Hillary Clinton Urges Silicon Valley To 'Disrupt' ISIS

HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that Hillary Clinton spoke at the Brookings Institution's annual Saban Forum on Sunday and said that the Islamic State had become "the most effective recruiter in the world" and that the only solution is to engage American technology companies in blocking or taking down militants' websites, videos and encrypted communications. "We need to put the great disrupters at work at disrupting ISIS. We need Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary. We need to challenge our best minds in the private sector and work with our best minds in the public sector to develop solutions that would both keep us safe and protect our privacy," said Clinton. "We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack. On the other hand we know there are legitimate concerns about government intrusion, network security, and creating new vulnerabilities that bad actors can and would exploit."

Comments

Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[tysonedwards]

Why try to be cute? Just say it.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[WarJolt]

Exactly, overt prevention discourages use. You get way better intelligence by allowing use of these resources. Additionally any attempt to disrupt use will inevitably prevent some legitimate use.

Re:Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilary's nothing like a bitch. Bitches don't get respect. No matter what they say.
She (and in reality, the government and elites) doesn't give one shit about ISIS or you.
The ONLY thing they care about is creating and twisting whatever situation both domestic and global into serving their interests and own longevity.
So long as you don't wake up, rise up, and throw them out... they're happy to keep on taxing and engineering all the life blood and independance they can right out of you your family friends coworkers and neighbors.
WAKE UP people, stop taking it in the ass.

Re:Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[rwa2]

This could work in the Middle East's favor... If they terrorize Western Governments into mandatory encryption backdoors for all communications, all of the multinational corporations are going to have to move their trade secret data centers and business transactions elsewhere. Sensitive business will be conducted in countries that allow strong encryption, and are have lots of shrewd businessmen... which sounds like what many countries in the ME are setting themselves up for.

This has happened before.... jews are pretty prominent in business and banking because most countries didn't allow them to own land, and for ages christians and muslims were forbidden to charge interest on loans. This created conditions that practically handed the entire middleman and long distance transaction business to jews. Perhaps... perhaps the Middle East, longing for the old days when they were a business empire powerhouse, has become desperate to find a niche to diversify their economy in the coming post-oil production years, and this may be a way to carve themselves a competitive business advantage on the world stage again.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[TWX]

You get way better intelligence by allowing use of these resources. Additionally any attempt to disrupt use will inevitably prevent some legitimate use.

This argument only works for foes like the Germans with their Enigma and Lorenz machines during World War II, where the size of the foe's organization means that the foe is able to adapt when their existing technologies are disrupted. State-level military operations that are essentially at parity with one's own operations cannot be completely shut down or permanently disrupted so easily.

For non-state entities like terror organizations, disrupting their command and control and other communications might actually break real operations, and might even help serve to change the nature of those that would sympathize with them. Remember, there have been cases where law enforcement, not criminal entities, managed to contact and provide means and encouragement to disgruntled individuals that motivated them to act. It's not legally entrapment, but without communication, encouragement, and means, would these people have attempted to commit acts?

One has to wonder about the effectiveness of all of the monitoring that we've all been so perturbed by. We've had attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino where unencrypted communications were used and the attacks were not disrupted. This foe, while not insignificant, is small enough that using their communications to disrupt their acts should be very effective, but it's not proving effective. If it's not effective, then what's the whole damn point? This isn't World War II where the stakes for the enemy learning of the interception would mean that interception would end.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[khasim]

We've had attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino where unencrypted communications were used and the attacks were not disrupted.

That is the key issue.

Trying to connect-the-dots is impossible. Because that is the wrong analogy. In reality it is about constructing thousands of "dots" out of the regular actions of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and then layering them on top of each other.

Soon you end up with hundreds of Billions of "dots" and not enough manpower to check even 0.0001% of the false positives. So the "bad guys" will always get through.

This foe, while not insignificant, is small enough that using their communications to disrupt their acts should be very effective, but it's not proving effective.

I think that it is insignificant. At least in the USofA.

If you are in the USofA and you die tomorrow, it will probably be from your diet. If someone kills you it will probably be someone you know.

Death by terrorism falls bellow death by ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[mcswell]

We've had attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino where unencrypted communications were used and the attacks were not disrupted.

True, but how many attacks were disrupted? We don't know. You can't evaluate something by saying it missed X until you know whether X was 1 out of 1, or 1 out of 1000.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[maugle]

Zero, most likely. Because the government be shouting "the system works!" from the goddamn rooftops if they were ever to actually catch someone.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not legally entrapment, but without communication, encouragement, and means, would these people have attempted to commit acts?

One has to wonder about the effectiveness of all of the monitoring that we've all been so perturbed by. We've had attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino where unencrypted communications were used and the attacks were not disrupted. This foe, while not insignificant, is small enough that using their communications to disrupt their acts should be very effective, but it's not proving effective. If it's not effective, then what's the whole damn point? This isn't World War II

What is legally considered entrapment these days? Hell, I just heard the president suggest that people on so called 'no fly lists' don't have 2nd ammendment rights like the rest of us (presuming I'm not on a no fly list- somehow I doubt there is a government website I can easily check my status at). Entrapment, Equal Protection Under The Law, Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Sorry, but 9/11 happened. Torture is back in again. But your point is spot on. People 'Going Postal' isn't the same thing as 9/11. But who knows, maybe some really clever postal worker will deviously figure out how to get away with killing 10,000 people. Shit could happen yo.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Lonewolf666]

In case of Paris, German police caught one guy with weapons in his car and plans for going to Paris. Assuming he wanted to participate in the terrorist attacks, that makes one out of nine terrorists successfully intercepted. By traditional search methods, not by communication surveillance.

Other attacks went entirely unimpeded (Charlie Hebdo, the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the 2005 London bombings). So I think monitoring communications is remarkably useless against terrorism.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[johnsnails]

Obligatory Simpsons reference. https://youtu.be/gtBpmljNaZE

Re:Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

This constant bashing and ridiculing of Democracy is what will lead the industrialized 1st world countries into totalitarian fascist dictatorships.

Mark my words.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Death by terrorism falls bellow death by ex-boyfriend/girlfriend.

This.

It should be also noted that 9/11 caused fewer deaths that year than the flu did.

San Bernadino is hardly even visible as a statistical blip. It wasn't even the majority of murders that particular day in the USA, much less something so significant that we should get our panties in a twist about it.

Want to really annoy Daesh? Try ignoring the whole "terrorism" thing, and treat this as just another murder investigation. Being treated as common criminals is much worse than any official acknowledgement of those clowns....

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[matria]

So we shouldn't be concerned with sidewalks or pedestrian crossings or bicycle paths. Forget about railroad crossing alarms and barriers. Who cares about how many people die because of drunk drivers? Don't worry about whether or not the doctor has washed his hands. More health practitioners die from hepatitis every year than have ever died of AIDS, so why the sudden rush to use rubber gloves all the time? How many other ways of preventing "insignificant" numbers of deaths can you think of? I mean, we all eventually end up dead from some cause or another, right?

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[jblues]

There was a (verified) statistic going around Australia last year in response to government policies, showing that, in Australia, you're much more likely to die falling out of bed, than from a terrorism related event.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Shadow of Eternity]

The problem is everyone thinks terrorism works like in the movies and television shows. Shadowy organizations, dead drops, burner phones, encrypted communications, cell after cell talking with each other and whoever their glorious leader of the week happens to be (until he gets blown up by a drone too)... that's not the strategy here.

The real threat isn't an organized conspiracy, it's a stand alone complex. A meme. People get taken in by the rhetoric and propaganda and individually or in small groups decide to do something to further the global jihad.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[AikonMGB]

So we shouldn't be concerned with sidewalks or pedestrian crossings or bicycle paths. Forget about railroad crossing alarms and barriers. Who cares about how many people die because of drunk drivers? Don't worry about whether or not the doctor has washed his hands. More health practitioners die from hepatitis every year than have ever died of AIDS, so why the sudden rush to use rubber gloves all the time? How many other ways of preventing "insignificant" numbers of deaths can you think of? I mean, we all eventually end up dead from some cause or another, right?

I don't hear any presidential candidates demanding unwarranted access to my private, encrypted information to tackle any of those issues.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[c]

If you are in the USofA and you die tomorrow, it will probably be from your diet. If someone kills you it will probably be someone you know.

Statistically speaking, if someone in the USA kills you, it will probably be yourself. The suicide rate is quite a bit higher than the homicide rate.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

According to General Alexander, somewhere in the 50's, but according to the people who audit it none.
The two attacks Alexander revealed details of, one was caught by traditional means, the other was an FBI pseudo terrorist where the primary plotter, bomb supplier etc. was FBI.

That's the other issue here, not only did they do mass surveillance without democratic consent or legal permission, they continue to act outside of any checks and balances.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Nite_Hawk]

One has to wonder about the effectiveness of all of the monitoring that we've all been so perturbed by. We've had attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino where unencrypted communications were used and the attacks were not disrupted. This foe, while not insignificant, is small enough that using their communications to disrupt their acts should be very effective, but it's not proving effective. If it's not effective, then what's the whole damn point? This isn't World War II where the stakes for the enemy learning of the interception would mean that interception would end.

It strikes me that the most useful argument for this kind of surveillance would be just-in-time collection and analysis of highly sensitive targets' communication. In reality, what it seems we have is bulk data collection of nearly everyone, stored for later use. That kind of collection serves an entirely different purpose.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[mrchaotica]

Connecting a no-fly list and a no-weapons list is not inherently a bad idea; the problem is that the no-fly list (or maybe both lists, for all I know) need a fuck-ton of reforms to protect civil rights applied first.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[kilfarsnar]

Want to really annoy Daesh? Try ignoring the whole "terrorism" thing, and treat this as just another murder investigation. Being treated as common criminals is much worse than any official acknowledgement of those clowns....

But that eliminates the propaganda value! How can they keep Americans so acquiescent without scaring the hell out of them?

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[TWX]

What is legally considered entrapment these days?

Entrapment requires compelling someone to do something that they would not have done without the investigation compelling them to do it. Distasteful as it is for FBI agents to provide fake bombs and blank ammunition to those that are disgruntled so that they attempt to attack and fail and can be busted for stronger charges, the individuals that chose to take the materials and carry out the attack did so of their own free will, and thus is not entrapment.

It starts becoming unclear when the attacker is given planning assistance by the agents, as it calls into question if they'd even be capable of doing such an act without more help than supply assistance. If the investigators put them into the position where they must carry out the attack or there will be real consequences then that definitely is entrapment.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[TWX]

It strikes me that the most useful argument for this kind of surveillance would be just-in-time collection and analysis of highly sensitive targets' communication. In reality, what it seems we have is bulk data collection of nearly everyone, stored for later use. That kind of collection serves an entirely different purpose.

Absolutely. In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith put things down the Memory Hole that he and everyone else thought led to an incinerator. In reality it was the perfect way to collect everything that anyone thought was sensitive enough to need to be destroyed thoroughly. That information was later used against Winston.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Grishnakh]

The only hope the Mid-East crazies have of living with each other is democracy.

Oh please, this is just dumb. Democracy is proven not to work in the middle east. They tried it in Egypt and elected the Muslim Brotherhood. Democracy doesn't work when you have a bunch of different factions constantly fighting each other. A strong leader like Assad or Saddam Hussein is what you need in those countries, to keep the peace and keep everyone in line, using brutal methods if necessary. Democracy only works in developed nations where people are educated and the culture is fairly homogeneous, so that politics is only arguing about exactly how much funding different programs should get, rather than arguing about which religion should be the state-supported one.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"On the other hand we know there are legitimate concerns about government intrusion, network security, and creating new vulnerabilities that bad actors can and would exploit."

The design of the US constitution is based on the observation, from cold, hard reality, that government is the worst of the bad actors in the long run. So you deny it certain powers, even in emergencies. Emergency powers lead to the downfall of many previous democracies, in Rome, Greece, and pre-WWII Germany.

They can be right while still being short-sighted and wrong.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[wyHunter]

Yeah like France is a gun loving nation, so terrorists could easily get weapons there. You are deranged. As for the middle east, it's going to glass itself.

Re:Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[wyHunter]

It's already happening. The number of useful idiots on this board - this one - who say the US Constitution is an old, out of date, document are legion. Let's see how much they can say online, or anywhere else, without it.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[JesseMcDonald]

The first such necessary reform being that you can't be placed on either list without first being convicted of a crime—a real one, that is, with victim(s) who suffered actual damages, not one of the made-up "crimes" which seem to make up a majority of the law these days.

Only a conviction for causing harm to others could possibly justify curtailing one's civil rights.

Re:Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Zeromous]

It already happened, have you been napping son?

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Rakarra]

The Terrorists are Coming! The Terrorists are Coming! Quick! Throw them another Freedom!

That would probably be funnier if it matched the rhetoric.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[Rakarra]

This is flamebait, and I'm not sure why it was modded as such. I think some folks just blindly believe that everyone in the world is enamored of Western-style, liberal democracy. That that is the sort of government they would be happiest with. They aren't. That was the blind thinking that got the "we'll be greeted as liberators" crowd into trouble.

Like it or not, Mubarak, Hussein, Ghaddafi, Assad were all very good at maintaining a strong government, and doing what you need to do to keep the people in those countries in line: harsh, brutal control. And strangely, that gave citizens more freedom (from our perspective) than the alternate: the Islamic theocracies and partisans that arise otherwise. They never had an Enlightenment, and they won't be happy with Western Democracy until they do.

Leaders in the Middle East have to follow Machiavelli, not Alexis de Tocqueville.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[riverat1]

Want to really annoy Daesh? Try ignoring the whole "terrorism" thing, and treat this as just another murder investigation. Being treated as common criminals is much worse than any official acknowledgement of those clowns....

Exactly. That's what I thought we should have done after 9/11 too, treat it as just another criminal action. None of these terrorists are an existential threat to the US unless we let them scare us into wasting our resources on unproductive wars that make the situation worse.

Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously.

[david_thornley]

Democracy, when first introduced to countries, tends not to work well. That doesn't mean it's not worth encouraging, but expecting good results from a newly democratic government is naive.

keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[turkeydance]

bottom line: i'm done with her. she lies and lies even more to cover up those lies. thought she had a chance. no more.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[labnet]

Hillary is a big a hypocrite as they come; so why is she still so popular?

