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Carly Fiorina Says Government Needs a Way To "Work Around" Encryption (dailydot.com)
Patrick O'Neill writes: Carly Fiorina wants the government to be able to "work around" encryption to aid intelligence agencies and law enforcement in their investigations, she said on Monday. The Republican presidential candidate and former HP CEO shifted the focus of her campaign to national security two days before the last Republican debate of 2015. Fiorina is the latest but not the first presidential candidate to weigh in on the encryption debate that has taken on a new life since terrorist attacks in Paris and California.
I'm sure lots of people want a 'work around', but what they want isn't always possible.
This is just a nonsense statement intended to get support from those who don't know better. At least she knows how to play the game.
No change in her technical competence since she ran HP into the ground, I see.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
why she was such a shitty tech CEO.
In Soviet Russia, government needs a way to work around Carly Fiona!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
A workaround for overreaching governments and individuals abusing their power. It's metabullshit because you aren't obfuscating who the data is comming from, where it is going to, or even how often. Supposedly that was all that was important right? The American government couldn't secure their own data, idiocy is rampant. How exactly is compromising all business and personal transactions to intercept a nearly non-existent threat even helping at all, except to perhaps facilitate your own illegal agenda? FFS the day the government actually addresses issues in the order of deaths per year, or even in financial damages per year to the American public is the day hell will freeze over.
All those secret zero day attacks available -- they probably have so many they can keep ahead of the curve, not to mention built in back doors to Windows.
The article does not mention much other than a wistful desire of some way to pierce...no, I don't wanna click to see some extremely uncomfortable family photos...
Anyway, it seemed like a magical desire to crack rather than forcing weak enc...oh, you wouldn't beliege the violent crimes some Hollywood stars have committed...is that ScarJo in an arrest photo? (Click) hehehe Tim the Tool Man Taylor...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The republicans seems to state that the Government is a bunch of bumbling idiots where the free market can outperform it hands down, yet they also expect it able to perform things such as conspiracies where thousands of people are involved. Making a back door that only the government can break. Creating a super virus so advanced that no mortal individual outside the government can't possibly make.
In short any government back door is a back door to the rest of the world. It isn't as much about the government spying on us, but who else, can. What if Snowden decided not to go public with the stuff he learned and decided to use it to profit off of the information? It takes one underpaid/underappreciated rouge employee to mess up any grand security system.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
it is patented, here it is https://www.google.co.uk/paten... differential workfactor encryption, as used in the International version of IBM Lotus Notes until the US government decided not to classify encryption as heavy munitions. It gives the US government 40 bits of encryption to crack and everyone else gets 128 bits. (and you can vary the assisted evesdropper and workfactors to taste). As far as I am aware they never once gave a single shit about it whilst they had it, and never wanted other products to implement it.
If you look past the political and law enforcement bantering, you will find that none of the defined terrorist attacked would have been stopped by the government being able to crack encryption. Most of them, I stipulate most may have been stopped by general police work and knowing the community, rather then spying on it. Stopping the lone idiosyncratic style may never be stopped, we have had them in the dark past of our history and will have them long into the future.
Outlawing encryption or finding ways to break into it hurts all of us more then it helps protect us. The leaders need to understand what they are asking, not seeing to control what they do not understand. The "I get the good encryption to protect me (the government) and you get the bad (everyone else)" no longer will work in this age of free and very good tools.
(.)-(.)
They already get a reacharound, why should they get a workaround as well?
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Does anyone else remember a time when politicians paid lip service to upholding the constitution and what it stood for?
I mean, we all knew they were full of shit, and they knew we knew, but it was like a game. Who could spew shit with a smile and not blush about the bullshit they were feeding us.
I miss those days.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Reach around is a luxury, they go in dry as well.
Maybe Steve Ballmer should run for President. He's was a more competent CEO than Carly, at least a more enthusiastic one. Plus, he can outspend Donald Trump and certainly out shout him.
We've just had GCHQ release their graph analysis software into the public domain. It's basically that, graph analysis, a database that can be constantly added to and performs data analysis. So what they're talking about is clearly bulk data mining, the so called 'power of big data' to spot terrorists and criminals.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/14/brit_spookhaus_gchq_creates_github_repo_offers_graph_database/
Mass surveillance to collect the data then graph analysis to analyse it. Not targetted investigations. You need the bulk data to crunch the numbers to see what's abnormal. And for that, you need to spy on everyone all the time, and encryption prevents that.
Of course it just generates masses of false positives and meanwhile the terrorists... well they just do their thing without causing any flags. Paris attackers used SMS with NO encryption and sailed straight past France's notorious mass surveillance.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after-endless-demonization-encryption-police-find-paris-attackers-coordinated-via-unencrypted-sms.shtml ///////////
And handily, you also spy on political campaigners, politicians, parliaments, journalists, governments, competing companies, defense contractors, etc etc.
Which is far more valuable. AND IS THE WHOLE POINT.
So UK Parliament, as an example, uses Microsoft Cloud. Microsoft assisted in bypassing encryption for the PRISM surveillance. PRISM forms a large part of Obama's morning brief. So basically now private internal UK Parliamentary documents and memos are read by US intelligence and used to brief the US President and Diplomats to ensure the debates produce UK laws the US wants.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
This decision was made *after* Snowden. They knew full well the US had a backdoor into Microsoft, and you lot in GCHQ, fuck you, you fucking traitors, anyone of you could have put end to end encryption into Parliaments communications. You know which encryption schemes NSA has broken, your duty is to UK, not the military leadership chain up through NATO. Get off your Stasi asses and secure Parliaments comms AS PER YOUR DUTY.
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240230372/Hague-reassures-MPs-on-Office-365-data-storage-as-Microsoft-ordered-to-hand-over-email-data ////////////
And now we know why Hewlett Packard Servers had backdoors.
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/New-backdoor-in-HP-server-products-1916506.html
"Computer manufacturer HP has admitted that its StoreVirtual servers also contain an undocumented backdoor. "
This was the one that you could log in remotely and add extra users to the file system with full privileges, all with one backdoor account password, Al Qaeda uses HP??? No? But a lot of major corporations with useful industrial secrets do, and a lot of governmental organizations do, and a lot of democratic and legal structures do.
