Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site
missouriindependent.com
missouriindependent.com
Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866805 - Oct 2021 (678 comments)
In the Georgia version, the technical details of the exposed information in the Secretary of State's office were facepalmingly simple (misconfigured apache directives) yet the story dragged on politically for years.
Quickly, a hired security researcher for a corporate client found all registered voters info and instructional pdfs with credentials for the elections system publicly indexed by google. They responsibly disclosed. The apache configuration was updated to "use encryption" (moved from http to https) but still left the info indexed by google over https vs. http. Eventually, this information became public.
The state attempted to prosecute the security researcher but found no state statutes they could use. They then used this incident as a base to create a bill to criminalize the security researcher's actions.
As a state rep, I worked very hard to push back on a bad bill spawned by the incident that would've criminalized responsible disclosure.
Only due to bi-partisan efforts from technically versed people were we able to get the Governor at the time to veto the bill.
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2017/06/15/researcher-finds-georgi...
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/comp...
It reminds me of this story in Iowa, where pentesters were arrested and charged with felonies for breaking into a courthouse they were hired to infiltrate:
The other giant thread here made it more directly partisan, this just sounds crazy though. On what rational grounds do you attempt to prosecute or make such things illegal? Is it simply trying to save immediate expenditure of money in a myopic fashion? Or is it more akin to they don't believe it's the state's responsibility to put that data online in the first place so f-it-all-to-hell and everything around it? My constituents don't understand this so I'm just going to oppose my opponents actions, regardless?
In your opinion, is there a way to fix this sort of thing? It feels like we're watching it writ large with the January 6 committee.
> In your opinion, is there a way to fix this sort of thing?
Yes, it requires patient, reasonable, intelligent people operating in good faith to sacrifice personal comfort, etc. and get involved in politics.
Politics is literally a zero-sum game when it comes to voting as it is currently structured in most of the United States.*
But when people with the above characteristics get involved, it literally moderates the extremism that we decry. No matter the level (local, state, or federal), whether you decide to run for office, helps others run for office, get involved with a party, or find a particular issue, being involved makes a difference. You may not be able to easily quantify, but it does make an impact. You may also be bringing a critical perspective in short supply to the political process too.
> On what rational grounds do you attempt to prosecute or make such things illegal?
I heard four reasons for the 2017-2018 SB 315 bill.
1. To ensure the next time someone shared a vulnerability that made the state look bad, that a D.A. would have the choice to bring a criminal case (which would obviously color perception of the story). 2. To bring the law into parity with Federal criminal statutes. 3. To give the Attorney General a "tough on cyber crime" campaign plank. 4. The banks were asking for help prosecuting criminals.
Here's the final text of the bill that passed the legislature, https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20172018/1.... The most relevant text are lines 12-14 and the subsection carve outs on line 16-20.
For further context, voter rolls were already public information and can be acquired via a request to the SoS office.
The larger red flags were the default usernames and passwords in the instructional pdfs for the election systems.
Both of these symptoms (and more) spoke to a woefully underfunded or poorly run office w/r/t to IT.
Getting more funds to have properly, well-secured systems takes political capital and there's not a lot of return of that type of political capital expenditure.
The current SoS has an engineering background and I've been seeing much better public facing systems put in place during their tenure.
*. Please, please, please can we get approval based voting?
The important thing was to take the time, speak to the bill's author, speak to my colleagues, build a coalition of lobbyists from industry (big companies, startups, etc.), and not stop fighting the bill even after it passed the legislature.
Having said that, this situation in particular really tests my willingness to assume good faith on the part of the governor and his body of advisors. Is he legitimately without a single person close to him that could inform him of how misguided this line of aggression is, and how fortunate it was that the individual who identified the security problem acted in such a helpful manner? On top of that he assigned the Missouri State Highway Patrol to investigate, because given his perceived severity of the situation that's the best agency at his disposal? It all just seems bananas.
I try not to assume that totally inane actions from elected officials are exclusively the result of political calculus, and I suppose I don't have any evidence to assume that's the case here either. But I'm at a loss as to how this situation could blossom into something so ridiculous.
I don't believe that there is any other reason here.
He knows perfectly well who is to blame, but he's using the situation opportunistically to further his own career.
The issue isn't just that he's objectively and morally wrong, it's that most voters don't see through the grandstanding.
All they see - and all they want to see - is a rich old white dude punching down at some college-educated kid who thinks he's clever enough to have an opinion.
It's not obvious a jury will parse this any differently.
Although I'd hope someone like the EFF would turn up with some heavy hitter experts to add some friction to the self-serving bad take.
This is why it's hard to do politics. While everyone is fact-checking and getting outraged about the reality the political game is being played on a different level with different rules - by people who are often quite good at winning it.
I think having "fact checkers" and "experts" debunk his claims will ultimately gain him support among his constituents. There's a sharp trend towards anti-expert, anti-intellectual sentiment that has assisted him throughout the pandemic, and there's no reason that I can see to believe that it won't serve him equally as well on this issue. We'll see, but I think this movement isn't something that will die out with the pandemic, but something that we will see permeate other areas of discourse.
They see, they just don't care, as we can see from a sibling subthread on this story.
As long as he keeps fighting on their side of the culture war, it doesn't matter what sort of crazy, destructive, or corrupt things he does.
Should we assume that elected officials have software engineers on staff or on call? Or assume staffers with software engineering background exist.. in traditionally low-pay positions ("elected official liaison" or "advisor")
?
So why would he change his mind? There's nothing to gain.
To any technical or even semi-technical person, the facts of this case are laughable. The Governor thinks that he can steamroll this case through, and is betting that most will not understand the underlying technical details and give into the fear mongering "hacking" narrative.
But the thing is, as soon as this goes to court, there is a 100% chance the EFF or another organization is going to step in. Once the defense can explain the layperson exactly what happened here, the governor is going to go from "protecting the people from hackers" to "dumbass trying to cover his own ass".
The Governor and his cabinet clearly think they have this one in the bag, but I think the EFF or another org is going to step in and hand his ass to him in court.
