My Priorities for the Next Four Years | Hacker News Reader

My Priorities for the Next Four Years

schneier.com

251 pointsr721147 comments

Good post and worth the read. His four priorities are:

1. fight the fights. There will be more government surveillance and more corporate surveillance.

2. prepare for those fights. Much of the next four years will be reactive, but we can prepare somewhat.

3. lay the groundwork for a better future.

4. continue to solve the actual problems. The serious security issues around cybercrime, cyber-espionage, cyberwar, the Internet of Things...

This isn't exactly presented like a political platform or policy agenda, but in fact that is what it is - and I am happy to see it. Schneier has been writing for so long - becoming such the guru - that I'm glad to see him courting audiences beyond the security community.

I have a hard time imagining these exact same four points not being equally urgent if we were ushering in a Clinton administration.

From an IT perspective, I think it's more important to recognize the increasing complexity and chaos of our security environment, and recognize that governments are not homogeneous objects, but themselves composed of good actors and bad actors.

Engage the good, protect yourself from the bad.

Brother Bruce has been fighting the righteous fight for a long time now, and he has been doing it with minimal ego and loads of class.

And here is he is trying to lift the spirits of the anti-Trump privacy folks. What's wrong with that?

Where's the love y'all?

I wouldn't read too much into this. People on Hacker News have this pavlovian need to contradict any article they're commenting on. If Schneier was saying the task was too big, you'd have people saying he's giving up too easily.

> People on Hacker News have this pavlovian need to contradict any article they're commenting on.

No they don't.

"Look here, this isn't an argument, it's just a contradiction!"

I think the negativity comes from the fact that it's hard to watch your heroes fall.

Which heroes? Trump?

Bruce Schneier.

Master Bra'tac

No, it's that people that disagree with an article are more likely to comment.

> And if there's a major terrorist attack under Trump's watch, it'll be open season on our liberties.

I'm starting to believe that there is not a single world leader who is more than one crisis away from "reluctantly" assuming dictatorial powers. And the populations of advanced economies have no conception of the value of their liberty, since they so willingly give it away.

I think in Europe the reactions are usually a little more measured. After the attacks in Paris and Brussels, there was a reaction and a rise in populism, but I wouldn't call it assuming dictatorial powers.

I don't think it could be compared to Trump's reaction in the hypothetical case where there was a similar terrorist attack in e.g. New York.

It's interesting that countries like Germany where the population experienced the Nazis and the Stasi are the leaders in resisting this populism.

In the US, we probably don't understand how bad it can get yet.

Europe also has had more experience with organised terrorism in the 20th century: Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany, CCC in Belgium, ETA in Basque country, IRA in Ireland, to name just a few. That might also partly explain why the reactions to terror attacks are more measured.

And, over time, they too will start to forget just how bad it was. It's just how humans are wired.

There have been bombings, gun battles and other mass murders in the streets of Paris, Marseille and elsewhere in Europe, and no sign of dictatorships.

France has curtailed liberties in the wake of recent attacks. No dictators though, you're right.

Interesting read, but I can't imagine how anyone could convince Google and Facebook to change their business models at this stage unless the market truly revolted and started moving away from their products due to privacy issues. I think change is much more likely to happen through disruption (which perhaps is the other side of his ideas, coming up with business models that are more privacy-friendly).

I think security and privacy are a lot more important to people than Facebook and Google's market share are thought to indicate. In 2017 they will be real selling points for a product if it can match the UX and features of the incumbents. That is the hard part -- particularly given that good UX for secure products has a long way to go. I don't believe it's impossible, but it requires a mindset shift in the industry. "Give an extra key to your friend/family member in case you lock yourself out" is an idea that's been with us a lot longer than "contact customer support." It just isn't how the tech industry has ever worked.

Matching the UX and features is only a part of it. Overcoming network effects are possibly an even bigger one.

And even if you do beat their network effects, they will throw as much cash at you as it takes to buy you out... sigh.

I think employee revolt is a much more promising avenue of attack than market revolt. Many of the people working at Google and Facebook are deeply uneasy about what the data they've collected can be used for. Watching their CEO (or COO) march meekly into Trump tower does not alleviate those anxieties.

I suppose however it is hard to revolt against the hand that feeds you more than 2x market rate. "Everyone has their price" sort of thing ..

That works both ways, though. Everyone also has an ethical limit, and that is a powerful point of leverage, especially in an industry where good engineers are hard to find and quick to find jobs.

It's very hard to be the only person promising to revolt, but it gets easier the more people that do it. What's the threshold percentage of Google or Facebook's workforce that would need to commit themselves before it would not only be safe to join them, but their demands would need to be reckoned with by management? I don't know (I'm really asking) but my gut says it's nowhere close to 51%.

The problem is how do you coordinate that? It's like forming a union in secret... Under the king of surveillance. How do you even get two people together, when talking to the wrong one will probably get you fired?

I also think many of those most likely to have privacy issues with Google at this point have moved on, it's not like this is a new concern with Google. I suspect a lot of people still at Google have embraced the post-privacy mindset I've seen suggested and even endorsed by a variety of futurists.