Put appropriate oversight in place that a warrant can be issued against to access the keys required to access whatever meta data the law enforcement or intelligence needs access to. This means appropriate use of decryption and key mechanisms is legal and inappropriate use is not legal.
This is what it looks like when the state doesn't want to give up the power to abuse the powers that it should not have.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
On the danger of being modded down into oblivion: I understand and agree why law enforcement needs to intercept communications to do their job. And I WANT police to be able to do their job and catch criminals.
but
a) this should be law enforcement and NOT "The Gouvernment"
b) on a case-by-case-base, watched over by a real judge and NOT a blanket surveillance issued by some Gestapo-Secret-Court and
c) not weakening encryption by backdoors so that any criminal can listen in. (and this is what happens when someone finds out about the backdoor and they WILL find out)
So why do we need encryption at all? It's a sad state that we need it to protect us from BOTH criminals AND overreaching government surveillance. It would be nice if I could trust government enough to not misuse their powers so that we wouldn't need strong crypto. But sorry, no.
Side note: I'm not from the US but we're having exactly the same discussion, so I'd say my points are valid pretty much globally.
I completely trust most governments and 3-letter-agencies to have only the best intentions. But they're not seeing where those are leading to.
bickerdyke
As a European, I always wonder how these politicians want to enforce these schemes. Will it be impossible to import strong encryption into US? But how? I still have a little closed-source shareware program with strong encryption online. So what happens if a US citizen purchases it via my web shop? Will this person be put into prison? Or will I somehow magically commit a crime in in the US even though I live elsewhere and have never been there, and will be extradited to the US? In the latter case, how should I prevent that US citizens buy my program? IP-based geolocation that is easy to fool?
Has any of these persons who suggest "workarounds" and backdoors ever made any concrete suggestions how to handle this?
It's because all people are hypocrites.
Republicans, the right, etc. all clamor for smaller government. Which I happen to whole-heartedly agree with. However, smaller government includes staying out of what substances people put in their bodies, what a woman chooses to do with hers, staying out of the average citizen's email and electronic communications, the list goes on and on. Repubs want to control all of those things, so I can't agree with their position.
Democrats, the left, etc. all clamor for bigger government. Which I don't agree with, for the same reasons listed above. However, Dems would rather dictate what food you can eat, what substances are approved to smoke and which ones are not, what you drive, how you choose to arm and defend yourself and your family, and also want to read the average citizen's email and electronic communications just for different reasons, so I can't agree with their positions, either.
The thing is, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Both sides are just petulant children who want what THEY want and nothing more. Either we have an overarching nanny-state "security" (theatre) culture, or we have freedom. Freedom means you have the choice to make bad (subjective) choices, meaning women can do what they want, people can eat what they want and smoke what they want and ingest whatever substances they want, can own whatever firearm they want, and not at all the least, freedom from having your communications spied upon unless a warrant has been issued signed by a judge (and not a rubber-stamp federal spy-approval one) and for a limited duration for specific information.
Unfortunately, freedom is scary to the vast majority of people. Those clutching their bibles won't be happy until abortion is punishable by death (ironic?), and those clutching the keys to their Priuses won't be happy until owning a v8-powered automobile, gun or cigarette (ironic?) is punishable by death. So, we will always have people demanding ignorant things like backdoors in encryption and "super viruses" because they want their side to win, and of course their side is perfect and smart and can do anything and will never be used for evil, everyone is the good guy who knows what's best for everyone else and freedom is dead because of spineless jellyfish on both sides of the political spectrum.
There already is a workaround. It's called investigation, surveillance, and basic detective work.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I don't know that they're fundamentally different on wanting to bypass encryption, but I do think that people who appear to believe:
the Government is a bunch of bumbling idiots where the free market can outperform it hands down, yet they also expect it able to perform things such as conspiracies where thousands of people are involved
tend to be Republicans. Actually they may identify as Libertarians, but probably not as Democrats who traditionally want to expand government reach to help some societal group. Not saying they even CAN help, but that's the reasoning. Of course, the politics surrounding fear of extremists tends to blur the lines quite hard. I think I'm in more danger of drowning in a bathtub that dying in a terrorist action but essentially no one worries about the death trap lurking in every bathroom.
The Dems seem to have less of a conflict. They think the government can do anything if they feel like it. Still a problem, but not as hypocritical.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
My greatest fear is a government that does work.
An effective government is very dangerous, to its citizens. A bickering set talking heads makes sure that the fad idea of the week doesn't just get passed in the next session then we have to live with its consequences.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Freedom means you have the choice to make bad (subjective) choices, meaning women can do what they want, people can eat what they want and smoke what they want and ingest whatever substances they want, can own whatever firearm they want, and not at all the least, freedom from having your communications spied upon unless a warrant has been issued signed by a judge (and not a rubber-stamp federal spy-approval one) and for a limited duration for specific information.
The creation of welfare states are the greatest threat to freedom because the actions of one person now affect the pocketbook of another. It's true that in societies, people who make poor decisions have always affected others: if the only blacksmith in town drinks himself to death, where are people going to get their horseshoes? But this is greatly exacerbated in a state full of subsidies and other shared burdens.
Someone is free to blacken his lungs with all the smoke he wants, for sure. But that man will then spend millions in hospital care for his cancer, and most of the money spent will not be his (no way he can afford it alone). Who pays for that? We all do, in the form of higher insurance premiums and medical care--after he skips out on the bill.
It is the greatest implement of control the government ever came up with. It's said the governments want handouts to keep people dependent on the current regime. That's only half the story. Handouts ensure people police *each other*. That's far more powerful than what any government can do.
There always was a workaround... break the encryptor not the encryption. Governments world-round are old hands at that.
Holy crap your thinking on democrat/republican politics is hopelessly mired in your own belief system. They basically say the same things, and do the same things, in aggregate whenever they are in power. Forget what they say on the campaign trail, that's for the chumps. And on encryption specifically, they are nearly all agreed that police powers should trump privacy for the sake of some minuscule danger.
Lambaste republicans all you like, but if you think democrats are any better, smarter, or more capable you are laughably out of touch with Washington DC politics.
you mean this kind, the reach around!
