5 ms·

At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans, Japanese or Russians did? I'd ha

by Sven7 12y ago

At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans, Japanese or Russians did? I'd hand the button over to someone like Truman over Hitler or Stalin any day of the week. Do I like the tools the NSA has in its possession? No. But I am happy they got there (and have access to them) before the Chinese, Russians or Arabs did. Are there going to be disasters like Hiroshima and Nagasaki thanks to these tools? I don't think so. Will the NSA and the government misuse the tools and make mistakes? Definitely. Their effectiveness must be constantly monitored and questioned. (Huge respect for Snowden for making that possible.) But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives.

rmxt 12y ago
What answer regarding nuclear weapons would you expect to get on a hypothetical news.ycombinator.jp? a .ru? I think the GP and Snowden's point is that the world would be better off without them, not looking to start a debate about which country is the better worldwide nuclear policeman. What better tech are you hypothesizing? You've seem to have already come to the conclusion that the tech we have isn't enough, while preemptively declaring that policy can't solve the West's issues. I think that technical literacy amongst legal professionals and legal literacy amongst technical professionals are steps in the right direction towards a balance of safety and liberty, and are ones that do not immediately entail increasing the scope of surveillance programs.
- nickik 12y ago
  Yeah, the russians are most defently looking back on the glory days of socialism.
reitzensteinm 12y ago
This analogy is completely broken, because the NSA could have instead seen it as its mission to ensure effective encryption on all communications. With that, no country would have the NSA's current capability. No such possibility existed with nuclear weapons.
elwin 12y ago
That's an interesting analogy with nuclear weapons, but I think there's an important difference. Nuclear weapons have a deterrent effect. That's why the American first possession meant that nuclear weapons would never be used to their full potential. There won't be any deterrent effect with tools that remain secret and unattributable after they are used. We've already seen that NSA dominance isn't going to lead to a truce in the style of the Cold War. For example, see the Chinese NSA counterparts who were recently indicted in the US, or the suspected Russians who can't be rooted out of the State Department network. The fact that the NSA is (probably) better at that kind of mayhem didn't stop them. I fear the invention of electronic warfare will be more like the introduction of firearms than of nuclear weapons.
nickysielicki 12y ago
>But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives. You're wrong on two counts. 1.) It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism. It's American foreign policy that must fix it. You cannot expect tech to fix the problems of that. Technologies are tools, nothing more. Terrorists and tax payers are technology users alike, and that will always be the case. (Sidenote: anyone who is intelligent should hate the word 'terrorism', it is blatantly doublespeak.) 2.) These spy tools are going to die, because we can make technology that makes them infeasible. Indeed, we already have. Tor is reportedly unstoppable by the NSA. GPG exists and falls under the same category. The way things are headed, the only thing that will change with time is that tech companies will embrace encryption and help the general population of innocents to stop being tracked. Those that care enough (eg: terrorists, libertarians, anarchists, and nerds) have already taken back their freedom... And will continue to do so. And there's nothing those 3 letter agencies can do to prevent it, because they've shown their hand. Anyone who has taken a cryptography class / a theory class knows that it's an unwinnable battle to try to fight RSA... It's just a matter of time before someone persuasive enough gets the message through to policy makers.
- lawnchair_larry 12y ago
  You seemingly don't quite understand the technology and the assertions in your second point and last paragraph are not correct.
  - nickysielicki 12y ago
    I'm totally willing to accept being wrong and own up to that. Can you let me know me where I've misspoken, though? To continue on what I said above, * One can always increase the size of the key. There's no stopping that. The fact that they can intercept and understand the bulk of communication currently is only due to the fact that we're largely not using encryption. (The idea being, they can collect huge amounts of encrypted information and years down the line decrypt it with supercomputers... But we can always generate larger keys and increase the difficulty by an order of magnitude. It is much easier to generate keys than it is to guess them.) Not that it's necessary. We have sufficiently large keys already. We just have to start encrypting. [1] * The NSA has difficulty with GPG and Tor. [2] [1]: http://security.stackexchange.com/posts/25392/revisions http://security.stackexchange.com/posts/25392/revisions [2]: http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7458159/encryption-standards-the-nsa-cant-crack-pgp-tor-otr-snowden http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7458159/encryption-standa...
rhizome 12y ago
I'd hand the button over to someone like Truman over Hitler or Stalin any day of the week. Isn't this Godwin's non-sequitur? Snowden was talking about physics as a whole, not bringing nationalism into it.
pdkl95 12y ago
> At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans The moral justification for the bomb was a concern that Germany was working on a similar project after they stopped exports of uranium[1]. Japan and Russia had little to do with the decision. In fact, several people working on the Manhattan project later commented they regretted the decision to develop the bomb, especially after hostilities ended in the European Theater abating the threat of Nazi Germany developing the bomb first. Feynman has commented[2] specifically that his focus on the work had totally blinded him to this change in moral justification. "What I did immorally, I would say, was not to remember the reason I said I was doing it, so that when the reason changed, which was that Germany was defeated, not the single thought came to my mind at all about that; that that meant now that I had to reconsider why I'm continuing to do this." Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done, even if there was a justification in the past. Also, the tools that the NSA wields may not be as bloody - with some exceptions[3] - but the cost in terms of the number of people affected already exceeded the losses due to the bomb, and will continue to grow in the future. Personal-scale tools that can do their work mostly hidden from public view have very little cost to the attacker. People notice and might get angry about using the bomb, while blackmail, threats, and bribery can continue for years and years before enough people notice. (and small casual racism or sexism can continue for centuries, even after people start to think the problem is "fixed") [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_l... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=986 [3] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-...
celticninja 12y ago
why should it be dependent upon techies to stop those events, they are not getting funding to do that. The NSA, FBI, CIA, GCHQ et al are being funded expressly for that purpose and are failing to achieve those aims. what they are doing is hoovering up every piece of electronic data they can regardless of whether there is a need or use for it. I think that actually " all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here" need to spend their time designing and creating better tech that doesnt allow the alphabet soup agencies the option to spy on people in such a broad fahsion, making it expensive and difficult to spy on everyone means they have to spend more time looking for the people worth spying on and only spying when they think it is worthwhile and going to lead to something. what happens now is they spy on everyone, then after an incident go backwards through the data to see what led up to the incident. Which is useless to all the dead and inujured and usually only works to point out where these agencies missed opportunities to prevent the attack. To give you an example, the recent terrorist hostage taking in Sydney, there was no warning or raising of the terror threat prior to the incident by the Australian Secret Services, although they are fully involved in the spying and are linked with the NSA and GCHQ. After the event we find out that there were double digit warnings provided by members of the public to a information line put in place to act as a confidential way to raise a concern. If they didnt rely on spying on everyone they would be in a better position to investigate tips such as this and focus all (or more) of their resources on these individuals instead of spreading it thinly across everyone.

