If you want us to trust our intelligence communities with decryption capabilities in case we happen to be criminals, then we need the FBI to put MUCH better accountability in place to ensure that THEY are not doing anything criminal. BEGINNING with a reliable and INDEPENDENT commission that can be approached by whistleblowers without fear of reprisal and that has the independent power to declassify anything they believe is government action in violation of Federal Law.
Because they do things that are criminal. Like, for example, mass surveillance, parallel construction, and to some extent the entrapment they use as effectively a primary tool for big investigations.
Right now we don't have the accountability to ensure that our government isn't acting criminally. We just fucking don't. They are mostly a black box saying that nobody else should be a black box.
But it doesn't matter. The studio said "hey, they owe us money," and nobody showed up to disagree. That's what default judgments are about--if someone doesn't show up to court, they tend to lose. There are some exceptions, mostly related to cases where the court doesn't have jurisdiction and somebody realizes that later.
I believe a lot of landlord-tenant cases are won this way. (The landlord shows up or pays someone to show up and the tenant doesn't bother, so regardless of whether the tenant has a legal reason why he should win, he loses.)
Think about how much value this will destroy. A ridiculous of money will go to the lawyers in the process, while a LOT of people will completely reorganize. Ultimately mergers almost always destroy value because of the transaction cost. For something this complex, that seems extremely likely. There will be some production benefits, but also some serious anticompetitive effects.
Experimental combat systems don't always work the first time. The big issue is more the massive fraud--you sell it all to Congress with one budget knowing it is going to cost at least three times as much if magical unicorn engineers don't show up from the future and tell you how to make it all work. With another few years of development it'll get better and better. This is still fairly important in terms of conventional engagements because mines are relatively cheap and easy to build.
He's met with the privacy guys once or twice. He's met with the security guys probably two thousand times since he took office. This meeting was a political stunt to pretend that both sides were being listened to, and now he'll spin a lie about how it's possible to have encryption the government can look at with a warrant.
Here's the thing--even if you could make key escrow really secure, and as a practical matter you can't, it's still far too risky because of government abuse risk.
Our spies and federal law enforcement agencies have demonstrated again and again that they can't be trusted by Americans. They lie to Congress and they (understandably, as a matter of being human and having their jobs) don't care about consumer privacy. They're trying to prevent another 9/11, but we have to think about what the next guy could do with their job and lack of meaningful oversight. So long as they have demonstrated a total unwillingness to have real and meaningful oversight and accountability, they sure as hell shouldn't be trusted with this kind of power.
Kind of like the $9 billion they took in the 00's to provide rural broadband to the country.
They just pocketed it and did basically nothing.
Almost certainly *exactly* like that. They're probably doing it to pick up money they've gotten from the public through Congress, most likely in the term of tax breaks. It turns out that when you call something a "tax cut," the public usually doesn't notice when Congress gives a company or industry a couple of billion dollars from the public's taxes.
Neither will the United States, as that will be viewed as an attack on our freedoms, our free speech, our liberties, and will result in war.
No. Not enough people care about it. Not enough people outside the tech world understand it. And if you rise in rebellion, you will find nobody rises with you.
Eventually the intelligence and law enforcement communities will find a boogeyman big enough that they can use it to get the rest of the government to support fucking over everyone by making encryption illegal so that mass surveillance works again. Look at how they responded to Snowden--by making *corporations* hold on to mass surveillance data, they were able to get mass surveillance renewed. The only situation in which they might stop is if they are able to penetrate the encryption entirely.
It may take another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. But eventually, such an attack will happen. It's just too easy to cause mass panic if you have a few people willing to do your bidding.
That's why the Wordpress goons decided to enable automatic updating a while back.
They really shocked the world with the auto-update's default use of FTP and innovative taking of the FTP credentials over unsecured wp-admin connections.
