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Jeb Bush Comes Out Against Encryption

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-so-cryptic-statements dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Presidential candidate Jeb Bush has called on tech companies to form a more "cooperative" arrangement with intelligence agencies. During a speech in South Carolina, Bush made clear his opinion on encryption: "If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren't in our midst." He also indicated he felt the recent scaling back of the Patriot Act went too far. Bush says he hasn't seen any indication the bulk collection of phone metadata violated anyone's civil liberties.

34 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. buh, bye by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's ok, most people are against Jeb Bush. Encryption makes it harder for the Stasi to do its job?

    Jeb was already on his way to irrelevant, just another nail in his political coffin.

    1. Re:buh, bye by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Funny

      Jeb is gonna want some kind of a cabinet position in the Trump administration, so he better start catching up on past episodes of The Apprentice.

    2. Re: buh, bye by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They still exist? I was under the impression all that's left from the Republicans I once knew is the religious nutjobs, the neocon assholes and the redneck hicks who vote for anyone that lets them keep their rocket launchers.

      I really miss my Reps. I really do. It used to be such a great party. Now it's just a hodgepodge of lunatics and assholes.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re: buh, bye by FranTaylor · · Score: 4, Informative

      The only "libertarian" candidate is Rand Paul

      http://time.com/3759378/rand-paul-defense-spending/

      His amendment would add $76.5 billion to the defense budget

      http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/09/3381381/rand-paul-gas-exports/

      "I would immediately get every obstacle out of the way for our export of oil and gas, and I would begin drilling in every possible conceivable place within our territories in order to have production we can supply Europe with if it’s interrupted from Ukraine."

      Here is a "libertarian" suggesting government involvement in the market on a scale never before attempted. He's the exact opposite of a "libertarian"

    4. Re: buh, bye by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only "Scotsmen" here are in DC (or their lobbyists are) - the big money donors and the politicians they own.

      There's a huge gap right now between the conservative base and GOP politicians in DC. Trump get his entertaining time in the spotlight purely because of his anger: the conservative base is really angry with the GOP establishment right now, to the point where they don't even care that Trump is not conservative! He's angry, and that emotional connection is enough for now.

      Jeb is the establishment candidate. I've never seen him praised in the comments of any of the conservative blogs I read. He's seen as a horrifying combination of RINO and "could even lose to Hillary". But he has all the money, as he has the love of the exact people the base is angry with.

      My strongest hope in the primaries is that we get no candidates names "Bush" or "Clinton". Enough with the legacies already! Bernie seems honest (for all I think he's a fool), I like Walker, Carson seems unobjectionable. Lets have an election where there's a difference between the candidates, for once!

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re: buh, bye by H0p313ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I love how by your admission the extreme right are the people who are clearly trying to make the world a worse place, and the extreme left are the ones who are trying, perhaps too hard, to make the world a better place.

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    6. Re: buh, bye by Firethorn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, I figure that those are very good reasons that ShanghaiBill put scare quotes around "libertarian".

      IE he's the most libertarian of the bunch, doesn't mean that he's actually one of us.

      Then again - Defense budget: It says right in the article that he's doing it as a compromise/appeasement to the 'war hawks'. He balances that with other cuts that we'd generally approve of (though I'd drastically reform the EPA, not cripple it via fund cutting).

      On Gas exports - REMOVING government obstacles against businesses is libertarian. Note that he didn't say 'subsidize' gas exports. So REMOVING the need for permits and such would be ' government involvement in the market on a scale never before attempted'?

      Remember, speeches are limited, it's very difficult to shove every shade of meaning into them.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    7. Re: buh, bye by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hmm...let's see...Obama, Feinstein, Napolitano, Holder...a lot of them, actually.

    8. Re:buh, bye by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Primaries have become a curse upon the nation. The people most likely to vote in them are the extremists, who then dump extreme-leaning candidates on the general election who then have to scramble to appear centrist since the country as a whole has a significant gap between Left and Right, regardless of how far Right the Left is considered by Europeans.

      So we have primary winners who are at best panderers to our worse natures and at worst aligned with them, whose credibility is suspect - they either have to "flip flop" or they're seen as unwilling to accommodate the other side. Anyone halfway sane or centrist cannot make it to the general election where they're needed most.

