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Interesting that they were willing to be seen forcing the agenda here, contra the WH's preferred positioning. They think the downsides of complicity with the N

Interesting that they were willing to be seen forcing the agenda here, contra the WH's preferred positioning. They think the downsides of complicity with the NSA program are worse than those of pissing of the White House. But there is a long way to go here. Someone will eventually have to confront the NSA's rhetoric "we can't stop terrorism / people will be killed if we constrain surveillance". I wouldn't expect that from this White House, or many in Congress. You can push on and even piss off the President, but if he won't push the NSA you have to generate political pressure to force him to do just that. I'm not sure that pressure is available under the argument that tech giant business models require transparency. That frames the issue as commerce vs security, I don't think that's a big vote getter. The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I'm okay with that, because I'm more worried about a tyrannical government, and We are bigger than the Bad Guys. But I'm not sure the electorate sees it my way. I suppose the likeliest solution is some tacit recognition that proper privacy does allow more terrorism / drug traffic / child porn. I worry that thus we won't get really proper privacy, or a real political commitment to it. I'm glad these CEOs carried this to the President, but I don't think they're going to be the whole solution to this.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
> The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I'm not convinced this is even true: 1) The effectiveness of dragnet surveillance is vastly overstated. There are far too many haystacks for the number of needles. 2) Even if it was effective in a vacuum, there is no evidence that alternative methods of fighting terrorism would not be at least as effective. Even if you stipulate that the amount of resources being spent on anti-terrorism is reasonable (which is by no means a safe assumption), using those resources for e.g. human intelligence may in fact be more effective in preventing attacks. 3) Dangerous automated systems are dangerous. Never mind federal agents stalking their ex, what happens when the terrorists you're trying to thwart break into your dragnet surveillance apparatus, or make use of the same vulnerabilities you've built into the infrastructure, and use it to determine the schedules and defenses of targets in order to plan an attack? They are creating a security vulnerability in the hope that it can be used against the bad guys while ignoring the possibility that the bad guys can use it against you. This is not such a good idea when you have a bunch of obvious soft targets all over the place and the bad guys don't. Which is before your quite valid argument that government officials may be among the set of people capable of misusing such power.
nathan_long 13y ago
>> The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I'm okay with that, because I'm more worried about a tyrannical government, and We are bigger than the Bad Guys. But I'm not sure the electorate sees it my way. Yep. It's no different than regular crime. We could prevent all crime if the state handcuffed every single citizen. Done! Yay! Whoops, except we destroyed what we meant to protect: life and liberty. That's what surveillance is doing now. It destroys freedom of speech, freedom to gather peacefully, freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances (how can you investigate government wrongdoing if they're tapping your phone?), all to (possibly) mitigate the already-small risk of being blown up by loonies.
darkarmani 13y ago
> The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I think you mean the opposite. A single repository with everyone's information makes it MUCH easier for bad guys to carry out attacks.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago

> The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I'm not convinced this is even true: 1) The effectiveness of dragnet surveillance is vastly overstated. There are far too many haystacks for the number of needles. 2) Even if it was effective in a vacuum, there is no evidence that alternative methods of fighting terrorism would not be at least as effective. Even if you stipulate that the amount of resources being spent on anti-terrorism is reasonable (which is by no means a safe assumption), using those resources for e.g. human intelligence may in fact be more effective in preventing attacks. 3) Dangerous automated systems are dangerous. Never mind federal agents stalking their ex, what happens when the terrorists you're trying to thwart break into your dragnet surveillance apparatus, or make use of the same vulnerabilities you've built into the infrastructure, and use it to determine the schedules and defenses of targets in order to plan an attack? They are creating a security vulnerability in the hope that it can be used against the bad guys while ignoring the possibility that the bad guys can use it against you. This is not such a good idea when you have a bunch of obvious soft targets all over the place and the bad guys don't. Which is before your quite valid argument that government officials may be among the set of people capable of misusing such power.

nathan_long 13y ago

>> The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I'm okay with that, because I'm more worried about a tyrannical government, and We are bigger than the Bad Guys. But I'm not sure the electorate sees it my way. Yep. It's no different than regular crime. We could prevent all crime if the state handcuffed every single citizen. Done! Yay! Whoops, except we destroyed what we meant to protect: life and liberty. That's what surveillance is doing now. It destroys freedom of speech, freedom to gather peacefully, freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances (how can you investigate government wrongdoing if they're tapping your phone?), all to (possibly) mitigate the already-small risk of being blown up by loonies.

darkarmani 13y ago

> The truth is that real privacy will in fact get more people killed, in the short run, because yes it makes operations easier for the Bad Guys. I think you mean the opposite. A single repository with everyone's information makes it MUCH easier for bad guys to carry out attacks.