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Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

jonathanmh.com

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Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#221

Post by jcrites »

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.

I'd recommend Pinboard.in. If you pay for an account with Bookmark Archive, it will also save a permanent copy of the bookmarks so that you can read them even if the original goes down, and provides full text search over them. There's a nice "Save Pinboard Bookmark" that you can add as a Bookmarklet. Lastly, it has a flag for "Read Later" if you like tracking that intention.

It is excellent for solving the information craving that goes, "I could have sworn that I read something about that...", and then actually finding it later, sometimes years later, in appropriate need. I don't use that capability very often, but I love the feeling that I have a permanent archive of all this information.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#222

Post by cromwellian »

Grishnakh wrote: post #210
cromwellian wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're in favor of the government bugging and installing cameras secretly? Because you can't really bug say, Enron's corporate office without a warrant served, and so they'd know they're being watched. The alternative is breaking and entering. So since retroactive paper trails will be devalued, the government will have to switch to preemptive collection and entrapment scenarios. I'm not sure this is better for pri…

This sounds like a bunch of crap (re: the warrant for Enron's corporate office). I admit I'm not aware of exactly what the legalities are right now, but for the sake of argument, I don't see why the government shouldn't be able to secretly bug a corporate office, provided that a proper warrant is in place . So yeah, if they get a warrant to do so and convince a judge that this is necessary, they should be able to get…

I'm not a lawyer, but aren't you supposed to be notified of warrants? Sure, they could knock on your door and break in to serve a warrant if you're not home, but aren't they required to notify you they've done so?

First google search returned this: http://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/arrests_and_...

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#223

Post by krapp »

gcb0 wrote: post #216
jordanb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

in other words, we are OK with the man elected to represent us for a few years to live like an alien. there will probably not be a single American that thinks a bomb proof car in a exaggeration.

>there will probably not be a single American that thinks a bomb proof car in a exaggeration.

Everyone in the world knows the President's car is a mobile battle fortress. I saw an entire show about it on the History Channel.

That's not because he's detached from the people, though, it's an unfortunate necessity of office. The last time an American President rode around in public in a convertible, it didn't end well for him.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#224

Post by mixmastamyk »

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.

Terrible formatting? It's pure html. If it looks bad, you should adjust your browser to improve it, or hit the reader button if lazy.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#225

Post by digler999 »

willholloway wrote: post #194
studentrob wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

hillary would do the same god damn thing. "but...terrorism!" "Iran is threatening freedom".

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#226

Post by hifier »

mozumder wrote: post #8
mythz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is being missed other than the premise that you can only create a back door that just compromises your privacy and security to the FBI/NSA. A backdoor available to the US Govt, is a backdoor available for everyone.

This is more fundamental than any "back door". The question here is: do you place any trust in government? If not, then you really can't function in a normal society. Good luck building your own army. And my army can beat your army.

The entirety of the US system of government is predicated on lack of trust. Hence checks and balances through branches and the limits placed on the government by the constitution. The founders saw this coming. They didn't trust the government. Why should we?!

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#227

Post by Qwertious »

cgriswald wrote: post #172
pearle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people put too much importance on the role of the president with regards to domestic policy. You can't expect the president to effect change if congress opposes the president 100% of the time. Electing Bernie won't make a huge difference if the republicans still control congress.

Woodrow Wilson sprang immediately to mind as an example of a president who effected change despite an intransigent congress. He is also a president who fought against entrenched interests. Your idea seems to be more of an observation of recent presidents than a property of the presidency itself. I think there are two things that make it so. First, modern presidents are generally picked from a very narrow pool of cand…

This is kind of sad, when I think about it - what you're describing is Trump and Sanders being opposed to Hillary and in a way that matters just as much as Democrat VS Republican, but that decision is entirely up to the Dem/Rep oligarchy.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#228

Post by simoncion »

cromwellian wrote: post #222
Grishnakh wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a bunch of crap (re: the warrant for Enron's corporate office). I admit I'm not aware of exactly what the legalities are right now, but for the sake of argument, I don't see why the government shouldn't be able to secretly bug a corporate office, provided that a proper warrant is in place . So yeah, if they get a warrant to do so and convince a judge that this is necessary, they should be able to get…

I'm not a lawyer, but aren't you supposed to be notified of warrants? Sure, they could knock on your door and break in to serve a warrant if you're not home, but aren't they required to notify you they've done so? First google search returned this: http://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/arrests_and_...

> I'm not a lawyer, but aren't you supposed to be notified of warrants?

Think about a warrant issued for the use of a Stingray, or for a wiretap. There is no notice requirement when running the searches permitted by those warrants.

I find it very hard to believe that performing warranted, clandestine on-premises surveillance on a target is legally impossible. (See the first season of The Wire, ferinstance.)

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#229

Post by HillaryBriss »

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.

The official reason was: "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/

The big international war issue from 2003 to 2008 was the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Enter Barack Obama, a candidate who campaigns vigorously on trying to get America out of Iraq and trying to limit or even undo some of the damage America inflicted on itself during that war (not to mention Iraq and its people).

Things have not gone all that well. But, when I imagine what would have happened if McCain had been elected, I conclude that things would have gone even worse.

What other candidate was pushing as vigorously for de-escalating and militarily disengaging from Iraq as Obama was? Hillary Clinton??

Where would we be on this particular issue if Senator Obama had not decided to run for president -- if he had just left it all to the existing establishment candidates?

Is this a bad analysis of the situation?

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#230

Post by ubernostrum »

harryh wrote: post #192
ubernostrum wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, for one thing it's not even a slippery slope. They want to unlock his work-issued phone, not his personal phone, and the FBI admits they have, and other law-enforcement agencies admit they have, an almighty queue of other things they'd like to get force-unlocked if they can only get precedent claiming that companies do indeed have to circumvent their own products on demand.
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