Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the bad-reactions dept
Following the attacks in Paris, many things were sadly predictable, including the crowd of encryption haters blaming Edward Snowden for the attacks. Responding to this, one anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week with a brief review of the facts:
14 years of ever-increasing surveillance
14 years with trillions of dollars in intelligence spending
14 years with trillions of dollars in military spending
14 years of torture and kidnapping
14 years of drone strikes
14 years of Guantanamo
14 years of crushed civil liberties
14 years of massive profits for defense/security contractors
And yet the western world's intelligence forces were unable to detect and prevent a poorly-planned and ineffective attack carried out by under-equipped amateurs. (If they were professional soldiers, heavily-armed, and better organized, then there would be thousands dead, not hundreds.)
Of course those on whose watch this happened will never, ever, EVER admit that this happened because they failed. Again. Instead they'll redouble their efforts toward the same tactics...never realizing and certainly never wanting to admit that you cannot fight the symptoms of terrorism, you must address its root causes. And in this case, sadly, the root causes trace back to the manipulation of the Middle East by western governments for their own ends. They created this monster and only now are they beginning to understand that it can and will turn on its creators.
At the same time, Hillary Clinton joined the chorus of demands for magical broken encryption that can't be abused, and That One Guy won second place for insightful by pointing out the real "enemy" in their fight:
Wrong enemy
When, to be blunt, idiots and/or liars claim that tech companies are 'refusing to work with police and the government', and that if only they'd stop being so 'antagonistic' towards the calls for breaking encryption a solution could be found that would allow the 'good guys' in, but keep the 'bad guys' out, they reveal that their 'enemy' is not the tech companies, but a much more troublesome foe:
Reality.
No amount of wishing, no laws or calls for 'co-operation' or threats of 'do it on your own or be forced to do it by law' will change the underlying fact, a fact that they are either dishonestly ignoring, or just too clueless to know:
There is not, and never will be, such thing as secure broken encryption or 'good guys only' security vulnerabilities.
At this point there is absolutely no excuse for anyone in the government or police speaking on the matter not to have done enough research to know this, so I can only assume that they know full well that they are demanding the impossible, and yet continue to lie and claim that it is possible, if only those dastardly tech companies would try harder.
Those that claim that it's possible for a 'golden key' system to be created, that claim that it's possible to weaken security such that only certain individuals can take advantage of the glaring vulnerability are either fools or liars, and need to be called out on it either way.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start with a response to the judge who mocked the very idea that being kicked off the internet was a big deal, comparing it to his son's complaints about being forced off the computer. A slightly more in touch anonymous commenter introduced him to the year 2015:
If I lost my internet:
My children could not do their homework because it's in the 'cloud'
I could not do my job where I am responsible for keeping elearning websites online 24/7
This asshole cares about HIS son getting an education and doing his homework but not anyone else.
Close minded, lack of critical thinking jackasses like this should not be allowed to sit on the bench.
In second place, we've got a simple response from jupiterkansas to a common refrain about police body cameras — the idea that the public can't handle the reality of law enforcement:
We know what you do isn't pretty, but we want to make sure what you do is legal.
Over on the funny side, we start with yet another anonymous commenter, who won first place with some thoughts about the ongoing failures of national security agencies in the face of attacks:
The Department of Hindsight Security knows exactly what happened after it happens.
In second place, we've got Almost Anonymous, who caught an error in our coverage of the attempts to retain a copyright on the diary of Anne Frank:
Spelling error in articleIt's already somewhat questionable that we extend copyright after death, but to enable an organization to claim that someone else has had a copyright in a work decades after his death when he did nothing during his own life to claim it seems exceptionally questionable.Mike, you misspelled "bat shit insane" twice.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with net another stupid response to the Paris attacks, this from from Rep. Joe Barton who wants the FCC (for some reason) to eliminate ISIS from the internet (somehow). Just Another Anonymous Troll proposed a simple way to honor his request:
I'd just cut off Barton's internet and declare victory. He can't see those sites anymore.
Finally, after we noticed a ridiculous rush to patent marijuana in the growing legalized industry, Roger Strong put things in terms of an anti-drug PSA:
"This is your patent system."
"This is your patent system on drugs."
[...]
"That's strange, there was supposed to be a difference."
That's all for this week, folks!
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Intel services wished & waited for Paris
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth:
The intel svcs WANTED Paris to happen.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sad that we, as a community, upvoted this one so far.
There is a difference between accepting that our foreign policy has been ineffective at best, immoral at worst, and going that tragic step further and tacitly taking responsibility for atrocities commited by evil people.
