Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption' 220
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with Re/code recently on a variety of topics relating to technology. The talk included the president's thoughts on encryption, which has been a controversial subject in tech circles lately after government officials (including Obama himself) have publicly complained about default encryption in modern communication tools. In the interview, he says he's a "strong believer in strong encryption," adding, "I lean probably further on side of strong encryption than some in law enforcement." Obama puts it another way, more bluntly: "There's no scenario in which we don't want really strong encryption." However, the president says the public itself is driving concern for leaving law enforcement a way in: "The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers."
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'...
As long as he has a way to defeat it [androidpolice.com]
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Don't worry, he's got a solution to that one. He'll just grab a chunk of billaboard write something on it and try to make a trendy hashtag. Like #Obamaforstrongcrypto and that'll fix everything! Slacktivists untie!
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Choosing who to pander to next" doesn't make your hair go grey in six years.
The man is younger than I am, and looks like he's aged 20 years since he got in office.
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"Choosing who to pander to next" doesn't make your hair go grey in six years.
The man is younger than I am, and looks like he's aged 20 years since he got in office.
Name a president who didn't seemingly age 20 years a term, especially when they serve a double.
Not enough left in the Federal Reserve to make that job worth it due to the stress alone.
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You can want to keep something that someone else can make non-existant.
The obvious point here was that not that Obama was promising that we could want something we wanted. But rather that we could keep something we already had.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
he's had enough chances to prove that he's a champion of The People.
he failed. every.single.time.
I refuse to trust him anymore. his lips are moving, so he's lying.
not saying I trust republicans, either. I trust them even less. but my faith in democrats is at zero and so I'd prefer we scrub the whole R and D party system, redesign the WHOLE thing and start all over again.
until then, you can present all the talking heads you want. no one with any sense believes a word they say, anymore.
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It only matters that people believe there is no other choice. It works. Simple as that. What can I say? This has always been a psychological game.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
not saying I trust republicans, either. I trust them even less. but my faith in democrats is at zero and so I'd prefer we scrub the whole R and D party system
You're lack of faith is disturbing. Now all we need is another Sandy Hook to get the Democrats attacking the 2nd amendment and Republicans attacking abortion and that'll scare you and everyone else back into a two party frenzy.
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Are we supposed to celebrate abortion?
No. Nor should we celebrate people shooting each other. Having the right to bear arms and having the right to an abortion don't mean we have to celebrate when people do bad things just because they had a legal or civil right to the means.
The sooner we can stop trying to take away people's rights because we are afraid they are going to do something bad and focus on making the world a better place where people don't need guns or abortions but can rest assured they have a right to them the better off we w
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Im a little baffled, which of the policies he has put in place have surprised you?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
he's had enough chances to prove that he's a champion of The People.
Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan are widely regarded as two of the worst presidents in the history of the United States. The held office prior to the US civil war and were all about civility and compromise and the rule of law. They weren't personally in favor of slavery but they were also unwilling to take a principled stand against it. Then Abraham Lincoln came along and suspended habeus corpus, presided over a civil war that resulted in the deaths of over half a million Americans, and ultimately got assassinated. But he also took a stand, and prevailed, against the evil of slavery in the USA. He is remembered as one of the greatest presidents in the history of the USA.
When Obama was elected I hoped that he would see his presidency as an opportunity to take a stand against at least some of the great injustice that still exists in this world - that it wasn't just a chance for him to enjoy his personal prestige as the first black president. Obama is fond of a quote from Martin Luther King Jr: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” But Obama somehow ignores the fact that this justice has been the result of good people being willing to take heroic stands against injustice. Instead, Obama is all about embracing middle ground fallacies and basking in a false respectability of being "reasonable" and "civil" - which amounts to rationalizing and preserving all the terrible injustice that still exists in this world.
When Obama was elected he could have chosen the path of Abraham Lincoln but instead he has chosen the path of Pierce and Buchanan. I certainly don't expect everyone on the planet to don the mantel of greatness and make their lives about something bigger than themselves. But it's disappointing when someone who has gone to the great effort of being afforded the honor being elected president of the United States turns out to be so unwilling to be champion of the fundamental principles on which the USA was founded.
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When Obama was elected I hoped that he would see his presidency as an opportunity to take a stand against at least some of the great injustice that still exists in this world
What injustice did you want him to take a stand against?
And what injustice are you thinking of that's worth suspending habeus corpus?
