I get the feeling that if every router was being intercepted, that picture would look more like a giant series of assembly lines rather than three people casually sitting around a Cisco box.
Guess I should've been clearer: any equipment they're interested in that ships from the US is at risk. They don't need to go after all equipment. They only need to go after equipment being shipped to backbone providers abroad, and specific targets they are interested in that are "tough to crack."
Further, if one believes that TAO is limiting themselves to terrorists buying Cisco equipment, I have a bridge to sell you. That's absurd considering they produly boast about their economic espionage, their spying on activists such as Wikileaks supporters and other "radicals," and their partners bragging about how they DDoS IRC chat rooms of hacktivists.
I don't expect them to be limiting themselves to terrorists - they're a foreign intelligence agency. I expect them to be gathering info on foreign governments, militaries, etc. (along with spying on terrorists).
I've written about the NSA porno article before, so I'll just post the link to that thread[1]. The TLDR is that Greenwald seems to have left a good deal out of his reporting in order to both sensationalize and avoid discrediting his own argument. I haven't read his new book; maybe he addresses it in there.
No, but that's their justification the vast majority of the time. They don't limit it to foreign governments or militaries either. They do engage in economic espionage, fact. They do single out anyone they don't like which isn't limited to terrorists in these campaigns: "radicals", among them Wikileaks supports, fact.
Stewart Baker has discredited himself[1], his opinion is worth jack shit frankly. I wouldn't trust anything he says, not only because he was behind many of these programs as council but also because of Eben Moglen's interactions with him during the almost-prosecution of Phil Zimmerman, and suggest you do the same.
That the documents are 'sensationalized' is the favorite refuge of NSA goons: when Keith Alexander's comment about collecting it all became public, SEXINT, PRISM, etc. He talks about all of those and leaves no doubt that this characterization is horse shit after the third chapter.
Wow, thanks for accusing me of being an NSA goon. For the record, I said the reporting was sensationalized, not the documents.
On the economic espionage front, I really don't care if the NSA spies in order to shape national policy. Things get a lot murkier when intelligence agencies spy and then hand off that data off to private companies. Huawei was caught red-handed using stolen source code from Cisco[1]. Cisco probably lost millions because Huawei was able to undercut them and skimp on R&D costs. Frankly, I don't want any foreign companies willing to steal trade secrets managing the same internet backbones I conduct business on, just like China probably doesn't want their internet backbones running on American equipment. If there is evidence that the NSA has been handing Huawei source code to Cisco, or any kind of data to any private organization for that matter, in order to gain a competitive advantage, then Greenwald has yet to show it.
You can consider Stewart Baker's opinion to be worth jack shit, but apparently Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim thought his opinion was good enough to quote extensively for the SEXINT article that they wrote. But that's not even the point - they could have been quoting Glenn Beck for all I care. The issue is that they quoted him very selectively in order to not discredit their argument. That wasn't even the first time: right off the bat they omitted slides from the PRISM presentation in order to make the argument that the NSA had direct access to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc.[2] I can see in the PDF file for Greenwald's book that he still extensively cites the Boundless Informant slides, despite the fact that they've been thoroughly discredited[3]. I'm honestly curious - did he mention that part in the book?
The Washington Post silently corrected their initial reporting without issuing a public statement[4][5], and as far I know Glenn Greenwald has never issued any retractions. I'm sure that there's probably plenty of interesting information in the Snowden cache, but I don't trust most of the reporting up until now.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I quoted verbatim from the book below.
>Wow, thanks for accusing me of being an NSA goon.
I didn't accuse you of being an NSA goon. Stewart is definitely one though.
> If there is evidence that the NSA has been handing Huawei source code to Cisco, or any kind of data to any private organization for that matter, in order to gain a competitive advantage, then Greenwald has yet to show it.
What does that have to do with anything? Why is NSA interested in “energy,” “trade,” and “oil” in the PRISM slides? Why is the NSA spying on “heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.” Why are they “monitor[ing] the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs [such as UNICEF], and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries.”
