11 ms·

But that is so revealing of the mindset. * We can have strong encryption just for the good guys * We can have master keys that only approved staff will use

But that is so revealing of the mindset. * We can have strong encryption just for the good guys * We can have master keys that only approved staff will use * We can block all the bad things on the internet and it'll be like they don't exist * If we have a back door into an encrypted device, only the good guys will use it It's like no politician ever read about crime. Staff can't be blackmailed or bribed. No one working for the govt ever used resources for their own ends. No govt agency ever tried to blackmail an inconvenient public figure. Because a terrorist once made a terrible attempt at a bomb in his trainers, quick, we'd better make millions of people remove their shoes at airports. Clearly no terrorist has the wit to try a different approach. The list is so damn long, yet people who really should know better get it wrong with depressing regularity. Are most politicians really that stupid? What are their advisers advising FFS?

bowlofstew 11y ago
Yes, the good guys will use it in many ways that were never intended.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden-at-nsa-sexually-explicit-photos-often-shared.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden...
lostgame 11y ago
Change it up: • We can have guns just for the good guys • We can have guns that only approved staff will use • We can block all the bad people from having guns and it'll be like guns don't exist! • If we have guns, only the good guys will use them. Seems like any dangerous technology can follow this mindset. :P
- qb45 11y ago
  If only good guys used guns, nobody would need them. It actually is "we know bad guys already have guns, so better if good guys have them too". Same with crypto, btw.
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    That's not completely true. If bad guys didn't have guns, we'd still want good guys to have them. I don't want police having to take on a guy with knives and a baseball bat, themselves only armed with knives and a baseball bat.
    - ameister14 11y ago
      I do. The police shouldn't have access to weaponry that citizens cannot obtain except in very specialized circumstances, like say a particular unit in a city like Detroit or Chicago.
    - crottypeter 11y ago
      Why not? It works. Cops without guns: https://youtu.be/cX5CPx4RKWw https://youtu.be/cX5CPx4RKWw Cop with gun: https://youtu.be/RdoeBXt06Bc https://youtu.be/RdoeBXt06Bc
      - merpnderp 11y ago
        Those cops were very brave, but you're going to be hard pressed to find even a tiny minority of Americans willing to put cop lives in that kind of danger.
        jdietrich 11y ago
        The British approach is safer for both officers and the public. By emphasising containment and de-escalation, British officers avoid the kind of chaotic and unpredictable confrontations that lead to fatalities. Only one British police officer was killed in the line of duty last year - PC David Phillips, who was run over during a pursuit. In the same year, eight American officers were killed by vehicular assault, 36 were fatally shot, three died after being assaulted and two died of accidental gunshot wounds. In 2014, no British police officer was killed on duty. Even accounting for the difference in population and the prevalence of firearms, there is a substantial disparity. Britain does have armed criminals, but our police are not routinely armed. There were riots across Britain in 2011, precipitated in large part by the fatal shooting by police of Mark Duggan. Only one other person was shot by the police in 2011. In the same year, the FBI estimated that 400 Americans were killed by police officers, but no official count exists. There is considerable interest amongst US police forces in learning from the British approach, as shown in this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pr23xUKZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pr23xUKZc
AJ007 11y ago
Government agencies & the military have to use computers. Those devices either will be secure or they won't be. How does the CIA, NSA, and DoD feel about that?
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
It's a huge lack of systems thinking. It's like they believe that the universe somehow cares about what they were trying to accomplish. * If we reward schools for increasing student test scores, then we'll have better schools. * If we fund a "war on drugs", we'll reduce the damage drugs do. * If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. This belief - that "having a goal and doing something that pattern-matches to helping" works - is incredibly dangerous in policy-makers. It's also incredibly difficult to fix, since the incentives for politicians are to make rationalizations that are convincing to voters, and that kind of reasoning is much easier to convey.
- duaneb 11y ago
  > If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. To be fair, this does in fact help many people afford housing. It just doesn't fix the endemic issue.
  - sslayer 11y ago
    You support his point. It is a systemic issue, political patches do not work.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      I don't really see many people claiming that rent control is going to solve rent for everyone. Seems like a blatant straw-man fallacy.
  - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
    These are political favors to local interest groups. It actively hurts the ability to find housing for everyone not blessed by the powers that be. Dense housing is affordable housing. When there's an empty apartment that you're moving into, where do you think the old resident moved to? There's only a few options - a new place got built that they moved into, the old resident died, the old resident moved out of the housing area, or the recursive option that cashes out into one of the previous ones. If you stop building units ("affordable housing" mandates) or arbitrarily keep low-income residents from making housing bids (rent-control), the only bids for housing are going to be from tech workers and market-rate housing gets ridiculous. Fundamentally, the problem is that there's X people who want to live in the area, and only Y housing units. The price is going to go up until the market clears. Handing out political favors so that the people who vote for you don't feel this reality isn't solving the problem: only building more housing will.
smsm42 11y ago
They are not stupid. They are just driven by wrong set on incentives. One which emphasizes short-term local success - i.e., being able to see the phone of the terrorist and maybe find something there and get a good press release and promotion, and maybe find some other terrorist (that rarely happens but has to be at least part of the law enforcement motivation) or drug seller (that happens much more often and is really what it all is about). Long-term problems do not figure much in that calculation - if the system gets corrupt and ruins security, it's not their fault, they didn't do it, they just did their job. And note that with drug war going on, which law enforcement is losing miserably, and terrorist threat to which they don't really have a good answer (not their fault here, nobody does, at least not in the enforcement realm) they may not exactly feel they have the luxury of long-term planning. Now add mass-media to that which provides extremely sensationalistic short-term reporting with almost no long-term focus - and you get perfect collection of incentives driving this behavior.
rlidwka 11y ago
That's what being politician means. This job isn't about solving problems, it's about making an appearance that you solve them. Suppose a terrorist did something with his shoe that he wasn't supposed to. Here is how it should be solved: "Based on our research, the probability of dying because of the terrorist attack is XXX, which we can reduce by YYY using blah-blah, therefore we should allocate ZZZ funds in that area." Would you vote for this guy? Well, most people won't even understand what he is talking about. So here is what happens in practice: "Okay, I don't know how to decrease national debt or prevent poverty, so let's find something else. Oh hey, terrorism! I know how to solve it. Forbid shoes at the airport. Sounds simple enough. So we can say 'we successfully fight terrorism'. And just in case people don't care enough, make this issue the most important one and add 'hey, think of the children' into the mix." So the general population becomes scared of terrorism 'cause guys running for office told them they should be. It's not politicians who are stupid, it's people who vote for them.
visarga 11y ago
> Are most politicians really that stupid? They aren't stupid, they just don't share your interests.
dave2000 11y ago
"It's like no politician ever read about crime. Staff can't be blackmailed or bribed. " More likely they know their audience (most voters) don't know about crime, terrorism and encryption to know how bad the plans are.
mindslight 11y ago
The system is concerned with legibility to itself first, more than reducing crime. Without legibility, there is no avenue to even be effective through! Specific instances of staff being blackmailed or bribed are simply addressed through the traditional channels of power, and thus creation of their possibility is not a problem.
euxneks 11y ago
It's basically the "us vs. them" attitude - i.e. dehumanizing the "enemy". As soon as everyone realizes that it's just "humans vs. humans" we'll get more intelligent discourse, and, perhaps, some sort of actual progress.

