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There's a fundamental logic error in your analogy. Difference here is that the cops have been going around with their battering ram and breaking down every doo

by woah 13y ago

There's a fundamental logic error in your analogy. Difference here is that the cops have been going around with their battering ram and breaking down every door in town.

rayiner 13y ago
We don't know how much traffic the NSA actually decrypts, just that it has the capability to do so.
- Seigmen 13y ago
  That doesn't mean we should trust trust them not to decrypt the trafic though.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    We shouldn't, but that's besides the point, which is that the point in the article is wildly illogical.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I love Popehat, and Ken in particular, but any issue that intersects with his politics tends to get the same semilogical hyperbolic treatment. The "Buckyball" magnet thing was, if anything, even worse.
      - thecoffman 13y ago
        I rather liked the Buckyball article personally, but I wanted to note that Ken, while probably the best author on Popehat, isn't the only one and the Buckyball article wasn't him; it was Clark. Clark's articles are often the explicitly libertarian ones.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Just like we shouldn't have to trust the cops not to bust my door down, right? It sounds snarky but it cuts to the core of the peoples' relationship with government. How much do you trust the government? How much can you trust the government? That's why libertarians are generally logically consistent when they oppose the NSA, and entitlement programs, and giant government services, etc., because they're the ones who will tell you that a government big enough to give you $FOO is big enough to take it away from everyone else.
    - CamperBob2 13y ago
      If the police in my town were Federal agents, then yes, I would expect to have a somewhat different relationship with them. My town would feel "occupied," just as my computer now does.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Well there are many towns where if the police were Federal agents, it would actually be an upgrade over the corruption and abuse the citizens normally see. So I don't understand any intuitive reason why the agency supplying the cops would necessarily make you feel differently, except perhaps for inherent biases.
        AnthonyMouse 13y ago
        >So I don't understand any intuitive reason why the agency supplying the cops would necessarily make you feel differently, except perhaps for inherent biases. If you don't like what the cops in your town are doing then you can campaign for local political candidates who will rein them in and have some hope of actually affecting the election outcome. Getting anything similar done at the federal level seems to require some combination of mass fatalities that incense the public and a box truck filled with hundred dollar bills to grease the wheels, which is obviously outside the control and ability of most normal humans.
        mpyne 13y ago
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  But we know about COINTELPRO, and we know that Egdar Hoover had a bag of dirt on everyone that mattered.
  - totalforge 13y ago
    Hm, good point, the NSA as the new old FBI.
  - juhanima 13y ago
    Goes to show that if you have the means, you'll come up with the ends, eventually. I agree, a very good point.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Hammers and nails, to some degree...
- j2d3 13y ago
  we do know that we are not allowed to know that
lambda 13y ago
The battering ram isn't really the right analogy. It's not a matter of them having particular equipment, or techniques, which they can legitimately use as part of their job. And it's not like they are very visibly damaging lots of things. This is more like a society in which the police routinely break into houses by picking the lock in order to rifle through your papers secretly, without telling you. They say that they have secret warrants to do this, but since they're secret, and they do the breaking in in secret, you can't even find out if they have broken into your house. People don't like this; they don't like the idea that some cop may be in their home rifling through their things. So they start developing stronger and stronger locks. The police get worried that they won't be able to pick the locks on your doors, and will actually have to get a warrant and not break in secretly. So they lobby to pass a law that all locks have to either be weak enough to be picked, or have a master key that the police have. Of course, the people, who don't like the police breaking in with impunity, defeat this bill. So the police don't stop there. Instead, they just make secret deals with a few key lockmakers, to build locks that accept master keys anyhow. When lockmakers standardize on key designs that are more secure, the police add a section to the standard that makes it so that any lock that implements that standard will be able to be opened with a particular master key, but in a way that you can't tell what that master key is from the standard. Since there are enough lockmakers that they can't subvert them all, and not everyone implements those standards they subverted, they also talk to a few doormakers to add a secret part that you can push to disengage the hinges. Now this information comes out. People are outraged; their lockmakers are supposed to make locks that even the police can't get in through; people don't trust these secret warrants and secret searches, and with good reason, as the police have used these secret searches to investigate ex-lovers before, not just terrorists. They're outraged by the betrayal of the police, making an end-run around the law that they thoroughly defeated to prevent the police from having master keys. They're outraged by the lockmakers subverting their trust. And what's the police response? "We need these tools to investigate terrorists and criminals." Never mind that in order to investigate terrorists and criminals, they've weakened everyone's security, and everyone's trust in their government and the companies that sold the compromised locks. Never mind that they've been through the houses of many innocent people, in a wide sweep to try to find evidence of a few criminals. Never mind that the system has been abused many times, but the only way the abuses have come to light is by whistleblowers who the police prosecute severely. The police (or the NSA, to step back from the analogy to the real world) find these tools useful in their job. I'm sure they do. But the public finds these tools too intrusive. I'm sure it would be useful for the police to be able to secretly break into any house they wanted, rifle through people's papers, and find people who had jihadist leanings that way. We have amendments in our constitution specifically forbidding that, for good reason. Likewise, regardless of how useful the NSA finds these abilities, we the public find them abhorrent. Just like the police should have ways to get warrants and under the authority of those warrants, search houses, there are definitely legitimate uses for some of what the NSA does, if properly regulated. But weakening everyone's security, so they can intercept and read your mail at will, in secret, with no oversight, is just as wrong as the police breaking into your house in secret, at night, and rifling through your belongings.

by woah 13y ago

There's a fundamental logic error in your analogy. Difference here is that the cops have been going around with their battering ram and breaking down every door in town.

rayiner 13y ago

We don't know how much traffic the NSA actually decrypts, just that it has the capability to do so.

