Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving in America
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
Fight this now, tech industry. It doesn't matter how stupid the idea is; those are fighting words.
E.g. You will use weak encyption in your product, or we will take your money, your company or even your freedom.
Simply having the mindset of desiring to ban or hamstring encryption (or build perpetual motion machines) is indicative of far greater issues (likely in that domain, which we as tech-citizens should be aware of and active against) than merely chasing dragons would imply.
That is a threat to the tech industry, as part of the ongoing campaign to paint tech companies as "selfish and unreasonable" or even "aiding terrorists" in the public eye. At no point is any kind of "Manhattan project" actually intended. That's just a clever talking point used to frame encryption for the general public.
The long-term message for tech companies is "stop challenging our power and authority". Encryption represents a power shift, which is something the people used to having that power cannot allow. Their traditional weapon is the power to control the framing of any topic.
The end game isn't breaking encryption. If the tech industry doesn't submit to the demands for a backdoor, the tech industry will be declared the enemy. If the economy related to the internet and encryption crashed (which can always be accomplished with punitive regulation), the power situation is improved form the perspective of traditional politicians.
If they want to survive in anything like their current form, internet corporations should be fighting this hard to counter the framing in the public eye. Spending a few hundred million (or even a few billion) spent on media campaigns to make people want encryption is preferable to being forced to implement backdoors and watching entire markets dry up.
Technology in general has moved a lot of power away from government to the big players in the tech industry. An easy example is the somewhat-recent articles[1] about the political power that Facebook has with their ability to influence people... and influence elections. Obviously, Google could do the same.
This shift in power is what scares people who's only goal is to be re-elected. Therefor, they see internet corporations like Facebook and Google - and by extension most of the tech industry to varying degrees - as the enemy.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-11-04/how-fa...
Really? I think companies and governments seem to work together pretty well just looking at all of legislation that has passed recently and all the secret agreements made in secret courts in order to have access to data from companies like Facebook and Google, that the public has been made aware of that happen.
>This shift in power is what scares people who's only goal is to be re-elected.
Or people are trying to muster of some sense of fear in people order to gain support, they themselves aren't scared because as you say they are using it as a political tool to get elected…
I get it, but I think we have to wait until those future actions actually happen to get serious. Partly it's because I don't necessarily believe that your narrative is correct - I think there's a great deal of real, legitimate ignorance about this technology, and that this will dispel in time. (Don't forget that Clinton is an old woman, who's made her career in a distinctly non-technical area. Do you really expect your grandma to understand things like PKI? Alas that there are no scientists or engineers in the field.)
Then you don't get it. It's impossible to fight from behind a jail cell.
Make supporting encryption without a government backdoor illegal. That same government backdoor could be abused by third parties. But the ones pushing for that either don't care about that or don't understand that. The government has many stupid people in it, but I don't think the NSA director is one of them. [0] He knows that third parties could use the backdoor, he simply doesn't care.
Notice how this occurring in the USA and not some totalitarian country you refer to? People aren't afraid for absolutely no reason. They're afraid because a country founded on freedom is increasingly taking the game plans out of a totalitarian state play book. People are afraid if they don't fight back now they might not be able to fight back.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/nsa-director-...
I listen to CSPAN every day, and heard Clinton say these words. Read the Washington Post criticism on this issue, which was more balanced.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/22...
Or even better, listen to Clinton so that you get the story straight from the horse's mouth. To see the game of "telephone" amplifying wtfs throughout the echochaimber bothers me severely. The technology exists to get your news directly from the source.
Why do you need a reporter from Vice to tell you what your opinion should be on something Clinton said? Why don't you just listen to what Clinton said herself, and then make an opinion?
At worst, Clinton simply demonstrated her extreme ignorance on this issue. She has no idea how encryption works, and was just saying words. She knows enough that she doesn't want to "break" encryption however, she's simply calling for computer scientists to think about the issue.
> Clinton simply demonstrated her extreme ignorance
The first Crypto War over the Clipper Chip and years of key escrow debate was part of Bill Clinton's administration. There probability that Hillary Clinton being "extremely ignorant" about encryption is laughably small.
> calling for computer scientists to think about the issue
She knew what the computer scientist position was 15-20 years ago.
She understands that "Apple and Tech Experts" are angry about this issue, but she clearly doesn't understand why.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-transcript-cli...
> CLINTON: I would not want to go to that point. I would hope that, given the extraordinary capacities that the tech community has and the legitimate needs and questions from law enforcement, that there could be a Manhattan-like project, something that would bring the government and the tech communities together to see they're not adversaries, they've got to be partners.
> It doesn't do anybody any good if terrorists can move toward encrypted communication that no law enforcement agency can break into before or after. There must be some way. I don't know enough about the technology,Martha, to be able to say what it is, but I have a lot of confidence in our tech experts.
> And maybe the back door is the wrong door, and I understand what Apple and others are saying about that. But I also understand, when a law enforcement official charged with the responsibility of preventing attacks -- to go back to our early questions, how do we prevent attacks -- well, if we can't know what someone is planning, we are going to have to rely on the neighbor or, you know, the member of the mosque or the teacher, somebody to see something.
> CLINTON: I just think there's got to be a way, and I would hope that our tech companies would work with government to figure that out. Otherwise, law enforcement is blind -- blind before, blind during, and, unfortunately, in many instances, blind after.
> So we always have to balance liberty and security, privacy and safety, but I know that law enforcement needs the tools to keep us safe. And that's what i hope, there can be some understanding and cooperation to achieve.
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I would like it for my politicians to understand technical issues, alas I've resigned myself to the fact that politicians really don't know what they are talking about. And all Clinton has done here is prove once more, that she doesn't know what she's talking about.
