Comment by datamoshr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by datamoshr | Hacker News Reader

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I work in the UK and live in a household where 3 of 4 people work in tech. It's mostly a case of the people outside of tech simply not knowing. Short of a prime-time TV special that outlined just how long the tentacles of GCHQ are and how it actually affects people; there won't be a change.

For those that are in tech, there are essentially two fields of thought I can extrapolate:

1. There's those like myself who are just plain uncomfortable with the idea of someone somewhere having access to every facet of me and my online presence. Modern day tinfoil-hattery if you will. It's at a point bordering on paranoia and having to cover so many bases to have basic operational security of your day to day life is exhausting.

2. There's those that say "I've nothing to hide, what do I care what the government sees". This is the overwhelming majority. What seems to be lacking is an education of the people on the freedom they're passively giving up. Education of these people in this country against the threat of omnipresent surveillance does not exist. It would have to exist outside the realm of the Government and as great as the EFF and various news sources documenting the abolishing of civil freedoms are, I feel it's not enough. I can almost guarantee that if I turned to any one of the 100+ devs on my floor, they wouldn't even know what TTIP is, let alone what the GCHQ is capable of doing.

I feel we've already lost. There's simply not enough force to stop what's happening.

This, sadly, is the right answer.

There's advantages to not having a written constitution, but this is not one of them. We don't have amendments we can take the government to court over. We have the EU and the Human Rights Act as our last line of defence, but the popular media is too busy trying to ridicule it as part of the "reluctant European" agenda. In this case our history as very reluctant Europeans does not help.

Outside tech, no one seems to have even the vaguest inkling of what's going on within their mobiles, or meta data is just date and time isn't it? It doesn't matter. Look at this meme.

Within tech

1. Those of similar mind can either withdraw and minimise exposure (ie use minimal apps, VPNs etc), join the open rights group, or... nothing. There's apathy in the extreme. The only other thing I could do, unless I made a solo stand in Parliament Square is contribute to Signal or similar on github.

2. There's the majority view which is along the lines of "I've nothing to hide", but with a total unawareness of concepts like if there's enough data you can criminalise anyone the powers that be take an exception to. If it's not criminal you could easily let something slip to make someone unemployable. Even tech people seem to have little idea or appreciation of historical lessons of only 70 years ago, except GCHQ is a good thing, it's the follow on to Bletchley and that helped win the war.

We've lost, clearly. You'd get as much, if not more, takeup organising a demo against the mythical chemtrails than this.

Everybody knows that history runs in cycles, just like fashion.

The people before us have fought (and died) for freedom. We are the ones giving it up. And some day after we're gone, some people will fight for it again.

And the whole thing starts over once more.

You may be right, but I'm not overly keen for my children's or future generations to have to die just to get back what we lost through apathy.

It might not be as easy to get back as getting them first time around. The pervasive surveillance will enable govt to hinder those pesky demonstrators far more effectively.

> I feel we've already lost. There's simply not enough force to stop what's happening.

Yeah, sadly, I have to agree with you. I think until there is a massive, public breach of this data people will assume its okay.

Even if people feel they have nothing to hide, I suspect the GCHQ and the Snoopers Charter will result in large scale private data collection that people are "okay" with the government but not the general public being aware of. However, once its all spilled into the public view they'll understand why this was a bad thing...at which point it'll be too late for an entire generation of people but gives hope for the future. :/

I think you also have to account that the majority of the UK population trust the Police/Security services. If not absolutely, then definitely benefit of the doubt. I feel like the US has a much much more adversarial attitude to those people. When you mention GCHQ - they're the ones who cracked Enigma etc. The NSA doesn't have that glossy veneer somehow - they are predominantly portrayed as suspicious and self serving.

I wonder if it harks back to culturally significant episodes like watergate?

I think there's a third group for those "in tech":

3. I know how mindblowingly easy implementing and obfuscating strongly encrypted messages is. I know how expensive it is to crack iff it was even intercepted. Given the odds of being able to intercept and decrypt before an attack (the supposed raison d'être for these laws), I care that so much taxpayer money is being jizzed up the wall of what amounts to security theatre. Doing something to be seen doing something.

I realise that even if not technically powerful, it does serve as a deterrent to the terrorists... But at the same time, as somebody living under this increasingly Orwellian nightmare, it also seems like the terrorists won.

To be fair, that doesn't seem all too different to the situation in the US, and this is coming from someone living in the UK. Remember, sites like Hacker News are only a small percentage of the population, and there's a much larger group either completely or nearly completely oblivious to the actions of the NSA or what not.

But yeah, people here don't really know all too much about this spying, and they sadly don't seem to care much if they do know. That depresses me, and makes me despair about how spinless much of humanity seems to have become.

To be clear, Theresa May just seems to be much more blatant about it because "terrorists and pedophiles"

She seems to be a real life personification of Delores Umbridge with all her unpleasantness.

But hey, there's also the current sh*tshow aka US presidential campaign.. :)

Let's be clear, most UK Home Secretaries of the last quarter century have been blatantly ripping away hard won freedoms. Even David Blunkett, once famous for "the people's republic of Sheffield" ended up slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.

The Daily Mail has played the because terrorism, think of the children cards for 100+ years, but now every kneejerk campaign results in equally kneejerk legislation.

I'm old enough to remember some of the IRA activities. They did far more than ISIS and Al Quida put together, and it was ongoing. The political reaction was always "we will not change our society, or they win". The few pieces of legislation, even the kneejerk ones, were aimed squarely at them - remove the right to appear on TV, occasional internment. We didn't have to get half undressed to get on a plane.

FFS I spent one night driving around London because I happened to be staying in a hotel near Heathrow the night the IRA decided to mortar bomb the runway. Didn't result in strip searches or armed police on a regular basis. (Aside, that's the only occasion I've had a gun pointed at me - the Police who were turning away traffic trying to get to the hotels were all carrying MP5s, and carrying them as though they were about to use them).

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