I wonder if it's time we started pushing for encrypted email as a default. Mail/Calendar/Documents hosted in encrypted form online, and can only be decrypted on personal devices owned by users themselves. I really don't trust any machines other than my own when it comes to entering passwords. Do you?
Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
91–100 of 100 posts
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Plenty of people knew this, but voted for Obama anyway." In all fairness, given the range of options offered for American voters, I'd also have gone with Obama even if I didn't agree on everything.
This is not how US politcs works. If you agree with a side on some points and disagree with others you are ostracized by all groups. It is stupid, but unfortunately the US is a place where (for example) you are pro-death penalty and anti-abortion or pro-abortion and anti-death penalty. If you are pro both or anti both, almost everyone hates you.
You almost had a point here, but your unfortunate choice of terms demonstrates a lot of what's wrong with US politics. Rather than referring to the pro-choice movement as such, you've adopted a label, pro-abortion, that is simply misleading. Here we have a debate over women's reproductive health rights, and it gets reduced to misleading soundbites like "pro-abortion."
In the same way, I think much of what is being protested in this thread comes from the false dichotomy between "pro-security" and "anti-security" that ignores how important the ideals of personal rights are to the debate. US politics is well-characterized by a practiced reduction of complex political issues to misleading soundbites.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate why you're touchy, but think about it: GOVT DEATH PANELS! That's all you need to know, to realize that the assessment of "semi-facts, lies, and emotion blended into an easily palatable gruel" is, in fact, the majority of Tea Party-er thinking. Not all of the people who are against socialized healthcare believe the "death panel" idiocy. Not all of them pretend they're doing some revolutionary act by joini…
Many of the people you believe are stupid tea partiers are actually posers attempting to make the tea party look bad. http://crashtheteaparty.org/ http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/tea-party-crasher... http://michellemalkin.com/2010/04/15/crashers-they-came-they...
The party needs no help looking bad, they're doing quite well as it is.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever you may think about Joe Biden, I can guarantee you he's a better VP than Sarah 'Drill baby drill' Palin (who now, ironically, has a TV series on Discovery where she talks about the natural beauty of Alaska that she kept trying to destroy).
> I can guarantee you he's a better VP than Sarah 'Drill baby drill' Palin Thanks. Your extensive footnoting and logical arguments definitely convinced me of your point of view.
No extensive footnoting is needed for saying that the sky is blue. The evidence of Palin's incompetence is easily available to anyone with an actual interest.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever you may think about Joe Biden, I can guarantee you he's a better VP than Sarah 'Drill baby drill' Palin (who now, ironically, has a TV series on Discovery where she talks about the natural beauty of Alaska that she kept trying to destroy).
Whatever you may think about implementing an entire e-commerce site in full-screen Flash and flat XML files, I can guarantee you it's a better solution than implementing an entire e-commerce site in a hybrid Java and ActiveX environment with an Access 97 backend.
Yes, and if your "ballot" had only had those two options, I would hope that you choose the former, as horrendous as it is. What's really objectionable, though, is that the political system in the US effectively presents you with a narrow set of unpalatable options.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obama selected Joe "I wrote the Patriot Act" Biden as his VP. This is the same Joe Biden who tried to ban Turing machines because they could be used to encrypt files that the government would be unable to crack. Plenty of people knew this, but voted for Obama anyway. For many people, "the government is violating privacy rights" is not a genuine policy position. It's just a club to beat their political opponents with.
I have no idea where you got this info but it is not true. I'm not a big Biden fan but he did not have anything to do with crafting the Patriot Act. Here, go to the Wikipedia article and do a search for Biden, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_USA_PATRIOT_Act , you'll come up empty. You will find names like Specter, Leahy, Sarbanes, Lott, Hatch, Daschel, etc. Biden did vote for it, but so did 98 of his usel…
Joe Biden disagrees with you:
"When I was chairman in '94 I introduced a major antiterrorism bill--back then,...I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up [the Patriot act] was my bill." - Joe Biden
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another solution would be everyone using their own mail server (which itself uses TLS). Mail still isn't encrypted, but all the tunnels they travel through would be. But I guess this is just as hard as encrypting one's email, given the number of people which don't even mind having their mail systematically analysed by a big, profitable company.
