Slashdot Mirror
FBI Director Christopher Wray On Encryption: We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement' (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday. The technology that scrambles up information so only intended recipients can read it is useful, he said, but it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them. "It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide," Wray said during a live interview at the RSA Conference, a major cybersecurity gathering in San Francisco. His comments are part of a back-and-forth between government agencies and security experts over the role of encryption technology in public safety. Agencies like the FBI have repeatedly voiced concerns like Wray's, saying encryption technology locks them out of communications between criminals. Cybersecurity experts say the technology is crucial for keeping data and critical computer systems safe from hackers. Letting law enforcement access encrypted information just creates a backdoor hackers will ultimately exploit for evil deeds, they say.
Wray, a former assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice who counts among his biggest cases prosecutions against Enron officials, acknowledged Tuesday that encryption is "a provocative subject." As the leader of the nation's top law enforcement agency, though, he's focused on making sure the government can carry out criminal investigations. Hackers in other countries should expect more investigations and indictments, Wray said. "We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."
Wray, a former assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice who counts among his biggest cases prosecutions against Enron officials, acknowledged Tuesday that encryption is "a provocative subject." As the leader of the nation's top law enforcement agency, though, he's focused on making sure the government can carry out criminal investigations. Hackers in other countries should expect more investigations and indictments, Wray said. "We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."
50+ years of voting for tough on crime politicians gets you thinking like this. That and the equally if not more-so ineffective "broken windows" policing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
governments are the entities people most need to be able to keep secrets from.
Just sayin.
Most encryption is used for benign purposes like the ordinary course of business. Weak encryption for the feds ALSO means weak encryption for criminals and foreign state adversaries.
A free society's highest priority is not to service law enforcement.
There will always be encryption they can't brute, haven't weakened or infiltrated in dev. They can put someone in prison indefinitely on a judge's contempt order when asking for your key anyway. I fail to see the issue on their end.
They have all the cards, but they're trying to put a genie back in a bottle. That can never happen like that.
And if we give you the keys Mr. Government everyone will have them in 3..2..1.. because we all know how well law enforcement can keep a secret.
Yeah, I'm looking at you NSA, the most secure agency on planet earth that couldn't hang on to their toys, tools, and tactics.
Fun Fact: If it wasn't for the NSA leaks, we most likely would not have had the WannaCry ransomware attacks.
And we don't. They have a hard job, but they don't need keys to our houses by default. This misconception of theirs has to go away. Dual_EC crap is not security, they can't keep secrets forever, it can't work. The knife cuts both ways.
Even if it becomes illegal in the US, there is still a whole world out there where it's not illegal. The software will still be there and still be accessible. You might as well let the good guys use it too. This man's argument is steeped in lazyness on the part of the FBI. They want to be able to issue a warrent to access the data and boom they have their case. The FBI don't want to do the leg work to get the information, they want a magic legal bullet. Sorry but that's pretty lame.
4th Amendment is "a provocative subject."
I donated, volunteered, and voted for Trump but I gotta say... fuck his FBI director on this.
Both of my positions as a conservative (small government) and a hacker (individual software freedom) are against this.
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking the Democrats would be any better on this issue. Both parties are chock full of authoritarian fuckwits.
Leave me alone with my guns and computers please. :(
Land of the free my ass.
“......(unless it’s in private between parties)”
AC comments get piped to
When they've locked up at least a few of my rather evil and (only incidentally) treasonous family members then I'll believe they're "following the facts wherever they lead." In fact, in light of their heinous and unmitigated crimes against myself and society, and in light of the fact that this repeatedly-debunked argument about encryption is technically impossible to actually pull off without actually giving more access to criminals as well, I can only assume FBI Director Christopher Wray is also in on it.
Btw your wiretap on my cellphone broke the voicemail box. Now nobody can talk to me. Idiots.
>"Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday."
No, it shouldn't. And it can't. We have been over this over and over again. It has been proven in the REAL WORLD over and over again. Either something is secure with encryption or it isn't. You can NOT have back doors or intentional weaknesses in encryption or, eventually, EVERYONE loses and suffers. It is either secure or not secure. Back doors and weaknesses will be found by the "bad doers"- bad governments, rogue elements in governments, corporate competitors, hackers with nothing better to do, terrorists, whatever.
