Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

jonathanmh.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 337 posts

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#161

Post by cromwellian »

jes5199 wrote: post #148
cromwellian wrote: post #131

Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every devi…

> 100% impregnable, and people maintain good OpSec fortunately, that never happens. Even the strongest defenses consistently fall to human error

Yup. Just as Dredd Pirate Roberts. :) Satoshi Nakamoto is probably the only one I've seen to successfully do near perfect OpSec.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#162

Post by eru »

jonesb6 wrote: post #122
teddyh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be an amazing insight into the corrosive influence of Washington on a person's integrity. I always liked Václav Havel’s short speech from 1991 where he coined the phrase “power unto death”: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html

I have hundreds of bookmarks in chrome. I have so many bookmarks that I've essentially stopped making new ones because the back log is simply too large. That speech I bookmarked. Despite the terrible formatting that speech is a work of art applicable to every human being who holds power, whether it's POTUS or the office manager.

Try Pocket. That's easier to organize.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#163

Post by a3n »

This is not a fetish. This is a conflict between a government that has gotten away from the "we serve the citizens" mentality, and gone to "we'll do anything we want, routing around the constitution whenever we want, and use "serving citizens" as the excuse, and the citizens who should be able to specify, to any level detail that we want, exactly how those "servents" will serve us. It seems to be sliding away from us.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#164

Post by MicroBerto »

tajen wrote: post #134
theseatoms wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What people say during elections is entirely disposable. This is my hope re Trump.

And Obama is the reason to vote for Trump: Obama is a demonstration that it doesn't matter who people vote for.

The good news about Trump is that he's not bought or sold. He is what he is, which from my viewpoint is better than the unknown that we currently have.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#165

Post by willholloway »

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…

Let's take a moment of deep appreciation for President Obama's decision to not panic after the San Bernadino shooting, reinstate color terror alert codes, spark a ground invasion of Syria, or in any other way overreact.

For a brief interlude in American history, we had a president that didn't capitalize on terror attacks politically, or generally set a tone of paranoia and fear.

We won't always be this lucky.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#166

Post by cromwellian »

BWStearns wrote: post #157
cromwellian wrote: post #131

Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every devi…

This is largely overblown though. Even with unfettered access to great and easy to use crypto your society doesn't collapse. It turns out that maintaining anonymity is a giant pain in the ass, no more people are going to go full on tinfoil ghost on society to dodge taxes any more than they already disappear and live off the grid. Most businesses are easier to conduct in public and even derive benefit from it. Regulat…

The issue isn't that they won't hand over documents x,y,z, they'll just hand over fake documents x, y, and z, while the real documents remain encrypted. When the government asks why they can't read files Real_X, Real_y, and Real_Z, they'll claim they're private email communications between employees, and that you can't force them to turn over the keys.

But in reality, they were secret bribery emails between corporate executives and local politicians.

Prior to cryptography, you could pull this off as well, you could have fake books. Hide the real books offsite so warrants can't find them, etc. Cryptography doesn't change whether it's possible to do or not, it just makes it easier to do and scales better.

I mean, even the Nazi's could have used one time pads by carrier pigeon if they wanted to, Enigma wasn't even needed. But the logistics of doing it are less convenient.

As cryptography becomes more universal, more automatic, more user friendly, OpSec will become less of a burden for less diligent people.

Infact, we hope it does, because sloppy OpSec is a huge problem for society right now. Just look at passwords.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#167

Post by revelation »

cromwellian wrote: post #131

Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every devi…

Way to burn a strawman the height of Mount Everest. Nobody is asking for cryptoanarchy, just freedom of backdoored communication.

In any case, I surely hope my bank is already practicing that kind of opsec. That doesn't mean they suddenly stop giving reports to the government. Why would it? That's just.. what?

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#168

Post by studentrob »

eigenvector wrote: post #102

> So if your argument is strong encryption, no matter what, and we can and should, in fact, create black boxes, then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years. Mr. Obama, you are the one who upset the balance with secret, dragnet surveillance of nearly all communications. That's not the bargain the public has had with law enforcement for the last 300 years. Widespread…

> dragnet surveillance of nearly all communications. That's not the bargain the public has had with law enforcement

I'm not sure this is the argument to make to Obama and the DOJ. They are already framing this as a privacy issue

The factors they understand are the public safety and economic impacts. Let us speak to those points and allow privacy to be a secondary concern. Obama himself told President Xi last year that the exact same policies would dramatically hurt Xi's economy [1]

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china-idUSKBN0LY...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#169

Post by studentrob »

downandout wrote: post #91

In the end, they are going to introduce laws that make it illegal to implement end-to-end encryption. This sucks, but it's going to happen. France is already moving to do it [1], and in the US, John McCain and others are also calling for similar laws [2]. They will all start off saying that it will be controlled carefully etc., as Obama keeps saying, and then it will be used with reckless abandonment. What this essen…

I'm not convinced this will get past our Congress. Lindsey Graham is also not convinced [1]

The reason the Apple case is in the courts is nobody wanted to put their name on this encryption bill without understanding it. Feinstein is one of the only ones willing to so far [2]. Basically, any politician who feels they are at about the end of their career might put forth such legislation, but all the others know it'd be suicide.

[1] https://youtu.be/uk4hYAwCdhU?t=1m44s

[2] http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2016...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#170

Post by coldtea »

graycat wrote: post #149
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…

Ah, come ON: It was plenty clear just what the heck Obama was well before and during the election. E.g., Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and his other buddies. Then, during the campaign where he was campaigning and on a stage with Hillary and Bill Richardson and the US National Anthem was playing, Hillery and Bill had their hands over their hearts and Obama had his hands together and below his belt. Then there was his "…

Actually all of these sound like excellent gestures.

Not playing to BS patriotism and phony sentiment by having his hands "together and below his belt"? Daring to say "my muslim faith" (haven't heard of that, so I kinda doubt it, but still). Bowing in respect to heads of other nations, instead of playing the "greatest nation on earth"?

All of these all excellent.

It's all the OTHER stuff that's bad about what he did.

Post reply on HN