On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 07:57:18AM +0000, Damian Counsell wrote:
The law has historically been imposed as a means to protect property and of course the more property you've got the more influence you have in shaping what becomes law.
No problem with that.
Now it seems that the intelligence services have made a grab for more law, not because they're interested in paedophiles, terrorists are drug smugglers, but because they're interested in grabbing intellectual property and more `jobs for the boys'.
Yeah, right, and the Jews were responsible for blowing up the twin towers. I'm very cynical about the authorities's motivations, but "grabbing intellectual property"? That's just tosh.
The security services are in up to their knecks when it comes to grabbing sensitive commercial information and also preventing it from being grabbed. It's why the French are keen on introducing Linux - as
Unfortunatly they appear somewhat less good at tracking down organised crime and terrorists. Which is ment to be their real job in the first place.
there's less possibility of the US making use of the numerous backdoors littering MS products to steal their firms commercial secrets.
Though I doubt the "backdoors" were specifically put in for that purpose. Most of them appear to be due to a design which enables "features" which are rarely used by default...
I've heard so many daft conspiracy theories since 9/11 (as the Americans refer to it) that I'm thinking of writing a book. The slack security that led to the incident itself is support for the cock-up theory of disaster more than anything else.
Most of the conspiracy theories are rot. Plenty of people hate the US - the only surprising thing was that it hadn't happened earlier.
It did, but skyscrapers tend to handle truck bombs in basement carparks quite well. More to the point most of the proposed anti-terrorist measures best at worst be a minor inconvenice.
Subsequent proposals for new powers are just panicky efforts by incompetents at stable-door shutting.
No, they're not that incompetent. It's a power grab under a pretence - pure & simple.
Most of the proposed ideas have been around for a long time, hence the conspiracy theories. (As well as having little to no relevance to "horses" or "stables".) But would you really expect the US (and for that matter the UK) governments to come clean and say "yes we have interfered with the functioning of other governments, including supporting dictators who were favourable to our business interests". (Let alone seek new policies to both clean up the mess which has been created in the last 50 or so years or attempt to prevent the same thing happening in future.) Maybe that's why the US government has a problem with effectivly punishing Microsoft. It sees something of itself in the way Microsoft does business.
We live in a democracy and the government pays most attention to the Daily Mail-reading voting bloc that is most likely to put a cross in the box.
If you think we live in some sort of democratic paradise where politicians listen to us then you're astoundingly naive. The Daily Mail and the rest of the Fleet St rags might aswell be written by 10 Downing St along with the BBC news etc. At least one Fleet St editor is
The BBC is (marginally) better than some. Though the UK media does generally appear to be a little more impartial and cynical than that in the US...
known to be an MI5 man.
Increases in security powers are meant to please the "something-must-be-done" brigade and not the sorts of thoughtful iconoclasts who read this list ;-). They are very little to do with "intellectual property" or, indeed, "jobs for the boys"---about which most individual MI6 employees probably couldn't give a toss. (I told you I was cynical.)
It's not meant to please the "something-must-be-done" brigade. It's
In a sense it is both, since it gives the illusion of those in authority doing something to address the "problem".
presented to us as meeting the publics demands for security as evidenced by the stories in the Daily Mail etc `reflecting public concern'. Only the terminally stupid give a damn about terrorists, paedophiles and the rest of the media created monsters lurking on the
As opposed to the media created monster of gangs of thugs terrorising housing estates...
'net - but then I guess Daily Mail readers are terminally stupid.
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