I'm not sure which I admire more in a candidate: The Republicans willingness to be upfront with the public how much they want to screw over the American people or the Democrats ability to keep it a secret until it is too late to do anything about it.
The creation of welfare states are the greatest threat to freedom because the actions of one person now affect the pocketbook of another. It's true that in societies, people who make poor decisions have always affected others: if the only blacksmith in town drinks himself to death, where are people going to get their horseshoes? But this is greatly exacerbated in a state full of subsidies and other shared burdens.
Before the welfare state, the actions of one person affected the bare life of another. It's the welfare state that allows people to recover from a sickness, to take time off to pursue some education or to take care of their children. All society is about is sharing the burden and sharing the benefits. If the older generation didn't share their experiences with us (we call this 'education'), we would be damned to reinvent everything again. If your blacksmith couldn't go to a baker to get some bread, he would never have the time to specialize as a blacksmith. I remember reading of some guy who as a project went out to built a toaster all on his own, from the resources he himself took out of Nature, and after 10 years, he still wasn't done yet (I don't know if he is now). It's sharing the burden that allows even mundane objects like a toaster to be manufactured.
Freedom as many libertarians understand it is actually a result of having a society which allows us to share burdens. It's the inherent welfare state that helps your parents while you are a toddler, that keeps you fed while you get an education, that protects you while you sleep and that provides you with support in all the situations you can't support yourself.
The only naive one is you. She was the CEO of a major DoD supplier. Why would you think she would be ignorant of any such thing?
nor people whose mantra was "more government always solves problems."
I just read a great essay (PDF format) by Phillip Rogaway which strongly argues exactly that we need to develop new kinds of cryptography which are aimed squarely at making mass surveillance impossible. Once mass surveillance has been shut down completely, then maybe we can talk about ways for law enforcement to "work around" encryption in very limited and controlled ways[1]. But as long as mass surveillance is feasible, this is a complete non-starter, because any mechanism for bypassing cryptographic security will be used to increase the penetration of mass surveillance. And at this point I don't think we can settle for purely political means of shutting down mass surveillance. Political restrictions on surveillance are necessary, but not sufficient. We also need technology that makes it difficult and expensive, because if it's cheap and easy it can always be done on the sly.
[1] Once mass surveillance is out of the way, then we can talk about "workarounds". But it's crucial that the workarounds not compromise the security of the result. At present, I don't think we have any cryptographic technology that enables controlled, limited access without compromising security in normal operation. Further, I don't think any such technology is possible. But until mass surveillance is shut down we can't even discuss it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Us GOPers can now safely scratch Carly Fiorina off the primary list permanently.
A snippet from wikipedia: "Steven Levy, writing in 2015 on the agreement(an HP/iPod supply agreement/cobrand), wrote that "Steve Jobs blithely mugged her and HP's shareholders. By getting Fiorina to adopt the iPod as HP's music player, Jobs had effectively gotten his [iTunes] software installed on millions of computers for free, stifled his main competitor, and gotten a company that prided itself on invention to declare that Apple was a superior inventor. And he lost nothing..."
Its a nice snippet as it encapsulates her well known lack of business skills and lack of strategic competency.
I heard a term used by a lawyer referencing someone similar a while back. It applies here - She is a lightweight dolly bird.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Government needs a way to work around the Bill of Rights.
Sorry folks, but the Bill of Rights is part of your job description. If you don't want to do the job you are paid for, get off the payroll. Or in the case of presidential candidates: get out of the race. It is for a job you are lacking the qualifications for.
I'm still trying to work around that face.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apparently Hillary thinks the same yet no Slashdot story on it.
Hillary Clinton: Stop helping terrorists, Silicon Valley
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Then they take away your right to privacy
Then they take away your freedom to speak
Then they take away your right to assembly
Then they win.
We're so, so close to this happening is not even funny. We're being snookered exactly the same way Imperial Japan and Germany both snookered an entire populace* and turned them against their neighbors, and in Germany's case, against an entire race and religion.
* by educating the young with your doctrine, by using popular media to give your doctrine wide reach, well into the adult segment of the populace, and by singling out one group of people as "undersirable"
Are we becoming the Fourth Reich?
The only solace I have is that our own Government is so retarded, so inbred, so incompetent they'll never be able to pull that off.
Or maybe... they're just playing the fool... for now.
Where's my tin hat?!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
She's wrong. The government doesn't 'need' this, it just 'wants' it, like I want a millions dollars, but just like me, they won't get it.
Would they want us to just ban private conversations altogether?
The private sector already knows that it's at war with the government. Attacking America isn't going to get it on your side. The terrorists tried attacking America to change its policies, but only the Fear Party (Republicans) fully committed to joining them; the rest of America maintained its resistance to, and (mostly) disagreement with, terrorism.
And that's another thing. You only know this industry and its people as an adversary, an enemy that you set out to humiliate and dismantle to everyone's dismay except the most ardent luddites. Everybody in tech knows that you're a business-destroyer. You can't fuck over an industry as badly as you did and expect everyone to not remember. You really think people are all "Never heard of 'em. Hewlett what?"
It's amazing what people will want to happen to others, as long as it is not applied to them. For example, "Join the Tea Party Fund Raising Event to help the Homeless." Where has one seen this; ever.
I mean I guess I can imagine Carly Fiorina, as a mere ex-CEO of one of the largest technology companies in the world, might not have any idea how, like, technology actually works. But this whole conversation is so stupid.
What are these people anticipating? First of all they need to legislate that all crypto software has to have a back door. Leaving aside the security implications of that (which are immense), it means that any company that wants to make and sell crypto in the US will need to change their product lines.
Then to actually make this effective, they'd need to legislate that any company that wants to use crypto within the US must use software that meets this requirement. Without that, then any company that wants actual security will just be buying products (that actually are secure) from overseas and using them in the US.
I don't even know what would happen with people currently using non-crippled open source crypto. Would they be expected to pull it out and replace it with a government approved commercial solution? Would someone create a fork of the open source products that had some back door?
To me every comment made by these clowns just demonstrates a complete lack of awareness about how software works, what open source is, and how tech people think.
Good luck, USA. You're going to need it.
As opposed to the Republicans that did do anything they felt like?
you CANT have a way around all encryption... Honestly why the hell did she ever run ANY tech company being that uneducated?