>"it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them."
We have ALWAYS had such playgrounds. Before the days of computers and text messages and Email and web logs and "security" cameras everywhere, the government couldn't just watch what everyone did/say/go/read/etc. We had privacy and security BY DEFAULT due to the fact that it was either impractical or impossible to collect such information and sift through it en-mass. And it would have been UNTHINKABLE that citizens would ever allow the government to do so in a free country.
In an age where information is power, privacy and security are more important than ever. And just passing laws to "protect" this or that isn't going to cut it. Strong encryption is the only option we have. Mess that up, and we have no real protections left.
offline my ass
FBI Director Christopher Wray just can't understand. "We're the good guys here! Why don't you believe us, we're the good guys!"
J. Edgar Hoover? That's in the past! Patriot Act? You can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs! The Panopticon such that even Grandma gets a working over due to too many internet searches for cross-stitch patterns? Well Grandma liked that Commie pinko Rudolph Valentino back in the day, that's reason enough to suspect her!!
This is a binary issue: you either have encryption, or you don't, damnit!
Meanwhile criminals (and non-stupid people!) will use non-backdoored encryption and not give a fuck.
Criminals will also find the backdoor and have access to everything!
Why the ACTUAL FUCK can't these brainless idiots get this through their thick skulls!?
Capone got busted on tax evasion. I'm not sure bringing him up is relevant here.
The only way to avoid leaking backdoor information is to not have one. Period. If there is one, it will unavoidably either leak out, or be found out, that's certain. I understand they'd wish their jobs would be easier, but wishes aren't horses.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Well as such a supporter of the constitution, I shouldn't need to remind you that the right to keep and bear arms is in fact an unalienable right, according to the constitution, the one you are a sworn defender of. In fact the second amendment says 'shall not be infringed'. It doesn't say 'unless the person is an idiot' or 'if I deem they are unsuitable for XYZ reasons'. That definitely clears up my misconceptions of 'the left', thank you..
But he IS a member of a foreign government?
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
As long as fingers are breakable, so will be encryption.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
And many people over 40 invented your computers, punk.
You're welcome.
Its because of jackasses like you, Hoover, etc, that we NEED and DEMAND bullet proof network security and encryption.
If you need a refresher on the reasons why, try the following.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And finally, go back and re-read this thoroughly. Shut your yap until such time you UNDERSTAND the material in question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
anything, and i do mean anything, that a person squirrels away for 'later' can and will be found and exploited by another.
so offline is only good until the building/room/safe is breached.
So what he's saying is that other countries have an unfettered right to spy on the US with the same backdoors he'll put into the software. Because surely no one is beyond the lawful reach of (US/Russian/Chinese) right to investigate?
-In space, it is very hard to rig lights.
It doesn't say "unless they are a felon" or "when they get on a plane" either but there you go.
I can't remember which one but there's an amendment that guarantees a civil trial with jury whenever a damage of "twenty dollars" is suffered. So some interpretation of it's intent is obviously required.
In other words, don't be so fucking literal.
With key escrow, the device manufacturer keeps the keys in offline storage. The key for your device is only retrieved when presented with a lawful warrant.
And nobody with a brain will trust that device for anything important anyway.
We Can't Have an 'Entirely Unfettered Space Beyond the Reach of Law Enforcement
Si, se puede!
So mail in the post should be opened and the contents scanned and looked at?
East German style?
Not just scan the envelope and keep text front and back?
Yet on the internet that electronic mail and data should be opened all the time by the federal gov?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Law enforcement's highest priority is removing the 'free' from society
Campaigning against encryption when everyone else has it just means your hackers won't have it if you succeed. Sure, your hackers might not be on your side directly, but there's hackers in nearly every nation and the ones in yours share your culture, acting in your shared interests. Seeking to take away their ability to encrypt shit is just going to hamstring your own nation in the long-run, because regardless of differences you have more in common with them than with hackers in foreign nations (which you can't legislate away regardless of how hard you try.)
When Gutenberg's press went into production.
The facts are that encryption is a byproduct of math and any computer science student can develop and encryption system as a school project. This is like trying to hold back the printing press. It's not going to happen.
