... Well, here's a thought: Not everybody has internet. I know this is shocking, but some people actually take their XBox, etc, on road trips, to friends houses, etc. Shocking, I know. So unless something really needs internet, it shouldn't have it because there are perfectly legitimate reasons beyond "zomg, piracy!" to not have internet. Secondly, always-on internet means when your servers crap, or you decide the game isn't popular enough, the people who paid for that game get screwed -- they can't play it anymore.
And for the second reason, I'll never buy a game that needs a DRM server to play. I play an MMO, and I can understand that the server is the game in that case, but unless you can make a compelling case that the game simply can't be played without it, I'm not buying it. Ever. And take a page from EA's playbook, Microsoft: Their stocks just took a big dive because of DRM and now one of your idiot employees is saying your company supports it. Do you want your stock prices to plunge too?
'Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. Itâ(TM)s not. People still want to argue about it. We canâ(TM)t be any clearer â" itâ(TM)s not. Period.... Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."
Failure as a Jedi, you are, yes. Convince us not for DRM, you try. But to the dark side your company has gone, yes, ooh. Doomed you are to fleeing customers, endless propaganda. Always there are two, the incompetent and the enslaved. Profit-mongering leads to DRM. DRM leads to falling consumer confidence. Poor reviews... lead to suffering.
They are threatening nuclear war. They should be taken quite seriously, posturing or not. It's effectively declaring war.
Yeah, in the same way that when I flick someone off on the freeway, that's the same as making a terrorist threat to blow up every car on the freeway. And let's not even get started on how many times I've murdered people in my mind... I'd be a serial murderer.:P
Any backdoors that are hidden and not disclosed to the customer should be treated as malicious.
Backdoors are common (over 50% of devices have documented ones... undocumented is probably much higher). Backdoors aren't disclosed up front, it's most always after the fact. By your logic, we should all throw away every electronic device we own and hide under the bed. Sorry... I don't subscribe to security puritanicalism -- I'm a realist. Backdoors are present in most of the devices I own, but I can still consider them secure enough for my uses because the odds of someone being able to find a backdoor in every device in the chain and end up with an exploitable condition is still low if everything is configured correctly.
There is no such thing as perfect security. Nothing is unhackable. So I'd rather live in a world where we test for backdoors in critical systems, document what we do find, and have the infrastructure and knowledge to react quickly to any problems that are found... because frankly, information systems are far, far too complex for your ideology to have any hope of implimentation.
Would we say that because MIT locks some of the doors to some of their rooms some of the time that the thieves and burglars have won long ago? Would we say that MIT "caved" to the thieves and burglars?
You're making a strawman argument here. I have thieves and burglars in my neighborhood. It doesn't mean I hide under the couch, stroking my gun, and mumbling "The time of purification is soon..." There is this thing called proportional response: And considering the massive benefits of the open-network policy in terms of the innovations that have come out of MIT versus the uncommon and not terribly harmful issues that have come up because of it, it's a terrible decision. The very start of hacking and humanity's first foray into artificial intelligence got its start because of that open policy.
If you wanna throw that away because of some burglars and thieves, you're a fool.
I suspect the treaty situation isn't anywhere near as clear cut as that. Those agreements are riddled with exceptions.
Ask and ye shall receive. "In the event either Contracting Party applies quantitative restrictions to certain products originating in or exported to any third country or region, it shall afford to all like products originating in or exported to the other country treatment which is equitable to that afforded to such third country or region." Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Besides, every single one of those treaties, like our Constitution, is not a suicide pact. The President has said "national security" and every one of those documents is trumped. If We The People don't like it we can, through our Representatives, impeach, amend the constitution or march on Washington with pitchforks.
Yes, we can also commit mass suicide too. That doesn't mean we should. The President can say "national security" all he wants, but all I have to reply with is "Impeach" and that problem goes away pretty fast. What's your point in all of this? You're discussing theoreticals. My post was about actualities -- the actual facts are that China-US trade is critical to the stability of the global markets. 17% of China's exports are to the United States. We're their #1 destination. Why would they choose to fuck that up? And if we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot on this, wouldn't it behoove us to have somewhat more conclusive proof than a Fox News scareisode about how the Chinese want to destroy us all with their backdoors of mass destruction?
