Yesterday I wrote again in defence of politicians. Many of the frustrations that give rise to ‘anti-politics’ are borne of people not understanding how politics works: there is a constant need to compromise and any hard choice will end up disappointing people.
Sometimes, however, the anti-political feeling is justified. I have rarely been as angry with politicians as I was when the coalition government passed the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act in just two days in 2014. This legislation made lawful a number of mass violations of privacy that the security services had been caught doing without public or parliamentary consent. The politicians from all parties made mendacious arguments in favour of the new law, claiming an ’emergency’ when there was none.
From that low point, my faith in parliament is slowly being restored. Continue reading
Category: Diary (Page 49 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
The Trump candidacy is looking ever more likely.
Here are a couple of opinion pieces noting the rise of the anti-politics he represents and why leaders within the Republican Party are now unable to stop him.
First, Josh Marshall, the editor of Talking Points Memo, describes the political ‘debt’ to the truth that the Republicans have racked up in recent years. Continue reading
I’ve written quite a lot recently on the topic of No Platform and the wider issue of free speech at universities. And I am not done yet. If the reader feels as if I am repeating myself, that’s because I am: blogging is an iterative form of discourse where each evolution towards some kind of opinion is published for all to see.
And I have been thinking about iteration in the context of the campus free speech wars.
After reading Emey’s amusing-but-actually-serious Open Letter to People Who Write Open Letters to People Who Write Open Letters, my mind wanders back to the debate of the past few days. Consider, once more, the the Tatchell pile-on from last week: an internicine debate between left leaning social liberals. Continue reading
Yesterday evening I left a comment1 on a post by Chris Jarvis on the Bright Green blog. Discussing Peter Tatchell and No Platform, Chris wrote:
Tatchell tacitly endorses the idea that people should not be able to collectively decide the people that they chose to invite to speak at events that they are organising in their own spaces.
No, I replied. In signing the letter, Tatchell is saying that when people chose not to debate people with whom they are disagree, they are making a mistake and harming their own cause. Continue reading
Apple have refused an FBI request to help crack the iPhone of a terrorist.
Ray McClure, the uncle of murdered soldier Drummer Lee Rigby has said that Apple is protecting terrorists, and that ‘life comes before privacy’.
I think Drummer Rigby’s uncle is mistaken, both in his assumptions about what Apple is technically capable of, and the moral trade-off between life and privacy.
We need to understand that Apple are not being asked to decrypt just the iPhone of one particular terrorist. They are not like a landlord with a spare key that will open a particular door. If they were, then there would be legitimacy in Mr McClure’s complaints. A judge could examine the particular case at hand, and then sign a warrant that permitted entry to the property or decryption of a device. Targeted surveillance and privacy violations are a legitimate law enforcement tool.
But that is not the request. Instead, the FBI have asked Apple to hack their entire operating system in such a way that would enable them to by-pass encryption on any iPhone. Including mine. Continue reading