zlacker

>"I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera."

Such a telling statement. It's my belief that this man does not adequately comprehend the magnitude of the issues at hand. General Hayden, on the other hand, is a man whom I believe to actually understand the technology that he was charged with professional addressing.

>>kobaya+(OP)
Hayden understands technology like a politician understands rhetoric. He's a snake.

>>kobaya+(OP)
> "Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera."

And there's (tens of) thousands of people smarter than you telling you how wrong you are about encryption, yet you're ignoring them.

>>colejo+n2
Exactly

>>jd3+E
I have no reason to believe that he's a snake - quite the opposite. He seems to be a man with strongly held convictions and a keen eye for reason. I certainly don't always agree with him, but he's thoughtful and thorough, as can be observed from his many interviews and his recent book. I can respect a person without agreeing wholeheartedly with them, and such is the case for Hayden. Comey, on the other hand, seems to be a one-track-mind kind of guy; a personality that is associated with the worst kinds of cops.

>>jd3+E
I recently had the chance to meet Gen. Hayden. He is quite competent and could hold his own in a technical discussion at a high level. He understood the minutiae of the Clinton email scandal and shared some insights that made me reconsider my view on the issue.

>>dsl+J5
What was your view on the issue?

I had read that they didn't even have SSL on the box for some time after it was up and running.

>>dsl+J5
Not sure if you're at liberty to say, but if you are I'm interested in what he had to say about the emails.

>>dsl+J5
At the Hoover Book Soiree? I heard great things about it.

I'd love it if you might share what he mentioned about the email scandal, as it's one of the few current political events that I haven't followed in great detail.

>>kobaya+(OP)
I went back and watched his whole talk. His entire appeal is that everybody arguing against him is stuck on emotion and won't let go of their incorrect notions. He characterizes all those arguing against him as lashing out that gubment shouldn't be poking into their tweets and instagrams, and that they are being irrational and need to open up their minds. He believes that all the people at technical companies are falling back to this emotional trap and won't actually address the greater issue of balancing privacy and law enforcement.

He really doesn't understand the actual underlying argument, which is the technical and mathematical fact that a system will either be unreadable by global 3rd parties, or will be readable by global 3rd parties.* It truly is either fully secure from both criminals and government, or it is open for criminals and government to have unchecked free access to our data.

The guy studied chemistry. It's not a "conversation" whether or not particular chemical reactions occur under particular conditions, but fact. Similarly, this is not a "conversation", but fact:

The reality we are faced with is that this easily accessed global communication network carries and connects to basically everything private and public, and all our knowledge of encryption leaves us without a viable "government only" access tool to data.

Any conversation needs to start from the recognition of that technical reality, not before. Comey is tossing this impossible request over the wall to tech companies, completely acknowledging he has no idea how any of that works but that they'll "figure it out", and views that as the way forward.

[* = This is considering that breaches of a mandated government-only back-door to encryption will inevitably happen, be it a leak of keys, attacks on the algorithms, or international information politics weakening the system as a whole. The precedents for these scenarios are plenty.]

>>kobaya+e3
I am hesitant to engage at this level, but - you just couldn't be more wrong about Comey. I know him to be every bit as thoughtful and reasonable as your glowing description of Hayden. That doesn't mean I agree with all of his positions, but he is one of the smarter people I've met, and I do not believe that is an indication of how sheltered my life has been. I also know him to be perfectly capable of acknowledging when he's gotten it wrong, and generally willing to admit it, change course, and move on. That leaves me fairly optimistic about how this whole mess will turn out. In any case, you taking this instance, and something you obviously feel strongly about, and using it to craft barbs about "the worst kinds of cops" - well, frankly that's exactly the kind of emotional hyperbole that will continue to make rational discourse here difficult. This sort of frothy angst distracts from otherwise potentially reasonable arguments, and probably makes dismissing them seem more reasonable. Can you see how that might be happening here?

>>thotpo+Zl
Might you share an example of what leads you to believe that Comey is capable of acknowledging when he's gotten things wrong, changing course, and moving on? I've never had the chance to meet him but even General Hayden's remarks on Comey seem less glowing than yours. For example, while Hayden does describe Comey as a "very competent" and "very honourable man", Benjamin Wittes, in a conversation with Hayden, described some "not so veiled hostility to Comey" in Hayden's recent book [0]. Hayden has, in my view, been able to weigh the national security benefits on encryption alongside the national security risks. I've never once heard Comey speak with any degree of clarity or comfort on the issue, and has instead doggedly pursued his goal of ensuring the FBI's access into content data. Thus, I've described him as a 'one-track-mind kind of guy'.

Well, I'm not sure if my comment about "the worst kinds of cops" is necessarily hyperbolic or even emotional, but I can see how it does make having 'purely rational discourse' more difficult. Surely, a singular focus and unwillingness to consider the validity of alternative perspectives is not unique to some members of the law enforcement community, but I think that the shorthand I employed does cut to the core of my understanding of Comey; He doesn't understand this issue as well as the technology experts who, virtually uniformly, disagree with his position on crypto.

[0] Hayden did rebuff that characterization, though I think the public forum might have had something to do with it.

>>kobaya+0z
I wish I could provide such an example in good conscience, but a (very broad) NDA with a former employer precludes me from doing so. They might not mind, and he might not mind - but I would have gone back on my word, which I definitely would mind.

I know that this reduces the strength of my argument to essentially "nuh-uh!" ... sorry. But I will tell you that, when he says (in that keynote address) that he is willing to explore the possibility that he could be wrong - I believe that he is being completely honest.

As to your description of his "singular focus and unwillingness to consider the validity of alternative perspectives" - that just doesn't seem accurate at all; it describes neither this speech nor his observable approach at large. It does, however, remind me of a funny pinterest picture/quote:

"Once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive. 'Look at this bitch, eating those crackers like she owns the place'. "

>>thotpo+XI
lol, good quote. To be clear, I don't hate the guy.

One of the first times I heard him speak was in late 2014 and he was essentially arguing for all the same things that he argues now: "I don't know how the tech community is going to do it, but they're smart, and they can build in secure access for law enforcement". He still completely ignores the national security implications of such a precedent, and he also ignores the fact that, over and over again, crypto experts are telling him that the community has enough trouble building secure systems at the moment, and adding access to third parties is likely to exponentially weaken system security.