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James Comey: the Man Who Wants To Outlaw Encryption
Patrick O'Neill writes: "There has not been a tradeoff between liberty and security in our response to terrorism in this country and in our efforts to offer security to the people of the United States," said James Comey, now the director of the FBI. Comey was the number two man in the Department of Justice during the Bush years when NSA and law enforcement surveillance of Americans grew to unprecedented heights. Now he's pushing to stop encryption by default on Apple and Android devices.
And this guy is the director of the FBI...for real? :-/
More and more surveillance of Americans instead of the supposed enemies. This is the US after 9/11 and the Boston bombing. Welcome to 1984.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
Correct, there has not been a tradeoff between liberty and security in our response to terrorism in this country and in our efforts to offer security to the people of the United States. What there has been is a complete and utter disregard for liberty and destruction of individual rights. Forget tradeoffs, the Constitution was abolished, that is what happened.
You can't handle the truth.
False, although mostly true so far. Notably, the intrusiveness of airport security has gone way up, for the big example on the false side.
Mostly what there's been so far has been a tradeoff between *privacy* and security. As in none of the former.
I feel for the guy--his job is to prevent another 9/11. He gets the call if a city blows up. And he probably really cares about defending liberty.
But unfortunately, pervasive surveillance without amazingly well-engineered procedural oversight and security will inevitably lead to tyranny. Anyone who doesn't see that isn't stepping far enough back. He's concerned about the next five years; I'm concerned about the next twenty or fifty.
I suppose there's an AI issue, too--a singularity is going to get into this data in a few decades. I can't predict what an AI a hundred times smarter than any of us might do with it.
From TFA: Comey said in an Oct. 2014 speech "Justice may be denied because of a locked phone or an encrypted hard drive." I can somewhat understand that from an investigator's perspective.
But my take is that lots of people are constantly attacking my devices, from the petty skript kiddies to corporations wanting secrets to the NSA who wants everything. Most of the attacks never see justice, they are never prosecuted. There is no justice in most cases, only criminals who break in.
If my devices are properly hardened in advance, I don't need to wait for the government to apply "justice".
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Yeah, but the reason he wants the default of 'no' is to make it easier to monitor communications. He doesn't give a shit about the 4th, naturally. The government shouldn't be dictating the default setting either, which is what he wants.
because we might need to look in your house for terrorists. Also get rid of locks on car doors because we might want to randomly search your car
A law that will affect innocent citizens and dumb criminals. The criminals the FBI is after will probably be aware of it and manually turn on encryption.
James Comey is
BWgSZ9ZYLw5I kmoBvJiRvnO7uQU9x6NoYlKBOaO vmb3df8lNwkgeFc30rNPB9kh09Fr61CxW24IkH3YWKRe8H YdTd8YHzpRBMQJcwyxn+O3cUPQ4sP2dN4GEA/9v17IipHz12Bon8o7dc0o8UaOj3tl Pr19cq3meoufARx7PLJ0SKclb3LG7SxW+GTISS1cRGpDRr d0NvdC8lHHkfyDx5YGnIp DUgQa9lMCpQbHSln40 LCosKrQamj4Ni27wIbikaSWV+IiDsn jyfc7eLKlq QSOgCFzMsBglGzC2+j9HifrKU/z9Fzc8HZ3UiaQahMiOj EnohZdYQqCdPAmeZlEkK/qaZBtwA13A BLrbolhR0C/NSgvA hPZzh7oj33/LHPY8tC TP7zXULYP/RsccmOc aS88VzbzOAaRwEf9KCu1YtKICdVyGlYhn5IN4q vM80+vNtkc0QiRUdKW
And I'll tell him that again to his FACE!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Lol, are you drunk? Most people are not going to pick up their guns an revolt against the government unless one thing happens: The government comes into THEIR town, and tries to take THEIR house/car/money/loved ones. Nobody is going to grab an AK-47 and march on Washington because the feds are reading their e-mail to grandma.