You have as your premise some deep respect for all these treaties and agreements. I believe most of these documents, particularly the trade agreements, are products of narrow interests creating special conditions for their exclusive benefit.
Okay, my turn: "Citation needed" Belief is not a rational basis from which to decide economic policy.
I believe most of them amount to throwing open the ports and hobbling the port authorities to flood the US with stuff from places with no EPA, OSHA, NLRB, IRS, etc. I do not share your reverence for that crap.
Again, prove it. They may not have an EPA, an OSHA, and NLRB, an IRS, or a bunch of other three and four letter acronym'd agencies, but none of that matters. Do the products meet specification, or don't they? If they do, let them in. If not, send them back. This is a very simple policy decision to make, and it requires no reverence, or belief.
Exactly. Running your public Minecraft server doesn't have anything to do with "learning" except in the broadest possible sense.
Making available a public and shared resource does lead to things that aren't strictly in-scope, but can you tell me you don't play flash games at work? Or post to a certain technology website to take a mental break from the tedium of what you're supposed to be working on, so you can come back to it refreshed?
Google gives its employees part of their workday off to do whatever they want, and it's resulted in some rather amazing products. And none of the company's resources used during that time is strictly for business either. Sometimes, loosening up regulations just a bit results in a lot of liquidity that can be leveraged to get bigger and more useful projects off the ground that otherwise wouldn't pick up enough momentum.
And Minecraft is a perfect escape for the kinds of people that build robots and program in their dorms -- they're still building things, just abstractly.
Terrorists didn't win you say? Consider that the next time you're at the airport.
We did that of our own free will, which is perhaps more damning. But no terrorist demanded or coerced us into fortifying our airports with questionably useful security. That's my only point: We never gave in to terrorist demands. We may have responded in a less than thrilling and intelligent manner, but we didn't just cave.
Okay, thanks MIT. You just let the terrorist win. Giving into fear is a stance the country as a whole has never given into. Even after 9/11, the most destructive terrorist attack on US soil ever, we said "Fuck the terrorists. We don't negotiate. Ever." And yet, here you are, one of the premier educational institutions in the country, where our best and brightest come to learn, caving like a house of cards.
Well, keeping the capability on tap I have no problem with. If they want to keep a few research teams going and some small-scale production facilities around, I won't argue with that. But we're talking about some large departments with hundreds of millions a year in IT requirements. Those costs could easily double or triple -- and when we start talking about billions of dollars instead of millions, there's a noticable economic impact.
We don't need to tie fear-mongering about chinese espionage into this initiative. If that's the reason, it can stand on its own merits, but we need to keep the costs down. That's all I'm interested in as a taxpayer -- don't buy premium when regular will do is all.
What they'll actually do is cite a simplistic theory that claims that. Empirical verification is another story. But even the simplistic theory only holds under a very restrictive set of assumptions, like balanced trade. We haven't had balanced trade in 30 years.
There is only one restriction: It must be voluntary. If you accept that "restriction", then Trade creates wealth. It's always beneficial, provided it's voluntary. This isn't an assumption, and it doesn't require "balanced trade" (whatever the hell that is). It's simple, common sense.
ou're joking, right? Throughout most of its history the US was famous for its high tariff barriers, including the period when we became the world's foremost industrial power. Turns out Al Hamilton was a pretty smart guy.
High tariff barriers is one of the causes of the Great Depression. Economists throughout the country begged and pleaded with Congress not to do it. A few years later... our economy collapsed. Also, Al Hamilton is a canadian hockey player.
More importantly by forcing local supply you enable continuity of supply and are never subject to a foreign government dictating levels of supply.
There is not a single thing in economic theory or practice where you can get something for nothing. There is always a tradeoff, and you're ignoring it here. By closing off international trade you jack up the cost of goods and services within your country and slow down your rate of economic growth because there's fewer trade opportunities. As a result, other countries which have a more open economic policy prosper while your own country stagnates.
That is a sane logical thing to do by any government and failure to do so when it is readily possible to treasonously betray the citizens of that country to the demands of another country, apparently based purely upon corporate executive greed.
