141–150 of 219 posts
Diane Feinstein is old and needs to retire. She is completely out of touch with the needs of her constituency, and comes off more like an old guard republican rather then a democrat that she is supposed to be.
There's a post-partisan, grassroots PAC to do exactly that:
From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors. He would likely also advocate allowing the FBI to suspend the bill of rights for any suspect during the duration of an investigation, and he'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in usef…
> Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. Terrorism is a political word to describe political enemies of the state, yet the patriot act and surveillance machinery has been used in enforcement of many other kinds of (less serious) crime. You are looking at the problem wrong. It has nothing to do with government indoctrination but an issue…
Everyone's vote is secret, so no one will come to your house and bust your balls over voting for someone who comes out against defeating terrorists. The problem is that there are no incentives to become well-read in the issues behind each election. Maybe we can find a way to incentivize learning the facts and becoming well-read on issues before elections [1]
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/17/political-vi...
geeeez, how long is Cali going to foist Feinstein on the rest of the country. The level of idiocy is just beyond painful... Edit to add: of course the same could be said about the remaining 49 states and their reps/sens as well...
Add Pelosi to that too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? Apple was not putting on a show. What the FBI requested required actual software development to be done. You can't force someone to work for you.
Judges absolutely can force work and do it all the time. See the discovery process Uber is going through now. For an example more relevant to the Apple case, look at the Lavabit court orders. The idea that writing software not intended for public release is compelled speech under the standard of Wooley v. Maynard is laughable. Nobody except a few gullible tech bloggers (are there any other kind?) took that argument s…
Discovery is different. Laws already require you to retain various records for later discovery. That's just general "shuffle stuff around" work that doesn't really require much effort.
What the FBI was asking for was custom software development to be done to circumvent existing software and hardware functions.
> The idea that writing software not intended for public release is compelled speech under the standard of Wooley v. Maynard is laughable.
Not sure I follow. The distinction wasn't public versus private release; it was writing the custom software itself. The whole "you can keep it and destroy it afterwards" didn't really matter. The FBI can't simply insert itself into your business, have engineers reprioritized from what they're currently working on and expect you to produce something for them.
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That's not a moral position, that's one branch of the conditional: > if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in useful information He's not arguing that torture is wrong, he's arguing that torture doesn't work.
No he stated his moral position (that torture is wrong) first, and then at the end of his answer appended "and of course it is ineffective, but that is another story". Maybe listen/read to his full response first?
But that just calls into question a person's character and it's going to be impossible to dig down and find a satisfying answer for everyone. So I'm not sure how fruitful this is.
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You're more likely to die from a lightning bolt than a 'terrorist' attack. You're thousands of times more likely to die from bad driving habits or being overweight, so why is the terrorist bogeyman given so much concern in the political conversation?
First of all I agree with you, but let me state what I think the other side's argument might be. You can choose to eat healthy and exercise and reduce your chance of early death from obesity/health issues. You can also drive extra carefully, or take a plane, or not travel at all if you're that concerned about a car crash. With a terrorist attack though, it's mostly out of your control and literally anyone can be affe…
Since "Terrorism" is a political problem, how about a political solution? Stop going into Muslim countries and murdering women/children and tearing down governments with no plan for rebuilding? Be more cautious about what you do on the world stage. Stop bombing brown people just because they don't support 'American interests' and such.
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Arguing deaths due to happened more frequently than terrorism in some time period is useless, if the underlying process that generates those numbers are widely different. Rather than thinking in terms of mortality rate over a period, its more accurate to think in terms of events. A single lightning bolt strike can at most affect 0 ~ 10 people with a gaussian distribution. A terrorist attack on the other hand has a lo…
Bad driving and cardiac/obesity DO cause more than 10^6 deaths per annum and get no where near the proportionate political/media attention that terrorism does. There are 10x the deaths in auto accidents than the worst terrorist attack in US history every single year. The DHS budget alone dwarfs any proportional safety return that could be made by simply raising the legal driving age by a year.
What?? What does legal driving age has to do with DHS budget? You are simply rambling, different mortality causes have different risk models.
Or to explain simply you are comparing "Apples to Oranges".
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Arguing deaths due to happened more frequently than terrorism in some time period is useless, if the underlying process that generates those numbers are widely different. There is no organized cult going around preaching auto erotic asphyxiation with explicit intention of causing large scale harm. On the other hand there are several organized terrorist groups which are intentionally trying to do that. Unchecked Terro…
> if the underlying process that generates those numbers are widely different. So stop the underlying process? Terrorist organizations aren't quiet about their problems, that tragic day in September was in opposition to US interference in their lives. If our goal was combatting terrorism, we picked a terrible way of addressing the problem.
To you these attacks are a valid grievance redressal mechanisms??? Is that the path every disenfranchised group should take?? If you are okay with such approach, no point in having a discussion.
From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors. He would likely also advocate allowing the FBI to suspend the bill of rights for any suspect during the duration of an investigation, and he'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in usef…
From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors. He would likely also advocate allowing the FBI to suspend the bill of rights for any suspect during the duration of an investigation, and he'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in usef…
There are threats against the US that are more than a few crazy people. The rise of Islamism is real. But the reality is that the number of casualties due to terrorism in the US is dwarfed by those of gang or drug violence, even including 9/11 (which is now more than 15y ago...). We do not hear anyone suggesting restricting civil liberties to reduce gang violence. It is kind of a curious massively asymmetrical tolera…