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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.
I hope it continues to drive him and others of his ilk crazy.
Full stop.
it would be nice to see how "crazy" he would feel if his own phone was hacked, his personal bank accounts stolen, his medical history made public, his emails analyzed in a foreign county just because a backdoor was mandatory for mobile devices.
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.
I am by no means rich and I live where it is pretty damn dark and cold 6 month of the year and I would still prefer that my communications, contacts, etc, are secure from the likes of the bad guys or even the likes of the FBI. Or perhaps especially the likes of tyrannical regimes like the USA.
I appreciate the work and dedication that law enforcement have to serve this country but that's where it ends. Cracking criminal is the task that law enforcement MUST do. The tech industry can help whenever they can but that's not a required responsibility. If they say they cannot help, they cannot help.
A single anecdote does not constitute proof. You'd need a far greater body of evidence to back your assertion. Also, it isn't the FBI's job to investigate people BEFORE a crime is committed. I'd prefer that the FBI not move any further in that direction than it already has.
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.
You colossally ignorant savage, you see tiny issues like terrorism and organized crime and don't see the darkness George Orwell, the Founding Fathers, and many others saw -- a boot stepping on a human face, forever.
Billions continue to live in despotism as their leaders use the tech you want for "crime" to catch and punish any challengers to their power.
Both Russia and China have leaders currently consolidating power for the long term, at least partly because of the lack of crypto government can't get into.
Thou impious fool.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If FBI get their back door as they wish, then they would be able to unlock devices of tourists and business people visiting the USA.
Since USA have not been elected to rule the world, then other governments should have the possibilities.
This would enable china to spy on business phones entering China.
"the leaders of the tech companies don't see the darkness the FBI sees"
They see a different, more dangerous kind of darkness: one brought about by the FBI and law enforcement and the rest of the government itself. The 4th amendment and the broader right to privacy itself is supremely important to avoiding a tyrannical government.
This is more important than any benefit against terrorism and organized crime.
Well, this kind of attitude makes me glad he's out. Sorry being FBI is hard. Yes, taking away people's rights would make your job easier.
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.
This book hasn't been released yet. The link provides a short quote and opinions about the context without sufficient information to be useful for anything but marketing hype. The link is an advertorial designed to generate hype.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
One of these individuals lied to Congress under oath and sabotaged an entire US election. Can you guess who?
I mean, the article proving this is bullshit is still on the front page here. At best it's a minor inconvenience. Your phone's been owned 8 ways from Sunday. This crap from Comey is all just theater.
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He [James Comey] 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,"
Similarly, the FBI appears to be not listening to the tech companies and not seeing the darkness they see. Things such state secrets repeatedly escaping (Snoden, Reality Winner, TSA keys), a perception that when a secret is shared with somebody else, it no longer is a secret and a belief that if one person can "break" encryption, so can somebody else.
James Woods called the FBI about suspicious Islamic men on one of his flights right before 9/11. Guess he talked to the same FBI employee as the the Florida shooter tipster.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I meant "neither" not "both" - that's what happens when you edit your post several times and don't rewrite the title.
Obviously, I don't want "Big Brother" nor do I want to live in an unsafe society. I want a society that is safe because relatively few people are motivated to hurt others, not because "Big Brother" is stopping crime before it happens.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Police hold a lot of power. The definition of the boundaries on that power should not be definable by them.
Police (ethical ones) really only care about what they can do within the law to solve crimes. It’s not their job to think about the big questions, and I’m not going to fault them for that (although the top cops should probably try to step outside their box).
But it’s also why I don’t put a lot of weight into their opinions on things like this, or the rights of the accused, or the inviolability of personal property. And it’s one of the many reasons the people who *did* spend time thinking about the big questions gave us a Bill of Rights.
#DeleteChrome
The Boston Marathon bomber and the father of the nighclub shooter in Orlando were paid FBI informants. Even the Garland, TX terrorists were in communication with the FBI before their attack, and a security guard is suing the FBI for not stopping it. It will be interesting what comes out during discovery.
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
On the flip side, lack of truly-unbreakable encryption being the norm makes it easier to disrupt communications between terrorists and criminals.