    9. Re: buh, bye by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, they weren't trying to eliminate encryption - just limit its strength. Yes, they were trying to implement restrictions as per the ITAR on strong encryption. They were up in arms over PGP being outside of their control. They were trying to force the Clipper encryption chip and Skipjack down our throats. And, Gore was the guy who was pushing these things for the administration with the urging of the 3 letter acronym organization.

      Encryption, in the US, would have remained. Clipper, embedded into everything would have allowed law enforcement to decrypt communications using, supposedly, a warrant to obtain the "Law Enforcement Access Field (LEAF)" that would then have allowed the recovery of the encryption key. It probably should have been called the "Law Enforcement Access Key" (wait..that spells LEAK...can't have that). A vulnerability was discovered that enabled a hacker to encrypt communications while bypassing the generation of the LEAF key. That derailed the entire project and Clipper died in 1996.

      Yes, I still have my "Sink Clipper" tee shirt from the RSA Data Security conference from back when they were actually trusted.

  2. He is not a Republican by Bodhammer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Jebby is a a RINO a best and most likely a New World Order statist.
    I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire...

    --
    "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
    1. Re:He is not a Republican by tom229 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As a non-usian I can honestly say the term makes a lot more sense than democrat. Not only *is* the US a republic, but besides having a democratically elected republic, it's not a real democracy. And, rightfully so. A true democracy would be terrible. After all, a democracy can be two wolf and a sheep deciding what to have for supper.

      To put "the republicans" more in line with what every other country in the world calls that party: they are conservative. Conservatives, free from corruption, are for small government. They prioritize tradition over progressive ideas, saving over spending, and the free market over social bureaucracy.

      The world needs more conservatism. The problem is that a proclivity towards private enterprise makes them easy targets for corruption. This is precisely why we need to keep the government's impact and their ability to monetize self interest as small as possible. The US (and others) political system has done a terrible job of this so far. A good start would be to remove corporate contributions to political campaigns.

      --
      If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
  3. Privacy is a civil liberty, Jeb by MacDork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job -- while protecting civil liberties -- to make sure that evildoers arenâ(TM)t in our midst

    That sounds like a threat... "If you make encryption, we won't bother with protecting civil liberties any more."

    1. Re:Privacy is a civil liberty, Jeb by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Those are some very nice civil liberties you have there. It would be a shame if anything were to 'happen' to them."

  4. He lost my vote by mrlinux11 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would vote for Donald Trump before voting for Jeb based on this issue.

    1. Re:He lost my vote by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would vote for Donald Trump before voting for Jeb based on this issue.

      I would vote for Don before Jeb for a lot of reasons. In fact, of the current Republican slate, I'd pretty much vote for Trump over all of them, because I consider him "mostly harmless" by comparison. I'd like to say I prefer Rand, but Rand has that whole "religiot" angle going that I just can't tolerate.

      Sadly enough, as a fiscal conservative (and social liberal), I'd actually call Sanders my candidate of choice so far. Yep - The self-proclaimed socialist shows more fiscal responsibility than all 38 GOPpers running.

      And they wonder why people don't show more interest in our elections...

    2. Re:He lost my vote by meglon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      http://mic.com/articles/119630...

      Considering the growth we had during the late 40's and 50's, that 90% top marginal tax rate certainly didn't hurt then, and in fact, helped to pay down a lot of debt we had from WWII.

      What is fiscally irresponsible is bottoming out taxes while exploding the national debt, like Reagan and Bush II did. People like to bring up the whole "balanced budget" thing on occasion, and in a sense i agree with it... but those people that do are being disingenuous at best. We could balance the budget in two years with a simple constitutional amendment that says "we WILL bring in the revenue to pay for ALL of governments expenses, or the rates will automatically be adjusted to do that. Period, no exceptions." The problem we have is a whole generation who are selfish, greedy, anti-American piss-ants who prefer to act like petulant children instead of living up to the social contract of continuing to invest in future generations, and those people have been leeching everything ever generation before them invested since the 1980's.