What did happen is that law and social values evolved to accommodate the printing press. Defamation was compartmentalized into libel versus slander and social and political conventions emerged to balance different interests.
The same is happening here.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
What they don't really address is that crooks have been pretty good at finding back-doors. No known technology can make a practical back door for law enforcement that's not a potential and fairly likely access point for crooks.
In fact, the crooks have proved smarter and faster than law enforcement, in part because 3rd-world labor is cheap and plentiful compared to law enforcement staff, and crooks are happy to outsource. The crooks have a much bigger eArmy. Law enforcement will lose a labor contest.
Table-ized A.I.
What you're saying is you want people to go after the key holder. Because that is what will happen as sure as robbers went after banks because 'that's where the money is.'
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
In layman's terms,
"Law enforcement must have master keys to all homes/offices/safes. Every cop must be able to freely copy them."
and "we promise we'll never lose them, pinky swear!"
See how that goes over with the general public.
captcha: "tyranny" - wow. First time I landed an apropos one.
And the manufacturer can also be hacked, and all the keys in escrow can then be stolen.
Pandora's box was opened a long time ago. Criminals can use open source encryption to avoid mainstream services.
The question the FBI and others haven't answered is - how is this any benefit to crime control when all it does is relocate the dark users to their own platforms that they alone hold the keys to?
Why therefore break it for the vast majority of law abiding citizens thus exposing us to not just bad actors in government but the criminals too?
What jackoff put this guy in charge of the FBI, anyway? And why does he hate freedom so much?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Have you? Don't even try to pretend your old lady doesn't run the show at your place. That's a defacto government if I've ever seen one. Points go to ze Kernel.
It's almost enough to make you feel like some kind of god, isn't it? The world debating whether or not unbreakable encryption should "exist", and you can create it in five minutes or so any time you want.
Using them wasn't.
I'm under 40, for a while longer anyway. I can code in assembly on a few different architectures, because when I learned to code, it was often necessary.
My aunt just retired and is looking for something new to do, and so I gave her some Python tutorials. She's loving it. "So much easier than when I first learned to program 100 years ago." It wasn't actually 100 years ago, but she learned to program on punch cards. Punch cards you had to physically mail to the nearest place that actually owned a computer.
Have you no regard for Government power ?
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?
Sorry to be flippant, but I really, really, really shouldn't have to point this out.
And our current president has pretty clearly removed all semblance of impartiality from the appointment while our Republican lead Congress (well, half of it now) is letting him get away with it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The next step is to make the same argument as to why the government should be able to mandate the placement of microphones in every room of every building. You can’t have an unfettered real-world space where criminals can discuss and plan crimes beyond the reach of law enforcement.
#DeleteChrome
It is still illegal to open somebodies snail mail. Why is encryption any different, legally, than an envelope?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You definitely shouldn't be able to talk privately with your wife.
No privacy from Leviathan.
Send nudes.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A good reason not to write your key or your finger.
This guy needs to read some good Bruce Schineer books like Data and Goliath and Click here to Kill Everybody. Then maybe these idiots will understand that if their goal is to catch bad guys (i.e. people who are out to commit things like terrorist attacks or mass murders or the other things the FBI is meant to be trying to stop) back-door access to encrypted devices isn't going to help (and in fact can make that job harder in some cases as well as increasing the risk that things like cyberattacks will occur)
That of course assumes the FBI wants to catch bad guys and terrorists and mass murders and stuff rather than turn into a 21st century version of the old soviet secret police where everyone is assumed to be guilty even when proven innocent in a court...
If the existence of idiots is enough to make you feel god-like, I recommend not returning to the surface. Ever.
https://www.cia.gov/library/ce...
I like the way things are right now. It's a good balance. There's secure encryption out there that's *very* hard for the government to break. If someone wants to use that stuff, they can, but it takes motivation. Apple products don't cut it - those are easy to break. You need pgp and stuff like that. If the government wants access to strongly-encrypted data, they have to get a subpoena. It's not easy. Two separate branches of the government (executive and judicial) have to agree that there's a legit reason. If the government meets that high bar, then they have rights to it. At that point, the person can either a) unlock the info or b) head to jail.
