More encryption means less privacy - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2904894 <comment><USER2> I think this point of view isn't just wrong it's _actively harmful_.

It completely ignores what happened - which is that various government agencies skirted around constitutional law, subverted public discussion of the matter [0] and have still not been brought into adequate compliance (Since it's incredibly hard to demonstrate standing and not have the case squashed [1]).

And after all this the author is saying the problem is that the users aren't part of the political process? I would say until powers and programs employed by government agencies are brought into accountability (let's not forget the CIA monitoring the computers of it's own oversight committee [2]) and a transparent debate is allowed to take place, there is precisely nothing better to do and _encryption everywhere_ is precisely the correct populist and democratic way to fight it.

>Just this past week Kazakhstan announced that a "state root certificate" would have to be installed on all computers wanting to use SSL/TLS/HTTPS out of the country.

Yes backwards nations like Kazakhstan might be implementing "state root certificates" but this is just clearly demonstrative that the power is on the side of the users in this debate. Isn't having these kinds of crazy measures on ballot in Western countries precisely forcing the political process the lack of which the author of this paper is criticizing?

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/06/watch-t...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/06/watch- top-u-s-intelligence-officials-repeatedly-deny-nsa-spying-on-americans-over- the-last-year-videos/#521129b121d3) [1] [https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel](https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel) [2] [https://theintercept.com/2014/03/05/congress-intelligence- co...](https://theintercept.com/2014/03/05/congress-intelligence-community- whos-overseeing/)

<comment><USER3> I think a very important point was raised though.

Before crypto, basically all guarantees where conditional on a judge's say so. With crypto this changes. The issue also comes up, in a clearer way, with crypto currencies. There is no way to deal with fraud or mistaken tranfers in bitcoin.

That loss of intervention hurts, and we gotta think about it. Even though no government has given a satisfactory solution, that doesn't mean there isn't a problem in need of solving.

<comment><USER4> Until very recently 99.99% of conversations where completely private and society functioned just fine. Even with crypto everywhere the governments have far more access to what people say and do than they had for thousands of years.

People with power pretend if they just had more power everything would be better. But, reality is if everything on a computer where private not much would change.

<comment><USER5> > _Until very recently 99.99% of conversations where completely private and > society functioned just fine._

In fairness, until very recently it was also extremely difficult for two people to privately plot to murder hundreds. Technology has changed the balances on a lot of scales.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for government back doors in encryption here. But I am saying we should not pretend that encryption just puts things back "the way they were". It most definitely does not.

<comment><USER6> What are you talking about? There have been plenty on bombings and shootings for hundreds of years.

<comment><USER5> 200 years ago there were "plenty" of bombings and mass shootings orchestrated by groups of 1 or 2 people that resulted in hundreds of lives lost? Can you provide a few examples of this?

<comment><USER4> That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed. Historical examples are generally things like fires not bombings / mass shootings. As an example of the risks: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Meireki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Meireki) for example was extremely deadly, though estimates of ~100,000 dead where probably exaggerated.

We have also forgotten a lot of this crap. EX: 40 to 81 people killed from a time bomb in 1875. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Keith,_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Keith,_Jr). Note, this was for insurance money not terrorists, but I don't think the dead care.

Some historical examples where donations where probably accidental. The Delft Explosion of 1654 killed 100-200 people. In 1769 ~3000 people where killed when a depo @ Bastion of San Nazaro in Brescia was struck by lighting. A lighting also sparked another detonation in 1856 killing ~4,000.

<comment><USER5> > _That 's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 > people with hundreds killed._

I've heard small conspiracies called out to justify mass surveillance. You don't really need mass surveillance of your own citizens unless you are concerned about very small conspiracies. Bigger conspiracies can be uncovered with more traditional detective work.

Freak fires are also not a great example. An arsonist cannot cause hurricane force winds to assist and push a fire through a city. This is effectively an act of God. The time bomb is a better example, though again I would ask for evidence that this was a fairly common event the way mass shootings and similar terrorist attacks have sadly become.

<comment><USER4> 200 years ago world population was 1/10th what it is today making most events more common now. Something like 5% of everyone ever born is alive right now.

In terms of most kills by a single person one sniper is credited with ~700 kills and a mounted knight in plate was expedition to equal 100 peasants on average so 200+ in exceptional cases seems reasonable especially considering the Spanish conquest of South America where in the 1500's where ~300,000 vs 2000 and the 2000 won with minimal casualties. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca_Empire)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Slapping unbreakable crypto onto more and more packets is just going to > make matters worse. The only way to retain any amount of electronic privacy > is through political engagement._

While political engagement is an alternative to "slapping unbreakable crypto" onto things, this article establishes no precedent for political engagement actually helping!

I see the technical as political, direct action as engagement.

An article like this that's attempting to be a call to action, needs to provide some positive reinforcement. I find myself failing to come up with big wins, the examples I can think of are almost exclusively heartbreakingly tragic (snowden, manning, swartz, Occupy, etc). When I think of political engagement in the US, I think of pretty violent end cases for everyone involved.

<comment><USER8> SOPA's defeat was a big win.

There is almost no political engagement from the technology sector, as compared to others (like pharmaceuticals, finance, telecoms, entertainment). If there had, the DMCA might not be so onerous, the CFAA would be gone, and SOPA would never have gotten as far as it did.

<comment><USER9> I wonder. I've seen people on HN saying that Google is one of the biggest lobbyist, so apparently tech sector is very much present in Washington. So maybe it's not that there is no engagement, but that those who engage have different goals in mind than your average HNer?

<comment><USER10> Google (Alphabet) has been spending way more than previously, but the "Internet" industry as a whole doesn't even reach the top 20: [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2015&inde...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2015&indexType=i)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sure makes for a nice contrarian opinion, but fighting politically vs technically is a needless dichotomy. At least this post attempts to back up this assertion, but it seems a quite handwavey to assume that because eg a protocol contains key escrow, that governments aren't _still_ going to want to preemptively read, archive, and datamine the cleartext.

Yes, all governments. Because governments, even democratic ones, fundamentally desire power. The _best_ political argument we have is getting working strong encryption into the hands of everybody and making them appreciate the security it gives them. Presently, they have no choice about being personally surveilled, so they might as well lobby for everyone else to be surveilled as well.

As an aside, HTTPS is easy to coopt by network operators because it is a terribly naive protocol:

\- fingerprintable, even going so far as to put the site name in the clear!

\- naming system that assumes unfettered Internet access

\- generally requires communication for every micro action

\- crypto keys are disconnected from naming, requiring binding together by ambient third party

\- naming system based on specific servers inevitably leading to centralized data silos that will be governmentally or economically coopted

(Yes, the problems are centered around naming. It's one of the 3^h2 hard things in computer science, yet is easy to ignore when focused on the details of transferring data)

<comment><USER12> > The problems are centered around naming.

What's that expression? "All problems in computer science are ultimately about naming."

<comment><USER13> There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. -- Phil Karlton

Variant: There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.

<comment><USER12> You can solve cache invalidation by doing naming right. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd honestly expect something this ridiculous and intellectually insulting to have been said by an NSA official during an interview.

There no possible political engagement at this point. Agencies of major governments can quite secretly and even illegally engage in mass surveillance, _as they documentably have_. They can even spy on each others' citizens. The only way you can force issues out into the open where they can be politically engaged is by making secret surveillance impossible.

 _" Make sure the other side has an easier way out than destroying you."_

That only works when the other guy _isn 't_ already dedicated to destroying every vestige of your privacy.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article seems to make the fundamental error of assuming that there is any middle ground between "unbreakable crypto" and "effectively no crypto at all".

If crypto _can_ be broken, it _will_ be broken, whether that's by state actors or by some kid in Mongolia who wants to make a quick buck by ransoming all your files.

<comment><USER16> Because it's not a fundamental error or indeed an error at all.

What you've just expressed is one of those fascinating pieces of mental junk that clutters up social groups, a political desire that's so strongly held you've managed to rationalise to yourself that it's a fact and not a personal desire at all. But it's still not a fact.

It is trivial to use cryptography in ways that yield some sort of balance between personal privacy and the needs of the state. In fact it's almost the default:

• Client-to-server encryption with central message routing is "unbreakable" against neighbours, friends, your employer (when not using their equipment) and most importantly criminals, but is easily accessed by any police officer who can serve a warrant on the provider.

• Disk encryption enforced by secure hardware like iOS, Android, BitLocker etc can easily be given a backdoor by the manufacturers. It's only a few pages of extra code at most.

And that's about it for "mainstream use of crypto up to about 3 years ago" right? It's only since Apple and Facebook started refusing to unlock devices and claiming (wrongly) they have end-to-end encrypted their service so they can no longer comply with warrants that this situation has changed.