      Then again, by the way you wrote that... leaving out the "top marginal rate" part... i have to assume you either do not understand history, or what Sanders said.... or that you're just being deceptive to get people to agree with you.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    3. Re:He lost my vote by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Advocating a 90% tax rate is fiscally responsible?

      First of all, you need to learn the difference between marginal and average tax rates.

      Second - Yes. Not spending more than you make counts as rule #1 of fiscal responsibility. I disapprove of the vast majority of government spending and would far prefer we balance the budget through cuts; but as long as neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can refrain from writing rubber checks, we'd damned well better back them with something other than green ink.

      That said - We last saw a top marginal rate of 91% from 1946 through 1963. Y'know, the post-WWII era, the "baby boom", one of the most prosperous eras in US history for the lower and middle classes? I don't normally go for rose-tinted glasses, but tough to see much but pink about that (unless you can't see anything through all the green).


      Hmmm. Ok, you go first.

      As soon as I make over $1,766,000 per year (the inflation adjusted 90% bracket floor in 1946), yes, I will gladly pay 90% of anything over that.

  5. How do people not understand by Glarimore · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Collecting "meta-data" (really just data) about the context of people's phone calls is no different than collecting information on what library books people are checking out (which IS protected).

    It's a serious invasion of privacy.

    Is there a candidate who understands this?

  6. One More Reason by hduff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Besides being an asshat in general, this is one more reason not to vote for him.

    Which other candidates share this view?

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re:One More Reason by Mantrid42 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Nope.

      “As someone who voted against the Patriot Act and opposed its reauthorization, I have long been concerned about out-of-control intelligence agencies.

      “At a time when the American people are outraged by government attacks on our constitutional rights, the president’s proposal is a step forward. We must, however, go further. Ending the bulk collection of phone records of virtually all Americans – 99.999 percent of whom have nothing to do with terrorism – is important. The president should end that program now, not 90 days from now. We also must also make sure that the government isn’t harvesting records on our emails and other Internet activity except in instances where there are specific reasons to suspect wrongdoing.

      “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies must be given the tools they need to protect us, but that can be done in a way that does not sacrifice our constitutional rights. If we allow the government to see all of what we read, what we watch and what we hear, then we cannot be called a free society.”

      http://www.sanders.senate.gov/...

  7. Jeb steps in it again by erp_consultant · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems like every time this guy opens his mouth he makes another mistake. Trump is right about one thing - Bush is a low energy candidate. This guy looks like he has been dragged kicking and screaming into this campaign. He has little interest and fewer ideas. Anyone that is against encryption and in favor of expanding the Patriot Act won't get my vote. Time to hang it up Jeb.

  8. Ashley Madison poll by geggam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ask those folks in Ashley Madison dump how they feel about encryption

  9. I appreciate his honesty by bjdevil66 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a Republican, his views on encryption and the Patriot Act are not reconciliable with mine. I can scratch him off the ridiculously long list.

    What that said, it's pretty hard to get any politician not named Donald to truly speak his mind. Thanks, Gov...

    1. Re:I appreciate his honesty by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What that said, it's pretty hard to get any politician not named Donald to truly speak his mind. Thanks, Gov...

      You think Trump is speaking his mind? He's not. He's telling people exactly what they want to hear and they are eating it up. He is tapping into the frustration against the establishment. He tried it with the birther movement the last time but that "controversy" was so ridiculous and contrived that there was no way he could ride it. But now he's found something with much broader appeal.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  10. Bad timing ... by techstar25 · · Score: 4, Funny

    There are (reportedly) 10,000 govt employees in the Ashley Madison hack that would probably disagree with you, Jeb.

  11. ADOLPH HITLER NOW!! by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just skip straight to the election to get rid of Hindenberg and Schleicher all at once. Hell, the economy is so bad, and the Mark so worthless, I'll take ANYONE over those two clowns!

    --
    Similar to the upcoming US election results
  12. Harder To Do Its Job by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren't in our midst."

    I see the same appeal to laziness from the RIAA/MPAA when it comes to anti-piracy programs and law enforcement when it comes to actual anti-terrorism procedures.