The answer is simple:
"When the United States uses the NSA to eavesdrop on the planning strategies of other countries during trade and economic talks, it can gain enormous advantage for American industry. In 2009, for example, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon wrote a letter to Keith Alexander, offering his “gratitude and congratulations for the outstanding signals intelligence support” that the State Department received regarding the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a conference devoted to negotiating economic accords. In the letter, Shannon specifically noted that the NSA’s surveillance provided the United States with negotiating advantages over the other parties."
It's economic espionage no matter how you spin it. When NSA believes it's pertinent to the "national interests" of the USA, not the "national security" they'll take it.
>You can consider Stewart Baker's opinion to be worth jack shit, but apparently Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim thought his opinion was good enough to quote extensively for the SEXINT article that they wrote.
Two quotes shooting himself in the foot by acknowledging and defending the program is hardly extensively quoting him.
>they omitted slides from the PRISM presentation in order to make the argument that the NSA had direct access to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc.
That was the Gellman and the Washington post that claimed that, without question. The Guardian article framed it as a question. Greenwald never had to issue any retractions.
And just fyi, Gellman is still sticking to the direct access accusations. And Greenwald now thinks that he's right, because analysts can query without staff intervention at Google et al.
I'll quote verbatim from the book:
The companies listed on the PRISM slide denied allowing the NSA unlimited access to their servers. Facebook and Google, for instance, claimed that they only give the NSA information for which the agency has a warrant, and tried to depict PRISM as little more than a trivial technical detail: a slightly upgraded delivery system whereby the NSA receives data in a “lockbox” that the companies are legally compelled to provide.
But their argument is belied by numerous points. For one, we know that Yahoo! vigorously fought in court against the NSA’s efforts to force it to join PRISM—an unlikely effort if the program were simply a trivial change to a delivery system. (Yahoo!’s claims were rejected by the FISA court, and the company was ordered to participate in PRISM.) Second, the Washington Post’s Bart Gellman, after receiving heavy criticism for “overstating” the impact of PRISM, reinvestigated the program and confirmed that he stood by the Post’s central claim: “From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may ‘task’ the system”—that is, run a search—“and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company’s staff.”
Third, the Internet companies’ denials were phrased in evasive and legalistic fashion, often obfuscating more than clarifying. For instance, Facebook claimed not to provide “direct access,” while Google denied having created a “back door” for the NSA. But as Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s tech expert, told Foreign Policy, these were highly technical terms of art denoting very specific means to get at information. The companies ultimately did not deny that they had worked with the NSA to set up a system through which the agency could directly access their customers’ data.
Finally, the NSA itself has repeatedly hailed PRISM for its unique collection capabilities and noted that the program has been vital for increasing surveillance. One NSA slide details PRISM’s special surveillance powers. Another details the wide range of communications that PRISM enables the NSA to access. And another NSA slide details how the PRISM program has steadily and substantially increased the agency’s collection. On its internal messaging boards, the Special Source Operation division frequently hails the massive collection value PRISM has provided. One message, from November 19, 2012, is entitled “PRISM Expands Impact: FY12 Metrics”.
Such congratulatory proclamations do not support the notion of PRISM as only a trivial technicality, and they give the lie to Silicon Valley’s denials of cooperation. Indeed, the New York Times, reporting on the PRISM program after Snowden’s revelations, described a slew of secret negotiations between the NSA and Silicon Valley about providing the agency with unfettered access to the companies’ systems. “When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled,” reported the Times. “In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.”
[...]
The Internet companies’ claim that they hand over to the NSA just the information that they are legally required to provide is also not particularly meaningful. That’s because the NSA only needs to obtain an individual warrant when it wants to specifically target a US person. No such special permission is required for the agency to obtain the communications data of any non-American on foreign soil, even when that person is communicating with Americans. Similarly, there is no check or limit on the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata, thanks to the government’s interpretation of the Patriot Act—an interpretation so broad that even the law’s original authors were shocked to learn how it was being used.
