Unsupervised Learning: No. 188

Marcus Hutchins got off with time-served, and people have feelings. The range basically goes from 'he did nothing wrong', to, 'he should rot in prison'. In my mind this outcome was close to perfect. Remember, he went through two years of hell since being brought up charges, he's still a convicted felon, and he also is largely banned from the US. I think it's good that he admitted guilt, faced consequences, and is being offered a chance to continue giving back to the community. More Attorney General Barr said recently that companies should put backdoors in their products that bypass encryption, or else the government will pass laws that require it. This is unspeakably stupid. Without even getting into the philosophy of whether the internet can host a private conversation (which requires a warrant to tap), we can just start with the fact that backdoors present a clear and present danger to security, right now, due to the weaknesses of those who create them. If the NSA can be hacked or somehow lose its sensitive tools and materials, there's no company this cannot happen to. Purposefully installing backdoors therefore equates (effectively) to giving such access to attackers. Unacceptable. More Equifax is offering people $125 dollars in reparations for them losing all your data. But to get it, you have to log in and give a bunch of data about yourself. It's hilarious. They made money offering credit protection after the breach, and now they're going to collect updated information on anyone who wants to collect $125. On Twitter I called this a sadder and more permanent form of giving plasma. More