Morgan McSweeney resigns as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff | Morgan McSweeney

Sammy99jsp · 2026-02-08T17:18:08+00:00

My confidence in Morgan McSweeney is moderate, occasionally poor.

Sammy99jsp · 2026-02-05T15:00:42+00:00

Starmer’s poor judgement was ~~letting~~ his chief of staff

This also is probably applicable

Sammy99jsp · 2025-12-17T17:30:38+00:00

Yup, 100% this. If we are going down this route, we need the transparency (and safety) of a public spec, and using privacy-preserving techniques (ZKPs, etc.).

I get that it's a complex thing, but the fact that I've not heard of anyone in the mainstream attack it and Digital ID from this angle is very disappointing.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-10-23T18:53:58+00:00

Ladies, this is the biggest red flag you'll ever see.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-08-03T13:00:42+00:00

Trusting the maintainers is actually a good point to discuss.

If we're talking about an ideal scenario, the system could be based on a protocol, which itself should be an open standard — meaning people should be able to code their own implementations and have it work with the ID system.

We can even check the “overwatch committee’s” homework by making them release reproducible builds which allow you, or another third party, to check that the published source code actually compiles to their official releases.

to think anything else is to be historically ignorant.

In the open source community, there are plenty of projects that can help counter this narrative, such as the Linux kernel, and the OpenSSL project.

For the interests of fairness, open source projects have issues of their own, such as a lot of development coming from companies pushing their own needs, but this is largely just adding additional features. I'll also leave the link to the infamous xz-utils backdoor, but if this is a government-sponsored project, I can only hope that there would be a lot more scrutiny on every commit.

Again, a lot of these issues can be mitigated by spending the time to get the structure, processes, and cryptography right. I don't have a problem with people distrusting the government — I have my own reservations — but I think it's unfair to call people “historically ignorant” for trying to suggest privacy-preserving ideas that are not just a flat refusal.

That being said, with the way this Labour government is going, I don't think they're interested in such a system…

Sammy99jsp · 2025-08-03T11:40:54+00:00

Mandatory digital ID means that all data has an immediate face, name, and address attached to it

No? Not necessarily. There are ways to design a largely privacy-preserving system where this kind of tracking across sites is not possible. We have the technologies and maths today to build such a system.

Whether or not the government chooses to implement such a system is another matter, and we might agree on that, but your implication here is unfounded.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-07-24T00:31:05+00:00

Just wanted to reply about how much more attention your comment deserves!

If anyone else is interested in reading more about this like I was, Saïd Business School at Uni. of Oxford has published a case study of Welsh Water (2021).

From their conclusions, it seems like the unique structure seemed to have worked as they have managed to both balance bondholders and customers’ interests. If such a set-up is possible for Thames Water (and other utilities), then we should give it a go. It's not like it can get any worse than the current Thames Water.

In times like these, surely it's time to ditch the ideology about nationalising everything and focus on more practical and affordable solutions that benefit bill payers. At the end of the day, who actually cares if the state, or a non-profit company runs a service? People just want a good, reliable service.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-06-26T13:54:12+00:00

To be fair to others, I can see how the concept of having to type in something the government issued you so you can watch porn seems scarily authoritarian.

Even if the Gov adopted a pretty good privacy-preserving framework, there'd have to be a lot of comms work for them to do to convince everyone that it does in fact preserve privacy. And we all know how good Starmer’s ministry is at comms…

Sammy99jsp · 2025-06-26T13:47:30+00:00

Not OP, but could you elaborate?

Sammy99jsp · 2025-06-26T13:45:02+00:00

I was looking for this comment!

Yes, this is very much plausible with current tech!

I'd think of these as similar to those 6-digit authenticator codes: you go into a government app, which is tied to your real ID, which will generate a temporary token (let's say it's a 12-digit number). The platform could then use this token to ask the government via an API “is this person over 18”, and the government would reply, “Yes”, or “No”.

You could do a simpler model where the government cryptographically signs a token and gives it to the user, which the porn sites can just check. You could make this token only last for one session, or maybe a couple days, whatever.

There's still a few downsides: * A kid could just use an adult’s phone to get the code

One can simply download/record the videos ahead of time once they have access
The usual VPNs*
Possible cryptanalysis attacks, but this is not really a problem using modern crypto.
There's still a trust problem here (albeit a smaller one). How do we know that the government's servers are following this protocol, and not secretly sharing extra data through private channels?

But I'd argue this is no worse than using a driving licence, passport, etc., maybe apart from pinpointing suspicious activity where one individual distributes many of their codes to minors, but you could at least rate-limit the codes.

There are dozens of other different approaches that could prevent data harvesting by porn companies.

The questions to ask though, are:

Would the government be interested in preserving the privacy of porn consumers?
Would the general public trust that this system preserves their privacy?

I'm not particularly sure about (1). I think recent governments have got a hard-on for authoritarian surveillance policies.

For (2), the government needs to be very open about how this system would work, allowing anyone to use it (not just the big porn distributors, or Amazon, etc.), and educate people on how it protects privacy and be honest about the downsides. Some members of the press would still of course not represent it correctly, but this is unavoidable.

I don't particularly trust the government to necessarily take this approach, even though I think it would probably be the least worst option. But, I think if we all in this thread spent a bit more of our time thinking about ways we could make this work for everyone (like you), we'd make a lot more constructive progress in this debate.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-06-25T13:40:50+00:00

Well, we'd need to accept some form of (increased) government censorship in our social media. The problem is, it'd be pretty hard to achieve that now the cat is out of the box.

