The link supporting the assertion that terrorists behind the Paris and San Bernardino attacks "used encrypted communications to evade detection." is not supported by the linked article. In the first place, the article is only about San Bernardino, not Paris. Second, it only says that authorities were trying to get access to encrypted data. In the San Bernardino case, there was encrypted data because the iPhone encrypts by default but there was no evidence released that the encrypted data contained anything relevant to the case. No article is linked about Paris. My understanding there was that French officials basically said that the terrorists must have encrypted there communication because they didn't detect anything. They offered no proof that encryption had been used. The assertion was like the one in San Bernardino - the suspects had used some encryption in the course of their regular use of technology, as most people do, but there was no definite statement that the encrypted communication had actually been used to plot attacks. Ars Technica reports no evidence of encryption being used.
Actually, that was a case where the military, itself, was divided, as was the rest of the country. It would have been a very different fight if the whole military had sided with the Union and the Confederacy had to put together militias with civilian owned weapons.
That's basically how the Soviet Union fell. Communist hard liners sent the military to go after Boris Yeltsin but he gave a speech which turned the tanks around to go arrest the Communists.
I won' t use either Chrome or Edge because I think it's a conflict of interest for a web browser developer to also be in the user tracking, behavioral marketing, advertising and search businesses. A web browser needs to balance the interests of users and content providers.
Firefox also has some telemetry but you can disable it in about:config or, better yet, by using a user.js file. One pretty good summary of privacy and security settings is here. I notice, however, that many of these telemetry settings are turned off by default in the mobile version of Firefox, at least the beta version. That's ironic in a way, because the standard excuse companies use when people find unexpected telemetry or back doors is to say "Oops, that was just supposed to be in test versions of the software. We forgot to turn it off in the final version."
Actually, what might be more important than the database itself is the process of enforcing standards for how to describe a mutation. There is actually a standard set by the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) but it's not followed widely. In journal articles, different authors use different notation for the same mutation and, worse, often don't provide an complete specification. For example, it's common practice to report a mutation in terms of how it changes the protein which it codes for. However, many genes have alternate splicing, which means that there are different versions of the protein. A mutation might appear at a different position (or not at all) in the different versions of the protein.
It's not clear that they are talking about full DNA sequences. They will likely follow the Massachusetts rule of reporting only the differences between a cancer sample and the patients normal tissue. It's true that there are potentially important interactions between the mutations in cancer and the patients normal genetic variants but the most important thing is to know what changes caused the transformation to cancer. With a few exceptions, like BRCA1 and BRCA2, it's the mutations unique to the cancer which influence treatment decisions.
Right, and the tactics which Microsoft has used to force the Windows 10 upgrade on people has really been one big demonstration that you can not trust Windows to keep the privacy and security settings you choose from reverting to default settings without constant intervention on your part.
Right, regarding gas giant moons within our own solar system, you have the possibility that some contain liquid water deep inside which could sustain some kind life. Outside our solar system, there might be the possibility of something like the situation in Nemesis by Isaac Asimov, where you have a gas giant, with a large moon, in the habitable zone of a star. The gas giant is not habitable but the moon is. I also wonder if some of the larger than Earth size planets detected in habitable zones might actually be binary planets. We only have the few rocky planets in our own system as a basis to judge how common it is to have moons, large and small. Then you have even more speculative possibilities like the one depicted in the Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring by Larry Niven, where a large rocky mass sustains a breathable atmosphere in an extended area around a neutron star orbiting in the habitable zone of a star. Life exists in free fall in this extended area. So there are various scenarios you can some up with that Kepler can not detect.
Perhaps they will be taught from a young age to use social media where they can't be spied on so easily. Retroshare, for example. Either that or how to use mainstream social media without being traceable. It's not easy but it is possible.
Sometimes a picture of the white board from a discussion is good just to give people an appreciation of the complexity of a topic. This is where you say "Yes, we've been over this subject already. It's complicated. I'll show you."
