[bell-cot]

Sigh...

Beyond the security researchers' own little "computer savvy 1%" bubble, is there any intended audience for such Open Letters?

Could they actually communicate with normal people if they (somehow) wanted to?

Are there laws in the UK that make it too risky to just say something like "This bill will make it so much easier for the next Wayne Couzens to find his perfect Sarah Everard."?

[Snarwin]

Most likely the intended audience is the press. Now that this letter has been published, journalists can write stories like "Online Safety Bill Under Fire From Security Experts", which make the issue digestible to a lay audience.

[Loquebantur]

They bury the central tenet in the middle, staying true to being inept at public communication:

> There is no technological solution to the contradiction inherent in both keeping information confidential from third parties and sharing that same information with third parties.

It would be more effective to tweet that sentence wherever the discussion is remotely touched. Nobody, including politicians, reads such lengthy letters.

[Lorin]

How is two pages lengthy? This isn't War & Peace. Should a TikTok be posted instead?

[mola]

Then we're doomed anyway...

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Could they actually communicate with normal people if they (somehow) wanted to?

That have that comm channel. It's the press and the press instantly loses it's way, the moment Gov puts on a NatSec or Child Safety mask.

[bell-cot]

Might you know of any Press Releases they've issued in conjunction with this open letter, or similar media-friendly materials?

At least where I live, the middle-aged owner of a small-town ice cream parlor is 99% likely to know how to do an effective press release. The "news" can be a new ice cream flavor, with the colors of the local HS sports teams...but you carefully write that press release in such a way that any over-worked bottom-rung reporter can spend 30 seconds adjusting the pronouns & such, then publish it in their paper.

[WarOnPrivacy]

I'm mostly talking larger news orgs, inc wire services. They have resources. However, if manpower is tight, maybe they could redirect some manhours from their sportsball or celeb divisions.

I will agree that local news orgs tend to show ineptitude whenever local LEO issue a PR. They'll just parrot what is said - no analysis at all - not even when a 5 sec search would reveal blatant misinfo (re:kids are at meaningful risk of stranger kidnapping).

[UncleMeat]

This is an answerable question!

There aren't a lot of people who are at the intersection of technology and advocacy, but they do exist and would be able to help us know what effective advocacy looks like. We just need a little guidance as a community.

[anonymousDan]

This is directed primarily to politicians about to vote on the bill.

[bell-cot]

In theory.

Could you tell us about the historical effectiveness of such open letters to UK politicians, from tiny numbers of technical experts, on issues politically similar to this?

Assume that we've heard of Performative Activism.

[AndrewKemendo]

While not the UK you might have heard of this letter from a tiny number of technical experts on a politically sensitive technical topic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_let...

[bell-cot]

Yes.

Context: The President it was addressed to had been working to prepare for war against Germany for most of a year. Einstein's "famous, politically ~neutral super-genius" reputation was far loftier than that of any signatory to this Open Letter. And it warned the U.S. President about a super-powerful type of bomb which Germany might develop (and use against the U.S.A.) during a period when both bomber and bombing technologies were obviously advancing very rapidly.

If a "smartest in the world" mathematician wrote the current U.S. President, to warn that the crypto algorithms currently used by the U.S. for uber-secret stuff might quite possibly be fully broken by China in the next few years - then I suspect that the current U.S. President might be fairly willing to take action. That is not the scenario around this Open Letter.

[AndrewKemendo]

Totally concur - the point I was making that you revealed well is “The author is all that matters”

This actually happens all the time between experts and legislators, they just call it lobbying and it unfortunately lacks the “neutrality” that should be assumed, corrupting the whole thing in the process.

[bell-cot]

Um..."The author is all that matters" was not my point. Nor is it my belief. It is, at most, one link in a chain.

[ChrisKnott]

> This bill will make it so much easier for the next Wayne Couzens to find his perfect Sarah Everard

How so?