> I can see in the PDF file for Greenwald's book that he still extensively cites the Boundless Informant slides, despite the fact that they've been thoroughly discredited[3]
How is that? That has nothing to do with whether the US records are correct.
> How is that? That has nothing to do with whether the US records are correct.
I have no idea how Greenwald brought up the issue of Boundless Informant in his book, I just know that I saw slides in his PDF showing the US and Poland (maybe more - I forget). In that series of articles, they seemed to make pretty clear that the program was showing where the collection came from, not where the targets were. So, for example, the numbers from Norway represented communications collected "to support Norwegian military operations in conflict areas abroad, or connected to the fight against terrorism, also abroad". Same with Germany, France, Spain and Italy (I'm probably missing some). When it comes to the US numbers, I don't see that it's that big of a leap to take the same statement that the Norwegian intelligence service made, and replace all instances of "Norway" with "US".
> That was the Gellman and the Washington post that claimed that, without question. The Guardian article framed it as a question. Greenwald never had to issue any retractions.
From the article published in The Guardian[1]:
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
...
With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.
With regards to the provider's denials, I don't see anything evasive about them:
Google: "I'm not sure what the details of this PRISM program are, but I can tell you that the only way in which Google reveals information about users are when we receive lawful, specific orders about individuals -- things like search warrants. And we continue to stand firm against any attempts to do so broadly or without genuine, individualized suspicion, and publicize the results as much as possible in our Transparency Report. Having seen much of the internals of how we do this, I can tell you that it is a point of pride, both for the company and for many of us, personally, that we stand up to governments that demand people's information." [2]
Microsoft: "We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it." [3]
Facebook: "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.
When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure."[4]
AOL: "We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers." [5]
Every one of them is very clear: the NSA needs a court order to get user's data, and they have only complied with orders for specific users.
The two statements from The Guardian are referencing the documents themselves. If you want to talk about out of context, you missed the headline and the multiple paragraphs framing it as a question of what the providers say versus what the NSA documents say.
"Direct access," these are the NSA's own words. The Guardian ran the providers statements versus what the NSA documents said. That's a fact. That's why there are no retractions in The Guardian's story, and as Soghoian says they don't actually deny "direct access" in those statements, legally. What's likely is that the companies allow them to run informal searches to narrow the data down.
As for the "court order," they're just talking about a FISA court order which only "allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization," which they readily ignore, and it's more like a general warrant because NSA relies on self-reporting. As Snowden indicated, and LOVEINT showed, analysts can just use bullshit justifications and cover it up. And if they targetted a U.S. citizen, according to their own documents, it's "not a big deal."
Yes - they denied it... because it was false. "Direct access" is not the NSA's own words, they were The Guardian's/The Washington Post's words. The slides themselves say "Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. service providers...", which we later found out means "provided under court order directly from the providers". The Guardian article goes on to say:
"When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the Prism program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers."
That is a blatant lie. The companies receive court orders - they have the ability to challenge the court order in the same way that they would challenge a subpoena or search warrant by going back to the court. If the FISA court doesn't agree, there's still a higher court to appeal to. There has yet to be a retraction of The Guardian's statement.
> As for the "court order," they're just talking about a FISA court order which only "allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization,"
You're mixing up programs now. That quote comes from an ODNI statement[1] about the FISA Section 215 metadata collection (I'm not going into that one now - that's a whole different mess, and IMHO that program is rightly controversial). The PRISM slides repeatedly indicate that this collection under FISA Section 702, which gathers content and which has a whole different set of legal requirements. Most prominently, people collected on under 702 must be reasonably believed to be outside the US and not an American citizen/green card holder/etc. The Snowden trove has yet to show any general warrant style orders related to PRISM.
I think the LOVEINT example actually works in favor of my argument - there was a small group people doing illegal stuff at NSA; they got caught; as a result, they don't work there anymore. You could go on to ask why the DOJ didn't prosecute, and I wouldn't fault you for questioning - I don't know the answer to that one. But citing LOVEINT to justify limiting the NSA's capabilities is kind of like saying "this cop fired his weapon and killed an innocent civilian, so we need to disarm the entire police force."