So maybe we are headed towards having the first American Zaibbatsu. Although, actually, I think the real power of some of these new companies lies in the fact that they are highly multi-national. They can pick and choose different legal systems for different operations. They can choose where different assets and operations are taxed (or not taxed.) Through lobbying and financial muscle they can influence politics. Apple, Google and Microsoft are certainly very powerful in terms of the technologies they have control over and those are technologies which run a large part of the world. Amazon is probably the closest to being structured as a vertical monopoly so, maybe, they will be the first to resemble the classic Zaibatsu except at an international scale.
Part of the problem with this is that an arrangement where some corporation is the middleman, censor and thought police for all communication is a system we don't want for other reasons. I've had the conversation many times with organizations that think they need to use Facebook groups to communicate with their members because that's what people expect. Then, of course, some fraction of the people object to using Facebook and don't agree with their terms of service. In particular, the provisions that you have to use your real name and you can't have more than one account. The inevitable reply amounts to "just go ahead and break their terms of service." So that's the expectation we are working under.
Android device manufacturers frequently do their own customizations to Android and thrown a bunch of bundled apps, a practice which was a demonstrated failure for Microsoft Windows. In the Microsoft antitrust trial, PC manufacturers said that they wanted the ability to customize Windows so they could compete against other PC manufacturers based on software as well as hardware. The result was PCs loaded up with lots of crapware, and sometimes, even malware right out of the box. The same thing is happening with Android now. If you really want to use Android, your best bet is to get a device which can run CyanogenMod. Then, as soon as you get it out of the box, wipe it and install a fresh copy of CyanogenMod.
Not only that, the Jefferson Disk shows that at least one of them was way ahead of his time in terms of encryption. I think he knew exactly what he was doing with respect to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution and encryption.
I get the point with the Nest that It's easy to configure through a web browser on a computer screen compared to the typical programmable thermostat, with a tiny monochrome screen and something like three buttons. The thing is that you don't really need to go through a cloud service to accomplish that. They could implement it like the internal configuration page of a broadband router or a printer, operating only within your own LAN. That's how I would want such a device to operate. If you really wanted to adjust your heat from outside, you could use a remote desktop application to get into your LAN. Any statistics could be computed and kept right on the device. There is just no benefit to the consumer of using a cloud service for these functions that I can think of. So, I think the Nest was designed to be a data collection device. It was not designed to serve the customer.
This is the reason I bought a fully mechanical numeric keypad lock for my house. It requires no power. There are lots of electronic keypad door locks available which connect to mains power, have a backup battery and a key which bypasses the numeric pad if all else fails but why go that way when there is a much simpler solution?
Actually, there is a school of thought that what you are suggesting, about distracting yourself, is counterproductive. The idea is that, when you wait until you are very hungry before eating, you tend to eat much more than if you eat on a regular schedule. So, the move away from strictly following a schedule for meals, as people did in the past, is one of the factors in the increase in obesity.
It's important to acknowledge uncertainty because it keeps people from sticking with bad advice too long. We should find a way to express the level of confidence that any particular piece of dietary is correct. Similarly, such advice should estimate the percentage of the population that it applies to. For example, we know that USDA recommendations on salt only apply to, at most, 20% of the population. The USDA knew this when they established the recommendation but they assumed the other 80% would not be harmed by a low salt diet. Since then, many small studies have shown that some people have the opposite reaction than expected. Their blood pressure goes up on a low salt diet. This phenomenon is called "inverse salt sensitivity" by some researchers and "reverse salt sensitivity" by others (if you search the literature, you need to use both terms or you will miss some references.) We don't know what percentage of the population this represents because no exact definition has been agreed on and no really large studies have been done. Salt may relate to obesity as well. Some references claim that high salt in foods increases obesity because it makes food taste better and so people will eat more. Others point out that salt, itself, is one of the few specific things, besides calories in general, which will trigger a craving. So people eating food with a low salt content may keep eating, to satisfy a salt craving, well past the point when they have satisfied their need for calories. It may be that both these things are true but for different people or even the same people at different times. These are things which need to be sorted out and the first thing you need to do to gain knowledge is to admit what you don't know.