by Sven7 12y ago

rmxt 12y ago

What answer regarding nuclear weapons would you expect to get on a hypothetical news.ycombinator.jp? a .ru? I think the GP and Snowden's point is that the world would be better off without them, not looking to start a debate about which country is the better worldwide nuclear policeman. What better tech are you hypothesizing? You've seem to have already come to the conclusion that the tech we have isn't enough, while preemptively declaring that policy can't solve the West's issues. I think that technical literacy amongst legal professionals and legal literacy amongst technical professionals are steps in the right direction towards a balance of safety and liberty, and are ones that do not immediately entail increasing the scope of surveillance programs.

nickik 12y ago
Yeah, the russians are most defently looking back on the glory days of socialism.

reitzensteinm 12y ago

This analogy is completely broken, because the NSA could have instead seen it as its mission to ensure effective encryption on all communications. With that, no country would have the NSA's current capability. No such possibility existed with nuclear weapons.

elwin 12y ago

That's an interesting analogy with nuclear weapons, but I think there's an important difference. Nuclear weapons have a deterrent effect. That's why the American first possession meant that nuclear weapons would never be used to their full potential. There won't be any deterrent effect with tools that remain secret and unattributable after they are used. We've already seen that NSA dominance isn't going to lead to a truce in the style of the Cold War. For example, see the Chinese NSA counterparts who were recently indicted in the US, or the suspected Russians who can't be rooted out of the State Department network. The fact that the NSA is (probably) better at that kind of mayhem didn't stop them. I fear the invention of electronic warfare will be more like the introduction of firearms than of nuclear weapons.

