[HN Gopher] Ireland wants to give its cops spyware, ability to c...
___________________________________________________________________
Ireland wants to give its cops spyware, ability to crack encrypted
messages
Author : jjgreen
Score : 197 points
Date : 2026-01-21 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| zexodus wrote:
| I'm so tired of these...
|
| Is there really no way we can make it technologically impossible
| for them to exfiltrate user data?
| a_paddy wrote:
| The problem is they'll legislate for the providers to insert
| back doors, negating cryptographic hardness.
| TingPing wrote:
| They have to make custom software illegal at some point.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| Given how many of these stories have been coming out, I'm
| sure they're considering it.
| digiown wrote:
| They don't have to make it illegal. They can just create
| all kinds of barriers like only allowing government
| approved OSes for essential services, and then using custom
| software can become grounds for suspicion and subject you
| to searches, etc.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| I'm certain this is the direction we are all heading,
| unfortunately.
|
| Governments will sanction the major proprietary OSes and
| compel Apple, Google, Microsoft to participate in their
| surveillance programs, and those will have remote
| integrity attestation and will be the only hardware and
| software you will be able to use to access essential
| services and the internet as whole, most likely.
|
| The usage of alternative software won't be outright
| illegal, but will get you on a watchlist. Like you said,
| they don't need to make other software illegal, just make
| circumventing the blocks illegal.
|
| They can't arrest everyone, but, it's one more gray area
| thing that can and will be used against you should the
| government ever decide they have a bone to pick with you
| specifically so you can get away with it for a long time,
| until suddenly you don't.
| voxic11 wrote:
| You can make it technologically impossible, but they can also
| come and arrest you just for using such technology. So its not
| really a technical problem, its a social/political one.
| jMyles wrote:
| Sure, but then they need to send a physical person, which is
| expensive and impossible to scale. Making it extremely
| expensive is probably good enough.
|
| (Feels like we have this same discussion over and over on
| HN.)
| gmueckl wrote:
| I don't understand this take. There is no real way in which
| a private person can make law enforcement "more expensive".
| The government can always find means as long as it is
| supported by a sufficiently big fraction of its people.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| 1 person using encryption vs 1 million people using
| encryption.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| Sure, they won't go out and arrest all one million, but
| from an individual perspective it's basically security by
| obscurity.
|
| Once that's the case, otherwise legal activities (e.g.
| protesting, or making political statements) run the risk
| of making you a target. Law enforcement can then punish
| you for your legal activity by selectively enforcing this
| other law.
|
| The resulting situation is one where everyone knows to
| some extent "you better shut up if you know what's good
| for you", and puts a chilling effect on otherwise legal
| forms of civic engagement.
|
| You might point out that there are already laws on the
| books that let them do this, but I'm sure they wouldn't
| mind another.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It needs to be done on both fronts.
|
| Privacy-conscious apps and communications tools need to be
| developed, and we need to build the consensus that privacy is
| important.
|
| edit: Anyone know why Briar doesn't have the feature for
| known contacts to be a "courier" for other contacts?
|
| Background: Briar is the encrypted messaging app that works
| over tor, local wifi and bluetooth. If Alice sends a message
| to Charles but she isn't connected, the app will hold it
| until it detects Alice and Charles are in proximity.
|
| My desired feature: If Bob is a verified contact with both
| Alice and Charles, Briar should be able to hand the message
| from Alice to Bob, and then deliver it to Charles.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Avoiding centralised services is generally a good start. You
| could also do something like encrypt any messages through PGP
| even if the service you're using is already "e2e encrypted"
| like iMessage or signal
| rtkwe wrote:
| I don't think there's a way with a phone that people would
| actually be willing to use. At some point it has to be
| decrypted to be displayed to the user and there's always the
| chance there's a flaw somewhere in the stack from hardware to
| OS to app etc that will have a gap to exfiltrate the data.
| briandw wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/538/ User data can only be as safe as the
| user.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There are no technical solutions to human problems. This has
| been explained over and over again, most famously in Randall
| Munro's XKCD comic where the secret police resort to hitting
| someone with a $5 wrench until they give up the password.
