Conservative party/opposition watch

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Oct 2015, 18:02

AutomaticEarth wrote:Tory conference on in Manchester. No coverage on BBC. There was more coverage on the Lib Dem and Labour conferences. Not that I'm saying that the Tories should be covered after winning the election but there you go....

Eh? It's the top story on the BBC News website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34437550

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Oct 2015, 21:55

Police with sniper rifles on rooftops over Manchester demo. Oh deary me.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... of-6573383

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ ... e-10193617

AutomaticEarth · Post by **AutomaticEarth** » 04 Oct 2015, 22:43

biffvernon wrote:
AutomaticEarth wrote:Tory conference on in Manchester. No coverage on BBC. There was more coverage on the Lib Dem and Labour conferences. Not that I'm saying that the Tories should be covered after winning the election but there you go....
Eh? It's the top story on the BBC News website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34437550

Wasn't much on the TV news channel, but take your point on the website coverage.

AutomaticEarth · Post by **AutomaticEarth** » 07 Oct 2015, 21:18

AutomaticEarth wrote:
biffvernon wrote:
AutomaticEarth wrote:Tory conference on in Manchester. No coverage on BBC. There was more coverage on the Lib Dem and Labour conferences. Not that I'm saying that the Tories should be covered after winning the election but there you go....
Eh? It's the top story on the BBC News website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34437550
Wasn't much on the TV news channel, but take your point on the website coverage.

Must admit lots of Tory coverage today.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 10 Oct 2015, 22:25

funny as F--k

https://www.facebook.com/peter.outhart/ ... d_activity

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 11 Nov 2015, 10:09

The government insists [...] that only people who have something to hide should worry.

Remember, this is government-speak, thus it means the opposite.

Source

Quite an entertaining article about an incredibly serious subject.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 11 Nov 2015, 10:30

Copying America again.

Michael Gove, justice secretary and lover of simpler times past, has just announced a £1bn plan to close down inner-city Victorian prisons, sell them off to housing developers and use the money to build nine new super-prisons like the one in Wrexham, to hold a total of 10,000 prisoners

'Super' is hardly the right word.

Once these are built, we start charging the inmates rent. Then keep them in jail for non-payment.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 11 Nov 2015, 11:06

The success of a society is measured by the number of prisoners it holds.

(That's fewer, the better, in case you were wondering.)

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 11 Nov 2015, 11:43

I wasn't. It's pretty obvious.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 12 Nov 2015, 12:44

Paul Mobbs on the Conservative government's latest repressive measures.

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 12 Nov 2015, 13:13

Although I don't agree with the government's proposals.

paul mobbs wrote:Understanding how technology functions entails far more than avoiding having your personal life tracked. Collectively our digital life has a large ecological footprint[37], with a noticeable effect[38] on energy use and the climate. Simply encrypting all your communications to avoid surveillance will significantly worsen that footprint further.

I don't think he is right in that there is any significant extra energy demand of encryption. Obviously it is going to have some change, but I would think it would be hardly measurable in the impact on the user's energy usage. Even if it is measurable I would not think it is significant.

The nub of the government's error is a misunderstanding specifically of how encryption works. It is not provided by the ISPs. It is built into the software.

I myself have written encryption software and there are many people that can do so. The danger for the government of the government's approach is that it causes more and more people to use encryption and therefore end up with the government finding things harder.

I thought I had kicked this into touch a couple of years ago, but clearly not.

Post by **clv101** » 12 Nov 2015, 15:25

[quote="johnhemming2"]The danger for the government of the government's approach is that it causes more and more people to use encryption and therefore end up with the government finding things harder./quote]

Absolutely! I can't understand why the Government is pursuing this. Strong encryption is perfectly possible and available to the masses. Government actions seem likely to encourage more and more people to use it routinely then all they'll have is data they can get from specific services like Facebook.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 12 Nov 2015, 16:43

When push comes to shove (and push will come to shove at some point), encryption will only be legally available for designated parties such as the police, security services and large businesses or for specific services such as banking etc. For ordinary people using it for their personal correspondence or for personal internet usage, it will be made illegal.

The usual bollocks will be turned up to the max by way of justification along the lines of "protecting the public from terrorism" and how the only people who should be worried are those that have "something to hide" etc.

Of course, none of the above will stop determined people from using encryption anyway. But what it will do is dissuade the vast majority of people from doing so. This will be more than sufficient since having the majority tracked and traced is all that is necessary to keep large scale dissent under control.

The latest MS Windows 10, by far the most common personal OS in the world, I believe to be a quite deliberate part of the above move towards an unadulterated surveillance state. Its data policy is quite simply staggering in its intrusiveness and overt spying as the default settings. Default settings which are, from everything I have read, incredibly difficult to change.

https://www.rt.com/usa/311304-new-windo ... cy-issues/

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 12 Nov 2015, 21:52

clv101 wrote: ...then all they'll have is data they can get from specific services like Facebook.

And we use Facebook to tell the government where they're wrong so of course we hope they are reading all our post.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 13 Nov 2015, 10:26

Little John wrote:When push comes to shove (and push will come to shove at some point), encryption will only be legally available for designated parties such as the police, security services and large businesses or for specific services such as banking etc. For ordinary people using it for their personal correspondence or for personal internet usage, it will be made illegal.

Yep.