I think there are lots of valid questions to be asked about any ambitious project and it's not wrong to ask them.

But I'm focused right now on my question, the one I just asked. What do we think the threshold is? What's the inflection point?

I think it may be higher than you think. Given how much of their revenue is advertising, and their entire direction on that advertising and how they market it is the targeting based on user profiles... I'd think firing even a large number of employees is easier than giving up your entire business.

Unless, and I guess maybe this is a worthwhile question to tackle first: Could Google and Facebook's advertising models still work without the privacy issues? Is their value as ad platforms still there if they can't operate that level of tracking?

"It's very hard to be the only person promising to revolt, but it gets easier the more people that do it."

Been there, done that. Several times. It's why I don't do it anymore. That threshold is higher than many people think. What happens most is insider attack where a person unsure will sell the people out to administration or management. Revolt gets squashed with that person maybe getting some compensation for it. Hard to build up to the necessary threshold without this happening. Once it does, it's witchhunting time. Most people just aren't cut out for spending long periods of time in such circumstances.

I doubt the tech people hoping from one cozy job to the next at six digits will have more endurance or patience than rebels in other sectors. I still see potential, esp if a wave of support started on social media somehow, but it looks bleak if we're talking organized rebellion inside likes of Facebook or Google.

What other similar things have you tried to organize? How many people got involved? What were the outcomes?

I have to keep the details private. All involved under 30 people who had some fight in them and motivation to resist in direction I pushed.

First one all but me backed out on key moment with one selling me out. Others had similar pattern with lots of support in those that talk, too few actually acting, some ratting, and it fizzling out as actors get scared or removed from a situation with too many talkers. All went that way. Im actually doing another right now but directly and in open since I anticipate others will bitch out.

In any case, the pattern I describe seems very similar to large-scale activism work or just how people in this country talk vs respond on big issues. It's either human nature itself or a weakness of American culture.

Ok, but right now we're closing on on 1300 signatures for the NeverAgain.tech pledge. I'm not so worried about the kinds of things that happen in 30 person groups, though I recognize those things are real.

They have 1300 supporting their position. Which large, tech companies or VC-funded companies have agreed to their terms with operational implementations on the way?

Or is it a tiny fraction of the tech community talking with little delivered while most support status quo? That's the pattern from the 30 person groups and national level things in politics. If it's not happening & they're succeeding, they're an example of something going well that doesnt fit what Im describing. Are they succeeding?

I don't understand your question. It's not a petition, it's a pledge. There's nothing their employers can do about it; it's not up to them. That's the point of a pledge.

I may be misunderstanding the reason for the example. You were talking about revolt and what threshold of support was required originally. My trend was personal experiences involving revolt where most talk more than they act when huge sacrifice is necessary. A common problem in politics in general. So, this is a pledge to not put together data that can be used for (basically) targeting minorities, destroying such data, the backups, etc. Also boycotting work for them and legal resistance. It follows they must be refusing to work at such places (eg Facebook, Google), not using their products/services, pushing for changes at them if they do work there before quiting if there's No's, preventing it in other companies via business model, and so on. They would expect change in tech company practices to result due to this pledge/revolt.

We'll be able to judge their current commitment based on their employment and if they boycott all such surveillance services with forms of PII that can be used for targeting. The latter due to Vote With Wallet concept of not financially supporting evil companies. We'll see if it fits my pattern by looking for whether a huge percentage of developers are committed to this over maybe next year or so. Also what changes happen in these companies' data collection and retention practices due to pressure from the pledge/revolt causing enough high-talent turnover. My pattern, if they fall victim to it, says they'll remain a tiny percentage of tech employees, probably use surveillance-powered goods, and likes of Google or Facebook continue collecting a trove of data that benefits such targeting since pressure didnt work.

I hope it does work, though, as I support the goals of the pledge. I'll leave this tangent at that.

Furthermore, I think that a relatively small number of us signing the pledge can have outsized impact when you take the political climate in the Bay Area (and California/the West Coast generally) into account. It's not like we're a small political minority wanting to defy Trump. Quite the opposite: the pledge serves as a way of reminding the people in charge that those of us opposed to Trump's policies in the areas that these companies depend on vastly outnumber the likes of Thiel.

In fact, you don't even have to look at just the Bay Area. Americans don't want a Muslim registry. They don't want mass deportations. Even Trump voters don't want mass deportations [1]. Tech companies need to remember that if they facilitate mass deportations, they are working against the will of the American people.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/09/trump...

That just highlights you moral bankruptcy if you cooperate with these practices: these people are employable like no one else, and they should have the ability to safe up a very nice cushions rather quickly.

IMO there are only two companies in the world right now that could possibly compete against Google and Facebook on that kind of scale but with a different, more privacy-respecting business model.

Unfortunately, the one in Cupertino only takes a lukewarm stance on privacy despite being in an excellent position to make it a distinguishing feature of their platform; and the one in Redmond with its always-calling-home operating system has just blown a ton of goodwill that it had accumulated over the last few years.

Microsoft unfortunately learned some of the right lessons of how Google beat them... And some of the wrong ones too.

But as their privacy fiascos aren't central to their business (unlike where ads is 99% of Google's), my hope is they can still do an about face on privacy.