Oh, and I thought the USA was on ISIS;s side? You know, after 18months of NOT bombing the beeline of oil tankers going through turkey, until Russia came along and showed the USA what hypocrites they are.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[dbIII]

The Manning leak that showed she wanted the credit card numbers of diplomats of allied nations so that they could be used for blackmail (yes something that stupid was in writing and available at Manning's clearance level) should have finished her. She probably kicked off the Swedish Assange stupidity as revenge.
Then again, there's that other guy on the Republican side that should have been finished in politics forever when the tollbooth idiocy came to light, and there's Trump who has been "captured" four times in business but has no time for a soldier who was captured.

The current flock make Carter and Nixon look like paragons of competence and virtue.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who has been paying attention has known for a long time that the Turks have been buying ISIS oil and that they could starve them of money if they wanted. However the Turks love ISIS because they fuck up the Kurds, and the Turks hate the Kurds almost as much as they hate the Armenians who they slaughtered by the millions so they'll keep supporting ISIS as long as they continue to fuck up the Kurds. Since Turkey is a major NATO ally and is uniquely positioned to bottle up the only warm water ports the Russians have the USA is not going to do shit to the Turks and only make completely ineffectual measures against ISIS that Turkey is cool with. So we'll send a drone off to murder a wedding party here, drop a bomb on a goat there, and every once in a while spend $millions to Hellfire the shit out of some barren patch of desert there because arms merchants needs to gets paid. Basically the same old shit we've been doing since 2001.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[hairyfeet]

She has a vagina?

Jesus I wish it weren't so but talking to people that say they are voting for Hillary when I ask them "What position does he have that you support? What policies has she supported in office that has caused you to vote for her?" and what do I get? Crickets. So you finally ask them why they are voting for her you get the "strong independent woman" meme, emphasis on the woman part.

So if you want to know why they support Hillary? at least in my area its strictly because she is a woman, they do not care about anything else.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[ganjadude]

and thats how we got this mess we got obama "because hes black" not becauser of his record (he didnt have one) or his experience (didnt have that either)

people who vote based on race and gender... are racist and sexist...yet for some reason, they project that onto those who disagree with them

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[quantaman]

At least she's not hypocritical in using strong encryption for her own servers!

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[KGIII]

I think Carter's the only person on the planet that has done more good when he wasn't president than when he was. I can't think of any other world leader who has done the same thing after their term in office.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

she wanted the credit card numbers of diplomats of allied nations so that they could be used for blackmail

Citation?

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[Zontar The Mindless]

Funny thing about first-term Presidents: they tend not to have any experience as President.

Obama had a JD from Harvard and nearly a dozen years as a state and US Senator under his belt prior to being elected President. I think calling that "inexperienced" is a bit of a stretch.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[Mr. Droopy Drawers]

Obama was in the Senate from 2005 to 2008; 3 years. He spent two of those campaigning for president. Experience would be applied to running for office, not experience at any elected office.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[Rakarra]

Funny thing about first-term Presidents: they tend not to have any experience as President.

Obama had a JD from Harvard and nearly a dozen years as a state and US Senator under his belt prior to being elected President. I think calling that "inexperienced" is a bit of a stretch.

You forget that in 2008 the experience goalposts were moved so that only "executive" experience, like being mayor of a podunk town, is what counts. Senator, State Senator, etc.. didn't matter. That wasn't presidential experience.

Never mind that it's far, far more valid governmental experience than just being CEO of a publicly-traded company, yet somehow those questions of experience don't matter anymore. Now if you haven't been in elected office you're an 'outsider' bringing fresh ideas, not part of the establishment.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[Rakarra]

transfurotherhelicopterkin on Tumblr

Oh God. You probably tried to throw as much weird stuff in one title as possible, but I'm pretty sure I know a few people who match this.

We'll get Hilary because as much as Americans insist they like the truth and a hard edge and all that, they're little bitches and they can't handle Trump

Trump sure gives the hard edge, but he only provides the illusion of truth. He projects the aura of competence without actually having it, but he's really just a narcissist. I like the definition from a marketplace.org article (wasn't talking about Trump, but about jerk bosses in general):

Murray Barrick, head of the Center for Human Resource Management at Texas A&M, offers the example of a door-to-door salesman. “Door-to-door salespeople get rejected all the time, but a narcissistic door-to-door salesperson can handle that rejection much better. Because a narcissistic person would say ‘you’re not rejecting me because of me, you’re rejecting me because you’re dumb or something about the situation,’ so I’m able to go easily to the next door.”

The result, writ large? “In a logical or rational world if you wanted to illustrate the relationship between talent and success for leadership, you could do it with only one circle in a Venn diagram, as opposed with two circles that are hardly overlapping, barely touching one another. But that is the case – you have lots of people who succeed in their personal careers, but when they get fired they get hired quickly by another company as if they didn’t fail, and you have many people who have hidden talent, the potential to lead effectively but they are overlooked because they lack these toxic assets,” said Chamorro-Premuzic.

Your ability to reject reality only goes so far in the Oval Office.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[Rakarra]

I'm still looking for the proof that Clinton said that credit records were to be used for blackmail.

Sure, the spying scandal wasn't great, but it's hardly out of the ordinary -- allies spy on enemies. Allies also spy on allies, though you're supposed to pretend in public that you don't. The most actually-controversial part of this was that diplomats were enlisted in the spying instead of (or in addition to) intelligence agencies, a big diplomacy no-no.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[dbIII]

The Manning leak on wikileaks as I wrote above.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[dbIII]

Then look on wikileaks if you want the fine details as I pointed out above and perhaps use a google search to narrow it down.
You'll learn far more and find it more interesting than if I just pointed to links of news articles from that time where nearly every major news outlet on the planet carried the story, but here's one of many if you want a quick and broad answer:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333920/WikiLeaks-Hillary-Clinton-ordered-U-S-diplomats-spy-UN-leaders.html

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[dbIII]

I needed a Democrat to head off accusations of bias and some people here really hate him for some reason. You would not believe the ridiculous venom filled reaction of dozens of posts when I wrote an offhand mention of him being a nuclear engineering officer on a sub.
Apparently it's far better to bribe terrorists like Reagan than it is the attempt to fight them like Carter.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[KGIII]

Maybe but I was specifically referencing their actions after their presidency and worded it poorly.

Re:keep HER safe and protect HER privacy

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Soooo...no citation then?

Or are you seriously telling me to simply read the half-million documents released by Manning?

"the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Fwipp]

Maybe y'all should stop bombing civilians over there. It doesn't take much to "radicalize" somebody whose family was killed by American bombs.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense.

Plenty of people are disillusioned or have their nations bombed by one country or another. None of those groups turn to terrorism. None, that is, except for extremist Muslims.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe y'all should stop bombing civilians over there. It doesn't take much to "radicalize" somebody whose family was killed by American bombs.

Moron. The stated goal of ISIS is a global caliphate governed by Sharia law implemented by the sword.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

How about those who are radicalized who never experienced any suffering? Like those who were raised in western countries?

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

If that were the only thing, muslims would be rising up against ISIS, because ISIS kills many more civilians than the US. And not accidentally: they kill them in brutal ways, on purpose. This is good reading, too.

The vast majority of Muslims don't want to kill Americans, and the vast majority of Americans don't want to kill Muslims (other than daesh). We're happy to live in peace.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Darinbob]

But that would decimate the bomb making industry!

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[rwa2]

Yeah, I see it as such a waste. It's amazing how well that groups like al-quaida and ISIS can motivate people to give themselves completely to their tasks. The world could be such a wonderful place if we could only figure out how to harness their talents to recruit fanatics for al-jebra and other pursuits.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

The stated goal of ISIS is a global caliphate governed by Sharia law implemented by the sword.

Exactly. They're willing to kill anyone who doesn't convert to their views and submit to their rule and they take a very long term view on their project. To say that we are not at war with these people, these radical Islamic terrorists, as President Obama and others within the Democratic party have done, is a flight from reality and into fantasy. ISIS seems willing to do whatever it takes for however long it takes to achieve their goals. Meanwhile, President Obama is busy telling everyone what we're NOT willing to do, like fight ISIS on the ground in Syria. If war is a test of wills, as Sun Tzu said, then who would the GP say is winning, our weak-willed President or the ISIS barbarians? We would all of us do well to ask ourselves that question when go to the polls in 2016 to elect a new President. Do we elect a warrior or do we elect another wimp? The sort of future your grandchildren experience may well depend upon it.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Darinbob]

We have most certainly had terrorists arise due to government force. Bombing other countries is a more modern affair though, in the past they'd just occupy a country instead which would create home grown non-muslim terrorists in droves. The US uses bombings instead of occupations because it's more palatable to the voters. They don't care if someone foreign dies as long as no soldiers die (especially if they're draftees).

Although it's possible that the some terrorists groups in the 60s/70s were inspired by bombings in Vietnam. Such as the BaaderMeinhof gang or Weather Underground.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Beck_Neard]

"Just because we brutally murdered your wife and kids doesn't mean you have any reason to hate us. It's for your own good! Now get the fuck out of our faces and build a pro-western democracy or we'll bomb and torture everyone else you know."

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Jack Griffin]

And the IRA...

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Orgasmatron]

Or why do the Christians and Jews that also suffer civilian casualties, often in the same villages as the Muslims, never get around to launching a global jihad?

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[fluffernutter]

"It's amazing how well that groups like al-quaida and ISIS can motivate people to give themselves completely to their tasks"

Obviously you have never known someone who is *truly* impoverished and uneducated.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

ISIS wants no Muslim to be welcome anywhere in the West, so all Muslims will be forced to join up with radicals like them. The clown car of GOP presidential hopefuls has agreed in total with ISIS as have the fascist right in every other western nation, doing exactly what ISIS wants. Vote liberal, or vote for jihad. It's that simple.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[YouGotTobeKidding]

Errr...9/11 was done by Musi' terrorists you idjiot. As for Pear Harbour....the Japanese attacked a military base. They didn't say try and bomb Hawaii so Im not sure where your thought process went off the rails with this one either. Of course this is probably giving you too much credit as you probably saw that reply on facebook and are now regurgitating it here.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cheater512]

Read the grandparent. It was talking about terrorism being a disproportionate response to the US bombing civilians.

The responses to 9/11 and Pearl Harbour were both disproportionate.

Following the US example, its entirely logical for the people getting bombed to want to become terrorists and bomb back.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

Islamic history that they don't teach at Harvard:

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost British Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers"--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had NO PREVIOUS CONTACTS.

The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam: "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Muslim who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

In 1805, American Marines marched across the desert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

War leads to war leads to more war. Endless wars. Is that what you want for your grandchildren? The forced democracy/imperialism that the US has been doing for most of the 20th century has led us to the point we are now.

Peace with Germany, Japan, and Italy? Oh! The horror!

If a war against ISIS was truly the last war against Islamic radicals then I'd be all for it. Better to get it over with now before more innocents are killed. But no, it would be just another link in a long chain of wars.

How do you think it will work out if they keep making war against us and we stop trying to defend ourselves? Any clues about that? They aren't going to give up any time soon.

Statistically speaking, we have bigger problems than a few civilians being killed by terrorists every few years (gun deaths, car accidents, drug deaths, etc). But because we're so used to those deaths they've kind of faded into the background. Perhaps low fatality terrorism will become like that.

Other countries suffer far more deaths from terrorism, and it badly disrupts society. The reason there are few deaths in the West at present is due to the cause being suppressed. If that suppression is stopped then the death rate will go up.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cyber-vandal]

Which doesn't describe the 9/11 bombers or the 7/7 bombers in the UK or most of the Paris murderers. We have people from the UK, from middle class families going off to a war zone hellhole. How they're doing that is a masterclass in motivation.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Bing Tsher E]

Ah, so the secret is that ISIS is part of the global anti-Imperialism movement. They sent delegates to the latest conference of the global anti-Imperialism Conference held in Geneva?? Have they harmonized their platform with the other anti-Imperialists?

How principled of them. We should send a Solidarity Wreath to ISIS.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Bing Tsher E]

Young people are really fucking stupid when it comes to ideology*. All you've got to do is hype up some deal where they come out on top because they fight for what is 'right.' The fact that the grown ups so strongly oppose ISIS is reason enough for young rebels to back them.

(*Obviously everything about the past is completely fucking wrong, and these dudes over there have it all figured out. Go join them and you'll be part of fixing everything.)

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cfalcon]

> It isn't like there has never been a modern Christian terrorist movement. The IRA comes to mind.

Oh, the IRA comes to mind, does it?

First, the IRA has killed less than 2000 people since the 1960s. Al Qaeda killed over 2500 just on September 11th, and that's only part of AQ, which is itself only a part of all Islamist terrorism.
Second, the IRA isn't waging some kind of religious war- there is a big difference between religious people doing a bad thing based on some political goal, and religious people doing a bad thing based on some religious goal.
Third, the majority of Islamist terrorism is to disrupt and kill peaceful Muslims- the mirror of that would be the IRA (though again, vastly less in scope). But while the majority of Islamist terror, it's only *part*- the IRA didn't go shooting up Paris, as a great example.

The fact that, in principle, someone might kill you for a religious reason, should not disrupt the reality that not every religion behaves in the way that the radical Islamists do. The numbers involved, the money involved, and the highly sophisticated recruitment methods involved should also not be discounted.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cyber-vandal]

I'm not sure what you mean by the bit in brackets. I think I'll just say go fuck yourself chuckles.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[towermac]

Whoosh?

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[raind]

That is an informative article.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Zontar The Mindless]

I for one am rather glad that the Japanese did not win the war. Perhaps you feel differently?

(Seriously--do you think for a moment that if either the Japanese or the Nazis had got nukes first, they wouldn't have used lots more than just 2 of them?)

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Zontar The Mindless]

When I went to school, FALSE && FALSE && FALSE evaluated to FALSE. Maybe they taught you differently.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Rockoon]

It isn't like there has never been a modern Christian terrorist movement. The IRA comes to mind.

There is a difference between doing bad things to people while being a member of a religion and doing bad things to people because they arent your religion.

The IRA are nationalist terrorists, as there motive is Irish independence based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.

The closest thing in the modern day "Christianity" that could be called terrorism is the KKK, but even here this falls short because the KKK is specifically a Protestant movement, and since its formation has always been full blown anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic. I'm sure that I don't need to remind you that Catholics are about as Christians as you can get.

The fucking problem is that Islam sanctions violence against all that is not Islam, and that Muslim holy leaders do not denounce this violence. Cirtually every Christian denomination has denounced the KKK.

tl;dr - poster is full of shit about christian terrorism

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Zontar The Mindless]

Dingdingdingding---we have a winner!

