Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

So the Rest is Politics interview with the Gary's Economics guy. Now, I haven't really looked into this Gary character but oh my god this interview, especially Rory Stewart... Do you want to get a taste of how probably the far-right sees us centrists? Watch it.

It's not just how the far-right sees centrists like them (particularly Rory Stewart, I quite like Alastair Campbell because he's healthily tribal if monomaniacal about Brexit) In fact precisely because of that there's no way I'll be watching or listening to that

I like Gary Stevenson a lot and I think he's a great communicator. But I think he's very smart, very compelling and basically wrong on a lot of stuff for a variety of reasons.

What are the points you think he gets wrong?

[Valmy]

If you want to keep kids safe it starts at home. Monitored computer time and parental control software. But that takes effort on parents behalf, something I guess parents are too lazy to do.

LOL. Maybe we don't want to have a weird spy and high control relationship with our kids? I have neither the time, the personality, the desire, nor the skill set to be a paranoid dictatorial micro-managing control freak. Nobody becomes a parent to do that. I communicate values with my kids and ultimately have to trust them to explore the world the best they can.

Too lazy? Fuck you. Nobody is ever going to want to be a parent if they have to spend hours every day running a prison camp or a surveillance state.

On the other hand I certainly do not expect anybody else to do that. What my kids choose is their lives. Kids looking at porn are going to be tweeners and teenagers by that point anyway. I just have to hope I have instilled the good sense and values in them to manage themselves. 

[Grey Fox]

Hey, if they ban VPNs they make working from anywhere but an office impossible due to security concerns so that could help the owners of commercial property. A big win for the common man if there ever was one.

What is the connection between a vpn and working remotely? (pun not intended).

When I work remotely, the computer at home is only a terminal to the machines that are in my office. I use a VPN then remote desktop to my machines there. A more controlled way for corporate IT than using 3rd party tools (like Team viewer).

Thanks, but isn't that a different thing from what Tamas is concerned about being banned?

What Tamas and the others have described; It's the same thing. A tunnel to hide where you really are and pretend you are somewhere else.

[HVC]

If you want to keep kids safe it starts at home. Monitored computer time and parental control software. But that takes effort on parents behalf, something I guess parents are too lazy to do.

LOL. Maybe we don't want to have a weird spy and high control relationship with our kids? I have neither the time, the personality, the desire, nor the skill set to be a paranoid dictatorial micro-managing control freak. Nobody becomes a parent to do that. I communicate values with my kids and ultimately have to trust them to explore the world the best they can.

Too lazy? Fuck you. Nobody is ever going to want to be a parent if they have to spend hours every day running a prison camp or a surveillance state.

On the other hand I certainly do not expect anybody else to do that. What my kids choose is their lives. Kids looking at porn are going to be tweeners and teenagers by that point anyway. I just have to hope I have instilled the good sense and values in them to manage themselves. 

You're obviously not the target audience for my comment,  then. My comment is for those who want society to police their kids actions because  they don't want to do it themselves. You don't want to police yours, you want to instill values in them, that's a different matter and I respect that.

[Tamas]

Watch it Sheilbh. I am not saying the Gary guy is right, he might be I need to listen to him more but I can easily believe him to be mistaken or a conman on the far left of the spectrum. But just the vibe from Rory.. Ugh

[crazy canuck]

Hey, if they ban VPNs they make working from anywhere but an office impossible due to security concerns so that could help the owners of commercial property. A big win for the common man if there ever was one.

What is the connection between a vpn and working remotely? (pun not intended).

When I work remotely, the computer at home is only a terminal to the machines that are in my office. I use a VPN then remote desktop to my machines there. A more controlled way for corporate IT than using 3rd party tools (like Team viewer).

Thanks, but isn't that a different thing from what Tamas is concerned about being banned?

What Tamas and the others have described; It's the same thing. A tunnel to hide where you really are and pretend you are somewhere else.

I don't understand, when our employees log onto our system remotely, we know exactly who they are.  In fact, if we didn't they would not be getting access to our system. So how is that what Tamas is talking about?

[Josquius]

[quote author=Grey

I don't understand, when our employees log onto our system remotely, we know exactly who they are.  In fact, if we didn't they would not be getting access to our system. So how is that what Tamas is talking about?

Your IT team knows as they're using your VPN.
Any websites they visit think they're in your office when they could be anywhere in the world.
Their ISP too doesn't know what they're doing other than connecting to your office.

[Grey Fox]

Hey, if they ban VPNs they make working from anywhere but an office impossible due to security concerns so that could help the owners of commercial property. A big win for the common man if there ever was one.

What is the connection between a vpn and working remotely? (pun not intended).

When I work remotely, the computer at home is only a terminal to the machines that are in my office. I use a VPN then remote desktop to my machines there. A more controlled way for corporate IT than using 3rd party tools (like Team viewer).

Thanks, but isn't that a different thing from what Tamas is concerned about being banned?