> "the one in Cupertino only takes a lukewarm stance on privacy"

Genuinely curious - but how so?

My observation of Apple so far is that they've taken a remarkably strong privacy stance. Not maintaining logs of iMessage, keeping nearly all personal data on-device, ensuring analytics do not leak personal data, going above and beyond to ensure their customers' devices are strongly encrypted (and exceptionally difficult to break, even for government entities)...

And they've made a point of publicizing this during their keynotes, too, so much of this isn't necessarily even under-the-hood details that only us nerds know about.

Indeed. They stared down the FBI with engineers threatening to quit and/or go to jail rather than compromising their users' phones. That had the enormous risk of making them unpalatable to the conservative half of the nation.

Compare to yahoo, where they apparently handed out data to anyone asking, and not a single person considered it m0re important than their paycheck.

A single person reportedly did consider it more important: "According to two of the former employees, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer's decision to obey the directive roiled some senior executives and led to the June 2015 departure of Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now holds the top security job at Facebook Inc."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-exclusive-idUSKC...

Yes, they do talk about privacy, and I respect them for taking a stance when the FBI asked them to decrypt a phone.

But talking to nerds is not enough. Apple could do so much more than that. Their marketing department could make privacy a major conversation point for ordinary people who are looking for a new phone or tablet. Like, make the Apple brand synonymous with peace of mind. Drill that into every consumer's subconsciousness. Actually hurt Google's bottom line where it hurts them the most, because they have no other business model.

In an ideal world, major Android vendors such as Samsung would take notice and begin to make drastic changes to their branches of Android in order to compete with Apple in the privacy department. Leaving the Pixel as the worst choice when it comes to privacy :p

Unfortunately, the one in Cupertino only takes a lukewarm stance on privacy despite being in an excellent position to make it a distinguishing feature of their platform;

(EDIT: read your reply further down; okay, we're not as far apart as I thought; in fact, I think you're spot on. I'll leave this here anyway.) Wow, do we have differing points of view. The way I look at Apple these days is that privacy is the distinguishing feature of their platform. What other device maker is visibly working to ensure that even they themselves cannot access the data on your device?

Now, any contrarian argument is sure to point out the holes, but IMO it's the best we've got at the moment, and Apple appears to me to give a message of "we don't care about your data, we're content to collect money from you by selling you shiny trinkets".

I think Apple is at least as dangerous in the long-run. Yes, an iPhone is much more secure (against anyone but Apple) than any Android phone. But it's much less free. In the Apple ecosystem users have no say over their devices, and developers only do with Apple's blessing. In an Apple-dominated world there are 3 castes: Apple, Apple's favorite devs, and everyone else who has no say in technology anymore. I'm no RMS, but I think this would be a disaster.

I was watching the 'Dunkirk' trailer the other day and a line stuck out to me:

An older fishing boat captain is talking to a younger and soggy rescued solider and says: "There's no hiding from this, boy", referring to the coming of WW2 in general and the captain having to turn to boat back into the melee to search for more survivors.

I think that line is also what Bruce is trying to say to a lot of the EFF supporters out there. There's no hiding from the next 4 years. The implication is then that you have to fight.

I know EFF and Schneier have been fighting the expansion of the US spy machine, but it seems like a lot of more liberal leaning groups didn't push back when Obama expanded policies started under Bush and that's pretty disappointing. Civil liberties and rights are to be protected even if your candidate/party is in power. Not just when the other party takes over.

This seems irrelevant and possibly untrue. What liberal leaning groups are you referring to?

The ACLU has, maybe for fund raising reasons, taken out a full page ad in the NYTimes promising to challenge Trump. They never took out a full page ad when Obama escalated the drone war or killed a US citizen without trial via drone strike.

A lot of pro-marijuana groups (let's face it they are liberal groups) weren't aggressively going after the DEA under Obama because his administration had a hands-off approach. Suddenly this is a huge issue with the nomination of Sessions, even though the law is still the same under both administrations.

None of the groups have gone after the flagrant violation of 1st amendment rights that the 'hate speech' laws bring about. You might not like a neonazi defaming Jewish people but hate speech laws are counter to the US Constitution.

The ACLU hasn't defended aggressions against the 2nd amendment.

The PATRIOT act was renewed under Obama. The NDAA was also renewed with increased powers under Obama. NSA spying has increased, the FBI has taken more liberties in 'national security letters' and the CIA has still had free reign to do as they please.

Yet all of the liberal watchdog groups gave Obama a free pass, even though he was basically the same as Bush whom they hated. You can go read his record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla... and yet the ACLU never took out a full page ad about his spying. Maybe you will also read this editorial: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/opinion/la-oe-turley...

Where were the 'civil liberty' or 'civil rights' groups these past 8 years?

Okay... but this has nothing to do with my comment.

How many accounts do you have? Because I was asked what liberal leaning groups didn't fight Obama and I replied.

Edit: Here is the link (time-stamped to 1:10): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-eMt3SrfFUhttps://www.youtub...

> Under a Clinton administration, my list would have looked much the same.

And the political polarization and bantering continue. But at least there is some truth in there.

The context of the next line is somewhat important:

> Trump's election just means the threats will be much greater, and the battles a lot harder to win.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Certainly most of these problems (surveilance, assaults on various liberties, etc.) were started/ramped up under W. Bush, but most of them were greately enhanced during Obama, so I have no reason to assume that Hillary might be any better (except better at PR/propaganda, of course).

So far the surveillance and related laws suck, but to some extent they're controlled and somewhat public. Even before the Snowden revelations, some monitoring was expected, and some was talked about. Of course the scale and depth were a new revelation (tapping private links, etc.), but it existed in some kind of framework that was supposed to be controlled. (Regardless of how well that worked)

Since the new potential president is a lot less organised and generally random in his actions, the old framework will be harder to rely on. Who gets the access now? Who's tracked? Who's trusted if he doesn't believe the current agencies? That's still unknown and we may get more secret deals now without clearly defined rules (even if they're not public)

Basically we got a chaotic neutral/evil leader now. Anything can happen and I don't expect he'll care about the subtle effects of new decisions.

One reason for thinking that Trump would be worse is precisely because Hillary and Obama's propaganda machine is good at painting them in a better light.

Trump doesn't have to pretend to care about human rights, or war crimes or civil liberties - he outright came out in favour of torture, the killing of innocent people, racial profiling, and said a whole bunch of other heinous things during the campaign.

At least with the previous politicians, bad publicity can act as some sort of brake on the violence and the repression and the surveillance, because you have some leverage against a politician's public image. When the next Abu Ghraib-type scandal comes out, Trump can legitimately say 'So what? I said I as going to torture suspects during the campaign, didn't I?'; if it came out under Hillary, she'd be under immediate pressure to shut down whatever happened.

Having an openly lawless politician is a shitton worse than having a closet lawbreaker with a good PR machine.

Does this theory work if you apply it to the past? Have Snowden's leaks about surveillance or relevations about Obama's drone programme (killing people, even US citizens, without trial and with a lot of collateral damage) resulted in any change in government behaviour (except more secrecy and extensive supression of leaks/information)?

My take on these questions is "no", but I haven't been following the events in detail, so I might be missing some positive consequences.

> Does this theory work if you apply it to the past? Have Snowden's leaks about surveillance or relevations about Obama's drone programme resulted in any change in government behaviour?

There were certainly Obama's voters that were disappointed by what Obama did, after he previously spoke differently. They have thought along these lines of the article:

"business as usual" ... "problems won't go away on their own"

... and didn't vote for her.

The problem is only having a binary choice when the both options don't look good.

We wouldn't be having these conversations if the leaks hadn't happened.

It was suspected before, now it's known. That's a fairly big difference.

Or in other words, speaking about nation state backhaul taps, etc as a threat model before made you a paranoid OpenBSD cyberpunk: now it makes you an average HN commenter.

"We" are having these conversations, but in the time since the Snowden leak, have we seen the government move away from the behaviors and patterns that Snowden brought to light?

Big ship, slow turning, etc. It's been 3 years since the initial leaks.

It took roughly 2 years between the Washington Post first reporting on Watergate and Nixon's resignation. And that was pertaining to multiple obviously illegal activities. National security and executive orders have a lot more gray area.

The most important thing is to keep the pressure on, keep it in the public discourse, and make it uncomfortable for anyone who supports the apparatus.

Snowden forced the government to put in place a whole bunch of new procedures and regulations over the NSA. Much of it is, of course, cosmetic and inadequate, but it works towards slowing down the surveillance campaign and providing some sort of leverage for future lawsuits and the like.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying...

Except that the next Abu Ghraib type scandal has already occurred under Obama many times over, but no one cares anymore. How about the CIA shoving hoses into detainee's rectums and pumping food in as part of so-called rectal 'feeding'? It's rape, plain and simple, and it's lead to rectal prolapse and anal fissure in some of the detainees.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-report-r...

Sure - bad stuff still happens. It gets found out, some people complain, the people in power modify their behavior (sometimes by not being so evil, sometimes by finding better ways of hiding it - the latter can be useful for at least slowing the bad guys down and making their lives more complicated and difficult).

But we are still in the world where the CIA and the President of the USA can be publicly pressured into not waterboarding people anymore. It's never a cure-all, but there's at least some scope for modifying the behavior of the rulers through public pressure.

That's likely to change on January 21st.

If you want to see what a leader untroubled by public condemnation of lawbreaking is like, you just have to cast your gaze towards the Phillipines, where there's a huge upsurge in state-sanctioned vigilante and police murders. How far Trump takes the USA in that direction is still grounds for speculation.

> If you want to see what a leader untroubled by public condemnation of lawbreaking is like, you just have to cast your gaze towards the Phillipines, where there's a huge upsurge in state-sanctioned vigilante and police murders.

Considering Trump has praised the murders already I would say it's anyones guess what happens now:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/philippines-ro...

For anyone looking for insight into the situation in the Philippines please read this fantastic photojournal from the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/rod...

> But we are still in the world where the CIA and the President of the USA can be publicly pressured into not waterboarding people anymore.

A world where the President and the CIA can be pressured into saying that we don't waterboard anymore. Respectfully, I think it's naive to think that waterboarding and much worse are no longer occurring at CIA black sites, and that the majority of these activities ever come to light. Obama passed legislation outlawing waterboarding, but what oversight apparatus did he create? Has he punished CIA personnel responsible for torture?

> were started/ramped up under W. Bush

Assault on privacy and massive surveillance started as soon as the internet became a household word - which actually happened under Bill Clinton.

Except the author never gets around to adding substance to his claims about how EITHER Clinton or Trump would be incrementally worse than Obama regarding "government/corporate surveillance."

I think it's off-topic[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it's assumed, because Bush was worse than Clinton, and Obama was worse than Bush. There's no reason to think that either Hillary or Trump would not continue the trend.

That, and the earlier part where he states (emphasis mine):

> That alternative narrative would stress business as usual, and continue to obscure the deep social problems in our society. Those problems won't go away on their own, and in this alternative future they would continue to fester under the surface, getting steadily worse. This election exposed those problems for everyone to see.

What makes him think privacy was not going to be as much or more in the cross-hair under Clinton? I was really put off by his first paragraph. As much as I have distaste for Trump, I don't see that level of power in the presidency.

I homed in on the same quote.

Not an informative essay.

Huh? Isn't that statement trying to defuse the political polarization?

You're assuming political preferences of the reader.

The author's attacking both Clinton and Trump without offering substantive reasons.

Do you enjoy seeing dead horses beaten?

I don't understand. Can you explain?

The election is over. Can we stop thinking about this as Trump good = Clinton bad or Clinton good = Trump bad, and worry about the policies of the actual president-elect instead of the possible policies of a past secretary of state?

I have my (extremely positive) opinions of Clinton, but they're irrelevant now. If there's something we disagree with Trump on, that's not a pro-Clinton statement because there's no chance of Clinton becoming president in the next four years.

Ideally, he shouldn't have to acknowledge Clinton at all to make the point he's making. The fact that he feels obligated to, and that that's seen as a good and moderate statement, is a sign of how uphill the fight to effectively oppose our president's bad policies is going to be. (Although we might also have inferred that from how poorly we're effectively opposing our current president's bad policies.)

That's literally the opposite point from what you're citing.

Key sentence: "Under a Clinton administration, my list would have looked much the same."

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Schneier. But he is fooling himself if he thinks a Clinton administration would be one iota less threatening.

That's exactly the point of the quote... The list would have looked much the same. Or am I missing something?

Same in content, but less extreme. Which seems like a completely fair assessment, given the cabinet choices so far.

The following sentence is "Trump's election just means the threats will be much greater, and the battles a lot harder to win."

And I think that's a bunch of poppycock. The threats would be no less under a Clinton administration. The battles would be no easier.

Have we all forgotten the Clipper Chip debacle under the last Clinton administration?

The last Clinton Administration increased FOIA capability & compromised on the crypto wars. Wheeler at FCC fought the schemes of ISP's. In each of these areas, Trump would do worse due to his politics or style of not compromising.

I'm a left-leaning moderate who expected Trump to win. I'm not saying any of this in a bubble. Republicans have almost always fought against civil rights (2nd Amendment is exception), privacy, far enforcement of copyright, and net neutrality. That's in the laws they pushed or passed rather than campaign promises. Trump, if he's consistent with Republican politics, will likewise do worse for people concerned about these areas. Better for those who liked the status quo & want noose tightened around individuals necks for big business & government.

I'm still holding out for the 3rd option of him knocking out a lot of this bad stuff after just saying what he needed to get elected. He could feed his ego quite well as a hero against bad laws created by special interests. On top of whatever else he does. Hope he does it but no evidence so far.

Two thoughts I had on why this indeed might apply:

A) The tech industry so far generally has leaned Democrat overall when it comes to lobbying / political gaming. Their power on influencing an all-GOP government thus might be quite diminished as a result of this election cycle.

B) Donald Trump's a wildcard to me. I don't see Trump as a certainty to be worse than Clinton. But he might be. It's possible that Donald Trump performs simply as GOP figurehead, in which case we know what to expect (roughly the same as Clinton, to be honest, minus the diminished influence). It's also possible that Donald Trump is blatantly okay with using state-sponsored hacking / surveillance / etc. for personal political reasons or even just grudge-settling. Under this circumstance, I do believe that probably would be worse than a speculative Clinton administration.

It's not like Clinton was great on computer security issues at all; I think Bruce's post made that perfectly clear.

No, he is correct.

A typical Administration tries for the power to utterly trample liberties, but then is fairly modest about how it actually uses the power. This is, in itself, concerning but not necessarily catastrophic. After all, the government also has the guns and other weapons to kill us all, but probably isn't going to do that either.

The catastrophes occur when the government is less restrained in using the massive power it always has.

I think he should plan for 8 years :) Trump might get another term. Trump probably will win the next election because he knows how to attract populace. At least this has worked beautifully in other places.

To be fair a lot of thing he talk about are sensible. But he doesn't have a clue on how to fix them so he won't bring any meaningful change. He did the talking and won. He will talk again and win again.

> Trump probably will win the next election because he knows how to attract populace.

Trump only won because fewer Liberals voted. I don't think that will happen 4 years from now.

Realistically the incumbent has a huge advantage in an election. I won't rule out that Trump does something bad enough to invalidate it, or even get impeached early, but if he makes it four years there's a good chance he'll be doing eight.

Fewer liberals voted because a lot of people couldn't stomach Hillary, and a lot of people were apathetic toward her. She didn't excite many people. If the Democrats run someone less entitled, less establishment, less robotic (for want of a better word), then that should help.

On the other hand, Trump needs to deliver, or have a mighty good reason why not. Talking big won't be enough next time. If he hasn't actually done anything for job creation, saying "I'll create jobs" won't cut it.

Yes, he'll have the incumbent's advantage. But people turned to Trump because they were desperate, because the status quo was failing them. That won't be enough to get Trump another four years if he doesn't deliver during the first four. It will just make people desperate for something different.

> That won't be enough to get Trump another four years if he doesn't deliver during the first four.

Not to be confronting but Obama got elected twice. Did he delivered the first time?

Obama probably shouldn't have been elected twice... but the Republicans ran Romney. He was nearly as hard to get excited about as Hillary. Obama, on the other hand, was very good at inspiring people.

Did he deliver? Well, the economy didn't crater into a Great Depression, so kind of yes. But he left us with a not-really-recovered economy in 2012, so kind of no.

Look, I may be under-rating Trump's ability to genuinely inspire trust. He may be able to bamboozle enough people into buying more empty promises and lack of substance in 2020. I just don't think the "true believers" were enough of his voters this time for him to be able to pull it off.

[Edit: If, by some stroke of insanity, the Democrats run Hillary again in 2020, Trump may well win.]

Let's also not forget that Trump lost the popular vote, so if we didn't have this arcane system, he would have lost. The majority of people (who at least voted, I imagine most people who didn't vote would have gone with the Democrat) didn't vote for him.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/dec/...

> we have a defeated majority

I take this to mean HRC supporters. It's also important to realize and recognize the pains being endured by the "minority" (I hate that word when it comes to binary politics and the "minority" is only 1-2% smaller than the "majority") that caused them to support Trump in the first place.

Failing to do so, or treating them as idiots, is only going to exacerbate the problem. Bruce Schneier addresses that a bit, but I think it's even more important, since his message also needs to reach so many of them.

It might also be more accurate to say "a defeated plurality" (Trump's 46% and Clinton's 48% are both minorities of the electorate).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_(voting)

First, I don't think that Schneier is ignoring the pains/problems of the minority. He said, "That alternative narrative [a Clinton win] would stress business as usual, and continue to obscure the deep social problems in our society. Those problems won't go away on their own, and in this alternative future they would continue to fester under the surface, getting steadily worse." I don't think he was referring only to racism, sexism, and/or anti-liberal sentiment. I think (but cannot prove) that he was referring to real problems (many of them economic in origin) that have devastated large swathes of the country.

Second: Complaining about Hillary winning the popular vote is like complaining that a football team lost even though they had the most yards of offense. The rules say that's not how the game is scored. Saying that the rules should have given victory to the other team is after-the-fact sour grapes.

This comment from Keith Glass is the perfect response to Schneier: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/my_priorities...

Meh. It quibbles over points that have no impact on the actual message of the blog post regarding security.

> Like many, I was surprised and shocked by the election of Donald Trump as president.

To me, this is a fundamental flaw with those in charge of our security. Your job in security is essentially to predict the future. The best security should be surprised by nothing.

I can't see how BS was surprised by Trump being elected. he had literally millions of datapoints to sample. The election is not some hidden process that spits an answer out. You simply hold a vote, count the votes, and the elect.

I like BS and have been reading him for about 10 years but this has really changed my view about him. I'm starting to think he really doesnt get it.

This comment makes zero sense.

There is a logic to it in a way, but I think it goes too far.

The security industry should strive to not have to broadly re-evaluate practices based on surprises. Shock and surprise are fine, but they shouldn't cause a scramble of reactionary work, since that work should have been done in anticipation of the potential threat.

I will restate my point another way and hopefully it will make sense.

The fact that BS was surprised that Trump got elected means in some sense he is not tuned to the issues right in front of him. Scott Adams would say he is living in another reality than half of america (half of america voted for trump). Security is all about prediction. You are most secure when you can predict everyone's movements.

Regarding the US vote of trump, there were lots of signs that showed Trump had a real chance of winning. It wasnt like the polls showed trump down by many points and then all of a sudden several million american's changed their mind and decided to vote for him. If you read about poll science, you will see Trump had the large gain in polls ever seen since they started polling.

Well, I understood you the first time, and it's not getting better.

Scott Amundsen would say "Nate Silver gave Trump a 30% chance, 30% chances sometimes happen (about 30% of the time), and you and Scott Adams are trying to extrapolate a single point of data into a Grand Unifying Theory of why you're awesome and how liberals live in la-la-fantasy-land."

The idea that some sort of personal connection to a different group of voters allows you to better predict election results than the combined effort of dozens of polling firms calling hundreds of thousands of people is laughable on it's face.

A small nitpick: a little bit less than half of the voters voted for Trump (63 million people), not half of Americans (which would be 159 million people).

He no longer likes Bruce Schneider because Bruce doesn't like Donald Trump.

Because Bruce didn't expect Trump.

I mean, I think the expectation is bogus. But at least state it correctly.

> Your job in security is essentially to predict the future.

Sure, within your own problem domain. You're making an unrealistic demand of BS here; he might as well play the stock market if he had the kind of predictive superpower you expect of him.

AFAIK his domain is cryptographic security, and more broadly how technology creates/undermines security. The politics he normally deals with are limited to the kind directly related to that.

I don't say this in a rude way, I just say it because I don't understand: it baffles me that the election of Donald Trump caused people to notice certain things.

If you are worried about government surveillance now, why were you not worried about that same power under a different administration? If you are worried about corporate overreach now, why were you not worried about that power under a different administration? Why is this fear more valid now then when people were worried four years ago? Did you not notice it? Is it because those people weren't on your side? Do we assume benevolent dictators?

I genuinely don't understand the mindset. If you know that in the future power may be abused by someone...why would you ever give someone that power? What caused this vast attention shift? It's genuinely smart people that seem to be noticing this stuff for the first time. How?

To be fair, Bruce has been worried (and very publicly so) about those things for a long time. I think what the post transpires is just a new sense of urgency.

He even says as much:

Those are my four areas. Under a Clinton administration, my list would have looked much the same. Trump's election just means the threats will be much greater, and the battles a lot harder to win.

See, I might even be tempted to believe that but he presents it like it's a known thing.

Why should we fear a Trump administration more? Why should we fear it so much that it's worth changing our personal focus for the next four years? Doesn't that seem reactionary?

If we look at the facts, we know that the Bushes and Clintons are friendly and even share a lot of similar views and the same goes for the Obamas and Clintons...and the Trumps and Clintons. Hell, one of Trump's first statements after that infamous tape was: "Bill Clinton has said worse things to me on the golf course". I'm inclined to believe him [0].

So we've got the previous four administrations going back to the 1980s that are chummy and/or have similar views. Under those administrations all this government surveillance has taken place. Under those administrations all this corporate overreach has been happening. Under these administrations we had social networks tracking their users without consent. More recently, Obama has been fairly friendly towards Zuckerberg and other tech stars. Tech and politics are intertwined now.

So know all of this...what steps is Trump going to take that are going to be worse than those that a Clinton administration would have engaged in?

Without something supporting it, it's just fearmongering.

http://imgur.com/gallery/uO2cqtr

Trump has consistently demonstrated his impulsiveness and lack of restraint in communicating his thoughts. To the point that erroneous statements about some companies have sent their stocks downward. He also claimed, without evidence, that a plane crash that had just occurred was by Islamic terrorists. He also called for a boycott of Apple (though his campaign staff still used their devices) because they wouldn't create a backdoor for the San Bernadino shooter's iPhone.

No doubt the Clinton administration would've continued a lot of the same surveillance, but it's unlikely she would've made populist and hyperbolic appeals to the people to turn them into a mob against those like Schneier or companies like Apple who want to protect our privacy (however imperfectly).

EDIT: What's Clinton at a Trump wedding matter? Wealthy and powerful people hobnob with wealthy and powerful people. My girlfriend's father is well-connected in Argentina, he attends events at the US Embassy and with other well-connected people. It implies nothing except that people in that strata network and socialize, which is a large part of maintaining their status.

I'm saying that the Clintons and Trump are a lot closer than people realize:

People with knowledge of the call in both camps said it was one of many that Clinton and Trump have had over the years, whether about golf or donations to the Clinton Foundation. But the call in May was considered especially sensitive, coming soon after Hillary Rodham Clinton had declared her own presidential run the month before.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bill-clinton-called-...

These people being so close makes it strange that the elcetion of one would cause fear while the other would cause things to go on as usual.

You're referencing talks between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Trump, not Mrs. Clinton. And then you try and draw conclusions about how similar Mrs. Clinton's and Mr. Trump's presidencies would have been?

People that have been married for decades tend to be pretty similar.

Can you offer evidence, then, that Hillary Clinton by way of Bill Clinton would have had a very similar set of policies to Donald Trump based on the apparent personal connection between Bill and Donald and the marital relationship between Hillary and Bill? Or is this all just nonsense?

>Hell, one of Trump's first statements after that infamous tape was: "Bill Clinton has said worse things to me on the golf course". I'm inclined to believe him [0].

Pretty similar, huh? So you're inclined to believe that Hillary has said worse things to Trump on the golf course too?

It's about probability, expectations, and complexity. A status quo candidate with a lifetime of political occupancy and a finely tuned brand of political strategy is simply more predictable; good or bad, the creation of a plan of action is less complex. An unconventional candidate with shifting priorities, an affinity for stirring tensions, challenging long-held principles of the democratic system is going to require a contextual kind of defense which is infinitely more complex.

> Why should we fear a Trump administration more?

Because Trump explicitly campaigned on going after journalists and his critics. He literally said he was going to rewrite slander and libel laws so he could sue people who criticized him. He's also probably one of the most litigious people in America, so it's not just talk.

