However, this Technology Review piece published today, here, looking at how Austrlia's ban seems to have failed highlights numerous issues of relevance to the UK.
The Australian government banned the import of 'dangerous' laser pointers with an output of over 1mW. Trevor Wheatley of the University of New South Wales sought to explore how effective this ban was by purchasing 44 different laser pointers from different sources (17 from Australia, 13 from H.K., 11 from China, 2 from the UK and 1 from the US) and his findings indicate that it was being widely flouted.
"Of these 44 laser pointers, he received 40 in the post without incident. However, customs officers intercepted three others and one never arrived"
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| Image from original paper accessible here |
"What’s more, many any of the lasers from international markets arrived in packages without any indication of what they contained, preventing customs officers from identifying them. “It would appear that the International suppliers are targeting a 5 mW restriction for laser pointers but advertising as 1 mW for the Australian market on the “.au” domain,”The Technology Review article makes a number of interesting observations, but some of the real gems are in the comments. "Ka5s" observed how the US had banned cellphone jammers but that his internet search had revealed dozens of unique sources including Amazon, Ebay and even a review for one on Gizmodo (N.B. I have not tested these claims). Others refer to the problem of getting the balance of risks versus 'rights', right; that 1mW is too low a limit to be credible and that (as can be seen with regard to the detection figures above) customs is always playing catch-up.
All of these issues are pertinent to UK Security and Safety too.
As technology advances the array of threats to the nation's security and safety, ranging for the trivial to the substantial (not just connected with terrorism but also invasive species, lethal products and malevolent services) increases exponentially, whilst the resources to combat these either shrinks or grows at best linearly. We (as a nation) need to be awake to these issues and looking for smarter ways to apply what limited resources we have to preempt them.
What is particularly alarming is that there are multiple 'mega-sites' selling products originating in country A to customers in country B, where it is known they are illegal. New cyber protocols need to be established to both prevent these kinds of transactions and to trap perpetrators that willfully seek to evade them. Such actions however open up an aray of related issues, for these things are complicated!
At the same time there needs to be a new, 'informed' layer of 'agile oversight', that better protects the rights of citizens to go about their lives as they see fit within the law (So as to better protect us from the kind of dystopia that Snowden's revelations suggest we may all be sinking into, to save us from the plight of many societies, where people already self-censor both their communications and actions in fear of the authorities). There are then yet more layers of oversight and control we need to refine: to ensure that laws are neither applied over-zealously or blind to the fact that they merit revision; to ensure equitable access to products and services, especially for the disadvantaged and, to never assume things are as they should be, but instead, may be error-prone and open to refinement.