... In the eyes of those 12 people on the jury.
but then again, Trump often lies about his losses in courts, claims they were wins, and gets applause from his audience. the GOP is a counter-majoritarian party, which makes counterfactual statements inevitable.
It's not useful to use a ridiculous situation like this as confirmation of your political beliefs.
The fact that one approach was chosen over the other suggests where is more to the reason.
For the topic to continue to get attention, it has to be rage inducing.
The alternative here would be to claim that the state was going to crack down and prosecute those in charge of building/managing the web site in question. Almost as ridiculous, but without the benefit of pursuing "the media".
It's been eye opening to see and recognize such people on the internet over the past 10 years or so. It's been a lot more scary to be able to recognize the same character flaw in real people I'm physically around.
It's not all narcissism though; it can be difficult to reason with deeply ingrained belief systems when there is a lack of critical thinking and challenges to the Id and ego, not to mention innate tribalism.
EDIT: Agree with the deleted comment that The Narcissist's Prayer could also be The CEO's Prayer, based on the personality type the C suite attracts [3].
[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Narcissist-You-Know-Narcissists-All... (The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me Age)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28880280
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-ma... (1 in 5 business leaders may have psychopathic tendencies—here’s why, according to a psychology professor)
History has seen this before. It doesn't end well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/...
> First, let me get this Donald Trump issue out of the way: If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.
I would not be surprised if that is the case. Or if he does have such a person he is only hearing what he wants to hear.
That's newspaper-covering-their-ass-speak. No serious person believes there's no coordination, however indirect, between candidates and their PACs.
I think by this point it's very clear he's acting in bad-faith to try and cover himself from the fallout.
This Governor has the DOMINANCE!
At this point, it's all about getting on Trump's radar in order to secure his VP nomination in 2024. I totally believe that's what's going on here - political posturing.
I've said it elsewhere and I'll repeat it here. People like Parsons who climb to positions of power think of security in terms of power, not technology. It's a sort of security-because-I-say-so mindset, which is more like what technologists would probably call "classified information". For a person of that mindset, calling it "secure" means that accessing it at all is a security violation, unless that person has clearance.
From the point of view of a person who sees security as "it's sensitive information because someone says so" accessing it without clearance is punishable, and I think that's where Parson and his ilk are working.
Even if Parson has someone close enough to him to explain the difference between security by technical means and security by declaration, the governor could still conclude, from his mindset, that a violation occurred because of the sensitive nature of the information.
As far as I know, neither Missouri nor any other state has anything like US federal-level information classification laws, for which a person can be found in violation and prosecuted even if they didn't have to overcome any technical security measures to access the information. But that doesn't seem to deter Parson from acting like there's an actual breach of law, according to his understanding. But someone could, possibly, reach the governor through explaining that there's no state law about sensitive information, and perhaps he would back down, although it might motivate him to push for laws that would look more like security clearance regulations.
It doesn't surprise me that he'd want to make hay with this - he can promote himself, damage his political enemies, and look tough to his base, which (generally speaking) doesn't consist of professional technologists.
(if you want evidence of his antipathy to Missouri's cities, look no further than covid vaccine distribution - St. Louis had maybe one single site, but rural areas had more vaccines than they could use. My elderly parents had to drive for hours to get to one of those underused sites because there simply weren't any vaccines to be found in the metro area.)
I lived in SoCal at the time and had to do the same thing. I drove about an hour and a half into the desert to get it when my name came up, and I lived in the city of San Diego.
The salient difference probably being demand (likely high in SD) versus malicious or apathetic political will.
I had to do the same thing and drive out to Julien. I live in San Diego too.
It's like watching someone navigate a glass maze that you can't see. The whole time you're wondering why they're taking such a circuitous path. They look like a crazy person to you, but it's because they're avoiding obstacles you can't see.
The reason we have two separate realities is that most of "reality" at the political level comes to voters by way of media. Almost none of us have directly witnessed, say George Floyd protests, abortions, industrial pollution, inner city gang violence, etc. Instead, we learn of these things through the news and social media.
But those in the US have become increasingly polarized. The picture of the world you get from watching Fox News or your Facebook feed if you have conservative friends shows an entirely different world than what someone watching CNN and the politics subreddit sees.
For politicians, winning elections is central. It is the source of all of their power. They know that the way to win elections is to get people on their side to show up and vote. Losing votes from the other side is essentially irrelevant — they weren't going to vote for them anyway. Politicians are fighting apathy, not the opposing party.
So almost all of their public behavior serves to make them appear good to their camp when viewed through that camp's media lens. The way it appears to the other side doesn't matter one bit because it won't significantly affect elections.
Once you understand this, Parson's behavior makes perfect sense. He got caught looking like a dumbass leaking SSNs so he has to do ("do" in the sense of some visible political behavior, not in the sense of solving the actual problem) something. If he frames it as the liberal press are evil hackers, then Fox News is happy to carry that narrative for him. His voters will see that narrative, be satisfied that it fits their worldview, and continue to support him.
The fact that his narrative is nonsense doesn't matter. No one likely to vote for him will ever see that, and those that do see it weren't going to vote for him either. Actually fixing the problem also isn't particularly relevant. Conservative media just wants him to win so won't run bad press if he doesn't fix it, so there's little incentive.
Every year, the US looks more like China Mieville's "The City and the City".
This is called "perversion".
> Once you understand this, ...'s behavior makes [it]
an accomplice and an entity of abysmal value.
--
Back to the elephant in the room: journalism was there to determine facts, reality. Outside narratives, facts exist, sometimes clear. It's like in judicial matters: advocatus dei and advocatus diaboli are there to attain to truth in a dialectic manner, proposed and implemented to exhaust the thinkable reasons involved - never there you meet the lunacy of "serving the client's interest". The disconnection to facts you indicate would be a horrible disease.
There are definitely plenty of journalists doing just that, which is why you and I are reading about this.
The problem is that roughly half the US electorate is not tuning in to those journalists, but they still have the vote.
> The disconnection to facts you indicate would be a horrible disease.
It is a horrible disease and the US is suffering mightily for it.
There is the (originally nautical?) term "tack" which means "A direction or course of action, especially a new one.", and it's hard to separate those similar sounding/meaning/looking words.
This is one of the least ridiculous things Republicans have done in the last few years.
The disclosure by the reporter was fair. The reporter waited to disclose the story until the department of education reviewed the matter. I don't see a court convicting from that fact, this is all for show on reelection.
What I'd like to see is Parson respond to community questions in a townhall and be held accountable for his words. Namely, can we see the line item breakdown of how we got to $50 million? That is _five_ times the cost it took to build Missouri's great Arch..
I also am incapable of understanding how this could be twisted into even vaguely being described as hacking. That’s like if I called myself a hacker for opening up the dev tools in my browser.
The idea that a journalist is "attacking" by finding an issue worth bringing up _must_ be cognitive dissonance, right? Otherwise all investigation would be a form of assault? Either someone with an IQ below 80 became governor or this is purely a strategic response.
Strategy being? This prosecution will never hold up in court, and we all think the governor is an idiot. So the accomplished goal seems clear: Everyone is now saying this governors name.
This situation is arguably the reason we have the first amendment: so the government can’t bully you into silence and submission when you’ve embarrassed them. When they’ve embarrassed themselves, really.
The only _known_ effect is that this becomes a hot story and we're all outraged one way or the other.
The only 100% proof-positive result is that we all now know who Gov Parsons is.
Actually, that might explain a lot of things.
The point is, yes, the courts are, or can be, that stupid, especially when it comes to "hacking". Just ask Kevin Mitnick.
+1 for bringing up Mitnick. His book "The Art of Deception" is pretty good and covers what you mentioned. My belief is that the courts and the general public are not nearly so clueless any more. And to the extent that they might be, lawyers know that tech stuff is important and can now make the required arguments to convince any remaining uninformed people how dumb these claims are.
That means that the Governor is either persisting despite knowing better, or is remaining deliberately ignorant despite the expertise at his disposal. Either way, this is at least somewhat intentional.
You don't have to be malicious to be incompetent.
I suspect it's a mix of both.
But you're assuming the Governor would pass the basic test that even shows that he is competent at listening to other competent people.
I am sure the OP's suggestion was in good faith, just that they weren't aware of some of the history and potential repercussions.
The commenter's point is that these "tests" can be designed to be difficult for one race/community, but easy for another, thus preventing them from holding an office.
It's great to have high standards for public office, but it's the voters who should hold their elected officials to those, not an arbitrary test imposed by the government.
In the US, VoteSmart [0] and others have tried to do this with position surveys for years, but most politicians would prefer not to answer.
Edit: I don't even know why for some reason I forgot (probably because it comes without saying): basic wits.
And, seeing that somebody really calls is an "odd idea": no, there absolutely should be requirements. Getting the appropriate measurements, reliably and feasibly, that is difficult. Yet, still duly. Duty, in the same intensity that suggests that thing holding office should be flung into space.
> No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
The information you provided is a further alarm bell about the dire needs we have about vetting people in the current, desperate, worn out world. Normal social interaction as a way to fine tune the individual, the traditional selection way, shows to be ineffective today.
--
¹Oddly, in a world in which the concept of "identification" is increasingly spread, "curiously and consistently" I have not yet heard the expression "X identifies as a moral (and/or dignified, intelligent, sophisticated, compassionate, judicious, reliable...) agent". The concept of "identification" seems to be restricted to tribal matters (and, still notably, "earthly" criteria). These two interlinked factors are very telling about the issues in today's society.
Alternatively you could pick the person who's decisions have most often turned out to be good* ones, and hope that they continue making good* decisions.
* For whatever you think is good.
It is up to voters to evaluate their chosen candidates for their qualities and qualifications for the job. The biggest problem right now is that too many vote on party lines instead of for candidates based on their qualities.
That wasn't an argument I made though. I asked:
> Who gets to set the test?
Which gets to the core of the point. The current requirements are fixed in legal stone and nobody gets to alter them. They aren't being [ab]used for political advantage.
People on here are proposing arbitrary ability tests that [someone] gets to create and alter using [some] undefined methodology.
You combine that with the history of ability-based testing (which, incidentally none of the existing requirements are) and it leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.
> History is littered with examples of eugenics programs, but that doesn't mean we should ban eugenics.
To which I'd argue we should absolutely ban eugenics because of the history of eugenics. Just like we should ban arbitrary political entry testing because of the history of exactly that.
I'm not making an "apples Vs. oranges" comparison, I'm making an "apples vs. historical apples" one.
If anything, this response demands worldwide attention on the state run systems and contracts paying to build and maintain them. Expect statewide incompetence paid at top dollar to contractors who aren't paid as much as the contract stipulates.
FOIA all the way
Then, he started tweeting/re-tweeting unrelated stuff to try and bury it, but people kept replying to those and re-raising the issue.
I look forward to the ACLU handing him his ass.
Does he care though? It is all about outrage, diverting attention from actual issues, hogging TV time. We are talking about it, Twitter is talking about it... Mission accomplished for him, no?
"X broke the law" isn't a fact in this narrow sense; rather it's an inference drawn from a set of facts.
e.g. (Volokh) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
/not-a-lawyer
There are lots of things about the US I would change (socialized healthcare being the obvious thing in my mind), but I don't think that we should delude ourselves by saying that the US is beyond redeemable.
I will agree that the acceptance of conspiratorial thinking in conservative circles is especially harmful (I wrote more detail about that in a sister thread), but you don't have to look very far in European history to find them electing demagogues too.
I know it's commonplace to wail on the USA because of all the shite that seems to be getting shittier but there is _so much_ goodness in the USA.
The systems are a bit broken. The constitution needs modernization, access to and application of the laws need to be made measuably fair, and the economic model requires reformulation. Racism, sexism, and perverse idolatry need to be educated out of the standard models of discourse. But.
The USA is still a paradigm of democratic republicanism. It's still full of amazing humans, many of whom work hard to improve other people's lives. It is seething with debate, invests hugely in technology, and still reacts quickly to changes of circumstances. It's fucked, but not irredeemably so.