How do you not know all this? Did you not pay attention to the election?

I could be wrong, but I think there is a difference in that with Clinton, there was an expectation of what kind of administration she was going to have.

Trump, on the other hand, has been unpredictable since his election (I speak more about his inclusion of Elon Musk into his advisory council as well as Bill Gates comparing him to JFK). I think an administration that is business-minded can yield great economic prosperity but might not necessarily have interests in maintaining the rights of American citizens.

"I think an administration that is business-minded can yield great economic prosperity but might not necessarily have interests in maintaining the rights of American citizens."

I don't think we've seen an administration in the last 25 years that had an interest in maintaining the rights of American citizens.

And have any failed to be business-minded?

I think to the extent of limiting expenditures and generating revenue, I can only recall Clinton's administration as one that actually created a surplus. In this regard, I posit government officials do not necessarily tend to act this way (at the expense of American tax dollars).

I understood business-minded to mean sympathetic to the desire of the business community.

No worries, that's why I tried to clarify (hopefully I did). I agree with you wholeheartedly.

I am inclined to agree, but I would argue that most businesses do not aim to preserve the rights of their customers (think the data collection performed by Google and Facebook and 100's of ad agencies on the Internet) and I think that this thinking can be quite dangerous in a political context.

I'm not sure why you are getting so many down votes, it's a legitimate point. We tend to forget that it was Obama who was in his second term when the Snowden revelations hit the papers. It was Obama who approved the drone strikes on US citizens. It was Obama who was in charge during Manning's court martial, conviction and sentencing. I appreciate the complexities of each decision, but it shows he understood and accepted the usefulness of the systems in place.

Hillary is a hawk, I don't recall her speaking out against the NSA or drone strikes. I do recall Feinstein, a senior Democrat Chair in the Senate politicking for surveillance. It seems Trump is less interventionist that what we've seen in the past 30 years from both parties in Congress. Perhaps that in and of itself will lessen the massiveness of our surveillance systems, perhaps not.

If you take a step back, realize that political parties are private entities that try to get their members elected into power, and they spend a lot of money convincing the citizenry they are the right choice. If it were Exxon-Mobile doing the same thing, you would have pause, even if they were saying the right things.

I'm not saying that Trump's administration will not be a complete disaster, but that remains to be seen.

>If it were Exxon-Mobile doing the same thing, you would have pause, even if they were saying the right things.

The CEO of Exxon-Mobil is going to be Secretary of State.

Yes, I'm aware of that, but being Secretary of State and putting candidates in elections every year while only allowing 1 other real competitor (the other party) to compete are completely different levels. Imagine if there was the Republican party and the Exxon-Mobile party.

I don't have to imagine. North Carolina is actually changing which powers are allocated to which offices based on the fact that a Democrat won the election.

The country is becoming a one-party state.

Wow, I just saw that in the headlines. I suspect that's what Congress has in store for Trump if he gets out of hand. Either that or impeachment for something. They have their perfect guy waiting to take his place.

I'm just going to respond to this in the context of this essay. It's very different to notice something and decide to do something about it. One requires much more expenditure of effort than the other. This is about how one person has decided to allocate their budget of effort over the next 4 years. One can reasonably assume they have noticed these problems before.

When "your guy" is in charge, you want him to be powerful so that he can do what you want. We've had over 200 years of never expecting "the other guy" to ever get the power even though every 4/8/12 years he does seem to.

It is exasperating to read comments like this about Schneier in particular, who has been beating this drum for a long time, and whose anxieties about surveillance and the power it concentrates have been wholly decoupled from the politics of who wields it.

What has changed under Trump is that the power is now concentrated in tiny hands that seem particularly like it to abuse it, unconstrained by social norms or political checks. But Schneier wrote entire books about the dangers of surveillance culture back when we all thought Trump was a joke.

Before you say things like "why only now", take the two minutes it takes to discover whether this is in fact a new topic for the speaker, or if they have a history of addressing it.

Nobody on HN is clueful about every subject that comes up on HN. You're not expected to be able to comment intelligently on every story here.

However, if you have no substantive contribution to make about a thread --- for instance, because it's about the most famous living cryptographer and you no exposure to cryptography or Internet security --- you are expected not to comment at all.

As it stands, you've derailed the whole thread with an objection that to most readers on HN appears completely nonsensical. Whether intended that way or not, this kind of commenting is indistinguishable from trolling.

Everyone else: this is why we have a flag button.

I don't have any problem with you personally, but it's not your job to shut down a thread because you disagree with the author.

Please don't take this thread any further off topic.

A substantive debate about variance or the lack of it in the surveillance policies of successive administrations is on-topic in a thread about surveillance. But arguing about whether you should or shouldn't know who Schneier is, and some of these other things you've posted, are way out in the weeds.

You simply criticized the wrong person. Schneier has already fought against the Clipper chip as far as I remember.

I agree that we don't know yet whether surveillance will be worse under Trump than under Obama/Clinton.

Trump likes to troll and is a bit unpredictable. He has flamed the CIA and apparently invites Musk (green energy).

For all we know Schneier will be invited to the transition team next week.

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