No we don't, but that's what the Politicians try to implement in our brains.
It is pretty stupid to try to jump a car on your bicycle without a landing ramp. Or play catch with lit M80s. And those weren't our dumbest ideas.
When I was a kid every 8-year-old pushed a lawn mower around once a week. And rode in the back of a pickup truck. Today I don't let my kids ride in the back of pickup trucks, and I'm nervous about the lawn mower. Or rather, I'm nervous about trusting my kid not to be careless with the mower.
But when I see the metal detector at the door of my kid's school I wince. Some dangers and some fears need to be met head on. For some people, those include riding in the back of pickup trucks. For some it is the school's metal detector. If only we could make those choices for ourselves and our children without forcing our fears onto our neighbors.
Edit: clarity
Yeah that's called life.
>Today I don't let my kids ride in the back of pickup trucks, and I'm nervous about the lawn mower.
That's because you already infected with fear. It's not your Children's fault that you don't trust them with a lawn mower..it's you and probably your society that is the problem.
>Some dangers and some fears need to be met head on.
Yes like wear a helmet on a Motorbike, but you need to dig much deeper, that a society needs a metal detector in schools.
And again the World IS much safer today...but remember the more you have the more you fear loosing it...it's the perfect setup to give up your freedom because you think you "win" some safety.
Lawn mowers are dangerous. But that doesn't mean they should be banned. As you wrote, that's life. The solution isn't to think they aren't dangerous. The solution is to recognize the danger, then act appropriately. We just all have different ideas of what's appropriate.
All that said, 8 might be a little young. I think I was around 10 when I started cutting the grass, but I don't really remember.
But i watched a documentary about the US, where Children's under 12 are not allow to play outside without supervision, they get picket up by the police and the parents got big problems.
Here, they run around the hole day in the forests with Swiss or Scout-knifes and lighters and some sausages in the backpack. It's just terrible to think that your children's are safe because they sit hole day in their rooms and play games.
So you close your mind (because everyone else is bad, and every Adult that speaks with my children is a pedo) then you buy a gun (even if the chance is much higher that exactly with that gun something bad happens) and your Children's needs to be under constant observation and they need to learn that one should trust no one, you life in constant fear and because of that you vote for trumps.
>if I had enough time to get back for lunch.
Exactly that was my biggest fear, to late for lunch meant grumpy Mum and Dad..and no roaming for the next two days.
Arguing whether the World has suddenly become more dangerous is counter-productive in that aspect. In the end, we keep becoming wiser, technology evolves, and the World changes because of it. It doesn't matter if things actually got more dangerous or if we just got more afraid of them; it's the outcome of our actions that we need to focus on.
There is something to be said in comparing encryption to what usually amounts to spinning blades connected to some kind of engine; abusing any of those technologies can result in outcomes that are undesirable from society's point of view, and potentially from the users' point of view as well. Because, you know, fingers and toes.
The main problem is that just as if you outlawed the sale of lawn-mowers without specific features, there's nothing stopping people from using their existing lawn-mowers (or even building their own ones)anyway, the current encryption technologies won't go away. There's nothing stopping anyone from saving existing tools, or the source-code of existing tools, and keep using then. The only difference would be that such encryption, and the protection it brings with it, would now be restricted to the very criminals that the outlawing of the tools meant to stop in the first place.
Arguing whether the World has suddenly become more dangerous is counter-productive in that aspect. In the end, we keep becoming wiser, technology evolves, and the World changes because of it. It doesn't matter if things actually got more dangerous or if we just got more afraid of them; it's the outcome of our actions that we need to focus on.
Edit: As for the outcome, keeping encryption from everyone but criminals is outright ridiculous. It might get to some of the businesses selling specialized solutions catering to the people law enforcement is after, but in the end it will just result in the baddies simply moving away from those platforms and onto other platforms that are out of reach of EU law-enforcement. That leaves us with everyone else having a big target painted on them because this time we know there's a backdoor in their product.
There are a lot of risky things we do all day anyway, like driving any car or walking close to road. Those things are still incredibly safe.
Perception of risk is not actual risk. Yes, everyone dies, but that's more of a biological fact than a statement about how safe this world is. If you're really worried about you and your family, watch what you eat and hit the gym a bit, because statistically it's going to be a heart attack that gets you.
