RIP on The Today programme

[Richard D G Cox]

"Brian Gladman" <brian.gladman@btinternet.com> wrote
 in message <014801bf8823$9113f3a0$03aaac3e@fortytwo>

> Any ideas on what assumptions we should make about the audience
> since this makes an enormous difference in how this could be done.

Far _too_ dangerous to make any assumptions about a radio audience;
particularly at that time of the morning when they won't be fully with
ii - certainly not ready to take in anything "heavy" or requiring any
mental effort ;-))

Here's my checklist:

[1]	How many of them will even be familiar with e-mail?
	(not as large a proportion as you might at first think)
[2]	How many will understand why there is a need for cryptography?
	(most of them won't even realise how much traffic is intercepted)
[3]	How many will say: "I've nothing to hide - it won't affect me".
	So we have to show exactly *why* it will affect everybody.
[4]	How many will say "That nice Mr Blair wouldn't do anything
	underhand?  (so we tell them what that nice Mrs Thatcher did ...)
	
Then we have to know and get across exactly what it is we want them to DO.

And that last bit is the hard one.  No point getting them to write to
their MPs if they haven't fully understood the issues.  And they won't
have been able to grasp even the basics in the time available.

The best way to approach this is to get somebody well known who people
would automatically trust, to explain that this is dangerous legislation
which will be extremely harmful to the city, damage the UK's prospects
for E-commerce, and undermine basic human rights.  And then link it all
to what has been reported recently about Echelon ...

-- 
Richard D G Cox

Mandarin Technology, Penarth - Phone (029) 2031 1131, Fax (029) 2031 1110