That's not even including other techniques like key escrow, the dual-EC RNG that the NSA was pushing (with the interesting fillip that it's got a cryptographically strong "unbreakable" backdoor!) and a whole host of other tricks that aren't really used much (we think).

PHK's article even _spells this out for you_ \- Kazakhstan breaks the supposedly unbreakable TLS by simply insisting everyone configure their computer to allow them that ability, a feature well intended by the TLS designers.

The truth is that there's a vast middle ground between "unbreakable crypto" and "effectively no crypto at all" and it is in that middle ground the virtually all services we use today sit. Enough crypto is used to keep out ordinary criminals and snoops, but not enough is used to keep out determined governments with jurisdiction. The point the author is making is that attempting to pursue the ideal of unbreakable crypto (a) won't work and (b) will actually end up making privacy worse for everyone.

<comment><USER17> If there is a backdoor, that backdoor can be used by anyone that has the key. I do not trust a government to responsibly handle such a key, as it leaking once results in total failure of security for everyone.

A backdoored crypto system is a broken crypto system.

<comment><USER16> There are lots of examples of governments maintaining the integrity of keys over the long term. The e-Passport system is an example of that. Another would be that the NSA had the ultimate insider hack - literally a sysadmin who dumped their entire internal wikis and document stores - and yet it appears that no key material was compromised.

You can repeat "a backdoored system is no system" mantra to yourself if you like, but there are a LOT of threats that aren't governments and those are the ones people tend to care about the most.

<comment><USER18> Threats posed by government are much more profound than those posed by any other type of organisation, because governments have much less effective checks on their power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd put it a different way. Encryption and other forms of good security force surveillance out of the shadows. Without it we wouldn't know what Kazakhstan is doing.

If the law requires a warrant to access your GMail account, good security is why law enforcement has to get a valid warrant and send it to Google to get access.

Done right, it's not a substitute for politics. It enables politics. It allows agreements on checks and balances to be enforced rather than letting state hackers do what they like.

<comment><USER3> We all like end to end encryption though. In fact, most people call it the pinnacle of crypto done right.

And yet, it completely circumvents any warrants.

<comment><USER20> Where does it say that the government has the right to expect the evidence obtained from a warrant to be useful?

If the government can't do their job effectively with the presence of strong, pervasive encryption, that's their problem. The right of the people to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects" is non-negotiable (at least in the US, barring a Constitutional amendment.)

They have the right to serve a warrant for my phone, and I have the right to hand them an encrypted phone. There may be circumstances where, legally, the government can demand a password, or pay for an exploit, and that's fair enough. But I don't believe any government does or should have the right to demand that encryption not exist, or that it should be fundamentally broken.

<comment><USER21> >Where does it say that the government has the right to expect the evidence obtained from a warrant to be useful? If the government can't do their job effectively with the presence of strong, pervasive encryption, that's their problem.

This is patently absurd.

US courts have, time and time again, upheld limits on the 4th amendment pertaining to the risk that evidence might be destroyed. The textbook example of this can be found in the so-called "motor vehicle exception". This exception holds that because of the inherent mobility of automobiles, there is exigent cause for a warrantless search, since evidence may trivially be destroyed, obfuscated or hidden.

>The right of the people to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects" is non-negotiable (at least in the US, barring a Constitutional amendment.)

The 4th amendment protects against _unreasonable_ search and seizure, not _warrantless_ search and seizure. Granted, a warrant often (but not always) renders a search/seizure reasonable, but a warrant granted absent probable cause is invalid.

Further, there are other well-established cases in which warrants are not required for searches and seizures. Three such examples are (1) Terry stops (2) the "in hot pursuit" exception (3) the "plain view" exception [0].

Hell, the text even states it plain as day:

 _The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized._

The only mention of warrants is that they are only valid if issued based on _probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation_ , and are specific.

>They have the right to serve a warrant for my phone, and I have the right to hand them an encrypted phone. There may be circumstances where, legally, the government can demand a password, or pay for an exploit, and that's fair enough. But I don't believe any government does or should have the right to demand that encryption not exist, or that it should be fundamentally broken.

I agree with one caveat: while I would hope that phone-decryption would be subject to a warrant, it's unclear whether or not this is constitutionally required. We may well see a "mobile electronics exception" appear. You and I might not agree that it's a good idea, but _prima facie_ , there is a legal basis for such a statute.

[0] [http://nationalparalegal.edu/conLawCrimProc_Public/Protectio...](http://nationalparalegal.edu/conLawCrimProc_Public/ProtectionFromSearches&Seizures/ExToWarrantReq.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a disappointingly defeatist perspective on the new crypto wars: unbreakable encryption is why we can't have nice things. I would rephrase most of his examples with the old saw: if you outlaw encryption, only outlaws will have encryption.

Since Snowden we've increasingly realized that our own governments are the adversaries, but hopefully incidents like the DNC hack will shift the narrative from the terrorism bogeyman back to defense against black-hat hackers.

<comment><USER23> Those hats might be a dingy shade of gray, but I appreciate their shedding some light on our political process. The _DNC_ is the adversary of decent citizens, in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a fringe opinion, but I personally wish the U.S. would make all forms of hacking and digital surveillance totally legal. Yes, legal, with no "I".

I think this would drastically change the technology landscape, putting more impetus on vendors to provide (and prove) protections such as encryption, and an impetus on users to select the vendors who are the best at doing so.

Hacking laws are a crutch that attempt to patch insecure systems with law enforcement. And they risk being interpreted incorrectly--see interpretation of CFAA in the Aaron Swartz case, where downloading files could have meant 35 years in prison.

I say let the CPUs interpret the bits, not the politicians. They cannot keep up with changes in technology, will make many wrong decisions, and are susceptible to corruption.

In a world where hacking is legal, encrypting everything would be the right thing to do. It would be the only way to stop the government from spying on us, and the only way for them to stop us from spying on them.

<comment><USER25> That would backfire very rapidly. We have trillions of dollars of infrastructure that would last 3 days against a single competent hacker. There was just an article recently on vulnerable hardcoded-password medical devices. Electrical grids and construction equipment aren't much better. People's webcams that they already own, phones that they already own, highly insecure software is pervasive in everyone's every day life. It's inescapable.

The pressure you are talking about would be too great. Things would collapse if it became legal to actively pursue hacking them.

<comment><USER26> So instead you want to wait until it gets worse? What's the end-game there? With bailing wire and plucky determination the FBI and NSA defend us, forever on guard against the one mistake that may bring it all crumbling down?

This "too big too risk" is precisely why we need this, and needed it twenty years ago. And we need it now, so that we aren't in a worse spot next year, etc.

To lessen the pain maybe for the first few years only "mostly harmless" hacks with full disclosure could be made fully legal. We could ramp up slowly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> All of the things the governments are trying to do won't (and shouldn't) work though. We can work around their attempts.

If the government wants data, it should get it at rest not during transmission. They can get a warrant to get the data store that your data is residing on. If they can't get what they want because that is encrypted then they can try to legislate all they want but it is pretty much impossible to stop someone from encrypting something at rest, especially considering the existence of the open source and open hardware movements.

</comment><comment><USER28> Encryption is political engagement. Loosely translated, TLS and PGP have historically been computerese for "get a warrant."

Of course the deep state will use politicians to assert its power, and if politicians do not work for us instead, people will use networks, technology, and trade (or the alternatives) to defend their freedom.

It is a reasonable question to ask, how long does a typical nation really maintain its territorial sovereignty, and which ones are outliers?

Kamp misinterprets the fact that because some states have begun to fight means that they will win. It does mean, however, that crypto facilitates freedom, and it forces the discussion in regard to the limits on elite powers. The crypto genie is out of the bottle. It is on states to rethink how they engage, not us.

</comment><comment><USER8> Kinda clickbait-y, and ignores the fact that encrypted communications were able to be used (with some effort) before Snowden, but his last point is solid:

> The only way to retain any amount of electronic privacy is through political > engagement.

<comment><USER29> No its not. The reality is the biggest threat to privacy is due to political engagement. Stronger encryption that no one can break is really the only viable option.

<comment><USER30> You don't need to break the strong encryption, when you can break the kneecaps of people using strong encryption.

<comment><USER31> Breaking kneecaps is expensive though. You can't just set up a ring of roadblocks around a city that kneecaps everyone passing through as a matter of course.

<comment><USER32> > Breaking kneecaps is expensive though. You can't just set up a ring of > roadblocks around a city that kneecaps everyone passing through as a matter > of course.

Once you establish the _willingness_ to break kneecaps, the number of kneecaps you actually need to break is fairly small.