Some people in government feel that they should be able to poke into whatever, whenever, wherever they want. If we give these people control, we'll end up like China. No thanks. I like my western democracy. The executive branch+NSA has overstepped these bounds in the past and I don't approve at all. Suck it up, spooks! Spend the time, fill out the paperwork and get your frikkin subpeonas approved by a judge. Every. Single. Time. It's designed to be hard on purpose.
Some people on the other side feel that they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. Laws be damned. Some of these people call themselves libertarians, some call themselves anarchists, some are truly criminals, but a lot of them just don't like being told what to do. These people need to get a clue. If you want to live like that, find an uninhabited spot and live as a hermit. Rural Australia, Siberia and the Arctic are good candidates. You won't last long, but you'll be free according to your own terms. The second you want to live in a group with other people (aka a civilization) there are rules to follow.
A free society's highest priority is not to service law enforcement.
If American society is still a TRUE Free Society, what you say makes sense.
Only if we can be truly honest to ourselves, that Free Society is no more.
Our mass media manipulate us just as much as Chinese mass media manipulate the people living inside PRC, and our government lies to us just as much as the chicom government lies to their own citizens.
This is not a technical issue.
For the last 232 years, the supreme law of the land in the United States is the US Constitution. All government powers, whether Executive, Legislative, or Judicial, are subordinate to the limits defined in the Constitution.
Claiming that the US Legal system must have unfettered access to all information is the same as saying that the US Legal system must not be fettered or subject to the US Constitution. That leads me to 3 important questions:
The FBI is one of the biggest jokes we have in government today. They have become so lazy about how they investigate crime that I'm sure they are missing whole cargo ships full of drugs, slaves and bootleg media. If they had to pick from those three things to stop, the bootleg media would be their first choice with the slaves a distant third. I wonder if they ever tried to outlaw private meetings and force people to have all conversations through a phone. "Hey we can't have all these people just going to the park and talking where we can't record it"
Indeed it doesn't mentioned felons. That's flat unconstitutional, and our courts engage in blatant intellectual dishonesty to claim those laws are. There should have been an amendment to do that (and IMO, for violent offenders only. Not for tax evaders and every other non-violent minor felony); and there's no support for "shall not be infringed" period meaning "but shall be for a shit load of malum prohibitum bullshit and white collar crimes". But airlines are private companies, and are well within their rights to ban taking guns onto their property; and I'm certain they all would, even absent a government mandate. Not that that's a good thing either, as it's always meant when a plane is hijacked the only people with weapons are the hijackers.
The argument for scaling $20 is better; so I'd be fine with the "intent" of that being $300 today, as the historical inflation calculator told me should be close to accurate; but that it's still $20 because well that's what the constitution says, you've undermined your initial point that stripping the 2nd Amendment from millions of nonviolent people, sometimes without even a criminal conviction, was the "intent" (not that it was).
They've been operating with impunity since Hoover was still prancing around in his pinafores.
Their attempt to force MLK to commit suicide should have been quite enough to cause their demise, if we had anything like a functioning justice system in this country.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You can't ban something that is already common programming knowledge.
Capone got busted on tax evasion. I'm not sure bringing him up is relevant here.
And the FBI has never gotten over the fact that it was IRS accountants who got him..........
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It's called the home. You know, private places.
Look at us, we already have.
Jesus F'ing Christ.. You are delusional...
All codes, even low level noforn and secret level stuff, are regularly changed. Some are done daily.. Others weekly. Well, at least in the DoD.
I can't even imagine that the nuclear stuff isn't rotated far more often than NOFORN. I wouldn't be surprised if it's some sorta deal like I've seen done at some Fortune 500 companies where you get a key fob with a password that changes every 30 seconds or so. I'm sure the nuke crap would be far more sophisticated.
Except of course when the NSA/FBA/FSB or whichever other agency you care to name subverts the manufacturer or software developer with their own staff then they have unfettered access to the keys to monitor everyone. It is without question that any such system will be immediately compromised as all of those agencies put their access to information well above and beyond anyone else legal rights.
