Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: rant

  • The Perception of Approachability

    The Perception of Approachability

    I’m speaking at WordCamp US. Someone I don’t know pinged me and said they were happy to see I was speaking, and they’d be there from their country. I haven’t the foggiest idea who they were or why they were telling me this.

    A few years ago, at my first WordCamp San Francisco, someone followed me for a few city blocks. Or at least he tried to. I was going out and he followed me out of the area. I paused, we chatted a moment and as I tried to leave, he kept talking. This pattern repeated until I finally said “I need to go. Good bye.” He kept talking. I spotted a female WordCamper I knew and she immediately came up and told me my wife was on her phone and was mine broken? Not at all. We lied. But I went with it, checked, looked shocked that it didn’t light up, and said it must be dead. I took her phone and proceeded to start a fake conversation that my wife had locked herself out of the car, 3000 miles away.

    In 2015, I was at a WordCamp where someone was very much crowing up in my personal space to talk. I quickly stepped back and when he leaned in, held up my hand and asked for personal space. At another WordCamp later that year, a similar thing happened to a friend of mine. I saw she was agitated and wanted the conversation to end, so I walked up and smiled and said I’d been looking for her. I knew the man, I thanked him, apologized for interrupting, wished him a good day, and he nodded and walked off.

    These are pretty normal events in my life.

    It’s a common, regular occurrence for people like me.

    I talk to hundreds of strangers a day in my work. I email at least 30 people a day with notes about their code. I converse with customers, co-workers, and a lot of random people. I don’t know many of them. We are not friends, these random people and I. We are not besties. We are not people I hang out with on their couch and play rude games. But the perception is, since we’ve had some conversations, we’re somehow closer than normal.

    And yet all four of those people, all men by the way, seemed to assume a level of connection that I did not. They all immediately felt I was ‘one of them’ and monopolized my time, not taking the social cues of ‘no’ until it was stated, and even then I had to be forceful.

    Flip the tables.

    Have I ever felt this way about women? Actually yes. I’ve had women at WordCamps do the exact same thing. 2014 someone kept asking me question after question about being a Woman in WordPress, until I politely turned to another woman and pointed out she too wanted to talk to me. In every case with women, however, they get it when I try to redirect the conversation to ‘I need to leave’ or ‘this conversation should end now’ and they get it without rancor or offense.

    This happens outside WordPress too. It’s actually a great deal worse outside WordPress. But in many cases, people attribute a greater level of friendship to an online social connection than I seem to.

    Of course there are exceptions. Most of my greatest friends came from random internet connections. People who, literally, changed my life with a job recommendation, held me while I sobbed over a death, had a girly sleepover where we giggled until 1am when we totally shouldn’t have since we had to be up at 6am for volunteering, offered me a couch, schwarma, or even just a gentle “Hey, I’m here for you. Are you okay?” They too came from this online place.

    So what’s the difference?

    We’re more approachable online, certainly. We let our barriers down and we engage more because it’s (mostly) safer. We can talk about how we feel, we can sob, and no one sees us. We’re freer. And with this freedom and honesty comes a ‘connection’ that sometimes transforms into true and honest friendship, and sometimes doesn’t.

    But when we move the online relationship into a physical one, we worry. We worry if the person is who they presented themselves to be and we worry if we’re going to get hurt. Many women worry if we’re going to be physically hurt. And we can’t tell. We often have no way to figure this out until it’s too late.

    I don’t have a solution to this problem, but I can tell you this. When I meet new people, even at a WordCamp, and when strangers reach out and tell me they’re excited to meet me, I receive that with a little trepidation and caution. I text my wife to tell her where I am, who I’m with, and if I’m worried. This is unlikely to change any time soon, and has nothing to do with the US political climate. What it has to do with is the understanding of what exactly makes up our connection.

    Comments on this post have been disabled.

  • The Time and The Place

    The Time and The Place

    It was the day of a big release. A major release. A release that had been announced weeks, if not months, in advance. Everyone who was anyone knew that today was the day. So why not publicly drop the news of a major issue with the project in the middle of that release?

    It was the middle of the development meeting. Everyone was talking about issues with a part of the project. They were deep into the hell that is debugging and backtracking and arguing if things should be fixed or simply noted. So why not ask for help about an issue one user was having?