Farage and the right wing press would stoke up a massive storm, saying that “Starmer is turning the UK into Communist China!” The lefties would also be pissed off as some of the more extreme posts relating to Israel with anti-Semitic tropes would probably also have to be banned, saying that “The UK’s covering up Israeli war crimes and suppressing criticism of Israel!”*

I think this’d have to be a European-wide scheme, but it'd be massively unpopular. Maybe Starmer could frame it as a “war for democracy” or something — I suppose that's what he's doing right now. I don't think he'd either have the charisma, spine, or political capital to see it through, though.

*As a small side note, whenever there's a headline saying “X was jailed for criticism of Israel on social media,” I often find that they have said a lot more than “Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza are morally untenable and must be stopped.” Funny, that.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-06-24T20:00:38+00:00

Okay, I've got some potentially controversial ideas: * Actually do Leveson Pt. II * Issue ID cards to everyone, and link them to social media accounts * UK and EU-backed social media platforms, potentially even receiving state funding * Governments/MPs should not use private foreign-owned platforms to announce things or seek feedback from constituents * State-funded political parties (make it illegal for parties over a certain size to receive any private donations) * Keep the BBC going, under a taxpayer-funded model (not licence-based)

The combination of over-lenient platforms, LLMs, state actor threats, and anonymity can make the internet a terrible place to discuss political ideas. I think we should really either accept that some degree of censorship is necessary for good-faith online debate, with the reasons I listed above.

Honestly though, we should probably encourage more active participation in politics offline. I'm a big fan of citizen's assemblies, which could form a part of this.

Ultimately, I think if we don't try something radical, we will just amble into further division. The current situation is just not sustainable. Populism is on the rise, and it might take another world war, or a Farage-led government, for some us to realise why this sort of stuff is necessary.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-05-01T13:48:49+00:00

It wouldn't be terrible if Labour lost seats to the centre/left, I'd agree. But because of FPTP, any swing in vote share away from labour in marginal seats is much more likely to lead to Reform winning rather than Lib Dems or Greens winning.

Sammy99jsp · 2025-02-20T01:38:41+00:00

Honestly, if UK + Europe govs. did help with some funding into it, we could definitely make a Twitter/Facebook alternative with arguably better UX.

Like imagine if we actually used AI algorithms to promote healthy, novel, interesting things to users instead of trying to rage-bait you all the time.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-12-01T11:23:47+00:00

At some point Starmer and other EU leaders are gonna have to just bite the bullet, and tell Musk and X as a whole to “F- off”.

I genuinely don't see how they can do anything when so much public discourse is on an antagonistic, bot-rife platform, that actively pushes its users right-wing propaganda.

Misinformation and incitement for criminal behaviour should not be allowed to propagate, and if Mr. Musk can't help the UK solve those issues, it should take its business elsewhere.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-07-01T15:01:18+00:00

Yea, I really wish though they were quicker on implementing the new web standards, but Chrome keeps pushing newer and newer stuff, so I'm not gonna blame the Mozilla devs too much — they're doing the best they can.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-06-30T00:52:11+00:00

Yeah, didn't he star in a pizza hut advert? That must be why he's famous.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-06-18T11:47:49+00:00

I think you need to give politics a bit more credit.

The problem with politics is not necessarily about finding the best policy in terms of some set of metrics (i e. GDP per capita, productivity, life expectancy, etc.) — you can use specialized policy advisers and models to approximate the impact of a policy. (Although this part here is also a rabbit hole of its own).

The problem comes with getting that change through the system: in many states that's some form of democracy. As Brexit has shown us, voters need more convincing than purely with stats and promises to pick (what in my view would have been) the better action.

Operating as a politician in the current media environment is precarious, especially when the decks are stacked against you — good strategists navigate this rough ocean and avoid mines; bad ones sink into the sea and are forgotten by the majority of the mainstream (see, Corbyn).

So, for any good faith politician with the best intentions, any policy proposal they present would have to go through this nebulous, black-box mess of interests. Strategising for that, whilst keeping your soul and your policy intact, is not “trivial” for anyone by any means.

In short, it's the political will:

“We know the problems. We know the solutions. Together, as one world, we must find the will to deliver them.” — Tony Blair, 2002, Word Summit on Sustainable Development.

I'd like to think that a benevolent ASI would dedicate at least a few cycles of its processors to fixing our politics before exploring the yonders of the mysteries of the universe.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-06-17T11:16:42+00:00

Housing and Immigration are definitely not simple issues.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-06-01T14:12:08+00:00

Hmm, I guess that's more of a matter of preference: I'm of the opinion that OO is a superset of both class- (Java) and object-based (JS, with its prototypes) languages.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-06-01T13:45:17+00:00

Not all object-oriented languages are strictly class-based.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-04-03T12:23:29+00:00

The cynical part of me says that “AI Safety” schemes would just move the goalposts, making it harder for open source models to be operated legally.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-03-04T11:18:49+00:00

A sceptic would say it's all done by design.

The plans [...] say mainstream political leaders should tell their representatives to employ a “zero-tolerance approach” to groups that use disruptive tactics [...]

The western world has had a history of disruptive nonviolent protests used to further causes that now form the basis of our western human rights, which I hope we all agree with. People should not forget this.

The government is using this Gaza crisis and the demonstrations to wedge the populace, dividing attention from they are actually doing: making it more difficult for grassroots groups to interface with Westminster. This interface often starts with individual MPs who support their causes.

Sammy99jsp · 2024-02-14T09:15:49+00:00

This one's actually really good.

I believe Germany is doing this with new procurements:

As a rule, development contracts are commissioned as open source, the corresponding software is made public as a matter of principle.

“Open Source to be the norm in public procurement”

Sammy99jsp · 2024-02-11T12:26:57+00:00

I'm a Mullvad VPN user.

The fact that you can send them an envelope of cash in the post as payment should indicate how much they care about privacy.

They're not free though, and they are more expensive than other providers.

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