No but what they will do is make it a crime to use robust encryption schemes. If you are caught using one then you go to prison for a long time on the basis of possession (regardless of whether you are actually involved in anything else illegal). Of course, criminals won't care, since they are already doing illegal stuff, but regular folk will basically have to make all their data discoverable to the authorities on demand. Similarly anyone in a position of authority, or with large amounts of wealth will be able to apply for an permit to use stronger encryption. As for data breaches, well, these seem to occur every few months at the moment, but unless it is panama paper stuff, very few seem to care (and even then...).
This is the middle class' biggest weakness - they have enough invested in the 'system' that you can use the threat of loss of participation in the system to make them conform to silly rules. Unfortunately we have only had a middle class for about 60 years now out of thousands of years of recorded civilisation, and I'm not entirely convinced it has the political will to sustain itself in the face of oligarchic leadership that seems intent on bringing back feudalism.
Hate to break it to ya pal, but you can't claim to be a sword defender of the Constitution if you're going to ignore it or cherry pick. You seem to be the exact opposite of a defender of the document.
The words "oversight, screening, and training" appear exactly zero times in the 2nd amendment.
How much more clear does it need to be?
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
shall not be infringed. I don't seen any qualifications for oversight, screening, and training. In fact, I'd happily argue that the "oversight" bit was 180 deg out from what the framers intended. There is no way in hell they would have been fine with the government knowing exactly how many, and what type of, guns you owned and where they were at any given time.
The whole point of the 2nd amendment was as a bulwark, or safety, against a government gone tyrannical. Jefferson mentions tyranny several times in his writings. The man was absolutely terrified that our own government would immediately begin heading down the wrong path and he, and the other framers, wanted the people to be armed to the teeth. He was hardly wrong either.. Didn't take very long for the government to pass the alien and sedition acts, which were so blatantly unconstitutional that it was horrifying. 10 years... That's how long it took before the government, that had just been formed, and before the ink was dry on the 1st amendment, tried to make it a crime to be critical of the government. Ten fucking years.....
I'd prefer that same government have a minimal, as possible, role in firearm oversight. I'd also prefer it if they have horribly inaccurate intelligence regarding who owns what and where it is. Because fuck them. They don't have a right to know. Do they have a want? Sure.. Do they have a need? Maybe.. But them's ain't rights... I want pussy.. I need pussy... Don't mean I have a right to any... Fuck them
The popular vote is meaningless. It's as valid as fairy dust. It has zero legal force.. It's side data if anything. The College is mentioned in the Constitution, the popular vote is not. So what's your point?
The first thing I thought of when I saw this post was Howard Payne and Deviant Ollam's talk "This key is your key, this key is my key". If you want to see how godawful most companies (and the government) are at security, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Or the incompetence of how the TSA master keys were leaked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yeah, let's not make any master keys please.
It also says "well regulated Militia": and where are those now? Are you part of a militia? If so, who is your commanding officer and your chain of command?
Do we have to bring this up every fucking time? Well regulated, in the speech of 1789, does not mean the same thing it does now. Regardless, the Supreme Court ruled that comma seperated the people from the militia part. The Federalist Papers back up this interpretation as being the only possible correct interpretation. That was the whole point of the Papers.. They were the Cliff Notes, of their time, to the Document.
The people have the right to form militias.. and they have the right to bear arms.. They can bear those arms privately or they can bear them in a militia.. Their choice.. End of story..
If there was any possibly chance the left could overturn or repeal the 2nd amendment with another amendment, they'd have tried by now.. Instead they are working on it by attrition.. Chip away a little bit here and a little bit there.
We can't have people who are exempt from law and out of reach, no matter what kind of damage they do to society. I welcome the push to finally do something about corporations flaunting their disregard for laws.
That's what you mean, right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... and math isnt illegal.
Good luck stopping it when the entire world runs on computers.
Crypto is just mathematics. You can't unlearn maths. For sure, popular apps with strong crypto can be banned or whatever but people can have privacy if they want it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If government authorities insist that we have no private data....they must do the same. It's like freedom of speech: You can only have it in a society if you allow others the same liberty...otherwise it doesn't work. If this body insists that all private information should be freely available...they must also comply. If they don't...they must state the reasons. As they are making these statements they will be providing all of the obvious arguments supporting the importance of privacy. Catch-22 bitch.
"It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide..."
Funny how often officials and policemen unintentionally reveal their inner thoughts when speaking in public.