Whoa there cowboy. Ease up on the rhetoric; you're making Kim Jong look good. There's nothing sane or logical about telling your citizens they have to pay more for something just to satisfy an emotional need. This is fear-mongering; not fact-based argumentation -- as evidenced by you using weasel-words like "treason", "greed", and some very black and white thinking if I do say so myself.
Now how about we start over and you can tell me how the restriction of international trade benefits a country's economy. If you can, step up and collect your nobel prize in Economics.
Depends on what you mean by conclusive, but there's a motive and there's a capability.
The motive is specious at best. China's economy is growing at 7.8% annually, and while its slowing down, that's still beating the snot out of our 2.2% rate. And the purchasing power of both the US and China are comparable -- about $12 trillion USD. China's economy depends heavily on international trade, and the major buyer of Chinese goods is the United States, clocking in at 17.1% of it's total export capacity. Screwing up trading with its biggest partner would cause them an unacceptable level of economic crisis, and quite possibly destabilize global markets as well. China may not like the United States, but it's not about to shoot itself and the rest of the world in the head.
As for capability, as Schneier points out in his own article, the majority of IT systems, commercial, industrial, residential, all have backdoors in them. It shouldn't be a surprise that military IT equipment also has some. And as he later points out, this may have simply been put in to assist in debugging; As so many backdoors are often created with that specific purpose in mind.
All I'm saying here is that the arguments being made by the intelligence committee are specious. I'm not saying they're meritless, but that they fall well short of conclusive, and barely meet the standard for suspicious.
Any government contract should be fulfilled with domestically sourced and manufactured parts whenever possible. If we can make it here, we should. If you want to create/protect jobs, it starts by keeping the money in the country as much as possible.
Any government contract should be fulfilled with the best quality product at the agreed-upon price whenever possible. Those are my tax dollars buying those things... I don't want to pay a premium because of your political values. And paying more for a a product or service doesn't create or protect jobs. If I pay $2 for a $1 candybar at the gas station, it doesn't mean the gas station attendant gets paid more; Even if everybody overpays, it still doesn't create new jobs. Jobs are created based on labor needs, which are related, but not causally linked, to price (and by extension, supply and demand).
And keeping money in the country as much as possible is an equally naive thing to strive for... money is just a financial instrument. It's a tool to enable the trade of goods and services. And any economist will tell you trade creates wealth, by the simple fact that as long as both parties are willing, they're both getting something they want. That means both parties are better off. Restricting international trade means that people in this country now have fewer choices and opportunities for trade... they are less wealthy because of that decision.
The United States became an economic superpower because it has steadfastly refused to take up the ideology you're preaching: The restriction of international trade, closing of our borders, and producing everything internally. This is what Japan tried to do up until WWI, and thanks to us kicking in the door on their isolationist policies, they went from a feudalistic agricultural society to a modern economic power in the scant space of fifty years.
Opening your economy to international trade provides enormous benefit to the domestic population -- provided that it is done with respect to maximizing trade for all citizens, not just the few and the wealthy.
New federal restrictions now preclude four U.S. agencies from buying information-technology (IT) systems from manufacturers 'owned, directed or subsidized by the People's Republic of China.'
Besides violating over a dozen international treaties, and you basically can't buy a computer without having at least some of its parts source, assembled, or otherwise passing through China, there's also the problem that due to a long two hundred plus year history of using this labor-saving device known as chinese people to build our railroads, infrastructure, factories, etc., we don't have much in the way of domestic production capabilities for many of the major components of modern IT systems. Simply put, you've doomed those four agencies to exorbinant costs and auditing control measures to address an unsubstantiated claim that there may be espionage/surveillance capability built into some devices.
And let me be clear: No government or private agency has come forward with conclusive proof that any product made in China for commercial resale has these capabilities built into it at the direction of the Government. In fact, no such capability has been discovered yet from which to raise this question.
