Or rather, to stop pretending we can put ourselves in other's shoes.
Talking to eg. abortion opponents, I usually get the impression that they have done a few thought experiments. They, if you'll allow the straw man, assume/imagine that faced with the same tough decision they would never themselves decide to eg. have an abortion. They're appalled that others (in practice) would choose to do what they (in principle) decide against or vice versa.
As you say, these principles are poor predictors of what people will choose to do in personal, life-or-death reality. Things like the fundamental attribution error make policies based on what-I-would-do-in-a-hypothetical-situation just as impractical as static, by-the-book morality. Perhaps there's a third option.
My sentiment exactly. I cringed at the thought of an argument based entirely on that. The last part, however
> George Bush famously proclaimed: “You’re either with us, or against us”. He asked foreigners the world over to choose. The wholesale spying on “foreigners” says how we chose made little difference at all..
The second option (MITM through access to the public key server) is not comparable to the first. Targets would have to be singled out and surveilled in advance of the messages, which actually lends itself pretty well to the sort of due process surveillance that law enforcement is generally trusted with.
It's not unthinkable that the NSA could access iCloud backups (with some sort of FISA rubber stamp). Access to everyone's backups is much more conducive to dystopian mass surveillance than the key server's tradeoff of vulnerability to MITM.
The OPs first point is a lot stronger than the second. Distributed backups are probably bad from a privacy/security perspective. That seems like the better point to make, provided we understand that iMessage is not a guarantee of complete safety from any surveillance.
How do we even know that the backups aren't encrypted? For all I know, the author had a second iDevice and it shared the key with the first one when the latter came online. That way, the key never leaves your devices, but you can still sync your messages.
Is there a way to access the messages on iCloud itself (i.e. the web interface)? That would be much stronger evidence that Apple can read it.
I agree these are interesting details, and I'm happier for knowing more about the people involved. However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden.
When the war logs leaked, I doubted that anyone would take the initial smears against Julian Assange seriously. I'm Swedish and the sexual misconduct allegations were a big conversation subject here.
After a while, I realised that though I wasn't impressed by the ad hominems, they really did work on the general public. Older relatives and friends who were not in tune with the particular issues of the leak were much more interested in stories about the people behind it. These stories require no expert knowledge; they're relatable. It's daunting for a layperson to try to judge who's right or wrong in issues like war or spying, but it's easy and familiar to judge people over the perceived wholesomeness of girls they're involved with. Thus, to my disappointment, these friends and relatives categorically dismissed anything about the war logs by referring to Assange's personal affairs.
Things like this are published to create negative associations; to cater to personal vanity (better-than-thou) and focus judgement on Snowden's character rather than the faceless institutions he ousted.
However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden.
When Snowden bravely outed himself, the media was in a race to find as many details on him that they could. If they could find people saying that he saved kittens, they would report that. If they find people saying he dropped out of high school, they report that. If Ars Technica discovered that he posted there, of course they're going to capitalize on that and post summaries of the sorts of things he said.
It required no conspiracy or concerted attack. It happens for spree killers. It happens for "hackers". It happens for politicians. It happens for heroes.
I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.
Now if the NSA suddenly claimed that they found child pornography on his workstation, or mysterious women appeared claiming to have been raped by him, a serious consideration would be in order. That hasn't happened (yet, at least), and instead people are seemingly acting knowing and world-weary about absolutely standard media reporting.
> I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.
In my view, neither the banality nor even the truth of the allegations are particularly important. The key reason I chose to file this as a ad hominem/smear is that it invites judgment of Snowden without pertaining to the contents of the leak or even the act of leaking.
"Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs."
I must be a misanthrope, but I disagree wholeheartedly with the latter. Limiting the annoying exposure to other people's problems is a feature, not a bug. People cry every day over ridiculous small-minded problems.
Spam filter. It's disappointing someone seriously believes this is some sort of "objectionable content" censorship. Namely because that's easy enough to test:
"barely legal teens" isn't delivered (edit: now does)
"actually illegal teens" arrives
...along with everything else of the sort (that I've tested).
Surely the phrase was blacklisted by some algorithm after it occurred verbatim in massive amounts of spam.
This isn't selective enforcement, just evaluating each case individually.
Those enforcing a law are typically free to find different answers (punishments) to similar questions (crimes) as long as they can distinguish the case.
The big dangerous problem, rule-of-law-wise, is when a court deviates in its method of judging, not in its judgements.
Hm. This makes it sound like your point stands regardless of personal ethics; as though
> profitting off of the distribution of other peoples work, without their permission, is not something that should be encouraged or tolerated
is a provable, obvious, non-debatable stance. I don't think it is.
I don't think profiting off it changes the basic ethics; if something is morally okay to do as a hobby, it should generally be morally okay to do as a business until proven otherwise.
I wouldn't agree you always need the permission of someone upstream to share ideas or content. That's something we can discuss. Don't make it sound like you have the answer sheet in front of you.
* http://www.macworld.com/article/1167247/cook_apple_planning_...
* http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion
Unless by "outside" you mean those they don't reach out to, but that would be true by definition and so fairly moot.