FYI, if it is really a difficult surgery, go to an expert. (e.g. Pancreatic surgery). Even if you have to pay out of pocket. The guy who wants your case so he can write it up is not necessarily as good as the guy who does lots of hard surgeries and doesn't publish as much.
Also, read the research papers yourself if you are smart enough. Your doctor may know the field but hasn't always read everything you'll find, and that way you'll be working with good enough information that you can make an informed choice between different viable treatments with more information than you would get from the doctor. You'll also understand enough that you can bring his attention to a question he doesn't notice if, for example, a lab writes up a report badly and without highlighting the issue.
I suppose it also depends on your referent. It is not extreme compared to utter trash. It is extreme compared to responsible journalism. That doesn't mean there aren't some good people working there.
To say that anything about the New York Times is extreme is to be extreme yourself to the point of inanity. The New York Times is about as mainstream as it gets. Their primary bias is toward their own image as 'the paper of record' - i.e. covering everything, in a journalistically 'evenhanded' way.
Not really. You won't notice it if you're too used to it or if you're not used to thinking in a way that's different from that of your community. But try subscribing to them on Facebook, for example, reading the articles they share critically, and you'll find they're not nearly up to the standard that their reputation would suggest. The journalists tend to be biased, presumably without realizing it, and many of the articles clearly aren't edited with a close eye for bias.
The Washington Post or Christian Science Monitor, for example, are usually less dogmatic.
Of course a gun can be used for target practice, or for hunting animals, or to create a great deal of mechanical energy. But there are also a lot of guns designed to kill. That is their function.
A gun is designed to send a projectile out at a high rate of speed with a great deal of mechanical energy, nothing more or less.
What YOU as a person point it at...determines its lethality.
Yes. When I sell you a thousand M-16s, a thousand AK-47s, and a nuclear bomb, I don't KNOW what you will be using them for. They're just ways of releasing energy.
a gun is a general purpose tool as well to anyone who understands them
If you are dedicated enough, you can make yourself believe anything.
Of course a gun can be used for target practice, or for hunting animals, or to create a great deal of mechanical energy. But there are also a lot of guns designed to kill. That is their function.
"Intel debuted its new Core i9 CPU today. This seems remarkably ill-timed, given recent attacks on Tokyo and LA by giant killer robots sporting intel inside stickers."
Yep, perfectly neutral tone. Just reporting the facts, ma'am!
1. This is the New York Times. However biased the summary may be, it's not as biased as... the New York Times. Most papers have a political slant of one kind or another. The Times is... extreme... in this regard. A lot of bias, a lot of clickbait. I assume it got desperate to buoy sagging circulation numbers and chose to gave up some principles.
2. The analogy you make about them does not show bias. A gun is designed to kill. An Intel processor is a general-purpose tool. It's like the difference between selling pressure cookers and selling grenades.
It would seem that they violating, specifically, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Which they agreed to follow.
We could talk about how, but I'm sure the ICJ opinion is so long and explains it in such boring and long-winded detail that you would be better advised to spend your time doing anything else.
No one owns the oceans. It's ridiculous to say the oceans belong a country. This whole proposition is pointless.
And yet nations regulate human activity, even on the oceans, and together can make treaties and courts.
Japan is violating International Law while pretending to follow it. In effect, they are going back on their word, betraying their commitment, undermining the legitimacy of every international agreement they make.
This is crazy. Any nation seriously interested in naval war should be spending their money on developing a swarm-based navy. If you could develop a small swarm warfare ship with a price tag of say, $250K, you could produce 16,000 of those at this cost. Good luck fighting those 16,000 ships with this one.
If the smart people are your enemy, it's because you're doing something stupid. Or at least evil. Smart people can never abide policies of stupidity.
You could harness that brainpower to create the most effective PR campaigns against ISIS in the history of the world, and instead you're making it your enemy by pretending that an Orwellian surveillance state is a good thing.
