While this is quasi related to the recent Zoom article on SN, this is mostly about attempting to outlaw End To End Encryption.
From TechDirt:
Senator Blumenthal Is Super Mad That Zoom Isn't Actually Offering The End To End Encryption His Law Will Outlaw
Richard Blumenthal has been attacking internet services he doesn't understand since before he was even a US Senator. It has carried over into his job as a Senator, and was abundantly obvious in his role as a co-sponsor for FOSTA. His hatred of the internet was on clear display during a hearing over FOSTA in which he flat out said that if smaller internet companies couldn't put in place the kind of infrastructure required to comply with FOSTA, that they should go out of business. Blumenthal's latest ridiculous bit of legislation lose your Section 230 protections. And while Blumenthal likes to pretend that the EARN IT Act doesn't target encryption, he also lied about FOSTA and insisted it had no impact on CDA 230 (which it directly amended).
But Blumenthal has now taken his ridiculousness up a notch. Following the (legitimately concerning) reports that the suddenly incredibly popular videoconferencing software Zoom was not actually providing end-to-end encrypted video chats (despite its marketing claims), Blumenthal decided to step in and play the hero sending an angry letter to the company, while linking to the Intercept's original story about Zoom's misleading claims about encryption:
Millions of Americans are now using @zoom_us to attend school, seek medical help, & socialize with their friends. Privacy & cybersecurity risks shouldn't be added to their list of worries. I'm calling for answers from Zoom on how it handles our private data. https://t.co/CEg1P3T3S1 pic.twitter.com/Vl9XyvxZjb— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) March 31, 2020
So outlaw end to end encryption. When a company pretends to offer end to end encryption, but actually doesn't, then feign outrage over the lack of privacy; the privacy you want to deny everyone with your own legislation.
Are you confused yet?
Related Stories
Elon Musk's SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns-memo
[...] In an email dated March 28, SpaceX told employees that all access to Zoom had been disabled with immediate effect.
"We understand that many of us were using this tool for conferences and meeting support," SpaceX said in the message. "Please use email, text or phone as alternate means of communication."
[...] NASA, one of SpaceX's biggest customers, also prohibits its employees from using Zoom, said Stephanie Schierholz, a spokeswoman for the U.S. space agency.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Boston office on Monday issued a warning about Zoom, telling users not to make meetings on the site public or share links widely after it received two reports of unidentified individuals invading school sessions, a phenomenon known as "zoombombing."
Also consider that one way to claim to have "end to end encryption" is to simply re-define the term. Zoom Meetings Aren't End-to-End Encrypted, Despite Misleading Marketing:
Zoom, the video conferencing service whose use has spiked amid the Covid-19 pandemic, claims to implement end-to-end encryption, widely understood as the most private form of internet communication, protecting conversations from all outside parties. In fact, Zoom is using its own definition of the term, one that lets Zoom itself access unencrypted video and audio from meetings.
With millions of people around the world working from home in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, business is booming for Zoom, bringing more attention on the company and its privacy practices, including a policy, later updated, that seemed to give the company permission to mine messages and files shared during meetings for the purpose of ad targeting.
Zoom admits data got routed through China - Business Insider:
In a statement late Friday, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan admitted to mistakenly routing calls via China.
"In our urgency to come to the aid of people around the world during this unprecedented pandemic, we added server capacity and deployed it quickly — starting in China, where the outbreak began," Yuan said. "In that process, we failed to fully implement our usual geo-fencing best practices. As a result, it is possible certain meetings were allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect."
He did not say how many users were affected.
During spells of heavy traffic, the video-conferencing service shifts traffic to the nearest data center with the largest available capacity – but Zoom's data centers in China aren't supposed to be used to reroute non-Chinese users' calls.
This is largely due to privacy concerns: China does not enforce strict data privacy laws and could conceivably demand that Zoom decrypt the contents of encrypted calls.
Separately, researchers at the University of Toronto also found Zoom's encryption used keys issued via servers in China, even when call participants were outside of China.
[...] Zoom has faced multiple high-profile security issues in recent weeks as it struggles to cope with an unprecedented surge in traffic and new users.
Zoom did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment and clarification.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday April 05 2020, @06:25AM (2 children)
(Betteridge here)
NO!!!
He is a Senator - and you expect common sense? Its not going to happen.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 05 2020, @12:35PM
Waffles for breakfast, waffles for lunch, waffles for dinner, they like them a bunch.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @02:56AM
Most likely, he's also serving the role of a LEA decoy. Usually, but not always, blatant deviations from common sense exhibited by politicians is the result of some kind of law enforcement operation being conducted behind-the-scenes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 05 2020, @06:31AM (5 children)
Blumenthal is a usefull idiot, or tool. Like any other useful idiot, it is up to the craftsman how the tool will be used. Blumenthal's masters tell him what he needs to hear, to pass legislation that his masters want. The ZOOM incident won't educate Blumenthal, at all. Instead, ZOOM will be the "example" needed to increase regulation on encryption, and companies that pretend to offer encryption. And, that will give congress and the senate a foot in the door when decreeing that all encryption must have back doors available for the government and it's "intelligence" agencies, not to mention law enforcement.
