Computer literacy 101: to err is human, to really foul up requires a computer.

They don't understand that by requiring the capability for going after domestic criminals, they've given a huge gift to their international adversaries' intelligence agencies. (And given this is about a computer vulnerability, "international adversaries" includes terrorists, and possibly disgruntled teenagers, not just governments).

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/21/meredith-whittaker-reaffir...

If politicians don't understand after such campaigning, it's a choice in willful ignorance, not bad computer literacy.

If I'd known about the idea of "inferential gap" at the time, my own effort might not have been completely ignored… though probably still wouldn't have changed the end result as I still don't know how to show lawmakers that their model of how computers and software functions has led to a law that exposed them, personally, to hostile actors.

How even do you explain to people with zero computer lessons that adding a new access mechanism increases the attack surface and makes hacking easier?

The politicians seem to see computers as magic boxes, presumably in much the same way and for much the same reason that I see Westminster debates and PMQs as 650 people who never grew out of tipsy university debating society life.

(And regardless of if it is fair for me to see them that way, that makes it hard to find the right combination of words to change their minds).

You literally tell them that. That's it. As prominent tech leaders have been doing. They either choose to believe experts, or disbelieve them. Or they could get a CS major. They chose option #2. They ostensibly disbelieve experts because what they're hearing does not mesh with what they want.

But let's be honest with ourselves; it's not that they disbelieve them, or don't understand. It's that they don't care. You are giving these people way too much of a benefit of the doubt. They have the tools at their disposal to remove any ignorance.

As it's not working, QED not "that's it".

> You are giving these people way too much of a benefit of the doubt.

They're hurting their own interests in the process. If they were just hurting my interests, I'd agree with you. But this stuff increases the risk to themselves, directly. I may have even told them about https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-0204 given the timing.

Neither is underestimating your enemy or making excuses for their behavior.

Indeed. I do neither, which is why I left the UK.

It would be underestimating them indeed to have remained there — I foresaw, even then, that a story equivalent to this very headline would eventually emerge.

And it would also be over-estimating myself to think that I could change them after the Act when I could not change them before the Bill.