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Comment by pgoggijr | Hacker News Reader

Don't really see the problem with this - the optimist in me believes that this can be helpful for parents who might be in over their heads. The leaflet isn't necessarily asking for vigilance to put kids on watch lists, just to give parents and kids some information on what is/not wrong to do.

"let us know so we can give advice and engage them into positive diversions"

Sounds like police actually trying to have a positive impact here.

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Reporting your kid to the police for non-crimes will not have a positive outcome. Your kid will be on a list, never trust you again, and have to overcome so many more obstacles. Every generation of parents finds something that is "over their heads" and they need to deal with it like responsible adults. Know what your kid is interested in and not fear monger it. Deal with issues like an adult with educating yourself.

Seconded. Police are not There To Help You. Police enforce the law. When in doubt of the law, they simply enforce. Don't ever tip someone off to the police unless you have a real reason to believe they have or will harm a person.

I don't know if you're in the UK, but this isn't true for most of our police, certainly outside the cities. If anything, this fact is something they're proud of.

As an example, I called them once (using a non emergency number before anyone says anything) because I was worried about a vulnerable relative who I couldn't get hold of and they were great - went to his house and called back to say he was fine, just couldn't hear the phone over the TV.

You didn't report a faux crime, you requested a welfare check.

But even a wellness check can go exceedingly wrong in the US.

"He said he called a non emergency number for a wellness check. Smith said minutes later he heard a gunshot."

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/13/769891781/fort-worth-officer-...

The US is irrelevant to the situation in the article.

The US seems to have a very strange relationship with its police.

The US and UK police are about as different from each other as it’s possible to be while still being police.

For example, the UK police do not routinely carry firearms.

On the other hand, the UK police is dangerously close to arresting people for thought crime: https://www.google.com/search?q=uk+police+thought+crime

I know this is the internet echo chamber, but the police in my community, and everywhere I have lived, provide a lot of outreach opportunities to under-educated and under-privileged (east coast, USA, for reference).

I'm friends with police in a hard to police area, and they are good people. It really has nothing to do with the normal functioning of their community outreach or the individuals themselves. I find my friends are intelligent and care about folks.

Its the system you put your kid into by calling the police on them. Police don't have choices in a lot cases and the system around them has a lot of rules that capture people in them for years.

Just to be clear - if you are in the UK the police are quite often there to help you.

This is what the cynic in me is worried about. As somebody who grew up with parents who had no idea what I was doing on the computer (no fault of their own, they just didn't have access to the tools I did growing up), I can see them being worried. Providing advice and materials is exactly what I would hope the police would provide to them (which is in-line with what this brochure says).

I acknowledge that this brochure _might_ represent fear-mongering, but based on what's actually written in the brochure, it doesn't sound like the police are looking to put kids on a list.

Having discord on a machine is a sign of being a gamer, or any number of other things. VMs have a multitude of legit uses.

These things are not wrong to use, at best what this will do is scare idiot parents, and perhaps put some talented, interested kids off from learning more about computers as a bunch of clueless authority figure in their life freak out about completely innocent computer use.

At worst kids will be traumatised, put on watchlists and strain could be put on family cohesion.

For nothing.

While I agree that having Discord should be innocuous, a parent who has no idea what Discord is should know that it could be used to talk to (potentially dangerous) strangers online.

A simple "Hey (son/daughter), the police told me that if anybody on Discord tells you to download LOIC, then you're probably in with the wrong crowd" is what I would hope would come of this (along with the typical internet stranger danger shpiel).

I also am scared of the worst case scenario you present, but this brochure doesn't seem like that to me.

A parent who has no idea what discord is but sees this poster is going to get the wrong idea, be suspicious of their kid and their kid's computer use, get scared and react badly.

"Hey kid stop doing that, turn off the computer we're taking it away, I saw that on a police poster" is more likely.

You don't tell people to contact the police over innocuous stuff like this. It's ridiculous.

The police in the UK are institutionally ignorant of computers and computer use, and this poster is harmful.

(edit: Can you not see this for what it is? Fear and ignorance in poster form?)

(edit2: The NCA have said they were not involved in this poster. Looks like an ignorant local police/council screwup)

My knee-jerk reaction was to see it as that, and usually that's the side I take, but the poster really isn't suggesting that learning these things are necessarily bad.

That's probably how most people will take it though, unfortunately.

Yeah, it really is, it's a scare poster. It's inviting you to phone the police (who have shown themselves ignorant by producing this in the first place) if your kid uses discord or virtual machines.

You're being deliberately contrarian here, to attempt to paint it as something positive.

Like I said, the NCA have distanced themselves from this nonsense, this is local cops who have no clue producing a bullshit poster.

>just to give parents and kids some information on what is/not wrong to do.

I'm not sure it's helpful to suggest to parents who may be in over their head that Discord and Virtual Machines are "wrong to do" or even things to worry about.

I didn't read that it was suggesting these things are wrong, but that the police (who I would and it seems here that they are) are educated on the topic, and can provide advice and materials to potentially prevent wrongdoing here.

Not the severely underfunded West Midlands police.

Excuse me, but you seem to be reading the news. By gosh, is that.. is that a printing press in your garage there?

Pardon but you'll need to come with us. We need to make sure you aren't publishing the _wrong_ sorts of things. Don't worry, I'm sure this will get sorted out just fine.

There's no advice needed if you find discord on your kid's machine, unless you don't want them talking to other people at all.

This is a poster that will scare the technically illiterate into taking computer access away from their kids.

You don't call the police for things that are not wrong. The police are there for when things go wrong.

Except in police states.

in over their heads with what?

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