The economic and political rammifications of this are being glossed over -- this action doesn't just affect our relationship with China, but with any country we do business with, because they signed the same treaties, and now they're looking at our unilateral action and thinking: What makes us think the US won't renege on their deal with us?
his is specifically covering a private corporation investigating itâ(TM)s own employeeâ(TM)s â" so I am not sure the 5th comes into play,
It's actually a thorny problem. A cursory examination of Washington's case law didn't come up with anything, but other courts have held that "The Fifth Amendment ⦠is not concerned with âmoral and psychological pressures to confess emanating from sources other than official coercion.â(TM)" In other words, statements coerced by non-governmental entities do not violate the privilege. Boyd v. State, 1987 OK CR 211, 743 P.2d 674 In fact, there is case law that specifically looks at employers. In Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 166-170, 107 S.Ct. 515 (1986), the court held "outrageous behavior by a private party seeking to secure evidence against a defendant does not make that evidence inadmissible."
So basically, a company can put you over a barrel, threaten you, extort you, fire you, levy fines and penalties against you, and it's all totally legal. And thus, a law allowing them to demand these things, and the penalties being any of the above sanctions, would also be legal... even without the law. The law, as it were, is superfluous: Employers can do this right now without fear of reprisal.
Why would the courts be willing to strike down something that's so beneficial to corporations? The courts are just as corrupt as the rest of the government.
True, but the corruption that sticks around is the corruption that goes unnoticed. Let's assume they pass this law, and for some reason it actually is upheld. There will be nobody in a few years using their real name on the internet... a new darknet will spring up promising anonymity and security, because the fact is: Social networking is so massively popular and useful that people won't willingly give it up. What they will do, is manage the risk. Remember Fucked Company back during the dot com bubble? They were being served so many legal subpoenas and warrants a day that they had someone hired to stand at the door and sign for them. Very few of those court actions went anywhere, because they never could track down who made the postings. And that's how it'll be again.
The laws cannot change human nature. They can only frame and channel it -- and the more it goes against the flow, the greater the amount of force required. The government, for its massive bulk and power, cannot contend with the inertia of the general public. If it wants something, all the guns, bullets, tanks, and laws in the world amount to exactly dick. You cannot stop 300+ million people saying "No." You can only hold back so much before the dam breaks.
The irony of it all is this cozy relationship between corporations and the government, with each co-opting our liberties for the benefit of the other, is pushing people to embrace new technologies and ways of maintaining their own independence from the superstructure. Look at the "Silk Road". It wouldn't have been possible to create a hidden website on the internet that passes tons of drugs around every day worldwide if it hadn't been for governments trying to restrict the freedoms of the average person. By censoring everyone, enough social pressure was created to cause the invention of a new technology to circumvent that attempt.
And as a result, not only did the censorship fail, but it also decreased the level of control the government (all governments, actually, worldwide) had over the black market trade of drugs. Laws that do not abide by the commonly-held values of the population it serves become poison to those who try to enforce them.
Granted, you maybe shit canned over it, but such is life.
So basically what you're saying is... if you have money, you can ignore the law, but if you're poor (and thus can't afford to lose your job), you're forced to go along with whatever freedom-eschewing measure your local legislator is cooking up this week to screw you over?
The difference is most of these legislators are ancient and neither want, nor care, about this newfangled "internet" thing. They still use flip phones and eschew anything with more than about 15 buttons on it. As a result, they go along with whatever their sponsors tell them about it. "It's totally not like that!" "Er, okay... *stamp*". We won't be able to fix these kinds of brain-damaged decisions until these dinosaurs are dead.
Unfortunately, by then we'll have an entire generation that's grown used to their chains and shackles, and may not be capable of embracing digital freedom again, nor bridging this artificially-created rift between the digital world, and the real one. We could be looking at the start of a new era in human evolution, but just like the last major leap forward (The Renaissance), it may be preceeded by a long Dark Age because a small group of people didn't want to release their stranglehold on power when their time was up, or were simply too set in their ways to adapt and forced a catacalysmic social event because of it.
Slashdot Mirror
... Well, here's a thought: Not everybody has internet. I know this is shocking, but some people actually take their XBox, etc, on road trips, to friends houses, etc. Shocking, I know. So unless something really needs internet, it shouldn't have it because there are perfectly legitimate reasons beyond "zomg, piracy!" to not have internet. Secondly, always-on internet means when your servers crap, or you decide the game isn't popular enough, the people who paid for that game get screwed -- they can't play it anymore.
