Comment by FooHentai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FooHentai | Hacker News Reader

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In a world where the clipper chip, snowden leaks, NSAKey, room 641a, NSA/RSA deal, and national security letters didn't exist, I'd be in the realms of crazy conspiracy theorist and you'd sound like the rational voice of evidence-based reason.

But that's not the world we live in. What I list above are not conspiracy theories, they are proven, factual happenings. There is a clear evidential basis to infer the NSA's intent and capabilities in this area.

There are obviously security/privacy snafus that companies make all the time that have nothing to do with nation-state influence and spying. Superfish, for example, was more-likely-than-not a really bad judgement call on the tradeoff between analytics and customer privacy.

>this is pure business.

If that were true then the ability to disable ME, which clearly exists, would be made available to parties other than the NSA.

... or you know - both are true - Enterprises want remote management - and provide the business case - and TLAs would like it too

Nah, it's still conspiracy theories. At best conspiracy conjecture.

Unlike "... proven, factual happenings", your idea isn't backed by any evidence - at least not any that appear in your post.

What kind of evidence would you imagine one would find, if that were happening?

Your point doesn't push the burden of proof unto those that disagree (see Russel's teapot[0]), nor make it OK to skip evidence altogether.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Things change once we've found the rest of a tea set in various orbits. There may not be strong direct evidence but it's no longer a silly conjecture, it's the kind of thing that we find.

So those other examples mean you do have the burden of justifying your 'conspiracy' label.

Not really; it isn't actually proven until you have proof.

As FooHentai originally said, "There is a clear evidential basis to infer the NSA's intent and capabilities in this area" - but it tells us nothing about this particular case, which remains speculation. One could say the odds have changed, but we still don't know anything about the real state of things.

The "'conspiracy'-label" is applicable regardless, whether we're talking about fact or fiction.

If you find that someone broke into your house and stole your Xbox, and there's a guy down the street who you already know has a long criminal record of home burglaries, is it unreasonable to suspect that guy to be a likely culprit?

Likewise, if there's a backdoor in every new PC's CPU, and there's a three-letter agency presiding over that CPU vendor's jurisdiction that has a long track record of backdooring things, is it unreasonable to suspect that maybe - just maybe - that TLA is responsible?

Now of course the ex-con or the TLA can be totally innocent here, but if I were a detective, they'd be the first ones from whom I'd be asking for alibis.

I don't think your analogy holds up;

The hypotheticals aren't comparable, nor is the prior available information - and even though the Intel AMT/ME situation is egregious, explaining it simply as "a backdoor" is an oversimplification.

I'd agree that probabilities with regard to what is reasonable to assume (the operative word here) shift as a consequence of circumstantial information, but you can't really draw any conclusions based on that - hence the burden of proof, i.e. the presumption of innocence in your analogy.

As indrax partly pointed out, Russel's teapot exists in a void where rational entities with no hidden desires are discussing a single fact with perfect knowledge, and no other related facts exist. Reality is filled with humans whose behavior follows trends, and the entirety of science is based on the concept that past evidence applies to the future despite having no evidence it will, because we allow induction since deduction is based on axioms of which we have none.

So what is the inductive reasoning behind the alleged conspiracy in question, then?

That it must have happened since the NSA has the intent and capabilities? Does this mean that any digital conspiracy you can dream up involving the NSA is probable?

"Does this mean that any digital conspiracy you can dream up involving the NSA is probable?"

Um, yes?

>Does this mean that any digital conspiracy you can dream up involving the NSA is probable?

No. If I dreamed up that the NSA was using frequencies in CPUs to control our behaviors and increase our orange juice consumption, there are still reasons to not treat that one as having any reasonable probability of being true, compared to the notion that the NSA is working to get back-doors into software. Reasons for this difference in probability are based on feasibility, implications if true, how specific the claim is, and if it is in line with past behaviors.

My point is, to follow your example re: orange juice consumption, that the reasons not to treat it as having any reasonable probability is secondary to the fact that there is no supporting evidence (burden of proof, etc.)

As I replied in another subthread, I'd agree that probabilities with regard to what is reasonable to assume (the operative word here) shift as a consequence of circumstantial information, but you can't really draw any conclusions based on that.

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