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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

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 useful information. To law enforcement, the rights of a suspect are a barrier to many convictions. How did we get to this point? Nobody would reasonably argue that extreme surveillance measures, patriot act, etc., is necessary to stop the vast majority of crimes from occurring, so why is it so easy for seemingly serious/intelligent people to think this nonsense is reasonable? 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. I am surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore after it's become so clear that there is no large existential threat (merely the occasional zealot who acts out due to his/her own mental health issues). And in spite of a historically unprecedented global surveillance system there have been no attacks thwarted. Comey is a symptom of the kind of cowardly, authority-respecting society we've become. I look forward to the day when our FBI director is not someone whose gaffes and judgment calls we read about in the newspaper on a regular basis.

Spooky23 9y ago
Comey is a bureaucrat looking for more power to do his job. He's the runny nose. The flu is Feinstein. From the ridiculous controls that treat cold medicine like contraband, the Patriot act, and bullshit like this, the Senator is a wellspring of bad law and disrespect for the American people. Why do Californians keep electing this person?
- jliptzin 9y ago
  Good question. Maybe because she reminds people of their grandmas?
- rconti 9y ago
  I'm a Californian, and I don't think I've ever voted for her, but I can't say so for sure to be honest. However, a senior politician of marginal quality can be better for your state than a junior politician of superior quality. In theory they are able to score you all kinds of handouts and preferential treatment where the junior politician would just get ignored. I don't know if that's the case for Feinstein, but my point is there's some utility there from the perspective of a Californian that does not exist for (say) a Utahn given the option to vote in CA elections.
  - deleted 9y ago
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- dekhn 9y ago
  Because the longer a senator is in power, the more power they get (committee positions), and she's ostensibly a democrat.
ponyfleisch 9y ago
> Nobody would reasonably argue that extreme surveillance measures, patriot act, etc., is necessary to stop the vast majority of crimes from occurring, so why is it so easy for seemingly serious/intelligent people to think this nonsense is reasonable? This depends on what kind of crime you talk about. And is "the vast majority of crimes" actually prevented from occurring? How do you get numbers for this? Calling people who don't agree with you stupid is not going to advance your cause. At all. > I am surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore after it's become so clear that there is no large existential threat (merely the occasional zealot who acts out due to his/her own mental health issues). Two points: 1. The occasional zealot is all it takes to make people feel unsafe, affect their behaviour towards other people and just generally ruin a lot of peoples days. 2. Blaming all terrorist attacks on mental issues alone without taking into account viral ideologies is dishonest. edit: i forgot this: > And in spite of a historically unprecedented global surveillance system there have been no attacks thwarted. Provably wrong.
- ionised 9y ago
  > Provably wrong. So prove it.
twoodfin 9y ago
Doesn't anyone remember why President Obama appointed a Republican FBI Director in the first place? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05...
- throwaway13337 9y ago
  That was a very interesting read. The gist of it is that Comey went to great lengths to make sure warrantless wiretapping wouldn't be considered legal. And when he failed to do so, he resigned. What happened to him since then?
  - mercer 9y ago
    It would be ironic if at some point he was wiretapped and blackmailed into toeing the party line (where 'the party line' is 'they', and 'them', clearly). On a more serious note though: it strikes me that in our time of 'total information awareness' the ability to blackmail people in powerful positions is a significant flaw in our system, much more so compared to the past. Has any research been or anything worthwhile been written about this (potential) problem? I mean, we know people have been blackmailed or that attempts have been made, so the question is how common this actually is. Despite my internal knee-jerk 'this sounds tinfoil-hatty', I can't think of anything keeping intelligence agencies from wielding massive hidden power in this way. Or would it just have come to light much more often if that were the case?
  - grandalf 9y ago
    I think he came to the belief that there was legal justification for conducting mass surveillance in secret... in other words that the AG didn't need to sign off on it for it to be an appropriate tool. If the AG had signed for it, then we'd have probably seen the supreme court weigh in on it. But since he didn't, the program continued behind closed doors and grew massively. I believe now there is a rolling 60 day archive of nearly all worldwide communications and metadata (and longer rolling archives for select subsets). It's incredibly impressive tech but quite scary.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. In this case, it might be better to assume malice rather than incompetence. In the 1950's it was s/terrorist/communist/, but it was a remarkably effective political tool. We might be in the same situation. But this time, our fates are all linked. Once shipping backdoors becomes mainstream, it might be impossible to go back. We should try to think of some concrete steps to resist this. It feels like we have to try, since there's so much at stake. Could we reverse engineer the political forces at play? We could try to think of the most effective thing we could do, and then focus on that.