You're right, partly. Either way, NSA ha(d|s) direct access to Yahoo and Google's internal networks with MUSCULAR and various other WINDSTOP programs that have collected many more records than MUSCULAR, without requiring warrants whatsoever. Arguing over why The Guardian didn't retract is just splitting hairs at this point, because they did include the slide that claimed "direct collection from the servers." Then there's also UPSTREAM. PRISM is hardly the smoking gun in these long chain of events. And again you're right, I did mix up the 215 blurb.
'Intellectual Property' doesn't exist at all, people just like to group copyright, trademarks and patents into the same term despite the separate, drastically different sets of laws backing them.
Lewis Hyde's Common As Air is a good read on the framers' original intentions when it came to issues like this, and why our modern system is in violation of their original constitutional mandate. Personally enjoyed it more than his other well known work The Gift.
On the subject of the article, and as per Bradley Kuhn's analysis[1], it should be noted that the court did not consider the question of fair use in this case and a jury will be able to sit down and consider that can of worms going forward. Not the end of the world, considering.
It's not going to interfere with anything: sponsored tiles aren't going to replace any of your newtab tiles (pinned or otherwise) in an old profile.
This is simply for new users and new profiles, to populate the newtab page with useful links until all of those items would be sufficiently populated.
Or you could click the button in the top-right hand corner of the newtab page to turn the tiles off completely (it also seems to disable thumbnailing now, you had to turn that off manually a few versions back.)
oh boy, another GPL debate! phk was right, seems we never get tired of this stupid shit.
It didn't make itself "deliberately incompatible" with all free licenses before it, for example MIT/X11 is definitely compatible. Why is the original BSD license singled out?
Many people besides you believe proprietary software is harmful enough to enact defense mechanisms when proprietary software vendors harm the user and lock down free software into their products.
I singled out the original BSD license because it was extant and the GPL was not compatible with it. Such clauses are pretty common in the software world and give credit where credit's due; hell, Microsoft has no problem with it, why does it bind the panties of the average GPL supporter so much?
Furthermore, I'd argue that a lot of those defense mechanisms that copyleft supporters claim are necessary cause much more harm to Free Software than they do to proprietary software. The ability to use GCC for static analysis, for example, was muddied for many years by the GCC team's unwillingness to create a suitable API out of fear that it would become easier for proprietary software teams to use GCC without contributing. Meanwhile, proprietary compiler chains, like those Microsoft provided, were easily able to create those same tools because they were not driven by such fears. Additionally, you have statements from people like RMS trying to memory hole software ( http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html ) that doesn't agree with his political views. While the goals may be noble, the route the free software community has chosen to get there has devolved into stubbornness and childishness to the detriment of everyone.
The vast majority of distros seem to agree that standardization is a good thing in the switch to systemd. If you don't want to be standardized maintain it yourself, see: GoboLinux.
But modularity of Linux doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Contrary to what the author says, systemd is not monolithic but rather consists of protocols and multiple daemons outside of PID1.
There doesn't seem to be any plans to stop one from using anything other than systemd on say Debian either. As far as I know the only hard requirement for systemd (really logind) is with Gnome on Wayland for user seats, because Consolekit is dead. Gnome seems to be willing to work with the *BSDs et al who have no plans to switch to systemd.
It consists of multiple daemons which are relied on by userland applications, are so strongly interdependent that the systemd developers don't support running them independently, and which have no stable or documented APIs between the different components. Oh, and many of them are infeasable to re-implement according to said developers.
Now, the Gnome developers may argue that technically Gnome doesn't require logind, and technically they're right. You lose the ability to shutdown, restart, sleep or hibernate your PC from the Gnome user interface - all things that worked before and that normal users expect to be able to do - but you can technically run without it. The API for those things isn't itself terribly complicated, but because the systemd and Gnome developers don't give a fuck about anything other than systemd they've bundled it together with a whole bunch of complicated, poorly-documented multiseat stuff that can only be implemented as one single, monolithic all-or-nothing API.