Everyone. Everyone dies. That includes you and me. The question is not if but how and what you do with the time you have.
On any scale between a human lifespan and the whole of human history, now is a pretty safe time to be alive.
In other words, obesity comes from worse diets. The working classes are bombarded with corporate foods that contain way too much sugar, etc.
It afflicts the poor in relatively comfortable and safe nations.
These are diseases of overpopulation, loss of freedom and control over one's life and general lack of anything to live for in the future. Mouse utopia comes to mind.
It's true that obesity is an affliction related to poverty; but it is related to poverty in nations of relative wealth and comfort. Access to that cheap and terrible food relies upon a logistics system that is heavily resistent to famine and blight.
Those in poverty who are dying from obesity related diseases are not dying in work place accidents, and are not dying in war or from untreatible infections. They didn't die in a pandemic.
The opportunity to die of obesity related diseases is tied to the relative safety and comfort of the nations in which the late individuals were impoverished.
What you are more talking about is the Politicians overstate the chance of dangers and they do it on the most evocative of topics (ex: terrorism, CP, etc).
A high danger we're in is from the potential for our governments to entrench their own powers and encourage potential future totalitarianism for small benefits here and now.
by Franklin D. Roosevelt
For example, in the weeks leading up to the election, CNN ran a sidebar on the screen to continuously show current statistics on covid deaths, all day. The sidebar vanished on election day, and has not returned, even though covid death rates are worse than ever.
You mean cases? They usually go for the biggest number they can display rather than the most informative.
It is by definition. Their ambitions haven't changed the last 30 years.
Actually you can have your cake and eat it. What you can't do is eat your cake and have it :-P
Well, you got the point. In french, we'd say: "You can't both have butter and money for it" -- greedy butter sellers.
And in Hebrew it's "You can't eat the cake and leave it whole" or "you can't hold the rope from both edges".
My home country is Norway, it looks safer than all of Eastern Europe, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
Belgium's 1.7, France is 1.2, Germany 0.95...
Real mix it seems. But no, it's not safer by an order of magnitude for all of it, mainly just Ukraine and Russia.
By the way, I wouldn't necessarily mention South-Eastern Europe in the same sentence as Central Europe; the Balkans have quite a tradition of being a hotbed of conflict.
And let's not just reduce safety to murders. There is the petty crime too, which I hear is becoming widespread in some problematic areas of big cities in Western Europe. There are social tensions, there are protests with occasional deaths and property damage, there is the radicalization of politics which may lead to all sorts of "interesting" things down the line. There is the "reasonable" restrictions on freedom of speech to counter the former, and yeah, it seems we are now talking about restricting privacy in the name of war on terror, which guarantees further increase in tensions and may enable a slide into totalitarianism in the future.
Remember that when Stalin started, he didn't intend to kill millions of people for fun, he just wanted social justice. The terror "happened" along the way.
We live in a dangerous world. We cannot control everything. I don't mind a slight risk of terrorist attack on myself or my family (caveat lector: I am young), if that means greater freedom.
In my book this is the first step towards authoritarianism: ensure that the state survives at all costs. And being able to spy on the whole population to track outlaws and dissidents is part of this. There is an invisible barrier between what's legal and what's not. Crossing it isn't hard, look at extinction rebellion and other civil disobedience protestors. Yet, on the other side, your trusted options are very limited, and encryption is one of those. I'd argue that letting citizens communicate and organize privately is a vital component of democracy, even allowing citizens to seize control of the state if they deem it necessary. More so than U.S.A.'s "Second amendment", encryption is an arm citizens should legally be able to bear.
Now, it is obviously hypocritical to offer such a thing, as politicians certainly wouldn't want their texts to be snooped on, would they? Any bill that requests backdoors should request them from everyone.
And don't get me started on how governments recommend their own to use Matrix and Signal, the very apps they aim to backdoor, because they are secure. You can't both have your cake and eat it, too.
A useful thing to explain encryption backdoors is the TSA master keys: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12177079
Their very existence made locks less secure (possibility of a key leak), and those are worthless against thieves now that master keys have leaked (you can 3D print them).