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>“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Sounds like a statement of the problem to me. Not when spoken by MLK, but definitely when repeated by a politician.
Sigh. I think I may be becoming too cynical for my own good.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, I care not one whit about the persona failings of a politician, We're hiring them to do a job, not be a saint. Their failings are irrelevant except as they impact their ability to do the job. Clinton's womanizing for example was completely irrelevant, except that the Republicans decided to make a media circus out of it for their own gain. Shame on us for allowing that.
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Voting is completely useless without fixing the gerrymandering.
Most of the the electections per state for the coming couple of elections are already known.
Just ask Kimball Brace.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama said,"The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers."
That's utter BS.
* If it's some local law enforcement types, they've already been unable to do this in a timely manor for ages. The public doesn't demand answers because the answer is clear - the data was thoroughly encrypted.
* On the other end of the spectrum, if it's something we're not allowed to know about (NSA level terrorist stuff), then the public won't know about it to ask any of those questions.
Some edge cases in between those:
* it's still high level, but the public does know the NSA knows... then they can clearly get a warrant and trace the source. They also have the most massive amounts of cpu power and maths to throw at the problem, so if anyone will get to the root, they will (assuming it's something they have full authority to rampage after full force).
* If it's still local law level, but pretty important, they can also escalate and get warrants and get the FBI/etc involved as needed.
In either case, a backdoor doesn't solve the problem if said person is using something that doesn't have a backdoor (or has one unknown to the agency working the case). Backdoors have been identified (and originated in the NSA) before, and none of those helped all the normal cases (state/local). We have no idea if that helped any other cases that were top secret (and/or questionably legal), or to what extent... but that doesn't matter with regards to Obama's statement because we, the public, won't be demanding answers if we don't know about it.
Besides, if he's only worried about saving face, that's an awful reason for anything.
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's cowardice, but it's unjustified. David Cameron in the UK said pretty much the same thing, that he doesn't want to be blamed if there is an attack and people say he could have done more to stop it. But look at recently history, i.e. 9/11 and 7/7. Both times the intel was there to prevent it, both times those responsible failed to do so. Didn't really hurt Bush, even when it was apparent he was more interested in golf than security. Didn't hurt Blair, even when the police then murdered in an innocent man a few days later under pressure to do better.
The man in charge never gets the blame, the terrorists do. People understand that on those very rare occasions when someone wants to blow themselves up and actually has the means and capability to do it there isn't much anyone can do to prevent it. Even other politicians shy away from blaming the head of government.
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Didn't really hurt Bush, even when it was apparent he was more interested in golf than security.
Bush played less golf in two terms than most presidents play in one term. Obama is at over 4 times as many games. This is a Michael Moore image that has really stuck, though, and is a good reminder of the power of propaganda.
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I agree that it's BS. Consider the Boston Marathon bombing. That counts as an attack. It turns out that there were leads, since the Russians had warned us. (AIUI, the Russians used one transliteration of Tsarnaev's name from Cyrillic to Latin letters, and the US had records under another transliteration.)
I don't remember a strong public
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His career might, but he doesn't want to tank the party's hopes. He can take certain unpopular opinion on himself, but only so much and only in certain areas.
That's the whole point of the presidency. (Score:2)
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They will demand answers because a portion of the population has been convinced that being an all seeing oracle at the center of the communications universe is the job of government.
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They will demand answers because a portion of the population has been convinced that being an all seeing oracle at the center of the communications universe is the job of government.
Unfortunately, a large portion of people are starting to believe that all aspects of life and everything else are jobs of the government.
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>> “The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn’t follow up on it, the public’s going to demand answers,” he said.
That quote seems to be pretty far-fetched because if a law enforcement agency (most likely the FBI) really needed to follow up on a lead,
they could always do it the hard way: get a warrent and hack into the suspect's computer and plant a bug. That includes breaking into his house and putting in a physical key logg
9/11 (Score:2)
Still demanding answers for 9/11. Please release the full document.
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Oh, that's Already been [911truth.org] done. No need to bother Obama about it.
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It's funny. On the one hand, you have people screaming bloody murder because Obama is acting like a dictator, giving people healthcare that they don't want, and obviously, as an elected official, the President should follow the will of the people.
On the other hand, he's a spineless pandering lame-duck who is unable to make unpopular choices.
