But there is one aspect they did not make that clear...
The headline was :-
"Tech firms seek to frustrate internet history log law"
It should have been
"Tech firms seek to help people exercise their basic human rights"
We all have the right to a private life and family and correspondence, and that is all people are after here. Nobody is aiming the thwart the law, unless, that is, if the law is trying to take away that basic human right.
So please, BBC, report it correctly. Nobody is trying to break laws, or frustrate them - we are just trying to exercise our human right in EU and UN declarations of human rights - a right to a private life - that is all.
It's all in the spin.
ReplyDeleteEven if the article is fairly balanced 80% of readers won't get past the headline. Sadly where the public are concerned you do not have to be right to win the argument - as recent events in the US and UK have demonstrated.
One problem is that all sorts of schemes have been proposed (not least on this blog) which are entirely about how to frustrate law enforcement and nothing at all about human rights.
ReplyDeleteFor example: http://www.revk.uk/2015/11/poised-well-ipbill.html
I'm afraid I think you handed some valuable cards to your opponents in this debate. They will have easily been able to dismiss the anti-snooping side's contributions as being the stuff of archetypal keyboard warriors making trouble from their mothers' basements and 'useful idiots' being used by the state broadcasters of unfriendly countries.
The trouble is that with the way the Bills are framed, *any* action you take to "preserve human rights" are, by definition, also actions to "frustrate the law".
DeleteThe two kind of go hand in hand when the law seeks to restrict human rights.
That may well be true, but it doesn't imply the reverse, which would be that all actions which frustrate the law also preserve human rights.
DeleteThe post I cited *advocated* (with a certain amount of subsequent back-pedalling) flooding the logging systems with noise as an act of rebellion. I don't have any problem with that if people think it's an effective way of making a necessary point, but if you do (or encourage) something destructive as an act of rebellion, you can't then get uppity about being called a destructive rebel.
For the avoidance of doubt, I think the Rev's motives are pure and his cause is good - it's the methods which are so (demonstrably) ineffectual.
I do think elaborate schemes to create offshore 'bulletproof VPN hosting' will end in tears, and if that destroys my ISP and telco in the process it will be somewhat tedious.
If I can get one explanation as to how someone can be stopped from driving a rental van into a crowd and killing loads of people, if only the food standards agency are able to know that I have been on the Currys website looking for a new TV, I will drop all opposition to this new law.
ReplyDeleteI suspect you already know about this but just in case:
ReplyDeletehttps://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199