Facebook is an ideal tool for a repressive regime. You crack down on dissidents through their friends and family. Iran is especially famous for this. Back in 1979, my family hosted an Iranian college student who suddenly became a refugee because her uncle was opposed to Ayatollah Khomeini . Had she returned to Iran, they probably would have taken her hostage in order to get at her uncle. Facebook is perfect for identifying and tracking such targets.
Actually, the link you provide specifically says that this method called "Parallel Construction" is illegal in a circumstance where a warrant would have been required for the original evidence. It is always possible that the court will never know that the evidence was tainted but the practice is still illegal. The situation where it is legal is to protect an informant who may be harmed otherwise. Talking to a third person doesn't bring up Fourth or Fifth Amendment issues anyway. The idea of continuing an investigation without ever bringing charges in court, as some have suggested, isn't really discussed in the article. The traditional remedy for Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations is to make the evidence inadmissible in court. If evidence is just used to justify ongoing surveillance without going to the courts, I would argue that it becomes a Sixth Amendment violation.
I think it's pretty clear that some people in the government care about the law and others don't when it comes to national security. Tom Drake, one of the NSA leakers before Snowden, basically said as much. He said that lots of people inside the NSA had come to him with worries that they might not be following the law and possibly not doing the right thing. I think the same is true of other branches of the government, including Congress and I'm not sure which side will win.
School curricula are determined by various levels of government. Since many of these politicians are influenced by their own religion, we have always had some compromise between teaching and not teaching Scientific Method. The result is that it's just assumed that Scientific Method is learned along the way in Science classes. It's seldom taught explicitly. I think the reason is that it undermines religious faith. The most subversive idea of Scientific Method is that it demands uncertainty. It even demands that you explain and try to quantify the certainty of any experimental result. That's where statistics come in. Faith means you either believe something or you don't. This conflict is one of the most fundamental and divisive aspect of politics.
According to TFA, some anonymous person who claims to be Anonymous claims that they are the ones reporting the ISIS accounts to Twitter and without them, Twitter would miss many of the terrorist accounts. The problem for Twitter it to figure out which of the anonymous accounts are Anonymous accounts. Of course it's also possible that some anonymous terrorists are falsely reporting Anonymous accounts as terrorists. That's what I would do if I were them. By the way, who's on first?
So they are promoting some particular encryption tools but to whom and for what purpose? It doesn't make sense to endorse these particular encryption tools for high security purposes. Actual terrorists would want to add on extra encryption from a third party and not rely on any built-in encryption from any service or software. What does make sense is for ISIS supporters to promote these particular tools to the general public for two reasons. First, the more widespread strong encryption becomes, the less likely any particular message will be flagged as suspicious simply because it is encrypted. In other words, it helps to make the really sensitive data look less conspicuous. Second, this helps to counter the possibility that potential recruits will be detected as someone who could be radicalized before ISIS even has a chance to try and recruit them. In other words, it counters the thought police approach to anti-terrorism.
The problem is that this level of protection gives governments the incentive to keep the threats alive so that they can hold on to their power. This way, your compromise of liberty doesn't really gain you any security in the end. In George Orwell's book 1984, this threat comes in the form of a perpetual stalemate war between major powers. Since the war is the excuse for the extreme totalitarian measures keeping society under control, the major powers keep the stalemate going. If you think about it, however, terrorism is really a much better and longer lasting excuse for totalitarian control than a war between major powers. So it may be possible for 70% of citizens to be willing to trade liberty for security but it is still not a good trade. Sure it is a problem and there is not much you can do except try to change people's minds. So yes, complain.
