I heard Admiral Lord West[0] today giving an interview on the BBC radio station '5 live'. In it he sated words to the effect: "Nobody cares about your emails o

I heard Admiral Lord West[0] today giving an interview on the BBC radio station '5 live'. In it he sated words to the effect: "Nobody cares about your emails or if your having 30 affairs". This is just a variation on the 'if you have nothing to hide' argument which as ever forgets that bothersome dimension - time. Perhaps I have nothing to hide 'now', but who's to say I won't later? Even in very recent history I'm pretty certain that if I was gay I'd be very much regretting making any previous public declaration of my sexuality in Russia say 5 years ago, much less the age numerous examples over the last century where people have been persecuted as government positions changed. This is a very difficult subject. I value privacy but I suppose I also value honesty. Knowing that what I put online (like this statement) is being surveilled en mass somehow feels better than finding out after the fact. The flip side to that is then, what's the point of more security powers? Surely if everyone knows they're listening no one will say much of that particular interest? It's common knowledge that the security services have broken 'everything' save for cleanly and properly implemented encryption on a clean system (even then the hardware is breached so air gap it). The 'Bad Guys' know this so the likelihood of obtaining quality intelligence from such mass surveillance seems counter-intuitive to put it kindly. Those who do use common online services will be the 'low-hanging fruit' and likely so stupid the'd have been caught anyway (maybe we should still pick that fruit, I guess). The truth is, attacking a soft target like a western country is easy and requires no use of encryption. Just go and get a couple containers of fuel, go on a tube at rush hour with them in a backpack, pull the emergency stop, dump the fuel and light a match. You could probably rig up something custom made to get the job done simply and effectively (with no end of variation to counter your initial 'that wouldn't work'). That sort of thing would probably rival the 7/7 London bombings with just a one man attack (and talking about it will no doubt get me on a list now - wow look at me worrying about self-censoring). In fact, I'd put £1000 on fire being the next weapon of choice because done properly it's incredibly effective. Could we defend against that sort of attack? No. We can't. That's the truth. We can't really stop anything (or most things) done quickly and where the attackers are themselves prepared to die. So do we pull down all the (illusions of) freedom we have built up for ourselves in the hope of catching some low hanging fruit? I don't think that's a good idea. After all, the security services must remember that their job is in fact _supposed_ to be difficult (impossible even) and they must struggle to do it whilst maintaining those pesky freedoms the populace deserve that keep getting in the way all the time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_West,_Baron_West_of_Spithead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_West,_Baron_West_of_Spith...