Mainly it needs to focus on education and healthcare, especially by removing pernicious, profit-seeking, short-term motivations.
Also, stop voting Retardicans.
To be fair, Demoticrats are a pretty shoddy bunch of disorganised and intellectually confused herd of kittens, but they at least _try_ to improve the lot of other humans. The Retardicans are big business first and all else after, with a whole heap of contempt for thought on the side.
I realize this guy is just at it for political reasons.. but I don't think it can be overstated how much of a negative all of this is on society. Even if this reporter never gets convicted of anything it could leave trauma that will make others second guess 'doing the right thing'.
This is what newspapers are supposed to do innit?
Like others, I'm sad to see such a technically illiterate response when there should at least be advisors capable of explaining this. I also agree the journalist is unlikely to be convicted but we really don't need to muddy the fairly clear scope of computer crimes per the above laws.
Copyright could apply.
Perhaps you are trolling?
"Under United States law, libel generally requires five key elements: the plaintiff must prove that the information was published, the plaintiff was directly or indirectly identified, the remarks were defamatory towards the plaintiff's reputation, the published information is false, and that the defendant is at fault."
Seems to fit all of these. I imagine there is some protection because these words are coming from a PAC but the governor has said the same stuff in news conferences.
> The video is produced by Uniting Missouri, a political action committee created by Parson supporters to back his 2020 election campaign. [...] It operates without direct input from Parson on its activities.
The legal conclusion was simple: weev did not have authorization to access those URLs.
The implication being that you are not free to type whatever you want into the URL bar. If I make something accessible by URL accidentally, I haven't given you permission to access that URL.
If the article said “anyone who right clicks the web page in Chrome and selects view source could see social security numbers” it would clarify things for the majority of the population that doesn’t know what “HTML source code” is.
I got sent to the principal's office (years ago...) for opening a command line and trying to ping a printer that said it was offline but was sitting right next to my station and looked happy. Most people are probably like my former teacher, who will wind up on a jury.
Politicians, particularly those in higher office, are terrible people because the incentives reward those that lie, cheat and steal to get ahead.
Elected officials are all antiscience and anti-reason on the left, the right, and the center, if the political situation calls for it.
If you can't see that, maybe the problem is elsewhere
Though no private information was clearly visible nor searchable on any of the web pages, the newspaper found that teachers’ Social Security numbers were contained in the HTML source code of the pages involved.
IN THE HTML SOURCE CODE!!!!
The publication also gave them advanced notice:
The newspaper delayed publishing this report to give the department time to take steps to protect teachers’ private information, and to allow the state to ensure no other agencies’ web applications contained similar vulnerabilities.
It is becoming clear that old folks like this need some basic internet literacy if they're going to accuse reporters of "hacking" because they looked at the source.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/08/19/the-gro...
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
This scenario clearly meets those criteria.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
The OP specifically said he wanted to have an intellectual discussion about how anti-intellectuality has recently become a prevalent issue among a particular political party, something of interest and concern to all people, regardless of country or political affiliation. I can't think of a more extenuating circumstance, especially with the disturbing historical precedents we've seen in the last century around this issue, but it's disappointing to see that you disagree.
You are trampling curiosity in the name of avoiding trampling curiosity.
My feeling is that Dan’s decision here is conclusive proof that HN’s mod team is unbiased. I was genuinely concerned that this thread wouldn’t be penalized, because it was political flamewar dressed up as intellectual conversation. It was delightful to see HN’s spirit shine through in spite of political divisions.
Curiosity is a fragile thing. The original comment was entirely ineffective at fostering curiosity, and it’s interesting to analyze why. I think framing has a lot to do with it. There was no attempt made at asking questions, for example. Asking questions in earnest is the hallmark of curiosity.
I don’t think that broadcasting personal feelings to a wide audience was necessary to foster curiosity, either. Quite the opposite: it detracts from the discussion. It’s tricky to express feelings in a way that isn’t divisive, and it’s important for HN comments to become more substantive as the topic becomes more heated.
And you’d be hard-pressed to disagree that the topic became heated, I think. It was a lot match in a gas-filled room, and the explosive subthread was an entirely predictable, deterministic outcome.
There's one non-obvious link in the moderation logic here, which might help to explain a bit. We don't really moderate comments—we moderate subthreads [1]. In this case I was swayed by the fact that the subthread was 350 posts of especially-wretched flamewar hell.
I often put it this way: the value of an HN comment is the expected value of the subthread it forms the root of (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). This is a weird idea at first—it was to me, at least—because how can I be responsible for what other people do? But when the genre is conversation, and it's relatively predictable how people will react, it's my (i.e. each of our) responsibility not to do things that will predictably generate poor conversation. Conversation is a dance [2]. We need to take the other into account, regardless of how right we are or feel we are. It's not really about being right; there are more important things.
For those of us who tend to think of ourselves as atoms, this is hard to learn, especially because internet posts feel like atomic operations. They're not, though—they're molecular, and the threads are the molecules. To be a good atom, you need to take into account what ions are floating nearby and thus what molecules are likely to form out of what you post. It's not that hard to know this—the dynamics are relatively predictable.
[1] Coincidentally I wrote about this yesterday, if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932445
Not letting the other team get any wins will be known as The McConnell Strategy in the history books, as he has practiced a policy of complete obstruction while in the senate.
Absolutely right. He is Lucy with the football to the Democrats' Charlie Brown.
And he's just so damn good at it too.
And another one on setting a timeline for getting out of Afghanistan
His administration wasn't very good at running a government, but they still had a couple wins
It doesn't matter that you're probably right. It comes across as you posting this to make yourself feel good, and holy moly the sense of superiority from your camp needs a chill pill.
Parson is evil. I'll be doing my duty as a citizen and trying to vote him out of office. But none of this was anti-science, nor did it have anything to do with COVID, and you've brought up both.
On one side are the computer scientists and engineers who understand the nature of the problem. On the other side are ignorant and/or dishonest actors out to avoid being embarrassed.
It's all on you if you pick the wrong one out of loyalty to a political party.