- gumby 9y ago
  > Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. > In this case, it might be better to assume malice rather than incompetence. I really want to consider you paranoid, but sadly I strongly agree. This is hardly the first time engineered paranoia has gripped the country, but living through it is horrible. I was a kid during the mid-to-late Cold War (post "duck and cover") and somehow I was never able to take it seriously. Even when I took classes on strategic deterrence and the like in college I considered them light entertainment I was paying for to give me a break from the serious classes. Now we have the emperor's new suicide vest.
  - miles 9y ago
    This is hardly the first time engineered paranoia has gripped the country ... I was a kid during the mid-to-late Cold War (post "duck and cover") and somehow I was never able to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the threat was (and still very much is) real: Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-stopped-nuclear-war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili... Not that paranoia is a particularly useful response, but it did not require much engineering.
dntrkv 9y ago
The article specifically states that he doesn't want a backdoor: “We’ve had very good open and productive conversations with the private sector over the last 18 months about this issue, because everybody realizes we care about the same things. We all love privacy, we all care about public safety and none of us want backdoors — we don’t want access to devices built in in some way. What we want to work with the manufacturers on is to figure out how can we accommodate both interests in a sensible way”
- bogositosius 9y ago
  He says he doesn't want a backdoor and then spends all his time asking for one.
  - Corrado 9y ago
    I thought it was interesting that he talked about breaking into other people's devices while specifying how they would harden their own systems. "We don't want you looking at our stuff, but your stuff is fair game."
  - AsyncAwait 9y ago
    He is playing the word game, what a technical person might call a "backdoor" he will call a "front-door" or something else, so there's technically not a "backdoor" and he technically didn't lie, even if he wants what many of us geeks would indeed call a "backdoor". It's sort of how the NSA redefines the dictionary meaning of common sense words to mean something else, (for example something like: "surveillance" means breaking into someone's home to plant a bug in there, so technically almost no one is under that definition of "surveillance", even if capturing our emails, hacking webcams etc. would be considered surveillance as well, but since no one broke in to plant a physical bug, that's not "surveillance" - it's just a words game).
    - grandalf 9y ago
      > He is playing the word game That's the worst thing about Comey. He is totally comfortable and unabashed about going in front of the American people and playing a word game.
1457389 9y ago
>He'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in useful information. To law enforcement, the rights of a suspect are a barrier to many convictions. Not Comey. In this committee session he bluntly said torture is not effective and that his personal standard for what constitutes torture is more stringent than that in the statutes.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  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.
  - 1457389 9y ago
    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?
    - deleted 9y ago
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    - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
      The problem here is, what if studies showed torture really did work? Would he have the same, up front moral position? I think that's what parent was trying to allude to. Not whether he is morally opposed to it right now but if he's more of a "if it works I'll use it no matter what" type of person. 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.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Sure, but if the populace and the political climate demanded torture from the FBI and he refused, he would be fired and replaced with someone not so principled in their opposition.
throwaway847345 9y ago
> 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. Wiretapping and search warrants are long standing and well support ways for law enforcement to investigate among other things organized crime. Just because you know have encryption doesn't mean that has changed. Similar to how the NSA didn't suddenly stop doing signal intelligence just because they allegedly "lost the crypto wars". > Nobody would reasonably argue that extreme surveillance measures, patriot act, etc., is necessary to stop the vast majority of crimes from occurring, so why is it so easy for seemingly serious/intelligent people to think this nonsense is reasonable? It's a presumably a "better safe than sorry" and "nobody got fired for choosing more surveillance" kind of a thing. > 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. Terrorism is just the ultimate argument of people in the establishment. Just like encryption enthusiast might have some story about how they are helping dissidents, but are mostly encrypting their warez and mundane e-mails.
- grandalf 9y ago