This is why I have ZERO respect for any CxO they all are fakers that bulshitted their way to their position.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
*waits patiently for the rest of this Yorkshiremen skit*
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
The creation of welfare states are the greatest threat to freedom because the actions of one person now affect the pocketbook of another
And the alternative, where the slightest hiccup in the life of somebody living on the poverty line causes their shit to enter an unrecoverable downward spiral - that doesn't adversely affect our society or economy at all, eh?
But this is greatly exacerbated in a state full of subsidies and other shared burdens.
Christ I am sick of hearing this short-term thinking bullshit. We all share burdens - no way around it. The question is whether you want to acknowledge that reality and try to deal with it sensibly, or pretend it doesn't exist and that you don't live in an interconnected society that benefits from increases in the general quality of everyone's lives. Just because you take the welfare line items out of the tax budget doesn't mean you are not paying for the costs of perpetual poverty and the effects of an ever increasing number of permanently disenfranchised people. You are, in fact, being the smoker in your example - making a selfish, stupid decision to defer positive preventative measures and instead rely on ludicrously expensive and ineffective disaster control.
Me, I prefer to share the burden in the form of proactive support. I, as a person who would like to not be sociopath, consider the term 'shared burden' to be a positive indication of a society recognizing its moral duty to at least try to promote dignity for the least of its people. Are these programs riddled with issues, run by fallible humans and taken advantage of by lazy fucks? You bet. But look who cashes in on the alternative do-nothing approach: predatory banks, prisons, overcharging pharma / insurance companies, etc. (oh gee, and who are same guys putting the screws to the rest of us because of their 'increasing costs'?). And what do we get for the investment in the your approach? Fuckall but more misery.
So no thanks teabaggers, I will happily give $100 today to assist a poor/sick/uneducated person in the hopes that they will improve their life rather than piss it away into the machines of our economy that run on suffering. Maybe that person squanders that assistance, maybe they don't - but I can be damn sure that the alternative is a wasted investment.
Such as...
Ms Fiorina,
While I can appreciate that your intentions behind this proposal may be driven by a sincere belief that such measures would be in the best interests of society, they fail to account for a single fundamental problem - that if the government, or law enforcement, ever has any foolproof way to work around any encryption, then so will the bad guys, who can then use it to eavesdrop on other people's communications. The problem with this is that of course, you are proposing sacrificing absolutely everyone's privacy, and exposing them indefensibly to anyone who might try to harm them by abusing their personal information. The government and law enforcement cannot be everywhere at once, and completely innocent people will be harmed by this proposal if it should pass. I can completely understand the imperative feeling that something might need to be done in this arena, but this is not the solution.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hillary is someone whom the country would be better without, but at least she doesn't score double-irony points with stuff like this:
Only Fiorina could get people laughing so hysterically with so few words. Even Trump has never said anything quite that shocking yet. This is like if Hillary were to sincerely brag about how faithful her husband has been.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Exactly this. The Republicans will advocate for small government one second ("Get government out of our lives") and the next second call for a huge, over-reaching government to pry into all aspects of our lives in order to root out the terrorists that apparently hide behind every couch in America.
This isn't to say that the Democrats are any better, but at least they are honest about calling for big government.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No, because Tea Party people often go to a church which does charity work, so they don't need a political organization doing that.
I'm beginning to think that governments are like users that tech support encounters.
The completely ineffective ones can do harm but usually wind up keeping themselves from doing too much harm.
The partly effective ones (the ones who think they know it all but don't) do a lot of damage as they overestimate their effectiveness and wind up trashing everything.
The completely effective ones don't do any harm but are also so rare as to be nonexistent.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Who could have guessed?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
What, and not immediately turn every discussion into slinging reductionist hyperbolic idiocy at each other? Unthinkable, sir! If I actually have to consider the merits of each argument rather than just looking for the (R) or (D) next to the name, how will I find time to write my ignorant diatribes in comment sections?
Those aren't "welfare" items but rather items of civilized society.
I would argue that a society with 0 social assistance programs is not a very civilized society. I think you underestimate the amount of order and civility of society that stems in/directly from people being able to get help sometimes when they need it and not go down in flames because of a single adverse event in their lives. That is the whole problem with this point of view: the societal benefits of welfare are often 2+ degrees of separation from the investment, so you assume they do not exist and just whine that you had to pay some tax money and got nothing for it in immediate returns. If you treat it like a transaction where you expect to get an instant return of 10 units of quality of life per $100 of tax money then you are oversimplifying, and I'm not surprised you don't see the value. It is, nonetheless valuable.
A topic about a Democrat or Republican, and nobody mentions the other. Where has one seen this; ever.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
... to just shut down that whole thing."
Type Clinton into the search box, it's the second story right after this one. http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/12/06/2252209/hillary-clinton-urges-silicon-valley-to-disrupt-isis
No wonder she ran HP into the ground.
The average church spends 82% of its budget on buildings, personnel, and administration. They kinda suck as charitable organizations.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I thought government was the problem and republicans didn't want "big brother".
We have several issues with granting government more power. Why would we not use spying to catch all criminals and not just terrorists? Why do we not have complete reports on incidents that were prevented by use of spying? It is impossible for every case to be so sensitive that it all must be kept hush, hush. So what would happen if we allow government to spy more? Suppose we catch an overwhelming number of people who commit crimes. Ultimately we would have to be selective and only arrest certain criminals. That gives the government way too much power. It is already a huge problem. Cops can arrest poor people and be assured that convictions will soon follow. Cops can not arrest rich people without a great deal of difficulty. And rich people tend to be found not guilty if it gets to trial. Our legal system is broken and needs repair. The last thing we want to create is a system that applies selective enforcement to various classes of people. There are many people on Wall St. that caused us more harm tan any nut job, terrorist with a pipe bomb or AK-47.
Both parties are horrible, no sane person can argue that. But for the past 7 years or so the only thing the GOP has done is try to sabotage anything the left does. Anything. They're on record saying as much. Hell, they shut down the government and threatened to do it again. The deep rooted insanity is evident in the candidates this year. I'm no Hillary fan but the idea that any current GOP candidate is going to with the election is completely laughable. They're all nutjob caricatures, which seems to be the new GOP brand. Even the GOP causes are championed by crazy. Every time I hear someone talk about Obama taking their guns I just want to take that gun and shoot them because there is no serious, real movement to ban guns. The Dem's crazy just pales in comparison and it's been that way for most millennial's political lives which is proving to be a real problem for the GOP.