I don't know what to make of it. Ah, except maybe this little statement that you quoted is actually relevant here: "The first time that an attack takes place in whic
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A quibble: The ACA is not about healthcare, it's about health INSURANCE. There is a difference.
A second quibble: it's not about "giving" something that people don't want, it's about forcing them to buy something they don't want.
They should've (not "should of", it should be noted) done it the easy way - expand Medicare to cover everyone, push commercial health insurance into the same slot as auto/home insurance - insurance against catastrophes only, not routi
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He needs to be more blunt. Let me assume the Jefferson position for a second. Ahem...
There will come a time when our leniency toward strong encryption will prevent law enforcement from doing its job. Some sort of violent attack will occur, a murder or a bank robbery or even a terrorist attack; and the public will demand answers. The public will want to know why we weren't able to break the veil of secrecy around our enemies's communications, why we couldn't keep up with them, why we couldn't protect t
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BS. Consider the Boston Marathon bombing. That counts as an attack. It turns out that there were leads, since the Russians had warned us. (AIUI, the Russians used one transliteration of Tsarnaev's name from Cyrillic to Latin letters, and the US had records under another transliteration.)
I don't remember a strong public demand
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Both parties seem to be in an all or nothing mode. Republicans have a history of beating the drums and then panicking and backing down. The recent homeland security bill is a good example of the democrats either getting everything or shutting down the department of homeland security.
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I'm hoping. It's hard for me to get any energy behind this since they keep backing down after looking like they are finally going to take a stand and stick with it.
He said lots of things (Score:5, Insightful)
What he has done is something completely different..
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All he asks is that you give him the key.
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And most people really aren't against the spying anyway.
This is true. So if he's a smart politician, he will lean towards the side with the most votes. And say it in a way that will try not to alienate the other side.
Transparency (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember when he was a strong believer in transparency too.
Re:Transparency (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember when he was a strong believer in transparency too.
Of all the promises that he failed to keep, this is the one I regret most. The other promises would make a difference in the short term, but an improvement in transparency would have made a huge improvement in the long term.
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My big disappointment was his stance on torture, which amounted to "We're not going to do it under my administration". Not "Torture is wrong, and should not be used by the US." There were no consequences for having tortured, having ordered torture, or having issued potentially bogus legal opinions that it was OK. No trying to ram an anti-torture bill through Congress.
Re:Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, who cares about the murders he is directly responsible for
No one said to ignore that.
Let's regret missing transparency.
Yes, because in the long run transparency would prevent a lot more murders.
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That would work if the murders were covered up and, upon bringing them to public attention, the criminals were brought to justice.
But alas, the murders _are_ publicly know. It's just that the corrective force is completely failing.
The transparency is here, it's just without consequence.
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Are you an educated person?
No, I learned to write while drinking moonshine in a pond, taught by a fairy in the starlight.
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It's like how people who believe in global warming do what they can to prevent it.
Here's the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
People are stupid. Like, really fucking dumb.
Couple that with a 24 hour news cycle nonstop coverage, first time some attack (even 9/11 was utterly minor in terms of life vs, say, annual car accidents) happens, you have these dumb sheep throw the Constitution out the window and yell 'Murica while going full tilt behind a nearly decade long attack on a country that had nothing to do with it.
If you think there is fixing this country, you are severely overestimating the ability of an educational system, any educational system to pound out the stupid. If it could have done so, we wouldn't be still debating evolution and vaccines.
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People are stupid. Like, really fucking dumb.
Remember when you talk like that, you're a member of the set 'people' [xkcd.com].
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That xkcd is just more of the recent bullshit Randall has started putting out lately.
Hey, I'll bet you're just like one of those people in that comic.
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I just realized you linked a different comic than I thought you had from your text [xkcd.com]. The one you actually linked is actually funny and not just the preachy bullshit he's been putting out lately. I retract that half of my comment.
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As to the other half of your comment......the earlier poster calls people 'sheep,' adds a bunch of outdated partisan stereotypes, and uses incomplete sentences. His analysis is not what you'd expect from a 'top intelligence outlier.' It's what you expect from the dunning-kruger effect.
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July 17, 2009 counts as "lately"?
I'll agree with you that every now and then, Randal seems to toss a turd directly at his core fanbase; but that hasn't really changed or gotten noticeably worse over time.
