Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

Post by teddyh » Sun, Mar 13, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #86

tomlongson wrote: post #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 dec…

I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another. A while back he advised some kids in College to never type anything into a computer if they want it to remain private. For him, it probably seems completely reasonable. I doubt he's touched a keyboard sin…

Post by harryh » Sun, Mar 13, 2016, 11:33 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #97

harryh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true at all. If you use gmail your data is pretty safe. Unless you tell me your password I'm going to have a pretty hard time reading your mail. It's encrypted at rest on Google's disks. It's encrypted in transmission over the internet. Google's network is protected with various forms of encryption and security that makes it hard for an unauthorized party to get into. But Google itself can access…

The difference is that by using Gmail you agree with Google's terms of service, which state somewhere in them that they can target ads at you. With a government-held master key, there is no such contract.

Post by beeboop » Sun, Mar 13, 2016, 11:34 PM UTC

BWStearns wrote: post #77

ecma wrote: post #9

This is incredibly naive bordering on puerile. To suggest that POTUS' view on this is without nuance is to miss his point. POTUS went on to cite existing warrant mechanisms and their underlying principle: "And we agree on that, because we recognize that just like all of our other rights ... that there are going to be some constraints we impose so we are safe, secure and can live in a civilized society." I'm not sugge…

I don't believe that Obama himself has an blunt understanding of this issue, but I can't know what is truly in his heart or head and the view promoted in his statements here is utterly oversimplified and purposely lacking in nuance. Glossing over the impossibility of providing security only against "bad guys" while leaving you open to "good guys" is an intentionally low resolution view of the issue intended to make r…

Post by jonathanmh » Sun, Mar 13, 2016, 11:35 PM UTC

mozumder wrote: post #49

JoshTriplett wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by harryh » Sun, Mar 13, 2016, 11:37 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #98

harryh wrote: 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…

The fundamental issue is that any back door accessible to "the good guys" will also be accessible to sufficiently-technically-advanced "bad guys". And from the perspective of securing the United States' defense infrastructure, major corporations, etc., there are multiple sufficiently-technically-advanced "bad guys" in the world already (i.e., certain major foreign governments and their intelligence/defense complexes)…