Does it, though? Terrorists might have access to math, and so be able to implement strong encryption anyway, even if you put every subject's keys in escrow. Secondly, they might use a mode of communication that is not as vulnerable to disruption in the first place.
That's what the DNC would like you to believe when really it was their fixing of the primary in favor of Hillary. Say what you like about Trump, at least he was able to win the primary without engaging in election fraud and voter suppression.
Why should any of use come out to support a candidate that couldn't be bothered to give us a reason why she should win other than vague platitudes and I'm a girl.
Translation: "I'm talking out of my ass because I'm a Trump voter and we're the best at it."
Translation: "I'm a Shillary who anonymously posts lazy ad hominem instead of actually addressing the point raised, because I hope that other lazy liberals will get distracted mentally cheering me on and forget to do a little homework and see that the person I'm pretending to scold is actually correct."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
lack of truly-unbreakable encryption being the norm makes it easier to disrupt communications between terrorists and criminals.
Does it, though?
It makes those who use unbreakable encryption - especially in transit - easier to spot and disrupt. See: Great Firewall of China.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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...
It's a shame Mr. Comey was constantly surrounded by poor imbeciles living under cloudy conditions most of the time but the point here is that the standard must be set for an ideal world or you've destroyed what you are trying to protect. Not unlike raising your kids while a teacher with a gun imposes upon them, for their safety of course. You would however be raising people who see absolute authority in weapons as most of us tend to remember our teachers for the rest of our lives, sometimes as people to exemplify. If I believe that I have no ability to protect my privacy, I'd rather not use the Internet. Most of the time I do not anyways, given there really is no way, but porn is free. I shudder to think who is using that data for what purpose but I know a few people (corporate entities?) can get it all, that's creepy enough. Treat the Internet like a cigarette, you start because of your friends, cool for a while, starts to taste great, but lets be honest, it's just bad for you.
Can people in the FBI decide themselves who to be loyal too?
In the title, Comey is referring to Trump's demand of him for loyalty, which was highly inappropriate. The "higher loyalty" refers his loyalty to the Constitution of the United States, which rules above all men - including the President.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
The moral problem is that Comey and all the right-wing do-gooders think only bad people want to encrypt stuff and only good people want to read it.
Where their logic falls apart is the "good people" section. Jesus said it best. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Given the homosexual child rape of Catholic monks and the coverup of it, along with the divorces and affairs of countless married ministers, and the blatant greed and avarice of the mega-church pastors in Texas, I don't automatically assume someone in the church is free of sin or badness.
Comey not only threw some acid on the Hillary email investigation wounds with the admission that the agency effectively undermined any investigation, the fact that there was more to the tarmac meeting than admitted and that there could be more to come if he ever spoke in an investigation. Now he’s admitting that he himself wants to undermine your basic constitutional rights.
Comey’s book is as much an indictment at Trump as it is a big warning of potential blackmail on the Democrats. He’s basically acting like a mob boss that is pimping out child prostitutes to a senator, I’ve got the pictures, you know I do, let’s make sure you remember that when I come around 2 years from now.
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"the leaders of the tech companies don't see the darkness the FBI sees"...
Gee Comey, ever consider the fact that tech companies don't see this because the government chose to keep that CLASSIFIED?!?
Not to mention pointing out the fact that the tech companies kind of woke the hell up with regards to default encryption when Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 what the US Government does when encryption is NOT the default standard. How ironic our OWN Intel community caused this shift in default behavior...
I kind of understand his point, to be honest.
The old system of the police getting a warrant from a judge in order to wiretap a reasonably suspicious person's telephone, in order to make sure that he's actually a bad guy made sense. There was control and oversight, a reasonable expectation of privacy for the rest of us, and the police could use this tool to catch some bad guys (always with judge oversight).
Nowadays everyone only has to follow some short tutorials to get secure communication channels that world powers would have salivated over just a couple of decades back. This has obviously changed everything.
But that Pandora's Box has been opened, and can't be closed again, at all. Even if Google and Apple would play ball, there will always be open source tools that guarantee secure encrypted channels.
I would actually like the police to have the same capabilities as they had before - but I know that including backdoors, prohibiting encryption and other shenanigans simply wont work. And I have no idea what the law enforcement system could do to face this challenge.
