
Technology Is Magic, Just Ask the Washington Post - jp_sc
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/25/technology-is-magic-just-ask-the-washington-post/
======
mspecter
Full Disclosure, I'm a co-author on the MIT paper that this article cites.

The posted article is talking about the following two op-eds by WaPo[1,2].
What's interesting here is that in [2] they call for a national academies
study on the issue, the logic being that the state of encryption has changed.
The academies have studied exceptional access in the past, and generally
thought it was a terrible idea [3].

I'm personally not opposed to a new study, but the point of the paper we wrote
was to argue that it's an even _worse_ idea than the last time exceptional
access was considered. I'd be shocked if the academies changed their minds.

[1][https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/putting-the-
digital-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/putting-the-digital-keys-
to-unlock-data-out-of-reach-of-
authorities/2015/07/18/d6aa7970-2beb-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html)
[2][https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/compromise-needed-
on...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/compromise-needed-on-
smartphone-
encryption/2014/10/03/96680bf8-4a77-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html)
[3][http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5131/cryptographys-role-in-
securi...](http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5131/cryptographys-role-in-securing-the-
information-society)

------
benkuykendall
> If you don’t understand how technology works — especially a technical
> subgenre as complex and dense as encryption and information security — then
> don’t write about it.

This is certainly one message to draw from the situation. But it's not the
most constructive message -- it puts the burden on non-technical people,
telling them what not to do. Even if non-technical people realize that there
are scientific limits to technologies, that won't stop them from thinking
about and writing on technology incorrectly.

I think the burden should fall on us techies -- I think there is something
constructive we can do. I think we should strive to educate others on the
roles and limits of technology. Even if we can't teach everyone the math,
physics, electrical engineering, programming, and software engineering they
would need to truly understand technology, we can explain the limitations of
something like encryption with our blog posts, social media, and every day
conversations.

~~~
Trombone12
Also, his message easily generalizes to:

"If you don’t understand how something works — especially a complex and dense
thing — then don’t write about it"

which of course is a totally ridiculous thing for a columnist to write
(especially considering his implied standard for "understanding"). Of course
this requirement is nothing he follows himself, writhing columns about broad
sociological changes crammed into phrases like "sharing economy" and "we are
all entrepreneurs".

The column doesn't even build any case for the accusation in its title!

------
DanielBMarkham
I've been watching season 1 of "The Blacklist" in the background while working
over the weekend. Aside from being yet more terror porn, one of the
interesting subplots had a rogue unit surveilling the FBI. The implication was
clear: these bad guys are so cool and awesome that they can run their own
surveillance! Against us!

But really, not so much. If you really wanted to gather a whole bunch of
secret data on what the government was doing? You wouldn't need to set up
cameras and monitor everything. You wouldn't need some super-cool intercept
site located in Virginia. _The government has already done that for you_. All
you need to do is break in and scoop up data like every other subscriber is
doing -- just like what happened with the recent breech at OPM. (Which, being
the biggest heist in American intelligence history, is amazingly under-
reported)

As this article points out, people seem to lose sight of the fact that by
putting all of our eggs in one basket, we just make it easier for somebody to
rob us of all of our eggs. Backdoors are a horrible idea. I agree with the
author here that the reasoning displayed on these editorial pages is
"breaktakingly stupid"

Aside from the fact that the security state is destroying the republic, there
are some seriously ignorant people making broad decisions about a lot of
things they should just stay away from.

~~~
Sven7
Well...its always going to be easy to say the leadership is stupid and
backdoors are a horrible idea.

What's hard to answer is how do you stop the next Boston marathon bomber. No
good answers to that, which is why we see all kinds of partial solutions, with
all their well known consequences getting deployed.

~~~
mcphage
> What's hard to answer is how do you stop the next Boston marathon bomber.

Not only how do you stop the next Boston marathon bomber—that's relatively
simple. What's hard is stopping the next Boston marathon bomber _without doing
more damage to our country than the next Boston marathon bomber would do_. And
that's hard, because despite the loss of life, the Boston Marathon bomber
didn't actually do much damage to our country.

------
caseysoftware
(My wife was in the DC press corp for years covering Congress, serving in the
White House Press Pool, and the Pentagon at various times.)

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the press has little understanding and
even less background in the topics they cover. The article they write on
Wednesday, they may have learned about on Tuesday, after being assigned it on
Monday. This is why so many groups can get away with handling them something
that is just slightly less promotional than a press release and get away with
it. Combine that with tight publication schedules and the sheer amount that
they have to publish (though mostly bloggers, less general journalists) and
it's a recipe for disaster.

While my wife was still active in that space, I briefed her colleagues on
technical matters regularly. I felt like I was helping educate at scale but at
some point I realized that too many just didn't care. They wanted the "10
second sound bite" and move onto the next topic.

Note: If the reporter has a strong background in a subject - technology,
medicine, etc - they become the exception rather than the rule as most of them
can make more money as consultants than beat reporters. They are often subtly
promoting their own books and lectures too.