    This is not about WordPress. Well. It is and it isn’t. It’s about understanding who you are, where you are, and what’s going on around you. It’s about awareness and acceptance. It’s about being a part of something greater than yourself.

    This is about common sense.

    In Festivus, there’s a time and a place for the airing of grievances. In Judaism, we have a time and place for atoning for sins and forgiving others. While you certainly can do these things at any point in time, the purpose of having set and established periods for them is to prevent people from being derailed, to stop breaking the flow.

    The time to report a security issue (which should never be ‘in public first,’ IMO) is not the middle of the release meeting. The time to report petty theft is not while your Manager is giving an announcement. The time to tell everyone that Beyoncé’s video was better is not while Taylor Swift is on stage giving her acceptance speech.

    Those moments are rude, inconsiderate, and disrespectful.

    It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not because yes, Single Ladies was a magnificent video and Beyoncé was robbed, it matters if the right people will be able to address the issue without causing harm to everyone else.

    No one is more or less important than anyone else. Saying ‘everyone’s special’ is just another way of saying no one is. As painful as that can be to hear, it’s true. Instead of arguing that ‘us’ are more special than ‘them,’ which is purely subjective anyway, we should look at the magnitude of the work we do. Who will be harmed by the choice to publicly state something now?

    The good of the many often is more important than the good of the few, or the one. That doesn’t mean you should not confront people in public. It means you should not do so recklessly. It means that you should not speak up without consideration of who you are, where you are, and when you are. It means you must be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions.

    If you decide the best place to speak up against a politician is at his rally, you must accept that you may be throw out. You must accept that protests may end with your arrest. You must accept that being vocally against a decision or an action may result in you being publicly talked back to and possibly shunned.

    At the same time, you cannot be afraid to do these things. You should speak up against wrongs. You should speak up against bad decisions. You should tell your manager that they’re making a bad choice. But you cannot do those things blindly or ignorantly.

    It’s human nature to want to be a part of a group. We’re herd animals. We like the safety it affords us. We like the security. We crave it. So when we achieve acceptance into an ‘inner circle’ we want to protect our standing and not be cast out, and that can cause a bit of a Status Quo mentality.

    Some members of the group will always be the ones to shake things up. They will be the ones to speak against the majority, to stand up and say “This is wrong and here is why.” They’re the ones who are brave enough and strong enough to accept the consequences of their actions. They don’t walk into a room, interrupting everything and everyone, to announce something. 

    They don’t get a free pass, however. They accept the consequences. And the effective ones make sure that when they choose to speak up, they do it in the right place, at the right time, with the full respect given to their group and community. And if they don’t, well again, they know what they’re getting into.

    I can’t tell you to speak unafraid. That would be incredibly unrealistic. But I can say to speak boldly and to think about the consequences of your actions. And I can tell you to ask. “Will there be a post-mortem of this deployment where we can talk about improvements to the process?” Ask. “I know this is a meeting, and I apologize for interrupting, but I have a security issue. Where would be the right place for this?” Ask.

  • Dog Shaming Disclosure

    Dog Shaming Disclosure

    You’ve probably seen this. A dog with something around their neck saying “I ate the carpet.”

    We think that it’s funny because the dog often has no real idea what they did wrong, and we’re embarking the absolute absurdity of the moment. At the same time, we’re terrible people because we’re mocking a creature who can’t understand what we’re doing. So we’re pretty shitty people.

    This is not about any one specific company or group or person. This happens weekly. I see people tweet and post and point fingers in public well before they ping people privately or directly. I see people come into Slack and announce “This is vulnerable!” I see people post in forums the same thing. Some of these people don’t know any better, but worst is when they do know better.

    While we bandy about the need for responsible disclosure of security issues, and the need for quick resolutions, I feel that we are often too quick to point and shame and accuse. We want to get the news out about a problem so fast, to get people’s eyes and attention, that we forget about the humanity behind the product.

    Also we forget how hard we hit.

