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Another day, another U.S. law enforcement official calling for regulation and weakening of encryption. This time, Michael Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, has told Congress that Internet communication services are helping ISIS/ISIL and other terrorist groups as they are now "Going Dark," and the FBI needs a "front door":
As far as the FBI is concerned, private companies must "build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else," the Washington Post reports Steinbach as saying. That's a pretty sharp reverse ferret from the FBI, which four years ago was recommending encryption as a basic security measure. But Steinbach said evildoers are hiding behind US-made technology to mask their actions.
Steinbach told the committee that encrypted communications were the bane of the agency's efforts to keep the American public safe from terror. But the FBI wasn't insisting on back door access to encryption; rather, it wants companies to work directly with law enforcement where necessary. "Privacy above all other things, including safety and freedom from terrorism, is not where we want to go," Steinbach said. "We're not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious."
Instead the FBI wants a front door; a system to allow it to break encryption created by US companies. Understandably, US tech firms aren't that keen on the idea, since "we have borked encryption" isn't much of a selling point.
Steinbach claims that while "traditional voice telephone companies are required by CALEA to develop and maintain capabilities to intercept communications when law enforcement has lawful authority, that requirement does not extend to most Internet communications services." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, fought unsuccessfully against the expansion of CALEA in 2004 to cover Internet and some VoIP providers. Efforts to expand CALEA continued in 2010, when the FBI first began to complain about "Going Dark":
In 2010, the FBI began its "Going Dark" campaign. Despite the fact that we are in a Golden Age of Surveillance, the campaign is a charm offensive to convince politicians that FBI is unable to listen in on Internet users' digital communications after obtaining a court order because of recent advances in technology. The proposed legislation would have forced all communications services to build secret backdoors for the government to spy on users and to decrypt any encrypted messages exchanged via the service. The proposal's problems were many, and it quietly died after a tremendous amount of uproar.
In the beginning of 2013, it was reported the FBI was again pushing for a wholesale expansion of CALEA to all Internet communications services. Similar to 2010, the FBI wants to force all companies with messaging services to engineer their products with a secret government backdoor and to decrypt all encrypted messages. The proposal also adds another component: fining companies for not cooperating. In May 2013, the New York Times revealed that the White House was "on the verge" of backing the proposal. While the bill was not introduced in 2013, updating CALEA was a stated priority for FBI Director James Comey in 2014 and we expect it to be so for 2015 as well.
Original Submission
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:51PM
Enough with the submissions that link to The Register.
Within just the past 12 hours we've had these submissions that all link to The Register:
The first two are actually in a row, one after the other!
If I wanted to read The Register, then I would go to their goddamn site. I come here for some variety of news, not just shit taken from The Register.
No, I won't submit my own submissions here. I've seen how the editors will mangle perfectly good submissions into total shit. I'm not wasting my time with that.
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:55PM
Here's what I'm going to do in response to your plea:
1. Continue submitting stories with links to The Register.
2. Repeat.
I won't bother refuting what you have to say about The Register, because that's a waste of my time.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:01PM
Do what's worst for this site if you really must.
SoylentNews is already seen as a site of crackpots and wackos, even by those at Slashdot and Hacker News.
Constantly linking to shitty sources like The Register surely doesn't help.
Not only do shitty submissions marginalize this site, but they also marginalize the topics being submitted upon.
Serious topics become jokes in the minds of the general public when people perceived to be cranks or weirdos keep on focusing on these topics, and referring to questionable sources while doing so.
(Score: 1, Informative) by takyon on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:06PM
Heh. Your trolling doesn't help the site, The Register isn't a shitty source, and my submissions are polished turds at worst.
What's best for the site is for you to leave it - forever.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:33PM
SoylentNews is already seen as a site of crackpots and wackos, even by those at Slashdot and Hacker News.
Sure, it is. I doubt many people at Slashdot and HN even know of SN, much less have this sort of impression. And how is posting about stories from the Register supposed to make that impression worse? The Reg is pretty mainstream for a tech site.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:42PM
HN?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:03PM
Hacker News [ycombinator.com]. It's where the people who actually work in the industry discuss things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:21PM
> Do what's worst for this site if you really must.
Like posting obnoxious self-indulgent whines?
Yeah, you are really helping. I don't see any submissiosn from you.
> Serious topics become jokes in the minds of the general public when people perceived to be cranks or weirdos keep on focusing on these topics,
You don't say?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:55PM
If we're seen as crackpots and whackos by the Slashdot hive, then we must be doing things right. I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member and all that.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @03:16AM
Those "crackpots and wackos," as you term them, had the moxy to fork Slashdot to Soylent when Dice began killing the cherished community that we had all loved for the better part of 17 years, nearly the entire history of the Web and a goodly chunk of many of our professional technical careers. They didn't sit around passively-aggressively whining how other people are not doing exactly what they think they should be doing. They have already put in countless hours, blood, sweat and tears to make this place a reality, and they did it because they love technology and the tech community. And in the 1 year they've been at it, this is already a better site, technically, than Slashdot was after many. The signal to noise ratio here is also better here than it has been on Slashdot for the last 7 years.