Slashdot Mirror
The link supporting the assertion that terrorists behind the Paris and San Bernardino attacks "used encrypted communications to evade detection." is not supported by the linked article. In the first place, the article is only about San Bernardino, not Paris. Second, it only says that authorities were trying to get access to encrypted data. In the San Bernardino case, there was encrypted data because the iPhone encrypts by default but there was no evidence released that the encrypted data contained anything relevant to the case. No article is linked about Paris. My understanding there was that French officials basically said that the terrorists must have encrypted there communication because they didn't detect anything. They offered no proof that encryption had been used. The assertion was like the one in San Bernardino - the suspects had used some encryption in the course of their regular use of technology, as most people do, but there was no definite statement that the encrypted communication had actually been used to plot attacks. Ars Technica reports no evidence of encryption being used.
Actually, that was a case where the military, itself, was divided, as was the rest of the country. It would have been a very different fight if the whole military had sided with the Union and the Confederacy had to put together militias with civilian owned weapons.
That's basically how the Soviet Union fell. Communist hard liners sent the military to go after Boris Yeltsin but he gave a speech which turned the tanks around to go arrest the Communists.
I won' t use either Chrome or Edge because I think it's a conflict of interest for a web browser developer to also be in the user tracking, behavioral marketing, advertising and search businesses. A web browser needs to balance the interests of users and content providers.
Firefox also has some telemetry but you can disable it in about:config or, better yet, by using a user.js file. One pretty good summary of privacy and security settings is here. I notice, however, that many of these telemetry settings are turned off by default in the mobile version of Firefox, at least the beta version. That's ironic in a way, because the standard excuse companies use when people find unexpected telemetry or back doors is to say "Oops, that was just supposed to be in test versions of the software. We forgot to turn it off in the final version."
Actually, what might be more important than the database itself is the process of enforcing standards for how to describe a mutation. There is actually a standard set by the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) but it's not followed widely. In journal articles, different authors use different notation for the same mutation and, worse, often don't provide an complete specification. For example, it's common practice to report a mutation in terms of how it changes the protein which it codes for. However, many genes have alternate splicing, which means that there are different versions of the protein. A mutation might appear at a different position (or not at all) in the different versions of the protein.
It's not clear that they are talking about full DNA sequences. They will likely follow the Massachusetts rule of reporting only the differences between a cancer sample and the patients normal tissue. It's true that there are potentially important interactions between the mutations in cancer and the patients normal genetic variants but the most important thing is to know what changes caused the transformation to cancer. With a few exceptions, like BRCA1 and BRCA2, it's the mutations unique to the cancer which influence treatment decisions.
Right, and the tactics which Microsoft has used to force the Windows 10 upgrade on people has really been one big demonstration that you can not trust Windows to keep the privacy and security settings you choose from reverting to default settings without constant intervention on your part.
Right, regarding gas giant moons within our own solar system, you have the possibility that some contain liquid water deep inside which could sustain some kind life. Outside our solar system, there might be the possibility of something like the situation in Nemesis by Isaac Asimov, where you have a gas giant, with a large moon, in the habitable zone of a star. The gas giant is not habitable but the moon is. I also wonder if some of the larger than Earth size planets detected in habitable zones might actually be binary planets. We only have the few rocky planets in our own system as a basis to judge how common it is to have moons, large and small. Then you have even more speculative possibilities like the one depicted in the Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring by Larry Niven, where a large rocky mass sustains a breathable atmosphere in an extended area around a neutron star orbiting in the habitable zone of a star. Life exists in free fall in this extended area. So there are various scenarios you can some up with that Kepler can not detect.
Perhaps they will be taught from a young age to use social media where they can't be spied on so easily. Retroshare, for example. Either that or how to use mainstream social media without being traceable. It's not easy but it is possible.
Sometimes a picture of the white board from a discussion is good just to give people an appreciation of the complexity of a topic. This is where you say "Yes, we've been over this subject already. It's complicated. I'll show you."