    Public Embarrassment

    When someone screws up in public, they are shaming themselves. Like the Olympic diver who belly flopped, or the hurdler who ran right into the first hurdle, when gaffs are televised world wide. They go on YouTube, they’re tweeted and pointed at for years. We will remember them for a long time. But that is embarrassment someone has done to themselves. People are people and release press notices too soon, push code early, and make mistakes. When someone does it to themselves, it’s galling and embarrassing, and they feel terrible. Their friends tell them it happens to everyone, and to learn from the mistake and do better next time.

    Public Shaming

    On the other hand, there is the ‘friend’ who publicly shouts that someone screwed up. They are metaphorically hanging a sign around someone’s neck and saying they suck. To the world. Now yes, they screwed up, but a human’s natural reaction to that is anger, pain, and a lack of desire to fix it because they’ll just screw up again.

    To make this more simple, public shaming creates a bad environment. It discourages innovation with fear.

    Responsible Disclosure

    Two years ago, Andrew Nacin talked about how security is nuances.

    There will always be individuals who want everything to be fully disclosed, and there are some great arguments for that. I’m not trying to sway you one way or the other. But if you’re trying to do the right thing — you’re doing full disclosure in the interest of users, possibly even providing a patch or steps to mitigate — working with the vendor is a good way to ensure you haven’t missed anything.

    Unlike Nacin, I do want to sway you to one side. I want to sway you to the side of communication.

    If you find a security hole in a product, the first reaction should be to reproduce it as best you can, write up exactly how it can be exploited with examples and Proofs of Concepts, and then contact the developers/vendors about it. Give them some time to reply. Ask them what they would agree a reasonable disclosure timeframe could be, talk and negotiate what would make sense for the product, the situation, and the developers. I want you to think about when releasing the information will harm the fewest people.

    Being responsible means thinking beyond the simple “This should be fixed for people.” It means “This should not put more people in danger.” It means you have to look at the big picture. Is it reasonable to expect people to update right away and, thus, you can release full disclosure with the update, or is it more realistic that it may take a while? What about bundled products? Will they get the alerts timely or not?

    Forget First, Embrace Most

    But above all else, we have got to stop this behavior of ‘First!’ Because that’s what’s going on. People are in a rush to be the first to report a problem or an issue, and in doing so they forget who they’re doing this for. Forget being first. Start caring about the people you’re posting the information for. Is this helping the most people?

    Publicly dragging someone through the muck, starting a witch hunt, just because they screwed up doesn’t help anything. It makes for an unhealthy developer community, and it makes for user base that cannot trust the developers.

  • Boundaries

    Boundaries

    My friend and coworker tipped me on to this post about The Asshole Filter which begs the question: “Why is everyone I deal with an asshole?”

    The post goes on to talk about how the issue is that if we draw a line in the sand but then allow people to cross that line, or worse reward them for doing that, we’re hurting ourself. In the example, a fellow named Fred used to accept personal emails about a project but now asks them to be sent to a group email.

    […] some people use fredsstaff@fredsconvention.tld and some people use Fred’s personal email.

    Who uses the officially designated email address?

    • People who feel strongly about following rules.
    • People who feel following the rules is generally a good idea.
    • People who respect Fred’s request because they’re generally respectful.
    • People who respect Fred’s request because they like Fred personally.
    • People who don’t want to antagonize Fred.
    • People who realize the problem Fred is trying to solve and want to be cooperative to reduce the burden on Fred.
    • People who feel it important to respect role boundaries.
    • People who are concerned that overwhelming Fred will cause their request to get lost.

    Who uses Fred’s personal email address?

    • People who can’t be bothered to learn and follow procedures.
    • People who feel rules are for other people.
    • People who feel they should get to cut in line.
    • People who don’t feel keeping track of what other people prefer is all that important.
    • People who aren’t troubled by the thought of pissing off Fred, either because they don’t care whom they piss off or because they think Fred is of no account.
    • People who feel entitled to get their way.
    • People who feel satisfaction when they find an illicit “shortcut” to getting what they want, that “suckers” are too “chicken” to use.

    In short, the decent, cooperative, law-abiding people all use the departmental email address, even though it doesn’t work a well as they might like, while the assholes continue emailing Fred directly.

    Did that just sound familiar to a lot of you who are thinking “I can just email Mika about plugins…”

    People often ask me why I sound angry when I tell you “Please email plugins@wordpress.org, don’t tweet/DM/Slack me asking for status. Just use the email and sit on your hands a bit.” I’m actually not angry. I’m annoyed. There’s a huge difference.