And for the second reason, I'll never buy a game that needs a DRM server to play. I play an MMO, and I can understand that the server is the game in that case, but unless you can make a compelling case that the game simply can't be played without it, I'm not buying it. Ever. And take a page from EA's playbook, Microsoft: Their stocks just took a big dive because of DRM and now one of your idiot employees is saying your company supports it. Do you want your stock prices to plunge too?
'Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. Itâ(TM)s not. People still want to argue about it. We canâ(TM)t be any clearer â" itâ(TM)s not. Period. ... Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."
Failure as a Jedi, you are, yes. Convince us not for DRM, you try. But to the dark side your company has gone, yes, ooh. Doomed you are to fleeing customers, endless propaganda. Always there are two, the incompetent and the enslaved. Profit-mongering leads to DRM. DRM leads to falling consumer confidence. Poor reviews... lead to suffering.
They are threatening nuclear war. They should be taken quite seriously, posturing or not. It's effectively declaring war.
Yeah, in the same way that when I flick someone off on the freeway, that's the same as making a terrorist threat to blow up every car on the freeway. And let's not even get started on how many times I've murdered people in my mind... I'd be a serial murderer. :P
Any backdoors that are hidden and not disclosed to the customer should be treated as malicious.
Backdoors are common (over 50% of devices have documented ones... undocumented is probably much higher). Backdoors aren't disclosed up front, it's most always after the fact. By your logic, we should all throw away every electronic device we own and hide under the bed. Sorry... I don't subscribe to security puritanicalism -- I'm a realist. Backdoors are present in most of the devices I own, but I can still consider them secure enough for my uses because the odds of someone being able to find a backdoor in every device in the chain and end up with an exploitable condition is still low if everything is configured correctly.
There is no such thing as perfect security. Nothing is unhackable. So I'd rather live in a world where we test for backdoors in critical systems, document what we do find, and have the infrastructure and knowledge to react quickly to any problems that are found... because frankly, information systems are far, far too complex for your ideology to have any hope of implimentation.
Would we say that because MIT locks some of the doors to some of their rooms some of the time that the thieves and burglars have won long ago? Would we say that MIT "caved" to the thieves and burglars?
You're making a strawman argument here. I have thieves and burglars in my neighborhood. It doesn't mean I hide under the couch, stroking my gun, and mumbling "The time of purification is soon..." There is this thing called proportional response: And considering the massive benefits of the open-network policy in terms of the innovations that have come out of MIT versus the uncommon and not terribly harmful issues that have come up because of it, it's a terrible decision. The very start of hacking and humanity's first foray into artificial intelligence got its start because of that open policy.
If you wanna throw that away because of some burglars and thieves, you're a fool.
I suspect the treaty situation isn't anywhere near as clear cut as that. Those agreements are riddled with exceptions.
Ask and ye shall receive. "In the event either Contracting Party applies quantitative restrictions to certain products originating in or exported to any third country or region, it shall afford to all like products originating in or exported to the other country treatment which is equitable to that afforded to such third country or region." Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Besides, every single one of those treaties, like our Constitution, is not a suicide pact. The President has said "national security" and every one of those documents is trumped. If We The People don't like it we can, through our Representatives, impeach, amend the constitution or march on Washington with pitchforks.
Yes, we can also commit mass suicide too. That doesn't mean we should. The President can say "national security" all he wants, but all I have to reply with is "Impeach" and that problem goes away pretty fast. What's your point in all of this? You're discussing theoreticals. My post was about actualities -- the actual facts are that China-US trade is critical to the stability of the global markets. 17% of China's exports are to the United States. We're their #1 destination. Why would they choose to fuck that up? And if we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot on this, wouldn't it behoove us to have somewhat more conclusive proof than a Fox News scareisode about how the Chinese want to destroy us all with their backdoors of mass destruction?
You have as your premise some deep respect for all these treaties and agreements. I believe most of these documents, particularly the trade agreements, are products of narrow interests creating special conditions for their exclusive benefit.
Okay, my turn: "Citation needed" Belief is not a rational basis from which to decide economic policy.
