Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/02/a-hell-of-a-drug.html
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Someone should write them an open letter, signed by all the IT professionals who would instantly turn to a career in cybercriminality if crypto disappeared overnight.
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It might take for a couple of them to have their bank accounts drained for them to really get it.
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We all deserve privacy, both in our homes and on the internet. No threat is worth denying ourselves the liberty and freedom afforded by privacy, offline and on.
Cryptography is the window shade of online privacy. I don’t care to allow the state to dictate that I only install shades that permit anyone with a special filter to see through mine and into my home as they see fit, and I cannot abide denying cryptography.
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Other than the presumption, isn’t that basically correct? Normal people don’t really think about cryptography, let alone demand it, even if it is in their best interests.
Why doesn’t she then just share her personal emails, other documents and financial interests with Joe Public?
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Is a bit like saying that normal people are not interested in temperature dependence of friction coefficient of their brake pads… Maybe not, but for sure they will notice if their car does not brake anymore because of fading (fading is when the overheated brake pad became much less efficient)
Or a better analogy, people are not interested in having locks made with hardened steel and not plastic, but for sure they will bothered having unplanned visits in their homes
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Don’t forget that this is Amber “necessary hashtags” Rudd - a history graduate who went to work for JP Morgan before entering Parliament.
It took the Home Office a week to tell the world that Rudd’s ‘hashtags’ were actually hashes. But I’m not entirely sure she knows the difference.
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I’m pretty sure that was merely the best they could come up with to try and disguise the fact that she has not got the first fucking clue what she is blithering about. It would have been her “series of tubes” moment, except that Senator Stevens’ analogy did make a small smattering of sense, in a very superficial and simplistic way. Rudd’s comment was word salad.
I’m entirely sure she doesn’t.
Exactly. Lead by example!
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Amber Rudd. Anagram: Dumb Darer.
“Daring the world to be dumber” - the new Home Office Motto.
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Liked for the tag “weaponized tautologies”.
Seriously, most of this nontroversy would be dispelled overnight if broadcast media outlets who covered the issue responded by asking these government crybabies about their own organizations’ policies of cryptographic use and computer security.
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Are you not interested in crypto? Or are you not a normal person?
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People don’t care how elevators work. Clearly this means that ‘normal people’ don’t mind having every major bone in their bodies crushed by an unsafe unregulated elevator that plummeted at terminal velocity into sub-basement four.
I mean: Duh!
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I concede that your analogy is better than mines.
Miss Amber Rudd,
If you are so vehemently opposed to online encryption to safeguard your business transactions, emails, conversations, and your other online interactions I propose the following as a demonstration that you fully believe the arguments you have put forth.
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Leave your house unlocked. After all only people with things they must hide would lock a door and shutter their windows right? You shall do neither as an upstanding moral citizen.
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Leave all of your mail publicly viewable. After all if you have done nothing bad you have nothing to worry about people raffling through these things right?
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Oh and while we’re at it I want to hear every single phone call you have ever made or ever will make. That’s not too much of an imposition is it? I mean you are a Good Person of High Moral Character right? You’ve never had conversations you wouldn’t care to have in front of your mum, right?
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Publish everything you have ever done online; every search query, every private blog post, every forum post. Everything must be made public. After all if you have done nothing you are embarrassed about you wouldn’t mind, right? If you are a Good Person you will make an ever-expanding always up to date list of these things. Right?
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Is it too soon to go for a "normal people don’t care about boring egghead ASTM flammability standards? Because I hear that the UK recently hosted an impressive demonstration of the fact that you don’t have to care about the messy details to care a lot about the difference in outcome…
Really, while it’s a fundamentally scummy and dishonest argument; it’s also a pretty versatile one: basically everything has a bunch of nerdy details that nobody except subject matter wonks care about(and some of the more tedious subjects have to pay them reasonably well to keep even them interested); but those details invariably have much more direct implications for things people do care about; so the motives of anyone who attacks the wonk details too enthusiastically are generally rotten to the core.
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Just leave the front door open, if you have nothing to hide.
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Mildly interested in crypto, mildly abnormal.
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This is the government that’s been relaxing building code standards.
They probably think crypto is like that: slack the standards, and hopefully nothing embarrassing will fall down or catch fire until after their retirement. And if anyone gets killed, it’s only the little people.
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