    Angry me logs off and calls it a day.

    Annoyed me rants a bit to someone who understands, or maybe says something passive/aggressive on Twitter about “Please use the plugins@ email…”

    In both cases, though, I probably waste at least an hour of my time not getting to the things everyone wants be to get to. In both cases, I feel incredibly disrespected and used. Yes, used. Because even when my friends say “Hey I have a quick plugin question…” the answer has once been a quick one. That question? Someone asked if he could adopt the plugin of a friend of ours who had died.

    First of all, that’s just an unexpected question by anyone’s standards (and it’s why we came up with a policy about handling death among developers). Second of all, it’s a touchy subject on it’s best day, so asking how to handle it was respectful. Third… He actually asked if he should just email the group.

    This was someone who clearly understood the reality, the situation, and the fact that there will always be exceptions.

    The sidebar of this issue is that, even if I ask someone to email a group, nine times of out ten it’s me who replied.

    I can give you a really long explanation, including how I plan to use those emails to train up new reviewers so you don’t have to wait on me, but let me ask you this instead.

    • Are you more or less important than everyone else who is waiting for their plugin to be reviewed?

    In general, if you get the ‘snippy’ reply of “Dude stop fucking things up and use the right channel” then I’ve already asked you, at least once, to “please” use the email. I’m very careful to ask nicely since I know there’s no possible way for everyone to know things. Mistakes are totally okay in my book. Intentionally trying to jump a queue just makes you an asshole, no matter your intentions. You’re disrespecting everyone, me and every other plugin developer out there, by demanding you get attended to first.

    Okay.

    So what would be a good reason to ping directly? Well about the only reason people do it that I consider thoughtful and respectful is this:

    Hey it’s been a week and I didn’t hear back about X. Did the email get lost or are you guys super backlogged?

    And maybe…

    I think [plugin reviewer] is treating me unfairly. Can you help or do you know who can?

    Both of those are totally perfect reasons to step off book. One is you not being sure if the email was received. The other is an issue with someone who might read the email.

    But do you see how they’re both asking, briefly, without a lot of drama or accusations, a simple question? Well. Not a simple question. But they’re asking in a way that shows they understand the situation of the world in general, they understand they’re asking for an exception, and they will respectfully accept the answers.

    By the way. The answer to the first one is 90% ‘backlogged’ and 10% ‘goddamn email!’

  • Poor Support Experience

    Poor Support Experience

    I broke my watch. I have an Apple Watch with the Sapphire glass screen, and I broke the glass.

    For reasons that are frustrating, I don’t have AppleCare+. The short version is that I didn’t realize I didn’t have AppleCare until September. The Watch was a present in May (June). I was deemed ineligible, which is annoying, but I appealed and pointed out I couldn’t know I didn’t have it until it was way too late. But I was declined. I didn’t have a receipt, I didn’t have proof, they couldn’t believe me. Fine. I acutally understand that and, were it me, I’d probably reject the claim as well. That meant I knew I was going to have to shell out if I ever needed a repair for a crack. And February 2016 was that time. I took it to the Apple Store and had one of the shittier repair experience of my life.

    I did not schedule an appointment since they had nothing until Monday anyway, and I knew this would be a “We can’t fix it, we’ll send it in.” sort of thing. I got there and was told that they don’t have a walk-in repair for the Apple Watch like that. They do for the iPhone, and the iPad, but not the Watch. Okay. Stupid. Fine. I set a Walk In appointment for an hour away, and went to run an errand. When I got back, the appointed time came and went. So I asked a nice person in an Apple Shirt how that worked.

    This was the first rude person I’ve ever dealt with an an Apple store. I wish I’d gotten his name. He was condescending, brusque, and unsympathetic. He said I should have known that the time was an estimate (sure, I did) and that it could be up to another 90 minutes. I stared at him. How the hell should I have known that? I asked if there was a different line for repairs, he said not and then chided me for not making an appointment. Sorry, make an appointment for four days out when I broke something today that will need to be mailed to a repair center? I did not say that, I looked at him and said “I see. So when you said ‘Around 1:55’ what you meant was ‘Between 1:55 and 3:30’? The guy who checked me in didn’t say that.” He shrugged and I walked off.