Most of the time, I just excuse it as a failed attempt at self-debasing humor and move on to the next comic - In many of his "preachy" ones like #610, he explicitly makes a point of including himself among the set of
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xkcd is popular because it does weird things that usually work. If I do enough weird and experimental things, lots of them will be busts. I think Randall has a much better record on doing weird and experimental things that work than I would.
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That xkcd is just more of the recent bullshit Randall has started putting out lately.
Don't tell me, it was the Libertarian jibe in the pop-up that cheesed you off, right?
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first time some attack (even 9/11 was utterly minor in terms of life vs, say, annual car accidents) happens, you have these dumb sheep throw the Constitution out the window and yell 'Murica while going full tilt behind a nearly decade long attack on a country that had nothing to do with it.
Dead is dead; what difference does the manner of death make, is that it? On the average day, 89 people die in automobile accidents. If that suddenly jumped to 3000 per day, you can bet your "dumb sheep" would react pretty much the same way.
Re:Here's the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny things is, it's not encryption that's foiling the government. It's stupidity. They had all the info they needed on the 9/11 hijackers but they ignored it. It was all in the open, nothing hidden at all. They just were too stupid to see it and too lazy to do their fucking jobs. No one got fired. Nobody! We just got the fucking Patriot act. Why? The same stupid fuckers are running things so what is that going to help. They can put a camera in every house in the US of A and they'll still fail because you can't fix stupid. The problem isn't with encryption it's with incompetent people running things. They fuck up over and over and over and over and never get fired. They just go whine about encryption and privacy like that's going to solve the problem of stupid fuckers that can't pour piss out of a boot with instructions printed on the bottom. Yeah, lets just abolish privacy, then when shit blows up what is the answer then? The Damn Russians practically handed them the Boston Marathon bomber dipshits and they couldn't handle that either. Stupid. The only thing saving us is the ISIS/Al Qaeda numbnuts are crazy and stupid too. Vicious but not all that bright or we'd be in real trouble.
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You must have been given lots of vaccines as a little kid.
Obama is a strong believer in strong encryption... (Score:5, Insightful)
... of HIS data.
Whelp.... (Score:2)
I'm a strong believer in good deadbolts (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yet I want you to give me a copy of the key and trust that it wont fall into the wrong hands or be used illegally against me. See how stupid that sounds Obama?
No, this will never be seen by governing officials. They want you to believe government will never do anything wrong, at least as long as you pick the right people in office. If anything wrong happens, it's because you didn't do the right thing in the last election.
It's basically a religious faith with no evidence.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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If one states that they believe self harm in any fashion is a sin and they find them self in a situation where they can either certainly die of starvation, dehydration or exposure OR they can cut their own arm off and have a chance of survival, that person commits self harm either way and is thus a hypocrite.
What makes them a hypocrite? Most people with such a belief would also believe that it is impossible to not sin.
Voting is a similar situation in regard to hypocrisy. The question is what is the greater hypocrisy when there is no option that conforms to ones political beliefs. Sometimes, there is no right choice. Sometimes there are only wrong choices and really wrong choices.
Obama is a really wrong choice. I could tell from partway through the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination process that he was going to be a mess and I turned out to be right. Just pointing that out.
Besides, voting is an action when one IS SUPPOSED TO ACT IN THEIR OWN, SELFISH, BEST INTERESTS. When tallied up, the best interests of the majority should prevail. If this is done, the tragedy of the commons is avoided and over-all, the majority gets what they want. Hopefully, what the majority wants is best for the majority but that requires an informed, intelligent electorate - I digress.
Two things. First, it's not. For example, accepting twenty dollars for my vote may be my selfish, best interests, but such activities are illegal. Second, tragedy of commons is not at all avoided sinc
Yeah? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Chomsky interpretation of mind control (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm starting to think that the whole NSA spying thing, and government spying in general, is a direct result of the lack of physical control of the populace. In principal, people in the free countries can think what they want, but only if the government knows what people are thinking at all times. I guess monitoring everyone's thoughts like as if we were all prisoners on parole is a direct consequence of physical freedom. If people are granted the freedom to _do_ what they like, they must give up the right to _think_ what they like, or at least they give up the right to share their thoughts privately with others.
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in the old Soviet Union, the ruling class there didn't develop mind-twisting distortions of reality
Simply read about propaganda in the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Without diving into the source material, I suspect the paraphrasing would be better stated as: sophisticated mind control is unnecessary. In North Korea, you believe the dear leader aced eleven holes the first time he played golf, rides a unicorn and farts rainbows, because if you don't, you're tortured and killed. Elaborate PSYOPs not needed.