If there is any criminal justice in this life, we need to accept that nothing - nothing - removes the responsibility or agency from those responsible for these heinous acts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Plus of course you have to blame the ideology that founded said empire as well. We are talking 1400 years here - not 14.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Inasmuch as western governments and external political factors created and continue fuelling the conditions that give rise to terrorism, that's an important thing to know. Whether or not and to what degree that has any bearing on the individual responsibility for a specific terrorist act is a moral question that people can grapple with for themselves; whether or not it's a fact that must be part of any complete understanding of the threat of terrorism is not even a question at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Which 'evil people' are these? You have to be speaking of the kind of people who'd work to overthrow a democratically elected government in the 1950's or run things with codenames like Absalon, Gladio, Plan Bleu, Red Sheepskin, the translated Austrian hiking, sports and society club, Condor, P-26/P-27 and I'm sure others.
You should be a little more specific as to who's "evil" so we can make a judgement of their "evilness".
If there is any criminal justice in this life,
Have you BEEN to a courthouse and a trial? How about fact-checked the work of attorneys? Attorneys have their jobs not because of the quality of their work but it seems due to their being a government protected monopoly.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Whataboutery and false moral equivalence. Some people decided to blow up or gun down as many innocent civilians as they could manage. That's the kind of evil we were talking about.
I don't need to approve of our own government to call that out for what it is, heck we might even agree about most of it.
But, honestly, if you don't recognise cold blooded civilian murder as evil, you must be just about too full of your own shit to function.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
VS what kind of "murder" - hot blooded? Drone based? Ohhhh, how about via long term poisoning with heavy metals?
, you must be just about too full of your own shit to function.
You might wanna do a sniff test of your local surroundings to check for your fecal matter overflow status.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
If a tiger escapes from the zoo and kills someone then you do blame the person who let it out - not the tiger.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
What an awful, inhumane response. You blame the person, in your example, because a tiger has no moral agency.
Terrorists have that agency. They are humans. This is part of what makes their actions so hard to accept.
Terrorists make a choice, and no matter how much our foreign policy may make us a target, the *decision* to murder innocent civilians lies with the murderer.
To suggest otherwise is not only victim blaming, but also racist.
When you suggest that islamist terrorists coming over from middle eastern countries can't be judged to the same standards that we judge our more local peers and colleagues, you are guilty of the racism of lowered expectations.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Terrorists have that agency. They are humans. This is part of what makes their actions so hard to accept. Terrorists make a choice, and no matter how much our foreign policy may make us a target, the *decision* to murder innocent civilians lies with the murderer.
The so called "serenity prayer" is relevant here.
Remember what is says about "accept the things we cannot change". Well we cannot easily change the fact that terrorists will act like they do - so we have to accept that one. Simply heaping moral opprobrium on them does nothing other than giving us a warm - but ultimately pointless feeling.
However we CAN change the things we do - that is where we have to focus our attention. The similarity between the tiger and the terrorist lies in the fact that from our point of view both are predictable and beyond our control.
To suggest otherwise is not only victim blaming, but also racist.
When you suggest that islamist terrorists coming over from middle eastern countries can't be judged to the same standards that we judge our more local peers and colleagues, you are guilty of the racism of lowered expectations.
You are absolutely dead wrong there. Islam is a politico- religious ideology not a race (did you not notice that some of these terrorists have been white european converts?). To imply (as you do) that Islam is a race is itself racist and a slur on those of Arab or Asian origin who are atheist, agnostic follow other religions!
But in any case the process of (so called) radicalisation mirrors in many ways the well known Milgram experiments ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment ) which shows clearly that your statement " the *decision* to murder innocent civilians lies with the murderer." is dubious.
The fault lies with the authority figures and ideologies that control the terrorists and those on our side who succumb to political correctness and make no effort to respond to the ideology.
So long as the ideology exists there will be people who follow it. Blaming those individuals will get you nowhere.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
I grew up in a home where right-wing casual racism was the norm but I CHOSE not to be a racist myself when I grew up. I still refuse to hate or discriminate against anyone based on their ethnicity, beliefs, or anything like that despite the pressures in some quarters to do so.
Swimming against the tide is kind of my thing so I can imagine some of you writing me off as a mere contrarian. However, my personal philosophy is, "The individual must be free to act and the will of the people must be respected." That is what informs my live-and-let-live attitude and it's why I argue over anything that looks like an authoritarian position. But I think for myself. That many people don't question what they're told is at issue as this is what makes them vulnerable to manipulation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBWGo7pef8&list=RDW5VND1-u6YM&index=7
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rich vs Poor
Then why are there still crimes being committed in prison? The loss of privacy is all about rich versus poor laws. Keep your head down and you mouth shut, else every possible will know you are a socialists and not to be employed. Complain and lose all travel privileges. Become political active and face prosecution as persecution.
Unless of course you are one of the rich elite your privacy is secure as you destroy any poor person who dares offend you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
OK?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: OK?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]