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NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

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Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#201

Post by anonymous »

wpietri wrote: post #171
saraid216 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously there are ethical issues, but peoples' ethics are much more pliable than most of us like to believe. The irritating thing about this is that most of us aren't taught ethics. Most people don't take philosophy courses. Most people don't take civics courses. We're expected to just figure it out through osmosis. It's not about pliability. Most people never actually develop their own approach to ethics.

Yeah. As much as a flaming atheist as I am, I regret that people aren't spending as much time getting an ethical education as they once did. I suspect that one could teach an excellent non-religious Sunday School class by only asking difficult questions. The only people who scare me more than people who have never thought much about ethics are the ones who think they know The Answer.

I can't picture how you could teach ethics, actually. Meaning, if someone is already unethical, I can't see a way to make them ethical and in reverse - if you have an ethical person, they don't need to be told to be ethical. Is it then mostly a class on reassuring already ethical people that they're behaving well?

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#202

Post by doki_pen »

fixxer wrote: post #103
tptacek wrote: post #14

This entire event was a staged press op. Keith Alexander is a ~30 year veteran of SIGINT, electronic warfare, and intelligence, and a Four-Star US Army General --- which is a bigger deal than you probably think it is. He's a spy chief in the truest sense and a master politician. Anyone who thinks he walked into that conference hall in Caesars without a near perfect forecast of the outcome of the speech is kidding the…

I agree with the basic argument that Alexander is a savvy SOB and knew what he was in for... BUT, you're making it sound like getting heckled on stage was desirable. I don't agree. I think it is more appropriate to say that the NSA is between a rock and a hard place. They could either... * Get heckled and look culpable, but maintain the illusion that they give a shit what the general public thinks, or... * Not attend…

every article that I saw yesterday painted the general as a hero and the heckler as a turd. It seemed like a concerted PR effort to me. It's about discrediting you opponents in the public forum.

Aside from that, It struck me that a lot of people at conferences like this are on the NSA payroll one way or another. I'd hardly call the group a bunch of freedom fighters.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#203

Post by rdl »

tptacek wrote: post #189
ballard wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naturally. Alexander didn't score any points for himself or his organization by coming off like he has something to defend besides American citizens. 0. The intros were more than courteous, they were gushing 1. "Holding questions to the end" was an obvious grinfuck 2. The 8 minutes of q&a seemed completely prepared 3. It also had a sense of "we're hiring" I don't know the guy, so I don't know where he actually stands…

For what it's worth: I don't the the NSA is at all interested in hiring Black Hat attendees. I don't mean "that's not why they're there at Black Hat, to recruit". I mean, "they don't want those people to begin with".

They do try to recruit at RSA every year, though. I couldn't really tell much difference between Black Hat and RSA expo areas.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#204

Post by mikeash »

b1daly wrote: post #197
mikeash wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the cost far outweighs the benefits. The world (and the economy) is not a zero-sum game. People usually say that when they want to state that value can be created, but it cuts both ways. The fact that it's not a zero-sum game means that value can be destroyed. We blew a trillion bucks on nothing useful. That's destroyed value. That somebody is benefitting in some small way from the side effects of this doesn…

This is an interesting question, what is value? What I took away from my econ classes long ago is that it's hard to determine the value of something outside of price (objectively). So if the hypothetical US taxpayer is satisfied with the perceived security they got from building expensive machines, transporting them to the other side of the world, and blowing them up, then it's hard to argue with him. This perspectiv…

Yep, excellent points there. I think my beliefs about the value of the war are superior to others' (because I'd change them if I didn't think that!) so I'd just call those people wrong and say that value really was destroyed. But, of course, I could be the one who is wrong.

If this was all capitalistic private enterprise, it would be much simpler. The people who saw value in it would contribute whatever money they thought was worthwhile, and that would be the "value" of the effort. I kind of doubt that most of the people who feel the war was necessary would actually put up the $3,000 per person if they had to write a check for it, but who knows.

When you get government involved, the question of value becomes much more complex.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#205

Post by wpietri »

anonymous wrote: post #201
wpietri wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. As much as a flaming atheist as I am, I regret that people aren't spending as much time getting an ethical education as they once did. I suspect that one could teach an excellent non-religious Sunday School class by only asking difficult questions. The only people who scare me more than people who have never thought much about ethics are the ones who think they know The Answer.

