It is the duty of the Home Secretary (and the UK's various nosey institutions - e.g. intelligence agencies, police, etc) to continuously badger us for this information - unfortunately, it's pretty much part of the job description.
It is our duty, as the public, to continuously say "no".
Disregarding any negative consequences, their motivations are pretty transparent - there's little doubt that being able to read everyone's private messages will enable the intelligence services to better do their jobs. However, as Edward Snowden and others have already shown to us many times over the last few years, the UK government can't be trusted with this responsibility - and that this is probably the thin end of the wedge. Britain is already the closest thing that Europe has to a surveillance state, and the number of people killed in the UK by terrorism is vanishingly small - we are hundreds of times more likely to die in a car accident. Is it really worth giving up the last vestiges of our privacy for a little bit more security?
is the duty of the Home Secretary (and the UK's various nosey institutions - e.g. intelligence agencies, police, etc) to continuously badger us for this information - unfortunately, it's pretty much part of the job description.
On the contrary. The Home Secretary is literally the holder of the ministerial authority that is required for police and security services to use a lot of the powers they have, and is supposed to be providing oversight and ensuring that those powers are used responsibly.
Unfortunately, that means the Home Secretary spends several hours every day just looking at cases presumably involving some very nasty people. You have to wonder how anyone could keep a balanced perpsective if they're doing that for 20, 30, 40 hours every week for months or years. Everyone who becomes HS in the UK turns into a severe authoritarian within a few months of taking the job, regardless of their prior political views or how reasonable they might be about other matters.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly - what I meant was that one can view the Home Secretary's requests for less privacy as a fact of life (just as death and taxes), and could consider refusing these requests as part of civic duty. You're correct, the HS usually turns somewhat authoritarian (regardless of whether it is their job to or not) - it is simply the public's duty to resist.
> there's little doubt that being able to read everyone's private messages will enable the intelligence services to better do their jobs
[citation needed]
Seriously, this argument is FUD. I'm sorry for picking on this quote, as I agree with the rest of your post, but allow me to go on a short rant..
We've seen this argument used many times over. It was used to introduce surveillance cameras on every UK street. What has it achieved? Less parking lot crimes[1].
The EU used it when introducing the data retention directive. Which was "nullified" eight years later due to violating fundamental human rights[2]. Of course, the infrastructure is still in place, and everyone is still using it. What has it achieved? AFAICT nothing except a blatant danger to society. The ability to know everything about anyone and actively take over their private devices is not something that should be taken lightly.
The GCHQ even admitted that the London terrorist was "on their radar". Well duh, who isn't. If that's not admitting mass surveillance is ineffective, I don't know what is.
It is impossible to prevent all crime before it occurs. The world isn't NP complete. Get over it. Or, to paraphrase Gödel: "I would rather live in a world that is inconsistent, than one that is incomplete"[3].
The intelligence agencies are just bored. They have no wars, except drugs and "terror". They use this "downtime" to get more data sources by influencing politicians.
Guess what, gathering more of the same shit data won't increase your signal.
> A standard test in brain damage research involves dropping brass weights on the heads of anesthetized rats, then inspecting their brains for tearing in the connections between nerve cells.
I (perhaps somewhat naively) assumed that a self-driving car would be programmed to prioritise the occupants of the vehicle (as that most closely emulates the likely reactions of a human driver in that situation).
Self-driving cars are likely to be safer than human drivers anyway, so one has to consider how much risk there is of a situation like the Trolley Problem arising - i.e. not much.
So here's the thing. The first time that an accident kills pedestrians with a self driving car involved the creator of that car will be open to a lawsuit. And in court the question of what that car should have been programmed to prioritize will come up. A response of we tried to emulate the likely reactions of a human driver in this situation won't hold up. The whole point of a self driving car as you said is that they are safer. In fact safer to the community as a whole. So if a car plows into crowd in order to avoid colliding with an obstacle and killing the rider. (something a real human would likely due without even realizing it) Would be grounds for that suit to award damages to the creator of the cars software.
Actually, that's a good point - I hadn't considered the legal ramifications of such a stance. It's interesting that you mention people seeking damages from the creator of the car's software, because that makes the entire situation more complex.
As for the concept of "safer to the community as a whole" - well, the idea is that they're a safer product overall, and this is mostly targeted at the individual (i.e. "if you own a self-driving car, you're less likely to die"). If people have the knowledge that their cars may (in certain situations) elect to kill them in preference of others, then I doubt that self-driving cars will sell particularly well.
Brilliant post, thanks for the information. I had no idea that Mou was so sketchy! As it turns out, I've stopped using Mou because some of the functionality is quite buggy (e.g. it appears that the "save" function executes in the control thread and uses a blocking save operation - because the application freezes for several seconds when saving).
On your advice, I've now switched to MacDown and I'm really very pleased with it indeed.
