Letters to the Editor
Mike Sulzer
Published Letters: 526 Editor's Choice: 2
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@rustcrumb
[Read the article: The conservative vision of America, by National Review]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rustcrumb is right: encryption is easy, breaking it is hard. This is a result of the public key cryptology developed in the 70s. Remember, for years, the NSA has tried to prevent the use such techniques with characteristics such that it could not break the code. For example, limit the basis of the key to a product of primes short enough so that it could do the factoring. Is it possible that NSA has solved the factoring problem? It seems unlikely that they could keep that secret. To do so would require very careful use of information obtained.
I think the current situation has little to do with encryption. It has to do with selecting specifics from a huge amount of information.
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Arne, Rustcrumb
[Read the article: The conservative vision of America, by National Review]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe I am missing something here or just incredibly slow, but I would like to see what you think. It seems the point is that this current surveilance is only useful if warrents are not an issue. You must patrol an entire subset of all communication. If you can legally do all foreign, that is a start. If you can extend the legal stuff to all foreign with US on one end so much the better. So you fight for that; hence the current effort in Congress, and you hope for an ambiguous law that you can mostly ignore. You really want to do everything; it is hard to make that even close to legal; so I am not sure what happens. The problem here is that it would seem that the potential for abuse is far greater than the potential for use. Or is that the point?
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@Ondelette
[Read the article: The conservative vision of America, by National Review]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Are you saying that it is difficult or impossible to encrypt so that it would take too long for even NSA to decode? I do not think that that is correct.
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@Ondelette
[Read the article: The conservative vision of America, by National Review]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did not interpret your response as rude; your sensitivity to this issus speaks well for you, so thank you. It is probably more than I deserve.
Yes, the time issue is important. Critical messages can be renderred impractical to decode, but the mass of information remains open. So the strategy is to look for patterns in that mass. The problem from my point of view is that they need it all, and I do not think they should have it.
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Get on board
[Read the article: The truth about telecom amnesty]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the administration is pushed, I think something like this will happen:
First, there will be a really intensive publicity campaign to convince the public that it is necessary for the security of the US that all communications be (or continue to be) searched.
Next, the claim will be that as long as the search is conducted by a computer program, not by people, and as long as the only use of the results of this search is the execution of appropriate emergency authorizations and later, warrents, there have been no amendment violations.
Congress will be expected to "get on board", that is, pass a law affirming the legality of this, past, present and future.
If the adminsitration is not pushed, things continue as they are.
Of course, no one would expect such a system to remain free of abuses.
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Ondelette
[Read the article: AT&T, other telecoms, buy victory in lawsuits]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Very nice letter.
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Overpopulation?
[Read the article: Earth to PETA]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mankind's use of power is equal to about .01% of the solar power falling on the earth. (That is 1 part in 10,000.) So we are fundamentally just a small perturbation. However, the biosphere has evolved some very delicate balances that we are now upsetting. Energy balance is easily perturbed by fluctuations in green house gas concentrations (water vapor, CO2, etc.). I think there are better ways of controlling or modifying the process than drastic population reduction.
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What, indeed?
[Read the article: Chris Floyd for Glenn Greenwald: The Democrats' year of living disastrously]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"And what new nightmares await them in the second year of this perverse union between a power-drunk president and a cowardly, corrupted, complicit "opposition"?"
Continued inaction on global warming comes to mind.
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ondelette
[Read the article: Chris Floyd for Glenn Greenwald: The Democrats' year of living disastrously]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Interesting article. I have never been to Las Vegas, and I think I will stay away. On the other hand, that aspect of Vegas is coming everywhere.
I agree about the hyphen, but once it is removed, facial is OK for an adjective.
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No Matt...
[Read the article: Earth to PETA]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"When measured by CO2 alone, power plants appear to emit more global warming emissions than animal agriculture, but this comparison is deceptive, as power plants don't generate energy for their own sake but rather to provide power for industrial and consumer purposes—like animal agriculture."
Matt, it literally is the power plant that emits the CO2. It is just simpler to account for it at the source. Therefore, meat production should be judged by is how much energy it uses, just as all other production should be.
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Air Power
[Read the article: Chris Floyd for Glenn Greenwald: Rain of terror in the U.S. air war in Iraq ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"And there would actually be even more of this under the nonwithdrawal "withdrawal" plans of the leading Democrats, all of which call for retaining some sort of "residual" force in Iraq. The only way to protect such a diminished, isolated but still very present and provocative force is through the increased use of airpower."
Air power is being used to assault supposedly military targets in civilian neighborhoods. The attacks are offensive in nature. That is not necessarily part of defending a residual force. I am not advocating keeping a force there one second longer than necessary to pull everyone out. But I do think it is important to understand the current tactics for what they are.
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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,...
[Read the article: Chris Dodd's leadership vs. Clinton and Obama's game playing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not only is that the part that matters, it is not sufficient. It requires interpretaion to apply the fourth amendment to technology that did not exist when it was written. Yes, there are communication laws that do part of the job, but even they do not help when it comes to "invasion by algorithm". When is information processing a legimate part of the operation of a communications system? At what point does it become an invasion of privacy? These things have to be decided based on the intentions of the fourth amendment and our current understanding of what is necessary for our democracy to exist.
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@nunnsense
[Read the article: Chris Floyd for Glenn Greenwald: People get ready -- one shoe away from war with Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Remember McCain's song?