[blobs]

The keeping safe argument from government is indeed preposterous. As if that was their mission to keep us safe. Why are they allowing our nature to be destroyed in favor of money/economy? This years heatwaves killed many thousands of people in Europe only, some estimates are in the tens of thousands. This is real deaths in 1 year, not because of terrorist attacks, no fucking backdoor will stop this. And what are they doing? Measures that won't make any difference. The cars will keep driving, the factories continue to produce poisons. Pesticides will still be allowed for better economy at the cost of entire insect species being wiped from this planet in just a few decades. The list goes on and on. It is so sad that I don't really want to listen to politicians anymore. They are the only ones who can change things by law, not me. And what law are they coming with for my safety? A backdoor for Whatsapp and Facebook.. We better ignore all this shit and try to enjoy our little lives for as long it will last.

[taxidump]

I can not find any source that many thousands if not tens of thousands died in Europe in 2019 from the heat wave. Can you point me to your information source? I believe you are confusing the 2003 heatwave from over a decade ago with the one in 2019.

The 2019 heat was directly implicated in the deaths of at least 15 people. Five died in France, four in Germany, three in the United Kingdom, two in Spain, and one in Italy. Nine of these were drownings, attributed to people cooling down, and another involved an exhausted farm worker who went unconscious after diving into a pool. The three who died in hot air were aged 72, 80 and 93. Approximately 321 million people were otherwise affected by similar temperatures in the same countries.[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2019_European_heat_wave

Edited for clarity

[yabadabadoes]

The difficulty of attributing deaths to heatwaves is something that comes up in books like freakonomics if I am not mistaken.. At any rate, from that wikipedia entry:

> Netherlands reported 400 excess deaths in the week of the heat wave, a figure comparable to those recorded during the 2006 European heat wave.

Netherlands is considerably smaller than the other nations.. Most put these spikes as a portion* that would have died in the next days weeks, or months lowering statistics later in the year and a portion that would not have.

(Edit) A paper putting the 2003 heat-wave death toll at 70,000: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S163106910...

*The term from the 2003 paper is harvesting and there were little to no signs of it.

[blobs]

> The 2019 heat was directly implicated in the deaths of at least 15 people. Five died in France,

That is not correct whoever wrote it. just do a google search: heatwave 2019 total deaths

CNN reports already 1500 deaths in France only. This is a link to a news site where they estimate a higher count, although I of course cannot verify the correctness of the source: https://www.vox.com/world/2019/6/26/18744518/heat-wave-2019-...

[m-p-3]

The goal of national security isn't to protect its citizen, but to protect the established order and whoever leads it.

Backdooring a communication is only done to safeguard a government's power under the pretense of security.

[TomMckenny]

This becomes more true the further a country moves away from democracy: in a vibrant popular democracy, people will honestly work for their nation's good and corruption is viewed as evil.

Further away from democracy, leaders are purely self serving, successful corruption is seen as a sign of intelligence and whistle-blowers, far from being heroes for pointing out maleficence, are threatened with execution.

And indeed, institutions eventually shift to working solely for the benefit of themselves and the people in charge. Mostly because any that don't are undermined until they do.

[grawprog]

>They are the only ones who can change things by law, not me.

I had this thought yesterday as I read about several prominent politicians in Canada, including the prime minister, actively participating in the climate 'protests' that occurred yesterday. Who were they out there protesting? Themselves? They're the ones with the power to change things. Why were they outside with signs instead of in their offices doing something about it?

[kemiller]

Because politicians in a democracy cannot do things unilaterally.

[qroshan]

Not all politicians have equal power. In the US, the nominations of important positions, the laws and policies are determined by 20 Senators in GOP.

Those 20 senators (from Alaska, Missouri, Arkansas) are answerable to the demands of their constituents. Those people are not asking for Climate Change Policies. It has nothing to do with money, but the values and culture of the constituents.

It is incredible how HN and majority of the supposedly 'smart' crowd completely fail to understand the dynamics of how policies and laws are passed or made in this country or anywhere else.

It is also incredibly stupid to paint all politicians with the same brush, because if you are an immoral, evil politician you'd exactly want that situation. "All politicians are the same", "All media is the same" is the foundational strategy of bad actors.

[alexilliamson]

It has nothing to do with money? How are the values and culture of those constituents determined, if not through vast sums of money spent on propoganda? Protecting the earth - not shitting where you eat - is an inherently sensical idea. The only way that people can align themselves against such an idea is when they are manipulated to believe it is part of a broader conspiracy to ruin their lives. It takes a lot of money.