It's the Encryption argument that's the lie. Explain to your friends that any competent programmer who attacks the problem can devise an uncrackable communications system. There is literally nothing that signals intelligence can do about a competent adversary. The thousands of articles in the news media about cutting back on encryption in the wake of the Paris attacks, based on the *speculation* that encryption was used, are nothing but a big fat lie that the media is swallowing whole. It is dependent on the ignorance of the press and its readers.
So explain to your friends. Anyone can do this. The communications strategy from the intelligence community is a fraud. Simply put, the intelligence community is trying to play the public like a fiddle to accomplish a policy change that tramples mud all over the Fourth Amendment and makes the computers in their lives snoop on them for the government.
Any program like this will have "exemptions" . . . for folks like doctors, policemen, politicians, etc. Normal folks will also be able to "buy" one by bribing the civil servant issuing the exemptions.
In the USA in the 70's, during the OPEC oil crisis, I remember there was also a system of odd/even license plates, odd/even days determining when you could tank up at the gas station. People were incredibly creative at finding ways around it.
I wonder if New Delhi has a way of tracking the effectiveness of this? Like counting the cars on the roads. It would be interesting to how many % less . ..
Yes. Corruption will certainly be an issue. Nonetheless, even in India I would expect an overall reduction in pollution, and the corruption itself will create a tax and small incentive on those who continue to pollute illegally. You get an unjust result, where those willing and able to engage in corruption have more rights than those who do not--but you do lower pollution.
A gigantic weapons platform (the Deathstar) with virtually NO point defense, virtually NO fighter screen, and practically no close-in, anti-attacker weapon mount points. WTF??
It was the seventies. Maybe they were emulating the still-fresh competence of Richard Nixon.
'We think that obtaining by sense enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area," Silverman, 365 U. S., at 512, constitutes a search at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use.'
Slashdot Mirror
If you want us to trust our intelligence communities with decryption capabilities in case we happen to be criminals, then we need the FBI to put MUCH better accountability in place to ensure that THEY are not doing anything criminal. BEGINNING with a reliable and INDEPENDENT commission that can be approached by whistleblowers without fear of reprisal and that has the independent power to declassify anything they believe is government action in violation of Federal Law.
Because they do things that are criminal. Like, for example, mass surveillance, parallel construction, and to some extent the entrapment they use as effectively a primary tool for big investigations.
Right now we don't have the accountability to ensure that our government isn't acting criminally. We just fucking don't. They are mostly a black box saying that nobody else should be a black box.
Sounds like an elected judge paid for by the cable company. Follow the money on his campaign and publish the results.
But it doesn't matter. The studio said "hey, they owe us money," and nobody showed up to disagree. That's what default judgments are about--if someone doesn't show up to court, they tend to lose. There are some exceptions, mostly related to cases where the court doesn't have jurisdiction and somebody realizes that later.
I believe a lot of landlord-tenant cases are won this way. (The landlord shows up or pays someone to show up and the tenant doesn't bother, so regardless of whether the tenant has a legal reason why he should win, he loses.)
Think about how much value this will destroy. A ridiculous of money will go to the lawyers in the process, while a LOT of people will completely reorganize. Ultimately mergers almost always destroy value because of the transaction cost. For something this complex, that seems extremely likely. There will be some production benefits, but also some serious anticompetitive effects.
Experimental combat systems don't always work the first time. The big issue is more the massive fraud--you sell it all to Congress with one budget knowing it is going to cost at least three times as much if magical unicorn engineers don't show up from the future and tell you how to make it all work. With another few years of development it'll get better and better. This is still fairly important in terms of conventional engagements because mines are relatively cheap and easy to build.
He's met with the privacy guys once or twice. He's met with the security guys probably two thousand times since he took office. This meeting was a political stunt to pretend that both sides were being listened to, and now he'll spin a lie about how it's possible to have encryption the government can look at with a warrant.
Here's the thing--even if you could make key escrow really secure, and as a practical matter you can't, it's still far too risky because of government abuse risk.