So maybe we are headed towards having the first American Zaibbatsu. Although, actually, I think the real power of some of these new companies lies in the fact that they are highly multi-national. They can pick and choose different legal systems for different operations. They can choose where different assets and operations are taxed (or not taxed.) Through lobbying and financial muscle they can influence politics. Apple, Google and Microsoft are certainly very powerful in terms of the technologies they have control over and those are technologies which run a large part of the world. Amazon is probably the closest to being structured as a vertical monopoly so, maybe, they will be the first to resemble the classic Zaibatsu except at an international scale.
Part of the problem with this is that an arrangement where some corporation is the middleman, censor and thought police for all communication is a system we don't want for other reasons. I've had the conversation many times with organizations that think they need to use Facebook groups to communicate with their members because that's what people expect. Then, of course, some fraction of the people object to using Facebook and don't agree with their terms of service. In particular, the provisions that you have to use your real name and you can't have more than one account. The inevitable reply amounts to "just go ahead and break their terms of service." So that's the expectation we are working under.
Android device manufacturers frequently do their own customizations to Android and thrown a bunch of bundled apps, a practice which was a demonstrated failure for Microsoft Windows. In the Microsoft antitrust trial, PC manufacturers said that they wanted the ability to customize Windows so they could compete against other PC manufacturers based on software as well as hardware. The result was PCs loaded up with lots of crapware, and sometimes, even malware right out of the box. The same thing is happening with Android now. If you really want to use Android, your best bet is to get a device which can run CyanogenMod. Then, as soon as you get it out of the box, wipe it and install a fresh copy of CyanogenMod.
Not only that, the Jefferson Disk shows that at least one of them was way ahead of his time in terms of encryption. I think he knew exactly what he was doing with respect to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution and encryption.
I get the point with the Nest that It's easy to configure through a web browser on a computer screen compared to the typical programmable thermostat, with a tiny monochrome screen and something like three buttons. The thing is that you don't really need to go through a cloud service to accomplish that. They could implement it like the internal configuration page of a broadband router or a printer, operating only within your own LAN. That's how I would want such a device to operate. If you really wanted to adjust your heat from outside, you could use a remote desktop application to get into your LAN. Any statistics could be computed and kept right on the device. There is just no benefit to the consumer of using a cloud service for these functions that I can think of. So, I think the Nest was designed to be a data collection device. It was not designed to serve the customer.
This is the reason I bought a fully mechanical numeric keypad lock for my house. It requires no power. There are lots of electronic keypad door locks available which connect to mains power, have a backup battery and a key which bypasses the numeric pad if all else fails but why go that way when there is a much simpler solution?
Actually, there is a school of thought that what you are suggesting, about distracting yourself, is counterproductive. The idea is that, when you wait until you are very hungry before eating, you tend to eat much more than if you eat on a regular schedule. So, the move away from strictly following a schedule for meals, as people did in the past, is one of the factors in the increase in obesity.
It's important to acknowledge uncertainty because it keeps people from sticking with bad advice too long. We should find a way to express the level of confidence that any particular piece of dietary is correct. Similarly, such advice should estimate the percentage of the population that it applies to. For example, we know that USDA recommendations on salt only apply to, at most, 20% of the population. The USDA knew this when they established the recommendation but they assumed the other 80% would not be harmed by a low salt diet. Since then, many small studies have shown that some people have the opposite reaction than expected. Their blood pressure goes up on a low salt diet. This phenomenon is called "inverse salt sensitivity" by some researchers and "reverse salt sensitivity" by others (if you search the literature, you need to use both terms or you will miss some references.) We don't know what percentage of the population this represents because no exact definition has been agreed on and no really large studies have been done. Salt may relate to obesity as well. Some references claim that high salt in foods increases obesity because it makes food taste better and so people will eat more. Others point out that salt, itself, is one of the few specific things, besides calories in general, which will trigger a craving. So people eating food with a low salt content may keep eating, to satisfy a salt craving, well past the point when they have satisfied their need for calories. It may be that both these things are true but for different people or even the same people at different times. These are things which need to be sorted out and the first thing you need to do to gain knowledge is to admit what you don't know.
