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Former FBI Director James Comey Reveals How Apple and Google's Encryption Efforts Drove Him 'Crazy' (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In his explosive new book, A Higher Loyalty, fired FBI director James Comey denounces President Trump as "untethered to the truth" and likens him to a "mob boss," but he also touches on other topics during his decades-long career in law enforcement -- including his strong objection to the tech industry's encryption efforts. When Apple and Google announced in 2014 that they would be moving their mobile devices to default encryption, by emphasizing that making them immune to judicial orders was good for society, "it drove me crazy," he writes. He goes on to lament the lack of "true listening" between tech and law enforcement, saying that "the leaders of the tech companies don't see the darkness the FBI sees," such as terrorism and organized crime.
He writes, "I found it appalling that the tech types couldn't see this. I would frequently joke with the FBI 'Going Dark' team assigned to seek solutions, 'Of course the Silicon Valley types don't see the darkness -- they live where it's sunny all the time and everybody is rich and smart." But Comey understood it was an unbelievably difficult issue and that public safety had to be balanced with privacy concerns.
He writes, "I found it appalling that the tech types couldn't see this. I would frequently joke with the FBI 'Going Dark' team assigned to seek solutions, 'Of course the Silicon Valley types don't see the darkness -- they live where it's sunny all the time and everybody is rich and smart." But Comey understood it was an unbelievably difficult issue and that public safety had to be balanced with privacy concerns.
He needlessly reopened an investigation 10 days before the election handing the election to Trump, and then he catches Trump red-handed committing treason.
I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is, Jenny.
Because Trump has Comey pretty dead to rights on some leaks of information he was not authorized to share with the press. Trump would have been well within his legal rights and authority to haul Sessions into his office and bluntly tell him to impanel a grand jury under the principle that if we're going to prosecute seamen for taking selfies, we ought to crucify the Director of the FBI for acting like leaks are his discretionary power.
Just look at how he's trying to character assassinate Loretta Lynch:
According to ABC News, the former FBI director felt compelled to take a prominent public role in the investigation into Clinton in part because of a “development still unknown to the American public to this day” about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch that he feared critics would use to raise doubts about the integrity of the investigation.
"Gee, she was bad, but I can't tell you why! You have to trust me!"
What's he going to do? Leak it to a "friend" again?
So what we know about Comey is:
(1) He was politically motivated in Hillary's E-mail case, trying to help her gain legitimacy after election.
(2) He was politically motivated to hurt Trump.
(3) He likes to spy on American citizens.
"A Higher Loyalty" indeed. The FBI started out being run by megalomaniac, corrupt authoritarians, and little has apparently changed.
Hey Comey, didn't you serve on the board of directors overseeing the laundering of drug money while at HSBC of like 1.9 BILLION dollars????
I don't see that in your book.
Hacker culture started during the Baby Boom's coming-of-age period. The government was in a massive crackdown on the young population, in a ways far too numerous and complex to go into here. The reaction was a distrust of the government and institutions related to its support and function, and both cultural and organized resistance to them. This reaction was massive.
Among those institutions were law enforcement and the criminal justice system, which had been massively perverted to attack the government's perceived opposition. This is when the drug war started. This is when RICO was passed, encouraging police to steal people's property. This is when concentration camps for dissidents were legislated and designed (but, fortunately, not used and the legislation later repealed). This is when the FBI, along with special "red squads" of local police, were used to infiltrate and disrupt political organizations (See COINTELPRO),. I could go on. Police were viewed as an invading army.
Similarly, the Vietnam conflict and the draft - a threat of slavery and death - were used to "channel" the new generation into desired occupations - and to stretch their entry into the job market out by pushing more of them into college than would historically have gone, in order to avoid an expected economic crash to dwarf the Great Depression. Institutions in any way connected with the war were considered culpable and attacked: Banks (help fund the war), chemical companies (make explosives, defoliants, and Napalm), the monopoly telephone company (collected a war tax).
In the midst of this (and to a large extent, in the California counter-culture hub that became Silicon Valley), personal computers were developed and the programs and applications for them were designed and/or deployed.
Is it any wonder companies (pre-institutional-web), founded and built up by the people who grew up in that environment, as part of that culture, would distrust law enforcement and favor the interests of their equipment's users over it?
And who's the point company in this conflict? Apple! Built by Jobs and Woz. Who got their seed money making "Blue Boxes" - devices to bypass the "war-supporting price-gouging" monopoly phone company's billing - during that era.
Doesn't surprise me at all. (Of course I lived through it, and to some extent was part of it. So I no doubt have personally seen more of it than the massively sanitized, repeatedly rewritten, dumbed-down, and politically-warped historical record, as promulgated by the current media conglomerates, will ever tell you.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
With 5 to 6 TIMES percent of U.S. population sitting in prisons vs. European and Australian countries with similar standards of living and systems of governance I would say LEA is already doing an amazing job considering their hands are tied by "darkness".
Look how well they've done with civil assert forfeiture being so successful trend line over decades has actually managed to exceed sum total of everything reported stolen. Way to go LEA!! Truly an amazing result. Imagine would it could be if only speaking in codes unknown to LEA were outlawed.
Steady bending of sentencing to enhance plea deals as an effective means of extortion now results in a 60 to 70% disparity in jail time for the same crime for those whose only additional sin was failure to forfeit their right to jury trial.
What this country really needs is for more people to give up more of their rights so LEA can do an even better job and keep everyone even safer. We're already 5-6 times safer than everyone else....
Oh what's that you say? We're not? You mean even with all of those extra people sitting in jail U.S. is 3-4 times less safe? No... can't be... I'm shocked...
Disgraced formner gestapo chief flatulently criticizes nouveau riche president for insufficient authoritarianism, pretends to be appalled by Silicon Valley tycoons who sell pretend-secure cellphones.
He has to believe that the Good-Guys can't become Bad-Guys, in his book he admits he didn't recommend HRC be prosecuted for mishandling classified material because they thought she would become President; which makes him one of the Bad-Guys. He sold-out for political favor, then found he had backed the loser!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Comey and other law enforcement types lacks perspective on this issue. They want an easy way to do their job at the expense of a fundamental right of the people who pay his salary. Police and detective work is made hard by our Constitution and laws, as it should be. Law-abiding citizens should not be treated like criminals to make life easier for people like Comey.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert