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    Obama thinks the harms of those crimes outweigh the privacy protections.

I think this is a silly argument. Forcing backdoors into people's phones will not stop any individual determined to maintain secrecy from using encryption. It will however allow government to spy on all individuals.

Even with a dumbphone one could use something like: https://www.schneier.com/cryptography/solitaire

How is the backdoor law going to help?

Or is the government going to ban any and all encryption methods?

At the moment, the concern with encryption seems to be encrypted communication rather than encryption as a means of securing personal data.

Eventually, though, as technology advances allow smaller groups of people to inflict larger amounts of damage with fewer specialized resources, how do you imagine that society could be kept secure without surveillance (or something even more invasive)? It seems clear to me that the side arguing for unlimited encryption in communications will ultimately be on the wrong side of the issue, even if backdooring the iPhone isn't a good idea.

So you're advocating for an omnipresent Police State on the statistically insignificant threat of Domestic Terrorism? Which you presuppose will only get worse, despite the fact that Domestic Terrorism has declined from thousands of Bombings in the US in the 60's and 70's to the rare one off instances of the new millennium.

What is it you suppose causes terrorism? Is it not the expected retaliation by a citizenry on a government gone too far? Perhaps an unintended consequence of increasing government surveillance as you suggest is more acts of terrorism not less.

Look, I value my privacy too and I don't want to live in a police state, either. I don't think giving additional power over to our government at its current levels of incompetence and corruption is a good idea. But I think you (and I recognize that many/most of the people around here think the way you do) aren't being realistic about the threat of terrorism. Even if rates of terrorism are declining, I suspect they aren't going to be declining as quickly as the potential damage of terrorist attacks increases.

Regarding your question of the causes of terrorism, do you really believe that all terrorism is caused by government oppression or injustice? I doubt it. Even if it's the majority, there's always going to be plenty of unhappy people among the 7 billion on the planet. So I don't see you as having answered my challenge of imagining a stable secure society in a world where small groups can cause enormous damage. And I doubt that prevailing opinion will survive the first major terrorist attack that occurs. Note for your statistics: I'd count the number of major terrorist attacks to date as zero.

Fortunately, I also disagree with your assumption that a system of mass surveillance will necessarily result in a "police state" or at least the dystopian society that the term is intended to conjure.

po·lice state

(noun)

a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens' activities.

I'm sorry, how does the elimination of encryption so the government is able to increase its mass surveillance and aggregate all communication not fit the definition of a Police State?

You admit that most acts of terrorism are in response to oppresive governments and you admit that as technology has increased acts of terrorism in the country have fallen dramatically, and yet you posit that there will be more because you feel that way.

I get it that you're willing to exchange yours and every other persons privacy in the name of the Bogey man that is terrorism, but it won't make you safer

I anticipated the word games, which is why I wrote "or at least the dystopian society that the term is intended to conjure."

I did not admit that most terrorism is in response to oppressive governments nor did I posit that there will be an increased number of attacks. Re-read what I wrote.

Hopefully you're right that terrorism will forever remain a "boogey man." I doubt it will. Unfortunately, if and when there is a major terrorist attack, all of the people saying what you're saying will have lost credibility and the chances of us ending up in a police state, at least for a period of time, will be quite high.

Yes I know you decided to define the word and its intent as you saw fit, which is why I posted the definition...

I'm aware you do not want to accept that most acts of terror have been in retaliation to government oppression, I can list of dozens of organizations throughout modern history who's reason for terrorism was/is oppression. I'd be interested in knowing which groups and events have led you to believe other wise.

Logically if you state > Note for your statistics: I'd count the number of major terrorist attacks to date as zero.

And you state

>Eventually, though, as technology advances allow smaller groups of people to inflict larger amounts of damage with fewer specialized resources, how do you imagine that society could be kept secure without surveillance.

One would conclude you believe there will be an increased number of attacks if any occur...

Why would a terrorist attack cause anyone for encryption to lose their credibility? Would a terrorist event prevent the need for encrypted financial transactions, encrypted messages containing proprietary information, encrypted emails in regards to internal corporate directives? I assume you understand the importance of encryption in transactions?

There are Unintended Consequences to implementing a Police State which aggregates all communication and outlaws encryption as you are advocating.

Living in a free society incurs a small percentage of risk. "I don't think giving additional power over to our government at its current levels of incompetence and corruption is a good idea." --> How do you think the government will ever change if there is no check to their power. A corrupt institution can freely monitor the communication of their opposition, if that is the case how can they ever be removed from power?

