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Comment by raesene6 | Hacker News Reader

ah more security cluelessness from the UK Government.

The frustrating piece is that they're ignoring their own internal experts on this. The people running the National Cyber Security Centre are very bright and have stated that they think backdoors are a bad idea

from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/05/problems-end...

"Ian Levy, the technical director of the National Cyber Security, told the New Statesman's Will Dunn earlier this year: "Nobody in this organisation or our parent organisation will ever ask for a 'back door' in a large-scale encryption system, because it's dumb." "

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The UK government has a habit of ignoring its own experts, to the degree of firing them if they give advice the government don't like. Drug policy is another area that suffers from this approach.

I was just about to mention this. For anyone interested Professor David Nutt[0] was fired from his role as the government's chief drug advisor after claiming ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-advis...

The comments from Alan Johnson, then Home Secretary, are rather telling:

> He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy. [...] As for his comments about horse riding being more dangerous than ecstasy, which you quote with such reverence, it is of course a political rather than a scientific point.[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/nov/02/drug-policy...

>> he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy

It's hard to believe he can say that with a straight face. Is he supposed to advise on topics he understands that the government doesn't or is he supposed to be a 'yes man'?

The mental gymnastics there is quite astonishing

> it doesn't actually help clarify the very real public health issues associated with drugs to make distracting comparisons in this way.

Almost like he's managed to put his head up his rectum and it doesn't seems distracting for him to have it there.

I've seen plenty of debates with nut-jobs like an anti-vaxxer or climate sceptic facing off against an MD or climatologist respectively on television, with a journalist as a moderator to make sure it's on a level that's understandable by the audience and to make sure it doesn't degrade to name calling.

Why can't the same thing be organized for politicians implementing policy? Let them face the concerns of the experts right in front of the public, the public has the right to be concerned if it's evident that politicians don't know what they're doing and aren't consulting people who do know.

Invite a computer engineer or something with any sort of experience in the field of network security to comment the Home Secretary's statements and ask her questions, maybe even through the journalist, and I'm happy.

This isn't cluelesness, it's maliciousness.

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