News UK government pledges to make Britain safer online

Is the green paper the same one they said they were working on nine months ago and would be published in the summer, do MP's lose marks for submitting homework late.

 

You never hear the same rhetoric about POTS or snail mail. Royal Mail is never demanded to prevent criminals from sending their correspondence through the post using a ciphered letter.
Amber Rudd complains about being patronised by tech companies but claims she "doesn't need to understand encryption" to demand legislation against it. Of course we're going to bloody patronise you if you demand things that are mathematically impossible even after being told that is the case! That crosses from mere negligent ignorance to wilful ignorance.

 

Telling lies to parents that their kids will be safe online is just about the most counter-productive thing possible.

 

IDK why the government doesn't just do the same for the Internet as they've done for alcohol, tabaco, work, sex, criminal responsibility, driving, voting, and other forms of what you can legally do at what age.

AFAIK you have to be 18+ to take out a contract for broadband so the bill payer should be responsible for under 18's using their Internet connection, i don't personally think the government makes a good nanny and shouldn't be taking over parental responsibility from people.

 

I'm sure this will be a well thought out, coherent paper with the support of industry, experts and the people.

 

We've had enough of experts FYI, we're all about the feels now.

 

Made me chuckle...

 

This, at least in the past, wasn't the case. Not sure about now. All you needed was a bank account in the case of DSL. I was 15 and the only owner of a computer in my household (early 2000's), and paid for the broadband myself via direct debit. Since parents already paid line rental to BT, it ended up not even being that expensive.

The difference was that I actually respected the internet - I knew it was equally as powerful a source of knowledge as it is a tool to be abused. My parents never had to worry about my activities since I was always smart about how I used it - even if I arguably used it too much.

Unfortunately, in a very short period of time (there were no smartphones back then for example), the internet has become *far more* of a commodity, and kids aren't getting the right introduction to the internet as a whole that they need to know. It's something they have just always had (almost since birth in some cases some kids will have known Facebook - isn't that a frightening thought).

Instead, we have toothless government "pledges" that make parents - who never had to go through the learning process - get complacent (since they learnt as they went, it effectively grew with them), and when combined with the fact that general IT knowledge in schools has stagnated and is no longer relevant to today's internet means that we have a situation where any procedures put in place are just wasted money and take away from the core concept of parenting - monitor what your kids do instead of expecting it to be done for you.