Besides, at the end of the day, how different are the two sides? One party wants to prosecute a reporter who found a site vulnerability, and the other party wants to prosecute the man who exposed the world to the dragnet surveillance being conducted by the NSA.
A two party system has basically set this up to occur.
I can’t see that it could ever be changed, but it’s utterly toxic.
There are a hell of a lot of computer scientists and engineers who vote republican, certainty not a majority but definitely a large enough minority you can't discount them. They just don't broadcast it for reasons that should be obvious to anyone reading these comments.
Which includes Republicans: https://twitter.com/tonylovasco/status/1448672694065668105
If you want to make scientific ignorance a political issue, we can discuss nuclear power, GMOs, unreasonable COVID restrictions, and plenty more.
Kansas City native here.
I vote democratic and agree with the comment you are replying to.
there is one data point that this isnt a partisan issue, but a rather non-partisan one involving an elected official.
Go Tom Brady, give the Buccs another win and put some dirt in Maholmes' eye.
This is a strawman. The parent was saying that in order to have an effect and convince people, you shouldnt alienate them. You can do this without lying or ignoring things that are happening. In fact, the people you're most likely able to convince are people in the middle and by alienating them you're actually causing the trend that you're denouncing.
> What does it say about your own values that they are so loosely held that you'd sacrifice them out of contempt like this?
This is just a straight ad hominem. I thought we were supposed to be above these sorts of things on hn.
1. Respond one single way to events
2. Ignore events
There are lots of ways to express concern that are less alienating.
There are plenty of trends happening on the "other side" which are also veritably nuts, so I don't find this to be a very compelling argument. The ad hominem doesn't help, either.
You're alienating yourself by following reactionary impulses in response to true statements.
I'm also honesty not sure how true this theory of reaction is generally. I'm sure it's true for some, but in many cases it functions as a rhetorical strategy to put people on the defensive who are making legitimate criticisms.
>But none of this was anti-science, nor did it have anything to do with COVID, and you've brought up both.
It's anti-intellectual, and therefore a pertinent comparison, and they used the term anti intellectual and covered all the necessary bases. The cultural and social forces driving both are the same, and here, again, I feel like saying "don't talk about this because it alienates me" is just a rhetorical strategy to put people on the defensive without addressing the merits of what they are saying.
Republicans are fostering anti-intellectualism which is (in fact) anti-science. From my perspective you'd be alienating yourself out of spite. This goes for Democrats or any political party.
Which side is worse is a matter of opinion. Personally I think they are both dangerous and won’t identify myself with either party as a result.
The result is that there is no point in leveling this accusation as part of a debate about something substantive, unless you just want to derail the conversation into a meaningless partisan bashing match.
You're saying "you must woo me to do the right thing" and it's complete garbage (you've already admitted OP is "probably right"). If you're going to vote out of spite because people aren't "taking a chill pill" you can go pound sand. I'm tired of this "you didn't tell me in the perfect way, so I'm right and you're wrong" reductive nonsense.
It is a partisan issue though. Republicans across the United States are largely pushing to reject science and schooling and are increasingly pushing through laws and changes that make the populace dumber, and more easily controllable.
You know this is happening, yet you still voted for republicans in the past.
It's your own fault if you continue to do so even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this is destroying America.
Whether or not you feel alienated is no concern, your feelings don't matter here, and the fact that you are feeling alienated means you have the capacity to change, because the people that keep voting against intellectualism don't feel alienated, they feel emboldened when someone calls them out, they feel pride in knowing they are doing something "the left hates me for", even if that something is destroying America in the process.
Alienation is exactly the type of thing one should use to combat this. Rationally minded people in the (R) camp SHOULD feel alienated by their intellectual peers when they spew anti-intellectual rhetoric and pass/support anti-intellectual policies or willingly associate, without protest, with people or groups known for doing so. You can't flip the script and say you feel alienated by your intellectual peers (HN) for not jumping with you onto the anti-intellectual band-wagon and/or for calling systemic anti-intellectualism out for what it is. Doing so would be as ridiculous as arguing that you find same-sex couples alienating/offensive/triggering because they tread on your precious sensibilities as an anti-LGBT person. In that scenario, you should feel alienated, because that is the primary societal force that will pressure you into recanting being an anti-LGBT person. Intellectuals are alienating you because they want you to get rid of the rest of your bad opinions, not just the select few you have already shed, before you can take your place at the table.
1.) This is an attack against a type of security researcher. Attacks against researchers are always anti-science.
2.) You’ve admitted to feeling alienated by truth. You might want to think that over and ask yourself some questions. That’s genuinely sad.
3.) If the truth genuinely alienates you, I don’t care about you or your feelings.
that's blatantly untrue. If a researcher is malicious, attacking their person is not anti-science.
By the way: «voting [that thing] out» is not enough. That thing having held the office is a very horrible incident, and it must be made very clear to all those who were distracted.
Of course it's anti-science. You don't think this governor has advisors that told him the reporter looked at source code that anyone can look at it and it's not hacking?
He's grandstanding for his constituency. Why? Because he knows his constituency won't understand nuance and won't hold him accountable, because he's attacking science, not guns.
Every group of humans - indeed, thanks to the central limit theorem, every sufficiently large sampling - is going to be normally distributed and there are going to be folks on either side offset from the mean.
However, that doesn't indicate that the mean isn't interesting or worthwhile to discuss, and isn't representative of the group as a whole.
You're blaming other people for something that is 100% under your control. If you don't want to accept the truth because you don't like the types of people who share it, that's just spite on your part.
There are signs WAY before you need to "try to vote him out of office".
Throwing a temper tantrum when someone objectively mentions the ideology of a party - threatening to take your toys out of the sandbox - really doesn't help your case in the "superiority" department.
The reason things are so "partisan" is because of the political extremist actions and policies from your party.
Are we expected to just pretend like there's not this huge anti-science movement on the Right because your feelings might get hurt? Look at all the anti mask, anti vaccine rhetoric. This isn't ok.
Plenty of problems on the Left too, and we should talk about those too.
I really do not understand how it is possible to separate Parson from Republican Party in Missouri? They very very much the same.