<comment><USER31> That's true if determining whose kneecaps you need to break is either trivial (e.g. open dissidents and protesters) or can be easily achieved using social engineering (e.g. anonymous print pamphleteers). If doing so is a /technical/ rather than social task, and your technical cryptanalysis isn't up to par, breaking kneecaps is much less powerful of a deterrent because your hit rate will be very low. Breaking kneecaps to deter the use of encryption itself is another matter though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > _Kazakhstan announced that a "state root certificate" would have to be > installed on all computers wanting to use SSL/TLS/HTTPS out of the country_

Devils advocate: Practically every country (national telecom) has its own root certificate. Here is the list:

[https://mozillacaprogram.secure.force.com/CA/IncludedCACerti...](https://mozillacaprogram.secure.force.com/CA/IncludedCACertificateReport)

When Czech goverment started digitalization, it was very user unfriendly to install Czech CA. I think Kazakhstan is just using force it has to speedup its own application.

</comment><comment><USER34> Crypto is just bringing back real-life privacy options into digital space.

IRL, two people could go to some quiet place and have a private talk. If they feel suspicious, they might have checked the place for not being bugged (hard, but possible).

In the Internet, the default communication mode was public, which was exploited by NSA and other surveillance organizations. But now, thanks to usable crypto, two or more people can also have a private conversation, and if suspicious, they can check for not being MITMed (also hard, but possible).

Therefore, crypto brings nothing new to expectations of privacy, and the entire premise of this article is wrong.

Nice try, NSA.

<comment><USER35> Given the pitch in the article, I think they may be switching up for "Ministry of Truth".

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Nobody really knows the correct answer and I think that's the reason communication is failing between the government and the tech sector.

I think we have to realize that some transparency into private lives is needed to have a proper society, and the anarcho-capitalists want full privacy from the get go and then increasing transparency as needed for society, while government is kind of hovering on the "we need transparency everywhere for any arbitrary reason because we don't know when we'll need it", and this is a difficult position to hold.

I think unfortunately if we are to have a government, we need to do the latter, because the government can't intrude on privacy NOR punish people without evidence or at least minimum cause, while in a completely private anarcho-capitalist society the individuals who don't comply can be punished indirectly with exclusion and isolation from society. Personally this seems like a pretty crappy way to do things but that's a post for another time.

<comment><USER37> > I think we have to realize that some transparency into private lives is > needed to have a proper society, and the anarcho-capitalists want full > privacy from the get go

This is almost a non-sequitor. If your private life is transparent then it ceases to be private. You're in fact advocating no private life. I strongly disagree that this position would be good for society.

It's funny how you'd think you have to be an 'anarcho-capitalist' to want privacy.

The rest of your comment is a strawman, whatever your feelings about 'anarcho- capitalism' is irrelevant to having a right to privacy.

<comment><USER36> > You're in fact advocating no private life. I strongly disagree that this > position would be good for society.

No, I'm not advocating for anything per se, I'm just bringing up opposite points of view. I don't have an easy answer either. Second, no privacy is what has been the standard since governments started. There has been no technology that has been able to make some aspect of reality 100% private, other than the decay of physical objects over time, essentially erasing the evidence.

The fact that we can have permanent 100% private aspects of life is a brand new thing, and thus must be discussed in that manner. That's why I brought up the extreme of anarcho-capitalism - not to speak against it but as a counterpoint to what we have now/what has been.

<comment><USER38> "No privacy" has certainly NOT been the standard. Before the information age, people were more likely to communicate extremely private information in person. Until the invention of microphones, this communication was most certainly private if you could avoid eavesdroppers! Now, with everything from TVs to phones to lampposts listening in, this type of communication carries less of a privacy guarantee, but it's still one of the only methods to obtain actual privacy under the right conditions.

So let's all go back to in-person conversations, right? It's not that easy. Friends and loved ones no longer live as close as they once did, as technology has allowed us to stay connected at greater distances. This means that our options under the current state of the world are (a) keep sensitive information away from our trusted confidantes until we see them in person, whenever that is, or (b) get used to the idea that sensitive information could be exposed. Either one of these options brings with it increased psychological stress. This is a big reason why people want "unbreakable" security, and there's nothing nefarious about it!

<comment><USER36> > "No privacy" has certainly NOT been the standard. Before the information > age, people were more likely to communicate extremely private information in > person.

The first problem with this is that influence and power in society is proportional to how many people a person has access to and is around in some way. So yeah you could be private before but you couldn't do nearly the same damage or have the same influence without having people around. Technology empowers people across the world while at the same time potentially leaving no trace. The second problem is that communications is one thing, but evidence and 'data at rest' is another. Things like sexual abuse pictures, financial logs like cryptocurrencies, gps coordinates of where you've been, app logs in your phone and whatever else that may serve as evidence. In the old world, you had no choice but to burn or bury that evidence, but that also eliminates their usefulness to the criminal so there's a choice to be made by them before they destroy it.

Basically in the old world you had physical items in a physical world, observed by the people around you, and your only friend was physical isolation, physical obfuscation (burying, using a safe, both of which aren't 100% private), or the decay/destruction of the physical items. Today you have pristine copies at global scale with 100% privacy and this is far more effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't totally understand this view. Government doesn't have a right to ephemeral conversations that happen in physical space between two people. We aren't required to record them in case some law enforcement officer might request them.

Why is online discourse different? Just because the bits still exist in some sense, why does that mean they need to be accessible?

<comment><USER40> Government doesn't have a right to meticulous transcriptions of every verbal conversation you've ever had. But, it does have a right to do its utmost to figure out what was said. It has a right to search your file cabinet, or tap your phone, or tail you with a detective, with a warrant of course.

<comment><USER26> Does it though? A _right_? Like your right to freedom of thought? That's big! Would you think this if a judge hadn't ruled this way?

Because in our system it's not the judge who can make that call, it's you (theoretically a citizen) who grants the government the authority to take certain (constitutionally limited) actions as long as it serves the people.

If the government has a "right" to tap your phone they have the same right to plant a microphone on you, and at that, they do have a right to every verbal conversation you've had. Because they can get one from the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm probably echoing others by saying this, but: I don't agree that there is even correlation between more encryption and less privacy. Even if we were not attempting to subvert injustices done to us by our own governments by providing technical solutions, I believe wholeheartedly that many governments would still be attempting to decrease our privacy in every possible way. They're using increased encryption use as a scapegoat, but they have never had a shortage of scapegoats. Not employing strong crypto wherever possible would be irresponsible for the future of our privacy. Likewise, not engaging in political activism to change laws that impact our privacy would also be irresponsible. We need to do both, whenever possible and necessary.

<comment><USER42> Typically (in the US) it's been the executive branch that has tried to subvert privacy (see COINTELPRO), and the judicial which has (sometimes) upheld it. However, because crypto would actively impede the ability of the judicial branch to use warrants, I imagine it would alienate our typical ally.

<comment><USER41> That might be true, and that's a conversation we should definitely have, as we decide how we will be governed in the future. But that alone does not mean less crypto is preferable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So what does he suggest? I think we are supposed to read between the lines, but I am not sure what that is yet.

Is it just pointing out an interesting contradiction and we should enhance and improve existing products, or there a message about moving back and reverting to using weak encryption like before or treating it like "munitions" for purposes of export control. So you you end up in prison just as long long for using OpenSSL as for reselling grenade launchers.

Yeah I can see how PR is on government side here -- "look terrorists use this and other horrible criminals, this needs to be stopped".

The answer usually is -- "Ah, but think of the human rights people from <insert far away country>" or make a reference to some generalized principle from the Constitution about freedom from search. Both of those lose in comparison to an image of scary guy with a bomb under their arm.

So the answer is to operate at the same level of PR. Bring in issues people can identify with: for companies and enterprises remind them of the Target credit card breach, about the Sony hack and how embarrassing that is. Or for private individuals talk about identity theft. Everyone has heard about that how disruptive and upsetting that is. "We need stronger encryption to protect you from criminals" kind of message.

(I am not the first one to think of this, I noticed Apple applied this in their response to FBI. I just thought it was a great approach).

<comment><USER12> > So what does he suggest? I think we are supposed to read between the lines, > but I am not sure what that is yet.

I think the larger implication of the essay is to consider addressing privacy from a systemic/game theory perspective. The underlying threat isn't technological, but in the response to technological capabilities. Encryption is just another capability that provokes a response.

<comment><USER43> That's valid. I think they way it is presented it is easy to mis-read it. I kind of hinted at finding a better way to respond to the problem in the PR domain.

However,a technological solution can still help. For example, focusing on plausible deniability, traffic hiding, dead man switches and so on. Technology is just another approach and for some it might be easier to work with for some and easier to disseminate.

<comment><USER12> I agree that by pointing out how technology can potentially make the problem worse, the essay can easily be interpreted as a call to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Perhaps that _was_ the intended message, but I'd like to think it was deliberately provocative to stimulate the right kind of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This doesn't follow. All it shows that it increases transparency and a goverment can't pretend to be a democracy while running a total surveillance operation against public interest and funded by the public on the side.