|
| If you're in a repressive state and you're worried about your
| data being exfiltrated the best security practice of all is not
| to create records of illegal activity. If you have to store
| such material, don't keep it on a communications device, put it
| on an external storage device, hide it somewhere outside your
| home, and don't tell anyone about it.
| Froztnova wrote:
| Feels like we're headed back towards governments attempting to
| control the sharing and usage of cryptographic algorithms again.
| Nicook wrote:
| always has been
| budududuroiu wrote:
| Whenever these people ask for more power in order to
| "stop/prevent crime", there should be a bot that replies a list
| of times when the police didn't act to stop crime, despite having
| full knowledge of the crime occuring and potential to stop it
| from happening.
|
| EU member and supporter of Chat Control, Romania, had a massive
| scandal where a kidnapped 15 year old girl called emergency
| services multiple times to report she was being kidnapped, every
| single time, the operators and the police officers spoke to her
| in an ironic and condescending tone. It took 19 hours to locate
| her, by which time, she was already dead. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alexandra_M%C4%8...
| alistairSH wrote:
| Even better, in the US, the police have zero obligation to
| actually protect anybody from crime (unless that person is in
| government custody). The courts have upheld this time and
| again.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > (unless that person is in government custody)
|
| Someone please correct me, but do they ever much bother to
| protect those in custody?
| JasonADrury wrote:
| They certainly seem to be willing to spend a lot to keep
| Luigi Mangione safe.
| foxyv wrote:
| Their main method of "Protecting" people in custody has
| been deemed a form of torture called Solitary Confinement.
| freedomben wrote:
| Generally speaking, yes. I have worked with the corrections
| side of law enforcement in the US and don't internationally
| for quite a few years at this point. The correction side is
| a different beast than the police side in many ways, so I
| definitely want to meet clear that my personal experience
| is limited in scope to that. However, generally speaking I
| have seen that the majority of corrections staff take
| protection very seriously. There are individual officers
| that can be scum, and ideally they should be bounced out of
| there. But realistically, it's a human problem. I've known
| plenty of software engineers that were cavalier with
| people's personal information in ways I think can be just
| as damaging. On the whole though, the majority of software
| engineers I know take protecting that information quite
| seriously.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's tangential... they can be held liable if they fail
| to protect somebody that is in custody. They generally
| cannot be held liable for failure to protect a member of
| the public.
| JasonADrury wrote:
| Per the DOJ, there's also this:
|
| >An officer who purposefully allows a fellow officer to
| violate a victim's Constitutional rights may be prosecuted
| for failure to intervene to stop the Constitutional
| violation.
|
| >To prosecute such an officer, the government must show that
| the defendant officer was aware of the Constitutional
| violation, had an opportunity to intervene, and chose not to
| do so.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Who represents the government in these cases?
| mothballed wrote:
| The government prosecutes the government and is judged by
| the government and a jury screened under _voir dire_ by
| two government lawyers?
|
| Kind of like when a robber comes to your house, you have
| him arrested, and when you go to court you look up and he
| is the one swinging the gavel.
|
| Of course, interesting the cop has to know there is a
| constitution violation. Somehow ignorance of the law is
| always an excuse for the cops but the citizenry must know
| all 190,000 pages of federal regulations and 300,000+
| laws and by god if they forgot one they are fucked.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Generally speaking, the way it's supposed to work is the
| local prosecutors will start the process. That,
| unfortunately, isn't something they like to do because
| they have to work with police departments. If they fail
| to do their job, theoretically the next step is that the
| FBI gets involved. But, doesn't seem like today's FBI is
| doing much beyond prosecuting Trump's political enemies.
|
| This is the reason why I've long believed we need a check
| both federal and local to police that is completely
| divorced from regular prosecution. We need
| lawyers/investigators whose sole purpose is investigating
| and prosecuting police at pretty much all levels of the
| government. The federal government theoretically has that
| with the office of inspectors general.
| jshier wrote:
| Unfortunately the courts have repeated ruled that "aware of
| the Constitutional violation" means knowing that the exact
| action being observed had previously been ruled a violation
| of Constitutional rights. It's essentially impossible to
| prove, which is one of the reasons we don't see that
| offense prosecuted.