Well, duh. Cointelpro, for one.
...
After all the political policing used by the FBI against MLK, war protesters, and countless other dissidents, it's both hilarious and said to watch the modern American left fall down and worship at the feet of high-ranking officers in the American Gestapo like James Comey, Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller. At least be consistent.
for encryption the government is not a defacto 2nd party.
That would imply that you had the intention of sharing the information with them.
For communications, the other end of the conversation is the 2nd party.
For storage THERE Is NO SECOND PARTY!
The government is a 3rd party, as you had no intention of supplying them with access to this information.
They are trying to FORCE people who have committed no crime to make them a default 2nd party.
they have also show extreme bad faith in automatically recording and storing information illegally, without any knowledge of the public (whom they claim to represent) and keeping that information because they want it..They only got caught out by accident and did their very best to block that knowledge from the general public.
They have also established secret courts that claim to protect rights, however there is no public discussion of such things, no transparency, even long after the fact, and they have been caught intentionally lying about such things to hide their actions in court, destroying due process (parallel construction).
Is there any surprise that the public feel a need to protect themselves from such actions?
Note however that the government HAS worked to put in place protections for themselves against this, although with limited success, by trying to put in place exceptions for government officials.
That is not democracy, that is a surveillance state where the government wants the ability to dig through peoples history if and when it wishes for whatever purpose it wishes. It would be more democratically correct for the opposite to be in place - so the public has the right to dig through the history of the people asking to be placed in control.
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. ~Nietzsche Comey has some real problems. No matter your political affiliation, it is best for the country Comey and others like him are not in leadership positions. The FBI has become the enemy of the people and they are in denial over it.
The very fact that Comey presumes to speak for techies (and seems to think that Silicon Valley represents them almost exclusively) is evidence of why we should be cautious of law enforcement, as well as those who would circumvent it. It may not be so much that we fail to see the darkness that the FBI, et al. confront. Rather, it may be that we also fear darkness in those who claim to protect us without understanding and honoring the breadth of our own principles.
Do iOS assholes not see the same shit we see coming out of them? When will this shit end? FFS. Fuck you Apple.
Comey doesn't recognise the darkness which is the various policing forces.
Go well
But we are also capable of something you apparently cannot do: See beyond our own needs. Which is scary considering that your job is to put yourself into the boots of criminals so you understand how they think which allows you to catch them more easily.
We know that catching terrorists is harder when there is encryption. But flawed encryption means that terrorists will use perfect encryption while your industry, having to obey the law, has to use faulty one which can easily be cracked, not only by you but also by, say, North Korea. Which is certainly interesting in case of, say, a company developing new and more efficient means of enriching nuclear material.
Apparently you can't think this far. It's not that hard, really. In other words, I rarely agree with Trump, but firing you was one of his more sensible moves. We don't need ignorant people who are unfit for their job in critical positions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He admits he rigged his investigation under the assumption Hillary would win.
All the 3 letter agencies had a lot of trust... But they abused their position, the Snowden revelations made that clear.
They routinely violated laws in many countries, and when caught they weaseled out of it. Nobody admitted that what they had done was wrong, there was no massive change in leadership or policy. So trust was lost.
Suddenly, being safe from government abuse became a sales point, and tech companies were quick to jump that.
These days security people will discuss how to minimize risks from state actors "friendly" or not, even if answers aren't perfect, this is now a thing.
But this is their own doing. The 3 letter agencies lost public trust by invading people privacy in the shadows. We have a wide acceptance of search warrants from a public court; but when engulf the process in secrecy you loose trust.
IMO, lots of things could be unencrypted, but rebuilding this trust will take generations. And right now law enforcement in the US should perhaps focus on not shooting people, as a good first step to rebuilding public trust.
So right! /s
Just from yesterday, the going dark thing wasn't real... https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
When viewed from the narrow perspective of the FBI or law enforcement then total access (no privacy rights for citizens) makes total sense...they're only going after the bad guys (at least till some administration who wants the country to run like a dictator's paradise and the FBI become his/her personal police force and have the Justice Department run like his personal judicial system), cause you don't know when that kind of nutball will get elected...