And the feds probably know it too, or else they wouldn't be doing it....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
In order to trade off some of A to get some of B, you have to actually get some of B. In this case, we've given a lot of A and gotten nothing for it
I have read many comments here and what you have said is so very true I just need to add to what you have written
I came from China
I left China back in the early 1970's, way back when the entire Chinese society was in a turmoil, where nobody can live in peace because the social contract between the government and the people had broken down
A political struggle at the top echelon resulted in a power-struggle at every level, and power grab was everywhere ... the so-called 'Red Guard' was a by-product of power-grabbing exercises, mostly at the local level
Anyway, people at large in China had no say --- they kept on losing their liberty, their livelihood, even their lives, --- with some driven into madness and many simply committed suicide since they couldn't take it anymore
To put it in simple terms, to the average Chinese citizens, what they had gone through in between the late 1950's and the early 1970's was that everything they had was taken away, just like that ... yep, without any tradeoff
Now that I am an American, I am alarmed at the current development within the United States of America
The people in the USA will be facing the same thing the people in China faced, if nothing is being done to stop TPTB
What happened back in China was that there was no one who could stop Mao. Zhou En Lai tried his best to slow Mao's incessant hunger for power but he just couldn't muster enough strength to halt Mao in his track. All Zhou could do was to do patchworks here and there
Even Zhou suffered greatly during the social turmoil. His own daughter was brutally slaughtered by Jiang Qin, that feisty wife of Mao, and even with his own daughter slaughtered, Zhou couldn't do anything
The experience from China should be a lesson to the Americans ... that is, even if you have someone who has conscience INSIDE the power structure, it is still NOT ENOUGH when TPTB turns ugly
And if the Americans don't do something now --- frankly, even now, it may be too late --- they and their children will eventually be facing a similar fate the Chinese faced some 50 years ago
I certainly don't wish that to America, my adopted country, but I am afraid that too many of the Americans are way too brainwashed to be able to comprehend what is going on and what is going to come
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Remember that rancher who had SWAT teams descend on his ranch intending to kill and bury his cattle "for taxes unpaid"? His neighbors showed up with rifles and the government employees started acting more polite.
I'm not sure why so many of you think that the fbi (etc) actually CARE about solving crimes.
lets be honest, these jobs attract sociopaths. funny (yeah, right) that these are the very people we have trusted to catch those very kinds of people.
quick question: what's the diff between a cop and a thug? ans: one has the legal right to bash your head.
these 'folks' all entered for the wrong reason. if you have any experience with human pyschology you know this. authority jobs attract the worst kinds of people. they enter the field to abuse their power. and they do a 'good job' of it, in almost all cases.
so, they are there to enjoy their power and to watch citizens suffer and plead with them for their freedom and lives. super power trips.
whatever makes them MORE powerful is what they seek. that's why they are all so totally for any kind of spying. it does not save us, it has never helped us but they all seem to enjoy their little LOVEINT spying and all the rest.
and so, when they ask for 'stop using encryption' its not because they think it helps bad guys; it basically stops them from having THEIR FUN at your expense.
everyone here has run into bullies who simply enjoy knocking heads and punching people (or worse). I submit that 90% of the staff of any of those three letter agencies all share the same sociopathic personality trait. they may not be physically big guys or big bullies but they all have the bully 'respect mah authority!' attitude and would simply love to make trouble for you if you don't cower in their presence.
the whole lot of them should be hanged as traitors. and then we can rethink what kinds of people we should HAVE in positions of high authority. what we have now is all the wrong people with all the wrong reasons for being there.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It wasn't for unpaid taxes. He was grazing on public lands and then refused to pay the grazing fees. He was basically being a mooch and the right only jumped to his defense because they could make up this story about he was a victim of government overreach.
"There has not been a tradeoff between liberty and security in our response to terrorism in this country and in our efforts to offer security to the people of the United States,
Last night the parking-lot exit from one of the terminals at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport was flooded.
This meant there were now only 2 ways to get out of the terminal: walk through the rain, or take the tram that connects the terminals.
The tram was inside security and most passengers had already existed security, either to get their bags or for other reasons.
Prior to 9/11, they had the liberty to re-enter security, take the tram to another terminal, and arrange for their ride to pick them up there.
Thanks to a "tradeoff between liberty and security" they were forced to either sit in the terminal for several hours while the flood cleared or walk out in the rain to get to another terminal (the buses that connect the terminals couldn't operate due to the floods).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.