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Nope. Nazi Germany had Goebbels which is until today considered the archetype of the state propagandist, spent millions of Marks on that Leni Riefenstal movies (and made expensive movies even when they were losing the war and money was on short supply), threw Hitler's personality cult on the classrooms to the point that, at the end of the war, kids of the Youth Nazi were often the fiercest soldiers because they were the ones that still believed on that shit. Even more amazing, a good deal of German weapons
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Hmm, from what I've read on the subject, the Bismarck-class was decent by European standards, but couldn't compare to either Yamato-class or Iowa-class. Or even King George V-class.
And the Tiger was about a match for an M26, and outmatched by a JS-II (much JS-III)
In other words, their reputation exceeded their capabilites....
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That's a self-serving fiction. In fact, the Nazi party was one of the largest political parties in German in the early 1930's, receiving around 1/3 of the vote. The Nazis formed a coalition with conservatives and Hitler later received nearly unlimited p
Doesn't sound to me like he is for it. (Score:2)
Sounds to me like he is for it when he's not against it.
so (Score:5, Insightful)
"leaving law enforcement a way in"
like a warrant?
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"leaving law enforcement a way in" like a warrant?
In case you haven't noticed a warrant is a piece of paper and not a very magical one at that. If all they have an encrypted phone and Apple/Google/Microsoft says "Sorry, we don't have a backdoor. The only way to decrypt it is with the correct PIN and after 4 wrong tries it'll wipe itself." they can wipe their ass with it. At least until they do an end run around the 5th amendment and introduce some RIPA-like legislation in the US, if you have encrypted data and can't/won't decrypt it you go to jail. Or just
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In most cases crypto is like having the worlds best lock on your door; the people that want to get in just jimmy the window instead.
The phone thing could certainly happen in theory, but in practice the NSA may have already installed a backdoor or found an accidental backdoor that was due to a bug. And they would probably copy the flashdrive in the phone and analyse it later, possibly on a supercomputer if they're really keen; a lot of commercial crypto is deliberately weak so they can crack it that way if t
What's people obsession with rubber hoses? (Score:2)
Rubber hoses are weak. You never get threatened with a rubber hose or a $5 wrench, without knowing it happened and your enemy revealing himself. It takes irrevocable commitment and admission of guilt on their part, and therefore risk of consequences, to take things to that level.
When they bring that stuff out, comply. Sing like a bird. They get the data they want, and then you call the media and your lawyer (or the cops, if your adversary with the hose/wrench doesn't happen to be the cops), and the TRUE
If you like your encryption (Score:5, Funny)
You can keep it.
He's speaking clearly (Score:3)
"Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'"
At least he's made it clear: he's 100% against strong encryption.
Color me cynical, but.. (Score:3)
..When I hear this, what my brain sends back to me is "We just struck a deal with Apple and Google to let them have our way into your phones whenever we want."
Damned if he does...Damned if he doesn't (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds like he's caught between a rock and hard place. He might, personally, believe in strong encryption and privacy. But, the series of events since 9/11 have made a stance which prevents the collection of information to prevent another attack a difficult one to sell to the public.
Strong encryption can protect secrets and privacy. The secrets and privacy of the common man is worth protecting. The same technology can also enable our enemies to operate in stealth. Should we have another 9/11 experience and the suspected perpetrator used strong encryption to protect their plans, the public will scream that not enough was done to prevent the attack. How should the president respond?
I am an advocate of strong encryption having started a business in the 90's to provide secure email and file transfer. I also remember the advent of the Clipper chip and the reasons behind it subsequent defeat. We liked to believe our privacy was not being infringed and then Snowden revealed how our intelligence community was violating our rights. At the same time, we haven't had another terrorist attack on our soil lending credence to their methods (valid or not). Snowden, however, also released information on other data and intelligence collection methods. That disclosure allowed our enemies to operate with more impunity through the use of strong encryption and by adjusting their methods to avoid detection.
Sadly, that protection strong encryption provided in order to protect our privacy and rights now becomes a marker of potential threats with other intel methods compromised. Weakened encryption or strong encryption with a backdoor would, theoretically, permit the gov't to pierce the veil when other intel might have put the focus on an innocent citizen and users of strong encryption would be marked as threats.
