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though frankly i think rudd has a hazy grip on reality in general & this merely one aspect.
agree with every word of this @digitalscream ;;;;;; thank you for the great post.
on the police investigation side, so true. i have seen someone close be put through it too.
once police resources have been committed to pursuing a course of investigation (which someone has had to make a judgement call on & justify to a superior) they are then under pressure to show a result or be seen to be chasing shadows & wasting resources. the internal market. quotas & targets. the bottom line is that no one wants to be worst performer in the room when the next round of cuts hit. you or them.
& they can find something on everyone because so many of the laws around 'threatening behaviour', 'terrorist material', 'porn', etc are all so vague & elastic. subjective calls.
a cynic (i'm one) would suggest intentionally so. so they can pick up & neutralise/inhibit anyone who opposes the government or the neoliberal status quo in a way which might embarrass them (or even actually have some effect). ask jenny jones of the green party.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/21/ipcc-investigates-claims-police-used-hackers-to-read-protesters-emails-jenny-jones
when the police want to nail you, they want acces to everything you have ever touched.
when you try to catch them out, or prove your innocence, they shred & resign with stress.
& if you think it can't happen think back to the last time you got pulled over for some stupid random traffic thing, which turned out to be nothing, but because the pc involved didn't like your attitude on the day he/she starts going through your entire car (tyre tread depth, indicators working, stickers obscuring back window, etc ) just to find that one thing he/she can nail you on to put you in your place.
clearly some police are great & deserve our support. & some are as evil as anyone they are supposed to catch & an insult to their office. they are a cross section of people in general.
but while both exist i'd rather not flip a coin with my or my family & friends' lives.
better they have nothing or as little as possible to rummage around in.
i use a (no logs) vpn for general secure stuff, ccleaner to wipe internet files & history after each session, firefox on private & ghostery to block trackers & cookies.
snowden would laugh at me & say it's not enough (i really like the guy) but i'm not a spy or a crim. so maybe it's ok. i'm trying to do my best.
have also tried tor-through-vpn as an experiment, but it seemed a bit like overkill. & also tried to set up a virtual machine (again, curiousity) but got confused & gave up. i think that's for the pros.
"For my part...all my traffic is encrypted with 2048-bit RSA, which would take many times longer than the age of the universe to crack with current computing capabilities. Good luck to 'em."
is that an option for tech mortals of for the hardcore only? i would be interested to hear more about what you think regular people (on little & no money) should be using. you know stuff.
curiously, one unintentional side-effect of the govt announcing these crackpot snooper schemes is that it encourages more civil rights minded types to think harder about their privacy options (hence my playing with tor & vm, even there is no real need).
which ultimately probably makes their job harder when they do want to pick someone out.
Since potential MPs have discovered that it is more fun to have your nose in the trough and making way more than their salary for special interests etc , there have been relatively few who genuinely stand for any cause or for their constituents.
I think it is what makes Corbyn seem so weird, and why the Blairists don't want to act in a way befitting of a traditional labour MP when life seems so much better when lining your own pocket.
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!
It wouldn't have mattered who was in power - there's massive international pressure (mostly originating in the US) to do so, and nobody wants to be seen as breaking with the pack.
Do you think personal freedom and liberty is more important than national security? Is the attack in London a price worth paying to live in a society in which the government has no right to our personal data or any right to monitor us, or any right to film us in public?
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
If someone is going to do something like this and has the intelligence and ability to make it happen they will - regardless of what barriers are put in place.
If the government get unlimited access to everyone's online and technology based correspondence those who want to correspond in secret will find another method.
So the government wanting access to this particular messaging service is fairly irrelevant for preventing attacks on the public as once they have the access - they'll just move software or platform entirely.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
nhs failures (errors, delayed surgeries, late diagnoses, cuts to drug funding, etc) that can be attributed to govt funding cuts, suicides/self-harm/trauma/clinical depression that result from cuts to mental health services, elderly people dying & suffering terribly (physically & mentally) as a consequence of cuts to care services.
(i'm a carer so i see this side of tory cuts every day. that's why i'm so fired up & angry a lot of the time. i'm not a snowflake, i am in it).
then there are more indirect factors such as reduced life expectancy & increased prevalence of life-limiting diseases among the poor (children/working age/retired) from malnutrition, obesity, stress, poor accomodation, etc.
there is a socio-political concept called 'structural violence' put forward by john galtung in the late 1960s, which i hold very much with.
Structural violence is a term commonly ascribed to John Galtung, which he introduced in the article "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research" (1969).
It refers to a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.
Structural violence is an "avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs". As it is avoidable, structural violence is a high cause of premature death and unnecessary disability. Because structural violence affects people differently in various social structures, it is very closely linked to social injustice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
so while the rare lone terrorist attack is obviously something to reflect upon & seek (rationally not hysterically) to prevent, if you are really concerned with saving lives & safeguarding public welbeing, you may want to expand your notions of what violence within societies is & can be, & then ask who is responsible for most of the harm inflicted on the population by those means.
Assuming that WhatsApp's owners have a local presence - which is overwhelmingly likely - the answer to that is "yes". However, the general public's understanding of how this works is so limited - as evidenced by a number of comments in this thread - that the security services can pretty much say what they like with impunity, in the name of getting the public on their side so they can expand their surveillance capability. See the front page of The Sun today for clarification.
Lucas said it best with the least offensive of the Star Wars prequels...
That's the goal.
The news reporting play such a big part in whipping up these events and actually increase the chance of them happening again because of the effect it had seeming worthwhile to those who would commit such acts in the name of "insert cause here"
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39427026
Mr T looking after his business mateys.