throwaway847345

> I think OP works for a member of parliament, if I understand them correctly.

No, he is saying that he is a member of a parliament. The lower house of the Irish parliament to be exact [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Rock

A technical alternative, yes, something like SRP. A usable alternative that is actually universally supported, well, no not really.

> From his perspective as the head of the FBI whose job it is to achieve outcomes within the law, of course Comey advocates encryption backdoors.

Wiretapping and search warrants are long standing and well support ways for law enforcement to investigate among other things organized crime. Just because you know have encryption doesn't mean that has changed. Similar to how the NSA didn't suddenly stop doing signal intelligence just because they allegedly "lost the crypto wars".

> Nobody would reasonably argue that extreme surveillance measures, patriot act, etc., is necessary to stop the vast majority of crimes from occurring, so why is it so easy for seemingly serious/intelligent people to think this nonsense is reasonable?

It's a presumably a "better safe than sorry" and "nobody got fired for choosing more surveillance" kind of a thing.

> Terrorism is a political word to describe political enemies of the state, yet the patriot act and surveillance machinery has been used in enforcement of many other kinds of (less serious) crime.

Terrorism is just the ultimate argument of people in the establishment. Just like encryption enthusiast might have some story about how they are helping dissidents, but are mostly encrypting their warez and mundane e-mails.

Passwords for authentication was just always a flawed idea, typing them into the DOM and sending them over the wire even more so.

> You can land a job almost everywhere with almost no knowledge if you are a jr female developer, which is not true for men.

Not only do I find that unlikely, I would say that it's blatantly false since you most certainly (AFAIK) couldn't land a job as an engineer in one of the large tech companies without a degree or significant experience.

Far more likely is that women who become developers, because of the state of the industry, on average are more employable since they are likely to have more formal education and skills that the industry lacks. But wouldn't necessarily recognized as such by other developers because they aren't seen as "cool hackers".