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>I am as certain they're not a CIA plant inside Cisco as I am of anything else in my perceived reality ... Of course they aren't. All I'm saying is if you have

by rl3 10y ago

>I am as certain they're not a CIA plant inside Cisco as I am of anything else in my perceived reality ... Of course they aren't. All I'm saying is if you have a company that has a routine acquisition deal flow from the CIA's venture capital arm, that there's probably healthy working relationships there.

tptacek 10y ago
By that logic, In-Q-Tel is a stroke of genius, because they've also built "healthy working relationships" with Network Appliance, IBM, Amazon, EMC, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Google, and Nokia. I think you just can't read anything into In-Q-Tel involvement with a company.
- rl3 10y ago
  >By that logic, In-Q-Tel is a stroke of genius, because they've also built "healthy working relationships" with Network Appliance, IBM, Amazon, EMC, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Google, and Nokia. Perhaps the plan with In-Q-Tel was partly to achieve pervasive private sector influence, and it was somewhat successful. While I appreciate the conceited scare quotes there, I'm not saying that working relationships directly translate to backdoors, just that it translates to influence, and that can indirectly lead to bad things over time. >I think you just can't read anything into In-Q-Tel involvement with a company. As a thought experiment, say Open Whisper Systems took money from In-Q-Tel, or even acqui-hired a team from one of their portfolio companies. Right or wrong, people would very much read into it, and probably lose their minds in short order. Signal's user base would plummet overnight.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Because people would write comments like the one you did upthread, deceptively implying they had an understanding of what In-Q-Tel was that they could reason from as if a first principle. That's the problem. You don't need In-Q-Tel to cause the kind of damage you're talking about; you have many other vectors for this kind of deception. I'm not sticking up for In-Q-Tel. I wouldn't take money from IQT. But it is, for the most part, just what it says it is: an investment firm that funds things that the CIA believes will be helpful to its mission, which includes virtually all network security, database, networking, and RF technology.
    - rl3 10y ago
      >Because people would write comments like the one you did upthread, deceptively implying ... Wasn't my intention for that comment to be deceptive in its implication. After seeing how some of the replies were going, I did try to amend it in a more balanced fashion—then ended up having to move that further down the thread due to the edit window expiring. Funny enough the original comment's karma continued to skyrocket while the more measured words teetered on the brink of downvote for some time. It was surprising, since usually HN is pretty good at punishing anything that even has the slightest perception of hyperbole. That said, I think we can agree that the 2-hour edit window represents a grave threat to civil discourse, freedom of expression, also freedom itself, probably national security, and nothing less than the future of Hacker News. It must be extended. :)

by rl3 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

By that logic, In-Q-Tel is a stroke of genius, because they've also built "healthy working relationships" with Network Appliance, IBM, Amazon, EMC, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Google, and Nokia. I think you just can't read anything into In-Q-Tel involvement with a company.

rl3 10y ago
>By that logic, In-Q-Tel is a stroke of genius, because they've also built "healthy working relationships" with Network Appliance, IBM, Amazon, EMC, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Google, and Nokia. Perhaps the plan with In-Q-Tel was partly to achieve pervasive private sector influence, and it was somewhat successful. While I appreciate the conceited scare quotes there, I'm not saying that working relationships directly translate to backdoors, just that it translates to influence, and that can indirectly lead to bad things over time. >I think you just can't read anything into In-Q-Tel involvement with a company. As a thought experiment, say Open Whisper Systems took money from In-Q-Tel, or even acqui-hired a team from one of their portfolio companies. Right or wrong, people would very much read into it, and probably lose their minds in short order. Signal's user base would plummet overnight.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Because people would write comments like the one you did upthread, deceptively implying they had an understanding of what In-Q-Tel was that they could reason from as if a first principle. That's the problem. You don't need In-Q-Tel to cause the kind of damage you're talking about; you have many other vectors for this kind of deception. I'm not sticking up for In-Q-Tel. I wouldn't take money from IQT. But it is, for the most part, just what it says it is: an investment firm that funds things that the CIA believes will be helpful to its mission, which includes virtually all network security, database, networking, and RF technology.
  - rl3 10y ago
    >Because people would write comments like the one you did upthread, deceptively implying ... Wasn't my intention for that comment to be deceptive in its implication. After seeing how some of the replies were going, I did try to amend it in a more balanced fashion—then ended up having to move that further down the thread due to the edit window expiring. Funny enough the original comment's karma continued to skyrocket while the more measured words teetered on the brink of downvote for some time. It was surprising, since usually HN is pretty good at punishing anything that even has the slightest perception of hyperbole. That said, I think we can agree that the 2-hour edit window represents a grave threat to civil discourse, freedom of expression, also freedom itself, probably national security, and nothing less than the future of Hacker News. It must be extended. :)