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Zontar The Mindless]

Adjust your sarcasm filters.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[fluffernutter]

(*Obviously everything about the past is completely fucking wrong, and these dudes over there have it all figured out. Go join them and you'll be part of fixing everything.)

You mean like how most people seem to be supporting Uber, despite the fact that the taxi regulations are there because it didn't work in the first place?

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Anonymous Coward]

That may have been the number of slaves at that point but previously many more Americans had passed through the system. The US paid ransom and they were let go.

In fact the US had a budget specifically for paying this ransom because they didn't have a navy to combat the Muslims. It wasn't until the ransoms got so high that it was a significant portion of the whole GDP that the US marched over there and kicked their ass. Thus began the policy US acting as world police (literally, this was the cause and start of it).

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Copid]

That's right. Also, taking sex slaves and throwing gays off of rooftops are things they're only doing out of necessity to fight off the invaders.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Copid]

(The fact that there are so many people making these arguments with a straight face that they don't come across as joking is very, very sad.)

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[chispito]

Read the grandparent. It was talking about terrorism being a disproportionate response to the US bombing civilians.

The responses to 9/11 and Pearl Harbour were both disproportionate.

Following the US example, its entirely logical for the people getting bombed to want to become terrorists and bomb back.

The response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor was disproportionate? The Japanese attacked a large US military base and the US declared war in response. That is the definition of a proportionate response. Act of war: declaration of war. Or were you trying to infer some other response, one far removed from Pearl Harbor?

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cheater512]

Dropping the only 2 nukes that have ever been used outside of tests because a military base got blown up? Yeah that sounds disproportionate to me.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cheater512]

“History is written by the victors.” Walter Benjamin

The Japanese never had a nuke program, and the Nazi program was a VERY long way from ever producing a bomb.
But there is entirely the possibility they would be less barbaric than the US if they had a bomb.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[chispito]

Your history, logic, and math are way off. There were two and a half years of war that happened between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. There were so many other factors, so many other millions of military and civilians that died before Pearl Harbor and after, that the way you're trying to directly and exclusively link them, and then apply some strange moral equivalence, absurd. Let me help with the bigger picture:
Nanking Massacre
Manila Massacre
And, lest you think I'm ignoring troubling aspects of the US prosecution of the war, keep in mind that they killed more civilians and destroyed more civilian infrastructure with conventional firebombing than were killed in either (maybe both) atomic bombings.

Seriously, just read a history book or something. The response to Pearl Harbor was entering a war. The decision to drop the atomic bombs, right or wrong, was made from within the context of that already long and bloody war. Hell, it may have been just as much about the USSR as about Japan. That should be even more troubling than your preposterous reasoning.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cheater512]

I do know the history - the nukes were dropped so the Japanese would surrender to the US instead of Russia who they had been in talks with about a surrender.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...

I'm not saying the Japanese were a bunch of innocent guys, I'm saying the US response was completely disproportionate to any real or perceived threat.

And I note you didn't go near Iraq - that one is pretty clear cut as not having anything to do with 9/11 at all.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Rakarra]

Japan bombs Pearl Harbour, and the us ends up dropping the two most devastating bombs in human history.

You make it sound like nothing happened in between those two events, or that there were no other extenuating circumstances (like Japan's Axis affiliation or your conquering of Pacific territories).

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[Rakarra]

But while the majority of Islamist terror, it's only *part*- the IRA didn't go shooting up Paris, as a great example.

I'd say the difference there is that while both of them were shooting up their enemies, the IRA considered the English their enemies, and ISIL considers anyone who is not in the caliphate to be their enemies.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[david_thornley]

The Japanese had two nuke programs, one for the Army and one for the Navy, neither with enough resources for any hope of success. (I can't remember offhand which was early on and which was late war.) It's hard to think that the country responsible for balloon bombs* wouldn't use nukes if they had them, though.

However, the Japanese were also killing millions of innocent people a year, including Chinese, Indochinese, Burmese, Indonesians, and Malayans. My estimate is that continuing the war by three months would have killed more civilians than the nukes did. The US was clearly the good guys in the Pacific War (not entirely good, of course), and Japan was the bad guys (not entirely evil, of course).

*Balloon bombs were balloons with incendiary devices attached, launched so they'd probably come down in the Pacific Northwest. Except for early cruise missiles, it's hard to imagine a more indiscriminate weapon. One of them actually managed to kill some civilians.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[david_thornley]

The Japanese also attacked in other places, against US forces in the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam, as part of a plan that included conquering what is now Indonesia, Malaya, and Burma. Pearl Harbor was the most dramatic part of it, so that's what most people remember.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[david_thornley]

Apparently you don't know the history. Try reading someone working from the Japanese side, like Frank's "Downfall" or whatever Feis wrote on it. The Japanese were not talking to the Soviets about surrendering to them, but rather wanted to use Stalin as an intermediary to negotiate stuff the Japanese never could agree on. The Japanese minimum proposal was something like no occupation of the Home Islands, Japan to try its own war criminals, Japan to determine the schedule for evacuating territory it had conquered, and retaining the Emperor.

The real threat was partly to the US Navy (losing ships to kamikazes while maintaining the blockade), but mostly to the civilians in Japanese-occupied areas. Given the rate civilians were dying in those areas, the nukes were not disproportionate.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[cheater512]

That's your estimate. Historical fact shows that they would have surrendered to the Russians within the week.
They were already in talks about the surrender with them.

That's why the bombs were dropped - so the Japanese would surrender to the US not to the Russians.

Re: "the most effective recruiter in the world"

[david_thornley]

You know what the historical facts say about Japanese surrender without the nukes? Nothing. The Japanese surrender was conducted in an unusual and not necessarily constitutional way, and nobody in Japan was sure if the surrender was going through until it did. There was a break-in at the Imperial Palace to stop the surrender. (See "Japan's Longest Day".) Any statement that the Japanese would have surrendered by X or because of Y is somebody's speculation.

The Japanese were not talking about surrendering. Richard Frank's :"Downfall" is detailed on what the Japanese were or were not saying. So, what were the Soviets going to do within that week that would cause the Japanese to surrender? The fact that their landings in the Kuriles were unsuccessful doesn't promise much for their plans to invade Hokkaido. The masterful Soviet campaign in Manchuria was no more a threat to Japan than the conquest of Okinawa had been.

Moreover, suppose Japan had decided to surrender (and it would have been a surrender on the Potsdam terms, which means not to the Soviets only). Would that surrender actually have happened? The historical surrender was iffy and not really likely to have happened, we've seen, and I see no reason to think any other surrender would have been more definite.

Your claim about the reason the nukes were used would require that, not only that you are right (which, as far as I can tell, you aren't), but that the US knew what was going on. The US didn't, and had no reason to think Japan would surrender to the Soviets (which they wouldn't anyway; if they did surrender they would have surrendered to all parties).

You may be referring to the surrender of Japanese Army forces on the mainland, which did happen and was to the Soviets. That had nothing to do with the nukes, or overall Japanese surrender.

Just give them the right tools.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. Give ISIS Windows 10 free of charge. Job done. :-)

(I'm not sure about the Geneva Convention implications of this however.)

Re:Just give them the right tools.

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them XP, and call China for tech support.

And who decides what speach is incorrect?

[fred911]

Surely we can't trust someone who directly profited from the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, basically wrecking our economy.

    Just say no to Billary...

Re:And who decides what speach is incorrect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clinton the arms dealer. She also lied and tried to cover up this as well and had to resubmit her tax returns after she got caught. So not only did she sell arms for donations allowing people to skip State Department reviews, she failed to report the bribes on her taxes as well.

I think it says a lot about the DNC when she is their candidate of choice.

Re:And who decides what speach is incorrect?

[h33t l4x0r]

Surely we can't trust someone who directly profited from the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act

So we're looking for someone who didn't have a stock portfolio in the 90s? Good luck with that. At least she's on the right side of Citizens United.

Hillary buys into market-speak

[93 Escort Wagon]

Every time a tech company comes out with a new product, the marketing droids refer to it as (yet another) "disruptive technology".

The Internet is a disruptive technology. You could argue the World Wide Web is either part of that same disruptive tech, or you could probably say it is disruptive in its own right. But all the new stuff being built on top of one or both of those things isn't "disruptive" - it's just taking advantage of the disruption that's already well underway.

However back to the matter at hand... Hillary is just once again repeating the mantra "give us back doors in encrypted communications" - she's just trying to phrase it differently. But since I imagine she's aware the tech companies generally employ people who are much smarter than she is, it's apparent the message isn't really for them - it's for the American public at large.

Re:Hillary buys into market-speak

[Viewsonic]

How do you get from asking smart people to help find ways to disrupt ISIS to her wanting to ADD back doors into encrypted communications? It really takes a leap to get from point A to point B.

Silicon Valley

[Etherwalk]

Silicon Valley has the smart people.

If the smart people are your enemy, it's because you're doing something stupid. Or at least evil. Smart people can never abide policies of stupidity.

You could harness that brainpower to create the most effective PR campaigns against ISIS in the history of the world, and instead you're making it your enemy by pretending that an Orwellian surveillance state is a good thing.

Re:Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Silicon Valley has the smart people.

50 years ago, yes. Today? Um... really?

Re:Silicon Valley

[HornWumpus]

In 1965 Si valley was Orange groves.

Re:Silicon Valley

[ultranova]

If the smart people are your enemy, it's because you're doing something stupid. Or at least evil.

Or simply something that's against their interests of the specific smart people who oppose you. That might be evil, or neutral, or even in the best interests of public at large. Being smart does not imply being ethical.

Smart people can never abide policies of stupidity.

Of course they can. Smart people are just as capable of self-deception as anyone else. They'll simply use their intelligence to hide the flaws in their logic under elaborate fantasies.

You could harness that brainpower to create the most effective PR campaigns against ISIS in the history of the world, and instead you're making it your enemy by pretending that an Orwellian surveillance state is a good thing.

Which is an excellent example of a smart person actively promoting stupid - even malevolent - policies.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Grishnakh]

God help us all should that moron get into office.

But when compared against Trump. It's like what options are we left with.

Idiots to the left. Idiots to the right. And no one supporting America's true interest in sight.

We do have a great candidate available who isn't an idiot and supports America's true interests. His name is Bernie. Of course, all the morons on the right don't like him because he believes in "socialism" (though it's really the democratic socialism that Scandinavian and other European countries have, basically what we already have with Social Security and Medicare but on steroids), and many morons on the left don't like him because he's male, not a minority, or not rabidly anti-gun (Gore was rabidly anti-gun: look how that turned out for us).

Did she just call for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did she just call for vigilantism? Yeah that always works out for everyone involved.

Re:Did she just call for...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, she called for all the companies to backdoor their encryption. If anyone steps up, then the government praises them and pats them on the head and gives them contracts and starves the competition. If no one steps up then they start passing laws to ban encryption. "I tried to talk with them rationally, but they kept on allowing math to happen, leaving me no choice but to bring out my men with guns!"

This is dog whistle for "do what I say or else". Obviously this means Hillary is a bad choice for president, but she's smugly aware that there's no good choice.

Under Bill, they almost pushed through clipper / capstone, backdoored encryption where the government gets a master key and you get a slave key. This is more of the same.

None of this would be justified if all the terrorist attacks recently had been coordinated over encrypted messages using mainstream products. But instead, none of it was- it was all plain text or face to face. This is all about making it so that encryption is harder to get- the idea that ios 8+ and new androids will be encrypted in place by default is making them panic.

Re:Did she just call for...

[Bing Tsher E]

the idea that ios 8+ and new androids will be encrypted in place by default is making them panic.

They're shitting bricks because it means they will have to go out and gather actual intelligence (again!). That means investing in shoe leather and spending less money on swivel chairs for analysts in cubicles.

You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[Anonymous Coward]

Her email fiasco already tells us that Hillary Clinton is merely a user of technology, not a developer

And you expect her to know the difference between 'Encryption' and 'Backdoor'??

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[chaboud]

I'm pretty sure that Bill knows what a backdoor is!

Honestly, trying to enlist Silicon Valley by either A) totally failing to understand what market disruption is or B) leveraging an utterly hamfisted rhetorical device? That is just failing out of the gate. Hillary looks more and more like a clueless, doddering elitist with nowhere near the mental horsepower to serve as President... And I'll probably still end up voting for her in the general...

Who the hell is running this campaign?

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[Opportunist]

If the past few presidents have been any indicator, then that being a clueless, doddering elitist is pretty much a requirement to even run for the position.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[BitZtream]

And I'll probably still end up voting for her in the general...

Idiot.

Who the hell is running this campaign?

Idiot. Are you voting for the campaign managers or the president?

You almost seem to care about what happens in politics ... but then you show that what you care about are the things that don't matter. Why the fuck are you going to vote for the shitty candidate when you know its a shitty candidate that you don't actually want. Thats a waste of a vote. It is better to do something wasteful like a write-in than it is to vote for someone you don't think should be president. Or don't vote at all FFS.

You are not helping by voting for someone you don't approve of, especially since you're approval criteria is based on choice of campaign manager rather that the candidates voting history (the one thing that actually matters)

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[dave420]

Not as idiotic as judging everyone who doesn't appreciate immature nonsense in lieu of more professional discourse by this one person. That's what you did, by the way. It's like if I said "all system engineers/architects are egotistical", simply because you happen to think anyone cares about or is impressed by your job.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[dgatwood]

The server was set up so she can do all her dirty business deals outside the eyes of the federal watchdogd. A complete disregard of the law. She tried to hide her pay Bill to get favors criminal act. Not to mention the clintons history of anti women anti law pratices. Bill hangs out and visits known sex traficers . He went to the island but did not know what was going on .

Too incoherent to even respond to.

Nah, perfectly coherent. The server was set up so because the watchdog daemon process on the federal server kept rebooting while she did her deals. She tried to hide her paycheck stub in an effort to get congress to pass a law that favors criminals. Bill hangs out and visits people who have sex with members of the Trafice family. And he went to Hawaii stoned.

Wait, what?

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[Opportunist]

Who, except the current one? Every single one was mostly elected due to the other guy being an even more geriatric fossil. It's like Soviet Russia all over. The old Soviet jokes almost work already again. "What's the difference between Monarchy and Democracy? In Monarchy, the power is passed from grandfather to grandson, in Democracy from grandfather to grandfather".

Clinton and Kennedy were the ONLY two presidents in the past century that were younger than 50 when taking office before we got a third with Obama now, and with Clinton it was a pretty close call. 50. You know that in the real world, out where there is actual work being one, 50 is pretty much the cutoff where you can't even find a job anymore because you're deemed "too old"? That this is the age where you're pretty much impossible to find anything new? But we obviously have no problem letting these old men run our future.