Which is, I think, part of the reason why Ubuntu gave up and is switching to systemd; they can hardly ship something that requires users to use the command line to shutdown or suspend their PC.
Edit: Also, the bit about how "we specifically approved some patches to allow Canonical to run logind without systemd" is... well, outdated is probably the politest way to put it. Since then the systemd developers have announced that they're breaking the ability to run logind seperately in future, they never supported it in the first place, and Ubuntu should never have done it.
The problem is that while systemd is superficially a bunch of different commands, they are a clinking, clanking mess of poorly documented programs that do their job worse than the programs they replace.
For a moment, let's look at one of these components, systemd-backlight, and it's terribly written manual page, http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-back... . Okay, so what return values can you expect? Where on the filesystem does it store the saved values so you can debug if things do go cactus? Why does it always overwrite the value at shutdown? These are all things that a reasonable program either should not do, or should document why and where they put things. Systemd just is not a responsible, well-engineered project.
Furtnermore, the only real reason consolekit is dead is because Lennart again shows a complete lack of responsibility as a developer with that project. He'd rather shove everyone towards his new baby of systemd than to do a responsible hand-off. This is furthered in his inability to document the interfaces used so that people can write compatible software, so that people can debug software, and so that people can maintain things if he ever gets hit by the number eight bus going downtown. It's just not a good way to run things, period.
I missed it. I guess I've gotten spoiled by BSD manual pages that have file locations in a subsection labelled Files instead of stuck in the description. At the same time, it gives a directory location, instead of an actual filename, which lends one to believe that the actual name and location will be subject to change without notice, as well as the contents of the file, format, etc.
>Australis sealed the deal and made them nearly identical in the most critical ways.
How is that? Using the hamburger icon, which was used by Mozilla in mockups before Chrome used it, or rounded tabs (which Chrome doesn't actually use), or making the customization UI (something which Chrome doesn't have, yet again) not look like it's from the year 2000?
Please identify the critical ways in which it's imitating Chrome.
The most important aspects for me would be customization, and Chrome doesn't offer anything in the same ballpark. And with Chrome, you have to resort to tedious workarounds to install certain extensions if you don't want to login to your Google account. And if we ignore all of that, Firefox's add-on ecosystem wins too.
People get upset at every UI rehaul; you could hear much the same sentiment after Firefox 3.
History will judge Eich just fine. He's a great technologist, and the Open Web owes a huge debt to him. He's probably done more for equality and inclusiveness than anyone who protested his appointment.
That's the real tradgedy here: the world, and Mozilla, lost a great ally (for now.)
The left-wing anti-liberalism streak that's fueled this crisis is apalling to me personally. And those who were so insistent on burning Eich, the heretic, because he wouldn't recant will hopefully regret their actions once it happens to someone, for example, who donates to Planned Parenthood and is pressured to resign by a bunch of conservatives.
If you would have been outraged if he was pressured to resign for having the opposite opinion but think what happened is somehow appropriate: you are a bigot.
I wish him the best of luck, some good rest to think things over, and know that (despite his opinion otherwise) we are worse off when there's a Mozilla without Eich.
You're kidding, right? Liberals get fired by their conservative employers for their views all the time. It's nice to see it work the other way for once.
Everyone with the "what if it were the other way around" argument is completely out of touch. Our side has been dealing with it all along. Sucks to see it thrown back at you, doesn't it? Time to eat your own dogfood.
>Liberals get fired by their conservative employers for their views all the time. It's nice to see it work the other way for once.
Where's the evidence? And regardless of whether that's true or not, it's not right: you're effectively feeding social pressure to keep your beliefs private out of fear for retribution.
Almost as if you're reinforcing another closet on everyone else.
>Sucks to see it thrown back at you, doesn't it? Time to eat your own dogfood.
