".

Ok.

Point definitely made

The English state ceased to exist in 1707.

I think they'd argue that this is them doing their job: trying to negate the advantages that sophisticated criminals have over law enforcement efforts.

Could you elaborate on what you see as "doing their job" in this context?

Given that we don't catch, deal with appropriately or rehabilitate the majority of the non-sophisticated criminals, I'd suggest we start with that before we decide to start spying on the rest of the population?

Based on how RIPA and it's successors in the UK have suffered from excessive use I doubt that we will be restricting this power to "sophisticated" criminals if it comes to pass.

Surely this won't help them with sophisticated criminals, as they'll find some other way to communicate. You can easily build your own end to end encryption method based on things on github.

It might help them with the dumb criminals.

The cat is already out of the bag, the encryption already exists. This only hurts them who obey the law.

The police can do legal wiretaps because it is a tremendous help to get the job done.

That's the problem with e2e encryption: it makes the police's job much, much more difficult.

That's the point. People have to realise that there is a real issue which does not have a simple solution.

All protections of civil liberties and rights to due process can make the police's job more difficult - if you consider the police's job to be something like "catching bad guys without regard to any collateral damage that might be caused along the way". But in a free society that's not normally the job we want the police to do.

Of course the trouble in this case is that we either have private, secure communication or we don't. There is no halfway measure available. So both locking the police out of everything and giving them complete access to everything might be simplistic non-solutions to the real issue but they might also be the only options we have on this one so a least-of-evils argument may have to prevail.

I've personal experience of police not doing their job properly.

Anything that makes their job more easy will only make them more lazy.

Police work should be hard, because they have to navigate the law if they're to prosecute anyone. Lawyers love laziness, it's sloppy and steps all over lines of technicality.

Also, the legal right to violate citizens rights should never be 'made easier' by any legislation. To be on the end of state-enabled rights violations pretty much entirely ruins any trust one may have in 'the system'. And that trust seems to be increasingly valuable and decreasingly present amongst the Western populace.

I always find it a headscratcher when people advocate for making the violation of civil rights easier.

Cops seem perfectly capable of doing it with the tools they have today.

> That's the problem with e2e encryption: it makes the police's job much, much more difficult.

So what? It should be difficult. They should have to literally send a guy to follow and literally spy on you if they want to learn a single bit of information about you. Not push a button and have your entire life revealed on their screens.

It's nonsensical to claim that the job of the police should be difficult and made to be difficult.

The restrictions and controls, which exist, should be an enforced legal framework. If today the police want to wiretap your phone they need a warrant, that's the control and 'difficulty', but then telcos will route your calls to them at the push of a button.

Again, the issue with e2e encryption is real and complex.

It's not "nonsensical" at all. Even with warrants, authorities will abuse their power. I've seen a story here on HN about police submitting literal blank pages to judges and getting the warrants they want. Don't tell me this warrant bullshit stops anything.

I refuse to grant them any power whatsoever by using subversive technology like encryption. Their only choice is to increase their tyranny by treating all encryption as proof of guilt, undermining the freedom of everyone, including yours. Will you tolerate the increased tyranny or will you oppose it? That is the question.

The easier the job of the police is, the easier it becomes for them to create a police state. We can argue perfect imaginary world semantics all day long, but it doesn't change the fact that in the real world abuse is rampant and power over others is pursued at great cost.

Making the job more difficult for the police costs nothing but money. To argue that we should relax our liberties to make the polices job easier, is to argue that liberty should be erasable by those willing to pay.

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