Non democratic governments are not the benchmarks for democratic behavior by definition. Governments in countries like Kazakstan and China have already made it clear they are not interested in privacy and its for their citizens and social structures to respond.

Countries like the US and UK claim to the defenders of democracy but are running equally intensive surveillance operations on the side, and in this case without outliers like Snowden we won't even know. So let this debate happen in the open so citizens and the state can reach an acceptable consensus on checks and balances.

It would also be a good idea to remove the emotional threats of terrorism that are used to manipulate and manufacture outcomes from this debate. There is a long history of government abuse of power that citizens cannot ignore. There needs to be more accountability of US and UK relations with Saudi Arabia and its 30 year funding of wahhabism globally. The effects of this and geopolitical games cannout be brushed aside as they are fundamental to terrorism today. Without terrorism there is essentially no debate and citizens will not give up their rights for day-to-day law and order problems.

</comment><comment><USER45> Mr. Camp has written about this topic before, see

More Encryption Is Not the Solution (2013) [https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2508864](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2508864)

[http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/escaping-the- dr...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/escaping-the-dragnet-of- surveillance-what-the-experts-say-about-encryption/)

"The recent exposure of the dragnet-style surveillance of Internet traffic has provoked a number of responses that are variations of the general formula, 'More encryption is the solution.' This is not the case. In fact, more encryption will probably only make the privacy crisis worse than it already is."

[https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2013JulSep...](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2013JulSep/0933.html) Re: Mandatory encryption _is_ theater

" Correct, but if you make encrypt mandatory, they will have to break _all_ encryption, that's what the law tells them to.

As long as encryption only affects a minority of traffic and they can easier go around (ie: FaceBook, Google etc. delivering the goods) they don't need to render _all_ encryption transparent. "

</comment><comment><USER46> This reminds me of a 2013 blog post by Albert Wenger where he argues that treating the problem of mass surveillance as a technical problem is futile:

 _We cannot and should not be living in digital fortresses any more than we are living in physical fortresses at home. Our homes are safe from thieves and from government not because they couldn't get in if they wanted to but because the law and its enforcement prevents them from doing so. All we have to do is minimal physical security (lock the doors when you are out)...

Surveillance is a political and legal problem, not a technical problem. We have to all become outraged and start a big and public online and offline campaign to take back the law into the hands of the people and their representatives and away from secret organizations "overseen" by secret courts in a system that goes beyond Kafka's worst nightmares._

[http://continuations.com/post/60444129080/disagreeing- with-b...](http://continuations.com/post/60444129080/disagreeing-with-bruce- schneier-more-crypto-is)

</comment><comment><USER47> >When Edward Snowden made it known to the world that pretty much all traffic on the Internet was collected and searched by the NSA, GCHQ (the UK Government Communications Headquarters) and various other countries' secret services as well, the IT and networking communities were furious and felt betrayed.

That's not how I remember it. Among those communities it was pretty well known that such surveillance was occurring. Knowing the scope of it caused a sense of obligation; that we should finally get around to adding some privacy protection to day to day internet traffic. Everyone knew that it was something that had to be done sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER48> > whatever you may feel about politicians, they do have the legitimacy and > power to do so. They have the constitutions, legislative powers, courts of > law, and police forces to make this happen.

Do they have the actual power?

As the article states, the reason for the all or nothing approach is that we currently don't have any way to do a middle ground with TLS.

We have the technology, and it's already available anywhere. How do you actually put that genie back in the bottle? Probably the best you can do is heavy handed enforcement.

That also does nothing to deal with the fact that an organization like ISIS are going to find ways to continue to use strong encryption.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the author is completely wrong on the premise that more encryption has meant less privacy. People are using more encryption because we already had no or little privacy. It hasn't gotten worse, it was already this bad.

He is right on one count though, this isn't a technical problem and it cannot be solved through a purely technical solution.

</comment><comment><USER50> <rant>

everything means everything. lately i am starting to become really mad at high schools and universities for teaching this "x implies y" mentality as a tool to look at real world phenomenas. thanks to this kind of "education" everyone constantly feels like s/he is discovering some Ultimate Truth™ and thus fails at accounting for a chaotic, ever changing world. "cause and effect" may exists but these pattern mostly happens on a scale for which human language is just too clumsy.

stop writing and discussing these articles. if you really got nothing better to do at any point in time, just stare out of the window for a while and relax a bit.

</rant>

<comment><USER51> This is incoherent

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The observations being made are correct in that what he's describing is actually and actively happening. The spot where things stop working is in the very last paragraph in that it very neatly wrecks the argument:

 _Slapping unbreakable crypto onto more and more packets is just going to make matters worse. The only way to retain any amount of electronic privacy is through political engagement._

The words "any _amount_ of electronic privacy" are where we have big problems. When it comes to protecting privacy from the prying eyes of a hacker, the only _amount_ of electronic privacy that is acceptable is _total_ privacy through _unbreakable crypto_. This is the problem our politicians have a difficult time grokking but most of us understand: what the _government_ is able to break into (i.e. a lesser amount of privacy from _total_ ) is also able to be broken into by a hacker. And, in fact, it becomes more easy if it is government mandated since a hack only need to attack the specific method used by the government to inspect those packets.

I agree that political engagement is necessary, but so too is _slapping unbreakable crypto onto ore and more packets_. The political engagement needs to come in the form of educating politicians on the realities of today's internet-connected world. We either have solid, unbreakable encryption[0] which necessarily includes protection for people performing financial and otherwise sensitive operations over a public network or we have limited and government-breakable encryption that offers _less_ security than "in the clear" transmission[1].

[0] To the extent that such a thing is possible since this isn't a "set it and it's done" sort of situation but an ever increasing arms race of privacy vs. attacker. This includes such things as ensuring researchers are allowed to test/expose and validate said technologies and not be hindered by legal requirements that prevent them from notifying people of the dangers of broken crypto.

[1] At least, potentially less. Assuming the "backdoor" method is used and protected as well as TSA master keys, we now have a scenario where limited use results in easy to identify "high value" traffic and less security because the hacker need only attack the government for the masters. Even if a much more "well thought out" method is used for providing government access, the problems multiply since now we're not only having to create sufficiently attack-resistant protocols but also manage sufficiently complicated escrow or other processes to provide access. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.

</comment><comment><USER53> Just out of curiosity, can anyone reading this say that their mind has been changed, even a little bit?

</comment><comment><USER54> This argument is like saying that if you build a castle to protect yourself from the attacker, you are responsible for the enemy's construction of trebuchets that siege the castle. Yeah, the castle builders are at fault. Nevermind that they protect so many innocent with their work.

Of course we need political involvement, but we _also_ need encryption everywhere, literally everywhere.

<comment><USER55> You should study the history of anti-ballistic-missile defense systems, and you will find that for the longest time nobody wanted them, because that would force the enemy to attack before they were completed.

Never build more formidable weapons _or_ defenses than you are willing to lay your life down for.

<comment><USER56> You're describing a reluctant, cautious and rational adversary.

There never was any effective political opposition to "Star Wars" in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Yes, math is not like gravity and can be overturned by legislation. Really now?

</comment><comment><USER58> I assume the author also believes that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

<comment><USER59> And I assume that you failed to read the article.</comment></comment>


Google Books PDF Smackdown: NookColor Vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab Vs. iPad - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/11/24/google-books-pdf-smackdown-nookcolor-vs-samsung-galaxy-tab-vs-ipad/

<comment><USER2> This article isn't really a comparison between the Nook, Galaxy Tab and the iPad, it's more a comparison of a specific ebook application on each of those platforms. It's not comprehensive (Aldiko for Android isn't mentioned for example).

If this were a hardware review like the title says, it would discuss which devices are more suited to reading ebooks: is the Galaxy Tab's smaller size better? Is the Nook's screen more comfortable to read on? Is the iPad too heavy? etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like none of these things seem to support JPEG2000, which is how Google Books encodes images larger than some threshold x. There are a couple apps that add it in, but most PDF readers rely on built-in stuff in iOS or Android.

I read PDFs off Google Books all the time in GoodReader, it's quick and works well. If you need the images, as I do, you can resave the PDF using Preview if you're on a Mac, it'll get like 8 times bigger but the images will show.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mike, you might try using GoodReader on the iPad to view the PDF. It uses a different PDF rendering engine than iBooks. I believe it is a bit better with larger PDFs, but really with PDFs like the Google PDFs which are basically a collection of image files in a PDF container, it's going to bog down a lot of computers, handheld or not.

<comment><USER5> Why would you use google's RSS feeder to read a pdf?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: "But for now, anyone who wants a tablet device to read Google Books PDFs, there is clearly only one choice: the iPad."

<comment><USER7> even that doesn't seem usable, if you read the details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly offtopic, but I was unable to download PDF of the book in question, which the article uses to compare e-readers. It only showed up 38 pages out of 533 available.

