Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, UK Parliament is made up of political careerists and art students, which is probably similar to most Western democracies. There's a saying 'those who can do, those who can't teach', it probably needs a final 'and those that can't teach, go into politics'.

Every time ukgov tries to make some sort of tech policy, it's embarassingly wrong, or naive, or both.

This comes from a country that effectively gave away ARM.

https://studee.com/media/mps-and-their-degrees-media

The most popular subjects for MPs who won seats in the Dec 2019 election

    Politics - 20%

    History - 13%

    Law -12%

    Economics - 10%

    Philosophy - 6%

    English - 4%

View on HN

I'm a principal software engineer with a degree in history. You don't need a science degree to understand most of these issues sufficiently to legislate them. But you need humility and a willingness to learn. That, sadly, is lacking in too many governments and civil services.

Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well.

Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well.

Surely some of them understand the technical details. That doesn't necessarily mean they understand or respect the wider implications of a policy. This is why it's important to have a government that sets policy - taking into account all of the competing influences and potential consequences - and politically neutral technicians who then implement government policy.

No-one would dispute that if the government could examine every communication everyone ever sends then it could catch more very bad people and prevent more harm to innocent people. The problem is all the other stuff that also happens if you give a government that kind of power over its own people.

The leader of the opposition studied computer engineering (before going on to law). Sadly she used the knowledge gained to hack the website of the deputy leader of Labour Party.

> Sadly she used the knowledge gained to hack the website of the deputy leader of Labour Party.

If by "hack" you mean she guessed the password, then yes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com