London Bridge Incident

Man of Honour
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You don't need to monitor everyone. Just those that get flagged. Then they are easier to monitor

A system set up specifically to monitor everyone (which is what the current government's publically declared goal is) will never be used only to monitor people who have been flagged. The whole point of it is to monitor everyone (or as many people as is possible with existing technology).

When a system is designed to monitor and restrict everyone in a country, that's what it's for. The plans are extremely badly suited to anti-terrorism work and may well be counter-productive by generating far too much irrelevant material. The plans are extremely well suited to internal oppression, though. It might be that the current leaders are so ignorant, stupid and incompetent that they don't know that and can't understand it even when security experts tell them...but I doubt it.

Even before the recent slide into ever greater authoritarianism, "anti-terrorism" monitoring was being used by local councils to find people who put their bins out before 1800 on the day before collection. I'm not sure you could even call it function creep when the system is set up to monitor and control as much as possible about everyone (apart from MPs) and "anti-terrorism" is just a useful lie.
 
Associate
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If it is the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism getting a foothold then it will turn into more than just 3 idiots and a van - though civil war at this point seems a bit ludicrous.

It won’t surprise me if these guys have been fighting for ISIS and have come home to continue the war.
 
Caporegime
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I never said the police were the problem here. The fact that people had to wait eight minutes for the sort of police who can actually deal with this situation is. I'm sure it is an impressive achievement to get those police officers from wherever they were to London Bridge in eight minutes, but that doesn't alter the fact that people died and were maimed in those eight minutes.
Why do you keep saying it took eight minutes for them to get there? It didn't. It took them eight minutes to get there and kill the terrorists. You're being extremely disingenuous.
 
Associate
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Since lots of the terror attacks nowadays use vehicles in some form, Isn't a simple to install in all cars what some new cars allready have, namely radar and anti collision system?

Many new cars have it and no matter how hard you press the accellerator the car does not accelerate if there are obsticales in front.

Seems like a simple and effective solution to me.
 
Soldato
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Since lots of the terror attacks nowadays use vehicles in some form, Isn't a simple to install in all cars what some new cars allready have, namely radar and anti collision system?

Many new cars have it and no matter how hard you press the accellerator the car does not accelerate if there are obsticales in front.

Seems like a simple and effective solution to me.

That could be disabled. Or just buy a old transit van.
 
Soldato
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I never said the police were the problem here. The fact that people had to wait eight minutes for the sort of police who can actually deal with this situation is. I'm sure it is an impressive achievement to get those police officers from wherever they were to London Bridge in eight minutes, but that doesn't alter the fact that people died and were maimed in those eight minutes.

What do you want them to do in these situations, teleport or something in seconds
 
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Caporegime
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UK Civil war? this isn't captain america, this is 3 idiots with a van and knives!
Why do you constantly try to downplay incidents like this? It's not just three idiots with a van is it? It's three terror attacks in three months that have resulted in multiple fatalities and life-changing injuries.
 
Man of Honour
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The police can knock on the door and come in. It isn't an armoured fortress. This is the same in the virtual world where intelligence services can easily "knock one the door and come in." If someone's house was a fortress with reinforced door and blocked out windows you would get suspicious.

Good try, but you're talking about outlawing encryption. That gives access to everyone. So the correct parallel would be outlawing opaque walls, not allowing access to the police.

Also, you're misrepresenting even the misrepresentation. It wouldn't be "knock on the door and come in". It would be "bug every house, 1984 style".

I'm fine with the police or intelligence services planting bugs in a house if they have a reason to suspect someone in that specific house. Or bug a phone, whatever. Targeted surveillance I have no problem with. It's necessary for protection against crimes. What you're advocating is blanket surveillance of everybody all the time, which is a completely different thing. You're also advocating that every unscrupulous hacker, every employer of unscrupulous hackers and every script kiddy be able to do blanket surveillance on everyone. That's what outlawing online encryption means, even if the rulers are forced to allow those they rule to use encryption for banking by the realisation that outlawing that would destroy the economy. But such rulers have proven themselves to be authoritarian and untrustworthy. Maybe they're only allowing broken encryption (i.e. not encryption at all) even for banking, commanding everyone who knows that to lie about it (and yes, forcing people to lie about insecurity is par for the course and being done already) and using the national realtime monitoring of everyone to find and stop anyone who is brave enough to disobey that command.
 
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