Tit for tat bullshit: you are no better than the anti-gay bullies.
I've supported equal marriage rights since high school, for the record, and lean left-lib.
The highest-profile example I can think of off the top of my head is NBC firing Phil Donahue. But it's normally people without a voice, like my mother, who don't have anyone leaking memos to prove it for them.
Isn't it? Why should I give money to an organization who's going to turn around and give it to a guy who's going to use it to compare my friends to child molesters?
> Almost as if you're reinforcing another closet on everyone else.
If your views involve enacting your religion into law, then yes, I want them buried in the closet where they can't harm anyone.
> Tit for tat bullshit: you are no better than the anti-gay bullies.
I'm not using the power of the state to enforce my views.
Phil Donahue is a nice example, I'll concede, but it says more about the corruption of the MSM than anything.
>Why should I give money to an organization who's going to turn around and give it to a guy who's going to use it to compare my friends to child molesters
Where's the evidence that Eich has compared your friends to child molesters? You have none. Eich reaffirmed his own stance on equality going forward, at issue is that he just didn't want to recant his support for Prop 8, for which he donated his own money on his own time.
I'm not going to dignify your bullshit with any further responses just based on that comment.
Did you seriously not see the ads his money funded?
If he can't recant his donation, there is no reason to believe his vague "stance" on equality. Someone who is willing to enact their religion into law should be even more willing to enforce their religion in private employment. A promise not to do so rings hollow at best, incredibly hypocritical at worst.
Would it make you feel better if he were tossed for being a hypocrite?
Ah yes, he could've spared himself the trouble by just parroting empty words. The heretic should've just recanted!
>there is no reason to believe his vague "stance" on equality.
There is: no one at Mozilla Co. publically doubted his stance on equality, in fact you had many coming to his side. It was people at Mozilla Fnd. who've never interacted with him, were the ones with doubts.
But instead of waiting for Eich, who said "I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain,[1]" to actually back up his words with actions, a bunch of social justice warriors decided that the heretic must burn. I'm not going to call them equal-marriage rights advocates because they're just acted like a bunch of bullies who thought he'd somehow "evolve" like our politicking President did.
It's shameful.
Hello to the person who decided to downvote all of my posts in a dead discussion, though. You must be so proud. Could've at least replied with a comment comparing Eich to the KKK or something.
"Liberals get fired by their conservative employers for their views all the time."
Burden of proof is on you to prove this. Citing an example here and there does not qualify, since that constitutes something like 0.000000001% of conservative bosses who have liberal employees. I have all day. Please provide your evidence. Thanks.
I agree with Sullivan's take[1] posted yesterday. If this is the gay-rights movement today, a bunch of extremist Social Justice Warriors, I want no part of it.
Not only that, but Catlin's reaction to it[2] is also shameful: 'oops, we thought he would evolve like President Obama did, our bad. but hey, we're putting our apps back on the marketplace!'
> If this is the gay-rights movement today, a bunch of extremist Social Justice Warriors, I want no part of it.
Partially true. This episode has been disturbing, yes, but at the same time, it has held strong by the community and the public. And it'll only get stronger till there is equality. It is the frustration of people, friends and family which makes episodes like these escalate. Only a strong movement can bring an impact.
So are they a bunch of "extremists"? No. Are they moderators then? No, again. Its somewhere in the middle.
And thousands of people have been murdered in the name of homophobia. But this isn't really a numbers game; if, in the TWENTY-FIRST century, anyone is murdered, attacked, insulted, or treated in any way differently because of their sexual orientation, that is an outrage.
Okay, let's go with a more direct comparison. Say he funds the campaign for a successful constitutional referendum banning interracial marriage. Do you honestly think he'd be able to stay as CEO in that case?
That direct comparison doesn't work either: The herd mentality in religious circles is that because same-sex couples can’t produce biological children together, they shouldn't be recognized as marriages. This is rational if you see the institution of marriage as a state-recognized union between that's only between a man and a woman, which has long social and cultural roots.