I believe most of them amount to throwing open the ports and hobbling the port authorities to flood the US with stuff from places with no EPA, OSHA, NLRB, IRS, etc. I do not share your reverence for that crap.
Again, prove it. They may not have an EPA, an OSHA, and NLRB, an IRS, or a bunch of other three and four letter acronym'd agencies, but none of that matters. Do the products meet specification, or don't they? If they do, let them in. If not, send them back. This is a very simple policy decision to make, and it requires no reverence, or belief.
What MIT has done here is exactly the same behavior.
You're saying two wrongs make a right. The government failed, therefore MIT should also follow in their fail-steps, thus leading to The Right Thing.
Exactly. Running your public Minecraft server doesn't have anything to do with "learning" except in the broadest possible sense.
Making available a public and shared resource does lead to things that aren't strictly in-scope, but can you tell me you don't play flash games at work? Or post to a certain technology website to take a mental break from the tedium of what you're supposed to be working on, so you can come back to it refreshed?
Google gives its employees part of their workday off to do whatever they want, and it's resulted in some rather amazing products. And none of the company's resources used during that time is strictly for business either. Sometimes, loosening up regulations just a bit results in a lot of liquidity that can be leveraged to get bigger and more useful projects off the ground that otherwise wouldn't pick up enough momentum.
And Minecraft is a perfect escape for the kinds of people that build robots and program in their dorms -- they're still building things, just abstractly.
Terrorists didn't win you say? Consider that the next time you're at the airport.
We did that of our own free will, which is perhaps more damning. But no terrorist demanded or coerced us into fortifying our airports with questionably useful security. That's my only point: We never gave in to terrorist demands. We may have responded in a less than thrilling and intelligent manner, but we didn't just cave.
"over a gunman... blah blah... blah..."
Okay, thanks MIT. You just let the terrorist win. Giving into fear is a stance the country as a whole has never given into. Even after 9/11, the most destructive terrorist attack on US soil ever, we said "Fuck the terrorists. We don't negotiate. Ever." And yet, here you are, one of the premier educational institutions in the country, where our best and brightest come to learn, caving like a house of cards.
You're pathetic.
Well, keeping the capability on tap I have no problem with. If they want to keep a few research teams going and some small-scale production facilities around, I won't argue with that. But we're talking about some large departments with hundreds of millions a year in IT requirements. Those costs could easily double or triple -- and when we start talking about billions of dollars instead of millions, there's a noticable economic impact.
We don't need to tie fear-mongering about chinese espionage into this initiative. If that's the reason, it can stand on its own merits, but we need to keep the costs down. That's all I'm interested in as a taxpayer -- don't buy premium when regular will do is all.
You make it sound like this is just a fortunate (to the politicians) eventuality and not a carefully calculated plan.
Carefully calculated or not, the result is the same.
What they'll actually do is cite a simplistic theory that claims that. Empirical verification is another story. But even the simplistic theory only holds under a very restrictive set of assumptions, like balanced trade. We haven't had balanced trade in 30 years.
There is only one restriction: It must be voluntary. If you accept that "restriction", then Trade creates wealth. It's always beneficial, provided it's voluntary. This isn't an assumption, and it doesn't require "balanced trade" (whatever the hell that is). It's simple, common sense.
ou're joking, right? Throughout most of its history the US was famous for its high tariff barriers, including the period when we became the world's foremost industrial power. Turns out Al Hamilton was a pretty smart guy.
High tariff barriers is one of the causes of the Great Depression. Economists throughout the country begged and pleaded with Congress not to do it. A few years later... our economy collapsed. Also, Al Hamilton is a canadian hockey player.
More importantly by forcing local supply you enable continuity of supply and are never subject to a foreign government dictating levels of supply.
There is not a single thing in economic theory or practice where you can get something for nothing. There is always a tradeoff, and you're ignoring it here. By closing off international trade you jack up the cost of goods and services within your country and slow down your rate of economic growth because there's fewer trade opportunities. As a result, other countries which have a more open economic policy prosper while your own country stagnates.
That is a sane logical thing to do by any government and failure to do so when it is readily possible to treasonously betray the citizens of that country to the demands of another country, apparently based purely upon corporate executive greed.
