angrymnk wrote:
gbaji wrote:
His point that people are too cynical and react emotionally to certain topics without engaging their brains.
I am sorry. You are wrong.
I'm wrong? I don't think so. I think that's precisely what he was talking about. That US intelligence organizations are subject to automatic negative reaction to any action they attempt, not based on a rational analysis of whatever it is they're proposing at the moment, but because of who they are, and association with past actions (and perceptions of past actions).
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That said, the statement was dismissed, because it is nonsensical. It is difficult to have a rational conversation when a guy who is supposed to be the top badguy catcher argue for undermining the encryption with mandatory backdoor ( the currently try to sell it as: but the master key will be split! ). If you are not sure, why it is a bad idea, allow me to simply say that, eventually,
it will be found. Then say "this is a bad idea, and here's why". Instead you berated him for crying about not being trusted because... wait for it... of past actions. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with saying "I don't trust you because you did something I disliked in the past, so I'm going to take whatever you're proposing now with a massive grain of salt'. However, what you are doing when you do that
is cynicism. You are free to believe that the cynicism he and others in his profession face is reasonable, but you should not deny that they are, in fact, faced with that problem.
That's all I was saying.
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And Comey has the audacity to whine about the environment he helped create? He should be happy people are cynical and not livid.
I didn't see his comments so much as whiny as recognizing that a big problem they face is cynicism about any action they propose. There are a lot of people who just assume that anything they do is aimed at spying on US citizens. Whether they are right or not isn't the point.
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I think when you say rational you want me to simply ignore all the crap they previously try to say or do. No dice. Interwebz remembers. ANd thus far they have not done much to earn my trust.
I'm not doing that at all. I'm just pointing out the irony of you responding to him with precisely the cynicism he was talking about. Again, I'm not saying it's not
fair cynicism. I just found it funny.
If US intelligence/security agencies had a perfect track record of avoiding infringing people's rights whilst doing their work, would you react to a proposed security measure from them with the same negativity? Probably not, right? You even mention above that is about past actions influencing your present perception. That's the point though. You're judging him (his whole industry), not just on what they're doing now, but what they have done in the past. And yes, that involves a bit of cynicism on your part (and that of others). Again, I'm not saying this is wrong. Just saying that he's correct that this is a problem. Because that same cynicism affects them even when proposing things that are quite reasonable as well as when they propose things that are not.