And it's hardly just the top executive office. Look around you in senate and congress.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[Rakarra]

How do you vote now?

You vote for the candidate you actually want. You never vote for the lesser of two evils.
Why? Because I've seen enough elections to see that the same thing happens every time.

First, you will get the choice between a really horrible candidate, and a really really horrible candidate.
Second, everyone will crusade to vote for the lesser of two evils, and they almost invariably say something along the lines of "yes, voting for your conscience is normally fine, but this is the most important election of our lifetime, and we can't afford to let win." Every election is somehow the most important, most defining moment of our lives. Every opposition leader is just "the worst person ever." And we fall for the rhetoric every time. Amazing how we don't learn, and amazing how well this works.

You know what not voting for your conscience gets you? It gets you trapped in a cycle of crappy choices that you can never get out of, because you consciously reward crappy candidates.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[Rakarra]

The server was set up so she can do all her dirty business deals outside the eyes of the federal watchdogd. A complete disregard of the law. She tried to hide her pay Bill to get favors criminal act. Not to mention the clintons history of anti women anti law pratices. Bill hangs out and visits known sex traficers . He went to the island but did not know what was going on . Please

Too incoherent to even respond to.

It's more innuendo that he doesn't have to prove, because lack of proof is proof of wrongdoing. Lack of evidence is only proof of coverup. You can't prove or disprove either way, so you can never lose.

Fortunately, our justice system doesn't (theoretically) operate that way.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Or don't vote at all FFS.

 
  That is the wrong thing to do.
 
that is throwing your vote away and does nothing about the issues.
 
Even if you just write in the name of your pet hamster for POTUSA it still gets counted as a vote that is NOT in support of the Dem or Rep candidates. How many times have we heard a winning politician claim that they had the "Mandate of the People" because they got most of the total votes cast, even though less than one third of the registered voters actually voted.
 
Sure, if most people just voted for a random candidate, even if they just write in Chuthulu, the Dem or Rep would still get into office, but if they only have slightly more than 16% of the total vote they couldn't say they represented the majority of the people.
 
So to repeat myself: The ONLY time you "throw your vote away" is when you do no vote.

Re:You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[dilvish_the_damned]

Her email fiasco already tells us that Hillary Clinton is merely a user of technology, not a developer

And you expect her to know the difference between 'Encryption' and 'Backdoor'??

Controlling access then mass deleting email is out of the Clinton's Whitehouse playbook. Making everyone think she doesn't know what she is doing is the strategy for getting away with it. I don't personally believe she can program anything, but I would not use any of this as evidence that she doesn't know how. Also "Backdoor".

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[Locke2005]

Main difference between Bill and Hillary: If Bill offers you a cigar, you should politely refuse (you don't know where it's been!) Policywise, I suspect they're not that difference. The other difference is Bill has enough charisma that he can lie to your face and make you believe he's telling the truth, whereas Hillary can tell the truth and you'll be convinced she's lying. Huge charisma deficit in the Democratic front runner.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[swell]

. . . Others have tried to explain this in complicated terms. Let me simplify:

Candidate A, who you don't like, and Candidate B, who you hate both have ~10M votes.

You write in a candidate that you like and don't vote for either A or B.

Candidate B wins the election because you (and others) took your vote away from Candidate A.

That's what you want? It's happened many times in US history. Even now, disagreement among Republican voters weakens all their candidates. Better to have the lesser evil than chance the alternative. And what point is there in writing in a name that cannot possibly win? If you're thinking "That will show them!", think again- no human will ever see your vote.

example: In 2000, Ralph Nader ran as a candidate of the Green party. This election ended in a virtual tie between George Bush and Al Gore. If Nader's 2,882,995 votes had gone to Gore, we would never have had the Bush era. There is no question that Nader is well-meaning and might have been a good president, but his intrusion into the election took important votes from Gore. We all knew Nader could not win, but some of us wasted an important vote that cost many lives, many freedoms.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[s.petry]

No, no, and no again. The person used a term which has been pounded for quite some. Women being ostracized and kept out of technical jobs, woman making 70% of what a man makes, men run around raping women at will, etc.. The error could have been as intentional as not, but I'm saying intentional. It benefits 2 separate agendas when people spew that type of nonsense. Most importantly, my correction was RIGHT!

You move right to the insults and name calling, which shows who is the person actually grasping for attention and attempting to impress people.

You can troll elsewhere, troll.

Re: You think Hillary is tech-smart?

[david_thornley]

If you like neither candidate, you can either vote for the one you dislike least, vote for a random third party in protest, or stay home. None of these are going to change who gets nominated for the next election.

If you want to have some slight influence on who the candidate is, you get involved in the politics of your party at least to some extent. You're not going to have much influence, of course, since you have to share power with a few hundred million of your best buddies, and it's going to seem like a very indirect route from your participation to the actual nomination, but reforming the process is going to have to start from where it is.

Encryption for "good guys" only

[netcruiser]

She's asking how to crack encryption so that only "good guys" can listen in on conversations; she's making it sound like a technical problem when it is a political decision.

The two are mutually exclusive

[Anonymous Coward]

"On the other hand we know there are legitimate concerns about government intrusion, network security, and creating new vulnerabilities that bad actors can and would exploit."

You can't have one and not have the other!

"We need Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary."

You can't brute force the private sector into spending money on compliance and weakening their products in the global market (Chinese contractors would LOVE to buy middleware with NSA backdoors!), and be "friends".

-----------

And more generally, the war on "unbreakable encryption" is just such an unbelievably stupid concept. It's an OBVIOUS power grab for intelligence agencies, and it takes nothing more than common sense to see that you can't ban encryption and mandate backdoors for everything. Encryption has been around for thousands of years and, barring spooky quantum computing tech, open source projects, personal projects, and most importantly *products from countries that don't mandate backdoors* will always be widely available to those who seek encrypted communication. If someone really cares about encryption, they'll still be able to find a solution. It's as dumb as spending years in court trying to block The Pirate Bay, and then WHOOPS they just change the extension.

More importantly, the recent terrorist attacks have been planned by UNENCRYPTED communication. We're talking facebook posts and text messaging!!! I mean *come on*, it's such an obvious power grab that won't make us any safer, like the TSA. It makes me sick to see these mouthpieces for power hungry organizations spout this asinine rhetoric and use these attacks to further their own agendas (like 9/11 was used to invade Iraq). It needs to stop, and the media needs to call them out. At least the major tech companies are pushing back against this. Then again, it's expected, they have billions of dollars of market value hinging on it, and risk being forced to be uncompetitive in broad swaths of security sectors due to these idiotic policies.

The whole thing is a can of worms. It's not like only America is going to get backdoors, that's just an unrealistic elitist view. Hackers get backdoors, corporations get backdoors which will inevitably be abused for profit as personnel changes over time, other intelligence agencies get backdoors, other countries will follow suit and get backdoors (China/Russia/you name it... Skype Saudi Arabia edition! Use it or be banned from the market in our country!) This entire line of policy, frankly, leads to shit, and Solicon Valley is right to consider these people their enemies.

Re:If all it takes

[Grishnakh]

You can't prove the Quran wrong; that's completely ridiculous. It's not a scientific text, it's a history book along with some mystical mumbo-jumbo and a bunch of philosophy. The mystical crap can't be disproven unless you can build a time machine, and you can't "disprove" a philosophy. The only thing you can do is try to convince people it's a bad philosophy. But philosophies basically are by-products of cultures and their ethoses, and you can't just force change on a culture. The only thing you can do is separate yourself from a culture you find distasteful.

Want to really get those terrorists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep on living in a free world while terrorists claw feebly at our liberty.

Dont join in on the bigotry. Thats what they want. They want us to hate them as much as they hate us. They want us to attack them like they attack us. They want all the decisions of the world decided by violence.

Dont give them what they want.

They have disrupted

[phantomfive]

The code of any major OS is so insecure that the NSA should have no problem hacking into them, and figuring out what the terrorists want. Good job Silicon Valley! Way to disrupt!

Re:They have disrupted

[93 Escort Wagon]

The code of any major OS is so insecure that the NSA should have no problem hacking into them, and figuring out what the terrorists want. Good job Silicon Valley! Way to disrupt!

FYI Redmond isn't anywhere near Silicon Valley...

(I kid, I kid)

Re:They have disrupted

[phantomfive]

Apple and Google are just as guilty as Microsoft in this. And Microsoft does have a SV office FWIW

Re:They have disrupted

[Anonymous Coward]

We're way past the windows xp days at this point. It's been significantly harder to hack windows since vista and each release gets better. I'm all for open source, but Microsoft has improved a lot and they deserve credit for that. Further, if you look at the number of vulnerabilities that come out for a full OS rather than just the kernel, Windows is competitive to many Linux distros and OS X, for desktop use. Have you looked at the number of ubuntu updates?

Just the stream of OpenSSL vulnerabilities have caused every major open source OS to have security patches. Those count.

As to google, they've failed to fix the android security problem. It's not that android is more insecure than any other OS, it's that users can't get the patches! It takes weeks, sometimes months to get android updates for tablets. Google has been trying to fix this, but so much android hardware is slow that it can't run the updates. Google needs to set minimum hardware and maintain it for at least 3 major releases and provide patches for at least 3 years. Microsoft at least patches windows and releases updates for it that people can actually get! Apple supports their iOS platform for several years with updates after product releases most of the time.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Islam and the Koran is a rather warfare and combat oriented religion.

"I believe in an America ... where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all." --JFK, remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, September 12, 1960

Re:First step...

[Anonymous Coward]

All American military bases abroad are a big cost for US taxpayers providing free national defense to other countries.

Please make yourselves targets

[sandbagger]

Hi:

No. People in uniform get paid for that.

'Kthnxbye.

disruptive doesnt mean what she thinks

[just another AC]

She just asked Silicon Valley to be a better, more practical ISIS to usurp the ISIS business model. She wants Silicon valley to deliver a better tool that more potential ISIS members will want to use to more effectively do what ISIS members do.

She just asked Silicon Valley to destroy America and its allies.

This is what happens when politicians and marketing people collide. But hey the sound bite registered well with Joe Sixpack.

Re:disruptive doesnt mean what she thinks

[SvnLyrBrto]

So, war-cries of "Apple Ackbar" then?

Re:If all it takes

[Wycliffe]

You can't prove the Quran wrong; that's completely ridiculous. It's not a scientific text, it's a history book along with some mystical mumbo-jumbo and a bunch of philosophy. The mystical crap can't be disproven unless you can build a time machine, and you can't "disprove" a philosophy. The only thing you can do is try to convince people it's a bad philosophy. But philosophies basically are by-products of cultures and their ethoses, and you can't just force change on a culture. The only thing you can do is separate yourself from a culture you find distasteful.

I think there is something else you can do. There are over 1 billion muslims. I'm not sure what percentage are "extremists" but only a small percentage are "violent extremists". As I'm more familiar with the christian faith, I'm going to talk about it but I think the same basic premise probably applies. Most christians are not extremists. Most "christian extremists" do things like build churches in third world countries and/or pray in front of abortion clinics. A very small percentage of christian extremists end up as violent extremists that bomb abortion clinics, etc... The same argument can be made for "enviromental extremists", "political extremists", etc... As there are a lot more extremists than violent extremists, what causes one to become a violent extremist? I'm not sure it's that the violent extremists are "more extreme". Many non-violent extremists are willing to sacrifice their own livelihood and sometimes even lives in pursuit of their pet cause but very few are willing to harm other people (especially innocent people). We need to figure out what makes a person cross over where they are willing to blow up a whaling ship, attempt to assassinate the president, etc... If we can figure that out and find a way to prevent people from crossing over then we would be alot closer to solving all the random shootings, etc... that are happening around the world.

Concessions First

[mentil]

If you want something in Congress, you have to give concessions first. I say the intelligence community should give concessions before anyone helps them. Particularly, bolstering FISC with an agency that has the clearance and authority to investigate cases and programs of intelligence agencies, and the teeth to publicly expose and prosecute certain projects/actions and those who authorized them. Which projects you ask? The agency can refer one to a branch of FISC, who can hold mock trials for constitutionality, with the agency giving their case that it is unconstitutional or unlawful. If FISC is not unanimous that the project or action is lawful and constitutional, then the project is immediately put on hold pending the case being escalated to SCOTUS.

Furthermore, permanent gag orders related to national security letters and orders need to be replaced with ones that quickly expire. The no-fly list and terrorist watchlist need to be purged and reworked, with a vetting process for removal no more difficult than passing a classified information clearance background check. Policy and law should disallow mandated (or even voluntary cooperation a la PRISM) software backdoors. The agency should inspect domestic internet backbones and switching points to ensure the domestic intelligence community is not tapping them physically. Intel swapping to gain domestic data (e.g. Five Eyes) should be made illegal.

Then, and only then, should we give one fuck about what the intelligence community wants.

Censorship is not the answer

[subreality]

Creating a widespread system of censorship is not the right approach:

1) It violates the principles the United States was founded on.
2) Suppressing the free flow of information deprives people of the liberty to make their own informed decisions.
3) When other opinions are squelched, the communication channel becomes a propaganda channel and loses all credibility.
4) This infrastructure will be abused. Now, ISIS. Next, common criminals. Eventually, dissidents.

Buying votes

[Okian Warrior]

bottom line: i'm done with her. she lies and lies even more to cover up those lies. thought she had a chance. no more.

Curiously, she seems to be polling higher than the lead republican candidate (Trump).

Every time she speaks, she mentions how "there should be a tax deduction for $x", where $x is tailored to the audience. There should be a deduction for college tuition, a deduction for caring for elderly parents, an individual deduction for health care costs, and so on.

It would appear she's "buying" votes with tax incentives.

Of course, these are just campaign promises, and she's going to pay for it by raising taxes on the rich. Go figure.

Re:Buying votes

[rsborg]

bottom line: i'm done with her. she lies and lies even more to cover up those lies. thought she had a chance. no more.

It would appear she's "buying" votes with tax incentives.

Of course, these are just campaign promises, and she's going to pay for it by raising taxes on the rich. Go figure.

As opposed to the Republican candidates who essentially lie in the other direction (claim to lower taxes on the rich/businesses by killing programs that serve the working class/poor - effectively raising tax rates for the services they still receive.).

In the end they will both serve the elite and mega-corps and the NSA/security state. Have no doubt on that. If you don't think ISIS is a construct of US meddling with the middle-east, you haven't been paying attention.