The book is Success: A Novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams <http://books.google.com/books?id=Slc1AAAAMAAJ>

EDIT: Using Advanced Search I was able to find a copy that I can read fully online at Google Books, but I still do not see any option to download the book.

Perhaps, this is because I am not really familiar with Google Books. Perhaps it is because I am in Europe?

Copyright is 1921, so the restriction must come from the library not the author, one presumes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Could these PDFs be using external images? That would explain the long delays to load images (because they're being downloaded) and the variable PDF reader support.

Here's a StackOverflow post about external images in PDFs: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1833222/adding- external-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1833222/adding-external- images-to-pdf-using-itext)

</comment><comment><USER10> I smell a business opportunity, but it seems pretty hopeless since nothing can be done outside of Google about the quality of the OCR scans. I don't want to download the PDF, I want to read a nicely formatted book on the Web.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's stuff like this that makes me lean towards getting a windows 7 or possibly linux tablet instead of one of the newer 'mobile' OSs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Was this review about the different devices, adobes pdf or googles OCR?

Reading pdf books on any device is something that could do with improvement. Most of the time I just give up and download the text version.

For the next review download android adobe reader app or goodreader for iPad and let us know how it goes.

<comment><USER13> I'd be more interested in reviews of reasonable-quality epubs and PDFs. A review based on badly-scanned material is silly.</comment></comment>


The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/if-you-re-young-the-job-outlook-is-grim-no-matter-where-you-live <comment><USER4> Most of the comments here focus on how people aren't trying hard enough to get jobs. This article indicates that the jobs _don 't exist_ and that the problem is likely to get far worse. You can try as hard as you want to get a job - <USER2> no one is hiring, you aren't going to get one.

The reality is that as time goes on, the world's needs can and will be met by fewer and fewer people. This should be a good thing, but it won't work under most existing economic systems. Our entire economy has to change to accomodate the new reality that a significant percentage of the population _will_ be unemployed.

<comment><USER5> > Most of the comments here focus on how people aren't trying hard enough to > get jobs. This article indicates that the jobs don't exist and that the > problem is likely to get far worse.

The reality is that BOTH are true.

There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. Which is fine for a few minutes or days, it's good to vent. But at the end of the day, that won't change anything. It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. Assigning blame doesn't solve anything.

That being said, I definitely agree some sort of Basic Income strategy will be necessary going forward. Perhaps soon.

<comment><USER6> Speaking for myself (as a 22 year-old recent graduate) -

I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly- altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy than corruption and inequality. I believed that the older generation who shape and structure society through government, industry, and academia were doing their absolute best to set future generations up for success; after all, what else could be the ultimate aim and goal of life once you marry and have children of your own?

Now, I'm not so sure this is the case. It seems like there is a lot less to go around, even for the older generation. I used to see teenagers bagging groceries and working menial service jobs. Now all I see are 50-60 year olds, and I wonder "how the hell did these people end up working minimum wage, 11pm shifts at the grocery store at age 58?". I see my landlord barely getting by on social security, rent income, and a sales job, unable to retire at age 65. Ageism is real, with layoffs at major companies (IBM, HP, etc.) affecting older workers disproportionately, many of whom are not yet able to retire and who don't have the time to retrain for a rapidly-changing economy that demands dramatically different skills than it did 20-30 years ago.

So ultimately, I find that many in the older generation are simply trying to make ends meet in an environment of scarcity that is new for the US, with the youth subsequently becoming disillusioned because the system seems to be set up against them.

Of course, as inequality grows, the shrinking proportion of families with money are largely exempt from these worries. But you would think "they" (the nameless, faceless, despised rich) would find it in their interests to give back to society; to give back to a system that had rewarded them with comfort and prosperity. To make sure it didn't rot from the greed, sloth, misplaced violence, weak guidance, and weaker morals that did away with the mighty Roman empire.

It's all a matter of perspective though: at least we're not being conscripted to go fight in Vietnam or WWIII, which is the ultimate manifestation of the old using the young for profit and self-serving agenda pushing.

<comment><USER7> > _to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity_

There is no mass of humanity in that way, just like "HN believes..." or "Reddit thinks..." is mostly impossible to say. Some folks of that generation did/do act in mostly-altruistic, benevolent ways, and some of them did/do not. The generational argument is a very clever red herring that shifts blame from a broken _system_ to the previous generation -- print this comment out and put it somewhere safe; your future children will be blaming your generation, too.

> _" how the hell did these people end up working minimum wage, 11pm shifts at > the grocery store at age 58?"_

Lots of times, sheer boredom. Folks like us might do freelance coding or something in our old age, but there's not a good market for freelance people managers (which a great deal of those 58-year-old bag boys probably were -- why not ask them next time?) Also, big grocery stores are typically union so it's not actually a terrible career for the kind of work it is. Your generation has a different idea of what a "good job" is, so that's probably informing a bit of your reaction too.

> _I find that many in the older generation are simply trying to make ends > meet in an environment of scarcity_

Most people are simply trying to make ends meet. Some saved more, some saved less, some earned more, some earned less, but in the US if you worked and paid taxes, you'll get the bare minimum (social security + medicare) and won't ever starve or go cold. If your desire for retirement is more than "won't starve", start saving today and always live below your means.

> _with the youth subsequently becoming disillusioned because the system seems > to be set up against them._

Every generation back to the ancient Greeks felt that way. There's basically always been a counterculture movement based on youthful disillusionment, some more successful (hippies of the 60s) and some less (#occupywallst). But it's not anything new. This should tell you something important: the system is the problem, and the system is adverse to change. A lot of those hippies turned into middle managers.

> _But you would think "they" (the nameless, faceless, despised rich) would > find it in their interests to give back to society_

They absolutely do. The top 1% of earners pay 50% of federal taxes. Those social programs I mentioned above that will keep you eating, clothed and warm even if you don't have a penny to your name? Thank the taxpayers, of whom top earners comprise disproportionately. Almost all charitable foundations are made possible by the rich. Did you take any grants, subsidized loans or scholarships? If so, thank taxpayers (mostly top earners) and private donators (again, mostly top earners).

What's weird is that you understand the effect ("greed, sloth, misplaced violence, weak guidance, and weaker morals") but totally misunderstand the cause. Yours is the first generation of "everyone's special" come to adulthood. Instead of looking at the rich person and saying "wow, I want that, how can I get that for myself?" (and then doing it or at least trying), they'll say "wow, I want that, he has it, f __* that guy ". It's worse than greed, it's covetousness - wanting something so much you'd take it from someone else. _That_ will be America's undoing.

<comment><USER6> It was just my opinion, I was not attempting to speak for anyone but myself, much less my generation. My upbringing was extremely different from that of millions of others in this country, and I have no right to put words in their mouths.

I'm not sure if Medicare/Social Security will exist when I'm 65.

I work for a living. I don't say "hey fuck that guy" because he's rich, I say "hey fuck that guy" because he's a greedy sociopath who is fucking up the fabric of our society, a society that I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of for the past 22 years and that I would love to raise my kids in one day.

I don't have anything against Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Michael Dell or people of their ilk - they're geniuses who excelled in bringing a fantastic product to market, and they were rewarded for that. I would love to emulate their success.

But the top investment bankers who were intentionally obfuscating the market through complex securitization and interest-rate manipulation? The CEOs of Moody's and Standard & Poor's who were intentionally misleading investors and prioritizing profits over quality and integrity? The people whose job it was to regulate these markets, stop oblivious consumers from taking on a $500k mortgage on $50k yearly income? The oblivious consumers and investors themselves? The government who set a precedent of propping up failed bets with taxpayer money? The ones who were not adequately punished for the pain and suffering they caused? Yeah, fuck all those guys.

<comment><USER7> > _It was just my opinion [... ]I have no right to put words in their mouths._

That's fine. But let's not pretend yours is a unique or unusual opinion.

> _But the top investment bankers who were intentionally [...]_

So here's another good example of the red herring that's been skillfully thrown your way. They could only do what they did _because the system let them._ Then they got slapped on the wrist a little (if at all) _because the system doesn 't punish itself._

And let's not forget: most of the people complicit in all that stuff were regular folks humping a boring job trying to make enough money to not go broke. By headcount, guaranteed those sub-$40k-a-year regular folks outnumber the terrible fatcats 10,000-to-1. They're responsible, too, but you don't see people demonstrating in front of their local mortgage broker's house. So when you (the global "you") talk about IBs ruining America and so forth, it rings pretty hollow to me because _the system that let them do it in the first place is what you should blame._ As long as you're distracted from that fact, you are no threat which is why knowing how to think is so important (colleges will try to trick you into believing that's what they're teaching, but they're not. Your first exercise is to figure out _why_ they're not).