But if you take a step back and look at the reason for the right to privacy (to protect the citizenry from the government abusing its power improperly at some point) then the tech industry's view (really just Apple at this point) makes sense.
The guy running the Justice Department is the guy that sounds like Forrest Gump at this point although taking orders from the President for the most part (very un Forest like there). JMHO...
Fine by me, insider trading is the least of our problems. It offends the American sense of fair play, but is pretty harmless compared to the military-industrial complex, mass incarceration, environmental destruction, etc.
Cointelpro is a leaflet bullet point from J Edgar Hoover's FBI. It's decades old history. Are you saying today's FBI is the same as J Edgar Hoover's FBI?
The Clintons are 'third way' moderate Democrats. It is indeed correct that the Clinton ideology is bankrupt.
The NSA, CIA, GCHQ and DEA. They would have helped domestically.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Not really. Figure that 15 to 30 percent of Internet traffic is porn. That's a lot of images and movies into which data can be injected steganographically. Do you really want to look through all that porn and determine whether it contains hidden messages?
No, wait....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Read this thread and reflect on how abusive government will take advantage of week crypro, or how criminals will not follow the law anyway, or how you probably not want limits on your key size or registration of all strong encryption. Live and let live!
Trump voters sure are dumb. They think "Shillary" is a clever insult. Boy are you dumb. You're dumb.
It is a clever insult, maybe it's just too highbrow for your low humor. I mean you used dumb, three times. Sure is the height of intellectual humor coming from you. After all, everyone knows the left can't meme. I prefer Hillary "Side of Beef" Clinton myself.
Om, nomnomnom...
LOL loyalty to the constitution! What a laugh. Comey? Since when did the FBI supporting Left ever give a shit about the constitution? Hell, when did they start supporting the FBI?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Trump is a scumbag you wouldn't leave alone in a room with your teenage daughter and the FBI hates encryption? Well, that sounds like a book full of amazing revelations; I must get a copy and see if he sheds any light on just what those bears are up to in the woods. Damn bears!
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You don't need evidence to accuse the president of treason, just vague hear say hinted at on MSNBC by some commentator.
If Obama had just done one of the things Trump does multiple times each day, you would have called for his head. Just take the "blabbing out Israeli intelligence to the Russian ambassador" thing.
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.
Repeat after me: "encryption BAD, because of the Donald".
And you have the word of a self-admitted insane person for it.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
ABSCAM is the only example I can recall where a ton of sitting politicians got actual jail time
other than that:
Nixon pardoned.
Scooter Libby pardoned
Bill Clinton never charged
Hillary Clinton never charged
Fast and Furious leaders never charged
Ollie North got immunity
Cheryl Mills got immunity
Reagan claimed dementia
the list goes on and on and on and on and on and isnt bound by party/race anything
When selling a book it is a good idea to sell it in large numbers. Who's going to buy it ? His friends in high places ? There are only a few of them, not enough to make a profit for his book.
So now that he wants those he screwed to fork their hard-earned cash and help him meet his sales target, he has to make it sound like he was suffering while screwing them.
As if corporate interests like Apple and Google did not know that if they wanted the tax loopholes to stay firmly in place they will have to play nice with the powers that be. If you remember his attitude before he was fired, he was not the one to suffer.
Remember when Trump tweeted about how bombing syria was a really bad idea when Obama did it, now it's mission accomplished apparently. He is a very stable genius after all.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I am not sure. One flaw of open source is the lack of regression testing and assumption that code just works and someone else looked at it. It is the tragedy of the commons and somebody elseâ(TM)s problem rolled into one. Take for example the heart bleed bug. It was there for ten years before someone figured it out. So, you could easily introduce a backdoor is you are clever and focus on low churn sections of code.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I'm a Gary Johnson voter and my insult is calling her Hillary Fraudham Clinton.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
If there's no encryption, the criminals will simply exploit other people's computers, just as they have in the past. This leaves no forensic traces on the criminal's computers. Want to talk darkness? Good place to start, the Involuntary Cloud.