    It took another 45 minutes to get to check in. Once I did, they just said ‘Sit at any open stool.’ This is poorly planned, but okay. I sat and after a few minutes, a fellow asked for my name. He tapped on his iPad, found my appointment, looked at the words on it, looked at my watch, and promptly apologized.

    “I’m sorry you had to wait so long for what’s about to be a really fast case.”

    I’d already taken the watchband off and nodded. I knew it had to be mailed in. They can’t replace a screen at the store. He filled in a form, the AppleCare+ conversation was had, and we left being told a link would be sent to me.

    No. Actually I got a receipt for the work order (fine) and no link. I logged into my Apple ID account at https://supportprofile.apple.com/ and was surprised to see my Apple Watch not listed. I added it and went to the ‘repairs’ link (which said I had 1 repair) only to have this:

    Apple could not locate any repairs for the Apple ID: [Me]. Please try again with a different Apple ID or look up a single repair on this page.

    Since the work order had the Repair ID, I put that in and the serial and got a pretty useless status page:

    Screenshot of my apple repair status which only says 'service requested'

    Step 1 | Request – February 10, 2016 : Service requested

    That’s it. Step 2 is Service and Step 3 is Return, but there’s no information like an estimated date or even verification it was sent out. At the store I was quoted 3 to 5 days. Now here’s the thing. I know what’s going to happen. They will get my watch, go “Oh, it’s broken, look at that!” and send me a refurb. I will not get my watch back, I’ll get a new one (a new used one) and it sucks, but there it is. I accept this. It’s a watch. Then they will send that watch back to the store and I will pick it up. And I was told 3-5 days (I asked ‘business?’ since it was about to be a long weekend, and the fellow said they were working Monday), and that I would get notified of status changes.

    But after a few days of nothing, I called Apple and asked two things:

    1. Why doesn’t it show up on my open cases for my Apple ID?
    2. What actually is the status?

    The guy on the phone and the woman at the store were helpful, if disappointing. The Watch had not been shipped out right away. The Dispatch Center did not have it. The store claimed to have sent it and received a sign off, though the shipping folks said that was not the case and status on that repair page still said ‘Service requested.’

    The phone tech said to call back in two business days days if I didn’t get any emails or any information, and he added the case to my account. No not the repair, the case. And the direct link to the repair works, but it’s still not associated with my account. I did what any neurotic would do, and I left the page open, hitting refresh once in a while.

    Three hours later the status zoomed to step 3: Returned.

    February 13, 2016 : Product replacement pending

    So why do I call this a bad service experience?

    It should have been much shorter. Apple could have a simple hardware check. Is it really broken? Yes it is, we’ll send it to repair. And this would be for things that are sent in only. If you want to try and trade it in for a fixed one then and there, it’s separate. But if you just want to express mail in your broken whatsit, why not make this easier? The front gate person can ask two questions: Is it really broken? Do you want to send it in for repair/replacement or trade it in today?

    I also never once got a single email from Apple about this.

    Well that’s not true. I got the first email but that was it. I never got a single status report, like they swore I would. I have root access to my server, I run my own email server, and I checked for every single email with ‘apple.com’ in it for the last 7 days. I found one from bounces@email.apple.com and none from GR_R###@APPLE.COM (I’ve removed the identifying numbers). I checked and yes, they were sending to the right email. The one email I did get was from donotreply@apple.com.

    But. Why were none of these emails recorded in my profile or my repair ticket? Why did I never get the promised texts? Why was there no communication? Why, when I contacted Apple, did they actually say their ticket system still said the device was ‘submitted’ and nothing more? They had to contact other teams to find the information which I was never able to see in my profile.

    As much as I deride my ticket system at the office, the fact that every email is logged twice (once as email and once in the ticket) means I can always go back and see exactly what was sent, by whom, and when. Clearly they have multiple systems, and none talk to each other.

    I did get my Watch back. On day 5. I could have had it back on day 2 if they’d learned how to properly communicate.

    And guess what? The new watch was broken. It wouldn’t vibrate.