Seigmen 13y ago
That doesn't mean we should trust trust them not to decrypt the trafic though.
- rayiner 13y ago
  We shouldn't, but that's besides the point, which is that the point in the article is wildly illogical.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I love Popehat, and Ken in particular, but any issue that intersects with his politics tends to get the same semilogical hyperbolic treatment. The "Buckyball" magnet thing was, if anything, even worse.
    - thecoffman 13y ago
      I rather liked the Buckyball article personally, but I wanted to note that Ken, while probably the best author on Popehat, isn't the only one and the Buckyball article wasn't him; it was Clark. Clark's articles are often the explicitly libertarian ones.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Just like we shouldn't have to trust the cops not to bust my door down, right? It sounds snarky but it cuts to the core of the peoples' relationship with government. How much do you trust the government? How much can you trust the government? That's why libertarians are generally logically consistent when they oppose the NSA, and entitlement programs, and giant government services, etc., because they're the ones who will tell you that a government big enough to give you $FOO is big enough to take it away from everyone else.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    If the police in my town were Federal agents, then yes, I would expect to have a somewhat different relationship with them. My town would feel "occupied," just as my computer now does.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Well there are many towns where if the police were Federal agents, it would actually be an upgrade over the corruption and abuse the citizens normally see. So I don't understand any intuitive reason why the agency supplying the cops would necessarily make you feel differently, except perhaps for inherent biases.
      - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
        >So I don't understand any intuitive reason why the agency supplying the cops would necessarily make you feel differently, except perhaps for inherent biases. If you don't like what the cops in your town are doing then you can campaign for local political candidates who will rein them in and have some hope of actually affecting the election outcome. Getting anything similar done at the federal level seems to require some combination of mass fatalities that incense the public and a box truck filled with hundred dollar bills to grease the wheels, which is obviously outside the control and ability of most normal humans.
        mpyne 13y ago
HarryHirsch 13y ago
But we know about COINTELPRO, and we know that Egdar Hoover had a bag of dirt on everyone that mattered.
- totalforge 13y ago
  Hm, good point, the NSA as the new old FBI.
- juhanima 13y ago
  Goes to show that if you have the means, you'll come up with the ends, eventually. I agree, a very good point.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Hammers and nails, to some degree...
j2d3 13y ago
we do know that we are not allowed to know that

lambda 13y ago

The battering ram isn't really the right analogy. It's not a matter of them having particular equipment, or techniques, which they can legitimately use as part of their job. And it's not like they are very visibly damaging lots of things. This is more like a society in which the police routinely break into houses by picking the lock in order to rifle through your papers secretly, without telling you. They say that they have secret warrants to do this, but since they're secret, and they do the breaking in in secret, you can't even find out if they have broken into your house. People don't like this; they don't like the idea that some cop may be in their home rifling through their things. So they start developing stronger and stronger locks. The police get worried that they won't be able to pick the locks on your doors, and will actually have to get a warrant and not break in secretly. So they lobby to pass a law that all locks have to either be weak enough to be picked, or have a master key that the police have. Of course, the people, who don't like the police breaking in with impunity, defeat this bill. So the police don't stop there. Instead, they just make secret deals with a few key lockmakers, to build locks that accept master keys anyhow. When lockmakers standardize on key designs that are more secure, the police add a section to the standard that makes it so that any lock that implements that standard will be able to be opened with a particular master key, but in a way that you can't tell what that master key is from the standard. Since there are enough lockmakers that they can't subvert them all, and not everyone implements those standards they subverted, they also talk to a few doormakers to add a secret part that you can push to disengage the hinges. Now this information comes out. People are outraged; their lockmakers are supposed to make locks that even the police can't get in through; people don't trust these secret warrants and secret searches, and with good reason, as the police have used these secret searches to investigate ex-lovers before, not just terrorists. They're outraged by the betrayal of the police, making an end-run around the law that they thoroughly defeated to prevent the police from having master keys. They're outraged by the lockmakers subverting their trust. And what's the police response? "We need these tools to investigate terrorists and criminals." Never mind that in order to investigate terrorists and criminals, they've weakened everyone's security, and everyone's trust in their government and the companies that sold the compromised locks. Never mind that they've been through the houses of many innocent people, in a wide sweep to try to find evidence of a few criminals. Never mind that the system has been abused many times, but the only way the abuses have come to light is by whistleblowers who the police prosecute severely. The police (or the NSA, to step back from the analogy to the real world) find these tools useful in their job. I'm sure they do. But the public finds these tools too intrusive. I'm sure it would be useful for the police to be able to secretly break into any house they wanted, rifle through people's papers, and find people who had jihadist leanings that way. We have amendments in our constitution specifically forbidding that, for good reason. Likewise, regardless of how useful the NSA finds these abilities, we the public find them abhorrent. Just like the police should have ways to get warrants and under the authority of those warrants, search houses, there are definitely legitimate uses for some of what the NSA does, if properly regulated. But weakening everyone's security, so they can intercept and read your mail at will, in secret, with no oversight, is just as wrong as the police breaking into your house in secret, at night, and rifling through your belongings.