If there is encryption, anything that would leave physical evidence still does so. Forensic labs are underfunded or privatised. In either case, incorrect results leading to false convictions and false rejection of suspects are commonplace. Getting those sorted would make defeating encryption less of a necessity and would solve far more crimes that have no relationship to encryption at all.
Let's focus on that second one. Crime labs are a mess. DNA analysis is regularly tainted with contamination and hundreds of thousands of serious crime scene swabs (rape kits, etc) are left abandoned, their evidence decaying. We all remember the false fingerprint match in the Spanish train bombing. These things are STUPID!
Fix this first. Then fix police attitudes. They are trained to be warlords, which is bad for community policing , bad for trust, bad for getting people in Starbucks arrested on suspicion of being black in a built-up area, and very very bad for SWATting victims.
Better community relations will solve a lot of problems. People know a lot but tell little to thugs in uniform. Give them police they can trust. Community police. Honest police.
Speaking of which, did you see the reports on the police unit that turned rogue and were using their uniforms to terrorize, burgle and extort? And the Chicago "black ops" jail where people were arrested without charge and tortured into confessions?
Are these reports true? Does it matter? As long as they're believed, people will respond with fear, hatred and disgust. 99.9% of your leads burned because you fancied the thumbscrews.
Fix the forensics and the police, and you'll find there simply isn't much you need to decrypt. But as long as you try to fight the darkness with the night, you will lose.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
^ The memoirs of James Comey
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Comey publishes a memoir that exposes what a complete and utter fraud (and moron) Trump is and slashdot highlights only that Comey found encryption to be a moral quagmire. I wish I could say I find this surprising.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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
Cointelpro is a leaflet bullet point from J Edgar Hoover's FBI. It's decades old history. Are you saying today's FBI is the same as J Edgar Hoover's FBI?
As an old fart who lived through that era, the differences are more quantitative than qualitative; and it's not just the FBI, there are numerous similarities.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
catches Trump red-handed committing treason.
Treason?
What country are we at war with?
Name the country, please.
What could the FBI have done about that? Being a threat in general is not a criminal offense. Being the sort of person who could plausibly be seen committing mass murder isn't a crime. About the only thing law enforcement could have done is follow the guy 24/7 and try to stop him when he actually committed a crime. That sort of thing is expensive, and I don't know how many other people were deemed similarly threatening and didn't actually kill anyone.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Since when have the FBI and the Left been on speaking terms, let alone supporting each other?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No. They definitely killed 3000 people. I'm just saying it wasn't the FBI's role to arrest them beforehand on someone's casual tip.
Highly inappropriate?? What the hell? Comey was a bureaucrat - and EMPLOYEE of Trump, who was elected to the exact job of being in charge of the executive branch. I think you Comey is a bit of a slimeball (as the book shows) and his use of the word 'loyalty' is a sign of just how things work within the government (for which Trump is an outsider).
Any good leader in an organization, anywhere, would fire an employee for not running things as his boss wished. Only to call it "non loyalty" is laughable, it's just plain insubordination. If you read even Comey's own words about the meeting, Trump sounds like any new manager meeting an employee, and Comey is instantly defensive and mistrustful. It is no wonder at all why he was fired. None of the senior bureaucrats liked Trump who was coming in to derail their gravy train they'd spent so long building.
We don't need a war to have enemies. Nonetheless, the idea that Trump is giving aid or comfort to U.S. enemies is preposterous, as is the notion that Trump is waging war against the U.S.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Maybe if you could trust the government with your data we wouldn't need encryption.
What about when the insider trading is
1) Private prison execs chatting congress people about to pass a law that increases mass incarceration? 2) Military contractors being given the heads up on what bills are going to be sponsored that call for more armaments? 3) Private chemical or other possibly environmentally destructive companies told ahead of time of repeals of regulations?
Seems like in those cases you VERY MUCH do care about the insider trading, it is the impetuous for all the previously described ills. As the old saying goes "Follow the money".
I think the point is that in the "big picture", giving the FBI the ability to easily crack phones to solve and prosecute those very few cases of insider trading that could not otherwise be solved without cracking phones is not, on balance, worth the cost of giving up encryption.
Yeah, that's it. It had nothing to do with the fact that the Democratic nominee was so awful that even a turd like Donald Trump could beat her.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.