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  • On the post: Senators Burr & Feinstein Look To Bring Back Bill To Outlaw Real Encryption

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2016 @ 08:06am

    What Happens Next.

    Right now the talk is of mandatory back doors for OS's. People can negate those with encryption in their apps. Apps from countries without mandatory back doors, if need be.

    Ban those with a new bill, and then what about programming tools? Functions for AES and other encryption standards are built right into the .NET framework. An amateur can implement them with no real understanding of how they work. (I know; I've done it.) Presumably frameworks for Mac and Linux have them too. It follows that these frameworks will get their own bill demanding back doors.

    The only thing this bill will do is force people and companies to other countries for OS's, apps and programming tools. Making Ted Cruz's grandstanding over ICANN's IANA seem even more silly.

  • On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: September 4th – 10th

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2016 @ 11:24pm

    Re:

    James Doohan - Scotty - was also Canadian.

  • On the post: Ted Cruz Still Blatantly Misrepresenting Internet Governance Transition

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2016 @ 02:30pm

    Re: Really Mike?

    In 2012 the job of Bachmann, Santorum, Paul, Cain and Perry was to stand next to Mitt Romney and make him look like a viable candidate by comparison. Buttressed by Palin and Trump further out.

    In 2016 Cruz and the rest were expected to stand next to Jeb! and make him look like a viable candidate by comparison When Jeb! sank without a trace - most of the non-Tea Party superPAC donations going down with the ship - there was no viable alternative.

  • On the post: Ted Cruz Still Blatantly Misrepresenting Internet Governance Transition

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2016 @ 01:22pm

    Re: The uninformed are running rampant

    Some times Ted Cruz's take IS Alex Jones's take. He doesn't just parrot ObamaCare and global warming conspiracy theories; he also parrots conspiracy theories from the Alex Jones crowd. Agenda 21 wingnuttery for example.

  • On the post: Ted Cruz Still Blatantly Misrepresenting Internet Governance Transition

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2016 @ 03:44pm

    > The Republican establishment spent years riling up voters who support candidates like Cruz and Trump, without ever expecting that it would ultimately be to the establishment's own detriment.

    I think that some wanted it to be to the party's detriment. Fox News and NewsMax, created as a wing of the Republican Party - plus WorldNetDaily, created to tell the lies that Fox, NewsMax and Republican politicians wouldn't dare tell but would cheerfully repeat - have made a discovery: Their best source of revenue is impotent right-wing rage.

    Rush Limbaugh's popularity has been highest - by far - during the Clinton and Obama years. He had to hold back on the anti-government wingnuttery when the Republicans were in charge. The same goes for Glenn Beck, Hannity, WorldNetDaily and the rest who monetize impotent right-wing rage.

    It was Fox News that gave the Tea Party it's voice. But it became far more than that. As Eric Boehlert put it way back in 2009:

    Memo to the media: Fox News is now the Opposition Party

    Rupert Murdoch's cable cabal is now, first and foremost, a political entity. Fox News has transformed itself into the Opposition Party of the Obama White House, which, of course, is unprecedented for a media company in modern-day America.
    [...]
    Greenwald noted the similarities between Fox News' overt role in U.S. politics with places like Venezuela, where the opposition TV station led the failed 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez, as well as Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate, uses his TV ownership to agitate. "Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch are really using that model to organize and galvanize this protest movement," wrote Greenwald. "It's a totally Fox News-sponsored event."
    [...]
    The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones.

    Fox News wants to REMAIN the opposition Party. They don't want the Republicans in power. The more power the Democrat boogeyman has, the more viewers tune in to Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and Rivera. Freed from responsibilities of being in office, more prominent Republicans can have segments on Fox shows. Fox News is a gold mine for Rupert Murdoch when the Democrats are in power.

    And so to win the Republican nomination you have to display a wingnuttyness that makes you unelectable in a Presidential election. The more Romney or other 2012 candidates tried to be moderates, the more they were painted as "Republican In Name Only." Even Republican hardliner Newt Gingrich learned this the hard way when he took the non-insane position that some compromise was needed on the budget. Fox News, the Tea Party and the Limbaugh/Beck wingnut fringe came down on him like a ton of bricks. In 2013 those Republicans who supported a budget deal were attacked.

