As a programmer... in some ways I feel like it&#x27;s an issue of abstraction. Naming variables is hard. Right?<p>We have this &#x27;Terrorism&#x27; abstraction. But that&#x27;s not really what it is. You might have an instance of Terrorism, that affects two people. Then is it really Terrorism? Shouldn&#x27;t it be something else? I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s just Violence.<p>The same happens all over the place. Child abuse, theft, piracy, etc. The battle seems to be fought and won by the media when we decide on how to categorise and name things.<p>So we end up in some frankly absurd situations, because we think we&#x27;re discussing Y, when actually we&#x27;re discussing X.<p>I don&#x27;t know how to solve this, I just want to get it out of my brain, because it really frustrates me and stops me bothering with debate most of the time when people don&#x27;t even seem to realise they&#x27;ve done it.<p>If I thought that eliminating privacy would save 1 billion lives, I would do it. No euphemisms. That would be a sacrifice I&#x27;d feel sensible in making.<p>But I don&#x27;t want to talk about &#x27;encryption&#x27; and &#x27;terrorism&#x27; because it&#x27;s just bollocks, really. It&#x27;s an absurd simplification; it&#x27;s a euphemism. You&#x27;re not discussing anything real anymore, you&#x27;re just giving platitudes.