Your last question is a good one. How can we set up checks and balances so that the surveillance apparatus cannot be misused? This is particularly important in our democracy, where the whims of the people might favor misusing it from time to time. I have ideas. Not that anyone's asking me.

Have 'plotting terrorists' actually committed any crimes? The child porn argument is even more nefarious - why is one kind of .jpg on your hard drive acceptable and the other criminal? Sure the creation of those images is criminal, but the images themselves are just data. Data should not be criminal.

> the images themselves are just data

Sure, and touching a child inappropriately is really just two electron clouds interacting. Van der Waals forces should not be illegal, right?

The right response is 'Sure.' (period). The analogy is a straw man. Whoever said it is 'just two ...etc.,? If you want to talk about intent then do it but you're in muddy water.

Viewing such images risks increasing the production of more of them. Even if that risk is small or unproven the majority doesn't want to gamble.

In the case of child porn, I think the bigger reason why it's such a serious crime is because that population will never have political support, and they're such an easy punching bag. They're the group nobody likes.

You say that the consumption of images increases the probability of more production, but I really doubt that's the explanation for why things are why they are. I don't know if there's a market for child porn, but if there isn't, that means that consumption of child porn doesn't provide material support for crime. On the other hand, when we buy goods supported by exploitation of both adults and children, sometimes fatal exploitation, we do provide material support to an economic process with a relation to crime.

While I'm okay with entertaining a discussion on my moral responsibilities as a market participant, as well as discussion about how global economy ought to work, I wouldn't be okay with criminal culpability because I bought cheap goods or electronics.

> To make my point absolutely clear: In the case of drone strikes, children die because intel isn't always accurate and weapons aren't perfectly discriminating. Despite what you're trying to imply, if Obama could wage war with perfect intel and weaponry, he wouldn't harm a single innocent person.

Not true at all, this is one of the many reasons why children, women and many innocents die because of drone strikes: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-r... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/war...

For all intents and purposes "Obama" and the people who serve under him don't care about killing children or innocent people in general. They don't even know who they are actually killing most of the time. It's not because technology is imperfect.

I love how you treat Putin one way and Obama another...

So the argument follows if you want perfect information; make everyone at birth wear an exploding neck tag with GPS and a cell phone that'll take your head clean off if you are ever thought of as a terrorist by the United States. No more war, no more collateral damage and yes, no more Edward Snowdon or Julian Assange.

If what we are after is perfect stability and no doors government can't unlock, why not aim to tag everyone up with a government controlled device, rather than doing it via mobile phones.

I wrote almost 400 words dispelling misrepresentations of Obama and bemoaning the extent to which HN users misrepresent opposing views... and your response is to misrepresent a thought experiment as if I was proposing some sort of mustache-twirling movie villain plan.

(sigh)

I'm not sure how I can make my point any better than you just did.

I was also providing a thought experiment and a possible end game solution so that drone strikes would be unnecessary.

Maybe think about the collateral murder tape and get back to me as to that thought experiment, or what about this one:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-...

41 people murdered without trial or war and 1147 people killed who weren't targets and tens of thousands who now hate the United States, perpetuating a never ending cycle of violence.

So yeah, people do drive by and say stuff to make opposing points on discussion forums, the point was to ridicule your argument of "If Obama didn't have to murder loads of people he wouldn't". Maybe he thinks there is no alternative to 2800%+ collateral damage, do you?

You missed the point. Obama thinks that taking our privacy away will help him target the bad guys better.

So the argument is, "How many lives is your 'privacy' worth? Would you give some up to spare the 2800% collateral damage?"

Snark aside, this is, actually, the rational conversation that America and the world need to have. Like many difficult problems, it's sometimes helpful to start with a simpler version of the problem. So let's simplify it a bit to start. Let's assume for a moment that backdoors will lead to better capture ratios for terrorists- that is, a higher probability of stopping real terrorist attacks. Even if it's only the stupid copy-cat cell guys, let's assume for whatever reason that giving this access to law enforcement buys us X innocent, civilian saved lives per year, by perhaps some combination of thwarting attacks and better intel on targets.

What is X such that privacy invasion is acceptable?

This, for me, is a super-hard question.

> What is X such that privacy invasion is acceptable?

It's impossible to tell in your simplified scenario, because you haven't said what the "simplified" version of the downside of privacy invasion is. If you're someone whose job is to prevent terrorist attacks, obviously you're going to judge that the downside of privacy invasion is a lot less than the downside of terrorist attacks. But if you're someone who's concerned about the long-term consequences of giving up civil liberties, you're going to judge that the downside of giving the government backdoor access to everyone's data is a lot more than the downside of terrorist attacks.

One way to tackle this question is to look at history: how much damage has been done by terrorist attacks, child pornographers, etc., compared to the damage done by governments who were given too much power? I think the latter has done orders of magnitude more damage, which means we should be a lot more worried about privacy invasion than about terrorists. YMMV.

I originally attempted to leave the downside of privacy invasion unsimplified, and thus different people would have different opinions based on their view of this- in other words start a discussion, not look for a "right" answer that I am pretending to know (because I don't). But this is the way I think about it. Perhaps it's still too hard of a problem, but your second paragraph what I was after.

A second, more poignant way of looking at the problem is this (I'll do this one in first person, because it flat-out sucks): My friend just lost his family in a terrorist attack on an airplane. It seems likely (via whatever channels) that the attack could have been averted with more intel that was unavailable due to encryption. My friend knows that I'm against back-doors and government invasion of privacy. What do I tell him in consolation?

I think that questions like this allow us to empathize with the people who are responsible for making the decision. (Of course a counter-example is also possible: Ronald Drump has just used warrantless wiretaps to identify all of the Muslim sympathizers and has started rounding them up...)

> It seems likely (via whatever channels) that the attack could have been averted with more intel that was unavailable due to encryption.

If you don't mind answering, why does it seem likely? (You're welcome to answer that you don't want to talk further about the specific incident, or even say which specific incident it was.) I ask because my estimate of the prior probability of this actually being the case is quite low.

> My friend knows that I'm against back-doors and government invasion of privacy. What do I tell him in consolation?

Being against back-doors and government invasion of privacy doesn't preclude also being against terrorism. (I'm against both.) So you can still tell him that you're sorry he lost his family, and that you hope the people responsible are caught and punished.

In this hypothetical construct, the arrangements for the attack were coordinated via cell phones. We had the ability to be able to control this information but forfeited that ability due to concerns about privacy.

When I tell my friend I'm sorry he lost his family and I hope the people responsible are caught and punished, it will beg the retort that the situation could have been prevented. And people like me are the reason this wasn't prevented.

The hard part of the question is when you look someone in the eye and tell them that their horrible loss is necessary for a greater ideal. I think a lot of idealistic talk goes away when it gets real. (Especially if you have kids.) And my main point is that I can empathize with a candidate who espouses the "ideal" but when it gets real has misgivings.

> In this hypothetical construct

Oh. I thought you were referring to an actual event.

> the arrangements for the attack were coordinated via cell phones. We had the ability to be able to control this information but forfeited that ability due to concerns about privacy.

Does your hypothetical take into account the future cost of giving up privacy? See below.

> their horrible loss is necessary for a greater ideal

No, it's not for an abstract "greater ideal". It's to avoid the highly concrete consequence of even more people dying when the government gets too powerful.

The problem is that, in situations like your hypothetical, the worse consequence is still in the future, while the bad consequence of avoiding it is in the present. So people are greatly tempted to convince themselves that the worse consequence won't actually come to pass. That's why I talked about looking at history: in historical scenarios that are similar to your hypothetical, we know not just the shorter term gain of giving the government more power--some particular bad thing got prevented--but the longer term cost--millions of people dying because the government got powerful enough that its screwups were catastrophic.

So, at the wake for my friend's family you are going to give a history lesson on big bad privacy-invading government; "freedom isn't free" or something. I have a hunch that won't play well. (Yes, the idea that our government will do horrific things down the line is abstract to most people. It's fitting a pattern of past behavior by bad governments to our current scenario. Most people don't actually believe that our government is engaging in world-criminal or war-crime behavior that needs to be stopped. The idea that it will turn on its own citizens is pretty far-fetched to them.)

We've probably gone on long enough in this thread, but my feeling is that if you want to get people to fear their government more than the terrorists, you have to make it as personal to them as the fear of terrorism already is. Until somebody can do that well we are all just preaching to the choir here.

And in order to have that conversation, we have to be ready to ask the other, uncomfortable one that I've been posing: "What is X such that privacy invasion is acceptable?" One planeload of people per decade? Per year?

We can ask it with a slightly different thought experiment. "OK the NSA surveillance data allowed us to thwart 5 plots last year; probably saved 200 lives. Turn it off, it's not worth it in the long run." If we replace 200 by X, what is X such that you, President pdonis, let the NSA program survive? How about President dhimes? President ady_ppp or President jkestner? I'm not asking for answers here, but just to consider this as a very real question faced by people who have to make these decisions, and that a whole lot of people would say X = 0 when it comes time to make that decision. I think Obama might be one of those.

NB I'm actually in pretty good agreement with you on the privacy debate, but I think that concrete questions like these need to be discussed.

> at the wake for my friend's family you are going to give a history lesson on big bad privacy-invading government

Why in the world would I want to do that at the wake? Do you insist on stating all of your personal beliefs to everyone on every occasion?

Anyway, I already suggested what to tell your friend, and it wasn't anything like this.

> my feeling is that if you want to get people to fear their government more than the terrorists, you have to make it as personal to them as the fear of terrorism already is.

Sure, that's easy: just describe what a Nazi or Soviet concentration camp was like, and ask, how would you like to live in one of those? The only reason that might seem less "personal" to people these days is that 9/11 happened more recently than WWII or the Cold War. But that's not a rational reason to fear terrorism more than excessive government power.

(For extra credit, you could describe how the Nazis came to power in Germany: they were voted in by a democratic election.)

> the NSA surveillance data allowed us to thwart 5 plots last year; probably saved 200 lives.

But the problem is that, while the President gets to see these numbers, we the people don't. They're secret. So the decision can't be made as a public decision where we can have a debate and then vote. It has to be made unilaterally by the very small number of people who actually have the relevant data.

Also, phrasing the question as "how large must X be for the program to survive" forecloses the possibility of finding other ways to save the same number of lives, without sacrificing everyone's privacy.

Why in the world would I want to do that at the wake?

That was your answer to the question I posed. You keep wanting removed conversations- that's the easy part. The hard part is what do you say when you have to look someone in the eye and explain yourself.

But the problem is that, while the President gets to see these numbers, we the people don't. They're secret. So the decision can't be made as a public decision where we can have a debate and then vote.

Precisely! That's why we have to be willing to discuss it also. Otherwise they have to make the determination and we all get to sit back and throw rocks at them. That's easy and cowardly for us, and not really good for them.

Also, phrasing the question as "how large must X be for the program to survive" forecloses the possibility of finding other ways to save the same number of lives, without sacrificing everyone's privacy.

No, nothing about this is mutually exclusive with (to?) working on better ways to keep us safe that help us keep our privacy. Of course, it would be difficult to regain that privacy, but I would definitely want sunset clauses built into any program or laws the I (as President dhimes) would sign off on.

> That was your answer to the question I posed.

It most certainly was not. I said you could tell your friend that you're sorry and you hope the people responsible are caught and punished. I said nothing about giving a speech at the wake on the dangers of giving up privacy. You said it wouldn't play well, which is of course true; but that's precisely why you don't want to have that discussion at a wake. You want to have it when there's no immediate issue at hand, so people can be reasonably objective.

> The hard part is what do you say when you have to look someone in the eye and explain yourself.

If your friend comes and asks you point blank why you're against giving up privacy, given what happened to his family, then you have to answer him, yes. But that is worlds different from making a speech, unprompted, at a wake.

If he asks you, your honest answer would have to be that, while you are sorry about his family and hope that the people responsible are caught and punished, you still believe that, in the long run, the dangers of excessive government power are greater than the dangers of terrorism. (That's assuming, of course, that you actually do believe that. But if not, what's the point of the hypothetical?) What else can you say? Your friend probably won't like it, but he's your friend; you've got to be honest with him.

> That's why we have to be willing to discuss it also.

You're missing the point. We can't discuss it because we don't know the facts. And we can't be told the facts because, if there is any benefit to the surveillance, making public how much benefit we get would destroy the benefit. That's why all of these activities are kept secret in the first place.

> Otherwise they have to make the determination and we all get to sit back and throw rocks at them.

We can, but nothing forces us to. Anyone who believes it's worth it for the government to do mass surveillance, and any other covert activities for that matter, has to also be willing to not criticize decisions made based on data that can't be made public. Otherwise they're just a hypocrite who wants the benefits without the costs. I would say that the main source of hypocrisy about that is not individual citizens, but the press.

Oh dear, I don't think such aggressive patronising comments deserve responses.

