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BBC News: ‘U-turn’ claim over house packs
I wrote here about problems with the housing market and my theories on how to solve it. News that the homebuyer’s pack is delayed is positive, especially if the plan is to be reconsidered. One of the major reasons for this delay is that, as I predicted, mortgage lendors will not be prepared to accept the seller’s statements!
Something to note is that within the past few weeks we’ve had Government u-turns (or at least announcements of delays) on
plus the well documented problems with party funding and the ongoing problems at the home office which all give signals of a floundering executive!
It’s with dismay today that I read this story from The Register. So much of this plan demonstrates a faith in technology that is bordering on insane (something it shares in common with the ID Cards, traffic monitoring, wiretapping &c.). At what point did collecting data and running it through a computer system replace parenting or policing?
Bruce Schneier has previously written about the problems with massive data mining (I picked up on this here) and yet every suggestion on how to solve problems at this level seems to rely on this!
I’m currently reading the excellent book “The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics” in which Roger Penrose argues that AI can not replace the Human mind. Penrose argues this by delving into quantum physics (which is pretty heavy going), but even without going to that depth we know already that people are the key to security - the classic tales of intuition and feeling that people have when something suspicious is happening ring true. Whether it be detecting terrorists and criminals, or determining poor parenting that may lead to future trouble then trained professionals are the way to go - well trained and sympathetic policemen, doctors, nurses and teachers will do far more than any computerised database.
On this day..
- OpenDNS - 2006
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[…] with so many other things the key aspect was the human element. I’ve said before (here, here)about how an over-reliance on technology can lead to problems - obviously this pales in comparison […]
December 15th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
[…] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Paul Toal makes an interesting point here, saying that his advice to a new security manager would be to instigate user training and education. People have to be involved in the process of security, whether it be a corporate information security, airport passenger security or just members of the public spotting crime (or future crime as I mentioned here) […]
December 15th, 2007 at 2:53 pm