  > Wiretapping and search warrants... True, but there is a big difference between presenting evidence to a judge to obtain a search warrant and subsequently manually wiretapping a phone line or two and the sort of massive-scale surveillance/capture we have today. It's like the difference between a doctor examining an awake patient who has complained about a specific symptom... vs to a doctor sneaking into the bedroom of thousands of sleeping non-patients and performing a secret physical exam on their genitals just in case anything about their genitals seems alarming. The crime (building the illegal infrastructure to do that surveillance) is now justified after the fact by a fairly quaint comparison to traditional police work. As much as I'd like to, I don't believe that surveillance is about police work. It's about political intimidation which is identical to the kind of political intimidation that seems obvious when talking about other police states from history. The effects of intimidation are not obvious as everyone expects them to be. I'll make an analogy with the North Korean regime to illustrate my point. How is it possible that the leader of N. Korea is able to make statements to the public that are obviously absurd. Are people in N. Korea less rational than elsewhere? Less intelligent? No, but over time the range of ideas considered acceptable has adapted to include some of the most ludicrous (and contradicted by fact) claims imaginable. How does this happen? I think it happens gradually. How likely are we to loudly criticize our government when we know all our devices contain a hot mic and all the audio might be getting recorded? Maybe we still offer a criticism but we couch it a bit or we follow it with some praise. Small things like this mean that we all hear less criticism, less scrutiny, less dissent. All because we are not sure who is listening or who will be reported to authorities for holding a controversial view. Over the course of decades, perfectly intelligent, rational people in N. Korea are easily able to believe some fairly outlandish claims simply because of a few decades of secret police presence and fear of being reported. What does this have to do with the US? By definition, terrorism is a political crime. It causes intimidation and fear. It is designed to be asymmetrical and sporadic, and is impossible to stop. The only way to fight it is with extreme social control... a more compliant society where holders of nonstandard beliefs are more easily identified. If the surveillance data had not been used to fight non-terrorism crimes, or if the systems were designed with a cryptographically provable audit trail, I'd consider the possibility that this was just a more modern way of doing law enforcement. But sadly I think all of the evidence points in the other direction.
kristopolous 9y ago
> I am surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore after it's become so clear that there is no large existential threat It was always just a ruse to snatch power. Parading a potential existential threat to consolidate authority goes back to antiquity and is a common theme in historical narratives, fiction, allegorical literature, popular political writings of the founding fathers... It's like the political version of a 419 scam. I'm continually dumbfounded that people fall for these things. In the modern era, there's accessible easy-to-read references at our finger-tips to learn about all the classic shams that are constructed to manipulate and seize power, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's really something.
bingomad123 9y ago
> Comey is a symptom of the kind of cowardly, authority-respecting society we've become. I am an Indian citizen living in USA and I think American society must take the blame here and not the politicians. The way society thinks and votes I think only a total narcissist moron can succeed in US administration. The fastest way to rise to top (as we saw in case of Obama and Trump) is to find some target group and blame that group for the failure of other larger society. The larger society is far too quick to raise pitchforks and burn the other group at stake. It is depressing to see that large % of Americans have seen inside of jail. A lot of people labeled as "suspected terrorist" or "sex offenders" are no where close to the common sense definition of those words. But once you have that label rest of the society treats you like utter shit. You cant find a job, state can put any arbitrary restrictions on all your freedoms etc. Unless US society learns to be compassionate and stand up for the rights of even those "deplorable" people purely as matter of principle I don't think there is any scope for optimism. I remember Ron Paul's words "Once you give up some liberty, you are not going to get it back, ever!"
- arwhatever 9y ago
  I'm always requesting constructive criticism like this from foreign-born coworkers, hoping for such valuable outside perspective, but they seldom provide it, no doubt hoping to avoid being offensive. This is a really excellent point that you make.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > The fastest way to rise to top (as we saw in case of Obama and Trump) is to find some target group and blame that group for the failure of other larger society. The larger society is far too quick to raise pitchforks and burn the other group at stake. Yes, we are very much a blame society. It is the Republicans fault. It is the Democrats fault. It is my neighbor's fault. It is my parents' fault. Blame blame.
aub3bhat 9y ago
Oh please whatever your opinion might be saying """ surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore """ Is quickest way to shut down conversation. Especially given horrific events in France, Ohio, Florida. Your argument is not only ridiculous its counter productive to anyone offering a balanced saner approach.
- kabdib 9y ago
  The moment the T-word comes out, you can be sure it's a power grab of some kind. Just like it was "communists" in the 1950s. I don't see any reason to compromise against a fake enemy.
