4 ms·

I wrote my Congressional representation about this. Only Chuck Schumer sent me back a reply, and I can't actually tell what his position is. He summarized the

I wrote my Congressional representation about this. Only Chuck Schumer sent me back a reply, and I can't actually tell what his position is. He summarized the bill, then said he worked on making Big Tech more secure ("I have worked to have these sites deploy more secure internet protocols"; must have had some help from Al Gore there) and that he values privacy ("I voted in favor of H.R.2048, the USA Freedom Act, which became law on June 2, 2015. This bill provides additional safeguards for individual privacy in our surveillance rules and ends bulk metadata collection. Moving forward, I will continue working to strengthen privacy protections under the law."). For whatever reason, my first reading of this email was "fuck you, I'm outlawing encryption TOMORROW" but after re-reading it, I'm actually less sure about that. This one is a nail-biter; outlawing encryption is probably the end of the iOS and Android ecosystem, because we'll have to use OSes from outside the US. Or let random low-level NSA employees read all your illustrated love letters to your partner. Feels a little gross just thinking about it.

monksy 3y ago
Tammy duckworths emails on encryption always results to hysterical claims that it literally harms a child for every character you encrypt. Durbans response is 3-4mons later and just says thank you for your feedback.
- DANmode 3y ago
  > Durbans response is 3-4mons later and just says thank you for your feedback. But was the response encrypted against your public key?, that's what we really want to know!
  - monksy 3y ago
    I know it went thorough ssl based confections to send the email.
    - waste_monk 3y ago
      You have to be careful with SSL confections, the SWEET32 ones might leave a bad taste in your mouth.
- jrockway 3y ago
  I used to live in Illinois and wrote a lot of letters to Durban on tech issues. His responses were consistently awful. Above average awful. I feel like tech is the most underrepresented demographic in politics. Neither party cares about us at all. We hear cries of "defund the police", but we want to give the police the right to read all of our thoughts? It's so hypocritical; if you think the government is abusing its citizenry and that removing their source of funding is your political goal, why give them spying tools? Meanwhile, the country's tax plan seems to hinge on one strategy: "software engineers should pay for everything". We make enough money to pay a ton of taxes (I paid the AMT every year before 2017), but we don't make enough money to afford lobbyists. It does get a little better as you get older; mortgage interest and dependents are nice deductions. But really, a lot of our money is being taken to make the country objectively worse. It doesn't feel great. That said, you can't vote for Republicans because of their hot takes on social issues. They would have half of my friends killed just for existing if they had their way. At least the Democrats kind of let people exist and even get married. (It's also not clear to me that they would ever meaningfully reduce the tax burden on people that work for a living; Trump's supposed tax cuts which removed the state tax deduction increased my taxes!) It's a mess out there. Consistently depressing. But you gotta keep writing the letters and make them think about the issues. Sometimes they accidentally do the right thing.
newZWhoDis 3y ago
Chuck “flash bangs aren’t grenades” Schumer is extremely pro-surveillance.

monksy 3y ago

Tammy duckworths emails on encryption always results to hysterical claims that it literally harms a child for every character you encrypt. Durbans response is 3-4mons later and just says thank you for your feedback.

DANmode 3y ago
> Durbans response is 3-4mons later and just says thank you for your feedback. But was the response encrypted against your public key?, that's what we really want to know!
- monksy 3y ago
  I know it went thorough ssl based confections to send the email.
  - waste_monk 3y ago
    You have to be careful with SSL confections, the SWEET32 ones might leave a bad taste in your mouth.
jrockway 3y ago
I used to live in Illinois and wrote a lot of letters to Durban on tech issues. His responses were consistently awful. Above average awful. I feel like tech is the most underrepresented demographic in politics. Neither party cares about us at all. We hear cries of "defund the police", but we want to give the police the right to read all of our thoughts? It's so hypocritical; if you think the government is abusing its citizenry and that removing their source of funding is your political goal, why give them spying tools? Meanwhile, the country's tax plan seems to hinge on one strategy: "software engineers should pay for everything". We make enough money to pay a ton of taxes (I paid the AMT every year before 2017), but we don't make enough money to afford lobbyists. It does get a little better as you get older; mortgage interest and dependents are nice deductions. But really, a lot of our money is being taken to make the country objectively worse. It doesn't feel great. That said, you can't vote for Republicans because of their hot takes on social issues. They would have half of my friends killed just for existing if they had their way. At least the Democrats kind of let people exist and even get married. (It's also not clear to me that they would ever meaningfully reduce the tax burden on people that work for a living; Trump's supposed tax cuts which removed the state tax deduction increased my taxes!) It's a mess out there. Consistently depressing. But you gotta keep writing the letters and make them think about the issues. Sometimes they accidentally do the right thing.

newZWhoDis 3y ago

Chuck “flash bangs aren’t grenades” Schumer is extremely pro-surveillance.