Anyone who knows this issue (ie: You and Me) both know that there is a direct contradiction in Clinton's speech here. She's either playing dumb, or is dumb about this issue.
And the rest of the reporters (Vice, Intercept, etc. etc.) are going crazy as if this is some existential threat on the internet. No, in my opinion, this is simply another presidential candidate trying to be vague about an issue they don't fully understand.
I agree with this, which is why I don't plan on voting for her. But to call her a "threat" when her only threat is "being ignorant" is making mountains out of molehills.
But sure, hyperventilate about a made up issue if you like. There's actual issues in this country to care about, and you're welcome to misrepresent Clinton's words to self-manufacture an enemy if you want to.
I'm simply calling out the Vice article for doing so.
In case you don't see it, the politics of the situation are obvious. The defense hawks want us to do something about encryption because ISIS is now clearly using VPN, TOR, and other forms of readily-available encryption to communicate with each other.
In particular, the connection of the San Bernadina shooters to ISIS seems to have only been discovered through private communication. (not quite TOR, but they only could have discovered that fact using non-publicly available information if you know what I mean). The Paris Attack was coordinated entirely within encrypted communications.
And the fact of the matter is, the US has absolutely no power against such a space. Clinton wants to appeal to the defense hawks, by claiming she has a solution. But she's also balancing her talk by occasionally saying "Apple" and "I'm against Backdoors".
IE: She's being a politician, and she's ignorantly pretending to believe there's a solution here. The fact remains: any weakening of encryption is tantamount to a backdoor, and doing nothing is unacceptable to the defense hawks. So Clinton's best move is either to play dumb, or actually be dumb.
> You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating. It’s more complicated with some of what they do on encrypted apps, and I’m well aware of that, and that requires even more thinking about how to do it.
This quote (video: https://vimeo.com/148092658), shows a more perturbing side of the issue that goes beyond simply not understanding encryption. She might not understand the technology, but she does understand that freedom of speech and, arguably, one of the other bits of "et cetera" she's referring to would be privacy, shouldn't get in the way of "fighting terrorism".
Not to turn this into a purely political argument, since this is a problem on both sides of the ticket. (Trump has said equally egregious things, but I'm still hopeful that he won't sniff the White House). Just saying, _please_ don't be so naive as to dismiss the political rhetoric as simply technological ignorance.
We don't give freedom of life to foreign fighters (ie: we blow them up and kill them), why should we give them freedom of speech?
Enemies are enemies. And people need to realize what "war" really means. Its not nice, and its messy. We will trample on the rights we hold dear against our enemies. Guantanamo Bay remains open: a location where we secretly take prisoners of war, without a trial, without representation, and detain them for decades.
And its best for us to be informed of war so that we know not to do it unless necessary. But in any case, we remain at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite Obama's attempts to get us out of the region. The France Paris attacks are proof of that. They are our enemy. They want to kill us as much as we want to kill them, and neither we (nor them) seem interested in brokering peace.
Until we can enter serious peace talks with the Taliban (in Afghanistan), and with ISIS (in Iraq / Syria), this war will continue. But such talk is heresy in all aspects of politics.
In any case, giving freedom of speech and freedom of expression to ISIS fighters while we shoot missiles at them with remote controlled aircraft, and send special forces units to kill them in their sleep is ignorant bliss. There's a war to fight, and our fighters need every advantage they can get.
*: "you" as in the Northern California / Tech Industry electorate, not you individually.
Yes, politicians and politics is a cesspool of unfortunate sadness. No, this doesn't mean we shouldn't still be upset when the most likely presidential candidate takes a stance like this.
However they are far from sufficiently regulated (which monopolies should be). Otherwise data caps rip off would have been illegal to begin with.
Economists far more generally speak of competitive markets, which carry numerous requirements, of which neither healthcare nor Internet / communications generally satisfy.
Which is how they came to be regulated in the first place.
Effective regulation is what makes markets.
More specifically, free and open markets work wonders -- but dominant players seek unfair advantage to eliminate the free and open market almost as soon as it starts working.
Some regulation is required to keep the market free and open to all participants, especially as leading players actively change the rules as they gather more resources. But the critical point is that those same players are far more likely to use regulation itself as an unfair advantage as they are anything else. Government is the biggest stick in the room, after all.
So yes, free and open markets work, and yes, regulation is required to keep them working. But regulations do not make markets any more than speed limits create the interstate trucking system.
You sound an awful lot like the people who ask for tighter gun laws after a shooting in a gun-free zone.
You're not serious right? Or maybe you just haven't yet explained what you really meant?
One of these is not like the others. Broadband access is hardly a freedom thing; data caps aren't either. And attacking encryption is troubling, but can't ultimately happen without wholesale outlawing of general computing devices.
Which leaves surveillance. But even then, it's not really about surveillance so much as it is surveillance by people you don't like. Usually large organizations - government that scrubs your data for evidence of threat and may send goons to your house; companies that broker your info and inject data into your brain for cash.
Not sure what to do about surveillance, since by definition large organizations with lots of money control politics through campaign contributions, and pretty clearly they see surveillance as a critical part of their immune system (which is actually kind of strange since they've done quite well without ubiquitous electronic surveillance for a long time).
I live in one of America's wealthiest cities and the undisputed tech capital of the east coast, yet finding a decent ISP is difficult bordering on impossible.
There's exactly one good ISP in my city called netBlazr, but they don't service my neighborhood. So we get Comcast instead: bandwidth rates approaching a tenth of advertised speeds, outright throttling for certain services, cheap hardware with limited firmware, ubiquitous surveillance, and no legal recourse at all.
Freedom.
What assurance is there that RCN won't pull any bullshit like blocking SMTP or throttling Tor?
How much bandwidth does free speech require?