- wand3r 9y ago
  More people die of auto erotic asphyxiation than terrorism annually (~682 people). You're insistence is what is rediculous, as parent pointed out if it was a problem--it isn't; then 0 cases have been publicly thwarted via this technique. I don't buy in that this problem is large enough not that this solution would be acceptable if it was
  - aub3bhat 9y ago
    Arguing deaths due to <x> 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 Terrorism has non stationary distribution and can lead to deadlier events that are orders of magnitude larger. Further why pick a year and not a day? At any given day the number of deaths due to Terrorism are close to zero, except you know on a tragic day a decade ago in september.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      > 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.
KallDrexx 9y ago
> 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 with incentives. The FBI's whole job is to investigate potentially illegal acts and as human beings they are incentivized to do their job as well as they can. When the opportunity comes up to give them more tools to do their job no one in the FBI is going to say "no I want to continue with one hand behind my back". The exact same thing happens at companies. Companies with poorly aligned incentives will quickly see employees act against the will of the company as a whole to make sure they look and come across as best as possible, and any chance a decision comes up to help them do their job better they will fight for it, because not doing so is pretty dumb. Well run companies work around these incentive issues by trying to get everyone aligned with checks and balances. We don't have that in the government because the people who are supposed to be doing the checks and balances (congress) have incentives to follow the FBI's requests because of the political suicide of coming out against solving crimes and defeating terrorists. It can (and will) be used against them at election time and their checks and balances (us as voters) fall for it all the time because we (as a collective whole) are short sighted and scared that something might happen and don't want to be someone who voted for someone soft on security. The only way to realign the incentives back for societal good is to get the common voter to understand the bigger implications of issues and hold our elected officals accountable. Until that happens the incentiives are always going to be aligned for the government to gain power.
- ctchocula 9y ago
  I was with you until "It can (and will) be used against them at election time and their checks and balances (us as voters) fall for it all the time because we (as a collective whole) are short sighted and scared that something might happen and don't want to be someone who voted for someone soft on security." 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-views-can-blind-people-to-the-facts-unless-theres-money-involved/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/17/political-vi...
cm2187 9y ago
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 tolerance to crime.
- C4K3 9y ago
  Terrorism can happen to anybody, that's the logic behind the asymmetry. "Regular" people see gang violence as something that can never happen to them.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    I took gang violence as an example, there are many other kinds of "common violence" that could happen to anyone. The US stats below are for a single year [1] [2]. For reference, cumulative casualties in the US as a result of terrorism for 2001-2014 is 3,412 [3], 416 if you exclude 9/11. Any way you look at it, terrorism is a very minor form of crime in the US and Europe. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2013.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-12 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [3] http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/03/us/terrorism-gun-violence/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/03/us/terrorism-gun-violence/
  - Sacho 9y ago
    You could aggressively curtail civil liberties in order to crack down on drunken driving, which kills more people than 9/11 each year, and can happen to pretty much anybody.
    - C4K3 9y ago
      Good counterpoint, I don't have an answer for you, you'd need somebody who supports curtailing civil liberties in order to combat terrorism to give an answer to that.
Arnt 9y ago
Comey is not just someone with a job at a particular organisation, he's also a servant of the state, and he is a citizen. Any servant of the state has a duty to the constitution. His job description comes second (or later). It's not at all natural that he should argue for hollowing out the constitution, or favour the needs of own organisation over the rest of the state or over the entire society.
- grandalf 9y ago
  > It's not at all natural that he should argue for hollowing out the constitution, or favour the needs of own organisation over the rest of the state or over the entire society. Very true. But I think it's safe to assume that no good, just individual would end up in the role of Director of an intelligence service. Who really aspires to be the leader of a team of secret police? There are some professions that are not strictly speaking unethical, but that tend to attract an ilk of people who are unconcerned with ethics. Used car salespeople, brothel owners, chiefs of secret police forces, people hired to do telephone cold calls to sell shady investments to the elderly, etc. If Comey is viewed in this light, we can see that he is acting predictably. Sadly, many people have the mistaken idea that people who dress in nice suits and wear medals and get appointed by presidents somehow deserve the benefit of the doubt. They do not.