Ms Fiorina,
Since I don't assume for a femto-second that you are unversed in technology or have at your back a multitude of technical advisors, as does your brethren across all parties. I am only left to assert that you are being disingenuous at best or a bold faced liar at worst for suggesting that government needs a "work around" for encryption to address current international criminal conspiracies. You know as well as I that such a thing is IMPOSSIBLE. It is especially IMPOSSIBLE in reference to the high value targets that you and your like have already declared, because they will never use cryptographic products that any government has a "work around" for. I speak specifically of all the Open Source, independently internationally vetted products that are available to any person with access to an internet connection.
I am only left to assume that should you get your wish of a "work around" that it could only be applied to the low-hanging-fruit of those citizens or otherwise, unversed in Operational Security who would trust encryption suspected to have a "work around" included. i.e. Wannabe criminal idiots, Minor Agitators and the general Citizenry.
We are Pseudonymous, we are Elsewhere, we sometimes Forget but we never Forgive (especially at polling time).
--- BTW: I give this post free of copyright to all, just replace the quoted portion with your detected dumb-assery quote of choice ---
Churches are not church goers.
http://www.churchlawandtax.com...
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Next time don't call someone full of shit with out making sure you are right.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
You are, I trust familiar with her dismal record at HP, which left the company and tatters. How anyone thinks this moron is fit to run a lemon aid stand, let alone a company or country, is beyond me.
It does demonstrate just how detached from what any given company does your average CEO is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And let's not forget how competent she is about technical issues... such that HP had to find a way to "work around" her (aka, firing her).
mark
For all the initial talk about the season of political outsiders, bunching Carly w/ the Donald or Dr Ben was a misplaced grouping of the 3. The third outsider in the group is Cruz. In fact, had Carly won her race against Barbara Boxer, she'd have been one of the insiders, had she still run.
In fact, in the race, I hardly notice much difference b/w her positions and those of Rubio or Christie. Along w/ Bush, all seem to think that Russia is our greatest enemy, rather than Muslims. And Carly wearing a cross in her interviews, or talking about the ISIS threat is all fake - it took Trump's statement on banning Muslims to pull out the true colors of all Republicans.
If anything, Carly was a real outsider at HP, and look where she led them. No wonder that in a season where Trump, Cruz and for a while Carson were doing so well, the only time Carly did well was after the second debate, when she grabbed the chance to be the voice of the live abortion fetal tissue sales campaign against Planned Parenthood. And on the abortion issue, she's one of the more liberal voices on the issue - there ain't much going beyond Walker, Santorum, Carson or Cruz.
I think Rubio and Cruz are both technically more competent than she is. In fact, I dare say either could do a better job at running HP
Why doesn't Carly ask for a perpetual motion machine to get clean, free energy while she is at it?
Exactly! We should have all learned in history class that one of the things that helped America become great in the beginning was the British empire's salutary neglect. We need more of that, i.e., a government that does less!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
To me there is little difference between what Carly wants and the statement; "In order to stop terrorist and child molesters, the government must be able to enter any home and look anywhere they want, with or without the homeowner's knowledge. Because this is so important, we must be able to do this without any warrant. Don't worry, we promise not to abuse this law.
And yet this figure entirely ignores volunteer work.
Only if you count donations to churches, the vast majority of which ends up getting returned to the donors in the form of member services.
If I pay a psychologist for marriage counselling, no one considers it charity. If you pay a minister's salary for it, it does.
If I pay to join a country club to attend social gatherings, no one considers it charity. If you pay for a church building to host social gatherings, it does.
etc.
If you look at money spent on actual public philanthropy efforts (which for most churches is a tiny fraction of their budget), liberals donate far more than conservatives.
It's not sharing the burden, it's division of labor. Which happens to be one of the defining characteristics of the capitalist economic system. Marx, believed that once the proletariat took over and the state was eradicated, division of labor would also disappear. Division of labor is one of the things that gave rise to civilization.
It's a mistake to assume that welfare can only come from the state. The problem with the welfare state is that it reduces production, which is precisely what is required to support the welfare state. That is also the reason most societies with welfare as their primary reason for being fail catastrophically.
I heard she knows a thing or two about high tech.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Have heard this asserted before, but never really bothered looking it up. Had assumed tithes would be a datapoint in study, but nobody seems to mention it (even in my links). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa... http://news.rice.edu/2012/05/3... https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.do... Looks like there's no difference between the two groups (generally).
If encryption is outlawed - only outlaws will have encryption. Businesses trying to do secure transactions will get screwed.
So the government holds a key/backdoor - when(not if) they leak the key - who is indemnified?
I suppose this thinking would outlaw BTC?
All your representatives will be compromised as well - and will do as they are told by the puppet masters.
There is a reason why HP's stock price jumped 7% the day she left...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The reality distortion field is strong in this one...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Apparently Hillary thinks the same yet no Slashdot story on it.
You're exactly right, except for this Slashdot story on it...
http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Seems like Carly Fiorina is spewing a lot of dung. Thankfully, I've gone all open source and OpenBSD. I can be assured that the OpenBSD folks will not give in to demands for work arounds and builtin weaknesses in encryption.
Wow! Someone that gets it! There will always be ways of keeping one's communications private, if one makes the effort to do so. A backdoor in a miscreant's operating system software won't help at all where he can use a die, a pad of paper and a match. That there is so much discussion about encryption in political circles betrays the fact that our politicians don't have the first clue what they are talking about.
The weird thing is, once they get into power, Republicans tend to increase the size of government, (and spending), while Democrats tend to decrease the size of government, (and spending). But people will never let facts get in the way of their narrative. Not that I support the Democrats, mind you, but facts are facts. The truth is, there is little difference between what the parties do, in spite of what they say. What we really need is to get rid of our de facto two-party system. There is nothing in the Constitution about a two-party system. Nevertheless, election laws have been designed to maintain the current political duopoly.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
You are, I trust familiar with her dismal record at HP, which left the company and tatters. How anyone thinks this moron is fit to run a lemon aid stand, let alone a company or country, is beyond me.