| JasonADrury wrote:
| In the Chauvin case all three of the bystanders were sent
| to prison by federal courts specifically for civil rights
| violations stemming from their failure to intervene as
| Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in front of them.
| jshier wrote:
| Exception that proves that rule. It took national
| protests over months, during COVID, to drive that case
| through to conviction.
| mothballed wrote:
| Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact they do
| have an obligation to stop anyone from protecting other
| people from crime (see Uvalde, where orders from above were
| to block parents from saving their children).
| Aunche wrote:
| > the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody
| from crime
|
| This gets misrepresented on the Internet all the time. What
| this really means is that you can't sue the city for
| incompetent policemen, which is the case in basically every
| country. That only punishes the taxpayers after all. What is
| different about other countries is that they are much better
| at firing incompetent police.
| eftychis wrote:
| In some (EU) countries, as a public officer/agent you can
| actually get prosecuted (civil or criminal proceedings per
| case), in cases of blatant or willful incompetence. (Think
| of the levels of gross wanton disregard/negligence.) (There
| is also the legal vehicle of insubordination.)
|
| For instance, in Greece
| https://www.lawspot.gr/nomothesia/pk/arthro-259-poinikos-
| kod... (N.B. the bar of wilfulness in this section in the
| Greek criminal code is much lower than the corresponding
| notion of wilfulness in the U.S.)
|
| The bar is high, of course, and yet people have
| historically managed to get prosecuted, lose their jobs,
| and go to prison.
|
| I think the problem in the U.S. is, ironically, the power
| of police unions in a fragmented police force (city,
| territory, county, etc.) ecosystem, coupled with the lack
| of unified, express state and federal statutes to enforce a
| standard of care and competence.
|
| Add to that that peace officer-specific state statutes
| (e.g., describing manslaughter while on duty) are written
| in such a way that, as a matter of law, it becomes a
| herculean task to tick all the boxes to successfully
| preserve a conviction on appeal. It is truly troubling. (I
| am hopeful, as this can be solved by the U.S. legislature,
| which I think we have a lot of reasons to demand to be
| done.)
| themafia wrote:
| The case in NY was police setup a sting on the subway to
| catch a serial stabber. Instead of stopping him they stood
| by and watched him attack several innocent bystanders.
|
| They were sued for incompetence. For the failed sting.
|
| The two police officers who stood and watched him get
| attacked were ruled to be immune because they had no duty
| to protect him.
|
| Point being, if police see you getting attacked, they have
| no duty to /stop/ that from happening. Their only duty is
| to take a report once they feel safe enough to approach.
|
| If you see two police on the corner and think "this is a
| safe area" you'd completely be operating on faith in their
| character.
| alistairSH wrote:
| And then chain that with the ridiculous "clearly
| established" bar for qualified immunity and it's nigh on
| impossible to hold police in the US accountable for what
| most citizens would recognize as clear malfeasance.
| bell-cot wrote:
| If you see two police on the corner and think...
|
| Not to speak highly of the NYPD - but it is the character
| of _most_ violent criminals to refrain from attacking you
| when police officers are standing close at hand.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| There's a famous video of an apple store robbery and the
| thief walks past a cop on the way out. Police don't do
| anything anymore.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _That only punishes the taxpayers after all._
|
| I am sick to the back teeth of this narrative that all
| grievances can be resolved into currency and that paying
| this hurts taxpayers. We can jail negligent or reckless
| public officials, the financial costs of investigating and
| compensating people are an economic incentive to promulgate
| better standards in the first place.
| Aunche wrote:
| > I am sick to the back teeth of this narrative that all
| grievances can be resolved into currency and that paying
| this hurts taxpayers.
|
| I don't understand. This seems contradictory. If the
| problem is that we're trying to resolve too many
| grievances with currency, then doing so does nothing but
| hurt the taxpayer. Americans are already significantly
| more litigious against police, yet you get significantly
| more misconduct. The same goes for doctors, drivers, etc.
| omnifischer wrote:
| See this:
|
| THE SUPREME COURT: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE; Justices Rule Police
| Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-
| po...
| testing22321 wrote:
| No. It literally means the police have no obligation to
| help anyone.
