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The New York Times reports that President Obama met yesterday with the nation’s top tech executives and company officials on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers amid a deepening estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government. “What has struck me is the enormous degree of hostility between Silicon Valley and the government,” says Herb Lin. “The relationship has been poisoned, and it’s not going to recover anytime soon.”
American firms are increasingly concerned about international competitiveness, and that means making a very public show of their efforts to defeat American intelligence-gathering by installing newer, harder-to-break encryption systems and demonstrating their distance from the United States government. “In some cases that is driving them to resistance to Washington,” says Obama’s cybersecurity coordinator, Michael Daniel. “But it’s not that simple. In other cases, with what’s going on in China,” where Beijing is insisting that companies turn over the software that is their lifeblood, “they are very interested in getting Washington’s help.”
Silicon Valley execs have also been fuming quietly over the government’s use of zero-day flaws. “The government is realizing they can’t just blow into town and let bygones be bygones,” says Eric Grosse, Google’s vice president of security and privacy. “Our business depends on trust. If you lose it, it takes years to regain.”
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Monday February 16 2015, @10:59AM
It can't be had both ways. If force is the underlying authority for government, then there are NO limits to the exercise of power (beyond what can be gotten away with without provoking a revolt) and ordinary people under such a government are slaves. Force in response to force is otherwise known as "self-defense", and which is part of the individual's own authority stemming from his self-ownership of the human body. To quote Malcom Reynolds, "if someone tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back."
I had occasion to put some [soylentnews.org] entries [soylentnews.org] in my journal on this topic in another thread. The attempt is to cut straight to the underlying source of law's authority, and explore the resulting consequences of a nation that is not a slave nation ruled by mere force.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 16 2015, @11:20AM
It can't be had both ways. If force is the underlying authority for government, then there are NO limits to the exercise of power (beyond what can be gotten away with without provoking a revolt) and ordinary people under such a government are slaves.
You can insist that is the case, but it's painfully obvious that some people will break even the most just of laws. They will never delegate their consent to the law because they will never consent to the law. Force by the state (even if it is the citizenry itself entirely enforcing the laws, they become the agents of the state) becomes the means of enforcing the law in those situations.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Monday February 16 2015, @12:12PM
Right, and that's not a problem. I believe the disconnect here is that I'm keeping in mind John Locke's observation that people willingly form governments as a means to improve their ability to defend their own bodies in a state of "nature" absent any society at all, of which all just laws reflect. Just laws cover things such as battery, theft, murder, fraud, and the like. Not consenting to laws that merely reflect a human's natural state outside of government is meaningless, as no one ever has justification to, say, murder or rob another person. Just laws most emphatically do NOT cover such things as illegal 21-ounce sodas in New York City or letting a policeman rape you and "let the courts take care of it later".
In a slave state, anything goes, and I'm not particularly interested in those, so I try to avoid discussing them except to point out that I'm generally not discussing them.
In a society based upon the consent of the individual, government is NOT a weapon that he who obtains elected office can use to bludeon his unlikeable neighbors with. Yes, that obviously happens, but doing so is completely outside of the scope of the delegated authority and thus outside the scope of law and THUS literally criminal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 16 2015, @12:22PM
In a society based upon the consent of the individual, government is NOT a weapon that he who obtains elected office can use to bludeon his unlikeable neighbors with. Yes, that obviously happens, but doing so is completely outside of the scope of the delegated authority and thus outside the scope of law and THUS literally criminal.
No, just "outside the law" which doesn't mean anything other than unintended behavior. Whether it is legal, illegal, or criminal depends on the laws in question. Normally, there are quite a number of legal ways to game a system of law.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Monday February 16 2015, @12:34PM
Ah, another term I left undefined. Whoops. What I meant with that phrase is that while individual people obviously exist even where recognizable society, government, and resulting law does not, non-slave governments only exist because of law.
If non-slave governments pass and enforce void non-laws that are in conflict with their founding law, such enforcement is literally exceeding government's legitimate authority. As such government requires said law to even exist, such activity outside of its authorizing law and thus is illegal and criminal. Another way of saying this is that I am no more a morally-employed robber if I do my robbing solo than I am as the leader of a robbing gang made up of a thousand other people; adding more individuals in support of a crime against nature doesn't justify the crime, even if it does make the crime easier to accomplish.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 16 2015, @01:03PM
If non-slave governments pass and enforce void non-laws that are in conflict with their founding law
There are plenty of other ways such as selective enforcement of law.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Monday February 16 2015, @01:19PM
I think I see what you mean, but dereliction of duty, while bad, is not the same as government agents committing out-and-out crimes because they know few victims can or will stand up to them.
Don't get me wrong, as I'm not saying such government negligence doesn't matter. I am, however, saying that US government in particular has already made the claim that it won't be responsible for your safety, even in the face of its agents' own negligence. See court cases Castle Rock vs Gonzales and Warren vs DC.
Like it or not, an American is responsible for his own safety. That government services might not available to provide protection due to physics or selective enforcement is not something that registers strongly on my personal radar.