On 7 Nov 2015 11:34 AM, "Peter Gutmann" <[1]pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
   wrote:
   >
   > Joseph Gentle <[2]me@josephg.com> writes:
   >
   > I don't really want to get involved in this debate (who has that much
   > asbestos?), but wanted to comment on one thing:
   >
   > >You just don't see guns in Australia. I don't know anyone who has
   one.
   >
   > You're a townie then?  If it's like NZ, pretty much every farm in the
   country
   > has (or had) one or more rifles, typically a .303 because they were
   cheap and
   > a .22 for dealing with rabbit infestations (they're mostly useless
   against
   > possums, another major plague).  Also, the fact that you don't see
   them
   > doesn't say anything about whether they're there or not.  At the time
   of the
   > gun grab, a friend of mine who lived in Queensland and was doing some
   work on
   > his house found it more or less impossible to buy PVC fittings of
   particular
   > sizes and types, the explanation being that the stocks had been
   drained by
   > people using them to sequester their firearms.  So they may have
   managed to
   > destroy large numbers of firearms, but they also drove large numbers
   off the
   > books and underground (literally, in many cases).
   >
   > Peter.

   Yeah I've lived in Sydney most of my life.

   But this goes back to my original point - despite lots of guns being
   quietly hidden around the place, most crimes still don't use them!
   Which is not at all an obvious outcome. It implies that most crimes
   aren't well planned and premeditated, and that simply making something
   *inconvenient* goes a long way toward banning it, even if people have
   strong incentives to overcome the inconvenience.

   We've seen exactly this with crypto too. Industry grade crypto has
   existed for years, but things like PGP being simply *inconvenient* has
   resulted in it having virtually no adoption. The big threat to
   pervasive surveillance isn't pgp, its companies like apple and whatsapp
   bringing that technology to the masses. The UK government only has to
   outlaw the big players implementing decent crypto, and 90%+ of
   communications will still be visible to surveillance. Even amongst
   criminals.

   We should be worried, but this isn't a play for us.

   -J

References

   1. mailto:pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz
   2. mailto:me@josephg.com