While I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying for the physical world, the digital world is completely different. In the physical world, the scope of any action is inherently localized. But with digital systems it takes just one person out of seven billion (or even just the right software bug) to create a global scale problem. The Internet is best treated as a source of malicious noise.
So then you're up against the halting problem at the "digital border" and you've only reduced the problem to say one in 300 million.
There are many differences. I already mentioned locality and scale. Another is that it's possible to make secure software (aka math) that precludes undesirable behavior a priori, whereas such thing is impossible in the real world.
> That's not the society I want. I don't want stronger doors everywhere. Tougher locks everywhere. Onerous security everywhere
> Digital borders exist all over the net. We use them every day to secure all sorts of things
Erm, how do you square these two sentences?
I took your first comment to be arguing against software security in general, presumably in favor of more post-facto enforcement when people violated authorization boundaries.
Your response then seemed to focus on mitigating the cross-jurisdictional issues that make post-facto enforcement hard, by having some sort of software-based security enforcement at a "border", and then relying on post-facto enforcement inside of that.
Now you seem to be supporting software-based security in the form of firewalls everywhere?
If we continue along this trend to even more local, we'll get to fewer firewalls (because they aren't that good of a technology), with security pushed out to the edges. Which is where best practices seem to be headed (BeyondCorp, etc), but is directly antithetical to your initial comment.
What isn't? I'm earnestly trying to understand what you're actually advocating, as your perspective seems to be shifting with each comment. If I have characterized your previous comments incorrectly, it was done in good faith and please correct me.
I'm exactly advocating for the federal government to do its job and protect its citizens and their property from foreign enemies.
It's not my job to protect my house from a foreign military that might want to come into it and steal things from me.
Nor should I install radar systems to alert me to enemy aircraft. That's why the USA spends the better part of a trillion dollars on the military.
That's my government's job and they should do that job. That's what I'm saying.
If a foreign government sent boats full of marauders to our shores to steal from people's homes and stores, you think the government would look the other way?
I don't. I think they'd blow the boats up and kill the marauders.
FWIW, I hadn't realized you were the one that started the whole thread. By "initial comment" I meant the first comment I responded to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090800 .
You've got a good point about general fear and trust breakdown with your top level comment (although not your inference from someone wearing a mask alone outside, there are many good reasons for that such as the possibility of coming up on someone, not wanting to fiddle with it while going between places you need it, etc.)