It does demonstrate just how detached from what any given company does your average CEO is.
Some have said she plans to do the same thing with the US as with her early profits at HP - Sell half the country off.
Amazing that the woman touts her financial acumen.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm sure he can do something about it, while he's doing working on closing up the internet.
What is even more amazing is that her rivals are such a pack of unadulterated morons that they won't even take a cursory look at her dismal time overseeing HP's most severe decline.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Encryption backdoors? Sure, we've got nothing to hide.
A woman's body? Better let the government handle that.
Healthcare? There's no way we can trust the government to do that!
Gun control? Not a chance - we need to be able to defend ourselves!
There is no debate. We either have functional encryption, or we don't. A technological vulnerability that can be exploited by one and only one entity is a pipe dream.
Now we can talk about key escrow, if only to dismiss it as untenable, where the government (or somebody) is required to keep a key to be used in the event that a warrant is issued, but that requires complicit cooperation on the part of the very people you want to monitor. So, good luck with that.
What I am more concerned with is the skewed perspective that's feeding these so-called debates and policy decisions. Terrorirism is NOT a major threat to national security. Isolated attacks with small arms will always be a problem, but they are not matters of national security. And if terrorism is the biggest problem our country is facing (it's not, but if it were) then we should be celebrating our success and relative security instead of hand-wringing over attacks that number in the singles of digits.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The whole point of organizing people into a society, whether a tribe, a city-state, or a nation-state, is that by helping weaker members, you increase the strength of the entire group. This is so plainly obvious, it boggles my mind that some don't get it. And often, the same people who want to pretend they're simply a self-sufficient individual are the same people who are obnoxiously nationalistic, yet seemingly oblivious to how they've benefitted from the very policies they decry. Of course, they often support one of our biggest, most bloated welfare programs - defense. Yes, that's a welfare program!
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Yes we all agree that any human being that is inconvenient should be killed.
Way to completely miss the point and focus in on your own bias. Read the post again, it isn't saying that anyone "should" be killed. No compulsion to do anything. That's the exact opposite of freedom, no one is advocating that except the strawman you've got going there. What it's saying is that a pregnant woman should be allowed to make the choice of whether or not to end that pregnancy without being forced to bring yet another life into this world. You seem to support the position that she should be forced to. That's not freedom.
The first thing someone who wants to kill unborn humans does is deny they're people.
I've never met a single person who claims they want to go around killing unborn humans. I've met several people who have decided that an abortion was appropriate for their situation though. Can you think of some reasons why they would make that decision, or do you just want to label everyone who considers an abortion as someone who "wants to kill unborn humans"? Are labels like that the way forward in a constructive dialog? Are you going to deny that people have legitimate reasons for wanting an abortion, or are you going to try to understand the position of people you disagree with? If I read your words and, instead of trying to understand your view, I just say you're a religious extremist, is that moving the debate forward in any constructive way?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Nice analysis, but one little part is wrong. You used the word 'share'. No matter how you dress it up, it's not sharing when it is government enforced.
Not going to get in the substance too much (like no one recovered from sickness, pursued education, cared for children, etc. before the nanny state) just use the right word. Whatever the right word is, it isn't 'sharing'.
former CEO of tech company that got destroyed. Yep she's the one to listen to.
As a former contract worker of that company that got fired, at the height of the recession, by a decision finalized BY HER, she *so* has my vote.
One could hope though, that after 50+ years you would see some reduction in the targeted problems. A slight decrease in the percentage of those living in poverty; something.
Would you actually say that we have more order and civility in our cities than we did 60 years ago?
Let's get this out of the way, pre-emptively: Carly is a worthless pile of human garbage, a perpetual leech on humanity's ass, and a shining example of everything that can go wrong in a Capitalist society. Did I forget anything?
What do they call people that operate on the path of, "Hey, [he] did it. That means I can do it, too!" That word.
The completely effective ones don't do any harm but are also so rare as to be nonexistent.
I'm not sure how this fits with the governmental analogy, but I think there are "completely effective" users... but they don't call tech support.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No, what I would say is that welfare inputs and the problems they are meant to address are 2 opposing forces, and that just putting something in doesn't mean you will see a net positive. You have to put enough in to counterbalance the problem, and I don't think that has happened over last 50 years. At best we have slowed the decline, not made progress.
Meanwhile, welfare programs and those who need them are consistently demonized and targeted as the 'takers' of society in an ongoing crusade to redirect people's attention away from the much larger deficit-inducing items that nobody wants to take on because they have lobbies behind them. It is a constant struggle to even maintain the existence of these programs, much less improve them. Every time one is shown to have flaws the reaction is 'kill it!' rather than 'fix it'. How somebody can think cutting welfare is a top priority in the face of the state of our banking regulation and corporate taxation systems is well and truly beyond my reckoning.
Yes, but my analogy referred to users that tech support workers encountered. Tech support rarely seems to encounter "completely effective" users. Instead, they get a mix of people who don't know anything ("completely ineffective" - e.g, "What is a Start menu?") and who know just enough to be dangerous ("partially effective" - e.g. "I should be able to solve this by clicking here, right? No? What if I click there? What if I delete this? Why are you yelling at me to just stop and listen to you?")
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yeah, and that too in a crowded field where there is already something for everyone...
If someone wants successful business experience, there's Trump, and to a lesser extent, Carson. If one wants knowledge of how the government works, it's just about everybody in the field, including the 3 governors who've dropped out. If they want pro-Life guys, there is Huckabee & Santorum. If they want foreign policy adventurers, there is Graham and Christie. Other than the gender card, I just don't see anything that she doesn't fill. And she's already indicated that gender should not be the consideration while supporting her, while laying out that she'd be the strongest against Hilary since the latter won't be able to play that against her.
What beats me is why she thinks she has any chance at the election, given her history? Her last CEO role was the one that everyone pillories her for - the one at HP. She ran an election against Barbara Boxer, which she lost heavily, once her record at HP was highlighted in an ad in the last days of the campaign. And aside from HP, there are other skeletons in her cupboard - her deal w/ Iran while she was CEO - today, she wants to convince us that she'd be tough on Islam, even while she derides Trump's plan to block Muslims from coming in.
