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Comment by jonstokes | Hacker News Reader

I followed and covered Ed's career over the years at Ars, and he's a great technologist and one of the Good Guys. EFF board member, anti-DRM activist, one of those sounding the alarm on e-voting and mass surveillance. In other words, he's opposed to just about everything that Obama seems to stand for in practice (disregarding the president's rhetoric on these issues). So I have to wonder, is this one of those "keep your enemies closer" things?

Anyway, congrats(?) to Prof. Felten. Here's to hoping he can make a difference.

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So I have to wonder, is this one of those "keep your enemies closer" things?

My bet is that this is simply Obama showing one of his better strengths. Namely that he is able to assemble a diverse team of people with different perspectives, let them all have their positions heard, and then Obama makes the decisions and is able to control the politics. Obama has never looked for yes men, and his team is unlikely to be prone to groupthink.

The result of this is an effective executive that can get things done. You may not like those things. But he is good on executing on his ideas.

So Ed will get a chance to explain why Hollywood does not need copyright strengthened. However if he fails to change Obama's opinion, he won't be in a position to set policy on that issue. (Given Joe Biden's involvement, I doubt that Obama will budge on that.) But he will be in a position to point out the technical flaws in specific bad proposals and keep Obama from proposing anything which is obviously impossible.

> he's opposed to just about everything that Obama seems to stand for in practice

If the gov had to excluded Tech people who didn't fit this profile they wouldn't be able to find anyone left to recruit.

Well, he was named CTO of the FTC back in 2010, so it seems he has a good relationship with the Obama administration.

The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency. They don't take orders from the President.

(I know, because I worked there for a year)

> he's opposed to just about everything that Obama > seems to stand for in practice (disregarding the > president's rhetoric on these issues).

Obama knows his hands are tied by the lobbying efforts of powerful interests that are so strong he can't act as he wishes.

Hiring Felton sounds like he wants someone on his team that can come up with the rhetoric that he'll need to be able to match his actions with his words.

Ridiculous, he isn't a 'good' guy, he works for someone who tortures and murders innocents without qualms or cares.

Down vote the truth.

What I think that the OP meant was that for the purposes of his role, he is an advocate for the types of civil initiatives supported by most of the HN crowd. In some sense every American that has benefited from torture, assassination, coup, neocolonialization, murder, and enslavement by America's administrations and corporations aren't 'good' people.

Amazing you believe Americans benefit from the torture and murder of innocents.

If you willingly work for those who torture and murder innocent people you are not a good person, sorry for all those out there who dont like to hear the truth.

Americans do benefit from torture and murder - in addition to rendition, colonialization, mass propaganda, and all the other things I mentioned. They benefit in monetary and security terms.

I am not claiming that this is justification. I do not think it is right or just. But I will defend the fact that on the other side of torture is expediency and quality of information, which America benefits from. This is not something that justifies the actions in the face of morals. But it is a real world fact.

If there are no incentives to torture, to assassinate, to surveil, to colonialize, to propagandize - is your claim that these things are done out of pure unadulterated evil, wrong done for its own sake? That they are not done for their benefits, despite and in the face of their immorality?

Americans benefited and continue to benefit from America's torture, rendition, murder, assassination, surveillance, propaganda, colonialization, etc in real terms. Again, this doesn't mean it was a good or moral thing to do.

While I agree that Americans have benefited (and continue to benefit of course) from a huge range of morally dubious actions by its government, I have quite a few reservations about the rest of your comment.

The main objection is to your belief that morally repugnant actions must benefit the American public (and their de facto consent). Neither of those statements hold. There is a long tradition of those with power and no accountability doing many vile things even when it's obviously counterproductive or there is no greater benefit.

Without corrective feedback, political/personal incentives often misalign with larger social good, and there are few corrective measures that can be taken. Just because there is short-term benefit to some does not mean it's any good for the American public. One only needs to look at the history of CIA operations and blowback to see that played out over and over. Even when not explicitly clandestine, these things can flow from pure economic logic - one only needs to follow the development of the military or prison industrial complexes to see that in action.

I'll also take exception to your description of torture. Any reading on the effectiveness of torture will show consensus that not only is it not an effectiveness information collection method, it also makes future collection more difficult both from the source and in strategic/game theoretic terms. The costs far outweigh the benefits.

Torture is great for getting things you want to hear, whether they are accurate or not, which goes a long way towards explaining its use. That and those misaligned personal incentives. And the banality of evil.

I don't think I believe that repugnant actions must benefit the American public - just that broadly, when rounding, it does in practice. I do not believe that it has or deserves American consent.

Regarding getting the intelligence you 'want' out of torture - we saw that in action as recently as the start of the Iraq war when tortured informants, under duress, gave intelligence (unreliable of course), that the Bush administration wanted to hear - Iraq and Bin Laden were both connected to the 9/11 attacks. This was used, even though the CIA warned the administration that the intelligence wasn't actionable, as some of the key evidence used to justify the war in Iraq that the Administration wanted to engage in anyway.

But from what I can tell and have read, torture is quite effective when there is a means of verifying specifics (location of hideouts, numbers of people, names of those in certain roles, dates of events), which our intelligence apparatus does have in some capacity. No intelligence information is without bias/counterintelligence/deception and in fact all HUMINT (even honest and helpful ones) - intelligence agencies know this most of all and have mechanisms to counter them.

I agree we should be skeptical of torture for a number of reasons. And as other have said, "that torture is effective is KGB argument." Effectiveness is not a justification anyway. But it is my understanding that torture, when used properly, can be effective. Where my belief may not have very good support is probably here. I believe that broadly, the use of torture by America is effective use of torture.

Torture has been shown countless times to be ineffective.

At this point I'm willing to believe that torture by US (or anyone else for that matter) operatives is carried out for revenge or sadistic purposes only.

And 'Americans' as a whole do not benefit from these things. A wealthy and influential elite however, do.

As a counterpoint, "The Government" isn't some monolithic enterprise. It's made up of thousands of people working for the interests of themselves and millions of others.

Since it would be naive to suggest that there aren't those in public office or employed by the government who engage in morally dubious behavior, wouldn't it make sense to want more sane, rational, and "benevolent" people working there as well to balance it out?

The idea that nobody should work for the feds or the state because others in power engage in bad behavior would imply that we should just give up and leave it to the "bad guys".

I think that human nature means there will always be either evil or ineffectual individuals in positions of power but this just means the rest of us owe it to ourselves and the rest of our countrymen to push for better options...to stack the deck back in our favor as it were.

I put torture and the murder of innocents beyond merely morally dubious, but perhaps you have a more liberal view.

Look beyond your self serving and hypocritical narrative, would you equally defend the bureaucratics under Stalin, what of an IT worker for ISIS?

I'm all for improving a system and government which has faults. However it is maddening to watch people continue to lend legitimacy to a government that tortures and murders innocent people -- what is your red line, genocide? The US is quickly approaching in the 21st century that marker as well when applied to Muslims.

I recommend you reflect on your moral views since they currently support the aiding of torturers and murders.

The thing is we aren't talking about morals and ethics. We haven't been.

We are doing a deductive (and therefore flawed) analysis of benefits and costs.

Case in point: societies also (feel they) benefit from genocide. This doesn't make it right. But we're not talking about right. We're talking about gain and advantage.

We could have a really interesting conversation about right and wrong. But that's not what we're talking about in this tree of the conversation. So nothing you are saying, as interesting as it is, addresses the conversation points.

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