I just wanna tell everyone here who is happy about how this outcome was acheived, never to complain about corporations running your democracy. You can't complain only when the outcome is undesirable. You surrendered "by the people" part if democracy because it suited your views.
UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
301–310 of 320 posts
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
The political communications are done with WhatsApp. This is illegal of course. There has been no discussion of the obvious national security risk. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/22/uk-ministers-acc...
This isn't even limited to the UK. In the US, we have presidents, vice presidents, and presidential candidates all under investigation for mishandling records by running their own e-mail servers. The most charitable explanation being that they don't want to have to deal with separate personal and work devices; the less charitable explanation being "fuck records laws".
The most charitable reason would be “I don’t want to deal with corporate Bs”. I’m sure we’ve all worked in those types of places.
Doesn’t really apply when it’s the Exco board though, if they say jump then it’s the CTOs job to make it happen.
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#303I just wanna tell everyone here who is happy about how this outcome was acheived, never to complain about corporations running your democracy. You can't complain only when the outcome is undesirable. You surrendered "by the people" part if democracy because it suited your views.
You can criticize something that sometimes works in your favor.
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think its increasingly true of several countries, not just the UK. Any State with strong Freedom of Information legislation not surprisingly creates incentives for certain political operatives to want to avoid exposure by use of unofficial channels further out of reach of FoI - private WhatsApp groups etc etc. I don't see this as any different than the instances of private email service mischief that has occurred i…
I think that if you hold a position in the government, all of your communication (including private email, chats, etc) should be subject to public scrutiny. A government official should be defined not as someone who is holding power, but as an elected representative of the people.
All that would happen much of the time is that people stop writing anything of consequence down, or seek secret channels like the WhatsApp example. NHS employees in the UK as another example admit privately all the time to not recording things in meetings to avoid FoI exposure.
I agree with you in principle, but you are fighting human nature in practice - generally no one wants to look bad in public. I think FoI legislation is important, but in practice the results have often been mixed, and the approach probably needs to be nuanced.
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wish I could upvote this harder lol. Parents really dont have enough time/energy to do this better than people who are trained in software/legislation. Especially if they have more than 2 kids/are single parents
So you trust the competence and the ethics of the government?
Id say i trust the competence of government in this arena more than that of parents on average. If someone is working on policy day in and day out for tech related things, they will have a better lay of the land than the average parent. However, you bring up a good point about ethics. A parent will definitely be far more acting in the best interest of their child compared to the government. An interesting quandry, good point
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you trust the competence and the ethics of the government?
Id say i trust the competence of government in this arena more than that of parents on average. If someone is working on policy day in and day out for tech related things, they will have a better lay of the land than the average parent. However, you bring up a good point about ethics. A parent will definitely be far more acting in the best interest of their child compared to the government. An interesting quandry, go…
The other test is what can the “other” party do with any power you give the government. I define “other” as the party with viewpoints you are opposed to.
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#307I just wanna tell everyone here who is happy about how this outcome was acheived, never to complain about corporations running your democracy. You can't complain only when the outcome is undesirable. You surrendered "by the people" part if democracy because it suited your views.
You can criticize something that sometimes works in your favor.
So long as you were consistent and your opinion didn't change when it suited you
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#308I don't really like the headline, it makes it sound negative. Big Tech tends to have negative connotations, nowadays. So, here the FT is trying to say that a democratically elected government is living in fear of private firms. While it may be true that our government are now living in fear of not just Big Tech but all types of Big whatever, the fight was way beyond just big tech. Sure Big Tech helped but it still is…
lol the uk gov has more negative connotations than bigtech. Also not quite democratic when the uk electorate last voted for a gov in 2019 but we have had 3 prime ministers since all with vastly different strategies, where the last 2 were chosen by anyone who wants to pay for a membership to the tory party, including fake identities made by journalists who registered from france. If you had some context, bigtech are a…
In the UK parties are free to choose their leader by any means they like. They have a lot less power than a President - which is part of the reason the previous two were deposed.
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
FT is a conservative-centre aligned news outlet, so stands to reason they'd favour their preferred party
Do you read it regularly? It is centre aligned but as a reader, I wouldn’t say it was Conservative aligned. It certainly is a mile off its alignment with the “Tory press” that typically set the new agenda.
Yes, I am a regular reader. And I didn't say Conservative with a capital C, I said conservative centre. As in, centre with a conservative angle.
Re: UK pulls back from clash with Big Tech over private messaging
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
What they would use instead? Plain-text emails? Plain-text SMS? Paper mail?
Signal?
How is it different from WhatsApp (apart from being worse feature-wise and not many people using it)? As far as I remember, WhatsApp uses Signal's encryption, so technically they're the same level of protection?