  • Apple Does the Right Thing

    Apple Does the Right Thing

    People died. While we can easily get lost in the implications of preventing deaths and understanding why a mass killing happened, there is one fact we’re left with.

    The FBI have asked Apple to write a backdoor into the iPhone code to allow the FBI to brute-force entry into an iPhone.

    What is Brute Force?

    Quite simply, it means trying passwords over and over again, until the right one is determined. At its heart, it’s trial and error, and you can program it into another computer. We call it brute force because rather than trying to intellectually deduce a password, it’s done via direct effort.

    Why does this involve Apple?

    You can set your iPhone to, after 10 incorrect passwords, wipe itself out. After three (3) wrong passwords, the iPhone makes you wait a little. I’ve set my phone to wipe on 10 incorrect passwords since if someone has my phone and can get in, they can also get access to my banking information.

    With a 4-digit passcode, there are 10,000 possible permutations. With 6, this increases to 1,000,000.

    The Ten most common passcodes have probably been already tried. And if you want a fun read, check out Why repeating a digit may improve security on your iPhone’s 4-digit lockscreen PIN.

    What did the FBI actually ask?

    I have read a copy of the summary (this is not the full 40 page ruling) and many of the news articles. The best I can summarize is this:

    Tuesday February 16th, 2016, a magistrate judge in Riverside, California ruled that apple had to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to the government to recover data from an iPhone 5c. This includes bypassing the auto-erase function (the one that happens after 10 bad passwords) and allowing them to submit an unlimited number of passwords. In order to do this, the FBI wants a special version of iOS that only works on the one iPhone.

    Apple has five days to respond if they believe that compliance would be “unreasonably burdensome.”

    Yes, it says that the FBI is asking to break into one iPhone, but the only way to do that is to write a system that could be used to backdoor any iPhone. This is because Apple intentionally wrote their code so that they couldn’t get at your data. Apple has no way to dismantle or override the 10-tries-and-wipe feature. Only someone with the passcode can do it.

    Is that technically possible?

    Of course. There’s no real question about that. It won’t be easy (so ‘unreasonably burdensome’ may or may not apply here). And to be honest, the technical possibility of this is not the issue either.

    Does this mean ‘anyone’ could do this? Yes, but it’s unlikely. This sort of hack is an OS-level one, which means the software needs to be signed by a key only Apple knows, unless there’s some other vulnerability in the phone. You can introduce a vulnerability by jailbreaking the phone, of course, but for the most part we don’t know if you can hack it from the outside like that. Signs point to this not being probable. But if it was going to happen, Apple would be the best company to try. They’re the ones who would know best.

    I want to stress: I believe anything is technologically possible. Human cloning? You bet! Hacking my iPhone? Sure thing. I do not believe these things are easy, or even probable, but they are in the realm of possibility.

    Why did Apple Say No?

    Apple did say no. They said it publicly in a Customer Letter on their website. And they said no, not because these things are hard, but because they are dangerous.

    Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

    […]

    Rather than asking for legislative action through Congress, the FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority.

    The government would have us remove security features and add new capabilities to the operating system, allowing a passcode to be input electronically. This would make it easier to unlock an iPhone by “brute force,” trying thousands or millions of combinations with the speed of a modern computer.

    The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

    You can read the whole thing for yourself, but in essence Apple is saying that by allowing the FBI to insist on this, they can use it as leverage to demand anyone’s phone be unlocked similarly. Keep in mind, while this case is certainly above board, do we really trust our government to always have our best interests in their hearts? Where can we draw a line between a known criminal act and a suspected one? Do you think they will never apply this to a case with tenuous links to an actual crime? We’ve already had wiretapping issues (Watergate, need I say more), and frankly the US government hasn’t gotten much better. And once the US has managed to allow this, many other countries will use this as their reasons to do so.

    Also you can’t uncork the lamp. Once the genie is out and this is possible, it will be given out to other agencies and someone will reverse engineer how this works. Other countries will get their hands on this. They will use it against innocents. We know this is truth because it already happens now.

    Privacy and Freedom

    I’m going to give you the quote you’re expecting. The Ben Franklin one:

    Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

    From a technical aspect, the hurdles faced to hack into a cell phone make me feel safer as a user. It makes me feel better to know that the FBI are failing to break into my little iPhone.