What Tamas and the others have described; It's the same thing. A tunnel to hide where you really are and pretend you are somewhere else.

I don't understand, when our employees log onto our system remotely, we know exactly who they are.  In fact, if we didn't they would not be getting access to our system. So how is that what Tamas is talking about?

It's not hiding WHO you are, it's hiding WHERE you are. UK users are using VPNs to access porn website by pretending to be from a different location. Thus by passing UK legislation.

Years ago, a decade probably, I used a VPN to access NFL Gameday out of the Netherlands because it was free there.

[Tamas]

In a professional context you use vpn to protect the data being transmitted.

[crazy canuck]

Ok, so you are assuming that a ban on people using VPN to hide their personal use would also include a ban on businesses creating systems to allow their employees to securely access their private servers.  That seems a leap to me.

[Sheilbh]

Watch it Sheilbh. I am not saying the Gary guy is right, he might be I need to listen to him more but I can easily believe him to be mistaken or a conman on the far left of the spectrum. But just the vibe from Rory.. Ugh

Incidentally, re. the vibe from centrists, this time from the Labour right. I'm not sure Thangam Debonaire's approach on Newsnight worked at all. I can't help but feel that between that and the Jimmy Savile line someone in Number 10 or Labour HQ has been giving disastrous briefings to media surrogates on how to deal with Reform.

Incidentally from Henry Hill who I always quite like on Conservative Home on the point I was making about bad legislation (the first half really just goes in on Kyle - but I think fair enough):

No, this is simply the latest, spectacular flowering of the modern tendency towards intention-based policymaking. This legislation is just one example of a common template, the [Nice Words] Act. To oppose it is, according to a given bill's supporters, to oppose whatever nice concept graces its title; such is the apparent power of this absurd suggestion that such legislation seldom either fails, gets repealed, or is even seriously amended. (How often did the Tories whine about the Equality Act whilst doing nothing about it?)

Examples abound. When various public health interventions fail to achieve any of the actual health outcomes originally promised, their objectives are simply redefined. The post-Grenfell rule requiring buildings over 16m tall to have two staircases has an official government cost-benefit assessment of minus 200 to one? You can't put a price on lives. The new renters' rights are pushing up rents and making people homeless? What are you, a landlord? Then there's Martyn's Law...

It must be immensely liberating for policymakers, especially bad policymakers, to be unshackled from such dreary considerations as whether or not their policies work. It has certainly allowed Parliament to pass more laws than ever before, despite the House of Commons sitting for drastically fewer hours than it used to.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, all this bad legislation has consequences, even if they who drew it up would rather not talk about them, and we have to live in the Britain they produce – a country which is increasingly both expensive and poor, rule-bound and lawless-feeling (for of course enforcement, like outcomes, is a consideration beneath the dignity of the purely-intentioned).

I'd just add on the two staircase thing post-Grenfell, it's unusual internationally - and we are just imposing that (as well as, from my understanding, a big new bottleneck in planning for tall buildings) at exactly the point where US YIMBY campaigners have managed to scrap it there because it is a big constraint on developments (and bad urbanism - think the unsettling corridors in US thrillers/horror movies). Another example of us looking at policies in the rest of the world and deciding that we will ignore what's going on there and develop something entirely bespoke that is somehow worse and more expensive

On the intentions bit it's striking to see that is already the main argument being made. "Yes, the act might not work , it might be messy, it might be disruptive - but isn't the important thing that we're trying to deal with it." That's not how government or lawmaking works

[frunk]

Ok, so you are assuming that a ban on people using VPN to hide their personal use would also include a ban on businesses creating systems to allow their employees to securely access their private servers.  That seems a leap to me.

It's the same software, used for two different (and also for many other) purposes.  VPNs are commonly used for many different applications, so banning them would be incredibly disruptive.

There is no way for a regulator to know in which context the software is being used.

[Grey Fox]

Ok, so you are assuming that a ban on people using VPN to hide their personal use would also include a ban on businesses creating systems to allow their employees to securely access their private servers.  That seems a leap to me.

Would you trust the legislators that came up with the current wording of the law to get this correctly?

[crazy canuck]

Ok, so you are assuming that a ban on people using VPN to hide their personal use would also include a ban on businesses creating systems to allow their employees to securely access their private servers.  That seems a leap to me.

It's the same software, used for two different (and also for many other) purposes.  VPNs are commonly used for many different applications, so banning them would be incredibly disruptive.

There is no way for a regulator to know in which context the software is being used.

No way? I would think it very easy to exclude business use for internal purposes.  Seems like a flimsy excuse for avoiding what such a law would actually be targeting.

[crazy canuck]

Ok, so you are assuming that a ban on people using VPN to hide their personal use would also include a ban on businesses creating systems to allow their employees to securely access their private servers.  That seems a leap to me.

Would you trust the legislators that came up with the current wording of the law to get this correctly?

Yes.  Things that are much more complex than this get regulated, why not this?