I can't picture how you could teach ethics, actually. Meaning, if someone is already unethical, I can't see a way to make them ethical and in reverse - if you have an ethical person, they don't need to be told to be ethical. Is it then mostly a class on reassuring already ethical people that they're behaving well?

Nah. Consider, for example, most of the people who participated in the mortgage bubble. Almost all of them thought they were behaving ethically. Most of them weren't, because the system was a) familiar enough that it didn't trip people's bad-situation triggers, and b) complicated enough that it was hard to see what the downstream ethical problems were.

E.g., the nice person at the mortgage issuer said the loan was good for them, so they just signed what he told them. And the mortgage guy was just doing what his boss told him. And that boss was just following the incentive plan set up. And the people buying the mortgages in bulk seemed happy with them, as did the ratings agencies. But in my view, most or all of them acted unethically; one can't swim in the mud and come out clean.

Or take a look at the content of a medical ethics class: http://web.missouri.edu/~bondesonw/MedicalEthicsSyllabus.htm...

Even if everybody wants to do the right thing, what the right thing is hard to figure out. Ethics classes force people to think things through. They can't make a sociopath healthy, but they can help everybody else to sort out right from wrong in complicated situations.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#206

Post by saraid216 »

anonymous wrote: post #201
wpietri wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. As much as a flaming atheist as I am, I regret that people aren't spending as much time getting an ethical education as they once did. I suspect that one could teach an excellent non-religious Sunday School class by only asking difficult questions. The only people who scare me more than people who have never thought much about ethics are the ones who think they know The Answer.

I can't picture how you could teach ethics, actually. Meaning, if someone is already unethical, I can't see a way to make them ethical and in reverse - if you have an ethical person, they don't need to be told to be ethical. Is it then mostly a class on reassuring already ethical people that they're behaving well?

There isn't such a thing as an ethical person. There are situations and [un]ethical responses. Most people have no structured guidance on how to feel out a situation to categorize possible responses as ethical or unethical. Forming that structure would be the purpose of the class.

To draw an analogy, most programmers can write code. But programming class isn't really about teaching a language's order of operations or explaining its particular grammar: the value of a programming class has to do with its explanations of modularity and data encapsulation, of structuring flow and conceptualizing objects. Then examples are provided that exercise these explanations so that you can apply them in future situations.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#208

Post by mcescalante »

jaekwon wrote: post #142
mcescalante wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't applauding Alexander, they were applauding for the conference goers who were shouting out loud at him (and their messages).

Were you there? That would be a terrible reporting job by Andy Greenberg.

I hadn't seen the footage, and the piece did a poor job conveying what they applause was for. After watching the video it looks like he drew at least some (if not all) of the applause. Not sure if I like that from Black Hat or not.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#209

Post by chris_wot »

tptacek wrote: post #160
chris_wot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Australian. Obama is the most disappointing politician I've ever seen. He talks of Hope, then he takes it away. He talks of Freedom, but doesn't allow it. That's very sad.

Australia has significantly worse Internet regulation than the US.

And? My disappointment with my own government does not mean that I can't be disappointed with the leader of the "Free World" - one that is increasingly monitoring its own citizens, much like a totalitarian state would.

If this is how it goes in the United States, and the U.S. is held up as the standard for freedom, how is that good for the rest of the world?

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#210

Post by mpyne »

saraid216 wrote: post #190
wpietri wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. As much as a flaming atheist as I am, I regret that people aren't spending as much time getting an ethical education as they once did. I suspect that one could teach an excellent non-religious Sunday School class by only asking difficult questions. The only people who scare me more than people who have never thought much about ethics are the ones who think they know The Answer.

Absolutely. That's roughly what philosophy courses are meant to do. They fire a shotgun round into the air to show you as much variance and disagreement between cogent and prominent thinkers and then ask, "So... what do you think?" (Speaking solely in terms of American education,) Literature classes also do this to a smaller extent. In elementary schools, more so but it's supposed to be done in social studies... whic…

I agree completely.

I took Ethics as an elective during my C.S. undergrad and I think it's still in the top 3 of the most-formative individual courses of study I've ever undertaken. I'd highly highly recommend people take ethics or philosophy classes, if only to see how even the simplest scenarios can have complex dilemmas.

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