Obama: cryptographers who don’t believe in magic ponies are “fetishists,” “absolutists” by Cory Doctorow.
President Obama is looking for a few good men and women who think it is possible to have strong cryptography, that becomes upon demand.
Here’s part of what Cory has to say about the matter:
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Obama conflated cryptographers’ insistence that his plan was technically impossible with the position that government should never be able to serve court orders on its citizens. This math denialism, the alternative medicine of information security.He focused his argument on the desirability of having crypto that worked in this impossible way, another cheap rhetorical trick. Wanting it badly isn’t enough.
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As a former constitutional law professor, President Obama should have pointed to historical precedent for believing impossible things:
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)
If you don’t already believe in magic ponies, start practicing today!
Your ability to believe impossible things may be the key to your next position in big data, national security and a host of other positions.
PS: “Absolutists” are easy to spot. Among other things, they believe math operators give everyone the same results; gravity exists in all known frames of reference; the Earth is an oblate spheroid, i.e., not flat, etc. Feel free to contribute other beliefs that identify “absolutists” in your comments.