Spooky23 9y ago

Comey is a bureaucrat looking for more power to do his job. He's the runny nose. The flu is Feinstein. From the ridiculous controls that treat cold medicine like contraband, the Patriot act, and bullshit like this, the Senator is a wellspring of bad law and disrespect for the American people. Why do Californians keep electing this person?

jliptzin 9y ago
Good question. Maybe because she reminds people of their grandmas?
rconti 9y ago
I'm a Californian, and I don't think I've ever voted for her, but I can't say so for sure to be honest. However, a senior politician of marginal quality can be better for your state than a junior politician of superior quality. In theory they are able to score you all kinds of handouts and preferential treatment where the junior politician would just get ignored. I don't know if that's the case for Feinstein, but my point is there's some utility there from the perspective of a Californian that does not exist for (say) a Utahn given the option to vote in CA elections.
- deleted 9y ago
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dekhn 9y ago
Because the longer a senator is in power, the more power they get (committee positions), and she's ostensibly a democrat.

ponyfleisch 9y ago

> Nobody would reasonably argue that extreme surveillance measures, patriot act, etc., is necessary to stop the vast majority of crimes from occurring, so why is it so easy for seemingly serious/intelligent people to think this nonsense is reasonable? This depends on what kind of crime you talk about. And is "the vast majority of crimes" actually prevented from occurring? How do you get numbers for this? Calling people who don't agree with you stupid is not going to advance your cause. At all. > I am surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore after it's become so clear that there is no large existential threat (merely the occasional zealot who acts out due to his/her own mental health issues). Two points: 1. The occasional zealot is all it takes to make people feel unsafe, affect their behaviour towards other people and just generally ruin a lot of peoples days. 2. Blaming all terrorist attacks on mental issues alone without taking into account viral ideologies is dishonest. edit: i forgot this: > And in spite of a historically unprecedented global surveillance system there have been no attacks thwarted. Provably wrong.

ionised 9y ago
> Provably wrong. So prove it.

twoodfin 9y ago

Doesn't anyone remember why President Obama appointed a Republican FBI Director in the first place? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05...

throwaway13337 9y ago
That was a very interesting read. The gist of it is that Comey went to great lengths to make sure warrantless wiretapping wouldn't be considered legal. And when he failed to do so, he resigned. What happened to him since then?
- mercer 9y ago
  It would be ironic if at some point he was wiretapped and blackmailed into toeing the party line (where 'the party line' is 'they', and 'them', clearly). On a more serious note though: it strikes me that in our time of 'total information awareness' the ability to blackmail people in powerful positions is a significant flaw in our system, much more so compared to the past. Has any research been or anything worthwhile been written about this (potential) problem? I mean, we know people have been blackmailed or that attempts have been made, so the question is how common this actually is. Despite my internal knee-jerk 'this sounds tinfoil-hatty', I can't think of anything keeping intelligence agencies from wielding massive hidden power in this way. Or would it just have come to light much more often if that were the case?
- grandalf 9y ago
  I think he came to the belief that there was legal justification for conducting mass surveillance in secret... in other words that the AG didn't need to sign off on it for it to be an appropriate tool. If the AG had signed for it, then we'd have probably seen the supreme court weigh in on it. But since he didn't, the program continued behind closed doors and grew massively. I believe now there is a rolling 60 day archive of nearly all worldwide communications and metadata (and longer rolling archives for select subsets). It's incredibly impressive tech but quite scary.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. In this case, it might be better to assume malice rather than incompetence. In the 1950's it was s/terrorist/communist/, but it was a remarkably effective political tool. We might be in the same situation. But this time, our fates are all linked. Once shipping backdoors becomes mainstream, it might be impossible to go back. We should try to think of some concrete steps to resist this. It feels like we have to try, since there's so much at stake. Could we reverse engineer the political forces at play? We could try to think of the most effective thing we could do, and then focus on that.