It is like saying that Gavin Newsom is something different than Democrats in California.
(Actually, I always pegged Eric for a moderate/conservative Democrat, but wasn't surprised to see him play the game he played given that his defining characteristic was always his careerism/ambition. I even mentioned after one of those meals that he'd probably prefer to run as a Dem but will definitely be running on the GOP ticket because he cares more about power and prestige than anything else & anyone with a brain knew running as a Dem in any statewide race in Missouri was a dead end. Actually, totally independent of this conversation, Eric is actually a really interesting case study in coalition politics; his resignation was as much about him snubbing folks with appointments than his sex scandal per se. Anyways.)
My interactions with folks in MOGOP back then scared the hell out of me. I could see the party coalescing around a pretty dark sort of nihilism. And not even really in terms of policy per se. It's the individual people, divorced of their politics, that really made me scared. On a personal and individual level. The deeply concerning interactions and conversations I had with specific rising stars in MOGOP are actually one of the reasons I left the state.
I understand your attitude toward partisanship, I really do, and I've voted for Missouri Repbulicans in the past as well. But that state party is in a really dark place right now. A few good apples -- and they do exist -- don't really matter when party leadership are scary as fuck narcissistic nihilists.
(And, yeah, all politicians suck or whatever... but MOGOP is really something else. The rising stars from back then who are all either ascendant or in control now are not just gross politician types... they're genuinely just really scary human beings.)
this event is completely political and is made possible by the fact that one party alone has decided that facts don't matter - a whole team of said people rushed behind this governor to start a politcal campaign based on fact-free made up realities, which is now the common mode of action for the right wing. The GOP also happens to be a party that claims to be extremely upset about liberals supposedly trying to ban speech that "hurts their feelings". this is after all where the terms "snowflake" and "cancel culture" come from, and in fact was a campaign slogan by the Trump campaign called "fuck your feelings", which you would see emblazoned on shirts worn by what we would assume were previously congenial grandparents.
based on all of this, it would appear hypocritical for right wing voters to claim that speaking of these issues are "alientating". The grandparents wearing T shirts that said "fuck your feelings" was pretty alienating to see. Where were the right wing voices warning that liberals might feel "alienated" by that ? Does anyone on the right have the slightest concern for anyone not like them ? I've yet to see it.
If you’re not actively working to dismantle the current Republican Party, we cannot be on the same side. I don’t mind alienating you; the masters tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
I guess reality does have a well known liberal bias :)
About that sense of superiority, it is relative to a pretty low bar, when people prioritize whether a person is on their side even over whether the person is right.
The clustering of inane views amongst a particular identifiable group of people is fascinating. And inane views happen on both sides. I find it super interesting to see how each side chooses which bonkers views they do, and how they line up.
Especially interesting is when they are not self consistent. For example, "my body, my rules," which is adopted by both sides in different contexts (abortion and vaccinations) both of which arguably are issues that involve personal choice but that also (again, arguably) affect the well being of others.
Finding the partisan alignments amongst these things is super interesting and should not be a third rail (meaning an untouchable topic) in discussions, imho.
I am not quite sure how much of this is anti-science as opposed to anti-college.
Colleges, not science or education in general, have been at the heart of the culture war, especially in the US, and have been viewed by many - not just right/Republicans, but centrists and moderates as well - recently as problematic when it comes to things like mandatory overreaching PC culture, title IX kangaroo courts and "rape classes", safe spaces (and racial segregation of dorms to provide such safe spaces, for example), coddling of students, college educational quality and how it correlates with college profits (including minor scandals of celeb parents bribing their kids into good schools), racial bias in admissions, speech codes, left-leaning faculty, etc, etc, etc... The list of areas that people receive as "problematic" is long.
I am not here to judge all these accusations on merit, just wanted to point out that they exist in the wider public debate (no matter the level of truth to them), and this is what may have swung the polls a lot more than a general anti-science stance.
This world needs a lot more new plumbers than new liberal arts majors. It is the society's fault that people feel compelled to go to college having little chance to make anything out of it.
If you have any evidence to support this, I invite you to post it. Because according to the study below:
"Getting a Bachelor's degree adds another large increase in lifetime earnings. With median earnings of $56,700 ($27.26 per hour), or $2.3 million over a lifetime, Bachelor's degree holders earn 31 percent more than workers with an Associate's degree and 74 percent more than those with just a high school diploma."
But more importantly, college should NOT be job training. It should be a place to learn critical thinking, to experiment in a safe environment, and a place to learn what you even want to learn about. A college graduate should be able to learn what they need to learn, including pursuing a career in the trades.
I agree that we need more plumbers. But the idea that young adults -- in practice, working class and poor ones -- should be denied the opportunity to learn and grow and instead be offered trade school or nothing, is profoundly unfair.
This is not to say that we couldn't improve the status quo. We could make college less expensive or free, consolidate degrees (getting a law degree in 4 or 5 years of college rather than 4 years of college + 3 more of law school), etc. But a blanket statement that "college is net detrimental to society" seems ignorant even in the kindest light.
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...
Post-secondary education, regardless of the specific major a student chooses, does provide a significant benefit to society: especially in the early years, it teaches students how to think critically. Perhaps this skill could be taught earlier during secondary education, but at least in the U.S., it is not. And this skill is incredibly important for becoming an informed member of the electorate who can separate truth from bullshit.
"This world needs a lot more new plumbers than new liberal arts majors"
This is a completely subjective and politically charged statement. I think the world needs more informed and educated critical thinkers. Its curious how the 90s led to a collapse in liberal arts departments and enrollments, and 20 years later we're now in an era of disinformation at massive scale.
1. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...
Regardless, I disagree that it's a waste of a person's best years. Most work is some variation of drudgery, I think it's great young adults get to spend a few years learning about interesting topics and making new friends.
It'd be nice if America could do that and not saddle these youngsters with crippling debt (as other countries manage to do), but I wouldn't say that feature of the American education system invalidates the basic concept.
