News Home Secretary calls for an end to encryption

As a clinician working in trauma, I wonder if the country can put a bit more effort into reducing drink-driving and reducing death by dangerous driving. And ban motorcycles. Seriously, they're death on two wheels.

In fact, as a clinician being painfully aware of how the most destructive and expensive to treat physical and mental illnesses in the NHS are directly related to childhood experience, I wonder when the country can put a bit more effort into raising children in an environment free from poverty, deprivation, abuse and neglect and parental crime and drug/alcohol abuse.

Just sayin'.

To stop my child dying in a messy and traumatic way I'd chop up live puppies and kittens if I had to. I'd put them in a blender and hit the "purée" button without a second thought.

The problem with such emotivist argument is that it appeals to emotion, not moral reasoning.

 

Its more likely that your kid will need to use end to end encryption than be inside an exploding train.

 

Interesting to note that one of the reasons leading politicians were against the EU for many years is that the EU enforces certain basic human rights. So now that that's out of the way Britain can get even more Orwellian and can get rid of pesky things like a right on privacy for the general population. But hey, it's a decision made by the British population to get to this point and I can only assume it's what they want.

 

If only the EU weren't gearing up to do the same thing...

 

Just think where we'd be if we put just some of the estimated £64 billion we've spent on our war on terror into ^^that^^

 

Continuing on that wildly off topic theme...

Nope. A ban is not the answer.

Darwin FTMFW!

 

Looks like the heads of those tech companies that got called to the headmasters office have agreed to "ensure terrorists do not have a voice online" yet made no mention of encryption, although Amber Rudd said she plans to return to the issue of encryption "through further, separate discussions"

Maybe Mrs Rudd should be chasing up the Whitehall lawyers who after 18 months still can't come up with a legally robust definition of what constitutes extremist material before she tells companies they must do more.

 

Ironically we'd have not only a healthier population, but also fewer terrorists.

Even more ironically, spend all the money that is spent on the "war on drugs" on child mental health and wellbeing, and we'd end up with much fewer drug users and drug-related crime.

 

I wonder how terrorists communicated before the advent of WhatsApp - you know , dead drops , cb radio, pen and paper...............

 

How much better off would our entire health care system be if the spent the 40 billion they've allocated to renewing our trident nuclear 'deterrent ' system into our NHS.

I think we've long since passed the point where the system we're trying to manage are far too large and complex for humans to really see the bigger picture and make course corrections.

Its abundantly obvious to you and others in your field where money should be being spent because you have a working and in depth knowledge of the sub system you work in. The issue lies in carrying this knowledge and information up the rank/communication systems to the people who set budgets on a national scale.

Its often becomes a 'that guy said his thing was important' louder than the other guy at the upper levels and the nuance and understanding is lost along the way.

 

There's an argument that owning a 150mph+ motorbike and riding it every day should be made law.

 

The basic problem is that science and politics don't mix well. The general public often wants things that feel 'right' but have no scientific evidence base. Politicians can then painstakingly educate the public or just ride the populist tiger into office (in the belief that if you keep feeding it, it won't turn around and eat you --which of course eventually it always does).

There is no scientific evidence that says the death penalty or tougher prisons reduce crime. Quite the contrary, in fact. Similarly outlawing drugs does not reduce drug use or drug-related crime. Advocating abstinence does not reduce teenage pregnancy, and sex education does not increase it. Raising people with religious values does not make them more moral or well-adjusted. Children raised by gay or mixed-race couples do not grow up any less well-adjusted than other children.

I've seen this process at work in health care. We had a focus group meeting involving a good few hundred members of the public, where we asked them where they would like the cancer budget spent. Why, childhood cancers first, of course! We then showed them scientific evidence-based statistics that childhood cancers already have the highest cure rates of all cancers (by a huge margin --we're talking 80% or so) and are also already the best funded. So, knowing that, where would you like more money spent? Why, childhood cancers, of course!...

I could go on. But the general public has its prejudices, and likes to see them confirmed in government policy. So that is what politicians tend to do. And that is why we make so little progress, unless politicians are prepared to listen to the experts (yeah, those again) and educate the public --even if it means telling it stuff it doesn't want to hear.

 

Just make it the law that you have to have pass your bike test and ride it on the roads before you're allowed a car.... simples

 

That'd be me allowed nowhere near a car in that case [balance problems means I can't ride a bike].


...that said I can't drive either, and it's probably for the best that it stays that way.

 

Yes, totally. All of them are, they get the job from who they know, not what they know.

 

Shaka, when the walls fell

 

Can't argue with that.

 

I understand where you're coming from there, its the same thing in science. What the public think and the actual realities are often two complete different things. Using your cancer funding example, i often hear "We have cures for cancer but the big pharma companies don't want to release them so they can make more money. They don't seem to understand the difference between cancer and having an infection. Because they both come under the umbrella term of disease, they think that one is equally as easy to cure and the other.

Cancer is a very complex disease that involves several, in normal conditions, high regulated systems breaking down. Often these are simultaneous failures so its not as easy as "hit protein X with drug Y" and boom problem solved.

Ultimately, I think this general ignorance in the public comes from a failure of our education system. I think we should spend far more time focusing on teaching the 'scientific method' and critical thinking then specifics like Romans called healing temples asclepions.

Its human nature to default to anecdotal evidence rather than a logical argument simply because it often makes intuitive sense. The problem is that this way of reasoning is is filled with all sorts of biases like the post hoc fallacy.

The only way around it is to educate from the start to not believe or trust in anecdotal evidence and to use the 'scientific method'

 

The problem is that we live in a democracy and so if politicians try to educate the public on inconvenient truths, the public will just vote in other politicians who's truths are more to their liking.

 

Democracy: probably the worst governmental system.*

Kiazi's children, their faces wet.



* Except for all other known systems tried.