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Australia to Push for Greater Powers on Encrypted Messaging at 'Five Eyes' Meeting
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Politicians are not stupid about technology. Politicians pander to the stupidity, fears, and selfishness of the populations that elect them.
Security/safety is a zero-sum game. The less common violent crime and terrorism become, the more newsworthy the remaining examples become. This maintains the illusion that crime and violence are constant or growing. The safer we are, the more fearsome the remaining threats appear.
Enlightened self-governance is boring. Learning history, logic, and civics, boring. Studying the Enlightenment's philosophers, boring. Becoming adequately informed to understand complex problems and solutions, really boring.
All sides studying and carefully reasoning-out a solution to problems...boring. Impassioned battles between irreconcilable ideologies... not so boring. Politicians-as-entertainers... not so boring.
Long term planning that averts crises... boring. Crisis management... not so boring.
Security/safety is a zero-sum game. The less common violent crime and terrorism become, the more newsworthy the remaining examples become. This maintains the illusion that crime and violence are constant or growing. The safer we are, the more fearsome the remaining threats appear.
Enlightened self-governance is boring. Learning history, logic, and civics, boring. Studying the Enlightenment's philosophers, boring. Becoming adequately informed to understand complex problems and solutions, really boring.
All sides studying and carefully reasoning-out a solution to problems...boring. Impassioned battles between irreconcilable ideologies... not so boring. Politicians-as-entertainers... not so boring.
Long term planning that averts crises... boring. Crisis management... not so boring.
I can only see this helping catch less important criminals, unless organized terrorists are going to be stupid enough to use off-the-shelf communication tech.
Until hackers set up bots spewing the words in e-mails by the millions.... Blanket surveillance is a really poorly thought out idea. It violates privacy while being easily avoided if one is determined. It also sets up the potential for abuse of the information, as already has occurred in isolated instances at the NSA (staff cyberstalking ex-partners etc.).
Agreed, I can't imaging how many people worldwide would be needed to monitor the trillions or more every day texts and e-mails. Losing battle.
Why not just make it illegal to be a terrorist or a criminal?
The nature of terrorists and criminals is breaking laws. Laws is not the weapon to combat the criminals and terrorists, but to restrict law-abiding citizens.
So, if using encryption is prohibited by law, everyone except criminals and terrorists will hurt most.
Most people don't understand, the government desire here has nothing to do with catching terrorists. Yep, absolutely nothing. The government only cares about one thing, that is power. There are two things that prevent absolute power; guns and privacy.
It does not make any difference what lipstick the government puts on it, the reality is that it is not for the children, not for the poor, not for the helpless, not for safety, etc. These are all just excuses to grab power and anyone that cares to look will see this immediately.
It does not make any difference what lipstick the government puts on it, the reality is that it is not for the children, not for the poor, not for the helpless, not for safety, etc. These are all just excuses to grab power and anyone that cares to look will see this immediately.
This used to happen a lot back in the 80's/90's on Usenet (before the web and before the public knew of the internet), lots of people had "subversive" signature lines on their otherwise unrelated Usenet posts saying things like, "plutonium yellowcake Iraq nuclear enriched Iran - hi NSA!"
I am informing the NZ govt and opposition that I laugh at the notion to regulate maths taught across every university in the world. I note that this maths is within the abilities of competent secondary school kids, or myself when I was in primary school.
That the Aus and UK govts are run by stupid idiots who engage in magical thinking is typical of their countries.
They also want to make it illegal to be good at maths, at least judging by my phone and internet wiretap.