|
| The can (and do) stand around with theirs thumbs a up their
| asses while bad shit happens.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-
| po...
|
| See also uvalde schoool shooting where they did jack shit
| while kids were executed en mass.
| mothballed wrote:
| In some parts of the world it's well known if you actually want
| the police to show up, just claim there are lots of drugs or
| cash at the location. That will actually get the police excited
| since they stand to gain from it. It's not clear why the police
| would care someone is being raped/murdered since they cannot
| profit from that. Although at 15 I would not expect someone to
| be wise enough to the world to figure that out.
| simion314 wrote:
| From my memory this case can actually be used to support
| spyware, I remember all the media complaining "how is it
| possible that the police or the secret service can't instantly
| locate a phone very precisely" , same when that airplane
| crashed and the people were calling for help but the
| authorities could not get the coordinates and searched for
| hours , the media was demanding that the police or other
| services have the technical ability to locate any person in
| distress.
| budududuroiu wrote:
| Of course it would've been spun that way, and maybe it
| would've worked had it not been for the police mocking the
| victim in the phone logs
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It is rather jarring to be stuck in the woods with Google
| Maps offering turn-by-turn navigation back home while the
| emergency room only gets a vague triangulated position (which
| might be wrong entirely if the signal gets reflected off of
| something).
|
| Of course these days such a system has been added. Bonus
| feature of the (at least American) feature: the system can be
| activated remotely, even if you're not actually calling in an
| emergency. The European ETSI spec is pretty funny, it
| basically comes down to sending an SMS to a Secret Number
| with a Secret Format containing your coordinates to prevent
| abuse (both can be found very easily); at least that
| supposedly only activates when you dial the emergency
| services.
| atmosx wrote:
| Two years ago a woman in Greece phoned the police, begging for
| a patrol car because her ex was about to "kill her." The
| officer mockingly replied, "Police cars aren't taxis". Seconds
| later she screamed, "He's here! He's going to kill me"
| (screams). She was murdered outside the police department
| moments later.
|
| https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/ag-anargyroi-plirofor...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Let me guess, dispatcher was NOT publicly prosecuted and
| jailed for life as accessory to murder?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Being bad at your job isn't the same as being an accessory.
|
| But then again, doctors can be arrested for being bad at
| their job. As well as lawyers losing their license to
| practice. Maybe that's a standard we should hold to our
| supposed "public servants".
| dmitrygr wrote:
| yes
| themafia wrote:
| Or a bot that lists out all the times police have been given
| these powers only for them to be abused.
|
| Flock is a great example. Story after story in the local news
| (only there for some reason) about police officers being
| disciplined or fired because they stalked people using the
| flock system.
|
| Meanwhile not a single story where a major case was cracked by,
| and could only have been cracked by, the flock camera system.
| mlfreeman wrote:
| Does anyone even compile these into a site?
| asdff wrote:
| All the technology and clearance rates are the same as they
| ever were.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... there should be a bot that replies a list of times when
| the police didn't act to stop crime, despite having full
| knowledge of the crime occuring and potential to stop it from
| happening
|
| In the UK despite many complaints by girls who had been raped,
| mass raping on an industrial scale went on (and is probably
| still ongoing) for decades. A UK politician was heard calling
| the victims "white trash".
|
| And as the evidence mounted, a nation-wide cover up was
| attempted.
|
| In one the case the judge read one the report: a girl with a
| tongue nailed to a table and ass-raped by several men.
|
| That's who we are facing: police, politicians, some judges even
| (not all thankfully), media, etc. all complicit in a nation
| wide cover up attempt.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
|
| That's 1400 kids raped in _one_ city. There are cases like this
| all over the UK.
|
| And it's not just happening in the UK.
|
| Cover ups, everywhere. To not "demonize" a particular community
| where a sizeable percentage (in at least one city the number of
| 30% of all pakistani muslim men involved in the rapes has been
| mentioned) of its members happens to think that raping infidels
| ain't rape.
|
| And if I'm not mistaken it's not even an investigative
| journalist (because these don't exist anymore) who uncovered
| the scandal: it's people from child support group who believed
| their stories.
