Post by charmbrights on Jan 16, 2015 12:49:12 GMT
Much of the time was spent with more than one person speaking at once rendering a lot of what was said incomprehensible.
The audience and most of the panel were carefully selected to disagree with David Starkey on most things. The craziest example of Political Correctness was when he said that he had seen children of 13, 14, 15 and 16 who were sly and manipulative. This was immediately contradicted by almost all of those present; do they live somewhere other than on this planet?
On the topic of the interception of communications, a subject on which I was an expert prior to my retirement, nobody mentioned the three most important problems for the security services. The first is the sheer volume of traffic on the internet; as this is essentially instantaneous communication and costs almost nothing, there are far more messages than anyone could hope to track. The second is exemplified by the methods used in 'Allo, 'Allo when René (Night'awk) was sending messages to London; they used mutually agreed code phrases such as "the purple emu laid another egg" which might mean "we need more money" or perhaps it meant "the operation failed". Such codes are, by their nature, uncrackable if used carefully. The third problem is languages; during WW2 the US Army used Navaho signallers who spoke unencrypted but in their native tongue, and the Japanese could not understand a word of it. Naturally there was a stooge in the audience who said, "I have nothing to hide. You can read all of my messages." That is just not true for the vast majority of people, who certainly pass information preceded by the phrase "Don't tell anyone else but ..." and these are called 'confidences'.
In short, I couldn't hear the politicians shouting each other down for much of the time, and when they could be heard it was either the standard BBC line or simple vituperation against their political rivals.
Chairman Dumbleby failed again to control the panel, but this time he went one step worse; he failed to control the technicians. Several times microphones were made available to members of the audience who were heckling panel members (at least Starkay and Anna Soubry) and had not been offered a chance to speak by Dumbleby.
The audience and most of the panel were carefully selected to disagree with David Starkey on most things. The craziest example of Political Correctness was when he said that he had seen children of 13, 14, 15 and 16 who were sly and manipulative. This was immediately contradicted by almost all of those present; do they live somewhere other than on this planet?
On the topic of the interception of communications, a subject on which I was an expert prior to my retirement, nobody mentioned the three most important problems for the security services. The first is the sheer volume of traffic on the internet; as this is essentially instantaneous communication and costs almost nothing, there are far more messages than anyone could hope to track. The second is exemplified by the methods used in 'Allo, 'Allo when René (Night'awk) was sending messages to London; they used mutually agreed code phrases such as "the purple emu laid another egg" which might mean "we need more money" or perhaps it meant "the operation failed". Such codes are, by their nature, uncrackable if used carefully. The third problem is languages; during WW2 the US Army used Navaho signallers who spoke unencrypted but in their native tongue, and the Japanese could not understand a word of it. Naturally there was a stooge in the audience who said, "I have nothing to hide. You can read all of my messages." That is just not true for the vast majority of people, who certainly pass information preceded by the phrase "Don't tell anyone else but ..." and these are called 'confidences'.
In short, I couldn't hear the politicians shouting each other down for much of the time, and when they could be heard it was either the standard BBC line or simple vituperation against their political rivals.
Chairman Dumbleby failed again to control the panel, but this time he went one step worse; he failed to control the technicians. Several times microphones were made available to members of the audience who were heckling panel members (at least Starkay and Anna Soubry) and had not been offered a chance to speak by Dumbleby.