What do you mean "waste"? Just that they're building career capital instead of directly earning money? You've got your whole life to work, spending that time learning, meeting new people, and trying new things seems way less "wasteful" than just starting your career 4 years sooner. Plus it gives you time to figure out what you want to do, most 18-year-olds aren't really equipped to decide what they'll want to be doing when they're 50 and the value of starting a career sooner is greatly diminished if you just end up switching careers anyway.
> teaches them mainly, useless stuff
Meh, most knowledge is useless, but it's not always easy to determine which knowledge will be useful in advance. I thought my linguistics class was useless (though interesting) at the time, years later I went into data science, turns out linguistics is pretty important for NLP. Also, I think learning for the sake of learning is a Good Thing, even given that most knowledge is useless.
> barely breaks even in terms of lifetime earnings
Got a source for that? Cause last I checked, holders of even most "useless" degrees out-earn those with just a high school diploma by something like $15k/year, making them well worth it financially unless you pay the sticker price for a private or out-of-state school. For better or worse, there are a ton of decent jobs in the US that just require any college degree.
> and makes people bitter because they feel they are not valued by society the way they believe they should
I haven't seen that at all. I know people who are bitter because they have a ton of student debt and are struggling to pay it off, but I don't know anyone who expects to be put on a pedestal because they have a college degree, if anything they're bitter at their colleges and/or their high school guidance counselors. Also, those people are outliers in terms of their debt levels, the average new college graduate (among those who take out student loans) earns ~$55k and leaves with ~$30k in debt, which is very manageable almost everywhere in the US and probably puts them at a higher income (though with less wealth) than their peers who started plumbing apprenticeships at 18.
I strongly believe that one's best years can be after college. Our society fetishizes youth too much. I've grown more as a person in the few years following college than I did in the decade prior.
I don't mean to straw man you, so I'm not implying this is what you said, but a liberal arts education is extremely important! Where else do you learn that racism isn't just slurs, that a bus route can be racist, that a health policy can be racist? Where can you get introduced to writers of color, to works by people from all times and all races? Where can you get an in depth view into how art reflects society and society reflects art?
Even if you don't step into a classroom, college teaches so much by forcing students out of their hometown and out of the communities. One of the biggest issues with racism and discrimination and partisanship is that most people haven't met the other side. College is a way to meet the other side in one's formative years.
I'd argue that college is the single most liberalizing institution in people's lives. No other institution takes students, transports them into a (hopefully) diverse, intellectually stimulating center and teaches them about society.
That may be true but the amount of assistance available through student loans and grants enables people to actually go. Without that, the people that feel compelled to go still wouldn't because they simply couldn't afford it.
Higher education in this country is a minefield of unintended consequences.
> When it comes to their own experiences with higher education, an earlier Center survey found that the vast majority of college graduates (from both two- and four-year institutions) say college was useful for them in terms of helping them grow personally and intellectually (62% say it was very useful in this regard, 31% say it was somewhat useful). Large majorities also say it was useful in opening doors to job opportunities (53% say very useful, 29% say somewhat) and in helping them develop specific skills and knowledge that could be used in the workplace (49% very, 35% somewhat).
I think the cost of higher ed is an enormous societal problem which leads some to feel embittered towards the system as a whole for good reason. But it's important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and to separate the ballooning cost from the education itself.
I think the anti-college popularity ties directly to the incredible cost of it in the USA, not that its necessarily a bad thing.
- Denial of the science of sex differences
- Denial of the science of intelligence differences, the relevance of intelligence in life outcomes and how heritable it is
- Belief without evidence that black/white racial differences in outcome are completely due to racism and not partly due to a byproduct of cultural differences
- Anti-nuclear sentiment that wildly exaggerates the risks of nuclear power
- Historical revisionism (e.g 1619 project and NYT begrudgingly making stealth edits)
Telling example: "We believe in self-determination" // "There are unclaimed votes available in those anti-abortionist tribes" // "Ok then, we take them". This should be a joke, not an event. There is a systemic issue.
One thing I've noticed about the friends who are dyed in the wool liberals is that they seem to be more susceptible than average to pseudoscientific practices such as reiki, crystals, homeopathy, etc.
And that jives, I think, with historical trends. Go back 100 years and G.K. Chesterton was chiding the liberal upper-class socialites who were taken in with this stuff.
Of course, my own observations are just anecdotal, but I would be curious to know if anyone else has noticed it.
> Belief without evidence that black/white racial differences in outcome are completely due to modern systemic racism and not partly due to a byproduct of cultural differences
I think what you're describing is that a lot of liberals and leftists are opposed to the use of science to justify what they would probably consider racist beliefs. They might point to the use of scientific racism in the past as a reason not to repeat such mistakes. They might also question the intentions of the (disproportionately white) people who tend to focus obsessively on these issues to the exclusion of many others.
I wonder if this is what has polluted and spilled over into other areas so it has influenced a general anti intellectual / elitism sentiment that gets in the way of critical thinking and science.
There's a really good article written about this subject by Jose Duarte: http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/i-was-denied-admission-to-a-p...
I really recommend giving it a full read. The gist is that higher education is very, very clearly biased against particular groups. "Net detriment" is loaded, but "unfairly biased against us" is a not only reasonable, but demonstrably true conclusion. Negative reactions are warranted.
There's a real problem here within education.
A lot of the skepticism of higher ed is precisely because they have not been doing a good job teaching science and critical thinking.
I mean yes there is definitely criticism on higher ed and what value students are getting for the now extremely high price tag, but to say that this is what is the issue is definitely missing the point
The class stratification in society is absolutely intense, if you're coming from a bad family you just need to get away from them as soon as you can. I made the mistake of not estranging myself from my own family much sooner. If I could change one thing about the way America works I'd eliminate the requirement for parental involvement when it comes to getting financial aid.
If your parents like to beat you up, you should be able to just walk out when you're 18 and get help to go to school. But that's not the system now. Aside from a small handful of exceptions which are painfully difficult to get, you're basically on your own. I think in Europe everyone just gets help to go to college so this isn't an issue there.
I agree that most students who got to college don't make good use of the time or investment, but it is still a minority of people who even attempt college.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_302.60.a... https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=40
Journalism has been degrading its own reputation through supplanting the standard journalistic integrity with biases.