|
| That's the world we live in. And many adopt a "won't hear /
| won't see / won't talk" attitude about it.
| shevy-java wrote:
| What is strange is that this happens in several countries at the
| same time.
|
| I never found out why this is the case, because there can be many
| explanations. In general the global tendency is that the more and
| more digital data is there, the more and more states want to
| surveil people and invade onto their privacy. This is functional
| erosion of rights. I don't know of many states that counter that
| trend.
| DetectDefect wrote:
| Why is that strange? Technology's proliferation decentralizes
| political power nexuses, making it a near-existential threat to
| tyrants^Wgovernments everywhere.
| pixl97 wrote:
| conversely
|
| >Technology's proliferation centralizes political power
| nexuses
| DetectDefect wrote:
| Closed-source propriety systems certainly have this effect
| (subjugation), but this is not the Free technology I am
| talking about.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Data and code are not the same thing. "Free technology"
| is just as free to enslave you as closed technology is.
| freedomben wrote:
| > Data and code are not the same thing.
|
| _feels a stir in the sea. The Lisp and Haskell people
| died a little inside_
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Every Western government is receiving the same briefings from
| its intelligence and counterintelligence agencies: these powers
| are needed in case the third world war starts.
| danielbln wrote:
| They've been pushing for this stuff for ever, at least 20
| years ago.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Different countries have made on-and-off efforts over the
| decades, but I'm explaining why they're all doing it right
| now.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Intelligence agencies have seen the writing on the wall
| with allowing hostile countries unfettered access to their
| own citizens minds on social media for a while, I would
| imagine
| LtWorf wrote:
| You actually mean you want to abolish freedom of speech.
| Sure. But then we lose the moral high ground of going to
| wars because we have democracy.
| an0malous wrote:
| I think western governments want these tools just to maintain
| order, they used to rely a lot on their ability to
| manufacture consent among their populous but the Internet
| allows people to discover inconvenient truths that threaten
| the old order. Everyone used to be pretty happy with the
| appearance of freedom and democracy in the western world
| because they didn't know any better and mainstream media was
| tightly controlled so they couldn't find out either, now
| they're learning they're neither free nor have any say in
| their governance from alternative media so here come the
| crackdowns on free speech and any form of protest or dissent.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, because the world is connected via a large global
| network with instant communication.
|
| It's kind of like asking "Why did the world kind of destabilize
| politically during the 1910s". Massive technological change
| swept the world and fast travel changed the dynamics of the
| world.
|
| Our world has changed from one of bulky analog data (paperwork,
| pictures, remote places) to one where any information can be
| digitized and sent anywhere in the past 2 decades. This data
| can be stored pretty much forever. This is as much of a change
| as what occurred in WWI and WWII. The political dynamics of the
| world are completely different in the data regime. He who
| controls the data controls the world.
|
| This is a very difficult trend to counter, just because _you_
| decide not to control said data, doesn 't mean that others
| aren't capturing that same data and using it against you, in
| which they'll take power.
|
| There is a distinct possibility that rights and ever growing
| capabilities of technology are fundamentally incompatible. This
| is going to present a growing problem for human societies.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > . In general the global tendency is that the more and more
| digital data is there, the more and more states want to surveil
| people and invade onto their privacy.
|
| You found out why.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I believe the main reason is the current "situation" with the
| US. European agencies and law enforcement have relied heavily
| on NSA signal intelligence via low-level intelligence exchange
| and it has become more and more clear that this is a dangerous
| dependence. In a sense, the turn towards codifying and
| legalizing surveillance had already started with the Snowden
| revelations because at that time many people realized that the
| usual practices were basically illegal and wanted more legal
| certainty. At the same time, companies like Apple have
| increased device security a lot over the past decade.
|
| That's my take on it. I'd love to hear other explanations. It's
| indeed curious why so many EU countries are pushing for
| increased surveillance so heavily.
| miroljub wrote:
| > What is strange is that this happens in several countries at
| the same time.
|
| Probably a coincidence that it all happens just before the
| World Economic Forum summit in Davos. It could be they sent the
| new agenda a bit earlier to allow governments to prepare
| themselves.