bowlofstew 11y ago

Yes, the good guys will use it in many ways that were never intended.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden-at-nsa-sexually-explicit-photos-often-shared.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden...

lostgame 11y ago

Change it up: • We can have guns just for the good guys • We can have guns that only approved staff will use • We can block all the bad people from having guns and it'll be like guns don't exist! • If we have guns, only the good guys will use them. Seems like any dangerous technology can follow this mindset. :P

qb45 11y ago
If only good guys used guns, nobody would need them. It actually is "we know bad guys already have guns, so better if good guys have them too". Same with crypto, btw.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  That's not completely true. If bad guys didn't have guns, we'd still want good guys to have them. I don't want police having to take on a guy with knives and a baseball bat, themselves only armed with knives and a baseball bat.
  - ameister14 11y ago
    I do. The police shouldn't have access to weaponry that citizens cannot obtain except in very specialized circumstances, like say a particular unit in a city like Detroit or Chicago.
  - crottypeter 11y ago
    Why not? It works. Cops without guns: https://youtu.be/cX5CPx4RKWw https://youtu.be/cX5CPx4RKWw Cop with gun: https://youtu.be/RdoeBXt06Bc https://youtu.be/RdoeBXt06Bc
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      Those cops were very brave, but you're going to be hard pressed to find even a tiny minority of Americans willing to put cop lives in that kind of danger.
      - jdietrich 11y ago
        The British approach is safer for both officers and the public. By emphasising containment and de-escalation, British officers avoid the kind of chaotic and unpredictable confrontations that lead to fatalities. Only one British police officer was killed in the line of duty last year - PC David Phillips, who was run over during a pursuit. In the same year, eight American officers were killed by vehicular assault, 36 were fatally shot, three died after being assaulted and two died of accidental gunshot wounds. In 2014, no British police officer was killed on duty. Even accounting for the difference in population and the prevalence of firearms, there is a substantial disparity. Britain does have armed criminals, but our police are not routinely armed. There were riots across Britain in 2011, precipitated in large part by the fatal shooting by police of Mark Duggan. Only one other person was shot by the police in 2011. In the same year, the FBI estimated that 400 Americans were killed by police officers, but no official count exists. There is considerable interest amongst US police forces in learning from the British approach, as shown in this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pr23xUKZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pr23xUKZc

AJ007 11y ago

Government agencies & the military have to use computers. Those devices either will be secure or they won't be. How does the CIA, NSA, and DoD feel about that?