gumby 9y ago
> Members of our government are so indoctrinated about stopping "terrorism" that they have lost all sense of perspective. > In this case, it might be better to assume malice rather than incompetence. I really want to consider you paranoid, but sadly I strongly agree. This is hardly the first time engineered paranoia has gripped the country, but living through it is horrible. I was a kid during the mid-to-late Cold War (post "duck and cover") and somehow I was never able to take it seriously. Even when I took classes on strategic deterrence and the like in college I considered them light entertainment I was paying for to give me a break from the serious classes. Now we have the emperor's new suicide vest.
- miles 9y ago
  This is hardly the first time engineered paranoia has gripped the country ... I was a kid during the mid-to-late Cold War (post "duck and cover") and somehow I was never able to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the threat was (and still very much is) real: Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-stopped-nuclear-war https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/27/vasili... Not that paranoia is a particularly useful response, but it did not require much engineering.

dntrkv 9y ago

The article specifically states that he doesn't want a backdoor: “We’ve had very good open and productive conversations with the private sector over the last 18 months about this issue, because everybody realizes we care about the same things. We all love privacy, we all care about public safety and none of us want backdoors — we don’t want access to devices built in in some way. What we want to work with the manufacturers on is to figure out how can we accommodate both interests in a sensible way”

bogositosius 9y ago
He says he doesn't want a backdoor and then spends all his time asking for one.
- Corrado 9y ago
  I thought it was interesting that he talked about breaking into other people's devices while specifying how they would harden their own systems. "We don't want you looking at our stuff, but your stuff is fair game."
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  He is playing the word game, what a technical person might call a "backdoor" he will call a "front-door" or something else, so there's technically not a "backdoor" and he technically didn't lie, even if he wants what many of us geeks would indeed call a "backdoor". It's sort of how the NSA redefines the dictionary meaning of common sense words to mean something else, (for example something like: "surveillance" means breaking into someone's home to plant a bug in there, so technically almost no one is under that definition of "surveillance", even if capturing our emails, hacking webcams etc. would be considered surveillance as well, but since no one broke in to plant a physical bug, that's not "surveillance" - it's just a words game).
  - grandalf 9y ago
    > He is playing the word game That's the worst thing about Comey. He is totally comfortable and unabashed about going in front of the American people and playing a word game.

1457389 9y ago

>He'd quite likely prefer that the FBI be legally allowed to torture suspects if extreme techniques were viewed as likely to result in useful information. To law enforcement, the rights of a suspect are a barrier to many convictions. Not Comey. In this committee session he bluntly said torture is not effective and that his personal standard for what constitutes torture is more stringent than that in the statutes.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
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.
- 1457389 9y ago
  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?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    The problem here is, what if studies showed torture really did work? Would he have the same, up front moral position? I think that's what parent was trying to allude to. Not whether he is morally opposed to it right now but if he's more of a "if it works I'll use it no matter what" type of person. 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.
rhizome 9y ago
Sure, but if the populace and the political climate demanded torture from the FBI and he refused, he would be fired and replaced with someone not so principled in their opposition.

throwaway847345 9y ago

> 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. Wiretapping and search warrants are long standing and well support ways for law enforcement to investigate among other things organized crime. Just because you know have encryption doesn't mean that has changed. Similar to how the NSA didn't suddenly stop doing signal intelligence just because they allegedly "lost the crypto wars". > Nobody would reasonably argue that extreme surveillance measures, patriot act, etc., is necessary to stop the vast majority of crimes from occurring, so why is it so easy for seemingly serious/intelligent people to think this nonsense is reasonable? It's a presumably a "better safe than sorry" and "nobody got fired for choosing more surveillance" kind of a thing. > 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. Terrorism is just the ultimate argument of people in the establishment. Just like encryption enthusiast might have some story about how they are helping dissidents, but are mostly encrypting their warez and mundane e-mails.