Science is in the middle of a crisis of integrity where 'publish or die' and intradepartment funding incetives push academics to pursue publications of a certain flavor, not to mention the standard of 'how was this result p-hackes' many must have to read.
this isnt a republican issue, this is a governor behaving with a survivalist mindset and abdicating any real leadership by forcing a hammer on a whistleblower.
also, is it so difficult to see how a 20 yr old will question the value of a 200k education? Ever see that Columbia School of Journalism piece? observe the data on climbing tuiting prices? I treasure my education, but have trouble explaining the true value when younger people simply see an increasingly diminishing return on that investment.
The growth in the cost of college hasn't improved standards, but rather it served to fatten administration departments at colleges.
Additionally, quality is dropping severely. I've seen it first hand. I can't count on two hands the amount of new grads from "quality" schools with their shiny CS degrees who cannot write code. Not leetcode, just any code. They can't solve business problems at all. It's like they learned to pass tests. That's CS, which still has some value. What about useless degrees like Political Science or Gender Studies? Those are outright scams given the results. The victims are young people.
I think we should start tracking them. Maybe we could force them to attend re-education, it would be a pain to implement and enforce on a wide societal level but maybe we could concentrate them in some sort of camp or something. I think this would be a good solution we could finally be rid of these dangerous ideas, and the people who hold them.
This trend is increasingly prevalent in both parties. If we are to solve anything, one has to first recognize the reality of the situation and stop getting lured in by us vs them.
The Church, as an institution, is dying. In their death throes they are basically doing everything they can to turn back the clock on society to a time they played an important role in dictating how we live. Every societal problem we have today is a result of Christian, Muslim and Jewish religions preaching their versions of ignorance and intolerance, every single Saturday and Sunday to millions and millions of Americans across the country.
Economic conservatives hate ignorance too - you need math skills to count your profits and to best gauge how to screw over your minimum wage employees, an accurate sense of history and economics in order to best manipulate markets and legal skills to avoid IRS and SEC penalties. They are just as frustrated with general stupidity as the rest of us.
But religious conservatives? They're fucking insane. They really, really, really believe what the Church tells them, and the shit the Church says is truly, truly, batshit crazy and has been for millennia. I personally know of people who truly worry about the "mark of the beast" from the COVID vaccination because that's what their Church says. In 2021 this should not be possible.
Until the secular American people realize who the real enemy is and go after the Church and all its leaders, in real, concrete ways, we're going to spend the rest of our lives dealing with this shit.
College is too expensive for what it gives. You gain a ton in maturity, soft skill building but unless you're in a STEM major, the material does not prepare you for the real world. Depending on what my kid wants to study, I will not be encouraging college.
So much journalism is so insanely biased. I respectfully disagree to anyone who thinks Biden is treated the same as Trump was.
I don't deny covid's existence at all. I took it very seriously in the beginning of the pandemic. But as more data came out, I realized it wasn't a big deal for my age group. I later got covid and only lost sense smell/taste for 4 days. Didn't feel the need to miss any work (remote job).
I don't like the boomer-esque decisions some of these republicans make in regards to tech security, abortion, or cannabis but I guess I have to side with that over freedom reducing laws, excessive money printing, and increased taxes
Increased taxes for who? Taxes were massively cut for wealthy people a couple years ago and the only proposal to raise them that got any traction recently didn’t even raise them back to the previous level - still a net cut.
Also, Covid is a big deal for the families of the 600k dead from it directly and the unknown number indirectly due to inability to access medical services. Just because it didn’t affect you personally doesn’t mean it’s not a real problem.
I took it seriously as well, realized it probably wouldn’t kill me, but still followed precautions so as to avoid hurting others who would most likely have died or gotten seriously ill. I feel like that’s a pretty minimum requirement for a functioning society - compassion for others, who are not in your exact situation.
People respect Biden more than they respect Trump. This isn't Biden's fault, nor the fault of the people.
Bruh. You went to work while you were sick with covid?
Of course they are not. How could they be, considering the large difference in behavior towards journalists and the world in general?
High level of debt makes people more risk-averse to changing jobs, starting a business, or even having children. I believe that the greedy bloated system of higher education is responsible for many personal tragedies.
You're damn right people are going to be skeptical of higher education when they indoctrinate in the anti scientific cult of leftism. People are starting to smell the rotting corpse of common sense and rest assured there will be a societal reboot soon enough.
Have you done any work to asses your biases along these fronts? What makes you think that the immunity after getting infected from covid is better than getting vaccinated and not getting sick at all? I know I don't personally have the time to be sick, I have a family to feed.
Nothing that anyone says politically right now matters. For proof, consider how many of your friends even remember that Afghanistan fell just two months ago - likely none if they’re like my friends. In fact, there’s a consequential NJ gubernatorial election coming up in the next month and no one’s talking about it. I love the peace and respite we’re getting from politics personally.
Anyways, to respond to you, Parson is in charge of a state that regularly has multiple cities top the US murder rate charts. Anything he says that makes you forget that fact, even temporarily, is a win for him.
Science is fundamentally about skepticism, and democratic politicians/the media have commandeered its meaning to push their agenda.
Many Covid-19 policy decisions based on “science” are not actually based on sound science, and it doesn’t seem like democratic politicians have any interest in addressing this.
Here are a few examples of highly questionable policies:
Mask mandates when everyone is vaccinated, school closures, gym closures, exemptions for wearing a mask when eating indoors.
Most worryingly, it seems like academics are scared to publish data that contradicts the mainstream progressive narrative, because they may have their career canceled.
Or, you know, 3. Like most new vaccines. Except with this one, an exception was made because people were (are) dying by the millions, and because most of those 3 years is an observation period for rare and obscure side effects that take time to manifest. But do nevertheless happen. We did what we usually do in medicine: risk-benefit trade-off. The decision wasn't a close one, but that doesn't mean that being concerned about the risk is somehow absurd.
Point being: using charitable interpretations of your opponents' arguments does not make for brief and funny sound bites.