She needs a couple of successful jobs before she can claim to be qualified to run for president.
Apparently Hillary thinks the same yet no Slashdot story on it.
Hillary Clinton: Stop helping terrorists, Silicon Valley
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
I am sometimes embarrassed to be in the same species as these idiots. Ok, Hillary and Carly Gnarly, how about we remove all medicine from the stores to help ensure those ter'rists don't have anything to help fight their diseases, thus eradicating them? Wanna try that? I mean, how could it NOT work?
I have a one-track mind, but I keep it that way because if I don't, I start to see all of the interoperations, weak points, lack of planning, failures, laziness, and all else that factors in (no pun int.) to the problem solving of huge issue that are beyond my control. Well, without a complete 'reboot' (read: eradication of all failures with a 'clean' boot where different preventative measures can be attempted). I, as a result, should NOT be a politician or in office. I would slow everything down and keep everyone from agreeing that there is no good, happy, and profitable solution to every problem. Oops, that last sentence earned me mod-down because it's effing true and people hate to face reality.
We all 'share' a society. That society has burdens, which by the transitive property we all also 'share'. So yes, we have 'shared burdens'.
Your point seems to be that we do not share a responsibility to address those burdens. Or is it that you would be just fine with sharing if it just wasn't the mean ol' government making you do it? I find this to be the most disingenuous argument one can make on this topic: the idea that if only the government would tear down all these forced contributions that somehow a voluntary grassroots movement of welfare would spring up and be organized, effective, located even remotely near the areas where it is most needed, somehow free of corruption, bungling and discriminatory treatment. Utterly ridiculous.
What is even more amazing is that her rivals are such a pack of unadulterated morons that they won't even take a cursory look at her dismal time overseeing HP's most severe decline.
A pity when she ends up as "the smart one".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
perhaps not getting the nomination and not getting votes will finally do it. so please contribute to that end, thanks.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's a mistake to assume that welfare can only come from the state.
So if all welfare programs were shut down tomorrow, I can assume that you will promptly take your extra $20 per paycheck and start researching charities to whom you can give the money, or start one where / for whom it is needed and contribute your time to it despite the fact that 'where it is needed' is nowhere near where you live and 'for whom it is needed' is a bunch of people you don't like? I think not.
The problem with the welfare state is that it reduces production
Well it doesn't get any more reductionist than that. I'm not sure how the spherical cows breathe in the vacuum where you live.
That is also the reason most societies with welfare as their primary reason for being fail catastrophically
As a 'primary reason'? Who the hell ever made a society where the 'primary reason' was to have the problems that require welfare? Please don't tell me you had Soviet / Maoist communism in mind, because that is not 'welfare' that is inversion of ownership and entirely inapplicable to the discussion of having a well-regulated capitalist society where people contribute a fair share to its general well-being.
You have a right to your opinion for sure. But I also have mine, and it's that you're an awful human being if you truly believe what you wrote.
The United States was not founded on FYGM.
True. How much of that charity is to non-religious and non political groups, and how much of that goes to minority groups? It sort of balances out. Also the US tends to give much more to charity overall than many other countries. Possibly because we have fewer safety nets in place than in other countries. The vast majority of our taxes goes to the military (basically a gigantic jobs program, so it's kind of like a charity).
There is at least one case where organized crime used a back door into phone switches to spy on law enforcement.
Right, I was just saying that your "so rare as to be nonexistent" is just perception, not reality. They exist, they just don't call.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
... only outlaws will have strong encryption.
She does know that those terrorists in France were communicating over plain old, in the clear, text messages, and still no one bothered to stop them.
This is a clear indication that none of this is being done to stop terrorism and aid law enforcement. France supposedly has a broader surveillance reach than the NSA does. And they still somehow missed these yokels that were not even using encryption. The need to bypass encryption is simply a need to spy on Americans and ensure that they stay in power. DO you think bad guys are gonna say "Well, damn! The cops can read my iMessages. What am I going to do now?" No, there's going to go to the first black market guy that can sideload the encryption app without the government back door and keep chatting away. Bad guys don't care about laws. That's why they are bad guys.
How about here? Democrats have great ideas, but Republicans can get the job done without spending all the money. There are exceptions to this rule. Like the Obama Care web site, and World-Com.
Democrats generally don't have great ideas, and their best ones are generally mediocre. (Not to say Republicans are any better.) And Republicans spend money just as bad as the Dems.
My point is, stop comparing bad and bad, and start opening the conversation up about how to get rid of both. Our voting system is one reason we are stuck in the two-party system that makes us vote against the worst instead of for the best: http://www.cgpgrey.com/politic...
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Kinda with you on that one. The idea of a government that does what it says it wants to do shouldn't be scary, but I've heard what the candidates say they want to do and I'd rather have a government that accomplishes almost nothing.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Sounds like what you want is a bunch of governments banded together for only the smallest portion of law that affects how they interact. It sounds like you want the option to have some people get strict gun control and all abortions illegal, while a hundred miles away another government might have legalized and subsidized abortions for fetuses up to twenty-three months and mandatory gun training and ownership for everybody. You'd have a bunch of small governments that could succeed or fail on their own, with the only laws tying them together being about the interactions between them. That could work. Then you'd only need a very small and inexpensive coordinating governing body for the disputes between the smaller governments.
I read about such a place. There was no income tax. There was freedom for whatever people cared most about and if it wasn't where they lived, they could move (mostly.) Some of the small governments got bothered when there were human rights violations by other small governments, preventing people from moving where they wanted not even being the greatest of the problems. They had a little war and the ones that wanted to tell others what to do won. Now that place still has their little governments but the central oversight government has taxed and legislated itself into a massive center of power and the differences between the laws by the little governments are insignificant in comparison. Oddly, most people still think their own little government is the best and still think they're "free" despite having to carry government issued identification papers at all times and having their private communications tracked and recorded doesn't seem to bother most of them. This guy Edward Snowden tried to tell the people there was a problem and had to flee the country and even though his revelations were in the news for months and months, most people couldn't tell you his name.