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

It's a huge lack of systems thinking. It's like they believe that the universe somehow cares about what they were trying to accomplish. * If we reward schools for increasing student test scores, then we'll have better schools. * If we fund a "war on drugs", we'll reduce the damage drugs do. * If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. This belief - that "having a goal and doing something that pattern-matches to helping" works - is incredibly dangerous in policy-makers. It's also incredibly difficult to fix, since the incentives for politicians are to make rationalizations that are convincing to voters, and that kind of reasoning is much easier to convey.

duaneb 11y ago
> If we enact rent controls and mandate the construction of below-market rate housing units, it'll help people afford housing. To be fair, this does in fact help many people afford housing. It just doesn't fix the endemic issue.
- sslayer 11y ago
  You support his point. It is a systemic issue, political patches do not work.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    I don't really see many people claiming that rent control is going to solve rent for everyone. Seems like a blatant straw-man fallacy.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  These are political favors to local interest groups. It actively hurts the ability to find housing for everyone not blessed by the powers that be. Dense housing is affordable housing. When there's an empty apartment that you're moving into, where do you think the old resident moved to? There's only a few options - a new place got built that they moved into, the old resident died, the old resident moved out of the housing area, or the recursive option that cashes out into one of the previous ones. If you stop building units ("affordable housing" mandates) or arbitrarily keep low-income residents from making housing bids (rent-control), the only bids for housing are going to be from tech workers and market-rate housing gets ridiculous. Fundamentally, the problem is that there's X people who want to live in the area, and only Y housing units. The price is going to go up until the market clears. Handing out political favors so that the people who vote for you don't feel this reality isn't solving the problem: only building more housing will.

smsm42 11y ago

They are not stupid. They are just driven by wrong set on incentives. One which emphasizes short-term local success - i.e., being able to see the phone of the terrorist and maybe find something there and get a good press release and promotion, and maybe find some other terrorist (that rarely happens but has to be at least part of the law enforcement motivation) or drug seller (that happens much more often and is really what it all is about). Long-term problems do not figure much in that calculation - if the system gets corrupt and ruins security, it's not their fault, they didn't do it, they just did their job. And note that with drug war going on, which law enforcement is losing miserably, and terrorist threat to which they don't really have a good answer (not their fault here, nobody does, at least not in the enforcement realm) they may not exactly feel they have the luxury of long-term planning. Now add mass-media to that which provides extremely sensationalistic short-term reporting with almost no long-term focus - and you get perfect collection of incentives driving this behavior.

rlidwka 11y ago

That's what being politician means. This job isn't about solving problems, it's about making an appearance that you solve them. Suppose a terrorist did something with his shoe that he wasn't supposed to. Here is how it should be solved: "Based on our research, the probability of dying because of the terrorist attack is XXX, which we can reduce by YYY using blah-blah, therefore we should allocate ZZZ funds in that area." Would you vote for this guy? Well, most people won't even understand what he is talking about. So here is what happens in practice: "Okay, I don't know how to decrease national debt or prevent poverty, so let's find something else. Oh hey, terrorism! I know how to solve it. Forbid shoes at the airport. Sounds simple enough. So we can say 'we successfully fight terrorism'. And just in case people don't care enough, make this issue the most important one and add 'hey, think of the children' into the mix." So the general population becomes scared of terrorism 'cause guys running for office told them they should be. It's not politicians who are stupid, it's people who vote for them.

visarga 11y ago

> Are most politicians really that stupid? They aren't stupid, they just don't share your interests.

dave2000 11y ago

"It's like no politician ever read about crime. Staff can't be blackmailed or bribed. " More likely they know their audience (most voters) don't know about crime, terrorism and encryption to know how bad the plans are.

mindslight 11y ago

The system is concerned with legibility to itself first, more than reducing crime. Without legibility, there is no avenue to even be effective through! Specific instances of staff being blackmailed or bribed are simply addressed through the traditional channels of power, and thus creation of their possibility is not a problem.

euxneks 11y ago

It's basically the "us vs. them" attitude - i.e. dehumanizing the "enemy". As soon as everyone realizes that it's just "humans vs. humans" we'll get more intelligent discourse, and, perhaps, some sort of actual progress.