    RIAA/MPAA: "Playing by the rules is too HARD! First you need to gather evidence. Then you need to file a John Doe lawsuit. Then you need to convince a judge that your evidence is good enough to get the person's name. Then you need to file a lawsuit against that person. Then you need to fight that lawsuit. Why can't we just say 'X did this wrong so destroy his computer'?!!!"

    Law Enforcement: "Playing by the rules is too HARD! First you need to gather evidence. Then you need to convince a judge that your evidence is good enough to get a warrant. Then you need to use that warrant to get more information. Then you need to arrest that person. Then you need to present that evidence in a court of law. Why can't we just say 'X did this wrong so we're tossing him in jail'?!!!"

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  13. Jeb unveils plan do destroy US tech economy by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho 2016! YEEEEEEHAAAAWWWWWW MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  14. how many people on the left by frovingslosh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    how many people on the left are calling for increased government surveillance?

    Well, lets see. The top "man" on the left is certainly doing it. And he really got pissed when the patriot Snowden revealed what his administration was doing. And his party seems to be behind him (in both this and the destruction of American ideals in plenty of other ways). So all in all I would say most of them.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:how many people on the left by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you fell for the trick-question.

      there isn't a single serious politician in the US who is leftist. that died well over 20 years ago, perhaps even 30+.

      we have ultra right and middle right. that's about it.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  15. Maximum damage by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Informative

    We could do worse than Trump... But.... We could do a LOT better too. I sure hope Trump get's tired of spending his money on this side show pretty soon...

    The summary nature of voting on legislature (yea, nay, abstain) puts an upper bound on the amount of damage a bad congressman can do.

    Essentially, there are a finite number of times any congressman can vote on an issue. If they vote against the interests of the people every time, they've reached maximum damage.

    The same can be said of presidents (pass, veto, pocket-veto, &c.).

    Few issues are black-and-white: most laws are some percent good for the people and some percent bad. The two issues I can find that are closest to 100% bad for the people are H1B Visas and the Patriot and USA Freedom acts.

    H1B visas take jobs away from Americans and allow corporations to impose misery on the imported workers, and the Patriot act and related violates our rights and makes us less safe (by diverting resources away from effective strategies like intelligence gathering).

    The relevant votes are shown below. The government doesn't care about our rights, and it doesn't care whether we have jobs. It has reached maximum damage.

    Trump might be the worst president we've ever had, but at this point in time, he's not *guaranteed* to be the worst.

    USA Freedom Act (Senate)

    YEAs: 67 (D = 43, R = 23, I = 1)
    NAYs: 32 (D = 1, R = 30, I = 1)
    Not voting: 1 (R)

    USA Freedom Act (House)
    https://www.govtrack.us/congre...

    YEAs: 67 (D = 124, R = 179, I = 1)
    NAYs: 32 (D = 70, R = 51, I = 1)
    Not voting: 2 (R) 5(D)

    Increase H1B Visas (Senate)
    https://www.govtrack.us/congre...

    YEAs: 67 (D = 52, R = 14, I = 2)
    NAYs: 32 (D = 0, R = 32, I = 0)

  16. That was before the tea party by Cafe+Alpha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Republican party is never going back to being sane, the threat of being primaried is worse than that of killing their constituents. They will prefer to refuse Medicaid, lower taxes on the rich till the government looks like Greece and starve Medicare etc.

    The Democrats move back to the right after being elected. The Republicans scream and shift blame and deadlock but they won't ever be able to govern responsibly ever again.

  17. Typical Republican.... by tekrat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can anyone who's a member of the GOP *explain* why the party of "Smaller Government" always wants to expand government when it comes to spying on US citizens and expanding the military?

    Why does it always come down to "cut social programs because we're broke", but "no spending limit for bombs/aircraft carriers"?

    And while we're at it, can someone explain why "every life is precious" when it comes to abortion, but then have no problem thowing away lives on useless wars, and expanding the death penalty to include petty theft?

    Why will they spend every dollar to force an unwed mother to bring her child to birth and then refuse to support it in any way once it's out of her womb?

    And why are these questions NEVER ASKED at a "debate"?

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.