Also, so what if the bad actors want us to believe that all politicians are the same? What if it were true that they're all the same and evil? Would it still be "incredibly stupid" to accurately assess the state of affairs?

[jebeng]

That can presumably be explained by the fact that there is a federal election coming up in less than a month.

[CountSessine]

Right? I mean why can't politicians unilaterally change things without convincing the electorate and just fix climate change, the way Kathleen Wynne so successfully managed to in Ontario?

[TaylorAlexander]

Well we know these actions look good from a public relations point of view. We only need ask if they had any other motivations or if it was only for PR.

[arctangent]

Cold weather causes more deaths than warm weather.

See for example: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/30/excess-winte...

[fauigerzigerk]

Sounds like NHS underfunding is what killed most of them.

[mcv]

> As if that was their mission to keep us safe.

I think it is. The problem is, denying us access to safe communication is not going to make is more safe, but less.

[godelski]

> The keeping safe argument from government is indeed preposterous. As if that was their mission to keep us safe. Why are they allowing our nature to be destroyed in favor of money/economy?

I don't think it is quite as simple as this (I'll preface this with saying I don't think we should have backdoors and that I wish we had STRONG encryption everywhere). I think the problem is that different departments have different goals. It is very clear that the CIA and NSA's jobs would be easier if there was a magical tool that let them backdoor in and no one else. The police and FBI would have an easier time doing their job if encryption wasn't a thing. That's definitely true! The issue is who is watching the watchmen? That's why we need checks and balances (specifically by people that understand the tech). These departments are so focused on their goals that they lose track of the fact that introducing backdoors actually creates more work for them (and thus actually makes their lives harder). But as humans we're always focused more on the task at hand and less on the over arching tasks (we're notoriously bad at dealing with large scale multifaceted problems). It all really comes down to these departments thinking "if we had this tool it would be possible that we could have stopped this" (which possible is the key word, because we've seen that they can't. There's just too much data. You're just adding more hay to the haystack). The failure really is at the checks and balances stage, that those watching the watchmen don't understand the motivations nor the consequences, and thus let them do as they please. Agencies running the checks and balances are supposed to be suspicious and critical, not friendly. But these agencies aren't getting the funding nor can they attract those that are tech literate, so there's a feedback loop that is only getting stronger. What I'm trying to say is that there's this long chain and things are broken at many stages and that if a single stage was fixed there would be significant improvement. Basically solving at any single stage will help stop the feedback loop.

tldr: The intelligence agencies should be smart enough that they would know that backdoors will backfire on them. But they clearly aren't. There's also a huge failure at the checks and balances stage where these agencies are getting approval which creates a feedback loop and without solving this the problem will continue to grow.

[qroshan]

Thanks for this nuance answer. Unfortunately, "Nuance" will always lose to "Pitchfork", even in supposedly smart and intelligent communities like HN.

There are ZERO people from the pitchfork community who understands the pressure of working in keeping a community, region or country safe. If there is a terrorist attack, the pitchfork people have to answer to ZERO questions, while CIA/NSA/Police will have to answer 'Why didn't you do something".

It is so easy to sit in their comfortable offices and homes and philosophize about privacy when you have no skin in the game.

[godelski]

I mostly agree, but I wouldn't call HN a pitchfork community. It can definitely get that way at times, but I think nuance is welcomed and generally encouraged here. Definitely the only way to keep it that way is to keep promoting it, so don't get disheartened. There's still hope.

> It is so easy to sit in their comfortable offices and homes and philosophize about privacy when you have no skin in the game.

And I definitely agree with this. But that's also why I made a big point into that lack of encryption actually gives these agencies more work (if we look at history). The problem is exactly what you note though, there will always be failure and we ask why they can't stop near impossible things to stop. Post hoc analysis is always easier than in situ.

[eanzenberg]

Was the Europe heatwave in 2019 caused by government actions?

[blobs]

No, not by their actions of course. It happens because of the lack of appropriate actions by them. Governments should anticipate on future events pointed out by science. And that is what they did not. All I see is business as usual.

[eanzenberg]

Can you cite the scientific evidence?

[beachy]

Rather, it was contributed to by government inaction.

[eanzenberg]

Where is the scientific evidence of this?

[bamboozled]

Maybe the definition of politician should change to:

“One who is elected by the common populace to facilitate business at the cost of logical reasoning, human rights and the natural world.”?

While I’m sure one or two exist, I can’t actually think of a politician in the US, UK or Australia who doesn’t fit into the definition somehow. Again, there would be a few good ones, just not enough.