Can't have... "unfettered"...
Fetters, of course, are chains. Apparently this Gestapo officer believes that all citizens belong in chains - at all times. Even their thoughts, ideas and words must be in chains.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
But unfortunately, the key to a free society is law. The most important freedom (to me) is to not get raped/murdered/stolen.
It's not an easy balancing act.
Here's a great satirical "Honest Govt ad" about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There is now a large and well documented body of scientifically and technologically sound evidence why this is a very bad idea. It is as if people like this one are unable to read and think. This is on the level of a 5 year old that insist on getting something he cannot have and then throwing a tantrum.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You know, the original meaning of "Terrorism" is a form of government where the citizens are kept in line by fear. He very much seems to want that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
He's right, except for a small detail: That's not how the world works.
In the same sense that it would be great if we could resurrect murder victims, or question them about who killed them. True, it would really be good. It's just not how the world works.
Encryption either is strong, or it is useless. There's no middle ground. If law enforcement has a way in, so has everyone else. It's in the nature of the thing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm sure the nuke crap would be far more sophisticated.
You sure about that?
The Nuclear Launch Code at US Minuteman Silos Was 00000000
I'd remind you that the constitution has provisions to allow it to be revised. So perhaps we shouldn't look at it as immutable.
Careful with that generalization there bud.
I am over 40, and started with VT220's, Apple //'s, and DOS.
PGP was a thing in the DOS days.
-Miser
In a world of idiots, the person who can differentiate is a god. In a world of geniuses, gods have to integrate.
You guys never do learn. You always think you are the smartest guys in the room and then you say something stupid-as-fuck. The deplorables comment hurt Hillary as much as anything else. Anyone in flyover country heard loud and clear just how much they could expect her to represent them. You guys prove over and over that you learned nothing.
The worst part of this tripe is the underlying dichotomy that having your own goals is inimical to answering to any other power.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the right hates evolution, on the whole, more than the left.
The message from evolution is this: not only does each individual organism have its own goals (a biological theorem on exact par with the non-existence of perpetual motion machines), but it's highly instructive to granularize this theorem all the way down to individual genes.
Fitness, in evolutionary biology, means the ability to thrive in your environment. And what is your environment? For a gene, it's all the other genes coexisting in the same organism, all the genes coexisting in related organisms, all the genes coexisting in supportive ecology, and a lot more. For an individual, it's your natural environment and your social environment.
The social environment is not to be messed with: this is why we have an evolutionary fascination with Survivor-style dramas, in which the ultimate punishment is being voted off the island (hot damn, we love us some punishment).
People on the right sometimes spurn social parasites by name (when it's not to risky to draw direct attention to the importance of the social environment), but they also encode this pervasive, throbbing fear in the klaxonic call to arms "free rider", in which formulation the importance of the social environment is indirect and unstated, but is not one tiny whit lessened in conception.
Socialism is a slippery slope with no feasible exit point. Even in the most extreme libertarian utopia, the social environment remains immensely powerful (and subject to almost all of the same rules of ecological self-organization). What you gain is making the villain more diffuse. Uncle Sam has left the building (but his fingers are still in your pockets, though you now label this "voluntary" association through contract). Trust me, those voluntary associations through contract will largely amount to offers you couldn't refuse. (The powerful shall remain powerful, and resistance shall remain a risky pain in the ass.) And it will be harder than ever to complain about this, because Uncle Sam has left the building, and the same old forces of extraction are now amorphous and spread thin. Under radical libertarianism, prostitution will no longer be illegal—the only question that remains is from what age of consent, if any—because those are conceptually individual transactions. But what about the pimps? The prostitutes shall surely demand that they need their pimps, because life is pretty bad when the mean don't police the mean (these being people most highly invested in the idea that they answer to no social construct but main force itself). Yada yada, libertarian ubiquity all around, and the pimps shall rule the earth.
Government is largely the idea that is we put all the pimps into a single giant bucket in the center of town, and at least forced them to answer to the electorate—some of the time—we could at least reduce this nasty, intrinsic aspect of the social order to a dull roar.
Government at scale is called the state, and the state retains the instruments of main force (it wouldn't be a giant bucket of pimps, otherwise). These instruments mainly being the police, the army, and the black swarm of TLAs.
