Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the unencrypted-via-golden-key dept

We've got a double-winner this week, with DannyB taking the first place spot for insightful and the second place spot for funny. The comment in question comes in response to Yahoo's sad and baffling decision to start blocking Yahoo Mail for Adblock users, and explains a better way of looking at it:

Yahoo has it BACKWARDS Yahoo says:

Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail.

What they mean is

Please disable Yahoo Mail to continue using Ad Blocker.

If that is not what they mean, then they will discover that this is what will happen.

In second place on the insightful side, we've got a response to Dianne Feinstein's recent attacks on encryption and their apparent contradiction of her desire for better cybersecurity. We blamed this on classic politician ignorance, but That One Guy was not prepared to be so generous in this case:

You mistake 'malice' for ignorance. She knows exactly what she's saying here, and while she's dishonest when she talks, she is consistent. She was for CISA because it would expand the ability of the various government agencies to spy. She's against encryption and security for the same reason in reverse, because it makes it more difficult for government agencies to engage in mass, indiscriminate spying on the public.

She's not an idiot, she's just a liar.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start with this week's post about the staggering scope of asset forfeiture in the US, where BentFranklin pointed out that it serves as a good case study for good intentions paving the road to hell:

In the 1980s we passed forfeiture laws to battle the largest criminals but look where we are now. If you want to know how the special powers we're giving government to battle terrorism will end up, just look at this program.

Next, we head to this week's other notable attack on encryption, this time penned by David Cameron's former speechwriter for the Telegraph, calling for the mythical golden key. One anonymous commenter was clearly fed up with this nonsense:

I want bullets that will only kill the bad guys and not the good ones.

I also want flash-bangs that won't go off into a room where a toddler is sleeping.

I want bulletproof vests that will open themselves when the bullet of a honest policeman protecting the community needs to take down a crook. (Corollary: OK, I know this one is really hard to do. The "honest" part, I mean...)

Oh, wait, this one this one is better. I want politicians that do what their voters want and not what their bribes tell them to do.

If we are going to ask for unicorns, at least make them with wings.

That editorial also happens to be the source of our first place comment on the funny side of things. The writer tried the same barbed flattery technique that so many have toyed with in this debate, lauding Silicon Valley as "the brightest people on the planet" who surely could mobilize their genius to achieve something, no matter how literally impossible it is. David speculated on the fallout from this particular monopoly:

Indeed, Silicon Valley cornered the market on bright people so thoroughly that the UK government had to make do with employing people like Clare Foges and David Cameron.

We've already had the second place winner for funny above, so now we'll move straight on to the editor's choice, where we start out on our post about the shocking decision by a Montana newspaper to retroactively make the real names of all commenters public. Among the many, many problems with this, there's the fact that Paul Alan Levy poked around the registration process and quickly determined that basically anyone can sign up as anyone with zero hassle. Atkray couldn't believe Levy would admit this so readily:

Worried about/for Paul Alan Levy

He has clearly admitted to hacking their website.





I hope he knows a good attorney.

Finally, we return to the post about the Yahoo Mail adblock-block, where Roger Strong used the format of another Yahoo property to sum up the situation neatly:

Yahoo Answers:

How to put the last nail in your own coffin while you're on the inside.

That's all for this week, folks!

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