Freedom is scary because people will abuse it and harm other people. Real freedom means that you have to let Fred beat his wife to death and watch his starving children die of preventable illness because Fred is "free." Real freedom means some people make other people slaves and other people embark on genocides.
My personal belief is that the only valid roles of government are justice, preventing people from harming each other and protecting the public from being harmed by outside actors. I believe in supporting the common good, but not in forcing people to support what others consider the common good with threats of violence or imprisonment. Schools? Firemen? Police? Roads? All things I'm in favor of supporting, but I'm not in favor of jailing people who don't. People often think Libertarian and Tea Party views are about providing less services, but in reality they're about who goes to jail for not helping. I'm not really a Libertarian but I have voted for Libertarian candidates and I'm not a member of the Tea Party but I do like tea and parties. What I don't like is guns and jails used on people who disagree but don't harm anyone else.
They should have invested in insurance
Insurance for what? Let's use the example of health insurance. Before the U.S. mandated health insurance, a move that the Republican Party opposed on grounds that it is SOCIALIST, how should someone with a preexisting condition existing since childhood have found health insurance once he finished school and entered the labor market? Let's also use the example of unemployment insurance. The recession of 2008 has demonstrated that the typical unemployment insurance policy is insufficient to cover structural un- and underemployment during a recession that occurs between two jobless recoveries marked by a shift toward purchase of goods and services from less-developed economies.
stayed in school
Public K-12 school is SOCIALIST, and community college is paywalled despite being also SOCIALIST. What should those who cannot afford school have done?
stayed out of trouble
A lot of people use "staying out of trouble" rhetoric to rationalize victim blaming. By "stayed out of trouble" are you, for example, placing the responsibility on women and adolescent girls to avoid being sexually assaulted and given an STI or pregnancy?
or moved to a country that supports SOCIALISM.
People are trying to do so. The citizens of those countries are expressing their opposition to such immigration.
What it's saying is that a pregnant woman should be allowed to make the choice of whether or not to end that pregnancy without being forced to bring yet another life into this world.
But how can the pregnant woman end the pregnancy without ending the life?
Would you actually say that we have more order and civility in our cities than we did 60 years ago?
Yes. AuntieMeme has made a collection of infographics showing that several misery metrics have been declining.
Before you invest, you need to have some money to invest. Where does one come across that?
I suppose that medical science hasn't found a solution for that yet, maybe in the future that will be possible so that the folks who want to see all fetuses survive can adopt them and give them the good life that they wouldn't have otherwise had.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Except not:
Blitzer pointed out that major tech companies have resisted government requests to access encrypted communications. He asked candidate Carly Fiorina if the companies should be forced to cooperate with the FBI.
"They do not need to be forced. They need to be asked to bring the best and brightest, the most recent technology to the table. I was asked as a CEO [of HP]. I complied happily. And they will as well. But they have not been asked," Fiorina said.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
In any similar circumstance, that doesn't matter. Suppose my brother needs a bone marrow transplant and I'm the only possible donor. I agree to donate. The doctors kill my brother's bone marrow. I back out of the transplant. My brother dies. I'm completely in the clear, legally.
I kill living things all the time. I don't kill humans, but I don't consider a fetus to be human life until said fetus has recognizably human brainwaves. Most abortions are performed before that happens, and the ones that don't tend to be for serious medical reasons.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Agreed. She is a busy, buddy, bright, ambitious lightweight. How do I know? She's a Republican. Look at them. Not a single, credible person in the entire party.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Suppose my brother needs a bone marrow transplant and I'm the only possible donor. I agree to donate. The doctors kill my brother's bone marrow. I back out of the transplant. My brother dies. I'm completely in the clear, legally.
Interesting. Where can I read about precedents related to legality of taking someone's life by backing out of a previously arranged organ or tissue donation?
I don't consider a fetus to be human life until said fetus has recognizably human brainwaves.
Signals from the hippocampus booting up would set the limit around 17 weeks according to an article by Margaret Sykes.
For better, for worse, Bill and Hillary are still married. HP has already divorced Fiorina.
So no thanks teabaggers, I will happily give $100 today to assist a poor/sick/uneducated person in the hopes that they will improve their life rather than piss it away into the machines of our economy that run on suffering. Maybe that person squanders that assistance, maybe they don't - but I can be damn sure that the alternative is a wasted investment.
A noble idea, but where does the altruism end? Let's assume the US is already a paradise, wouldn't there still be people outside the walled garden who want to get in? Should we help the poor/sick/uneducated in other countries as well?
That's the trick isn't it - it is inevitably an unwinnable situation and there will always be people who can't (or shouldn't) be helped. My stance is that this is no excuse to throw your hands up and do nothing. If we want to consider ourselves a civilized and just society, we have a moral obligation to at least try to help as many people as much as possible without doing serious harm to others. I know, 'serious harm' is going to be the subjective sticking point in that statement, but to me, a small fraction of a paycheck does not remotely qualify. There is a balancing point somewhere which we need to find, and such a thing cannot be codified. So, we must (and should) keep having the argument at all times about when enough is enough. I don't think we are anywhere near that point.
I've just simply fucking had it with people who think that assistance programs can somehow not be accompanied with some level of incompetence, abuse and mismanagement, and that these are reasons to not have them at all. No action of of the federal government will ever have 100% positive results. As a pragmatist who does not consider societal policy a set of equations evaluated in a vacuum, I would happily settle for anything over 60%. And yes, I recognize the oxymoron I just created there using percentages to describe subjective quantities.
Kinda with you on that one. The idea of a government that does what it says it wants to do shouldn't be scary, but I've heard what the candidates say they want to do and I'd rather have a government that accomplishes almost nothing.
You have your wish, because the US government was specifically designed to not be able to do anything unless most could agree on it. Which almost never happens.
Part of the reason is to give the "control phreaks" a game to play with, so they don't destroy all of us.
When you hear that our governmenbt is so broken and needs to be streamlined, remember that it is working -exactly- as it is supposed to! 8-)
You might want to fact the U.S.'s party systems. Better yet, you run for President. If a political dumb ass surgeon can, you can. Hillary has shown she can't lead. The Republican bench as a group are nin-com-poops(sp?). One problem I've figured out; who ever is involved with Citizens United, I wish cancer upon them all.