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>> But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. Giving up such a valuabl

>> But I'm interested in what do people here have to say about the privacy features are used by terrible people to do terrible things. Giving up such a valuable right to possibly stop attacks which, in the grand scheme of things actually harm very few people, is idiotic. Terrorism is obviously awful but the number of people in the UK actually affected by it is far, far too small to consider forgoing such an important right. And IMO, once you do that, the terrorists have won. Take the attack in London last week for example. It doesn't require planning. Anyone could get in a car and mow down a lot of people in seconds. It doesn't need discussion on WhatsApp. It doesn't require purchase of weapons. It doesn't require you to do anything shady that could give you away more than a second before you do it. No amount of intelligence gathering could figure it out. You could force every citizen to wear a mic and body cam and you still wouldn't be able to stop it. How about tackling the actual problem - terrorists seem to have resorted to using cars and trucks to kill people. Lets put up some metal/concrete bollards alone the edge of pavements that have no 'escape route', such as the one on Westminster Bridge.

brokenmachine 10y ago
> How about tackling the actual problem - terrorists seem to have resorted to using cars and trucks to kill people. Lets put up some metal/concrete bollards alone the edge of pavements that have no 'escape route', such as the one on Westminster Bridge. Nice post. I agree almost entirely with you, but you can't put a bollard everywhere, and even if you could, bad people would find a way around or between the bollards, or simply another way to hurt people. It would be like playing a futile game of whack-a-mole. At the end of the day, there are people who are so mean-spirited that they want to hurt innocent people for no reason, and they will find a way to do that no matter what we do. Honestly I think a lot of it is mental health more than anything we can really protect against. It's not possible to wrap everyone in cotton wool, and in order to have some freedom we risk a small percentage of harm. There is no way around that. Without that freedom, there's also the IMO much larger risk of harm from the authorities themselves. There's no way around it, living in the world involves some risk. It's unrealistic to not accept that risk and fantasize that all outcomes are preventable. Like another comment mentioned, there are literally tens of thousands of stabbings in the UK every year. Why are we even talking about removing fundamental freedoms (the right to privacy) in order to probably not prevent a few unfortunate deaths per year? The payoff is so small and the cost is much too great.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> you can't put a bollard everywhere I agree, this wasn't my suggestion. I was thinking more of areas like a bridge where if a car does start speeding along the pavement, even if you are further along and see it, there is nowhere for you to go. Your choices are stay put (and get hit), run into the road and probably get hit by traffic, or jump off the bridge (dangerous). Bollards along pavements like that would be useful. Even just one at each end and one in the middle would halve the damage by 50% at least. My greater point though is that something like bollards tackles the problem directly and is much more effective than SIGINT for these type of attacks yet nobody is talking about it.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    The real problem is not the fact that we have places where pedestrians can be hit. It's the fact that there are people who would want to hurt innocent people for no reason. TBH I don't really understand why these crimes should be treated in any special way other than any other murder/assault crime. What difference does it make what ideology they are claimed to identify with? I am not convinced that the volume of such crimes (assault with relevant ideology) is enough to warrant putting them in a special category in the first place. I do think that the bollard solution is a bit unnecessary though, as there'll always be a place where pedestrians would be vulnerable, and many other ways that people could be hurt besides. At least it's something that could have an effect though. Snooping on emails would have almost no effect, and I hope everyone knows that. Snowden/William Binney, etc, should have made it patently obvious to everyone that there is no shortage of data flowing in, and I'm sure any successful preventative efforts would have been trumpeted to the rooftops with the way those agencies love to pat themselves on the back to justify bigger budgets. More crap data, from millions of law-abiding innocent citizens, is not going to make it any easier for them to separate out the signal from the massive amount of noise. The fact the media is not presenting real solutions to either of the actual problems - people being run down by cars or trucks, and people wanting to hurt other innocent people, or even questioning the imaginary solutions makes me strongly suspect there's ulterior motives at play. To be quite blunt, this is such a blatant and transparent power grab by the authorities that I can't help but think that if the average person cannot see that our media is not interested in presenting the true story, with real facts that make sense, and our government representatives aren't addressing any of the real issues and just trying to remove our freedoms at every turn in order to not even solve imagined problems, then our society is already doomed, and not at the hands of terrorists.

brokenmachine 10y ago

> How about tackling the actual problem - terrorists seem to have resorted to using cars and trucks to kill people. Lets put up some metal/concrete bollards alone the edge of pavements that have no 'escape route', such as the one on Westminster Bridge. Nice post. I agree almost entirely with you, but you can't put a bollard everywhere, and even if you could, bad people would find a way around or between the bollards, or simply another way to hurt people. It would be like playing a futile game of whack-a-mole. At the end of the day, there are people who are so mean-spirited that they want to hurt innocent people for no reason, and they will find a way to do that no matter what we do. Honestly I think a lot of it is mental health more than anything we can really protect against. It's not possible to wrap everyone in cotton wool, and in order to have some freedom we risk a small percentage of harm. There is no way around that. Without that freedom, there's also the IMO much larger risk of harm from the authorities themselves. There's no way around it, living in the world involves some risk. It's unrealistic to not accept that risk and fantasize that all outcomes are preventable. Like another comment mentioned, there are literally tens of thousands of stabbings in the UK every year. Why are we even talking about removing fundamental freedoms (the right to privacy) in order to probably not prevent a few unfortunate deaths per year? The payoff is so small and the cost is much too great.

k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> you can't put a bollard everywhere I agree, this wasn't my suggestion. I was thinking more of areas like a bridge where if a car does start speeding along the pavement, even if you are further along and see it, there is nowhere for you to go. Your choices are stay put (and get hit), run into the road and probably get hit by traffic, or jump off the bridge (dangerous). Bollards along pavements like that would be useful. Even just one at each end and one in the middle would halve the damage by 50% at least. My greater point though is that something like bollards tackles the problem directly and is much more effective than SIGINT for these type of attacks yet nobody is talking about it.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  The real problem is not the fact that we have places where pedestrians can be hit. It's the fact that there are people who would want to hurt innocent people for no reason. TBH I don't really understand why these crimes should be treated in any special way other than any other murder/assault crime. What difference does it make what ideology they are claimed to identify with? I am not convinced that the volume of such crimes (assault with relevant ideology) is enough to warrant putting them in a special category in the first place. I do think that the bollard solution is a bit unnecessary though, as there'll always be a place where pedestrians would be vulnerable, and many other ways that people could be hurt besides. At least it's something that could have an effect though. Snooping on emails would have almost no effect, and I hope everyone knows that. Snowden/William Binney, etc, should have made it patently obvious to everyone that there is no shortage of data flowing in, and I'm sure any successful preventative efforts would have been trumpeted to the rooftops with the way those agencies love to pat themselves on the back to justify bigger budgets. More crap data, from millions of law-abiding innocent citizens, is not going to make it any easier for them to separate out the signal from the massive amount of noise. The fact the media is not presenting real solutions to either of the actual problems - people being run down by cars or trucks, and people wanting to hurt other innocent people, or even questioning the imaginary solutions makes me strongly suspect there's ulterior motives at play. To be quite blunt, this is such a blatant and transparent power grab by the authorities that I can't help but think that if the average person cannot see that our media is not interested in presenting the true story, with real facts that make sense, and our government representatives aren't addressing any of the real issues and just trying to remove our freedoms at every turn in order to not even solve imagined problems, then our society is already doomed, and not at the hands of terrorists.