Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones • Hacker News Board

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#191

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 12:59 AM UTC

karmelapple wrote: post #186

jacquesm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be an amazing insight into the corrosive influence of Washington on a person's integrity. That's going on the assumption that he had integrity in the first place and I'm no longer immune to considering the possibility that he did not and just played the voters for all it was worth. For instance: someone with integrity would have returned an un-deserved Nobel peace prize.

Really? That seems very disrespectful to the Nobel committee to me.

No, what the Nobel committee did was disrespectful to all those that won that prize for good reasons.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Nobel_Peace_Prize

Quoting "Obama said he was "surprised" and "deeply humbled" by the award. He stated that he does not feel he deserved the award,[14][15] and that he did not feel worthy of the company the award would place him in."

So if that was his stance he should have refused.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#192

Post by harryh » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 12:59 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #174

harryh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can gain access to your customer's data by gaining access to a cell phone owned by one of your employees then you are doing something deeply, deeply wrong. You should fix that.

Who says it's only about phones? The fact that it's an iPhone in the San Bernardino case is kind of a red herring; the precedent it would set is not "iPhones and only iPhones and not any other type of computing device are subject to law enforcement unlocking". The precedent it would set is that any encrypted system must be built to be decrypted on demand by law enforcement. And that gets back to my original comment:…

Slippery slope arguments are lame when they start to go like this.

Like, I get you. By allowing X which might actually be OK, we might allow X+1 to happen and that wouldn't be OK. So we must oppose X as a practical matter.

I get the practicality of that.

But when you start opposing X as a matter of principle rather than simply as a matter of practicality that's when you've gone off the rails.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#193

Post by mhurron » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:02 AM UTC

harryh wrote: post #145

sk5t wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you presume that compromising the iPhones belonging to the men and women who do control the nuclear launch codes wouldn't serve to compromise everything they control, by extension? Either by using the data as a lever against the people, or directly snooping, this would be a very powerful opening, and your position seems to defy all common sense.

Obama used the word "fetishizing" for a reason. It's a pretty unusual word to use don't you think? It was carefully chosen though I'm sure. Comments like this are exactly why he used it.

Yes he did use it for a reason. He used it to make it seem perverse that you would want your information on your phone to be secure. Hes is trying, once again, to put forth the governments position that if you're not trying to hide something, you have nothing to fear.

And quite frankly, yes, I do hold the security and privacy of data as more important than the terrorism song and dance the government is playing. And I do hold that view absolutely.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#194

Post by willholloway » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:02 AM UTC

studentrob wrote: post #176

willholloway wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am happy about that. What does any of that have to do with the fact that he does not understand encryption technology? I can appreciate some things about Obama and not others. People aren't all bad or good. I support ideas, not people, just as I hate the game, not the player.

We almost never say it. I want to say it. As someone who first became politically aware during the post 9/11 Bush era, it's really nice to have an administration in the White House that isn't trying to scare us.

We wouldn't live like that in a Trump administration. We would live in fear.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#195

Post by studentrob » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:02 AM UTC

thoughtsimple wrote: post #101

This is akin to the politicians that don't want to believe the science around global warming. They believe that if they just deny it, they will turn out to be correct. Obama is doing the same with "golden key" encryption. It is not that the experts are correct and know what they are talking about, it is just that they are disengaged and being stubborn. "I'm the President of the United States of America and if I say t…

Yup. But he doesn't understand that criminals will just change to use technology that is encrypted. We just need to share the facts and let people make up their own minds.

What baffles me is that nobody has been able to convince the President of that simple fact. Surely, he must know about Signal and Snowden, and that Signal can easily be downloaded to any device...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#196

Post by cromwellian » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:03 AM UTC

eigenvector wrote: post #171

cromwellian wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in favor of Apple's choices, but I can see the government's side of this too, I don't think it's as cut and dried morally as people are making it. I like to mentally "game out" repercussions of various scenarios to see where they lead, and I don't think it is bad with such wide sweeping and powerful technologies, to play devils advocate and argue on both sides. A lot of people don't seem to want get into the fine…

I think with respect to business regulation, encryption won't pose much of a problem. People in criminal prosecutions have a right not to incriminate themselves. But if the government wants to investigate, say, DuPont for chemical dumping and there's a law on the books saying companies have to keep chemical storage records for 7 years, DuPont can't just throw away the key for their encrypted internal data. They'll ha…

Thank you, I think this is a much clearer argument for how to proceed and how to address transparency required in business and satisfies some of my concerns.

I think we may need additional regulations for the political class however. Government communications need to be secure, but I think being a politician abdicates some privacy rights, and IMHO, if you are an elected representative, you either must use some kind of key escrow, or, you must be able to provide access to your communications under warrant, and if you fail to do so, it's grounds for impeachment.

The risk of collusion between politicians and industry is too great IMHO.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#197

Post by MicroBerto » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:04 AM UTC

keehun wrote: post #177

MicroBerto wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could say the same about Bernie? Or would you disagree?

Would agree, but I'm not confident in his chances of defeating "the chosen one"...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#198

Post by ap22213 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:05 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #85

api wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policy wise Obama is close to a Rockefeller Republican. What people say during elections is entirely disposable.

I'm giving Bernie Sanders one last chance. But if he is elected and also reneges on his promises, I will probably stop caring about politics permanently. edit: Whoops! Shouldn't have revealed I'm a Bernie supporter. Forgot that HN is a libertarian paradise!

Based on the title of the post alone, someone with even center to left politics should expect to get jumped on in the following discussion. It's a post that's trolling for conflict, not solutions.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#199

Post by beeboop » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:05 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #183

beeboop wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot fathom end to end encryption ever being made illegal. I tremendously doubt this will ever happen in any effective manner. At worst, they will pass from vaguely worded bill that makes it illegal in the sense that you are required to decrypt data on demand for any government agency. But since we are already seeing the trend of service providers being unable to decrypt user data, I doubt that will be much of an…

If you're not willing to revolt over it then it is definitely a possibility that end-to-end encryption will be made illegal. Non-techies simply don't care, they have 'nothing to hide' (or so they think).

I don't think it will happen due to the impossibility of actually enforcing it, hence "effective manner" in my OP.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#200

Post by krapp » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

MicroBerto wrote: post #164

tajen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't become a billionaire without having deeply entrenched political and business connections. Donald Trump may be "self funded" but I don't believe for an instant that his persona is any less calculated than that of any other politician, or that his agenda is entirely his own.

Because he is a politician, and by definition a very successful one. Just because he wears a red baseball cap and is willing to use vulgar language and encourage violence at his rallies in the name of denouncing political correctness doesn't mean he's an anti-establishment maverick and hero of the common man, or that anything he says is sincere. He's simply found a gimmick that works.

To his credit, it seems to work extremely well. But that doesn't make him qualified for the office.

Ok, it might, to a degree because it's a political office, but... he seems like a charlatan. I don't understand why people trust him, he seems like the most obviously political figure in the entire field.