Re:Buying votes

[Anonymous Coward]

Curiously, she seems to be polling higher [realclearpolitics.com] than the lead republican candidate (Trump).

Curiously? Admittedly, I am an outsider when it comes to American politics, but what I would find curious is if a retarded monkey failed to poll higher than Trump.

Re:Buying votes

[MikeMo]

Curiously, she seems to be polling higher than the lead republican candidate (Trump).

That has more to do with Trump than Hillary.

Re:Buying votes

[dbIII]

If you don't think ISIS is a construct of US meddling with the middle-east

Consequence not construct. The roots were in Saudi Arabia with the rich sending money for "the struggle" and Turkey wanting something to counter the Kurds. Add in a large group of people locked out of the US funded government in Iraq and all it took was a match to blow up. So fuckup and not paying attention to actions of backstabbing allies instead of a deliberate construction. Yet another spectacular failure of spooks playing at being toy soldiers. The thing that boogles me the most is ISIL/ISIS/Daash were and most likely still are exporting large amounts of oil despite having skies full of opposing fighters and bombers.

Re:Buying votes

[HornWumpus]

You honestly believe nobody could see the sunni/shea war restarting?

It's only been going on for 1000 years, give or take. Everybody knew that it would get going again.

It was planned and the only reason they aren't crowing now is it would defeat the purpose. We don't want the Muslims to stop killing each other. At least not until they are out of oil and once again broke.

Re:Buying votes

[ITRambo]

Typical traditional party candidate promising something to everyone and later delivering only for those that helped and can further help the candidate. Both parties lie.

Re:Buying votes

[ganjadude]

if a retarded monkey failed to poll higher than Trump.

apparently one is (hillary)

Re:Buying votes

[dbIII]

You are acting as if Horse Judges and the spook that called in a set designer to do up his office like Star Trek are not calling the shots.
Yes, the experts said that allowing the sunni/shea divide to increase by having only one side in charge of everything was very bad news. They were not listened to - hence the consequences. You knew this. I knew this. Every grunt on the ground in the middle east knew this. The spooks on the political fast track dismissed it out of hand as not their problem.
Remember that they didn't even see the Arab spring coming?
Do you think they suddenly got superpowers, or even basic competence, in the time since?

Re:Buying votes

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the cheering Muslims... that happened after 9/11... in Gaza. ISTR, There was no cheering in the US on camera, and if that footage came to light, it would prove me wrong. Plus, after 9/11, anyone cheering like that would be torn to pieces by a crowd that was wanting Bush to nuke Afghanistan.

The problem is that Trump is in a "perfect storm" position. Obama has been an intelligent leader, doing well to defang the hatred against the US after Iraq. However, Obama is an ivory tower type, and surrounded himself by similar ivory tower people. He made the mistake of leaving Iraq as per politics... which left a power vacuum, and every political intel person around was saying that would lead to the most brutal, sociopathic group gaining power... and now we have Daesh.

The US is a lot like 1930s Germany. We have a population of people who are disinterested in politics completely, won't vote. We have a sagging economy (H-1Bs are commonplace, if dev work isn't sucked offshore), lots of random attacks on US soil, with leadership that blames a segment of the population for those atrocities as opposed to the actual culprits. Now, we have someone vying for office who is willing to put political correctness aside, which is rallying the base, especially with promises of being a Churchill after 8 years of what is viewed at as Chamberlain-esque appeasment (even though Obama did do some decisive victories.) To boot, people are actually pissed off and not just venting on social media.

I get worried. I'm hoping Bernie wins, because he is the only voice of sanity in all this... but it looks like the same rhetoric blaming bad economic times on ethnic groups back in the 1930s will be used for another autocrat to ascend to power. If not 1930s, I'd almost say more like the times of the Reign of Terror in 18'th century France.

This isn't good. I am ashamed to see Islamaphobia rearing its head... I thought our society was better than that, and the lessons from World War 2 would have been learned.

Re:Buying votes

[Opportunist]

And as if that's not sad by itself, the fact that someone like Hillary is STILL considered the better choice... was the water cooler no option anymore? He sure had more personality than both of them combined.

Re:Buying votes

[slew]

The thing that boogles me the most is ISIL/ISIS/Daash were and most likely still are exporting large amounts of oil despite having skies full of opposing fighters and bombers.

That's because nobody wants to "bomb" the oil production fields. The reasons given are this...

* ecological disaster associated with a burning oil field that nobody might be able to put out for years because of the fighting
* if/when ISIS is defeated, it's the oil only source of income for the government

All those fighters/bombers are doing are bombing the mobile refineries hidden and scattered around the country. Word on the street is that ISIS is buying the parts for making these mobile refineries out of parts bought from Alibaba so they can make them about as fast as anyone can bomb them. Apparently these refineries are the size of a moonshine still and the cart the refined product is sold relatively locally. That's the problem with a fungible commodity, there's literally no way to stop the black market. If they can make it, they *can* sell it...

Re:Buying votes

[dbIII]

Apparently these refineries are the size of a moonshine still

If you don't care about cracking the heavy stuff it's not so difficult to only distill out the light stuff - very wasteful but you get something.

Re:Buying votes

[CrimsonAvenger]

Of course, these are just campaign promises, and she's going to pay for it by raising taxes on the rich.

Since the President has no power to either raise or reduce taxes, she's just blowing smoke.

Re:Buying votes

[Tom]

The thing that boogles me the most is ISIL/ISIS/Daash were and most likely still are exporting large amounts of oil despite having skies full of opposing fighters and bombers.

Yeah, you'd think they intentionally didn't attack the weakest spot and went for nice but ineffectual TV images instead...

Re:Buying votes

[DarkOx]

by killing programs that serve the working class/poor - effectively raising tax rates for the services they still receive

Those programs are why we have working class poor. If you giving things to 'working' poor you or subsidizing labor, and pushing wages down below market rate. Programs for the working poor are not giveaways to the poor they are giveaways to 1%er corporate owners. They enable the expanding wage gap.

If you really want to help the working poor, you fix illegal immigration so everyone working in America has access to a common system of legal protections and nobody can be paid less than the minimum wage. That is the first step.

The next thing you need to do is start rolling pack all those social support programs, you need force people to do what they need to do to make ends meet. If that means leaving coasts for Midwest that is what needs to happen. We need to incite people to go where they can earn a living wage with the skills they possess.

Re:Buying votes

[Zontar The Mindless]

The President submits the nation's budget to Congress, and has the power to approve or veto bills affecting spending and taxes.

So, no, the President doesn't have the power to raise or lower taxes *directly*, but, no, she's not just blowing smoke, either.

Re:Buying votes

[L. J. Beauregard]

"What [people] need to do to make ends meet" often involves the use of deadly force.

Re:Buying votes

[dave420]

If you think the US is like 1930s Germany you either need to learn more about the modern-day US or 1930s Germany, as your understanding of at least one of them is severely messed up.

Re:Buying votes

[Whorhay]

"The next thing you need to do is start rolling pack all those social support programs, you need force people to do what they need to do to make ends meet. If that means leaving coasts for Midwest that is what needs to happen. We need to incite people to go where they can earn a living wage with the skills they possess."

One of the problem with this is that the groups with wealth have leveraged that to lock in the working poor. Need to cancel your cable because your income shrunk, that'll be a few hundred dollars in fees. Many low income households take advantage of lower prices through subscription, but it means they end up locked in and can't take action when their income shrinks. Moving is a significant barrier to most people because it's not just about them. Moving with a family to somewhere that you don't have social support already available, and usually with no bankroll to speak of, is rough and scary as hell.

That isn't to say that it doesn't need to happen, but it's not an easy thing to make happen.

Re:Buying votes

[slew]

Apparently these refineries are the size of a moonshine still

If you don't care about cracking the heavy stuff it's not so difficult to only distill out the light stuff - very wasteful but you get something.

Not that ISIS probably cares about being efficient, but AFAIK, the type of oil in the northern Iraq region control by ISIS is exceptionally light crude (as light as 48 API aka champagne crude) where they don't actually require much cracking to get usable fractions. The Rumalia fields (in Basura in the south) tend to be the ones with mixed and heavier crude oil and more complicated refining to get usable fractions.

Re:Buying votes

[rsborg]

The next thing you need to do is start rolling pack all those social support programs, you need force people to do what they need to do to make ends meet. If that means leaving coasts for Midwest that is what needs to happen. We need to incite people to go where they can earn a living wage with the skills they possess.

Sorry, your words just sound like elitist pablum.

Sure, lets just make things harder for those who have the least - because, welp, that'll just make em stronger! I have an idea, why not make things harder for the rich who have so much, and force them to pay back into the society that made them rich? We can start with simply removing the tax loopholes that make investment income less taxed than working income - you know how it was back in Reagan's day. I'm not even proposing we go back to (that old socialist) Eisenhower's tax rates.

Re:Buying votes

[HornWumpus]

I believe that nobody could see how the details would play out and knew it.

But I also believe that people like Rumsfeld, Powel etc knew that sunni/shea war was the most likely endgame and that taking out Iraq was regionally destabilizing.

They also know that 'their friends' the Saudis aren't allies at all. They don't want to actually knock the Saudi royals out of power. Just make them more focus their attention and money on holding onto power.

Remember these are many of the same people that maintained the balance between Iraq and Iran in the 80s. Sunni vs. Shea was the thing that worked well for them last time.

Re:Buying votes

[dbIII]

With respect anything less than a full refinery does no cracking at all. There are two main things going on - distillation to separate out the stuff you want, which can be done on crude, and cracking so that you can later distill out MORE of what you want.

Distillation sorts by weight in this case.

Cracking breaks up big heavy chains, oil that doesn't flow very well, into shorter chains.

So if you are prepared to put up with a lot of waste, just like was usual a century ago, a refinery can be distillation only.

Re:Buying votes

[dbIII]

But I also believe that people like Rumsfeld, Powel etc knew that sunni/shea war was the most likely endgame and that taking out Iraq was regionally destabilizing

And going by past performance they wouldn't give a shit if they knew. Rumsfeld "destabilized" the US military TWICE. It had barely recovered before he came back and tried to cut back on anything that made the difference between professional soldiers and mindless warriors. Thankfully he was far too incompetent to accomplish it.

Re:Buying votes

[dbIII]

It's amazing because he was a decent SecDef under Gerald Ford

Are you serious? Go ask your Dad.

You are correct,

[Anonymous Coward]

but she is not unique. It is a matter of logical necessity that *all* politicians lie.

First off, the job is most attractive to sociopaths, so liars are already over-represented in the group of candidates.

Second, the liars have an advantage over the honest candidates (the precious few) when campaigning, since the liars can promise that which they know to be impossible, or that which they have no intention of delivering. The liars can also produce stronger attack-ads to discredit their rivals, and can brazenly deny the ones produced against them even if they are true. Also, the liars have no problems forming alliances with special-interest groups who's interests run counter to the voter's agenda, and receiving more financial backing than the honest ones can. So, in general, the liars win.

Third, once in office, the only means of furthering a political agenda is to cooperate with other politicians and special interest groups. The system is designed to make it impossible to operate alone. So, those who are willing to compromise on their principles will have far more political allies. Those who are willing to lie as easily as breathe will have the most political allies, and will absolutely crush any politician that does not do the same.

So, eventually, the honest ones get shut down and shut out, leaving only the liars (and the *best* liars, at that) behind.

They all lie. They always will. Every damn one of them.

Re:You are correct,

[AmiMoJo]

It's actually worse than just liars prospering. In the UK many people have long been complaining that we don't have enough "conviction politics", people who stand by their convictions rather than simply pandering to what their spin doctors tell them people want. Essentially our politics is based on focus groups being manipulated by spin doctors.

Now we have some conviction politicians, namely Jeremy Corbyn and associates. Suddenly people have realized that they don't like some of his policies, and so won't vote for him. Honesty and conviction are liabilities, because voters are dumb.

To be fair it's not entirely the voters fault. David Cameron, the man Corbyn has to beat, is an expert at giving vague, non-committal statements that are largely policy free. He is particularly good at it before elections. Essentially everything he promises is so vague that it's hard to be offended by him, because you can read whatever you like into it. Nigel Farrage is similar, often saying things that bigots can read as supporting and confirming their hatred, while slightly more moderate voters can read as a sign that he isn't racist or sexist or homophobic, just genuine and concerned. He plays to the anti-political-correctness crowd brilliantly, without being too specific about actual policies.

That's where we are. Extremely vague and general statements rather than specific policies. Note how Clinton says she thinks there should be tax breaks, not that she will definitely try to enact them if she is elected.

Trump has really jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

His antics were amusing and refreshing, but as I read his views, I sort of expected deeper thinking and it was missing.

This whole "New York Muslims cheered 911" thing, he's clearly confusing this incident:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123885&page=1

Yet he can't back down and admit he's wrong, as if his face saving trumps (pun not intended) the real world.

I think people want to elect Bill Clinton, and she's sort of a placeholder. They hope if they vote for Hilary they'll get Bill, but sadly I doubt that's the case. She really thinks she's competent.

I still don't see a decent candidate in the US elections. The rest of them are just grey background color.

Trump is front and center

[Okian Warrior]

God help us all should that moron get into office.

But when compared against Trump. It's like what options are we left with.

Idiots to the left. Idiots to the right. And no one supporting America's true interest in sight.

Don't tell me what he *is*, tell me what he *did*. Tell me what he *said*.

Anyone can case aspersions on a candidate(*).

Here's an example of something Trump actually *did*.

At the first [R] debate everyone was falling over themselves to pledge not to run as an independent... except Trump. He forced the GOP to make a deal with him, and knowing him he probably got something out of the deal.

That's a level of political savvy that we don't normally see in America. If he can bring that expertise to the white house, then we might start getting better trade deals and better laws. He's said he wants to make America great again.

All of Trump's controversial statements have put him front-and-center in the minds of Americans for the last 3 months. He's had more name recognition than all the other candidates put together, including Hillary.

I can name several things Donald has said in the last 3 months, none of which are without merit or irrational.

You may disagree whole heartedly, but you can't claim that any of them is irrational or without merit. Most of the controversy has been puffed up by the media by using sentence fragments taken without context.

In the last three months, what has Hillary said?

(*) I'm a fan of Trump, and would welcome informed debate about the candidates. Unfortunately, most people here can't rub two words together to spark a rational argument. Anyone is welcome to take that as a challenge, if you feel up to it.

Re:Trump is front and center

[dbIII]

I can name several things Donald has said in the last 3 months, none of which are without merit or irrational

An effective trick is to state problems but not solutions.
If you do not believe in magic it's best to avoid those that employ that trick.

