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I happened to catch a Radio 4 documentary [0] on Sunday about the government's "Prevent" strategy, which aims to find evidence of extremism in places such as sc

• biofox 9y ago
  I have no problem, in principle, with the prevent strategy. If impressionable children are at risk of being brainwashed into a dangerous ideology, then the state should step in, just as it does with any other form of abuse. Hasn't "pre-crime" always been a part of policing, in the form of intelligence gathering and crime prevention? My main concern is schools, and (increasingly) the police acting irrationally and disproportionately.
  • openfuture 9y ago
    I feel it is the government that are brainwashing impressionable children with dangerous ideology and I'd prefer it if the stepped out.
  • J-dawg 9y ago
    That's an interesting counter-argument, thanks. But I still don't think I agree with you. The problem here is that it's left up to police to decide what is a "dangerous ideology". It's not something that you can decide in advance and make objective criteria for. The potential for police to abuse these powers (either through corruption or simply being over-zealous) is enormous. This is how you end up with a Green Party politician being added to the register of "Domestic Extremists", to give one of many examples.
  • Jedd 9y ago
    How do you feel about the banning of toy weapons - including water pistols, plastic swords, bows & arrows, rubber knives? (Personally I think it's a fine idea, but many of my thoughts are easily taken out of context.)
    • reitanqild 9y ago
      Next they take your car. Why? Cars kills way more people than guns. Often not because of a need to get from a to b but because of reckless driving just for the fun of it. So - you could argue - you should not only need to have a drivers permit but a driving permit for your actual trips. Ok. Maybe cars should be banned. Or at least restricted to people with a legitimate reason like politicians and doctors. But do you think it will end there? If we give up cars then air traffic would be a natural next step... You see? This is why I defend the right to have guns, the right to modify cars, have real crypto, say almost[0] anything you want. Because it is a cheap insurance against a society that we really really want to avoid. Because the majority of people who have been killed have been killed by their own or a neigbouring country - not by their neigbours who happened to have a personal gun. [0]: including: "I belive the person behind reitanqilds account is stupid" Not including: "Hi guys! Lets start a fundraiser to kill <anyone>"
      • Jedd 9y ago
        > Next they take your car. But cars are useful and, on average safer, for many / the majority of people that use them. Guns are, on average, not so useful / safe. Note that I'm averaging this across the planet, not just across one small (5% of global population) country with a lot of strong opinions on the matter. > Why? Cars kills way more people than guns. I know it's a pithy aphorism, but in the same way that guns don't kill people, cars don't kill people either. It's a matter of mitigating the risk of misuse of one or the other (or both). And, as I say, cars have a very important benefit for a lot of people. Guns ... less so. In any case you've missed my point. We don't have toys that we hand out to toddlers and < 10yo's that encourage the emulation of lethal activities by means of turning a vehicle into a weapon -- but we do with plastic facsimiles of weapons. I was asking should we be discouraging the latter. You turn that into a 'if the kiddies don't have plastic semi-automatic weapons, then we'll have to give up private transport, and then we won't be able to use commercial airlines'. Aside: there's sufficient natural experiments out there that demonstrate the benefits of gun control compared to, say, the USA's approach. While I respect your preferences here, it's difficult to make a compelling argument.
• DanBC 9y ago
  The PREVENT strategy could have been useful. But schools over-report (because that's the safest thing to do when you're compelled to report) and there doesn't seem to be sensible triage in place to filter out over-zealous referrals. Here's an example of what the PREVENT agenda should be about: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html or this case: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2016/3171.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2016/3171.html
  • mtgx 9y ago
    > The PREVENT strategy could have been useful. No, it couldn't have been. It's a mistake to believe that any prevention strategy will work on a large scale, and the reason is you'll always get too many false positives like that [1]. It's not just an issue with schools being too eager to report. It will happen in any scenario, including inside intelligence agencies if you force them to go after any "remotely potential terrorist". There will be thousands and thousands of false positives. [1] - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_for.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_f...
    • saimiam 9y ago
      > thousands and thousands of false positives. Or, for Iraqis from 2003-2007, one truly egregious one.