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Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

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Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#331

Post by meowface »

ryandrake wrote: post #115
mtgx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like she was a pretty terrible CEO all-around. But as a user, I would never use a service run by Marissa Mayer again. She lost that trust for good.

> I would never use a service run by Marissa Mayer again. Surprisingly, stacks of $100 bills make great mattresses. She won't lose a night of sleep.

I'm not remotely rich, but I feel like after a certain amount of wealth, personal and professional reputation (and the success of things you control) matters much more to your overall happiness and well-being than your net worth.

I suspect she's not had a good year, from her perspective and for the people around her.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#332

Post by coldtea »

smokeyj wrote: post #286
CodeMage wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was tempted to reply with a "found the objectivist" just to illustrate what "ad hominem" really means, but I'm waiting for a build, so I have time to kill. Ad hominem would have been to attack Ayn Rand. I didn't do that. The quote I used doesn't attack the author, it attacks the work. I happen to agree with it. If you want to criticize it, you would do better to point out that the quote I used is not constructive c…

It's only humorous if you agree with it. Replace the two books with ones you like and you have a formulaic insult. Save it for elsewhere.

Well, in addition to the "insult" (which surely adult conversationists can suffer easily) the quote also included a summarized view of the contents of mrs. Rand's work.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#333

Post by coldtea »

crdb wrote: post #287
CodeMage wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was tempted to reply with a "found the objectivist" just to illustrate what "ad hominem" really means, but I'm waiting for a build, so I have time to kill. Ad hominem would have been to attack Ayn Rand. I didn't do that. The quote I used doesn't attack the author, it attacks the work. I happen to agree with it. If you want to criticize it, you would do better to point out that the quote I used is not constructive c…

The problem is that language is much higher bandwidth than the information content of the words. Context and implicit shared knowledge play a huge part and should be taken into account when assessing someone's words. Both the quote, your original use of it, and your reply to my comment are ad hominem attacks where the attack is mostly in what is left unsaid but understood by the relatively smart, well read, culturall…

>The problem is that language is much higher bandwidth than the information content of the words. Context and implicit shared knowledge play a huge part and should be taken into account when assessing someone's words.

But not when assuming they are Rand's followers?

Because you criticized the parent poster exactly for making such an assumption (whether he made it or not)...

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#334

Post by boren_ave11 »

j1vms wrote: post #328
boren_ave11 wrote: post #324

Friendly reminder: the FBI and NSA are part of the executive branch of government and report to the President of the United States. Make no mistake -- there absolutely is someone who could stop this. The fact that this clearly unconstitutional activity not only continued after being exposed, but actually appears to has expanded in its scope, leaves us with but one conclusion: the President supports this activity and…

> (...) are part of the executive branch of government and report to the President of the United States. It's very likely, from what we have observed over the past sixty to seventy years, that the Executive Branch does not operate this way in practice. The actual bureaucratic system has probably morphed to allow for deniability and other measures that offer structural protection against political or legal attacks.

But we know that he knows about it. Because he has talked about it. He once gave a speech specifically about government spying. Not only was the illegal activity not stopped, it expanded. There simply is no deniability left.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#335

Post by ryandrake »

meowface wrote: post #331
ryandrake wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never use a service run by Marissa Mayer again. Surprisingly, stacks of $100 bills make great mattresses. She won't lose a night of sleep.

I'm not remotely rich, but I feel like after a certain amount of wealth, personal and professional reputation (and the success of things you control) matters much more to your overall happiness and well-being than your net worth. I suspect she's not had a good year, from her perspective and for the people around her.

She might make anywhere from $55M to $122M from the Verizon acquisition. Please, sign me up for such a bad year.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#336

Post by smsm42 »

Most illustrative part: "Yahoo President Marissa Mayer and the company's legal team kept the order secret from the company's security team."

If you have to hide things from your own security team, it's pretty clear you're doing something very bad and you know it.

And my imaginary hat off to Stamos for resigning when he found his boss betrayed user privacy and undermined security. If everybody had such level of integrity, doing shady stuff would be much harder.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#337

Post by takeda »

kefka wrote: post #40
rudolf0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there's a huge difference between a computer "seeing" your email and a human being searching for keywords within your email to decide whether or not to follow you around and/or arrest you. This report isn't complaining about unencrypted emails. It's about them giving an intelligence agency the equivalent of a `grep "terrorism" | tail -f` for all their users' email. Without a warrant. (Not that a warrant coul…

You're right, that US govt bulk-scanning is terrifying, especially without warrants. But what happens when Facebook scans your private chats and reports your illegal doings to the police? ( http://www.infowars.com/facebook-monitors-your-private-messa... ) What data restrictions do we have that would prevent $dataCompany from sharing data with other actors? I'm sure a "privacy policy" can do something, but in the end,…

> But what happens when Facebook scans your private chats and reports your illegal doings to the police? ( http://www.infowars.com/facebook-monitors-your-private-messa.... )

That's a very different situation. With Facebook you learn about it and chose to continue using it or not. With government bulk scanning you no longer have any choice or even knowledge about it.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#338

Post by DominikR »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #11

I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced. The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders. You aren't legally allowed to talk to other companie…

Very few people would put the blame mainly on companies like Yahoo or Google as they are forced by their government to do this.

But it still makes using their services dangerous to you and your company or the company you are working for.

I would even go so far and require any politician running for any office to not have used any foreign email, messenger or social network in the last X years except for reaching out to voters.

There's a high risk that they could be blackmailed with their private communication being in the hands of foreign governments and I don't want compromised people like that anywhere near public office.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#339

Post by sangnoir »

Schwolop wrote: post #318
CodeMage wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

Does anyone know if there's a name for this form of humour? (That is: forcing a split between two things, then describing the second one first in a manner that is ambiguous until the punchline confirms the order.)

I don't know if the type of humor itself has a name, but the technique it employs is misdirection, of which there are many variations such as posing a question to 1 of 2 very different people, when the more suitable target (to audience) starts to answer, asker then says "I wasn't talking to you"

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#340

Post by crdb »

coldtea wrote: post #326
crdb wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responding with an ad hominem - whether at the author of the quote or the poster of it by association - is both an ineffective response (the appeal to emotion signals an inability to argue rationally) and lowers the quality of discussion (by taking it away from the point, into emotional territory). Constant appeals to emotion and resorting to a wide array of fallacies allows for strongmen to build tribes which follow…

> Responding with an ad hominem - whether at the author of the quote or the poster of it by association - is both an ineffective response (the appeal to emotion signals an inability to argue rationally) and lowers the quality of discussion (by taking it away from the point, into emotional territory). Thankfully, that was not an ad hominem. It was a quote against a particular BOOK. > Constant appeals to emotion and re…

> Thankfully, that was not an ad hominem. It was a quote against a particular BOOK.

I've explained in detail why I disagree with you on this.

I see you have engaged into the discussion further, for which I thank you as this is a lot of fun (and I mean this genuinely, in a "thank you for taking the time and effort to engage into a discussion with me" way). Although this is the top comment reply right now, I'll continue the conversation on the other thread.

> So, kind of like Ayn Rand, which had a known history of blind following entourage?

Do I need to expand on why this, in this context, is ad hominem coupled with an inappropriate use of the association fallacy?

FWIW I happen to agree with your statement to an extent (that there exists a bit of a cult, and that it resembles blind following), but disagree with its relevance to this line of discussion, or the assumption I half get the impression of that all people who reference Ayn Rand are blind followers.

I personally know hundreds of people who have taken value from Ayn Rand's writings without agreeing with her on everything. Note that I am not sure whether that is what you are implying, but I'm addressing the possibility that it is.

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