Back Doors

[Francis_Vaughan]

@deregulated

What happened to the rest of the posts? There were at least 4 more with more information. Government censorship sucks cecil. Did you sell us out? It is already obvious from the replies that government is interfereing with the discussion. **** this site

What posts are missing? The thread has just started its second page, so if you clicked on the little square on the left of the thread title it would have taken you to the second page of posts, of which this one is about the eleventh. Click on the text of the thread title, or click on the little “1” to go to the first page of posts, which contains the first 50. (Assuming you use the standard settings for posts per page.)

I hope you don’t think I’m government interference. I’m not even in the US, nor a US citizen. I am however a techno-geek.

[levdrakon]

@Francis_Vaughan

Curiously, those are exactly the right sentiments. Those are all human failings in positions of power. They are not technical issues. Security agency failings are human problems. The above discussion is all about tools. My point is that none of the tools in use should be a surprise. Nothing has changed in hundreds of years in terms of the tension between privacy and security. Nor has the problem moved in that time. The problem is always the humans that make use of the tools available. Humans make human mistakes, and have human failings. They also make good decisions and there are great successes.

If you are worried that your government is overstepping the mark in terms of privacy erosion the place to look for a culprit is not the technology. Be aware of the technology, but don’t be surprised that it continues to keep pace with efforts to thwart it. The right place to look is at your congress-critter or equivalent. If your president is a crook, lecher, or an idiot, you voted for them. Not that our political systems are exactly foolproof, but we do need to make an effort.

We are concerned with the culprit, and your congress critter probably doesn’t know jack shit about what the NSA has been doing since before that congress critter got elected, much less now.

[Leaffan]

The men don’t know, but the little girls understand.

[Steve_MB]

The subject came up in a confrontation between Officially Endorsed Magical Thinking (represented by NSA Director Michael Rogers) and Actual Technological Reality (represented by Yahoo chief information security officer Alex Stamos):

“‘Backdoor’ is not the context I would use,” [Rogers] said during an event at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. “When I hear the phrase ‘backdoor’ I think ‘This is kind of shady, why wouldn’t you want to go in the front door?’”

“It sounds like you agree with [FBI] Director [James] Comey that we should be building defects into the encryption in our products so that the U.S. government can decrypt communications,” [Stamos] said, in a testy exchange.

“That would be your characterization, not mine,” retorted Rogers.