So there you go, something to watch out for and how someone can say something that is perfectly true but completely and utterly useless.

Re:Trump is front and center

[Zero__Kelvin]

If you can listen to Trump for more than 60 seconds without recoiling in disgust and wanting to change the channel then I have bad news for you. That makes you an even bigger douchebag than Trump.

Re:Trump is front and center

[Wonko the Sane]

(*) I'm a fan of Trump, and would welcome informed debate about the candidates. Unfortunately, most people here can't rub two words together to spark a rational argument. Anyone is welcome to take that as a challenge, if you feel up to it.

If you can listen to Trump for more than 60 seconds without recoiling in disgust and wanting to change the channel then I have bad news for you. That makes you an even bigger douchebag than Trump.

I suppose trying and failing is better than not even trying at all.

Re:Trump is front and center

[Bing Tsher E]

If you can listen to Trump for more than 60 seconds without recoiling in disgust and wanting to change the channel then I have bad news for you. That makes you an even bigger douchebag than Trump.

Did you wee all over yourself while you typed that? Good. We need people like you out there ranting.

Re:Trump is front and center

[Zero__Kelvin]

Nobody is ranting. You might want to take a remedial English class. Indeed, your inability to understand what he says could be a reasonable explanation for not understanding that he is a douche.

Re:Trump is front and center

[Rakarra]

AKA "when I lose arguments I pretend it's because the opponent was just too stupid to understand my superior position".

That's the nature of the Narcissist, of which Trump is a prime example. "I didn't make a mistake, you were just too stupid to accept my argument."

Re:So let me get this straight.

[SeaFox]

Idiots to the left. Idiots to the right. And no one supporting America's true interest in sight.

This should be a bumper sticker.

Replace with what?

[Taco Cowboy]

... wake up, rise up, and throw them out ...

Okay, we wake up, rise up and throw all the rascals out ... then WHAT??

What do we replace them with?

The same ol' shit?

It isn't that I am a cynic, but I've seen enough of the bullshit from inside the beltway to become extremely wary of the politicians

Re:Replace with what?

[TheRaven64]

Replace them by coopting people who do not actively seek power over others to work as representatives of the people, rather than holding a popularity contest with entry tickets costing a few million dollars.

Re:Replace with what?

[Rakarra]

Replace them by coopting people who do not actively seek power over others to work as representatives of the people, rather than holding a popularity contest with entry tickets costing a few million dollars.

And where does the power come from for people who don't seek power to force others out of office? Because clearly the general public doesn't really have a problem with the "power seeker" type.

How about we do it more directly

[dbIII]

How about we do it more directly and stop buy oil from those Saudis that are funding ISIS/Daash and those oil companies that are buying oil from ISIS/Daash.
Blocking a few web pages isn't going to do anywhere near as much in comparison. They need funds more than they need recruits.

Re:How about we do it more directly

[BigU 03C0mpin]

Go read about how well the Saudi's, and that silly little thing called OPEC, are doing at the current price of oil.They're
shopping the shit out of it and still can't make a profit. Saudi Arabia the country is already screwed. They are now
operating at a huge loss and hemorrhaging money so fast that they will go bankrupt in 5 years without economic reform

They engineered the oil price drop. They gambled on breaking the U.S. fracking industry and lost as efficiency increased
fast enough, in concert with, lowered demand to out pace Saudi Arabia's production efficiency. S.A. planned on us banning
fracking, we didn't.

They also planned on China needing more oil than China does due to a slowdown in China.

Saudi Arabia has too much to handle at home to pick a dog in this fight. The hause of Saud is crumbling, there will not be a lot
more money to throw at things like political ideaology unless quite a few people stop being able to afford private jets, million dollar
sports cars, and estates in Monaco with each of the aforementioned on hand at all times plus a complete wardrobe equal to the
regality and status of the selection at home. Not to mention it's a lot more difficult to maintain and operate that U.S. sourced
military air power.

Re:How about we do it more directly

[dbIII]

They are now operating at a huge loss

And driving the competition, mostly new US shale oil startups, out of business - deliberately.
Nice "allies" aren't they? Add in their funding of Daash/ISIL and a bunch of others.

Re:How about we do it more directly

[Tom]

This.

Follow the money. Always follow the money.

The day we stop bombing huts in the desert and start bombing those who illegally buy the oil will be the day ISIS downfall begins.

And no, bombing their tankers won't do the same. Trucks can and will be replaced, and you will never get all of them. You need to stop the buyers from buying, and I bet you the CIA et al know exactly who the buyers are. They're just not saying it, because inconveniently they are friends and allies and we need them for other parts of our geopolitical game.

If we gave Hillary to ISIS ...

[exabrial]

Well... I mean it'd seem we'd be solving a few problems at once

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Grishnakh]

Well for the people who care about this, they only see people as a "minority" if they're a racial minority that generally doesn't do well economically in the US. So Jewish people (which isn't really a race, there are many different ethnicities of Jews) and Asians don't count. The full term is "disadvantaged minorities". Somehow Asians don't get this status because, while they're certainly a minority, they actually do really well scholastically and economically, usually a lot better than Caucasians on average.

Oil

[Bram Stolk]

Step1 in defeating them is so easy:

Severely punish everyone buying isis oil.
Assesinate them by cia if req'd.

But somehow, the super power with oil addiction is far too sensitive when it comes to oil interests.
Quit that oil addiction and hit the buyers hard.

Maybe put radioactive tracers in the wells, and close down all refinaries where the trace shows up.
Especially if it is a US owned refinary. Bomb it if you must.

Hillary don't know ...

[CaptainDork]

... bullshit from wild honey.

That crap was teleprompted to her by non-techies and it comes out as a null.

She's against encryption but she appreciates that Americans value their privacy???

Which is it?

Also, I'm Silicon Valley-ish in that I'm tech.

Is she green-lighting for me to do some hacking?

"I was just trying to bring down ISIS for Hillary Clinton and stuff."

Re:If all it takes

[Grishnakh]

Most "christian extremists" do things like build churches in third world countries and/or pray in front of abortion clinics.

No, they do more than that. They go to 3rd-world countries in Africa and build churches and then teach people how "evil" gay people are, and encourage them to pass laws legalizing the murder of gay people.

We need to figure out what makes a person cross over where they are willing to blow up a whaling ship, attempt to assassinate the president, etc...

I don't think it's that simple. For instance, it actually makes logical sense to blow up a whaling ship if you want to stop whaling. It's pretty hard to kill whales without a proper whaling ship after all. And if you blow up such a ship, it'll make potential crewmembers think twice about joining another whaling crew. It's not like there's lots and lots of whaling ships and whalers out there: it's a really small population. It's kinda like killing poachers: there just aren't very many of them, so extermination is a viable solution, though obviously grim. That's why countries trying to protect their endangered animals have adopted the extermination route.

Assassinating the President is actually a pretty stupid thing to do if you think about it. It's not like the country is going to change course 180 degrees if you do that, plus you can kiss your life goodbye (either shot, or jailed forever). It's really more of a symbolic act than anything, a way of getting attention, or a product of mental disorder. Look at the last assassination attempt (Reagan): the assassin was a lunatic. JFK's killer (putting aside any conspiracy theories for the moment) was mentally unbalanced. (Or, maybe he was set up by someone else, who took advantage of his mental state.) Lincoln's killer was also mentally unbalanced, and pissed about the Civil War.

Similarly, terrorist acts really don't make that much sense if you're trying to accomplish real change. Killing a few dozen people isn't going to affect population numbers in any significant way, and as we've seen, it doesn't affect policy much, in fact it usually makes it much worse for whatever group sponsored the terrorists by creating blowback: the attacked nation unleashes their military and bombs the shit out of wherever the terrorists came from. I guess you could argue it helps their cause by killing their own people, driving more of them to joining the terrorists, but that seems rather short-sighted, though that is a common human failing. But unlike sinking whaling ships, it's not going to fix your problem quickly.

Simply put: if you sank a small handful of whaling ships tomorrow, whaling would end for a while (they'd need to build or outfit some new ones), and quite possibly for good if it puts the whalers out of business which it very well could. But killing the president or murdering a few dozen people in a terrorist action is not going to, for instance, cause western nations to suddenly pull out of the Middle East or convert to Islam. So I don't think the mentality is quite the same. The first, while exceeding most people's boundaries of appropriate action, makes some logical sense, if in a brutal fashion. The second, does not.

Re:In Soviet America ...

[CaptainDork]

Stop it. You're gonna make me cry.

"Great disrupters"

[Anonymous Coward]

My she sure thinks highly of Silicon Valley. If those meddling disrupters can find classified mail she scrubbed clean then they must be capable of anything!!!

I agree with those claiming this is a very wrong approach and disrupting the flow of free speech should not be the solution to dealing with ISIS. They'll just find a way around it like criminals usually do while creating a tool for the Government to disrupt us should they choose to abuse it in the future.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[fluffernutter]

Personally I can't stop trying to put it to the melody of 'Stuck in the middle with you'.

Pay those ...

[CaptainDork]

... goddam Anonymous turds and get off our lawn.

asking the wrong people

[plopez]

Considering Silly Valley's support for oppressive regimes, e.g. The Great Firewall of China, they are the wrong people to ask. The only worse whores are the weapons manufacturers.

Fuck Off Hitlery...

[O('_')O_Bush]

...You should have done your goddamn job in the State Department instead of letting this shit get wild. I don't want another big brother in the Silicon Valley making 'oops' all over our internet to cover for your fuck-ups.

Who cares?

[khasim]

The stated goal of ISIS is a global caliphate governed by Sharia law implemented by the sword.

So? Who cares?

What's the worst that they can do to us? Or to China? Or to Russia? They're a third-string wannabe that is getting all the media hype because FEAR SELLS.

And it is easy for politicians to look tough by calling for more military action against them.

Re:Who cares?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Third-rate wannabe? No, there are plenty of third-rate wannabe terrorist groups and none of them have successfully attacked Paris and the continental USA. The Islamic State isn't the "jayvee" as your wonderful Obama stated. Get with the program, stop believing the President, get some facts into your brain, and THINK.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, they're a ghost - a scary thing to keep the children in line. Trying to kill ISIS is like trying to stamp on ants, there's a fair few of them, they can give you a nasty bite, but they scatter and reform wherever they can.

If they ever establish a caliphate, that would be the end of them, a single group with something real to lose. At best they would become the new North Korea, at worst they'd be a scorched patch of earth.

But right now, they're politically useful to a lot of people with power.

Hillary better be careful.

[Irate Engineer]

ISIS might "disrupt" her snizz with a snuke!

Do I risk being called unpatriotic?

[Anonymous Coward]

We should all consider this a very frightening initiative. From a dollars and cents perspective, why would I want use company resources for spying on my customers and sifting through the inordinate amount of false-positives generated from monitoring/censoring our data.

If I don't bring my company policies in line with government objectives - do I risk being called unpatriotic? How can I build trust with customers, protect shareholder value, and keep the government happy...damned if I do, damned if I don't.

It's an interesting gambit to have the government challenge tech companies rather than just contract them - I'm surprised no one made the idea popular sooner, but hopefully no one buys in more than they already have.

Although, maybe we could simply apply these new censorship technologies equitably and have social media companies remove all hate speech from their feeds. My cousins' posts are essentially calling for an end to all black people, but I don't see anyone calling them terrorists and deleting their posts.

Disrupting Daesh social media

[Applehu Akbar]

Shouldn't this be a job for that omnipotent NSA everyone in here fears so much? If Hillary Clinton, not some Republican, admits that the private sector has to do this job, I think we're a lot safer from the great spy threat than we thought.

Re:Disrupting Daesh social media

[Wonko the Sane]

NSA needs plausible deniability for their hardware backdoors, thus the push for software backdoors.

Fuck you, Hillary.

[jcr]

When that fascist cunt says "we need to put (anyone) to work to (do something)", she's exposing her belief that other people are hers to command. Fuck that noise.

-jcr

Re:Tech companies should join STASI

[Applehu Akbar]

"propping up a regime that gasses its own people"

It is well known to all liberal hipsters that the US is evil when it lets Middle Eastern Dictatorships stand and also when it pulls them down. Or just maybe, a critical-mass percentage of people in the region are just cult-crazed rabid killbots, and have been for as long as anyone can remember. Why else would women, after reading the news about how Daesh treats its females as slaves and party favors, rush over to join the movement?

But we're nerds, remember, and we're supposed to Think Different. Perhaps we should investigate the Middle Eastern microbial ecosystem for some species analogous to this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Read closely the part about effects on humans)

Re:STFU you dumb cunt

[jcr]

If she shuts up, she'll get elected. I cling to the hope that she'll keep spewing this kind of bullshit until even her starry-eyed SJW minions start to realize that she's evil.

-jcr

Proposed French Law: Block Tor & Forbid Free W

[Anonymous Coward]

Related:

http://slashdot.org/submission...
http://slashdot.org/firehose.p...

After Paris Attacks, Proposed French Law Would Block Tor and Forbid Free Wi-Fi

"After the recent Paris terror attacks, the French government is proposing to forbid and block the use of the Tor anonymity network, according to an internal document from the Ministry of Interior seen by French newspaper Le Monde.

That document lays out two proposed pieces of legislation, one around the state of emergency, and the other concerning counter-terrorism.

In the former, the French government is considering to "Forbid free and shared wi-fi connections" during a state of emergency. This comes from a police opinion included in the document: the reason being that it is apparently difficult to track individuals who use public wi-fi networks.

The latter piece of legislation, meanwhile, says the government is considering "to block or forbid communications of the Tor network." The legislation, according to Le Monde, could be presented as early as January 2016."

- http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

Re:If all it takes

[cold fjord]

No, they do more than that. They go to 3rd-world countries in Africa and build churches and then teach people how "evil" gay people are, and encourage them to pass laws legalizing the murder of gay people

Your complaint seems a bit "one dimensional" and not meaninfully representative of the activities of Christian churches and relief organizations in areas such as Africa. (Speaking of Africa, have you seen the AIDs rates in some of those countries? It is a holocaust in the making. You may recall that President Bush dedicated billions to fight it. Any ideas as to his motiviation?)

As an Atheist, I truly Believe Africa Needs God – Matthew Parris

Re: So let me get this straight.

[cyber-vandal]

Clowns to the left and jokers to the right sounds like a succinct summary of politics in every English speaking country.

Re:If all it takes

[cold fjord]

As an Atheist, I truly Believe Africa Needs God – Matthew Parris

Re:First step...

