
A Solution to Hackers? More Hackers - bipr0
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/technology/a-solution-to-hackers-more-hackers.html
======
ditonal
Step 1 would be to pardon Snowden. He was whistleblowing on an illegal and
dangerous program that directly threatened our democracy and took steps to
totalitarianism. But instead of honoring that, Obama and his DoJ instead go to
SXSW and give insulting, condescending talks about how we should stop working
on "cat apps" and come be a drone for Uncle Sam. Why? So you can demand all
our expertise but trust none of our judgement? So you can underpay us, give us
no voice at the table, but then insult our intelligence by acting like serving
these crooks is some noble cause? Lawyers run the country, Congress is all
lawyers and no engineers. But then they run into problems related to
technology and they say "bring in the nerds". Well, the word you're looking
for is experts, and they're in the West Coast making way more money and
building real technology instead of bureaucratic bullshit and illegal
authoritarian tools of oppression. And maybe smoking recreational marijuana
without having to bullshit their way through some bogus polygraph (not that
those even work). I can't imagine anyone but the most naive would work for the
NSA, FBI, or CIA if they had any other options.

~~~
Inconel
Regarding polygraphs, I've heard form a friend who gets administered them
routinely, that they are actually fairly effective. By effective I don't mean
that they can tell if a person is lying, the science behind them is as far as
I know completely bogus, but in the hands of a skilled interrogator they can
be very effective at convincing otherwise rational people to admit all shorts
of things to the government that they shouldn't, and more importantly, that
the government would otherwise have absolutely no way of finding out.

~~~
sugersvoltet
I don't really understand why people have an issue with polygraphs. They're
pretty effective for the sole task they're designed for. As long as people
don't try to involve them in legal cases (or otherwise use them as a genuine
barometer for honesty), what's the problem?

~~~
dgfgfdagasdfgfa
Well, they create a culture of distrust, and when crossed with issues like
drug use which may not be relevant to work concerns, it's going to scare high-
value prospective employees.

~~~
sugersvoltet
Some kinds of organizations require some level of distrust in their culture.
And the issue seems to really lie with how the employer handles past drug use.
My understanding is many organizations, including some government agencies,
tend to be fairly lenient about admitted past drug use (depending on many
factors like how long ago it was and the kind of drug).

I think in an ideal world, questions about past use would never be asked and
drug tests would be strictly limited to determining if someone is high/drunk
on the job. The fundamental problem is employers losing potentially valuable
employees due to their unnecessary and invasive drug policies. The polygraph
isn't to blame.

~~~
drunkenmonkey
If a culture exists which relies upon distrust, that culture is tightly-
controlled, so that such distrust can be usefully exploited by the /elite/ to
put the community in check, when required by the elite.

When you combine this with government, you have a recipe for "your life is
over" workplace weather conditions. Maybe that storm only blows in once every
10 years, and doesn't take many people... so if you're high-functioning, you
might not want to join the island where the heroes are fed to the Minotaur
when the political climate goes South, sometimes without warning.

You might want to join the place where the worst-case scenario fail condition
is a pink slip and a bad blog post. Naturally.

------
BigChiefSmokem
Not sure what the solution would be here besides being able to register for a
"Licence to Hack" from the govt.

Edit: going to leave this link right here, since it's incredibly relevant:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/03/researche...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/03/researcher-
who-stopped-wannacry-ransomware-detained-in-us)

~~~
justanothersoul
Privateering for the digital age. I like it.

~~~
gruez
...until Iran, NK, Russia, and China does the same thing

~~~
OtterCoder
Like they already do?

------
mikegerwitz
Considering we're posting on a website called "Hacker News", I can only assume
I'm not the only one deeply frustrated by that title, and the opening
paragraph.

There's the hacker vs. cracker debate, but this is just profoundly
disrespectful to me. There's no intentional disrespect here. The author
probably has no idea. (Granted, a search for "hacker culture" does yield a
Wikipedia article making it quite clear.) I feel disrespected for the complete
lack of research on the term and because my core identity is being
unintentionally slandered with such _brevity_ without even being understood or
recognized. I continue to identify myself to others outside of the software
community as a "free software hacker". And when someone sees this website on
my computer---Hacker News---what are they to assume? When I'm sitting on an
airplane looking at this site, what are they to assume?

Had to vent.

~~~
diegoperini
Some people will assume you are the one to call when their computer is broken.
Some others will assume you are the reason why their computer is broken.

------
danjoc
Counter point,

#4) Hacking is cool

[http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d...](http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/index.html)

------
microcolonel
If only they'd realize the same thing in regard to gun ownership.

~~~
devrandomguy
Gun control is a completely different kettle of fish, because it is so
unlikely for someone to recover from an attack; these aren't beanbag shotguns
we're talking about. Also, there are no procedures that you can follow to
prevent an unexpected bullet from quickly killing you, whereas with, say, an
unexpected DoS, you can take measures to mitigate it after it has already
started to hit you. With a security breach, you can lock down, wipe and
recover from backups. But that bullet, it is just so uniquely final (and
therefore, off topic, hence the downvotes).

~~~
microcolonel
The National Research Council conducted a thorough review of evidence some
years ago and found no correlation between the introduction of gun control
measures and reduction in violent crime. In certain jurisdictions, there is a
negative correlation (probably unethical to do a RCT, so we'll never know if
causal) between certain thresholds in gun ownership rates and the rate of
violent crime. The accidental injury and death figures are not convincing when
compared with other common risks.

If your respirator monitoring machine gets hacked, or your records can not be
retrieved to show a drug sensitivity, you could die from complications in an
ER. I know for a fact that the hospitals near me run Windows XP, connected to
the public internet, on mission critical systems. If a system which controls a
switchable lane freeway signal gets hacked, even with generic malware which
accidentally causes a crash, a distracted driver could plow into another.

P.S. I'm facinated by your turn of phrase _kettle of fish_ , here it would be
a _can of worms_. Especially strange to me considering what I would think a
_kettle_ is [0][1][2][3][4]. Turns out there's such a thing as a _fish kettle_
[5].

[0]:
[https://www.google.ca/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle](https://www.google.ca/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle)
[1]:
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle](https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle)
[2]:
[https://www.google.com.au/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle](https://www.google.com.au/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle)
[3]:
[https://www.google.co.nz/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle](https://www.google.co.nz/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle)
[4]:
[https://www.google.co.in/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle](https://www.google.co.in/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle)
[5]: [http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/fish-
kettle.jpg](http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/fish-kettle.jpg)

~~~
orf
I think that study found that there was no correlation between the
introduction of _right to carry_ laws and gun violence.

They also found it was pretty hard to study general trends, due to an
overwhelming number of factors and poor quality of source data.

~~~
microcolonel
> They also found it was pretty hard to study general trends, due to an
> overwhelming number of factors and poor quality of source data.

If the effects of gun laws can be lost in noise among crime statistics, and
the right of the people to keep and bear them shall not be infringed, it seems
pretty outrageous to suggest that there is any reason to introduce equivalent
laws which a) infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms and b)
have had no effect that can be detected in the statistics in any implemented
form.

Vital records and the corresponding court records are an excellent, high-
quality datasource. If your "life saving" laws can not be detected in vital
statistics, then you have failed.