Facebook is an ideal tool for a repressive regime. You crack down on dissidents through their friends and family. Iran is especially famous for this. Back in 1979, my family hosted an Iranian college student who suddenly became a refugee because her uncle was opposed to Ayatollah Khomeini . Had she returned to Iran, they probably would have taken her hostage in order to get at her uncle. Facebook is perfect for identifying and tracking such targets.
Actually, the link you provide specifically says that this method called "Parallel Construction" is illegal in a circumstance where a warrant would have been required for the original evidence. It is always possible that the court will never know that the evidence was tainted but the practice is still illegal. The situation where it is legal is to protect an informant who may be harmed otherwise. Talking to a third person doesn't bring up Fourth or Fifth Amendment issues anyway. The idea of continuing an investigation without ever bringing charges in court, as some have suggested, isn't really discussed in the article. The traditional remedy for Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations is to make the evidence inadmissible in court. If evidence is just used to justify ongoing surveillance without going to the courts, I would argue that it becomes a Sixth Amendment violation.
I think it's pretty clear that some people in the government care about the law and others don't when it comes to national security. Tom Drake, one of the NSA leakers before Snowden, basically said as much. He said that lots of people inside the NSA had come to him with worries that they might not be following the law and possibly not doing the right thing. I think the same is true of other branches of the government, including Congress and I'm not sure which side will win.
School curricula are determined by various levels of government. Since many of these politicians are influenced by their own religion, we have always had some compromise between teaching and not teaching Scientific Method. The result is that it's just assumed that Scientific Method is learned along the way in Science classes. It's seldom taught explicitly. I think the reason is that it undermines religious faith. The most subversive idea of Scientific Method is that it demands uncertainty. It even demands that you explain and try to quantify the certainty of any experimental result. That's where statistics come in. Faith means you either believe something or you don't. This conflict is one of the most fundamental and divisive aspect of politics.
According to TFA, some anonymous person who claims to be Anonymous claims that they are the ones reporting the ISIS accounts to Twitter and without them, Twitter would miss many of the terrorist accounts. The problem for Twitter it to figure out which of the anonymous accounts are Anonymous accounts. Of course it's also possible that some anonymous terrorists are falsely reporting Anonymous accounts as terrorists. That's what I would do if I were them. By the way, who's on first?
So they are promoting some particular encryption tools but to whom and for what purpose? It doesn't make sense to endorse these particular encryption tools for high security purposes. Actual terrorists would want to add on extra encryption from a third party and not rely on any built-in encryption from any service or software. What does make sense is for ISIS supporters to promote these particular tools to the general public for two reasons. First, the more widespread strong encryption becomes, the less likely any particular message will be flagged as suspicious simply because it is encrypted. In other words, it helps to make the really sensitive data look less conspicuous. Second, this helps to counter the possibility that potential recruits will be detected as someone who could be radicalized before ISIS even has a chance to try and recruit them. In other words, it counters the thought police approach to anti-terrorism.
The problem is that this level of protection gives governments the incentive to keep the threats alive so that they can hold on to their power. This way, your compromise of liberty doesn't really gain you any security in the end. In George Orwell's book 1984, this threat comes in the form of a perpetual stalemate war between major powers. Since the war is the excuse for the extreme totalitarian measures keeping society under control, the major powers keep the stalemate going. If you think about it, however, terrorism is really a much better and longer lasting excuse for totalitarian control than a war between major powers. So it may be possible for 70% of citizens to be willing to trade liberty for security but it is still not a good trade. Sure it is a problem and there is not much you can do except try to change people's minds. So yes, complain.