[cold fjord]

America completely withdraws from the Middle East.

That should put an end to the blowback. Though the US has been creating a mess over there for well over 20 years.

You apparently completely fail to understand the motivations of the Islamists. Their goal is conquest and conversion of the entire world. The US totally withdrawing isn't going to help fight that. If anything it makes things worse since that would make aiding US allies more difficult and forfeiting any real influence in the region.

Oh, *now* you want our help?

[goodmanj]

After decades of treating the Internet as the greatest threat to American government, *now* you want our help? Yeah, no.

safety OR privacy

[markdavis]

>"solutions that would both keep us safe and protect our privacy,"

Sorry, that doesn't happen (which has been proven over and over again). You can have safety or privacy/freedom. They pretty much are opposite ends of the spectrum. You can try to have middle ground, but it is a compromise, not obtainment of both.

Re:safety OR privacy

[markdavis]

That is very true (of course, I didn't say giving up one gains the other, only that you can't have both at the same time)

Re:Disrupt?

[Z00L00K]

A much better way that to disrupt the communication which only works temporarily is to instead trace all communication and identify as many operatives for IS as possible outside Syria in order to round them up in a coordinated strike. Also identify as many channels as possible that finances them and take out those channels.

Re:This is all well and good

[tlambert]

Hedy Lamarr -- Frequency hopping and spread spectrum

Agnes Meyer Driscoll -- developed the "Communications Machine" or "CM", the standard cypher machine used by the U.S. Navy for a time; she also broke JN-25, the post Perl Harbor Japanese fleet operational code.

Elizebeth Friedman -- sometimes credited as the first female American codebreaker -- broke a Mandarin Chinese code used in the opium trade, as well as a number of codes used by bootleggers in the prohibition era, and went on to design some of the security measuers still in place at the IMF (International Monetary Fund).

Maureen Baginski -- Signals Intelligence Director during the 2011 attacks on the U.S.; worked at the NSA

Mary "Polly" Budenbach -- directed the NSA's "Technical Consultants organization.

Wilma Davis -- mathematician who broke Italian diplomatic codes in the 1930's, Japanese Army code messages in WWII, worked on the Chinese team for a while, and then moved on to "Venoa", a covert group tasked with breaking Soviet messages.

Minnie Kenny -- Directed the National Cryptologic School for the DoD and NSA; if you think the fact of her genetalia is significant (you shouldn't), you will also be surprised that she was black.

Ann Caracristi -- one of the people responsible for applying the (then new) computational technology to signals intelligence within the NSA; established the first laboratory for doing so.

Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein -- worked with the SIS (Signal Intelligence Service) as a cryptanalyst reading Japanese diplomatic messages; make the breakthrough that resulted in the creation of an analog computer to read the Japanese "Purple" code.

Joan Daemen -- Rijndael

Shafi Goldwasser -- zero knowledge proofs used in asymmetric key algorithms ...

That's doing about 5 minutes worth of looking, and omitting about half of what I found.

Re:Think you can do better? Prove it

[Z00L00K]

You can never have safety against lone wolfs unless you run an utopia with mind control drugs. OK, maybe that's why weed was legalized in Colorado.

This is basically...

[BigU 03C0mpin]

the proxy war between rich old white men and rich young entrepreneurs.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at K street. I need some popcorn.

Re:If all it takes

[khallow]

John Stewart did a frightening but very insightful sketch drawing direct comparisons between the American Tea Party and the Taliban. It was funny and chilling at the same time.

Not at all. Why should I find the rule of law, reduction of the extent and power of the US federal government, or responsible fiscal policy to be something to fear? This reminds me of Vox Day's three rules, behavior exhibited by someone incapable of understanding certain contrary beliefs or viewpoints and imbued with a certain passive aggressive behavior:

1) Always lie.
2) Always double down.
3) Always project.

We see all three behaviors exhibited here. Core beliefs of the Tea Party movement have long been advertised and it is well known that there are non-religious members. So why not only lie that the Tea Party is only about religious beliefs and then double down by comparing the resulting Tea Party strawman to the Taliban with a woodenly delivered list of negative attributes that are to some degree shared by the not particularly self-aware, Stewart?

These are immature behaviors of someone who lacks wisdom not something to respect.

There are lots of people of all sorts of beliefs and ideologies who are concerned about government overreach, such as NSA spying, extending globally the stranglehold of excessive IP protection, and feeling people up at US airports. At some point, if you aren't a complete fool, you have to realize that the religious aren't your enemies, they are your neighbors, your friends and relatives, and your natural political allies on some really important issues.

The Tea Party is not a reenactment of the Handmaiden's Tale. It's in response to some serious problems that threaten the future of the US. I believe we should wonder why so many people are working so hard to discredit them on such flimsy pretexts.

Haha

[easyTree]

We need Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary.

Ahaha; funny one. You should be in comedy.

How about we disrupt the government instead?

[aralin]

Government seems to be old technology poised for disruption. We could do that. It would give people more control and once that would happen, we wouldn't get into these useless wars that create terrorist organizations in the first place. Maybe a bit of direct democracy would be helpful? We can tally votes in real time. It would be so easy to have a system where someone says something stupid on the floor of congress, in the next minute everyone knows about it and before his ass hits the seat, he is already fired. How do you like that, Hillary?

Re:If all it takes

[Bing Tsher E]

They go to 3rd-world countries in Africa and build churches and then teach people how "evil" gay people are, and encourage them to pass laws legalizing the murder of gay people.

The people in Africa don't need westerners telling them how 'evil' gay people are. They have long cultural traditions of exterminating the gays amongst them. The idea that outside westerners are the catalyst for gay-hatred in the 3rd World is ludicrous. If anything, missionaries from the West improve the situation regarding homophobia.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Bing Tsher E]

The best thing that could come from Bernie becoming president would be the huge reduction in the power of the Executive that would immediately come into being.

We really, really, need to clip the wings of the Executive in the US, and restore the balance of power. Bernie in the Oval Office would insure that very quickly.

almost...

[slew]

FWIW, I think Joan Daemen might object to your classification of him as a famous woman (unless you were going for the minority designation with him as someone from Belgium).

Re:almost...

[tlambert]

FWIW, I think Joan Daemen might object to your classification of him as a famous woman (unless you were going for the minority designation with him as someone from Belgium).

Whoops!

Guess I'm more gender blind than the OP!

The others are correct (reverified).

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course the best way to characterize someone is by their race and sex. That's really all you need to know.

Re: So let me get this straight.

[cfalcon]

> Clowns to the left and jokers to the right sounds like a succinct summary of politics in every English speaking country.

Curious, what languages do you speak besides English? Like, are you just saying that politics in English speaking countries suck because you can understand them and know they are full of crap, or is there some other language where politicians don't lie? Is it, like, a secret language, like Druidic?

Re:If all it takes

[cfalcon]

I'm so glad you can make some argument based on principle, and show by equivalence that you could, in theory, have a problem with violent Christian extremists, violet environmental extremists, and so on down the list. But why don't you go by something like "body count" and figure out which of these things is actually a real problem?

One thing that ticks me off in political debates goes like this:

Person A: George Bush sucks, because X.
Person B: I disagree, because Al Gore sucks, because Y.

Two things wrong with this: Obviously, Person B isn't addressing the question. And more importantly, if you replace "Al Gore" with "John Kerry", you now see the problem- not only is the issue not being addressed, but now the argument is only even understandable if you realize who is running AGAINST someone. If someone claims Hillary Clinton has shitty policies, and your first impression is to go look to see who the Republican frontrunner is so you can formulate an attack against them, you're so far from rational debate that you'll need to pray to the wind gods to ever see those fair lands again.

The mirror shows up here: "The problem with violent Islam is X" -> "Oh, well, in theory, any religion can be violent, and in practice, others have been. "

Don't reframe. If a billion peasants were screaming Deus Vult and stabbing Muslims, then your equivalence argument might have some weight- instead it's just a worthless apologetic so you can reframe it to a general attack on religions, or people who believe strongly in something. LOOK AROUND YOU

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Opportunist]

Which is quite illogical, people who are working hard instead of holding their hand out and yelling "gimme!" sure are a very tiny minority today.

Re: So let me get this straight.

[cyber-vandal]

It's perfectly simple. I don't speak any other languages fluently so it's harder to judge. Wind your fucking head back in.

Global Ideology status.

[geekmux]

"...the Islamic State had become "the most effective recruiter in the world"..."

OK, forget the "West" for a moment here, are global ideologies that fucked or should I merely take this statement with a grain of salt coming from a politician running for President hell-bent on using encryption as the reason terrorists "win"?

We've heard "backdoor" brought up so many times recently that other countries must think we hire porn stars as politicians now.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[aaaaaaargh!]

As a reader of /. I know your political opinions, of course, so it's kind of pointless saying this, but Sanders is definitely among the reasonable politicians in this electoral run. (There are one or two halfway reasonable Republicans, too, but just like Sanders they have no chance of becoming candidates.) You may disagree with his suggestions, that's understandable, but at least he recognizes the real problem, namely the dwindling middle class. You don't have to be a socialist or become one to recognize that this is the biggest problem of the US in the long run, and that clowns like Trump and elitists like Clinton will never address this problem. A better economy will not alleviate this problem. Look at the data, it's horrifying.

By the way, the Danish PM is deliberately misleading and he knows it, but he has a political agenda. The Danish government is one of the most right-wing governments ever in Denmark. However, most of their actual policies would still count as pure socialism in the US. It's just a confusion of words, what Sanders and most of your fellow Americans call Socialism is in reality Social Democracy, which has practically nothing to do with socialism as a precursor to communism. The latter was only ever defended by communists, never by any Social Democrats. Sanders should use the right word, but he deliberately chose not to because the majority of US citizens is unable to make the distinction anyway and he wants to provoke.

easy

[Tom]

This is easy, do I get anything for it?

Step One: Stop fucking supporting them.
There are good hints that Washington or Langley or Fort Meade or someone else high up in the US is directly or indirectly supporting ISIS. Possibly as a part of some geopolitical games like "let's remove Assad from power and seize his oil" or some such fucked-up shit.

Step Two: Stop fucking supporting their allies.
We know the list - Saudi Arabia, Turkey, various so-called Syrian rebel groups who ally with whoever pays them the most or gave them the most recent blowjob or whatever. Possibly Israeal though that are rumours I'm not sure about. Point is that if if you are fighting them with the one hand, and helping those who help them on the other, you shouldn't be surprised. Turkey is basically backstabbing the anti-ISIS coalition at multiple opportunities, because they don't like the Kurds and have their own plans for the area. Also, Putin is not the first to point out that most of the oil trade ISIS runs despite international embargo is going through Turkey. Saudia Arabia has been such an open supporter of islamic terrorism and jihad philosophy (remember 9/11 and where most of the hijackers were from?) that their oil and strategic alliance with the US is the only reason they've not been invaded long ago.

Step Three: Stop fucking "using the opportunity"
If you want to be serious about fighting ISIS, you need to stop seing them as a good opportunity, a nice pretext, a useful thing to have so you can push through your mass surveilance and pseudo homeland security bullshit.

Step Four: Stop fucking working on the next ISIS
All this messing with other peoples religions and internal politics got us where we are today. Al Qaida came out of the US misguided interaction with the Taliban predecessors in Afghanistan. ISIS is a direct result of the Iraq invasion and Saudi support of Wahabism.
If we bomb ISIS into oblivion but continue to play the same game, we will get the same result, again. And if we extrapolate the trend, the next one will be even more ugly. ISIS is not just a terror state, it's also a mindset, and removing it from the map won't stop it. It's not just in Syria, but over half of Africa as well, for example.

Re:easy

[Zontar The Mindless]

I amazes me that so few people can see that, except for the brazen world conquest thing, Saudi Arabia is not very different at all from ISIS.

And even that is starting to change, as noted even by this obvious fanboi.

Re:easy

[Tom]

1) Of course, officially the US never supported ISIS. The same way they didn't sell poison gas to Saddam and never planned an invasion of Kuba.
2) Turkey very much plays its own game and has active plans for its own caliphate, they just think of it as the resurrection of the Ottoman Empire. Why would Turkey mind one bit about ISIS? They fight the Kurds, Turkeys arch-enemy, and Assad, another political enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend...
3) Some things shouldn't be touched with a ten-foot pole, no matter how convenient. I don't have an agenda to push, so your second part is just pure nonsense.
4) Yes, a strong Syrian government - which was inconvenient to the US and thus opposed even when it was desperately needed. Even when the writing was on the wall for a long time, removing Assad from power was a more important US goal than containing ISIS.

If you have an "easy" solution for a geopolitical issue, then you probably don't have a cohesive grasp on the issue.

When your own government is basically responsible for a huge part of the trouble "stop fooling around, you idiots, you only ever make things worse" is both an easy and obvious solution.

The whole problem is the superpower-ambitions of some fuckers who think they have a right to consider the whole world their playground. Leave the stupid arabs alone to kill each other over whatever three-word difference interpretation of their holy fantasy novel they have. Of course now it's too late for that and the mess isn't as easy to solve as it would've been to avoid, but you have to be extraordinarily blind to see that ISIS could not exist without outside support so massive that it needs at least one nation state to be there. You don't get a 2 billion/year budget from goat farming in the desert.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the elephants in the room that the western media was too scared and/or stupid to mention for years. Now, slowly, you can read about it. Took Russia bombing the actual terrorists instead of empty shithouses in the desert, but at least some inconvenient truths are slowly being written about.

Re:easy

[david_thornley]

When your own government is basically responsible for a huge part of the trouble "stop fooling around, you idiots, you only ever make things worse" is both an easy and obvious solution.

Except that it isn't a solution. We've broken a whole lot of things in the area, and we can't unbreak them.

Re:easy

[Tom]

True, now that everything is fucked up, we can't just go home and say "oops".

But the least we could do is learn from mistakes and not repeat them. When A got you into the mess, "more A" is very unlikely to be the correct solution.

Cyberwarfare: a very bad thing. Unless we do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is why ISIS manage to recruit. You spout BS about being better than everyone else, spout BS about how bad people are by the things they do, THEN YOU GO AND DO IT YOURSELF. *THEN* you call it a good thing to do, because YOU are justified?!?!?!?

When your justifications are so batshit insane, there's absolutely no reason for the insanity of ISIS to look any less sane, and someone who would prefer the ISIS version of the world can feel like they're just as sane as the next man, BY POINTING AT YOU PEOPLE.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[towermac]

See, we're not electing a king. He can't just do all that stuff, he's got to convince Congress to do it. Which is why Trump is not such a bad choice either. Bernie can't just implement socialism, and Trump can't deport 11 million illegals by himself.

