Linked List: January 9, 2020

Thursday, 9 January 2020

Scaring People Into Supporting Backdoors 

Bruce Schneier, observing the shift from “terrorism” to “pedophiles” as the boogeyman of choice with which to try to turn public sentiment against strong encryption:

Let me be clear. None of us who favor strong encryption is saying that child exploitation isn’t a serious crime, or a worldwide problem. We’re not saying that about kidnapping, international drug cartels, money laundering, or terrorism. We are saying three things. One, that strong encryption is necessary for personal and national security. Two, that weakening encryption does more harm than good. And three, law enforcement has other avenues for criminal investigation than eavesdropping on communications and stored devices. This is one example, where people unraveled a dark-web website and arrested hundreds by analyzing Bitcoin transactions. This is another, where police arrested members of a WhatsApp group.

How hard are law enforcement authorities trying to push this line? Testifying before Congress, New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance said:

In fact, we were never able to view the contents of his phone because of this gift to sex traffickers that came, not from God, but from Apple. As a result, our investigation of sex trafficking was blocked by encryption.

Outrageous.

Maddenisms 

Great thread on Twitter from J.A. Adande (and some additional quotes in the replies, too):

During the 2002 NFL season I kept a notes on random stuff John Madden would say during games, to see if I could learn his philosophy on life through the observations he dispensed in the broadcasts. I recently came across the notebook so here’s a thread of Maddenisms. […]

Some of my favorites:

“When you win [as a coach] you get to be a genius. But if you look at it, you’re a guy that was a PE major in college. Your best class was recess, and then you become a coach. When you win some games you’re a genius. You go from being good at recess to genius…”

“There’s 2 rules in life: You can always be late because you were watching Monday Night Football and the World Series. As a kid, you can always watch those 2 things and it’s okay.”

“When you do lose your hat, you don’t want your head in it.”

There may be football fans who didn’t love listening to Madden call a game, but I don’t know any of them. Madden and his longtime play-by-play partner Pat Summerall will always be the voices of Sunday afternoon football in my mind.

Teen Vogue Story About Facebook Caused Bewilderment About Whether It Was Sponsored Content (Spoiler: It Was) Before the Entire Article Vanished 

An utterly uncritical story on Facebook’s anti-disinformation team appears on Teen Vogue with no byline but no “sponsored content” label. Then Sheryl Sandberg links to it approvingly. Folks at Facebook deny it’s sponsored content, including those profiled in the story. Then the article disappears from Teen Vogue. Then it reappears with a “sponsored content” label. Then it disappears again.

What a clusterfuck all around, both for Teen Vogue (which despite what you might assume from its name, has been publishing very good, very serious work for the last few years) and for Facebook, whose entire reason for buying this sponsored article in the first place was to reassure people that they’re trustworthy. I think Felix Salmon’s theory on how this happened is almost certainly spot-on.