I must have written it poorly. I didn't mean for it to be aggressive nor patronizing. I meant it sincerely as a thought experiment. I extended to you the Principle of Charity in that you believe that Obama would actually reduce innocent casualties if he could- I am saying that he believes that more information will help him do so. I apologize if it didn't come across that way. I try to not be a web asshole- +1 for calling it out.

Ah, that's cool, I think disagree but an opening gambit of "You missed the point" felt very harsh to me.

I can see both sides of the debate on this but I do think trusting people with the keys to all the doors who believe drone strikes actually help Does not make sense. America and the west cause more terror than they receive.

And an issue with this question is that the government that's currently posing it stands to gain by softening the damage to privacy. I don't like that it has a horse in this race.

> The horrific stories you hear about are accidents, not deliberate. Due to incomplete information, poor decision-making, or just plain bad luck, soldiers sometimes kill innocents.

Not true. Just one example: in 2011, Obama authorized the assassination of an American man and his 16-year-old (American) son[0] by separate drone strikes. The father's assassination was completely deliberate. The son was killed two weeks later, when he went looking for his father.

Both the father and the boy were American citizens. Neither was even in a country with which the US is at war (although that wouldn't have been sufficient reason to order the extra-judicial assassinations of these US citizens them even if they were)[1].

Rather than "everyone agreeing this was a tragedy", it was pretty quickly buried in the news. Most news outlets actually refused to even acknowledge that they were American (using the euphemistic epithet "US-born", as if implying that either one renounced his citizenship).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki

[1] Before anybody takes issue with the characterization of this man and boy as US citizens, arguing that Constitutional rights [should|do] apply to everyone: I certainly agree that the US should not be ordering extra-judicial assassinations of any civilian, American or not. But it's notable in this case, because it highlights the absurdity of the policy. If we can't expect US citizens to be protected against extra-judicial assassination by their own country's government, then what rights can they expect?

Thanks for bringing this up. The al-Awlaki case is a clear testimony of what has become of the "benevolent" super-power.

Officials in your article say they didn't know the son was there, and were targeting Ibrahim al-Banna. Sounds like an accident to me.

And it sure as hell wasn't buried in the news. It was a controversial event, on the front page of the NYT, and the Administration was forced to clarify specific policies on who they would target with drone strikes.

If theirs is a drive-by misrepresentation, yours is a sycophancy and an adulation.

The argument from bad people is a false one, largely because bad people are people and hence do everything that people in general do. As a result, it can be applied to anything. If it's a universally valid point for the prohibition of anything, then it is cognitively meaningless.

Nor is it all absurd to believe that a ruler is ambivalent over their subjects. Why would such a thing be absurd? The state and political power are not instrumentalist concepts. We must apply behavioral symmetry to all power elites.

(It's also amusing to see "incomplete information" brought up again. That's the same pseudohistory used to justify Iraq in retrospect.)

> I don't agree with that, but it's not an unreasonable view to hold.

Given that Obama chose not to conduct an independent investigation into 9/11 or prosecute the folks involved, it's actually a pretty unreasonable opinion to hold.

> Or prosecute the folks involved

Or it would mean that Obama largely believed the 9-11 comission report. Who do you have in mind that he should have directed the AG to prosecute?

> Or it would mean that Obama largely believed the 9-11 comission report.

Given that the authors of the 9/11 commission report have pointed out numerous serious errors and omissions, that seems highly unlikely.

First, law enforcement catches and successfully prosecutes pedophiles all the time. It's called "good old fashioned police work" and it doesn't require violating our 1st, 4th, and 13th amendment rights.

Second, how on earth is Obama going to force me to stop using crypto, except to threaten me with violence for using it? Perhaps the government will start to license programmers, and prosecute those caught writing software without a license? (Don't laugh -- they already license hairdressers, marriages, and dogs.)

Of course he cares about the lives of children in those countries. At the same time, to call them just accidents, as us laymen use the term, is naive. Do you really think the US government went into these countries thinking they wouldn't kill any civilians? It is not an "oops, I didn't know I would kill civilians." It's an "oops, I didn't mean to kill civilians, but I knew I would. But, we decided it would be worth it."

taking actions that have some risk of killing or greviously harming others is not uncommon or monstrous. Well, at least if it is, then we should be much harsher to folks who drive cars.

Responded to your statement here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273766

Re: the "accidents": The difference here is that the military is never convicted for manslaughter.