grandalf 9y ago
> Wiretapping and search warrants... True, but there is a big difference between presenting evidence to a judge to obtain a search warrant and subsequently manually wiretapping a phone line or two and the sort of massive-scale surveillance/capture we have today. It's like the difference between a doctor examining an awake patient who has complained about a specific symptom... vs to a doctor sneaking into the bedroom of thousands of sleeping non-patients and performing a secret physical exam on their genitals just in case anything about their genitals seems alarming. The crime (building the illegal infrastructure to do that surveillance) is now justified after the fact by a fairly quaint comparison to traditional police work. As much as I'd like to, I don't believe that surveillance is about police work. It's about political intimidation which is identical to the kind of political intimidation that seems obvious when talking about other police states from history. The effects of intimidation are not obvious as everyone expects them to be. I'll make an analogy with the North Korean regime to illustrate my point. How is it possible that the leader of N. Korea is able to make statements to the public that are obviously absurd. Are people in N. Korea less rational than elsewhere? Less intelligent? No, but over time the range of ideas considered acceptable has adapted to include some of the most ludicrous (and contradicted by fact) claims imaginable. How does this happen? I think it happens gradually. How likely are we to loudly criticize our government when we know all our devices contain a hot mic and all the audio might be getting recorded? Maybe we still offer a criticism but we couch it a bit or we follow it with some praise. Small things like this mean that we all hear less criticism, less scrutiny, less dissent. All because we are not sure who is listening or who will be reported to authorities for holding a controversial view. Over the course of decades, perfectly intelligent, rational people in N. Korea are easily able to believe some fairly outlandish claims simply because of a few decades of secret police presence and fear of being reported. What does this have to do with the US? By definition, terrorism is a political crime. It causes intimidation and fear. It is designed to be asymmetrical and sporadic, and is impossible to stop. The only way to fight it is with extreme social control... a more compliant society where holders of nonstandard beliefs are more easily identified. If the surveillance data had not been used to fight non-terrorism crimes, or if the systems were designed with a cryptographically provable audit trail, I'd consider the possibility that this was just a more modern way of doing law enforcement. But sadly I think all of the evidence points in the other direction.

kristopolous 9y ago

> I am surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore after it's become so clear that there is no large existential threat It was always just a ruse to snatch power. Parading a potential existential threat to consolidate authority goes back to antiquity and is a common theme in historical narratives, fiction, allegorical literature, popular political writings of the founding fathers... It's like the political version of a 419 scam. I'm continually dumbfounded that people fall for these things. In the modern era, there's accessible easy-to-read references at our finger-tips to learn about all the classic shams that are constructed to manipulate and seize power, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's really something.

bingomad123 9y ago

> Comey is a symptom of the kind of cowardly, authority-respecting society we've become. I am an Indian citizen living in USA and I think American society must take the blame here and not the politicians. The way society thinks and votes I think only a total narcissist moron can succeed in US administration. The fastest way to rise to top (as we saw in case of Obama and Trump) is to find some target group and blame that group for the failure of other larger society. The larger society is far too quick to raise pitchforks and burn the other group at stake. It is depressing to see that large % of Americans have seen inside of jail. A lot of people labeled as "suspected terrorist" or "sex offenders" are no where close to the common sense definition of those words. But once you have that label rest of the society treats you like utter shit. You cant find a job, state can put any arbitrary restrictions on all your freedoms etc. Unless US society learns to be compassionate and stand up for the rights of even those "deplorable" people purely as matter of principle I don't think there is any scope for optimism. I remember Ron Paul's words "Once you give up some liberty, you are not going to get it back, ever!"

arwhatever 9y ago
I'm always requesting constructive criticism like this from foreign-born coworkers, hoping for such valuable outside perspective, but they seldom provide it, no doubt hoping to avoid being offensive. This is a really excellent point that you make.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
> The fastest way to rise to top (as we saw in case of Obama and Trump) is to find some target group and blame that group for the failure of other larger society. The larger society is far too quick to raise pitchforks and burn the other group at stake. Yes, we are very much a blame society. It is the Republicans fault. It is the Democrats fault. It is my neighbor's fault. It is my parents' fault. Blame blame.

aub3bhat 9y ago

Oh please whatever your opinion might be saying """ surprised anyone can still use the word "terrorism" with a straight face anymore """ Is quickest way to shut down conversation. Especially given horrific events in France, Ohio, Florida. Your argument is not only ridiculous its counter productive to anyone offering a balanced saner approach.

