

MI5 staff who lack computer skills made redundant - yanw
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8615162.stm

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MWinther
"I know a lot of people who are over 60 who are quite capable of using
Facebook and Twitter," [the computer expert asked about the move] said.

I would hope MI5 would have higher requirements on their cyberterrorism-
fighting employees.

"A six-year-old can use them, so I'm sure a 60-year-old can."

That's hardly a relevant assumption. A six-year-old of today most likely grew
up with computers and knows nothing of a world without them. A 60-year-old
might very well have not seen the point of computers and resisted using them
for their entire adult life. Just because an average 60-year-old person has
the cognitive abilities to learn to use computers, doesn't mean that they want
to.

Granted, if they were kicking people out based on the assumption that if
you're over a certain age, you can't use a computer, that would be one thing,
but it seems to me that they're checking employee skillsets and then letting
people who don't have the skills needed go. Isn't that basically a good thing?

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nfnaaron
A six year old (or twenty two year old) doesn't have sixty years of
accumulated observation of human nature and the intuition that comes from
that.

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arethuza
Sacked from a civil service job for not being able to do something? That must
be a first.

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Monkeyget
I know of a bank who did something similar several years ago. They layed-off
all their computer challenged employees saying that that was very unfortunate
but that the environment changed and computer knowledge was now needed for the
job. They just couldn't employ unskilled personnel.

You had people who worked there their entire life. The bank made them work
monday to friday, 9 to 5 and they didn't give them any training. not a single
day whatsoever during their entire career. And then they came and said thanks
for working hard all your life for us but we just can't have untrained people
like you with us.

I remember a 5th grade teacher telling us that working is like being a lemon.
They squeeze all the juice in you and throw you away when empty. He was a
bitter old man near retirement :).

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gaius
This is exactly the problem the CIA had under Clinton. Forced to rely on
electronic intelligence as it's "the future" and not human intelligence, years
of accumulated experience, they were taken completely by surprise by the
Taliban and Al Queda, who it turns out weren't using the latest Soviet tech,
they were simply riding their motorbikes into the desert and chatting face to
face.

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dhimes
You are remembering something I must have forgotten. I recall Clinton taking a
shot at Bin Laden with a missile and being derided as blowing up an aspirin
factory (Bush made fun of him for this too, long before letting Bin Laden
escape from a being surrounded in a hole in the ground), and I recall their
policy position was that terrorism was the most significant threat to the US
national defense and trying to get airport security money (among other things)
into the budget.

The country at that time, however, was really mad at him for getting hummers
at work, so the Republicans took advantage of his political weakness to take
money out of the antiterrorism budget and put it into "Star Wars" defense.
They claimed that the biggest threat to Us national security were nukes.

They were wrong.

And, of course, nobody missed the Taliban because they were all over the news
for smashing Buddhas and the throats of unveiled females.

They were singly responsible for the influx of gaggles of beautiful Afghani
women into US cosmopolitan cities, something that I didn't mind a bit.

Perhaps you are referring to something pre-1998 or so, but I honestly don't
recall them missing either Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

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gaius
I am remembering _See No Evil_ by Robert Baer, a CIA veteran.

~~~
dhimes
I like Robert Baer's take on things. He seems quite level-headed (and I
believe I worked with his brother, who was a helluva good fellow himself).

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samratjp
By this weird twitter analogy logic, then a twitter using plant
(<http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/add2/>) can replace their jobs
as well?