Of course the TLAs answer to society (via the executive branch). Otherwise, we'd have extreme libertarianism by breakfast tomorrow. The only reason to have the government at all is to keep them minimally answerable to something.
It's the most interesting part of the whole equation: we put the pimps into a barrel in the center of town to better keep an eye on their abuses of power, but then they convinced us that their essential function of keeping us "safe" (we're all cowering prostitutes, deep down) is t
Why not just put permanent handcuffs and leg restraints on everyone as they are born? Oh, and install an internal tracker as well, of course.
Logically, that would make it even harder for people to do bad things and evade law enforcement.
Seriously, this man has tunnel vision. It's past time for him to retire.
The real problem is that LEOs have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted with data collection. Its like trusting the banks to regulate themselves. Mission creep takes hold and what was once restricted now is shared, especially with privatization. Right now various LEOs are using contractors to handle data collection and processing to avoid restrictions that may have guaranteed that the data was handled correctly and only used for a specific, mandated purpose.
Let's go a little crazy, with a goofy thought experiment. Suppose this weren't America, and as a society we generally agreed that we don't care at all about civil rights. Suppose we also thought that people who want to secure their computer storage and communication from criminals, snoops, nosy neighbors and insurance companies were being drama queens. Your own government is the only adversary that people ever want to protect their stuff from (criminals and foreign powers aren't real-life threats), and protecting yourself from your government is .. oh, let's just say that alone is highly suggestive of criminal intent. Just pretend you agree with Wray. No, please, do it.
But I need you to pretend one more thing. Pretend it's still 2019 in this alternative universe, so the genie is already out of the bottle, just like it is in real life.
What would you do about it? What can you?
I think the only reasonable answer is: Jack Shit.
The time for this discussion was in the 1940s, at the very latest. And for whatever reason, even after the authoritarian leadership needed during that most colossal of fuckups in all human history (WW2), America did still value civil rights "enough" (even as we told blacks to get to the back of the bus), so for whatever reason, Wray's opinions became irrelevant, way back then. Wray was born 70 years too late for his silly religion to not be mocked. He might as well be bitching about horseless carriages.
And that's the case even if you agree with him.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Like in the memories within their own minds. After all, they both involve "memory!"
Just wait (probably quite a long time, if ever) for technology to be developed that can read memories, and watch the police state roll out the proverbial battering ram.
"We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead, to whomever they lead, no matter who doesn't like it," he said. To applause, he added, "I don't really care what some foreign government has to say about it."
wtf?? You are willing to hack into whatever you want no matter what some foreign government has to say about it? That's basically a declaration of war.
it's the same reason Nancy Pelosi is the House Speaker even though she's got a 14% approval rating. The alternatives were worse.
That said, if we'd stop electing these yahoos we could stop these kind of "lesser of two evils" choices in the first place.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And many punks are over 60 by now.
I'm over 70. I started programming Fortran on the CDC 6600.
A generalization is meant to express a common case. There can be many exceptions.
That's why you have a system with two keys -- one that returns something innocuous like complaints about the plot of the last Star Wars movie, one that returns the real goods.
We can't compromise privacy to make it easier to catch criminals. Police have caught the bad guys doing old-fashioned police and detective work for years and years. Criminals are, fortunately, capable of stupid mistakes that will expose them. All the emotional sob stories law enforcement trots out to support their belief that taking away our privacy and freedom is a good thing are a sign of the desperation they feel and the lack of confidence in established police procedures they experience.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
In a world of idiots, the person who can differentiate is either an idiot too, or a hermit.
(calculus joke)
You forgot to integrate your semantics, though.
If a joke falls without meaning, is it still a joke?
Yeah, but he's right.. The airmen in the silos could have launched the missiles all by themselves any time they wanted. The only codes required to physically launch the missiles were 8 zeros. To be fair, however, this system was rectified nearly 30 years ago.
Also, these silos were not connected to the internet. They were/are part of the DSN (Defense Service Network). My experience with them ends 20 years ago, so I haven't the slightest clue how they're operating now. But, as the cold war is over, I suspect that the need to have missiles that can be launched independently has long since passed.