    Trump hijacked the party not from the Republican establishment, but from Fox. But that's OK: If Trump wins he can't possibly live up to the expectations of the wingnuts. If Hillary wins, so much the better.

  • On the post: Holy Crap: Wells Fargo Has To Fire 5,300 Employees For Scam Billing

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2016 @ 05:56am

    Re:

    Why? Because the fake accounts WERE generating new profits.

    As the story explains, two million fake accounts still fleeced customers for very real service fees. And then the bank could charge them for insufficient funds or overdraft fees because the money was not in their original accounts.

    Sure, the practice probably wasn't explicitly approved by the bank. In exactly the same sense that certain outlaw motorcycle clubs don't explicitly approve criminal activity by their members or puppet clubs.

  • On the post: Vox: If The Clinton Email Scandal Has Taught Us Nothing Else, It's That Email Should Be Exempt From FOIA Requests

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2016 @ 09:46pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: What the Clinton Emal scandel teaches...

    No fan of Trump, but right now, there is no provable government corruption that I am aware of... just provable stupidity.

    Given that he hasn't been in government, it would be equally valid to note that Hillary has no provable Presidential corruption or stupidity.

    One can only go by their record outside the job. It isn't pretty for either of them, but Hillary has nothing to match outright scams like Trump University.

  • On the post: FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2016 @ 03:58pm

    Re: Re: Rumors of others...who cares with facts

    It's not "innuendo and rumor" that others used classified email in personal email. It's all either on record or freely admitted. (This is why I provided links.)

    NONE of all those other cases involved encryption. Most were against the rules, every bit as much as for Hillary. (Again, this is why I provided links.) There is no more evidence that Hillary's server was hacked than for the others.

    Sure, prosecute. But not in an "it's OK when Republicans do it" fashion.

  • On the post: Vox: If The Clinton Email Scandal Has Taught Us Nothing Else, It's That Email Should Be Exempt From FOIA Requests

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2016 @ 11:36am

    Re: Re: What the Clinton Emal scandel teaches...

    Well, sure! Given that Jeb!, plus Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal all have their own similar email scandals, plus Mitt Romney and Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and the entire Bush II administration.... Trump as a Putin sock puppet would be the only one left untainted by email scandals AND with government experience.

  • On the post: Terrible Ruling: EU Decides That Mere Links Can Be Direct Infringement

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2016 @ 12:22pm

    This effectively extends "The Right To Be Forgotten" - really, the right to force others to forget - to any whistleblower site.

    And how specific a link have to be? If The Intercept publishes a damning email from some corporation, is it only the link to the individual story that's infringing, or ANY link to The Intercept? The latter may seem unreasonable. But based on past stories here, obviously a lot of IP lawyers would disagree.

  • On the post: AT&T's Already Happily Tap Dancing Around Its DirecTV Merger Obligations

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2016 @ 11:43am

    > AT&T's Already Happily Tap Dancing Around Its DirecTV Merger Obligations

    If AT&T had hired the Apple PR guy first, they'd be calling this "Courage."

  • On the post: Hillary Clinton Thinks Real-World Military Responses To Hacking Attacks Are A Nifty Idea

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2016 @ 08:12am

    Re:

    I could vote for Hillary strictly on the basis of messages like this. It takes little imagination to visualize the sort of candidate Anonymous Coward would try to vote into power.

  • On the post: Hillary Clinton Thinks Real-World Military Responses To Hacking Attacks Are A Nifty Idea

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2016 @ 07:50am

    Re:

    Her claim takes me back to Clifford Stoll's 1989 book The Cuckoo's Egg. It tells the true story of how the Soviet KGB enlisted German hackers to break into American military computers - via other computers in California and Virginia. And that's in the dial-up / Tymnet pre-internet days, before things got complicated and much harder to trace.

    Would Hillary bomb California? Virginia? Germany?

  • On the post: Hillary Clinton Thinks Real-World Military Responses To Hacking Attacks Are A Nifty Idea

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2016 @ 07:33am

    Re: Re:

    Nice. My Samsung Note 7 still communicates by bursting into flames.