Our spies and federal law enforcement agencies have demonstrated again and again that they can't be trusted by Americans. They lie to Congress and they (understandably, as a matter of being human and having their jobs) don't care about consumer privacy. They're trying to prevent another 9/11, but we have to think about what the next guy could do with their job and lack of meaningful oversight. So long as they have demonstrated a total unwillingness to have real and meaningful oversight and accountability, they sure as hell shouldn't be trusted with this kind of power.
Kind of like the $9 billion they took in the 00's to provide rural broadband to the country.
They just pocketed it and did basically nothing.
Almost certainly *exactly* like that. They're probably doing it to pick up money they've gotten from the public through Congress, most likely in the term of tax breaks. It turns out that when you call something a "tax cut," the public usually doesn't notice when Congress gives a company or industry a couple of billion dollars from the public's taxes.
That's not a caveat, it's a bloody big guy with a chainsaw. It's like uber saying... "and we're the only people who can drive you this way again..."
Neither will the United States, as that will be viewed as an attack on our freedoms, our free speech, our liberties, and will result in war.
No. Not enough people care about it. Not enough people outside the tech world understand it. And if you rise in rebellion, you will find nobody rises with you.
Eventually the intelligence and law enforcement communities will find a boogeyman big enough that they can use it to get the rest of the government to support fucking over everyone by making encryption illegal so that mass surveillance works again. Look at how they responded to Snowden--by making *corporations* hold on to mass surveillance data, they were able to get mass surveillance renewed. The only situation in which they might stop is if they are able to penetrate the encryption entirely.
It may take another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. But eventually, such an attack will happen. It's just too easy to cause mass panic if you have a few people willing to do your bidding.
That's why the Wordpress goons decided to enable automatic updating a while back.
They really shocked the world with the auto-update's default use of FTP and innovative taking of the FTP credentials over unsecured wp-admin connections.
FYI, if it is really a difficult surgery, go to an expert. (e.g. Pancreatic surgery). Even if you have to pay out of pocket. The guy who wants your case so he can write it up is not necessarily as good as the guy who does lots of hard surgeries and doesn't publish as much.
Also, read the research papers yourself if you are smart enough. Your doctor may know the field but hasn't always read everything you'll find, and that way you'll be working with good enough information that you can make an informed choice between different viable treatments with more information than you would get from the doctor. You'll also understand enough that you can bring his attention to a question he doesn't notice if, for example, a lab writes up a report badly and without highlighting the issue.
I suppose it also depends on your referent. It is not extreme compared to utter trash. It is extreme compared to responsible journalism. That doesn't mean there aren't some good people working there.
To say that anything about the New York Times is extreme is to be extreme yourself to the point of inanity. The New York Times is about as mainstream as it gets. Their primary bias is toward their own image as 'the paper of record' - i.e. covering everything, in a journalistically 'evenhanded' way.
Not really. You won't notice it if you're too used to it or if you're not used to thinking in a way that's different from that of your community. But try subscribing to them on Facebook, for example, reading the articles they share critically, and you'll find they're not nearly up to the standard that their reputation would suggest. The journalists tend to be biased, presumably without realizing it, and many of the articles clearly aren't edited with a close eye for bias.
The Washington Post or Christian Science Monitor, for example, are usually less dogmatic.
A gun is designed to send a projectile out at a high rate of speed with a great deal of mechanical energy, nothing more or less.
What YOU as a person point it at...determines its lethality.
Yes. When I sell you a thousand M-16s, a thousand AK-47s, and a nuclear bomb, I don't KNOW what you will be using them for. They're just ways of releasing energy.
a gun is a general purpose tool as well to anyone who understands them
If you are dedicated enough, you can make yourself believe anything.
Of course a gun can be used for target practice, or for hunting animals, or to create a great deal of mechanical energy. But there are also a lot of guns designed to kill. That is their function.
