Tech-ignorant journalists are allowed to misinform public opinion about important matters like encryption just because they have a platform.

As a tech-head I feel the need to say current government initiatives to back-door encryption are flawed, due to the simple fact that a end-to-end secure messaging app can be written by a competent programmer in a few hundred lines of code. Maybe all us coders should just make one each and open source it?

What’s more, 100% secure email can be configured by anybody who can follow instructions.

So the encryption cat is out of the bag.

This journalist, and all others similar, and the policy makers are getting this one wrong. They are going to impose unnecessary and pointless expense on companies, weaken security for all of us, and snoop on the regular Joe whilst those who really want to remain private will use other means.

So for some reason, whether it makes a jot of difference or not, suddenly I just feel the need to speak up, having never been even remotely political before.