Bans on interracial marriages, on the other hand, are just justified by racism and not objective facts.
Eich is ignorant, but I'm pretty sure he's not a bigot.
You're aware that the religious argument, and the IT WILL DESTOY SOCIETY argument, and the "unsuitable for raising children" arguments were all used in the context of interracial marriage in the US in the 60s, right?
Incidentally, the idea that marriage has long social and cultural roots is also kind of dubious. If you look at marriage in 1800, it's essentially an entirely different arrangement to marriage today; notably, it lead to effective legal erasure of the wife as a person.
You don't seem to understand: they can be rational and maintain that a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, two people of the same sex, can’t be a marriage.
It's ignorant, places way too much emphasis on sex rather than committment and love, and is justified by stupid ideas like marriage being "reserved" for heterosexual couples for the purpose of procreation, but it's rational. It also leads to seperate but equal legal frameworks, which are bullshit.
Bans on interracial marriage were irrational, not relying on a single objective fact.
What I would like: abolish state-recognized marriages altogether. Civil partnerships for everyone, let churches squabble about marriage if someone wants a ceremony, and they can enter into a partnership for benefits.
What's practical: modifying our legal framework for marriage across the states.
My point is that people who opposed interracial marriage thought that they had a rational basis for doing so (even though it didn't make sense); similarly, people who oppose gay marriage today also think they have rational bases for doing so, even though they don't make sense.
> they can be rational and maintain that a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, two people of the same sex, can’t be a marriage
Pretty much nobody actually makes this argument, though. Probably because infertile people get married all the time.
>My point is that people who opposed interracial marriage thought that they had a rational basis for doing so (even though it didn't make sense); similarly, people who oppose gay marriage today also think they have rational bases for doing so, even though they don't make sense.
Not really, as I said before there’s no biological basis for refusing to accept an interracial relationship as a marriage.
I'm not going to continue defending views that aren't my own, so if you're interested in reading what exactly "traditional marriage" defenders are talking about then try this review: http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Georg... (pdf)
You don't seem to understand: they can be rational and maintain that a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, two people of the same sex, can’t be a marriage.
That's explicitly not rational, unless you are going to deny marriage rights to opposite sex couples who are "categorically incapable of producing children together biologically."
"a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together biologically, [the female of whom has had a hysterectomy following uterine cancer], can’t be a marriage."
Your point contradicts itself; first you mention that marriage is about biological reproduction (which would annul marriages between infertile couples?), then you say it's about society and culture, then you say it's about objective facts.
No: They believe that marriage is a union that's only between a man and a woman, which has long social and cultural roots. Justified by the fact that same-sex couples categorically can't reproduce with each other.
Of course these objections to same-sex marriage have a slight problem: egg and sperm donations. But it's not exactly typical biological reproduction.
It's pretty stupid, but not everyone who holds these objections is a homophobic bigot. And, to be clear, I'm not attempting to act as an apologist for whatever views Eich holds: I'm just trying to refute the direct comparison between same-sex and interacial marriage bans. Because it's in every thread multiple times, and usually with a KKK reference which is absurd.
There was really no way this situation would have ended well regardless of how it turned out, because both sides seem incapable of communicating.
Good point, it's not like members of the LGBT community have ever been beaten and killed for being LGBT.... Oh wait...
Yes he didn't donate (directly) to a group that goes around beating and killing homosexuals but it's disingenuous to pretend they (KKK and homophobics) don't have plenty in common. First of which being hate.
Well Debate.org seems to agree with what I think you are trying to say which is "being against gay marriage does not make you a homophobe"[0], of course Slate would disagree with you [1], and The Atlantic would agree with you [2]. I could go on but I won't, I'll just tell you what I think: yes, It does.
And yes, he was a homophobe, by giving to a group of people trying to destroy human rights for homosexuals. I think people can change but the complete lack of response on that specific issue from Brendan Eich makes me assume he still is.
Here's the source, but be warned that this is a 90 MB pdf: http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/holt/greenwald/NoPl...