Tangent: my favorite example of this method of distraction is Obamacare. All this discussion about how to make it so everyone could afford an asprin at the hospital, and when it was all over nobody had bothered to ask why an asprin at the hospital should cost $15 in the first place. Why not? Because that's not a conversation the system wants you to have. $15 asprins build hospital wings and buy fancy new machines and pay administrators 8 figure salaries. We do _not_ talk about the asprin.

Anyway, my point is that calling out the rich or the 1% or whatever is stupid, because they give back way more than their fair share (by the numbers). When someone/something says you need to direct your hate over that way, your first reaction should be to look and see what's the other way. The system that let banks go too far is the same system that's burying young people in student loan debt. Except this time you can't walk away! You and I both know this, but now we'll tab over to our editors and keep coding and making money and paying bills and moving on with our lives. This is why the system is the system, and we are not.

<comment><USER6> > "The people whose job it was to regulate these markets, stop oblivious > consumers from taking on a $500k mortgage on $50k yearly income? The > oblivious consumers and investors themselves? The government who set a > precedent of propping up failed bets with taxpayer money?"

I explicitly called out the regulators and the irresponsible consumers in my comment. Come on man, at least read what I have to say if you're going to form such a long and complex argument against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Disclaimer: This is purely anecdotal, and not backed by any data.

I'm in my mid-twenties and just recently started interviewing people for the team I work on. It's amazing how little effort many seemingly qualified people put in to secure an entry-level job. Whether it be hustle to learn more about a business, the specifics about the company you might work at, or finding someone to give a second set of eyes on a cover letter or resume, most people really drop the ball. If job prospects are grim, you'd at least hope people would put in more effort.

<comment><USER9> Recruiter and resume-writer-on-the-side here, and it's become so easy to apply for jobs that most people put zero effort into anything but pressing send and shotgunning a resume to hundreds of companies. If there was even a small cost (time or money) to applying, you can be sure that resumes and cover letters would be much more common and of higher quality.

I'm not suggesting that we charge applicants, but years ago when there was the time taken to type resumes, print them up/copy, put into envelope or hand deliver, the amount of time invested likely made people more concerned with their product.

Job seekers are much better served spending an hour sending 10 focused applications than spending that same hour to send 100 sanitized applications.

<comment><USER10> As a recent college grad who went to a community college and then a run-of- the-mill state school, my experience and general impression from my peers was that _unless_ you shotgun as many job applications as possible, you're probably not going to hear back from anyone.

My own hypothesis is that most companies are so obsessed with a potential "false positive" hire that they're perfectly okay with not investing in a new graduate. Thus, we have to send out 10+ job applications per week, otherwise we end up as yet another one of the millions of unemployed, college-educated young adults.

It's not totally awful (I found a great job as a result of my career fair), but unless a company is specifically recruiting from your university it's pretty much a given that you won't be offered an interview, let alone a job.

<comment><USER11> What you're seeing is actually the opposite problem. That candidates aren't obsessed enough with a potential "false positive" hire where they end up working somewhere they don't actually want to work. You can't tell me that someone applying for 40 positions a week truly wants to work at all 40 of those places. Primarily, the candidate just wants any job he/she can get because of the fear of unemployment.

<comment><USER12> > That candidates aren't obsessed enough with a potential "false positive" > hire where they end up working somewhere they don't actually want to work. > You can't tell me that someone applying for 40 positions a week truly wants > to work at all 40 of those places.

This sounds like a whole lot of blaming the candidate. It also assumes that the candidate could even land one of those 40 positions in the first place. I applied to a whole lot more before I landed mine - as did most of my peers now in our early-mid 20s who didn't get swooped up in a career fair early on in the process.

You can't really tell me that someone applying for a job _in the first place_ truly wants to work (instead of pursuing a passion they like) _period_. More likely, the candidate doesn't _want_ (keyword) to work at _any_ of those 40 places at all. And here's the kicker:

 _The candidate should not be faulted for that if he or she is competent at the job and works hard._

The modern age has shown a lot of workers being faithful to their companies and having that faithfulness be an expected one-way street. Look at the firings of Disney and IBM Engineers. The Disney engineers had to even educate their replacements at reduced salary.

I'd love to be spending all my days producing music and building native iOS apps, but that's not how the world works. So, I work somewhere I tolerate working, somewhere I work well. And I count my blessings for it - not many millennials are as lucky as me.

<comment><USER11> I have real trouble believing a competent developer can't find a job developing native iOS apps in this job market.

<comment><USER12> Why would I do something I truly love for someone elses dream?

<comment><USER13> To gain experience? To learn the challenges & pitfalls of the field on someone else's dime? To learn from somebody who has been doing it and getting paid?

Nobody jumps from the bottom of the mountain to the top - you climb it one step at a time. There are people making a living producing music and writing apps - the world does work that way. I'm not saying tomorrow you can decide that's how you'll make a living and it'll happen - but it is something you can work towards and achieve in a reasonable amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Student loan debt surpassed credit card and auto loan debt in the US last year. Many college grads graduate with large sums of debt and can't find relevant jobs. Since student loan debt isn't forgivable, it'll be interesting to see the effect of this over the next decade. I have a hunch that the next big market crash will be caused by student loan debt.

<comment><USER15> I agree that student loan debt seems like an asset bubble -- in that the price of an education greatly exceeds the valuation justified by the fundamentals.

But I can't think of a way that the bubble could actually pop. Or what it would look like if it did.

Unlike housing, you can't walk away from your education; student loans are designed to prevent debtors from ever escaping their obligations. They're also guaranteed by the federal government, which has seemingly infinite resources.

Educational institutions themselves are also either private, or are state-run, both of which would shield the impacts of a collapse from the average citizen. The average citizen isn't invested in education like they were in public tech companies or housing. It's also impossible to short Harvard or the UC system.

I actually think this is worse in some ways. Bubble pops are scary, but the bandaid comes off quickly. Instead I fear educational indebtedness will just be a silent vampire on our economy for decades to come.

<comment><USER16> > But I can't think of a way that the bubble could actually pop. Or what it > would look like if it did.

It would look like a social movement. It would look like tens of millions of young people realizing that they have fallen under the yoke of life-long indentured servitude to the older generation, and either 1) getting organized enough to get the law changed or, 2) saying "fuck it, I've got nothing left to lose" and rioting in the streets.

<comment><USER17> > It would look like tens of millions of young people realizing that they have > fallen under the yoke of life-long indentured servitude to the older > generation

Nobody forced them to take out loans.

There are lots of options which don't involve crushing debt.

<comment><USER18> Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER17> On which part? That there aren't roving bandits forcing people to take on huge loans? Or that there are other options?

In terms of other options, there is (a) community college—very cheap, (b) state school—much cheaper usually, especially if you live at home, (c) attending a slightly less prestigious college when they offer a substantial merit scholarship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The world needs at least 600 million new jobs in the next decade for young > people

Or, perhaps, the world needs to stop coupling basic human needs for subsistence and dignity to wage labour, and find some better way of doing things.

<comment><USER20> It's so easy! Why has no one thought of this? All we need to do is convince every government in the world to undertake dramatic changes to their economic and labor structure.

<comment><USER21> We lived for at least fifty thousand years without any money at all, for around three thousand with some form of money, and the last two hundred years with the idea of hourly wages and bills and rent.

It's entirely possible we'll find a better way to do this. Maybe we'll have to "undertake dramatic changes" to avoid an even bigger disaster.

<comment><USER22> Life before money was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". In fact I wouldn't choose to live anytime before the last 100 or 200 years. 1950 or later would have been my preference had I been given a choice. For how much we all like to armchair quarterback our current system (yes.. capitalism), it's easy to forget how bad 99.9 percent of the human experience on this planet would have sucked comparatively. That's not to say let's quit trying to fix things, but take a deep breath and look around. Things are pretty good. There is an unbelievably high probability that you and all your children live to old age. You won't have to be too cold, too warm, or too hungry during your stay. Not bad.

<comment><USER23> "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"

Isn't this also our future? The future is unevenly distributed... Detroit hasn't reached you yet, but its only a matter of time.

<comment><USER24> No. Just no. _The future_ is not Detroit. _The future of a few places_ is Detroit, but not the future of everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is anecdotal at best, but I feel like there is an apathy epidemic. It's fucking impossible to get people to even do "fun" things, much less a "boring" job. Everyone just wants to sit at home in front of a screen. It could just be the people I surround myself with, but that's the feeling I get.

</comment><comment><USER26> What qualifies as an adult anymore?

      people 15 to 29 years old are at least twice as likely as adults to be unemployed

30 is adulthood in their interpretation of the data.

<comment><USER27> I have two kids and own a house but I guess I'm still 5 years away from being an adult!