It all makes a warped kind of sense if you can put yourself into a role playing mode. In that role, your major goal must be to accrue power to yourself, and to your allies. Other goals may be useful, or desirable, in reaching that real goal of wielding power, but always, everything must contribute to that power goal.
And, please don't allow Blumenthal off the hook due to age. I'm an old bastard, and I understand a lot of tech crap. People 20, and 30 years my senior actually gave us the internet we know today. Blumenthal obviously had access to advanced education. He makes my business and yours HIS business. There is no excuse for ignorance on his part.
Long story short, he's just another whore in an office, selling his vote to the highest bidders. His masters have told him what is important, end of story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2020, @08:32AM
From Connecticut. He was groomed as Lieberman's replacement, fits right in. See all the committees he's on? Real team player, this one
You people keep complaining about politicians, seeming to forget that voters have to sell their votes on election day to get some of that pork, or all the dollars mean nothing.
Who are the real whores?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 05 2020, @12:37PM (3 children)
Just because he acts the part of an idiot doesn't let him off the hook for anything.
Whether he's truly ignorant, or willfully ignoring what he knows, its his actions that matter and those are what he should be voted out for.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday April 05 2020, @05:20PM (2 children)
Sure, he had "access" to advanced education. I'm not going to research it, but there's a fair chance he has an Ivy League degree. (Edit: I looked it up after all; no surprise, he went to Harvard and Yale.)
Many of the "elite" send their kids to those schools, where they are accepted, passed through, and graduate with the right piece of paper and all the political connections they will use in later life. If they also partake of the educational offerings at those schools, that's great, but by no means necessary. Blumenthal is no exception. Military service might have beaten some sense into him, but he managed to dodge the Vietnam draft - after five deferments, he managed to dodge into the reserves. A familiar tale...
What I find sad about people like Blumenthal is: he probably doesn't see himself as corrupt. After so many years in office (his political career began nearly straight out of school), it's a sort of creeping rot. He takes advice from people who have particular interests. Progress is made by scratching each others' backs. The fact that this makes him a millionaire and the other people's organizations get the legislation they want? That's just business as usual in Washington.
It is corrupt, of course. Politics should be a part-time and temporary profession, not a career.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:30PM
Very few people live in guilt, seeing themselves as corrupt. What's really astounding is when they take it to the next level and wonder why others perceive them as corrupt - when they're that far out of touch, it's time to bring out the guillotine.
I worked directly for a CEO - he regularly hired consultants to tell him what was "acceptable behavior" - and he really was a pretty good guy, paid us market rates, paychecks never bounced, decent benefits, etc. However "acceptable behavior" included giving himself 5x the highest other annual pay in the company during good times, making loans to the company from his personal funds during hard times and charging upwards of 12% APR on the loans, handing out "restricted stock deals" to the employees where the employees could purchase up to $3K in stock at 50% of current market price restricted from trade for one year, while issuing himself $300K in stock at 25% of current market price restricted from trade for 6 months, etc... apparently, the consultants that CEOs hire to tell them what is acceptable think all of that is just fine...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:37PM
Politics should be a part-time and temporary profession, not a career.
Serving in politics should be like jury duty, but in the meantime we do have the power to shorten their careers considerably, should people ever decide to do so.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by istartedi on Sunday April 05 2020, @06:41AM (2 children)
It's the ol'
function. Tell the devs to get right on that.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Sunday April 05 2020, @07:50AM
Here you go (v1):
You'll have to pull in some libraries, but implementations of the called methods have been mature for quite a while.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 06 2020, @08:39AM
Here's the calling code:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday April 05 2020, @09:55AM (4 children)
First, we are talking about a D. R are in for the money D are in for the control. Two parts of the same agenda. So the behavior is not logical and DOESN'T HAVE TO BE, the actual logic is I rule you obey.
Second, "Blumenthal", a German-Swiss sounding surname most common in Liechtenstein and, guess, Israel? watch out for hidden agendas. Not necessarily (I know some perfectly well behaving suspicious surnames), but a good reason to keep antennas up.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2020, @05:39PM (3 children)
So which surnames should I trust?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2020, @08:33PM (1 child)
Do you not get undertones? He means only trust the stereotypical WASP names and definitely not the Jewish-sounding ones.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday April 06 2020, @02:52AM
No, you need a proper pedigree and DNA check. Why? Because I am racist? possibly, but mainly because THEY DO IT TO US so WE DO IT TO THEM.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday April 06 2020, @02:47AM
LOL! trusting politicians, good one.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2020, @12:02PM
News: Khazar jew rat richard blumenthal wants to outlaw privacy so his foreigner race can spy on human communication. If you were to spy on their communication you will see they are another species different from humans. One needs to observe them for a while and everything about these chosen rats becomes clear.
In other news, khazar rats dressed in long caftans and wearing black side-locks in occupied Palestine are refusing to quarantine themselves, exploding the number of infections of a virus they helped create.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wisnoskij on Sunday April 05 2020, @03:58PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @05:58AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a952gCabSCQ [youtube.com]