"Intel debuted its new Core i9 CPU today. This seems remarkably ill-timed, given recent attacks on Tokyo and LA by giant killer robots sporting intel inside stickers."
Yep, perfectly neutral tone. Just reporting the facts, ma'am!
1. This is the New York Times. However biased the summary may be, it's not as biased as... the New York Times. Most papers have a political slant of one kind or another. The Times is... extreme... in this regard. A lot of bias, a lot of clickbait. I assume it got desperate to buoy sagging circulation numbers and chose to gave up some principles.
2. The analogy you make about them does not show bias. A gun is designed to kill. An Intel processor is a general-purpose tool. It's like the difference between selling pressure cookers and selling grenades.
You mean they try to.
Don't be pedantic.
Other stuff
It would seem that they violating, specifically, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Which they agreed to follow.
We could talk about how, but I'm sure the ICJ opinion is so long and explains it in such boring and long-winded detail that you would be better advised to spend your time doing anything else.
No one owns the oceans. It's ridiculous to say the oceans belong a country. This whole proposition is pointless.
And yet nations regulate human activity, even on the oceans, and together can make treaties and courts.
Japan is violating International Law while pretending to follow it. In effect, they are going back on their word, betraying their commitment, undermining the legitimacy of every international agreement they make.
And who is going to crew and service those 16,000 ships? People cost money too, you know. Not to mention dock/mooring space...
Drones. At least a lot of them.
This is crazy. Any nation seriously interested in naval war should be spending their money on developing a swarm-based navy. If you could develop a small swarm warfare ship with a price tag of say, $250K, you could produce 16,000 of those at this cost. Good luck fighting those 16,000 ships with this one.
Silicon Valley has the smart people.
If the smart people are your enemy, it's because you're doing something stupid. Or at least evil. Smart people can never abide policies of stupidity.
You could harness that brainpower to create the most effective PR campaigns against ISIS in the history of the world, and instead you're making it your enemy by pretending that an Orwellian surveillance state is a good thing.
That's not the most worrisome lie.
It's the Encryption argument that's the lie. Explain to your friends that any competent programmer who attacks the problem can devise an uncrackable communications system. There is literally nothing that signals intelligence can do about a competent adversary. The thousands of articles in the news media about cutting back on encryption in the wake of the Paris attacks, based on the *speculation* that encryption was used, are nothing but a big fat lie that the media is swallowing whole. It is dependent on the ignorance of the press and its readers.
So explain to your friends. Anyone can do this. The communications strategy from the intelligence community is a fraud. Simply put, the intelligence community is trying to play the public like a fiddle to accomplish a policy change that tramples mud all over the Fourth Amendment and makes the computers in their lives snoop on them for the government.
Any program like this will have "exemptions" . . . for folks like doctors, policemen, politicians, etc. Normal folks will also be able to "buy" one by bribing the civil servant issuing the exemptions.
In the USA in the 70's, during the OPEC oil crisis, I remember there was also a system of odd/even license plates, odd/even days determining when you could tank up at the gas station. People were incredibly creative at finding ways around it.
I wonder if New Delhi has a way of tracking the effectiveness of this? Like counting the cars on the roads. It would be interesting to how many % less . . .
Yes. Corruption will certainly be an issue. Nonetheless, even in India I would expect an overall reduction in pollution, and the corruption itself will create a tax and small incentive on those who continue to pollute illegally. You get an unjust result, where those willing and able to engage in corruption have more rights than those who do not--but you do lower pollution.
A gigantic weapons platform (the Deathstar) with virtually NO point defense, virtually NO fighter screen, and practically no close-in, anti-attacker weapon mount points. WTF??
It was the seventies. Maybe they were emulating the still-fresh competence of Richard Nixon.
From Part III of the court's decision:
'We think that obtaining by sense enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area," Silverman, 365 U. S., at 512, constitutes a search at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use.'