Even that wouldn't help if your server is hosted in the US. If they really want access to your e-mail, they can just have your hosting provider give them access (or get the data for them), and under the Patriot act, they can't even tell you about it. Another other solution would be to use e-mail providers (or hosting solutions) outside of the country. Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, for example, have excellent conn…
By "own mail server", I meant a server which is behind your own walls: at home. Of course having a server behind the walls of a remote company isn't much better that using Gmail.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary, living in Europe I see you in the US as a great example of society which dares to stand up and say "No!". By comparison, you are exceptionally well-educated, conscious and actively taking care of your rights.
how so? if I may ask. Living in the US, I accept the claim that not many get together to say "No". Compare to Asian/European countries where the slightest rift creates huge protests. To cite UK as an example, we always hear British Airways going on strikes(not saying it's a good/bad thing); When was the last time we heard such a thing in the US? I often bring this up in conversations and a common argument thrown at m…
You're kidding. It happens all the time.
I will be oversimplifying now, but still my observation is that in western Europe most people who oppose to something are those for whom it's a way of life, like leftists (or, contrary, extreme right-wing people). Insane example: people who created Baader-Meinhof, they didn't remotely know the real sides of life of the people they supposedly represented; they just found a way to utilize rage and pump their egos.
On the other hand there are post-communist countries, where I come from, where most of the people just don't care; they look at the west, want to become a middle class and they choose to be opportunistic.
But in the US people, common folk -- not any extremists, even if they just want to be a middle class, are quite good informed what they want, what the govt should do for them and what not, and are caring of it. This is deeply rooted in a foundation of the US.
Maybe you will have a clue what I have in mind when you compare the bureaucracy needed to create and maintain a business in the US and in the EU.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a link I found. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,540965,00.html It is well established that socialized medicine entails rationing.
> It is well established that socialized medicine entails rationing. Every system entails rationing. In a private system, your resources and your choices determine how decisions are made. In a "public" system, govt decides. Yup - they'll take resources that you might have used for for your care and spend it on someone else and deny you care. We already hear "we're not going to pay to care for fatties or smokers". If…
At the risk of being further downvoted :).
The proper definition of "rationing" is ; Government allocation of scarce resources and consumer goods, usually adopted during wars, famines, or other national emergencies.
http://www.answers.com/topic/rationing
The conflation of private and governmental actions is exactly one of the things that has gotten us into the current troubles. If I choose to buy cake and not pencils today, I am not rationing myself. If the government says I can only have so many pencils or cake, I am subject to rationing.
Government is the only authorized agent of force. Private citizens are not allowed to force others to do their bidding. That is against the law: you cannot take my cake from me by force. Unfortunately, with our government becoming more and more unlimited, the force it can exert is correspondingly larger.
Re: Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is well established that socialized medicine entails rationing. Every system entails rationing. In a private system, your resources and your choices determine how decisions are made. In a "public" system, govt decides. Yup - they'll take resources that you might have used for for your care and spend it on someone else and deny you care. We already hear "we're not going to pay to care for fatties or smokers". If…
At the risk of being further downvoted :). The proper definition of "rationing" is ; Government allocation of scarce resources and consumer goods, usually adopted during wars, famines, or other national emergencies. http://www.answers.com/topic/rationing The conflation of private and governmental actions is exactly one of the things that has gotten us into the current troubles. If I choose to buy cake and not pencils…
> At the risk of being further downvoted :). The proper definition of "rationing" is
irrelevant.
You're absolutely correct, but that's now how this discussion works, even if both of us wish otherwise. (And yes, I upvoted your comment.)