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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-ever-expanding-government dept.

Apple and Dropbox said Tuesday that they oppose a controversial cybersecurity bill that, according to critics, would give the government sweeping new powers to spy on Americans in the name of protecting them from hackers.

The announcement by the two companies comes days before the Senate expects to vote on the legislation, known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA.

"We don't support the current CISA proposal," Apple said in a statement. "The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of their privacy."

Dropbox said that the bill needed more privacy protections in order to win its support.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:38PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:38PM (#253441) Journal

    Of course it matters who supports or says something. It's this thing called "credibility" and it is important in real life and politics because it is impossible to evaluate everything down to the last detail -- you could never get on with your life if you didn't make decisions based on credibility. It would take you a week just to analyze the contents of your breakfast to decide if eating it was a good idea or not. Instead, we engage in trust because to do otherwise would make living impossible.

    Simple example: a plumber who comes with a recommendation from a friend, has a number of positive online reviews, and an actual physical shop suggests you need to fix a pipe. You'll probably believe that plumber because of credibility reasons. If some random person tells you the same thing, you'll probably not act on it for _lack_ of credibility reasons, and if you do act, it is to go find someone you believe is credible and get their opinion on the matter.

    Take this from the negative side: Bernie Madoff calls you up and says "hey, I have a sure fire investment opportunity just for you!" You probably just hang up the phone rather than investigate. Why? Madoff's past actions leave him without any credibility at all. This is a totally reasonable and rational decision.

    So, to the statement at issue, all the GP said is that if Feinstein (like Madoff) suggests something, the knee-jerk reaction is to reject it because of her lack of credibility. It does not indicate that he would support it if someone else suggested the bill, just that given Feinstein's track record, the chance that there is anything good in the bill isn't worth the waste of life (time) it would take to investigate. That is a rational and reasonable response because again, you can't investigate every single thing in the world and you must sometimes rely on such factors as credibility.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @05:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 23 2015, @05:42AM (#253510)

    Of course it matters who supports or says something. It's this thing called "credibility" and it is important in real life and politics because it is impossible to evaluate everything down to the last detail -- you could never get on with your life if you didn't make decisions based on credibility.

    This leads to extremely lazy thinking where people often dismiss others' arguments for arbitrary reasons. Examine the proposal and decide if it is good or bad based on its own merits. You don't have to scrutinize something down to the last detail; you could do a shallow analysis, such as by reading summaries. Yeah, you can't investigate everything in the world, but at least use your brain and research something for at least two seconds; that is easily possible.

    Credibility itself is often subjective and arbitrary. I love seeing people debating one another claim that the other person has lost their credibility for some completely arbitrary reason, and how this means their argument is defeated. It's especially funny when this happens in a debate where all of the person's arguments are on the table and nothing is hidden in the shadows, so their opponents could just directly respond to their arguments, but they choose not to in favor of claiming that the person lost their mythical "credibility".

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday October 23 2015, @04:23PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Friday October 23 2015, @04:23PM (#253639)

      such as by reading summaries.

      Published by whom?

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"