31–40 of 148 posts
He's right that they're patriots, but he's wrong about the problem they're trying to solve. They're fighting different terrorists. Terrorists hiding in government.
George Orwell's 1984 should be a required reading for high school students. Not just in the U.S., but world wide. It really highlights just what dangers come from the idea that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the sheer amount of power and influence a global, instantaneous, and always on intelligence network can have over the population.
George Orwell's 1984 should be a required reading for high school students. Not just in the U.S., but world wide. It really highlights just what dangers come from the idea that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the sheer amount of power and influence a global, instantaneous, and always on intelligence network can have over the population.
Allow me to ask what I'm certain is an incredibly naive question, so please bear with me. But it's a question that the average / non-tech folks ARE asking, and I'm not looking to be attacked, I'm looking for an intelligent answer (or corrections if my assumptions are wrong.) Base scenario: We have adversaries. Our adversaries are plotting something objectively bad - to blow up things and kill innocent people. They ar…
If we leave a backdoor for the "patriots", then we can guarantee that foreign governments and criminals will find and use the same backdoor. All any restrictions on encryption will do is lead to more non-terrorism arrests.
Blatant attempt by intelligence services and law enforcement to get their personal wish lists legislated by shamelessly exploiting a tragedy. I'll happily donate a constant percentage of my company income to fight whatever useless laws come out of this. It'll be fought immediately if they try to legislate backdoors or any equivalent tinkering. Last time we had a big legal fight about strong encryption, we got a supre…
My biggest issue with all this is that when you give them the power to take away rights to prevent terrorism or protect children, the government will use their powers wherever convenient. For example, the patriot act has been used in 1,618 drug cases and only 15 terrorism cases[1]. It has also been used for everything from copyright violations to Las Vegas money issues[2]. 1. (2011) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blog…
B.B.C. used Anti terror Laws to catch license fee dodgers http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northe...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How are we supposed to prevent them from doing these bad things? Well, we might not be able to. Such is the price of liberty. Personally, I think the thousands that died in the trade centers do not justify the massive loss of civil liberties, and it's STILL not clear we would have been able to do anything about it. Bad guys are going to use encryption no matter what. Citizens should not be restricted from using it…
This is a great reply. Thank you. My thoughts based on it: 1) It's a tough sell to Average Joe. Average Joe wants it both ways - he wants Liberty AND to be protected from bad guys. Obama etc. were effectively hired to protect Average Joe from the bad guys. If Obama were to say "Sorry guys, we can't protect you in the name of Liberty", he's going to be eviscerated. 2) Agreed completely that banning encryption is fooli…
My biggest issue with all this is that when you give them the power to take away rights to prevent terrorism or protect children, the government will use their powers wherever convenient. For example, the patriot act has been used in 1,618 drug cases and only 15 terrorism cases[1]. It has also been used for everything from copyright violations to Las Vegas money issues[2]. 1. (2011) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blog…