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I've been working within the Liberal Democrats to try and push policies that are pro-privacy for the past few years, revoking some of the acts put in by the cur

I've been working within the Liberal Democrats to try and push policies that are pro-privacy for the past few years, revoking some of the acts put in by the current Conservative government and pushing new ones to protect against future government breaches like this. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't stick when polled to the general public. The average person simply doesn't care it seems, no matter how you frame it, and as such it's almost impossible to break ground into updates to the party manifesto. I tried the same thing within Labour a few years before and the same barriers existed, with the added fact that many of the MPs seemed to be cut from the same cloth as the Tories, and that they were incredibly resistant to change outside of their traditional focuses (NHS, Unions, Immigration, Education, blah, blah). To be frank, it seems like most politicians would rather be at war with the technologically apt than to work with them. All we can hope is that technologies adapt at a faster rate than authoritarian governments can, and the witty can outwit the witless.

da39a3ee 5y ago
These normal people don't vote for it for a good reason! The importance of online security is massively overstated, especially by specialists like us on forums like HN. We've got to keep our credit card details private, yes. But in general we (e.g. HN community) completely fail to do the cost benefit analysis -- we talk about security as if you always have to have maximum security, rather than recognizing that it's a trade off with convenience. That combined with the tin foil hat tendencies of some HN types who comment on security. Really the best thing for almost everyone is to just keep everything in Google Drive: the probability of google employees stealing it multiplied by the loss is much smaller than the probability they won't multiplied by the convenience. I hope this comment doesn't come across as trolling-- I found your post genuinely interesting and I genuinely think that the normal folk who you're having a hard time convincing have a point -- the correct position to adopt lies in between the two camps. Which is a truism. But I mean, like, relatively far from either!
- toyg 5y ago
  "Really, the best thing for almost everyone is to hand all their belongings to an unaccountable American corporation (which effectively provides no support), so that they can datamine it for advertising and identification purposes." The fact that "specialists like us on HN" can say this sort of thing with a straight face and no hint of doubt, is one of the many reasons we are sleepwalking into dystopia.
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    Note that we're talking about security here, not preventing a corporation from profiting from us. All normal people need to do is store their stuff in Google Drive. I agree it's not pretty, and I agree hopefully we can get to a better future where we don't use a megacorporation for this, but it is safe and sensible for normal people. You've got to remember that other things happen in peoples lives -- their loved ones die -- and that's all more important than the aesthetics of their digital lives. Google gets the job done for them.

da39a3ee 5y ago

These normal people don't vote for it for a good reason! The importance of online security is massively overstated, especially by specialists like us on forums like HN. We've got to keep our credit card details private, yes. But in general we (e.g. HN community) completely fail to do the cost benefit analysis -- we talk about security as if you always have to have maximum security, rather than recognizing that it's a trade off with convenience. That combined with the tin foil hat tendencies of some HN types who comment on security. Really the best thing for almost everyone is to just keep everything in Google Drive: the probability of google employees stealing it multiplied by the loss is much smaller than the probability they won't multiplied by the convenience. I hope this comment doesn't come across as trolling-- I found your post genuinely interesting and I genuinely think that the normal folk who you're having a hard time convincing have a point -- the correct position to adopt lies in between the two camps. Which is a truism. But I mean, like, relatively far from either!

toyg 5y ago
"Really, the best thing for almost everyone is to hand all their belongings to an unaccountable American corporation (which effectively provides no support), so that they can datamine it for advertising and identification purposes." The fact that "specialists like us on HN" can say this sort of thing with a straight face and no hint of doubt, is one of the many reasons we are sleepwalking into dystopia.
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  Note that we're talking about security here, not preventing a corporation from profiting from us. All normal people need to do is store their stuff in Google Drive. I agree it's not pretty, and I agree hopefully we can get to a better future where we don't use a megacorporation for this, but it is safe and sensible for normal people. You've got to remember that other things happen in peoples lives -- their loved ones die -- and that's all more important than the aesthetics of their digital lives. Google gets the job done for them.