    "The Beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!"

  • On the post: Thanks, Google, For Fucking Over A Bunch Of Media Websites

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2016 @ 12:16pm

    > For what it's worth, we received absolutely no notifications from Google about this.

    “But the plans were on display…”
    “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
    “That’s the display department.”
    “With a flashlight.”
    “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
    “So had the stairs.”
    “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
    “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
    - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

  • On the post: FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2016 @ 10:03pm

    Re:

    If you're just going to repeat that claim, others can repeat the same answer.

    Previous Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice also used private accounts for classified emails. Any (likely true) claim that it was done to intentionally avoid FOIA laws, applies to them with equal credibility.

    Also Bush II, Cheney, Rove and anyone else connected to the Bush White House email controversy, tens of millions of White House emails sent through private servers. Millions of them lost. White House deputy Jennifer Farley even told Jack Abramoff not to use the official White House system "because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." Abramoff responded, "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system."

    Jeb! as governor used his own server against the rules and as Florida governor to discuss security and military issues such as troop deployments to the Middle East and the protection of nuclear plants.

    2016 presidential candidates Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, who each have their own email scandals. Mitt Romney too. You honestly don't believe that avoiding FOIA laws had anything to do with it?

    And of course all those Congressman who claim that they "don't use email", while having their aides use their private accounts. "Conveniently" avoiding FOIA requests.

    In most if not all cases you can't point to a "specific email" because they haven't been recovered. Or you can (the above Abramoff email exchange for example) but people simply lost interest because they left office.

  • On the post: FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2016 @ 01:59pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: She Should be in Jail

    Given that you're talking about jailing a large number of the very people responsible for feeding the prison-industrial complex, that's going to provoke a lot of mixed feelings.

  • On the post: FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2016 @ 01:49pm

    Re:

    That same worry could be expressed with equal credibility for any other Presidential candidate in recent decades.

    Well, except for Trump of course:

    - Trump no longer does business with many US banks. Instead he "has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia" according to a lawsuit uncovered by the New York Times.

    - Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman until recently, has spent decades as a political adviser in eastern Europe. He worked closely with Putin-supported former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who was ousted from power in 2014.

    - Trump's foreign policy advisor Carter Page has "deep and continuing financial and employment ties" to Gazprom, Russia's trillion dollar energy company.

    - Researchers have concluded that the national committee was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies in a deliberate attempt to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Trump has even publicly urged Russia to cyber-invade the United States to find and publish the hacked emails.

    - Trump has often praised Putin and promises to pull the US out of NATO. He's told the New York Times that he might not honour NATO commitments should Russia invade Baltic states.

    - The Republican National Committee shifted their stance on Russia under pressure from Trump staff in the days leading up to the convention in Cleveland, softening their position on the invasion of Crimea and Western Ukraine and weakening their support for Ukraine.

    - My favorite: George Stephanopoulos questioned Trump about that last point. Trump's defense of Putin - who has already invaded Crimea and western Ukraine: "He's not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He's not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want."

    - Reported here on Techdirt: Putin's Internet Trolls Are Stoking The Vitriolic Fire By Posing As Trump Supporters

  • On the post: FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2016 @ 12:31pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: She Should be in Jail

    Yup. America's founding fathers made sure that the definition of treason was VERY limited. They were, after all, committing it.

  • On the post: FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2016 @ 12:27pm

    Re: She Should be in Jail

    While you're jailing Hillary, don't forget to jail previous Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. They also used private accounts for classified emails.

    Also Bush II, Cheney, Rove and anyone else connected to the Bush White House email controversy, tens of millions of White House emails sent through private servers. Millions of them lost.

    And Jeb!, who as governor used his own server against the rules and as Florida governor to discuss security and military issues such as troop deployments to the Middle East and the protection of nuclear plants.

    You might want to at least consider 2016 candidates Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, who each have their own email scandals. Mitt Romney too.

    And of course all those Congressman who claim that they "don't use email", while having their aides use their private accounts to avoid FOIA requests.

    Or...

    You could ask why it's been standard procedure for pretty much everyone to avoid government email servers.

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