~~~
Sven7
There is a Matt Taibbi talk somewhere, where he says he was on the
presidential campaign trail with more or less the top reporters in the country
when Bear Sterns collapsed, and his shock at realizing that none of them knew
what that meant or what even the story was about.

------
gfodor
Is there a term for the phenomenon where whenever the press covers a subject
you are knowledgeable on, you can see clearly their reporting is terrible --
so inductively they are always reporting terribly?

~~~
dwmtm
[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
gel...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-
amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you)

------
forgottenpass
TechCrunch is one to talk. Their writing might be more knowledgeable but is
still characterized by magical thinking on tech when it comes to Big Names and
Buzzwords.

The WaPo editorial board has taken a stance which large businesses that
specialize in high tech products have already publicly opposed. In this
particular disagreement, the technologists' position supports that of Valley
firms, so TC can namecheck Diffie, Rivest and Schneier to argue their case.

Wake me up when TechCrunch starts echoing Schneier about the surveillance
economy fueling the internet.

~~~
rezendi
Er. [http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/29/mo-data-mo-
problems/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/29/mo-data-mo-problems/)
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/13/get-ready-to-pay-for-
your-p...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/13/get-ready-to-pay-for-your-
privacy/)
[http://techcrunch.com/tag/panopticon/](http://techcrunch.com/tag/panopticon/)

(OP here)

~~~
rezendi
(and that's just me: here's eg Natasha Lomas --
[http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/06/the-online-privacy-lie-
is-u...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/06/the-online-privacy-lie-is-
unraveling/))

------
cakoose
I can sympathize with the Washington Post.

There are two common uses for the word "impossible" that are relevant here.
Solving the halting problem is impossible in the absolute sense. We have a
proof.

But think about the (mind-blowing) discovery of asymmetric encryption. Before
that, many things would have reasonably described using the word "impossible"
in the sense of "nobody has any idea how to do that."

Do we have a proof that "golden key" thing is impossible in an absolute sense?
If so, then it needs to be explained to non-technical people in a way that
conveys that. If it's just that nobody knows how, then it's not actually
impossible.

I think maybe people are interpreting the article as saying "if Google and
Apple wanted to, they could do it this year" and of course that's incorrect.
But I read it as them just lamenting that nobody even seems to be trying.

And I think their read on the lack of motivation is accurate. The people
saying it's a bad idea from a technological perspective probably also think
it's bad policy -- they wouldn't trust the government with a golden key even
if it were possible.

So all the Washington Post can do is try and convince people that it's good
policy. And it's fine to disagree with that, but it's unfair to call them
stupid for thinking that there could possibly be a solution to the problem.

~~~
gizmo686
In an absolute sense, a golden key is already possible, and we have the
cryptography necessary to do it. In a practical sense, a security system that
has a golden key is necessarily more complicated than one without it, and have
yet to demonstrate an ability to reliably construct a secure system even
without a golden key. On another practical sense, we would need to construct
an entire key management infrastructure so that it is possible for government
agents with legitimate access to use the golden key, and this infrastructure
itself would be a high value target.

------
kristopolous
That's pretty high quality writing for tc, maybe I should start paying
attention to them again

------
pmorici
Doesn't Jeff Bezos own the Washington Post?

~~~
MichaelCrawford
Yes but he is more concerned with ransacking its employee pensions.

------
nickthemagicman
What is this in response to? I couldn't find it listed anywhere in the
article.

~~~
niravshah
Seems to be in response to an op-ed from October 2014 -
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/compromise-needed-
on...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/compromise-needed-on-
smartphone-
encryption/2014/10/03/96680bf8-4a77-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html)

EDIT: In a similar vein, WaPo also published this, though not from their
Editorial Board [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apple-and-google-
thr...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apple-and-google-threaten-
public-safety-with-default-smartphone-
encryption/2014/09/25/43af9bf0-44ab-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story.html)

------
rbcgerard
How can any sane person advocate a "solution" like this after the OPM debacle?

------
gweinberg
You don't really have to have a deep understanding of the technology to
understand that there can't be such a thing as a technology that can only be
used by law enforcement personnel performing their legitimate function.

------
walshemj
And people are surprised that traditional Publishers have the same sort of
level of understanding tech as Jen does in the IT Crowd?

------
elektromekatron
Perhaps it would be a better tack to explain to the Washington Post that, yes,
technology is magic. However the kind of magic that has been used here is to
wedge open Pandora's Box and pipe the output into the global economy, so
unfortunately it doesn't respond reliably to demands.

