[liberationtech] FW: The security and ethics

[Jacob Appelbaum]

On 02/09/2011 09:26 AM, P.A.Bernal at lse.ac.uk wrote:
> Jacob, I'm certainly not advocating that we don't aim for
> understanding the world 'as it is' - but sometimes you need to teach
> someone to drive rather than how to design and build their own car,
> let alone the physics behind the internal combustion engine. There's
> a balance to be found - and as you say, creating a space in which we
> can find that balance is the key.

Yes, of course. However, when I learned to ride a motorcycle, I was
taught about the T-CLOCK safety procedures:
http://micapeak.com/info/T-CLOCK.html

It's the bare minimum knowledge you *should* have if you hope to be safe
when inspecting a motorcycle before riding.

People generally do fine without this kind of inspection until it kills
them. It's not a matter of licensing, it's a matter of knowing what you
know, why you care about what you know, and how you put it to use.

"It looks fine" is a totally worthless statement if you're not sure what
to look for or how it _should_ look.

> 
> What I was really looking for was a solution for the situation as it
> often is on the ground, as described by a few posters on here, where
> people have little time and lots of demands upon that little time,
> and who would like to find good solutions to their problems but who
> don't have the expertise to find their way through the technical
> language and literature.

I think we should reject technology that is unsafe. Additionally, we
should teach people to reject that same technology when there are
telltale signs of disaster on the horizon.

All the best,
Jacob