It's the 'outsider' part; not owned or bought and paid for or even overly influenced. In this day and age, that makes them our two only viable choices.

If it turns out to be Trump vs. Sanders (because Hillary is on her way to jail in that scenario) then we have a real choice on our hands, and whoever wins, it will be a good thing.

I urge Silicon Valley too

[TheCarp]

To Disrupt the criminal washington gang which created ISIS and will create their replacement bad guy when they become worn out in the media.

Give them no safe harbor for their secrets, offer them no contracts to secure themselves, and above all, refuse to work for them. If you do work for them, accomplish nothing. Grind these terrorists to a halt for the good of humanity.

So at least one so far...

[Roger W Moore]

Zero, most likely. Because the government be shouting "the system works!" from the goddamn rooftops if they were ever to actually catch someone.

You have a short memory. The reason we are no longer allowed to carry large volumes of liquids onto planes is because they caught the terrorist plot before it could be used and trumpted it from the rooftops...before massively disrupting air travel with several days of security theatre (to drive the point home).

Re:So at least one so far...

[TheRaven64]

The reason we are no longer allowed to carry large volumes of liquids onto planes is because they caught the terrorist plot before it could be used

The 'terrorist plot' involved mixing nitroglycerine in the plane toilet. The technique that they were planning on using needs several hours on a steady workbench to be used. If, by some miracle, they'd managed to stay in the toilet for a couple of hours without anyone noticing, then the first bit of turbulence or vibration in the airframe would have resulted in an explosion just large enough to take off the hands (and, given how small aeroplane toilets are, probably more delicate parts) of the terrorists, but had no other effect.

In other words, stopping the 'plot' cost us a propaganda victory of being able to say 'Al Quaeda, the idiots who blew themselves up in a toilet last year' in every story related to them. It's pretty hard to spread terror when you're a laughing stock.

Re:This is all well and good

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hedy Lamarr was awesome in just about any way you can think of.

Anonymous

[frogcode]

Hillary, meet Anonymous. No need for two-sided introductions since Anonymous already knows everything about Hillary, esp because of those emails.

Re:If all it takes

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Core beliefs of the Tea Party movement have long been advertised

> The Tea Party is not a reenactment of the Handmaiden's Tale [wikipedia.org].

I'm afraid that in local elections and in their public practices, they do seem to be trying _very hard_. The only female candidate I've seen willing to work with them is Sarah Palin, and the strong conservative religious core of their membership is clear in their handling of birth control rights and funding.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nice try, but some of us can actually see what you're trying to pull here.

FYI: The PM of Denmark is a right-winger (Venstre party, Danish for "right"), so of course he can't admit that Denmark is socialist.

He just lists a bunch of socialist characteristics that are true of Denmark and then concludes, "--but these don't make us socialist!"

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Why are you promoting the ISIS game plan?

Re:If all it takes

[Zontar The Mindless]

Be sure they pick the God that allows the use of condoms.

Encryption is the least of her worries

[zerofoo]

Our "intelligence" community missed plain-old, unencrypted, facebook communications in the San Bernardino attack.

Terrorism is simply a convenient excuse to expand government reach into personal communication and data.

Re:STFU you dumb cunt

[L. J. Beauregard]

SJW

*chug*

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Grishnakh]

what's 'moronic' about being on the left, and not liking Sanders because he is male?

Um, because that makes you a sexist?

Wow.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Grishnakh]

I don't get your point here. Are you saying they should or shouldn't be given preferential treatment the way blacks and Hispanics are?

I'm pointing out that they're *not*, and that this is inconsistent with how other minorities are treated. As you point out, in the past, they *were* treated very poorly (if you lump all "Asians" into a single category), but today they're not given any kind of special treatment at all, whereas blacks and Hispanics are.

Re:If all it takes

[Wycliffe]

Don't reframe. If a billion peasants were screaming Deus Vult and stabbing Muslims, then your equivalence argument might have some weight- instead it's just a worthless apologetic so you can reframe it to a general attack on religions, or people who believe strongly in something. LOOK AROUND YOU

I am looking around. There are over 1 billion muslims. A large percentage of these are in India where they don't seem to cause much problems. The government has actually profiled violent muslim extremists and has found that a large percentage of the crazies are converts. Some of the converts have gone so far as bought "islam for dummies" books on their way to join the jihad. This isn't ideology gone crazy but rather more likely a "rebel looking for a cause". Yeah, there might be hotbeds like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan that somehow encourage violent extremism but it's still as a percentage is a very small percent of the total population of muslims. You can argue that percentage of violent christians or violent environmentalists is smaller and it probably is but that doesn't change the fact that the percentage of violent muslims is still fairly small and seem to be predominately people who are not immersed in the muslim culture but rather people on the fringe of the muslim culture.

Gas pipelines!

[coder111]

Add to this potential to have a gas pipeline from Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia) to Europe.

Such a pipeline was impossible because it would have had to go through Syria. Assad's Syrian government was and still is friendly with Russia, and would block such a pipeline. Such a pipeline would end Russia's monopoly on gas exports to Europe at large scale, and ruin their business. BTW, Russians are now in Syria bombing any forces that are opposed to Assad, mostly Western/Turkey backed ones.

Enter ISIS, which is opposed to Assad. They are also Sunni branch of Islam as are Saudi Arabia. If they win, the route is open for the gas pipeline.

This whole mess is simply energy business & the great game on large scale.

--Coder

Re:If all it takes

[khallow]

I'm afraid that in local elections and in their public practices, they do seem to be trying _very hard_. The only female candidate I've seen willing to work with them is Sarah Palin

Michelle Bachman is another high profile one. Wikipedia lists a number of female politicians associated with the movement.

and the strong conservative religious core of their membership is clear in their handling of birth control rights and funding.

So? That's just confirmation bias.

Re:STFU you dumb cunt

[jcr]

WTF are you talking about?

-jcr

Re:NO. 17th Century Rules.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Well, actually, there is, but only if you read German.

Re:How to condition yourself for the next election

[Grishnakh]

This post of yours is extremely offensive to the undead.

Most effective recruiter?

[CanadianMacFan]

Somehow I doubt that. The number of people recruited from Europe and North America are somewhere between 100 and 150. Yes, they are getting many more from the Middle East but that's from a combination of factors. One is the recent history of the intervention by the Western nations. Another is that many people join ISIS when they take over an area because it's better than being killed.

Better things to do

[matthewv789]

I'm pretty sure Silicon Valley has better things to do than pander to ridiculous political shenanigans. They have businesses to run, products to build and ship, customers to keep happy, not go off on a wild goose chase after some irrelevant terrorists from the other side of the world, all in order to further political goals of spying on and controlling the domestic population. Hillary can go suck on an egg.

Seriously?

[erp_consultant]

How this woman can have any credibility at all is beyond me. She has shown herself over and over again as a pathological liar. Every single post she has held has ended in abject failure. And yet she is the leading Democratic nominee. Absolutely astounding. The only conclusion I can draw is that some people hate Republicans so much that they will vote for literally anyone as long as they run as a Democrat. Is this what our country has come to?

Re: So let me get this straight.

[cfalcon]

My point is that your phrasing implies that politicians in other places are better. "Except for the cases where I've first eaten caviar, I can't punch through an iron block" is logically true, but if I then point out that I've never eaten caviar and was just trying to not exclude the case where caviar gives me iron punching powers.... well, you see the point.

If our choices are liberty or safety

[AutodidactLabrat]

screw safety
No one is safe who still lives anyway and as the "war on terra" has always been a war on DISSENT, it is past time to tell the government to stuff it

Re:If all it takes

[AutodidactLabrat]

The Tea Baggers are ignorance personified, a faith that wondering around with guns and signs saying to legislators "We came unarmed THIS TIME" will somehow build anything but a brownshirt movement
Time to acknowledge that those who stalk Abortion Clinic workers are terrorists.
Those who bring firebombs to gay clubs are TERRORISTS
Those who fund antiabortion "action" groups are TERRORISTS
Time for Gitmo to get a bigger cage.
Time for seizure of assets
Time for prison terms for those who adovacate killing citizens in pursuit of religious dogma.

Re:If all it takes

[khallow]

Why did you bother to write that? Those aren't Tea Party platforms. Sure, there are some people who are anti-abortion and/or are religious, and happen to support the Tea Party. Why should I care?

How Carly will disrupt ISIS

[unixisc]

1. Join ISIS

2. Become its leader

3. Do a merger w/ al Qaeda (similar to HPQ)

4. Announce massive restructuring/layoffs

5. Jihadi coalition is decimated

6. Resign (since getting fired would mean getting shot, out there)

Attention span? Link was at end loser

[dbIII]

Now that is just funny - in response to a post about how to get information with a link at the end for the lazy you responded with "no citation then".
You could not only be replaced with a bot, it would do a better job! A student project bot would be a failure if it responded to any post containing "http" with "no citation".
As for your ridiculous suggestion with half a million documents, try reading the post and it will tell you how - if that was too complicated there's these things called computers that can search for terms and you are using one right now.

Re:Attention span? Link was at end loser

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Let's assume I've read your links, read your advice, done some basic Google-fu, and still can't find a citation for "Hillary Clinton spied on diplomat's CC numbers in order to blackmail them".

What would you suggest next?

Re:Attention span? Link was at end loser

[dbIII]

With such a fuckup due to zero attention span you are asking a lot are you not?
How about you do one of those things, such as follow the link, and then get back to me with something from that reading that proves you at least have human intelligence - then we will be able to talk.

Real Disruption is Snowden/Manning :-)

[billstewart]

What Hillary's really looking for (besides speeches that sound good) is approaches like censorship, identifying politically incorrect users without the need for warrants, that sort of thing.

(I'm one of those annoying Libertarians, so I can pretend to be neutral between the two big-money parties, which I'll get around to after the Republicans clean up the corruption of the Bush/Cheney/Koch/Norquist/NeoCons/GlobalWarmingDenialism/etc years. But I live in California, where right-wing bigotry against our largest ethnic groups pretty much guarantees a Democratic win, so rather than voting for Kodos\\\\\Hillary, I'll presumably vote for whoever my party comes up with, or if they choke or pick somebody unacceptable, I'll fall back to voting for the Greens or Peace&Freedom.)

OPEC oil

[NewYork]

Since 1971 OPEC is selling crude oil exclusively in US$, starting the friction between Islamic and Western; It's a lose-lose proposition; You're riding Frankensteinâ(TM)s monster; As a Muslim, President Obama is pretty much aware of it;
http://qz.com/562128/isil-is-a...

Snowden

[NewYork]

Ok lets start with vindicating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re:If all it takes

[AutodidactLabrat]

One word answer:
TRUMP

Re:Think you can do better? Prove it

[VikingNation]

There is not going to be a full proof system. Getting back to my point. Technology companies and folks on Slashdot have been mercilessly beating up on the government and intelligence agencies. It is not helpful and is shrill behavior. Folks need to take that energy and look for ways they can help combat the problem of lone wolfs and terrorist using technologies from the private sectors. How many folks who did mass killings posted on social media before doing these acts? Folks need to stop complaining and work to be part of the solution.

You clearly did not use google

[dbIII]

You clearly did not use google since a keyword search turns up large number of pages like this:
http://www.frugal-cafe.com/pub...

Re:You clearly did not use google

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

In the FOX interview with Sean Hannity below, political commentator and former White House consultant Dick Morris compares Hillary's tactics at the United Nations to what the communists do to their opponents to blackmail them.

This is just another guy comparing the spying with blackmail but not providing evidence. I couldn't find anything from leaked documents that shows blackmail was attempted or intended. And it seems you can't either. I'm quite willing to eat my words on this if you can prove your assertions, but I'm not just going to trust random-guy-on-internet without some sort of citation.

Re:You clearly did not use google

[dbIII]

OK then, cut and paste your "Hillary Clinton spied on diplomat's CC numbers in order to blackmail them" into google and find a second article.
What's with the extreme laziness, the lying "assumption" and the demand that I do some work instead when you didn't even bother to read to the end of my post above before replying?

I couldn't find anything from leaked documents

From your own admission you did not look, so why state that you couldn't find anything? Tell me why I should not be laughing at you.

Re:You clearly did not use google

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Second article is wikipedia. Third article is the guardian. Fourth article is the same Dick Morris quote. How much do I have to read to do your own homework for you?

And you'll have to point me to where I "admitted I didn't look", because I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt so far, reading your articles (which don't say what you think they do) and googling your search terms (which come up with nothing). The only thing I admitted to not reading was half a million pages of wikileaks, which I frankly don't have time for.

Anyway, unless you can find some meat for your next post, we're done here, and you should stop posting hyperbole as fact.

Re:You clearly did not use google

[dbIII]

How much do I have to read to do your own homework for you?

You are getting this backwards. It's catch up in your case for living under a rock a few years ago. I already knew so it's you doing the homework.
Unless of course it's deliberate stupidity - ignorance is no defence against reality despite Soviet style revisionism depending upon it.

To dumb things down, my entire point is some contents of the leak made Hillary look bad. Do you deny that?

Re:You clearly did not use google

[dbIII]

Anyway, unless you can find some meat for your next post

Good excuse for running away in the silly game you started, or more seriously your denial of reality by playing that game.
To dumb things down, my entire point is some contents of the leak made Hillary look bad. Do you deny that? If so, why?

Re:You clearly did not use google

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

my entire point is some contents of the leak made Hillary look bad

That's not what I asked for a citation of. You made a very specific claim, and I was legitimately curious because I hadn't heard it before. I wanted to know if it was true, and what the original source was.

It's okay to admit you were mistaken or misremembered. It doesn't make Hillary Clinton a good person, it just means one of the many claims levelled against her is false.

Re:If all it takes

[khallow]

What does he have to do with the Tea Party? I get the feeling you don't understand the draw of someone like Trump. He's the "fuck you" vote for Republicans tired of political hacks and establishment shenanigans. That groups shares some overlap with the Tea Party grouping, but they aren't identical. In particular, Trump doesn't have a strong draw for the strongly religious or the strongly libertarian.

Re:If all it takes

[AutodidactLabrat]

Sorry, I just listened to the racist, classist, threatening, gun loving rhetoric of the teagaggers and found that Trump says every single thing you've seen at these 100 person gatherings of the tri-corner hat wearing nutballs.
he encapsulates the ignorance, rage and fury of old, undereducated, redundant white men, which is to say, the Teagagger movement