Unless maybe their definition of adult is 18+ and that sentence means "the 15-29 age bracket is twice as likely as 18+ to be unemployed"

<comment><USER28> Haha, I was just thinking that if I'm only 4 years away from being an adult, then that feels about right. I don't feel like an adult at all, but maybe when I'm in my 30s.

Wow, I can't imagine having 2 kids or a house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is quite a contradiction from the recent talk about demographic pressure leading to a wage turnaround.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34488950](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34488950)

" Taking just wage growth, simply put (and for more detail follow the links above), an end to the global labour glut should see real wages (wages accounting for the change in prices) start to rise at a faster pace. An ONS report of 2014 found that UK real wages in the 1970s and 1980s grew by an average of 2.9% a year."

so which is it? too many people or not enough?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm struck by the fact that, if 600M people were living together in one area, they'd spontaneously create jobs around the fact that 600M people will have to figure out ways to interact with each other in an civil way.

I tend to believe that the reason we don't have enough jobs right now are because of market distortions that place unequal value on certain, expensive things, like college educations, personal vehicles of far greater passenger capacity than strictly necessary, private dwellings of extremely large size, and the latest and greatest smartphones ever two years. Our "betters" have successfully created a scenario where people willingly enter into debt slavery to acquire what they believe is their entitlement.

Because, sans weird pricing, there is real need for work to be done, that is not getting done, in our current environments. There are roads that are falling apart. There is food that is not getting to hungry people. There are children who are not learning what they need to learn to be successful. There are hydrocarbons that are continuing to be burnt. There are routine medical physical exams that aren't being performed.

There are things that people want, but can't acquire at a price that is reasonable. This could be a function of the constituent inputs being too expensive, but I doubt this. Arbitrage is a powerful force for innovation. I suspect there is a much stronger force at work that is preventing the goods and services that people _need_ from being created: mega-corporate-backed government regulation.

There are people in 1st world countries who are going hungry, who don't have heat, who don't have doors on their house. I have seen this with my own damn eyes. Yes, they are poor, but is their poverty their fault? And even if, in some extremely twisted way, it is their fault, does it justify forcing them to live in squalor? Should the laziest of lazy people be forced to live in _literal_ shit-holes?

As long as there are people willing to work but incapable of moving, I think a little "undeserved" compassion is a good enough reason to create a job. Just because some vanishingly few poor people are slovenly doesn't justify completely writing off the entire class.

</comment><comment><USER31> As the article highlights, the Arab revolutions were led by the youth. I wonder what, if anything, will happen in the USA when the current generation, saddled by seemingly insurmountable college debt, comes to the realization that it cannot find stable work or afford decent housing.

I truly believe that moment will be an earthquake for the current political environment; what we characterize Republicans and Democrats today will dramatically change (just like it did after the Civil War and also the Civil Rights movement).

<comment><USER32> >saddled by seemingly insurmountable college debt

Does anyone know of a source for statistics on student loan debt? This site

[http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data](http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data)

...claims that the average debt of graduating seniors is $28.4k. I'd like to see a histogram of all recent graduates and dropouts, with the bins in dollars of debt. I'd also like to see a scatter plot showing the median debt vs. debtors age (for all age groups, not just recent grads). And another scatter plot of debt vs. income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Job hack: open volunteer trade schools in impoverished urban areas and fund it with both government and private money and give tax incentives to those that fund them or volunteer to work there. This could be anything from computer jobs to specialized manufacturing (Foxconn-esque).

Not only could this provide us with a 'cheap labor' manufacturing workforce that corporations love, tech jobs that could be done remotely would also be easy to train for, and thus our country's very limited transportation options wouldn't be such a barrier to getting work. Areas of high crime or gang violence could begin to get kids off the streets and into a stable job.

</comment><comment><USER34> These stories are always interesting to read, both from what they say, and what they don't say. For example, do you know that world wide there is a shortage of people in various trades roles[1] ? (Welding, masonry, carpentry, electricians, etc) And why are their young people who are loading up on debt they can't afford to go to Ivy league schools when they can be just as successful going to state schools? How much part time employement might be found if there wasn't a floor on minimum wage? [2] Since we don't have the category of 'extra' or 'part time' job like we used to, current minimum wage policy is geared toward making _every_ job pay a living wage. That prices a lot of jobs out competitiveness for humans and spurs the development of robotic replacements. Not that those jobs are career paths, but they do offer people a bit of extra change in their pocket.

A more intriguing question is to what end might you employ two or three hundred million people? Imagine they are sitting outside your window waiting for your command. Assuming you are paying them a living wage, what economic output could they accomplish that would be "worth" say 5 to 15 trillion dollars a year?

[1] [http://facilityexecutive.com/2015/05/u-s-employers-suffer- la...](http://facilityexecutive.com/2015/05/u-s-employers-suffer-largest- talent-shortage-in-skilled-trades/)

[2] [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995)

<comment><USER35> > Assuming you are paying them a living wage, what economic output could > [200-300 million people] accomplish that would be "worth" say 5 to 15 > trillion dollars a year?

A good thought experiment! My initial thought was a spiritual successor to WPA-like projects of the depression, but I'm not very well-read on the economic outcomes. My layman view at least sees the humanitarian and creative output of such projects.

But your last sentence is key: would it be "worth" 5-15 trillion/year? Is there a way to "measure" such a number of WPA-like projects?

<comment><USER34> Since the number presented was world wide, I expect just the US would be a smaller number, but it would certainly be interesting to offer young people an opportunity to participate in a service program which was not a military outfit. So you spend 2 years of service shoring up infrastructure or working to rebuild cities ravaged by flood or other disaster. In exchange you get basic clothes, room and board, and perhaps payback on any student loans you have outstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't know how this is going to work, I actually think the root-cause of mid-east crisis is more related to youth-jobless.

Young people without job will lead to bad things, in the meantime the technology/AI/robotic-factory is making more people "unneeded", will it either be a utopia-coming-true or a revolution?

</comment><comment><USER37> There are a few ways to create many openings:

1\. Legislate a maximum working hours (probably < 40 ) . 3 jobs at 40 hours per week becomes 4 jobs at 30 per week, 33% expansion, problem solved.

2\. Allow humans to undercut automation in price competition (eg abolish minimum wage)

3\. Expand government to employ people for whatever, just print the money you pay them.

Clearly these all come with unsatisfactory side-effects.

Maybe the fix is to end our obsession with creating jobs and jobs being the form of survival we offer our species. Imagine if we just created 600M jobs automating all the things so that those jobs would never (or nearly never) need to be done again? The future generations would need Billions of jobs! But no one would be worse off for it. Its like when a dishwasher became common place, suddenly kids were free to do more homework or facebook or xbox etc. Suddenly parents were more free not to have kids (to complete household chores). Etc etc. By automating and reducing the work that human kind has to do, we're enabling better lives all involved, including the displaced workers. Change hurts in the shortrun, but can bring utopia in the long run.

<comment><USER38> #2 is probably the absolute worst possible thing to be done, and perhaps the most likely thing to be done.

Abolishing minimum wage won't cause the costs of things to come down, but it will create even more people who are given no choice but to have a job that doesn't pay them enough to live, or starve.

"Imagine if we just created 600M jobs automating all the things so that those jobs would never (or nearly never) need to be done again? The future generations would need Billions of jobs! But no one would be worse off for it."

Except for the people who aren't able to buy food or put a roof over their heads because they don't have a job.

"By automating and reducing the work that human kind has to do, we're enabling better lives all involved, including the displaced workers."

You're gonna have to explain what's better about being evicted from your apartment because you can't pay rent.

<comment><USER37> You're missing the point that if automation does all the work there is no competitive reason not to lower the price down to near 0 (or the cost of capital, which at current interest rates is VERY low).

If I can get land, put robots on it and churn out apples, all entirely without my labor, and I can borrow the money for near free, at what price could I sell said apples for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Who needs a job? We need "goods", and to obtain then we usually trade in part of our monetary income; but that does not need to come from a job.

I believe in "mincome" or "basic minimal income", as provided by a form of government to all citizens; to be paid for by tax money. This will be low, but enough to sustain yourself (simple shelter + food). If you want more then that you need to either find a job or walk a more entrepreneurial path and make a job.

The amount people receive as "mincome" will be an important number to control by politicians. It will have a strong effect on the then emerging "post- mincome unemployment rate". This would be all people that are looking to supplement their mincome, but currently have not found the means to do so.

I think a mincome-society will find a lot more people entrepeneuring: as a safety net is in place.

The "jobs" that the article speaks of are only going to be created if there is a strict need for them. A business will usually only create a job in last resort, as employing people costs money and brings risks.

</comment><comment><USER17> > people 15 to 29 years old are at least twice as likely as adults to be > unemployed.

Today I learned that 28-year-olds aren't adults.

<comment><USER40> I'm curious if that sentence is itself an explanation for the perception that a 28 year old might not be an adult.