Whoa there cowboy. Ease up on the rhetoric; you're making Kim Jong look good. There's nothing sane or logical about telling your citizens they have to pay more for something just to satisfy an emotional need. This is fear-mongering; not fact-based argumentation -- as evidenced by you using weasel-words like "treason", "greed", and some very black and white thinking if I do say so myself.
Now how about we start over and you can tell me how the restriction of international trade benefits a country's economy. If you can, step up and collect your nobel prize in Economics.
Depends on what you mean by conclusive, but there's a motive and there's a capability.
The motive is specious at best. China's economy is growing at 7.8% annually, and while its slowing down, that's still beating the snot out of our 2.2% rate. And the purchasing power of both the US and China are comparable -- about $12 trillion USD. China's economy depends heavily on international trade, and the major buyer of Chinese goods is the United States, clocking in at 17.1% of it's total export capacity. Screwing up trading with its biggest partner would cause them an unacceptable level of economic crisis, and quite possibly destabilize global markets as well. China may not like the United States, but it's not about to shoot itself and the rest of the world in the head.
As for capability, as Schneier points out in his own article, the majority of IT systems, commercial, industrial, residential, all have backdoors in them. It shouldn't be a surprise that military IT equipment also has some. And as he later points out, this may have simply been put in to assist in debugging; As so many backdoors are often created with that specific purpose in mind.
All I'm saying here is that the arguments being made by the intelligence committee are specious. I'm not saying they're meritless, but that they fall well short of conclusive, and barely meet the standard for suspicious.
Any government contract should be fulfilled with domestically sourced and manufactured parts whenever possible. If we can make it here, we should. If you want to create/protect jobs, it starts by keeping the money in the country as much as possible.
Any government contract should be fulfilled with the best quality product at the agreed-upon price whenever possible. Those are my tax dollars buying those things... I don't want to pay a premium because of your political values. And paying more for a a product or service doesn't create or protect jobs. If I pay $2 for a $1 candybar at the gas station, it doesn't mean the gas station attendant gets paid more; Even if everybody overpays, it still doesn't create new jobs. Jobs are created based on labor needs, which are related, but not causally linked, to price (and by extension, supply and demand).
And keeping money in the country as much as possible is an equally naive thing to strive for... money is just a financial instrument. It's a tool to enable the trade of goods and services. And any economist will tell you trade creates wealth, by the simple fact that as long as both parties are willing, they're both getting something they want. That means both parties are better off. Restricting international trade means that people in this country now have fewer choices and opportunities for trade... they are less wealthy because of that decision.
The United States became an economic superpower because it has steadfastly refused to take up the ideology you're preaching: The restriction of international trade, closing of our borders, and producing everything internally. This is what Japan tried to do up until WWI, and thanks to us kicking in the door on their isolationist policies, they went from a feudalistic agricultural society to a modern economic power in the scant space of fifty years.
Opening your economy to international trade provides enormous benefit to the domestic population -- provided that it is done with respect to maximizing trade for all citizens, not just the few and the wealthy.
limit republican-leaning closed-source and un-auditable voting machines.
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? /snark
New federal restrictions now preclude four U.S. agencies from buying information-technology (IT) systems from manufacturers 'owned, directed or subsidized by the People's Republic of China.'
Besides violating over a dozen international treaties, and you basically can't buy a computer without having at least some of its parts source, assembled, or otherwise passing through China, there's also the problem that due to a long two hundred plus year history of using this labor-saving device known as chinese people to build our railroads, infrastructure, factories, etc., we don't have much in the way of domestic production capabilities for many of the major components of modern IT systems. Simply put, you've doomed those four agencies to exorbinant costs and auditing control measures to address an unsubstantiated claim that there may be espionage/surveillance capability built into some devices.
And let me be clear: No government or private agency has come forward with conclusive proof that any product made in China for commercial resale has these capabilities built into it at the direction of the Government. In fact, no such capability has been discovered yet from which to raise this question.