We, as a nation, have allowed the events of 9/11 to shatter our society and live in a world where our believe of privacy through ignorance was shattered by Snowden's revelations.
The revelations that Snowden provided on the intelligence collection programs aimed at our own citizens, supposedly for our protection, were necessary. However, the disclosures of other techniques and operations on the international front has given our enemy insight and tactics to be able to circumvent critical intelligence collection methods. In that regard, he has done tremendous harm. And, with the shutdown of those programs, the fight is now over when and how strong encryption will be permitted.
This quote proves only... (Score:2)
...that he will be strongly in favor of whatever the audience is in favor of in whatever venue he's speaking (because he won't really talk to Republicans anyway, so in that sense self-selecting).
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...that he will be strongly in favor of whatever the audience is in favor of in whatever venue he's speaking (because he won't really talk to Republicans anyway, so in that sense self-selecting).
Should I infer from this that you believe that Republicans are against strong encryption?
I'd think the Libertarian wing of the Republican party, at least, would want to promote strong encryption everywhere. I'm not sure where the "Defend America Against Evil" wing stands on the issue. (The "We Are Against Whatever Obama Is For" wing, of course, doesn't itself know where it stands on any given issue, until after Obama has stated his position ;))
It's so simple! (Score:2)
We need strong encryption for use by law-abiding citizens, and weak encryption for use by criminals.
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Of course, encryption software could use the evil bit to determine which method to use.
Nonsense (Score:3)
The public is not driving a "demand" for law enforcement to have a way past people's strong encryption. They're driving a navel-gazing demand that everyone else's strong encryption be breakable, but not theirs.
Worse, law enforcement is ignoring the fact that they're supposed to get warrants to access people's information, and are bitching to high hell that people are taking steps to stop their illegal snooping.
Too bad, fuzzballs. You, the NSA, CSEC, GCHQ, and everyone else who thinks their "need" to spy is greater than my need for information security can take a spin on a sharp pole.
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I'll be happy to let you scan my computer -- if you show up with a warrant authorizing you to do so. I have nothing to hide; that doesn't mean I'm going to broadcast it and make it easy pickings for your fishing expeditions.
Leaving Law Enforcement A Way In (Score:3)
Dear Mr. President,
Back in 1997 a group of leading experts wrote a paper [schneier.com] about "leaving law enforcement a way in". From that paper's Executive Summary:
The deployment of key-recovery-based encryption infrastructures to meet law enforcement's stated specifications will result in substantial sacrifices in security and greatly increased costs to the end user. Building the secure computer-communication infrastructures necessary to provide adequate technological underpinnings demanded by these requirements would be enormously complex and is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field. Even if such infrastructures could be built, the risks and costs of such an operating environment may ultimately prove unacceptable. In addition, these infrastructures would generally require extraordinary levels of human trustworthiness.
Sorry Mr. President but I don't believe you. (Score:2)
It's like when he says that he "believes" in the right to keep and bear arms. There's an asterisk in there somewhere.
LK
Does he not know about PGP? (Score:2)
Damned Lies... (Score:2)
Politicians never tell you what they REALLY believe. They only tell you what they think will make you believe what they want you to believe.
He also said that (Score:3)
He is also a strong believer in
-closing Guantanamo
-transparent government
-closing corporate tax loopholes
-elimination of no-bid contracts
-Santa Claus
If the public demands answers, give them answers. (Score:2)
Complete and utter BS... (Score:2)
"The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn't follow up on it, the public's going to demand answers" - The first time? How many times has this already happened and no action was taken.
Benghazi - The government had plenty of intel on the impending attack and yet did nothing. People died as a result of this inaction.
9/11 - Again, plenty of advance warning and no action.
Mortgage meltdown/Lehman Brothers collapse - Nobody died here but The Fed, in concert wi
No need to wait (Score:2)
Public, I already have your answer. You problem is that back around 1789 [wikipedia.org] you moved to America. If you wanted the needs of a police state to come before your freedom, you could have lived pretty much anywhere else. And you still have a lot of options, if you're simply convinced that America is a bad idea.
Re: (Score:2)
What I want to see is a published register of all SSNs.
The Social Security Number was never intended to be a 'security key' for citizens. When I went to college, our SSN was used as our student ID number, in fact.
The government should simply publish each and every SSN. Who has each number, etc. Doing so would render SSNs immediately useless for identity thieves, and the financial industry would be forced to stop using them as a 'trusted identity number.'