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I don't agree with Obama, but the comment you've written is (I'm sorry to say) absolutely terrible. First, you've completely mischaracterized Obama's position.

• deleted 11y ago
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• andy_ppp 11y ago
  I love how you treat Putin one way and Obama another... So the argument follows if you want perfect information; make everyone at birth wear an exploding neck tag with GPS and a cell phone that'll take your head clean off if you are ever thought of as a terrorist by the United States. No more war, no more collateral damage and yes, no more Edward Snowdon or Julian Assange. If what we are after is perfect stability and no doors government can't unlock, why not aim to tag everyone up with a government controlled device, rather than doing it via mobile phones.
  • ggreer 11y ago
    I wrote almost 400 words dispelling misrepresentations of Obama and bemoaning the extent to which HN users misrepresent opposing views... and your response is to misrepresent a thought experiment as if I was proposing some sort of mustache-twirling movie villain plan. (sigh) I'm not sure how I can make my point any better than you just did.
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    • andy_ppp 11y ago
      I was also providing a thought experiment and a possible end game solution so that drone strikes would be unnecessary. Maybe think about the collateral murder tape and get back to me as to that thought experiment, or what about this one: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-... 41 people murdered without trial or war and 1147 people killed who weren't targets and tens of thousands who now hate the United States, perpetuating a never ending cycle of violence. So yeah, people do drive by and say stuff to make opposing points on discussion forums, the point was to ridicule your argument of "If Obama didn't have to murder loads of people he wouldn't". Maybe he thinks there is no alternative to 2800%+ collateral damage, do you?
      • dhimes 11y ago
        You missed the point. Obama thinks that taking our privacy away will help him target the bad guys better. So the argument is, "How many lives is your 'privacy' worth? Would you give some up to spare the 2800% collateral damage?" Snark aside, this is, actually, the rational conversation that America and the world need to have. Like many difficult problems, it's sometimes helpful to start with a simpler version of the problem. So let's simplify it a bit to start. Let's assume for a moment that backdoors will lead to better capture ratios for terrorists- that is, a higher probability of stopping real terrorist attacks. Even if it's only the stupid copy-cat cell guys, let's assume for whatever reason that giving this access to law enforcement buys us X innocent, civilian saved lives per year, by perhaps some combination of thwarting attacks and better intel on targets. What is X such that privacy invasion is acceptable? This, for me, is a super-hard question.
• sbov 11y ago
  Of course he cares about the lives of children in those countries. At the same time, to call them just accidents, as us laymen use the term, is naive. Do you really think the US government went into these countries thinking they wouldn't kill any civilians? It is not an "oops, I didn't know I would kill civilians." It's an "oops, I didn't mean to kill civilians, but I knew I would. But, we decided it would be worth it."
  • afarrell 11y ago
    taking actions that have some risk of killing or greviously harming others is not uncommon or monstrous. Well, at least if it is, then we should be much harsher to folks who drive cars.
• snarfy 11y ago
  Have 'plotting terrorists' actually committed any crimes? The child porn argument is even more nefarious - why is one kind of .jpg on your hard drive acceptable and the other criminal? Sure the creation of those images is criminal, but the images themselves are just data. Data should not be criminal.
  • criddell 11y ago
    > the images themselves are just data Sure, and touching a child inappropriately is really just two electron clouds interacting. Van der Waals forces should not be illegal, right?
    • vixen99 11y ago
      The right response is 'Sure.' (period). The analogy is a straw man. Whoever said it is 'just two ...etc.,? If you want to talk about intent then do it but you're in muddy water.
  • paulryanrogers 11y ago
    Viewing such images risks increasing the production of more of them. Even if that risk is small or unproven the majority doesn't want to gamble.
    • threatofrain 11y ago
      In the case of child porn, I think the bigger reason why it's such a serious crime is because that population will never have political support, and they're such an easy punching bag. They're the group nobody likes. You say that the consumption of images increases the probability of more production, but I really doubt that's the explanation for why things are why they are. I don't know if there's a market for child porn, but if there isn't, that means that consumption of child porn doesn't provide material support for crime. On the other hand, when we buy goods supported by exploitation of both adults and children, sometimes fatal exploitation, we do provide material support to an economic process with a relation to crime. While I'm okay with entertaining a discussion on my moral responsibilities as a market participant, as well as discussion about how global economy ought to work, I wouldn't be okay with criminal culpability because I bought cheap goods or electronics.
• GreaterFool 11y ago
  Obama thinks the harms of those crimes outweigh the privacy protections. I think this is a silly argument. Forcing backdoors into people's phones will not stop any individual determined to maintain secrecy from using encryption. It will however allow government to spy on all individuals. Even with a dumbphone one could use something like: https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/solitaire https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/solitaire How is the backdoor law going to help? Or is the government going to ban any and all encryption methods?
  • shasta 11y ago
    At the moment, the concern with encryption seems to be encrypted communication rather than encryption as a means of securing personal data. Eventually, though, as technology advances allow smaller groups of people to inflict larger amounts of damage with fewer specialized resources, how do you imagine that society could be kept secure without surveillance (or something even more invasive)? It seems clear to me that the side arguing for unlimited encryption in communications will ultimately be on the wrong side of the issue, even if backdooring the iPhone isn't a good idea.
    • ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
      So you're advocating for an omnipresent Police State on the statistically insignificant threat of Domestic Terrorism? Which you presuppose will only get worse, despite the fact that Domestic Terrorism has declined from thousands of Bombings in the US in the 60's and 70's to the rare one off instances of the new millennium. What is it you suppose causes terrorism? Is it not the expected retaliation by a citizenry on a government gone too far? Perhaps an unintended consequence of increasing government surveillance as you suggest is more acts of terrorism not less.
      • shasta 11y ago
        Look, I value my privacy too and I don't want to live in a police state, either. I don't think giving additional power over to our government at its current levels of incompetence and corruption is a good idea. But I think you (and I recognize that many/most of the people around here think the way you do) aren't being realistic about the threat of terrorism. Even if rates of terrorism are declining, I suspect they aren't going to be declining as quickly as the potential damage of terrorist attacks increases. Regarding your question of the causes of terrorism, do you really believe that all terrorism is caused by government oppression or injustice? I doubt it. Even if it's the majority, there's always going to be plenty of unhappy people among the 7 billion on the planet. So I don't see you as having answered my challenge of imagining a stable secure society in a world where small groups can cause enormous damage. And I doubt that prevailing opinion will survive the first major terrorist attack that occurs. Note for your statistics: I'd count the number of major terrorist attacks to date as zero. Fortunately, I also disagree with your assumption that a system of mass surveillance will necessarily result in a "police state" or at least the dystopian society that the term is intended to conjure.
• vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  If theirs is a drive-by misrepresentation, yours is a sycophancy and an adulation. The argument from bad people is a false one, largely because bad people are people and hence do everything that people in general do. As a result, it can be applied to anything. If it's a universally valid point for the prohibition of anything, then it is cognitively meaningless. Nor is it all absurd to believe that a ruler is ambivalent over their subjects. Why would such a thing be absurd? The state and political power are not instrumentalist concepts. We must apply behavioral symmetry to all power elites. (It's also amusing to see "incomplete information" brought up again. That's the same pseudohistory used to justify Iraq in retrospect.)
• Alex3917 11y ago
  > I don't agree with that, but it's not an unreasonable view to hold. Given that Obama chose not to conduct an independent investigation into 9/11 or prosecute the folks involved, it's actually a pretty unreasonable opinion to hold.
  • afarrell 11y ago
    > Or prosecute the folks involved Or it would mean that Obama largely believed the 9-11 comission report. Who do you have in mind that he should have directed the AG to prosecute?
    • Alex3917 11y ago
      > Or it would mean that Obama largely believed the 9-11 comission report. Given that the authors of the 9/11 commission report have pointed out numerous serious errors and omissions, that seems highly unlikely.
• chimeracoder 11y ago
  > The horrific stories you hear about are accidents, not deliberate. Due to incomplete information, poor decision-making, or just plain bad luck, soldiers sometimes kill innocents. Not true. Just one example: in 2011, Obama authorized the assassination of an American man and his 16-year-old (American) son[0] by separate drone strikes. The father's assassination was completely deliberate. The son was killed two weeks later, when he went looking for his father. Both the father and the boy were American citizens. Neither was even in a country with which the US is at war (although that wouldn't have been sufficient reason to order the extra-judicial assassinations of these US citizens them even if they were)[1]. Rather than "everyone agreeing this was a tragedy", it was pretty quickly buried in the news. Most news outlets actually refused to even acknowledge that they were American (using the euphemistic epithet "US-born", as if implying that either one renounced his citizenship). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki [1] Before anybody takes issue with the characterization of this man and boy as US citizens, arguing that Constitutional rights [should|do] apply to everyone: I certainly agree that the US should not be ordering extra-judicial assassinations of any civilian, American or not. But it's notable in this case, because it highlights the absurdity of the policy. If we can't expect US citizens to be protected against extra-judicial assassination by their own country's government, then what rights can they expect?
  • cies 11y ago
    Thanks for bringing this up. The al-Awlaki case is a clear testimony of what has become of the "benevolent" super-power.
  • navait 11y ago
    Officials in your article say they didn't know the son was there, and were targeting Ibrahim al-Banna. Sounds like an accident to me. And it sure as hell wasn't buried in the news. It was a controversial event, on the front page of the NYT, and the Administration was forced to clarify specific policies on who they would target with drone strikes.
• rpgmaker 11y ago
  > To make my point absolutely clear: In the case of drone strikes, children die because intel isn't always accurate and weapons aren't perfectly discriminating. Despite what you're trying to imply, if Obama could wage war with perfect intel and weaponry, he wouldn't harm a single innocent person. Not true at all, this is one of the many reasons why children, women and many innocents die because of drone strikes: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-reveal-uncomfortable-truth-us-is-often-unsure-about-who-will-die.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-r... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/warren-weinstein-drones/391655/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/war... For all intents and purposes "Obama" and the people who serve under him don't care about killing children or innocent people in general. They don't even know who they are actually killing most of the time. It's not because technology is imperfect.
• hellbanner 11y ago
  Re: the "accidents": The difference here is that the military is never convicted for manslaughter.
• nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Responded to your statement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273766
• f3llowtraveler 11y ago
  First, law enforcement catches and successfully prosecutes pedophiles all the time. It's called "good old fashioned police work" and it doesn't require violating our 1st, 4th, and 13th amendment rights. Second, how on earth is Obama going to force me to stop using crypto, except to threaten me with violence for using it? Perhaps the government will start to license programmers, and prosecute those caught writing software without a license? (Don't laugh -- they already license hairdressers, marriages, and dogs.)
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