The economic and political rammifications of this are being glossed over -- this action doesn't just affect our relationship with China, but with any country we do business with, because they signed the same treaties, and now they're looking at our unilateral action and thinking: What makes us think the US won't renege on their deal with us?
his is specifically covering a private corporation investigating itâ(TM)s own employeeâ(TM)s â" so I am not sure the 5th comes into play,
It's actually a thorny problem. A cursory examination of Washington's case law didn't come up with anything, but other courts have held that "The Fifth Amendment ⦠is not concerned with âmoral and psychological pressures to confess emanating from sources other than official coercion.â(TM)" In other words, statements coerced by non-governmental entities do not violate the privilege. Boyd v. State, 1987 OK CR 211, 743 P.2d 674 In fact, there is case law that specifically looks at employers. In Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 166-170, 107 S.Ct. 515 (1986), the court held "outrageous behavior by a private party seeking to secure evidence against a defendant does not make that evidence inadmissible."
So basically, a company can put you over a barrel, threaten you, extort you, fire you, levy fines and penalties against you, and it's all totally legal. And thus, a law allowing them to demand these things, and the penalties being any of the above sanctions, would also be legal... even without the law. The law, as it were, is superfluous: Employers can do this right now without fear of reprisal.
When they came for us, there was no one left at all.
That's because they all installed Tor and continued on their merry, man.
It'll be considered too "creepy and suspicious".
As opposed to having current and former employers stalking our facebook pages, which isn't creepy at all.
I think you forgot to check the Post Anonymously box.
So did you. And as for me... well, LEEEEEERRRRRooooooy Jeeeenkins!
Why would the courts be willing to strike down something that's so beneficial to corporations? The courts are just as corrupt as the rest of the government.
True, but the corruption that sticks around is the corruption that goes unnoticed. Let's assume they pass this law, and for some reason it actually is upheld. There will be nobody in a few years using their real name on the internet... a new darknet will spring up promising anonymity and security, because the fact is: Social networking is so massively popular and useful that people won't willingly give it up. What they will do, is manage the risk. Remember Fucked Company back during the dot com bubble? They were being served so many legal subpoenas and warrants a day that they had someone hired to stand at the door and sign for them. Very few of those court actions went anywhere, because they never could track down who made the postings. And that's how it'll be again.
The laws cannot change human nature. They can only frame and channel it -- and the more it goes against the flow, the greater the amount of force required. The government, for its massive bulk and power, cannot contend with the inertia of the general public. If it wants something, all the guns, bullets, tanks, and laws in the world amount to exactly dick. You cannot stop 300+ million people saying "No." You can only hold back so much before the dam breaks.
The irony of it all is this cozy relationship between corporations and the government, with each co-opting our liberties for the benefit of the other, is pushing people to embrace new technologies and ways of maintaining their own independence from the superstructure. Look at the "Silk Road". It wouldn't have been possible to create a hidden website on the internet that passes tons of drugs around every day worldwide if it hadn't been for governments trying to restrict the freedoms of the average person. By censoring everyone, enough social pressure was created to cause the invention of a new technology to circumvent that attempt.
And as a result, not only did the censorship fail, but it also decreased the level of control the government (all governments, actually, worldwide) had over the black market trade of drugs. Laws that do not abide by the commonly-held values of the population it serves become poison to those who try to enforce them.
Granted, you maybe shit canned over it, but such is life.
So basically what you're saying is... if you have money, you can ignore the law, but if you're poor (and thus can't afford to lose your job), you're forced to go along with whatever freedom-eschewing measure your local legislator is cooking up this week to screw you over?
Yeah... sounds about right.
What's the difference?
The difference is most of these legislators are ancient and neither want, nor care, about this newfangled "internet" thing. They still use flip phones and eschew anything with more than about 15 buttons on it. As a result, they go along with whatever their sponsors tell them about it. "It's totally not like that!" "Er, okay... *stamp*". We won't be able to fix these kinds of brain-damaged decisions until these dinosaurs are dead.
Unfortunately, by then we'll have an entire generation that's grown used to their chains and shackles, and may not be capable of embracing digital freedom again, nor bridging this artificially-created rift between the digital world, and the real one. We could be looking at the start of a new era in human evolution, but just like the last major leap forward (The Renaissance), it may be preceeded by a long Dark Age because a small group of people didn't want to release their stranglehold on power when their time was up, or were simply too set in their ways to adapt and forced a catacalysmic social event because of it.