The U.K. Parliament is close to passing the Online Safety Bill, which threatens global privacy by allowing backdoors into messaging services, compromising end-to-end encryption. Despite objections, no amendments were accepted. The bill also includes content filtering and surveillance measures. There’s still a chance for lawmakers to protect privacy with an amendment preserving encryption. A recent survey shows the majority of U.K. citizens want strong privacy on messaging apps.
Current world politicians are so tech illitirare it’s bewildering. Supposedly they have experts and think tanks at their disposal to help them in these sorts of endeavours, for what? It’s insane how much survailance has been ranked up in the past decade.
Experts aren’t hired to craft or guide legislation. They’re hired to give a pathway to a destination.
In other words, politicians already know what they want and what they’re going to do, they need a way to make it accepted by society and to force corporations to play ball. “Experts” and “think tanks” will always align with that agenda.
I guess you’re right, it’s just frustrating this world.
It’s not just politicians, it’s so many of the older people running the companies and pulling the strings.
My own boss is an absolute nightmare for not understanding that technology that could make our jobs here so, so much easier - and crucially much much more efficient. And yeah, I get that we could endlessly chase the promises of tech, but I’m forever being told to wind back my reliance on online tech because the boss won’t spend the money needed on some computers and would rather do things on paper. I just nod, agree, then carry on doing things my way, because it has proven results. There’s a bunch of us here who rely on Google Docs for collaboration software, because the boss refuses to spend any money on anything better suited. He didn’t need it back when he set up the company 20 years ago, so he doesn’t need it now!
Drives me fucking mad.
As to your point on experts; our government ministers actively reject experts who actually know about the issues, choosing instead to listen to people who’ll tell them what they want to hear.
Narcissism and confirmation bias runs rampant in our governments and top executives.