tedivm: blaming congress is an easy way out. Congress themselves have complained that the executive branch has been overstepping the boundaries it had set in secret.
you: really? evidence?
logn: here you go. Senators have repeatedly complained that the laws are being deliberately misinterpreted.
you: blargh! laws exist simultaneously in multiple forms, you can't possibly expect them to be applied exactly as they've been phrased!
There's a word for that: apologism. Why are you stooping to that? Stop defending those who don't deserve your efforts to defend them.
You're a highly reputable security expert and founder of a highly reputable security business. You have enormous credibility with the HN crowd and outside of it (hell, you're the top commenter on https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders by karma, by 70'000 points!). But with every one of these comments in which you defend these people for no reason other than wordplay you lose a little bit of that reputation, at least with me.
You're a highly reputable security expert and founder of a highly reputable security business. You have enormous credibility with the HN crowd and outside of it (hell, you're the top commenter on https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders by karma, by 70'000 points!). But with every one of these comments in which you defend these people for no reason other than wordplay you lose a little bit of that reputation, at least with me.
You seem to be worried that people will be persuaded by tptacek just because he's tptacek, rather than by the content of his comments. But, somewhat ironically, you're helping that process along by being so emotional when countering his arguments. E.g. I wouldn't want to associate myself with what you're advocating: "Don't think. Trust your feelings." So even if there's some truth to what you say, it's obscured by the way you're expressing it.
EDIT: I've figured out what's upsetting about this exchange. You're not trying to change his mind. That would require you give him some credit, and you seem unable to. You're just trying to attack him (poorly). If forum members don't resist that sort of feeling, then forums will degenerate into flamewars. Therefore what you're doing now is poisonous to HN.
That is not what I am advocating. Please read my other comment.
I am worried that every time one of these arguments pop up, tptacek suddenly sprouts fifteen heads like a hydra and starts defending "the system". That worries me, because I don't understand why he feels that is worthy of his time, and none of the explanations I can come up with are satisfactory in view of his standing in the community.
Volumes of comments can appear convincing even though they are made by a single person (I've experienced that in flame war situations).
Edit: Perhaps. In any case, I need to go now, so I'll stop and let this rest. That said, I'm still worried.
When you bring someone's professional reputation into a discussion that has nothing to do with that person's profession and then make the claim that their comments risk impacting that professional reputation, that's bullying. It also signals a carelessness about professionalism on your part: when you say that your opinions about someone's professional reputation depends in some way on their politics, you are implicitly warning your peers that information they get about professionals from you is tainted by your own political opinions. It's a bad rhetorical strategy and you should reconsider ever using it again.
As for your summary of the conversation, here is what actually happened:
* The story is about DOJ adopting a policy of providing notice when evidence in a case is derived from surveillance intelligence.
* The top of the thread suggests that this was a politically good move for Obama, who is (according to that commenter) essentially required to execute surveillance policies set up by Congress.
* The comment I replied to refuted that argument by suggesting that the Obama administration has little respect for the laws of Congress to begin with.
* I replied by suggesting that refutation conflated a lack of transparency in an area of law specifically designed by Congress not to be transparent with a general contempt for the laws of Congress, which contempt is not actually in evidence. I also, as you pointedly refused to acknowledge, expressed dissatisfaction with that state of affairs.
* Various commenters cited evidence of a lack of respect for the laws of Congress which were, to my eyes, all further evidence of the former point (opaqueness and "flexibility" in an area of law that was designed to be opaque and open-ended) and not the latter. I then refined my comment to be about criminal law, which is the subject of the story the thread is based on.
* Along comes 'swombat to tell me that I'm an apologist for the state, a not-credible human being, and at risk of putting my professional reputation in doubt.
I think a close reading of the thread will bear my interpretation out, and, more importantly, show how different that interpretation is from the one you provided.
Right, so having done a bit of thinking about this, I'd like to apologise for making the statements above publicly. I do stand by them, and based on the number of upvotes my comments received there I was not alone in forming the impression I did. However, my concerns, justified or not, should have been sent privately rather than making a public fuss about it on a thread at the top of HN.
It was a mistake to post this as a thread on a public forum, and I apologise for that.
I think you should be wary that other people might form the same impressions that I've formed, and perhaps be more exact and clear in your responses. For example, you say you meant to say:
> I replied by suggesting that refutation conflated a lack of transparency in an area of law specifically designed by Congress not to be transparent with a general contempt for the laws of Congress, which contempt is not actually in evidence. I also, as you pointedly refused to acknowledge, expressed dissatisfaction with that state of affairs.
When what you said was:
> It's clear to me (and I hope everyone) that the executive branch and particularly the DoD is not transparent.
> While most laws exist simultaneously in the distinct (and sometimes even contradictory) forms of statutes, rules, and operational norms, foreign intelligence laws start out by necessity with fuzzy statutory foundations, and end by necessity with secret operational norms. This situation is indeed exacerbated by the DoD's (and, I suppose, FISC's) unwillingness to be clear about its rules and rulemaking process.
> But this is an article about the use of surveillance evidence as criminal evidence. So, my refined question would be, in what sense does this executive branch have secret rules or norms that apply to the criminal justice system?*
I still don't quite see where you point out that there's a conflation of "a lack of transparency in an area of law specifically designed by Congress not to be transparent with a general contempt for the laws of Congress, which contempt is not actually in evidence". Perhaps I'm not smart enough to read between the lines, but then that's probably the case of others too. What it sounded to me was a get-out clause for anyone to ignore the laws (roughly equivalent to the statement "no one can possibly know exactly what was meant by the people who wrote the law, so those who vigorously stretch the meaning of those laws are perfectly in their right to do so.").
Surveillance is a touchy topic for many. It can get people emotional. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that the society that is currently forming thanks to those laws is a direct existential threat - i.e. that if those people win the game entirely, I (and you) will either have to join them and give up our freedom to choose to do the right thing, or give up our lives. I'm sorry I brought this up in a public forum rather than via an email, but I think you should be aware of this possible reactions to what I (and perhaps others) sometimes perceive as a vigorous defence of the government surveillance programmes.
Happy to continue this conversation by email if you wish to do so. My email is on my blog, at swombat.com.
I liked this whole thread and think everyone had good points. This is just what happens when a bunch of really smart geeks start debating :)
Also, I personally don't think it's unfair to occasionally call out people individually when they've reached epic commenter status... people do it to pg all the time, and anyone who's in the public light gets this, and tptacek has reached that level on HN. And the great thing is, we're all here to hash these concerns out... ah, if only people with real power (politicians and corporate elite) were so accessible.
tedivm: blaming congress is an easy way out. Congress themselves have complained that the executive branch has been overstepping the boundaries it had set in secret.
you: really? evidence?
logn: here you go. Senators have repeatedly complained that the laws are being deliberately misinterpreted.
you: blargh! laws exist simultaneously in multiple forms, you can't possibly expect them to be applied exactly as they've been phrased!
There's a word for that: apologism. Why are you stooping to that? Stop defending those who don't deserve your efforts to defend them.
You're a highly reputable security expert and founder of a highly reputable security business. You have enormous credibility with the HN crowd and outside of it (hell, you're the top commenter on https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders by karma, by 70'000 points!). But with every one of these comments in which you defend these people for no reason other than wordplay you lose a little bit of that reputation, at least with me.