> In some sense what the president thinks about how crypto works doesn't really matter
While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists. Law enforcement then believes we technologists are being disobedient and aren't doing our civic duty. That has a cost.
Law enforcement needs to understand that they can't rely on this data so heavily in the future. We pay them to keep us safe and I'd prefer that they figure out how to do their job the right way sooner than later.
> crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale
No doubt
> So I choose to think they know more than they let on
Feel free. I think their understanding of encryption tech is incomplete. I do think Comey is being less than truthful about his intentions to access "just this one phone". But I also feel it's our job to keep people informed so we don't play this mindless, pointless finger pointing game and get down to doing things the right way. If technologists do not teach the lay person how technology works, and we say everyone must research it themselves, then I believe we will take longer to move forward as a trustful society.
> The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth.
I completely agree it's the public we want to educate here to make sure this is the last crypto war, and that it ends with this case. We're only hurting ourselves by letting these buffoons have the biggest voice.
"While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists."
I agree with this 100%. He's one of those people that think every problem can be solved through force of will, intelligence, and civility - so he's constantly making forceful declarations about how we should get all of the smartest people together, put them in a room, and have them calculate exactly how we can have our cake and eat it too.
The problem is that he thinks that you get the smartest people by selecting the most civil members of each belligerent faction. To him, people who understand encryption constitute one faction, because they all have the same opinion, and with that he guarantees that the smartest people are going to be a minority in that room. If Silicon Valley businessmen, the FBI, NSA, DEA, and anti-Islamic hawks are also separate factions, he can set up a situation where 99/100 people in the room are talking about what should be done, and only one has any understanding of how it works or the capability of implementing it. 90% of the remainder are quoted anonymously in the NYT saying "I think the ultimate solution will land somewhere in the middle."
"While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists."
This is one of those "correlation isn't causation" cases here... the President isn't leading them to that conclusion, there's an independent belief about that from, well, pretty much everybody other than experts in the field that there must be a middle ground.
For sure! I definitely believe people can make up their own minds, and hopefully most will. All I'm saying is we all don't have time to learn about every scientific advance and the surrounding laws and implications. We entrust a lot of that to others. And sometimes, through lack of knowledge, we can be swung by fear. My fear, since I don't know much about how law enforcement operates, is that law enforcement already feels disrespected by the public, and they will blame technologists for failing to catch terrorists instead of doing the best they can at their jobs.
The rise in portable social media has amplified situations where they make mistakes. They need to quickly improve the quality of their service in order to maintain our trust. On top of that, if Apple builds a more secure device, they may soon find that they no longer have access to as much information as they had for the last 5 years.
Like any boss, the President is supposedly the best suited and most informed. In this case he is the most informed on security issues balanced with civil liberties, and so he holds some convincing power over those who may not be as informed as he is, which includes all levels of the DOJ and the general public. It'd be nice if he knew a few more details about encryption and could either share those facts with the world so we can all understand a little bit more about the future, or at least stop acting like there is something tech companies can do to help the government catch terrorists who use encryption to hide their communications. On an ad hoc basis there may be something tech companies could do with the NSA, like having a special forces tech group, but forcing all encryption software to do key escrow just isn't feasible when you consider open source and free software. Obama's rhetoric sounds like he wants some permanent solution in place via legislation. That isn't possible and he is misleading the public by implying it is.
While the President touts finding middle ground, he leads the DOJ to believe that there must be some concession that can be made by technologists. Law enforcement then believes we technologists are being disobedient and aren't doing our civic duty. That has a cost.
Law enforcement needs to understand that they can't rely on this data so heavily in the future. We pay them to keep us safe and I'd prefer that they figure out how to do their job the right way sooner than later.
> crypto doesn't care about any of the silly things being opined by Comey et al. Key escrow does not scale
No doubt
> So I choose to think they know more than they let on
Feel free. I think their understanding of encryption tech is incomplete. I do think Comey is being less than truthful about his intentions to access "just this one phone". But I also feel it's our job to keep people informed so we don't play this mindless, pointless finger pointing game and get down to doing things the right way. If technologists do not teach the lay person how technology works, and we say everyone must research it themselves, then I believe we will take longer to move forward as a trustful society.
> The general public is a lot more ignorant and complacent than FBI, no matter what comes out of Comeys mouth.
I completely agree it's the public we want to educate here to make sure this is the last crypto war, and that it ends with this case. We're only hurting ourselves by letting these buffoons have the biggest voice.