kabdib 9y ago
The moment the T-word comes out, you can be sure it's a power grab of some kind. Just like it was "communists" in the 1950s. I don't see any reason to compromise against a fake enemy.
wand3r 9y ago
More people die of auto erotic asphyxiation than terrorism annually (~682 people). You're insistence is what is rediculous, as parent pointed out if it was a problem--it isn't; then 0 cases have been publicly thwarted via this technique. I don't buy in that this problem is large enough not that this solution would be acceptable if it was
- aub3bhat 9y ago
  Arguing deaths due to <x> 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 Terrorism has non stationary distribution and can lead to deadlier events that are orders of magnitude larger. Further why pick a year and not a day? At any given day the number of deaths due to Terrorism are close to zero, except you know on a tragic day a decade ago in september.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    > 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.

KallDrexx 9y ago

> 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 with incentives. The FBI's whole job is to investigate potentially illegal acts and as human beings they are incentivized to do their job as well as they can. When the opportunity comes up to give them more tools to do their job no one in the FBI is going to say "no I want to continue with one hand behind my back". The exact same thing happens at companies. Companies with poorly aligned incentives will quickly see employees act against the will of the company as a whole to make sure they look and come across as best as possible, and any chance a decision comes up to help them do their job better they will fight for it, because not doing so is pretty dumb. Well run companies work around these incentive issues by trying to get everyone aligned with checks and balances. We don't have that in the government because the people who are supposed to be doing the checks and balances (congress) have incentives to follow the FBI's requests because of the political suicide of coming out against solving crimes and defeating terrorists. It can (and will) be used against them at election time and their checks and balances (us as voters) fall for it all the time because we (as a collective whole) are short sighted and scared that something might happen and don't want to be someone who voted for someone soft on security. The only way to realign the incentives back for societal good is to get the common voter to understand the bigger implications of issues and hold our elected officals accountable. Until that happens the incentiives are always going to be aligned for the government to gain power.

ctchocula 9y ago
I was with you until "It can (and will) be used against them at election time and their checks and balances (us as voters) fall for it all the time because we (as a collective whole) are short sighted and scared that something might happen and don't want to be someone who voted for someone soft on security." 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-views-can-blind-people-to-the-facts-unless-theres-money-involved/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/17/political-vi...

cm2187 9y ago

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 tolerance to crime.

C4K3 9y ago
Terrorism can happen to anybody, that's the logic behind the asymmetry. "Regular" people see gang violence as something that can never happen to them.
- cm2187 9y ago
  I took gang violence as an example, there are many other kinds of "common violence" that could happen to anyone. The US stats below are for a single year [1] [2]. For reference, cumulative casualties in the US as a result of terrorism for 2001-2014 is 3,412 [3], 416 if you exclude 9/11. Any way you look at it, terrorism is a very minor form of crime in the US and Europe. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2013.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-12 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [3] http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/03/us/terrorism-gun-violence/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/03/us/terrorism-gun-violence/
- Sacho 9y ago
  You could aggressively curtail civil liberties in order to crack down on drunken driving, which kills more people than 9/11 each year, and can happen to pretty much anybody.
  - C4K3 9y ago
    Good counterpoint, I don't have an answer for you, you'd need somebody who supports curtailing civil liberties in order to combat terrorism to give an answer to that.

Arnt 9y ago

Comey is not just someone with a job at a particular organisation, he's also a servant of the state, and he is a citizen. Any servant of the state has a duty to the constitution. His job description comes second (or later). It's not at all natural that he should argue for hollowing out the constitution, or favour the needs of own organisation over the rest of the state or over the entire society.

grandalf 9y ago
> It's not at all natural that he should argue for hollowing out the constitution, or favour the needs of own organisation over the rest of the state or over the entire society. Very true. But I think it's safe to assume that no good, just individual would end up in the role of Director of an intelligence service. Who really aspires to be the leader of a team of secret police? There are some professions that are not strictly speaking unethical, but that tend to attract an ilk of people who are unconcerned with ethics. Used car salespeople, brothel owners, chiefs of secret police forces, people hired to do telephone cold calls to sell shady investments to the elderly, etc. If Comey is viewed in this light, we can see that he is acting predictably. Sadly, many people have the mistaken idea that people who dress in nice suits and wear medals and get appointed by presidents somehow deserve the benefit of the doubt. They do not.