In other words, at least in American culture, adulthood is strongly tied with stable employment. If the 15 - 29 age bracket in general does not enjoy stable employment, that could itself be responsible for creating the perception that members of this bracket are not adults.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adulthood is also tied with marriage, home ownership, car ownership, child- rearing, etc... these things have been pushed back a decade or so as a result of too little money.

By the standards of the 1950s, the 20-somethings of today aren't adults. That has sociological twists to it as well, of course-- but primarily economic. I suspect that people aren't actively avoiding having a house, car, wedding, or children, so much as adjusting their wants to be more in line with what is realistic-- choosing one or half of one of the above listed items.

<comment><USER17> > Adulthood is also tied with marriage, home ownership, car ownership, child- > rearing

No. Just no.

Those are things which some adults do, that does not mean you aren't an adult if you don't do them.

Is a 40-year-old with a successful career who just never got married not an adult?

Stop insulting and marginalizing people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just reiterating the state of the status quo's expectations-- they happen to be tied to useful and measurable economic activities.

I fully believe you can be an adult without any of the above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is a truly massive global issue and it hits quite close to me. I've been absolutely lucky in going to university and getting a reasonably promising role in a financial institution whilst studying. The flip side has happened to my brother who at this point is stuck doing menial jobs to pay for food and transport to get to university whilst he collects debt for going. I've had conversations to the effect of 'I actually cannot afford to go to class today or ill be losing another few hundred dollars i need for food' which is not a though ANY young person should have to face. The system needs immediate change for the future of our current society.

</comment><comment><USER42> We should be honest and talk about just not creating more jobs BUT having LESS babies.

<comment><USER43> Why not the other way around - just kill everybody above a certain cutoff and feed them as soylent to the rest? They've already spent most of their productive years anyway, right? Its equally ridiculous, isn't it?

<comment><USER40> No, killing people and feeding them to others is several orders of magnitude more ridiculous than simply voluntarily having fewer children.

<comment><USER43> Every developed country in the world has a negative net population growth - natural growth excluding migration. The only reason the seniors are fed, clothed and washed is a a supply train of foreign nurses and home-care aides, usually from a country such as Philippines - which has a positive population growth. The entire economic system, as it is right now - in reality, is based on positive population growth. How is decreasing the number of kids is going to help?

<comment><USER44> Because automation means less need for labor, which solves the issue of "positive population growth" \-- since it's not the bodies that are providing the economic activity, its their labor. But the bodies require more and more resources that our planet is not capable of sustaining. Hence, less babies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Central Asia and South-East Europe are lumped together? Ouch! That feels like a rather stinging critique of the European Union.

</comment><comment><USER46> Solution: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration)

It's been done. It worked. Do it again.

<comment><USER47> It's different this time. To do many things today(say like repair infrastructure) , the bottle neck is capital costs, not labor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Meanwhile the more menial / labor-intensive jobs are being replaced by automation. I read somewhere that automation was supposed to be the great liberator, enabling an ever-increasing amount of leisure time. But at some point attitudes started shifting so that people must justify their existence by continuously working hard; and if things don't happen to work out for them, well they just weren't motivated enough. This attitude is apparent in our [US] welfare system which has a huge administrative overhead in place to prevent freeloading.

</comment><comment><USER49> It is grim with the exception when you live in Germany or Switzerland.

<comment> ju-st It's still hard to find interesting jobs. But maybe I'm already spoiled...

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The point is there will be less and less global-economy jobs (because of automation and the insane productivity it allows to very few skilled people) and more but not enough local-community jobs (caring, agriculture, menials and so on). In a fair deal of the so-called first world, too many educated people are just reverting to local-community jobs already, competing with the uneducated and migrants. This is not going to end peacefully if some sort of basic income is not introduced soon.

</comment><comment><USER51> Less jobs more food. Grow food, at whatever scale available, pots in your room, pots on the balcony/porch, small gardens, side gardens, public spaces, large gardens.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't fully understand this claim.

The job market has people coming in, but also, in parallel, people exiting out of it.

developed markets, especially in Europe and Japan, will see massive attrition due to people retiring or dying off. the baby boomer generation in the US is retiring as well. all those jobs need to be backfilled and all those old people will need services.

as the world population is stabilizing, it should not be that bad, no?

</comment><comment><USER24> I recently saw an article (don't recall where, but I think it was based on a World Bank report) that indicated that the fraction of the population aged 18-65 had peaked in 2012. That was part of the problem - more people were of working age. But demographically, that's going to be less and less true as we move forward; perhaps that will soften the conclusions of this article.

</comment><comment><USER53> Another idea: how are people today that do so-called 'work' contributing to the human race anyway? In my occupation I call 'work' my contribution is minimal. I help build software to make corporations more money. Almost a negative on the human race. My saving grace is that I make music in my spare time. That is my real contribution to the world.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is this a plain in the open "ideology injection in the brain" from above (the rich) to deter emigration to better countries?

<comment><USER55> What makes you think they'd want to deter emigration?

<comment><USER54> I think I'm paranoid

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> If we had space exploration capability like in Star Trek, we could think about a different approach. But we are constrained to Earth and we have limited resources. Capitalism is the best system available to allocate resources. What we have right now is not really Capitalism.

</comment><comment> sudo-i Hey how valid is this information? I didn't quite grasp if they counted in other factors, for example, people incurrent jobs that will pass away. Additionally data such as baby boomers are getting older and will create markets in stagnant areas at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER53> The young people of today are different. They are on the cusp of potentially something wonderful and strange for the human race. Older people don't recognize it. The values are different. Maybe the idea of 'work' will change to suit them.

<comment><USER32> >The young people of today are different...

"They have exalted notions, because they have not yet been humbled by life or learnt its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble."

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Once we no longer need to work we can occupy ourselves with love, learning, passion and play!

</comment><comment><USER58> Better think positive, guys - it's only going to get worse as you get older ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> Alternatively, let's rethink capitalism now that automation is taking over jobs. Maybe we all don't need to work so hard anymore.

</comment><comment><USER59> The world has confronted this problem every decade since the beginning of time. Is there any reason to believe This Time Is Different?

</comment><comment><USER60> Or just redistibute the wealth more equally.

<comment><USER61> Sounds like pinko-commie talk to me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> ...because we don't have enough stuff and we always have to be doing something? How about, work less, live more.

</comment><comment><USER63> Lots of people have great ideas but most governments stifle small business with excessive relations and fees.

</comment><comment><USER64> Or, we need 600m new small businesses, consultants, etc. The world can change, adapt.

</comment><comment><USER65> Let's produce more. Let's make a rich world for everyone :-)

</comment><comment><USER66> Sounds like a good time to create an education business. :)

</comment><comment><USER67> Extra schooling only delays reality and leads to more debt. What really matters is simple supply and demand - whether people have the skills that others are willing to pay for.

</comment><comment><USER68> Start a startup and create your own job?

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, so how is this startup going to pay its founder before it is profitable?

Where are the founders getting this money, if they're unemployed?

<comment><USER23> How are the customers going to pay revenue if they're unemployed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> The reality is with $31 Billion in mobile app sales and rising those jobs will come from small businesses building mobile apps as we have 1 TBytes of free data to organize into mobile services every year that our current programming languages cannot self learn how to organize.

Yes there will still net jobs loss as tech progress eliminates them..the new job is your small business you set-up

<comment><USER47> That's not a that large of a number, considering it's a global industry.Also, we don't know how concentrated this wealth is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> As difficult as it would be to find money for it - I would propose a one time entrepreneurship grant to all college graduates equal to an average yearly salary in the profession (this is an approximation and experts should figure out what variables should adjust for best amount). That would allow several things to happen: 1\. New graduates with a strong drive for entrepreneurship can start working on their ideas right away and do not have to spent several years working for corporations, picking up anti-patterns. 2\. New graduates who are unable to find professional work can have a cushion while they search, and can potentially become lesser partners to people in the first category.

Jobs and careers are created by businesses, so the more small-medium size businesses there are, places that are still flexible in their mindset - <USER3> more work there will be.</comment>


iOS security hole allows attackers to poison already installed iPhone apps - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/11/ios-security-hole-allows-attackers-to-poison-already-installed-iphone-apps/

<comment><USER2> [http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/11/26/tech-firm- fireeye-f...](http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/11/26/tech-firm-fireeye- faces-class-action.htm)</comment>


Tesla launches $2k Acceleration Boost for 3.9s 0-60 MPH in Model 3 Dual Motor - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/12/19/tesla-acceleration-boost-model-3-dual-motor/ <comment><USER2> I cant help but feel like car features being "micro"transactions like this is going to lead to a lot of cars being jailbroken.

<comment><USER3> Does the Tesla chip void warranty? Typically chipping your car messes up first-party warranty and service. But yes the 80 mph DLC would be a strange end.</comment></comment>