These guys have done a damn fine job, and they deserve gratitude, compassion, and understanding for it (when things don't always go smoothly) far more than back-biting.
But then, I don't think yours is a sincere criticism. Someone who says Slashdot did not have its "crackpots and wackos" clearly doesn't know much about Slashdot; it was rife with "crackpots and wackos" from the beginning and has always ever been. Frankly, any person who uses those terms as pejoratives also has not one clue about technology or science in general, or anything geeky or nerdy in any way--geeks and nerds are "crackpots and wackos" by definition. Yours is the sort of cutting remark the cheerleaders and beautiful people in high school said about the kids in the math club, the sort of words that drip from the mouths of sales people after the sysadmin has told them for the 500th time that they cannot surf for porn on their work computer, the sort of belittling dismissal that issues from PHBs or MBAs who cannot fathom the slightest iota of what your average engineer has mastered. It rather takes "crackpots and wackos" to make civilization, technology, and general advancement work, and I personally wouldn't seek the company of any other kind of cat.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:31PM
Post your own stories that are based on material from elsewhere. Others can submit what they wish to read.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:17PM
Come on. Read the comment before you reply to it. That was addressed already:
No, I won't submit my own submissions here. I've seen how the editors will mangle perfectly good submissions into total shit. I'm not wasting my time with that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:45PM
Take your pick:
Now why are any of them better that The Register for this story?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:32PM
Except for the Reddit link, all of these are more reputable than The Reg.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:41PM
All the stories are correct. Having a big name doesn't necessarily mean any better content.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by GungnirSniper on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:41PM
That's like quoting Hitler on the health problems of smoking when there are more reputable sources. Just because it's correct doesn't mean it isn't tainted by the source.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by penguinoid on Monday June 08 2015, @02:03AM
That's like quoting Hitler on the health problems of smoking when there are more reputable sources.
Any chance Hitler had any good, perfectly respectable quotes on global warming or some other currently politically charged topic? I would totally like to go around saying things like "Hitler said insulating your house is one of the most important things you can do to save on heating costs while helping to fight global warming."
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday June 08 2015, @02:09AM
Just because it's correct doesn't mean it isn't tainted by the source.
If it's correct, then it is correct.I don't know what you could possibly mean by "tainted" other than that illogical fools might dismiss it because of the source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:20AM
Ad hominem spotted! Attacking the source instead of the information itself means we can simply ignore you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @03:22PM
> > "Except for the Reddit link, all of these are more reputable than The Reg." isn't an ad hominem.
> Ad hominem spotted! Attacking the source instead of the information itself means we can simply ignore you.
Wow. I have not seen a more wrong statement in a long time.
1) You didn't spot an ad hominem (he didn't attack the character of The Reg as a means of invalidating the story, he just said he thinks they're less reputable).
2) You don't know what an ad hominem even IS. Ad hominem isn't about attacking someone. It's about irrelevantly attacking someone's character (instead of their arguments) as a means of making them look bad so people don't listen to them.
3) "we can simply ignore you"? Has ad hominem been made into a Rule of the Internet? Has a fatwah been issued stating we must shun the ad hominem heretics?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:09PM
Too bad all the idiot pedants had to come over from /. too. We'd be far better off without them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:45PM
By reading SN I only get the relevant stuff from that source. Otherwise one would have to wade through the 99% intellectual mud that SN submitters skipped.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @02:50AM
I don't know what process other regular submitters use, but mine means I often submit several in a row from the same source, because it's efficient. Doing it that way means about 5-7 minutes per submission. Running around to a dozen sites, scrolling through all their AJAX- and javascript-happy media pages just for the sake of not having your submissions come from one or two sites grows that preparation time quite a bit. I love Soylent, but I can't spend 2 hours per day doing extra legwork just to satisfy this very specific sort of objection, which, honestly, along with its follow-up post, strikes me more as whinging for pleasure and profit than serious, well-meant feedback, because it is a meta-criticism (as Quellenkritik always is) and because you have stated that you will aggressively not put your money where your mouth is and submit articles from "better" sources.
In a perfect world there would be hordes of submitters drawing from myriad sources, and during the week we're pretty good there. But on the weekends it's tough to keep the pipeline robust. If you're not prepared to either help remedy that or to overlook the source that the poor, beleaguered submitter pulled several submissions from, then you will continue to be unhappy here.
Washington DC delenda est.