nickysielicki 12y ago

>But these tools aren't going anywhere until all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here stop wasting their time pretending to be lawyers (the law and lawmakers aren't going to get us out of this hole) and design better tech to stop the next Boston bombing, Charlie Hedbo style attack or ISIS recruitment drives. You're wrong on two counts. 1.) It's American foreign policy that created anti-american Islamic extremism. It's American foreign policy that must fix it. You cannot expect tech to fix the problems of that. Technologies are tools, nothing more. Terrorists and tax payers are technology users alike, and that will always be the case. (Sidenote: anyone who is intelligent should hate the word 'terrorism', it is blatantly doublespeak.) 2.) These spy tools are going to die, because we can make technology that makes them infeasible. Indeed, we already have. Tor is reportedly unstoppable by the NSA. GPG exists and falls under the same category. The way things are headed, the only thing that will change with time is that tech companies will embrace encryption and help the general population of innocents to stop being tracked. Those that care enough (eg: terrorists, libertarians, anarchists, and nerds) have already taken back their freedom... And will continue to do so. And there's nothing those 3 letter agencies can do to prevent it, because they've shown their hand. Anyone who has taken a cryptography class / a theory class knows that it's an unwinnable battle to try to fight RSA... It's just a matter of time before someone persuasive enough gets the message through to policy makers.

lawnchair_larry 12y ago
You seemingly don't quite understand the technology and the assertions in your second point and last paragraph are not correct.
- nickysielicki 12y ago
  I'm totally willing to accept being wrong and own up to that. Can you let me know me where I've misspoken, though? To continue on what I said above, * One can always increase the size of the key. There's no stopping that. The fact that they can intercept and understand the bulk of communication currently is only due to the fact that we're largely not using encryption. (The idea being, they can collect huge amounts of encrypted information and years down the line decrypt it with supercomputers... But we can always generate larger keys and increase the difficulty by an order of magnitude. It is much easier to generate keys than it is to guess them.) Not that it's necessary. We have sufficiently large keys already. We just have to start encrypting. [1] * The NSA has difficulty with GPG and Tor. [2] [1]: http://security.stackexchange.com/posts/25392/revisions http://security.stackexchange.com/posts/25392/revisions [2]: http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7458159/encryption-standards-the-nsa-cant-crack-pgp-tor-otr-snowden http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7458159/encryption-standa...

rhizome 12y ago

I'd hand the button over to someone like Truman over Hitler or Stalin any day of the week. Isn't this Godwin's non-sequitur? Snowden was talking about physics as a whole, not bringing nationalism into it.

pdkl95 12y ago

> At the end of the day is anyone arguing it was a bad thing that the Americans got to the bomb (and used it) before the Germans The moral justification for the bomb was a concern that Germany was working on a similar project after they stopped exports of uranium[1]. Japan and Russia had little to do with the decision. In fact, several people working on the Manhattan project later commented they regretted the decision to develop the bomb, especially after hostilities ended in the European Theater abating the threat of Nazi Germany developing the bomb first. Feynman has commented[2] specifically that his focus on the work had totally blinded him to this change in moral justification. "What I did immorally, I would say, was not to remember the reason I said I was doing it, so that when the reason changed, which was that Germany was defeated, not the single thought came to my mind at all about that; that that meant now that I had to reconsider why I'm continuing to do this." Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done, even if there was a justification in the past. Also, the tools that the NSA wields may not be as bloody - with some exceptions[3] - but the cost in terms of the number of people affected already exceeded the losses due to the bomb, and will continue to grow in the future. Personal-scale tools that can do their work mostly hidden from public view have very little cost to the attacker. People notice and might get angry about using the bomb, while blackmail, threats, and bribery can continue for years and years before enough people notice. (and small casual racism or sexism can continue for centuries, even after people start to think the problem is "fixed") [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_l... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE#t=986 [3] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-...

celticninja 12y ago

why should it be dependent upon techies to stop those events, they are not getting funding to do that. The NSA, FBI, CIA, GCHQ et al are being funded expressly for that purpose and are failing to achieve those aims. what they are doing is hoovering up every piece of electronic data they can regardless of whether there is a need or use for it. I think that actually " all the embarrassingly smart technologists around here" need to spend their time designing and creating better tech that doesnt allow the alphabet soup agencies the option to spy on people in such a broad fahsion, making it expensive and difficult to spy on everyone means they have to spend more time looking for the people worth spying on and only spying when they think it is worthwhile and going to lead to something. what happens now is they spy on everyone, then after an incident go backwards through the data to see what led up to the incident. Which is useless to all the dead and inujured and usually only works to point out where these agencies missed opportunities to prevent the attack. To give you an example, the recent terrorist hostage taking in Sydney, there was no warning or raising of the terror threat prior to the incident by the Australian Secret Services, although they are fully involved in the spying and are linked with the NSA and GCHQ. After the event we find out that there were double digit warnings provided by members of the public to a information line put in place to act as a confidential way to raise a concern. If they didnt rely on spying on everyone they would be in a better position to investigate tips such as this and focus all (or more) of their resources on these individuals instead of spreading it thinly across everyone.