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Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

jonathanmh.com

41–50 of 337 posts

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#42
A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS.

Maybe it's that he decided to use his political clout to pick healthcare as his signature in American history, not wage war against the NSA, but either way it saddens me to have campaigned for someone who has empowered a surveillance state instead of fight against it.

Liberty literally means "freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control", and freedom in the information age means the liberty to communicate and store information. Anything to compromise that makes us all more vulnerable to control in all parts of our lives, not just those stored in zeros and ones. I believe America can be "Land of the free, home of the brave", but not without digital liberty.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#44

Obama, our manipulating word artisan of a president yet again attempting to use strong language (i.e "fetishizing") to polarize our view.

First he accused me of clinging to my guns, but since I didn't own any guns, I was OK with that.

Next he accused me of clinging to my religion, but since I was an atheist, I was like, meh, whatever.

Then he accused me of clinging to my smartphone, and oh, boy. It's on now, motherfucker.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#45
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wrong. The government isn't saying that no one should be able to encrypt data. They just thing that, in some cases, it should be done in such a way that certain data can be read by use of a centralized master key. This, of course, presents certain problems. What if that master key leaks? But it's not binary. Data secured this way is absolutely safer than not encrypting something at all. "Is it safe enough?" is…

wow, when you put it that way it's like saying "either I have the right to own a gun or I do not." So I guess if people except limits on gun ownership they should accept limits on encryption cuz it's just as dangerous?

To me personally the concept of even owning a gun is utterly ridiculous, but I guess American people would be incredibly upset if every gun had to come with a built-in remotely controlled switch that could be used by the police to disable it. This is essentially what they are trying to do with encryption - you are free to use it, but we want to be able to manually switch it off if we want to.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#46
so they tell us that we have to arrange our private lives in such way that it would be easier for them to investigate/persecute us, if sometime in the future they decide that we are guilty of breaking their laws.

[with great sadness]: how low have we fallen if we seriously discussing this instead of grabbing pitchforks.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#47
post #38

Obama, our manipulating word artisan of a president yet again attempting to use strong language (i.e "fetishizing") to polarize our view.

Interesting choice too - there's clearly a demographic who go to the Folsom Street Fair who definitely don't have negative connotations to "fetishizing", and I suspect any porn site operator could give you some numbers that some people would not believe about the number of people for whom fetishes are a real thing. I wonder if Obama and his speechwriters have research about how many people (and from which demographic…

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Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communications are already being monitored by random government employees with no judicial review. The FISA court is already a rubber stamp. Encryption is one of the only ways to non-passively protest. Edit: Can't reply to my replies, likely because of the down votes on my parent's comment. Re: FISA, yes to both. That anecdote may be truth but I am still hung up on NSA employee looking up ex-girlfriends' emails the d…

Again, good luck building your own army. My army can beat your army. As a citizen, you are expected to trust the FISA court.

> As a citizen, you are expected to trust the FISA court.

This opinion is just nuts. Trust a court that you were told for years didn't even exist? A secret court? How about no.

Secret courts lead to abuses: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/jo-shaw/secret-cour...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#49
post #4

I think a lot of libertarians miss the fact that many of the communications monitoring aspects that the administration is proposing includes authorization by court order. It's not like your communications are being monitored by random government employees at will for no reason. There's a specific safeguard here for personal privacy, and that's through a court order. If government is monitoring your communications, th…

First, it doesn't matter what process governments (plural) have in place to protect backdoor access mechanisms or escrowed keys. That those mechanisms exist at all means they can and will be abused by people who do not go through those mechanisms. Beyond that: > If government is monitoring your communications, then there's a pretty dammed good reason, as determined by a judge. Not even close to true. We have document…

They're monitoring meta-data, not private communications.

And for private comms, they have filters that filter them out for US citizens, as the Snowden leaks show.

LOL when people find out that the Snowden leaks actually show the NSA protecting privacy rights of US citizens, in a top-secret program.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#50
post #4

I think a lot of libertarians miss the fact that many of the communications monitoring aspects that the administration is proposing includes authorization by court order. It's not like your communications are being monitored by random government employees at will for no reason. There's a specific safeguard here for personal privacy, and that's through a court order. If government is monitoring your communications, th…

First, it doesn't matter what process governments (plural) have in place to protect backdoor access mechanisms or escrowed keys. That those mechanisms exist at all means they can and will be abused by people who do not go through those mechanisms. Beyond that: > If government is monitoring your communications, then there's a pretty dammed good reason, as determined by a judge. Not even close to true. We have document…

That those mechanisms exist at all means they can and will be abused by people who do not go through those mechanisms.

Isn't this true about traditional wiretaps as well? Yeah, a corrupt agent could illegally wiretap anyone's phone, but that certainly won't hold up in court.

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