| alephnerd wrote:
| People really overestimate the WEF's influence. It's
| basically a fairly boring corporate conference that consists
| of side means and some side parties. There might be some
| shenanigans happening, but that happens at "nerdy" GDC as
| well. Years ago, we had to "invite" Register, DarkReading,
| SDxCentral, etc "reporters" to free booze sessions during RSA
| to keep them happy in the era before Nikesh Arora called out
| conferences like RSA for their bullshit and their ecosystem
| of PR leaches like The Register (notice how they've reduced
| their snark about HPE becuase they have a partner content
| relationship now).
|
| Finally, most police forces and interior ministries have had
| access to offensive security tools (often called "spyware")
| for over a decade now.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| In a network diagram the WEF is a hyperconnected node.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Dafuq? Within Davos you have additonal segmentation based
| on badge and sponsor type - not all Davos attendees are
| equals.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| The whole point of davos is networking. It's not just
| principals there but also their staff.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Sounds more like a lobby thing. Once a government finds a new
| "recipe" to be worked out with global vendors, meaning, a new
| way to allocate budget with a strong social justification (e.g.
| protect children, fight terrorism etc.), governments from other
| nations jump into the matter and literally copy/paste it
| locally. In short, whoever comes up with a creative idea to
| allocate public budget will serve as the basis for others to
| copy.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not strange. They can read technology news like anyone
| else, and vendors of security tools do sales campaigns like any
| other industry. Media says 'cybercriminals are getting away
| with it using this one weird trick,' people grumble about the
| police being useless, police say they can't stop the
| cybercriminals without spyware, media runs story about
| sympathetic pensioners losing everything to scammers because
| police are letting them run free, voters demand politicians do
| something etc etc. etc.
|
| Also, y'all need to recognize that unbreakable personal
| security/ privacy/ paranoia is just not the default social
| position in most societies. There isn't a big conspiracy, it's
| a reflection of social mores we disagree with, either
| ideologically or through recognition that policing is often
| ineffective and corrupt.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Ireland wants to turn their police into the CIA.
| alistairSH wrote:
| s/CIA/NSA/g (probably)
| hiprob wrote:
| Oh look, it's the copy of the UK acting up again!
| cranium_melter wrote:
| That's terrible, people really gonna stand for this??
| cranium_melter wrote:
| That's terrible, people really gonna lie down for this??
| 627467 wrote:
| So, it is always going to be a cat and mouse game. As long as the
| rules are clear let the game begin. Just dont try to tilt the
| game in your favor by using legal threats (ie Chat control and
| alike).
|
| Anyone can try to break encryption, why can't the police force?
| But dont say others arent allowed to use malware/Spyware - or
| malware/spyware countermeasures - if you are using it yourself.
|
| You already have (theoretical) access to state resources. You
| dont need more help
| clickety_clack wrote:
| There's a massive lack of gardai (the Irish word for police) in
| Ireland, and you'll be waiting for the better part of an hour if
| you call them. But by all means, let's forget about the types of
| basic "safety in your own home" type of policing and focus on
| creating a cyberpolice force instead.
| monster_truck wrote:
| I know you want to think, or have been told to think that the
| reason this happens is because they need more cops.
|
| Brother let me assure you, more cops will not help. I have
| lived in cities with more than twice as many cops per 10k. Both
| times I actually needed one it took over 3 hours.
|
| They were never intended to provide basic safety to you in your
| home. That's your job. Their job is to deal with what comes
| after that.
| Fernicia wrote:
| You've missed the sarcasm in the OP.
|
| On a side note, the suggestion that police numbers don't
| affect crime is obviously false. We've seen what an
| arbitrarily large police presence does to Washington DC this
| year with the national guard deployment.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| European governments see their future survival absolutely
| requiring a draconian level of surveillance and repression.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This isn't about European governments particularly. Cops
| everywhere are like this, it's a personality type. Of course
| they want to use tools that will make their job easier, so
| would you if you were a cop.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Cops might push it. The governments wouldn't otherwise go
| along with but for the lebanonization happening in western
| Europe.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Lol it's not about making their job easier.
| randcraw wrote:
| How very... British of them.
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