> So…some friendly government officials and security vendors but no press or members of the public ensure "the highest level of transparency" in Microsoft's book?
Sometimes the message you need your 'partners' to receive is: "Yes, we fucked up 3 times, but over the same period you lot fucked up 100 times so we're going to severely curtail what you can do, if you don't like it tough"
And if you're Linus Torvalds you can just say that in public.
But if you're a business with a PR department and lawyers, and some of these partners are actually important to your business and you want to maintain a good relationship with them?
Then it's probably a lot easier for you to deliver the message clearly and frankly if you do it behind closed doors.
That makes a bit of sense. I'm stuck in this weird place where part of me wants information to be free (read; actual transparency) but the other part of me knows I don't understand all of it and will likely misinterpret or misrepresent it alongside millions of other people and multiple media outlets that generally don't know enough about a thing to be drawing conclusions about it. Having a foot in both of those camps is exhausting. It's a conundrum.
I would rather live in a world where information is free and we learn to deal with that rather than one where information being free is subject to whatever powerful group is in charge at that moment, whose interests will never align with citizens'
> information being free is subject to whatever powerful group is in charge at that moment
The mainstream media outlets dont really change hands often. The vast majority of people are already subject to the whims and biases of said media organisations. More information being available is unlikely to change that. We already can't parse the amount of information available today.
I take this to imply a dichotomy that does not exist: it isn't just MSM vs the rest. There is a lively, informative section of the press which is dedicated to specialist topics, or specialist treatment of current affairs, etc. Le Monde Diplomatique is a great example of this: a relatively narrow readership, fortnightly publication, and high quality articles written by experts who are good at communicating with the public.
By contrast, most people who talk about non-MSM outlets are referring to places that publish actual fiction, YouTube channels, or thinly veiled propaganda outlets.
Just because it's beyond me or you doesn't mean it's beyond everyone else.
The point GP made that it seems most people have missed, is that we need to recognize that we almost always lack the necessary context and expertise to understand something. One potential response to that realization is more ignorance, yes, I suppose. Another might be looking for people with the necessary expertise to understand something and get their input on it.
Getting the input from someone, means not getting the input from someone else… in that unit of time.
So it doesn’t make a difference?
(Assuming there are way more potential inputs than you have lifespan to receive, which is already the case)
And I’m pretty sure it’s the case for everyone, since even if someone is 10x smarter than Einstein, they will still only have 24 hours a day. And their neurons have a chemical upper limit in processing speed.
I'm not going to argue for the sake of arguing. If you have a position you're arguing from, at least try to articulate it, otherwise I'm done with this conversation.
Whose education would they be given? As in, what education plan? I would say one devised by teachers and educational experts, the goal of which (in the context of this discussion) would be to educate children on things like critical thinking, media literacy, recognizing propaganda, etc.
I mean they could be educated in something other than our standard tradition. For example someone educated in NK under the ideology of "the Juche idea" will have very different reactions to media than we would have.
> where information is free and we learn to deal with that
We’ve tried that. We’re probably in the era with the greatest individual access to information in human history. It’s mostly void screaming and sound bite selecting. We should still fight for free information. But that doesn’t mean we should be forced to give up the benefits of privacy and confidential dealings.
What we have is a deficit in expert, diverse journalism. Our media landscape just isn't fit for the amount of information that's out there: ideally, a newish profession would exist that straddles academia and journalism, with more generalise than the former and more specialism than the latter. Having this would let us actually enjoy the benefits of an open society much more freely, and make use of the huge number of semi-experts that are out there in the world thanks to the advent of mass higher education.
> We’re probably in the era with the greatest individual access to information in human history. It’s mostly void screaming and sound bite selecting.
I'm not sure there's much evidence to suggest these are related. It's always been like this. Just because it's easier to see that now doesn't mean we should ignore the benefits this era brought.
> But that doesn’t mean we should be forced to give up the benefits of privacy and confidential dealings.
I don't think anyone suggested this.
> We’ve tried that.
So we keep trying? Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
This one sounds like a standard application of Chatham House rules[0]. No press, no snipe reporting, no out-of-context soundbites.
The short version I often use about that rule: "you can quote, but you can not attribute". It's a relatively common practice among certain technology conferences. At least in the UK.
I still remember the wonderful times when press simply was not welcome on hacker (security) conferences. OpenBSD even sold a "NO COMMENT" shirt at HAL2001 (Twente). Years later, all that sentiment was (sadly) gone. As if there could come anything good from uninformed journalists writing about deeply techy topics.
Jonathan Corbet is great, as the first example I thought of. I don't want to try to make a proper list right now, it feels like it would get nitpicky and waste an hour to do so, but I could point to a lot of sites and blogs that do good tech and security writeups. Many without a day job of "journalist", but in this context they'd still be filling the role as press.
Honestly, I was kinda delighted that some "journalists" were offended enough to write this "no transparency" complaint. And I don't feel like this is some Bilderberg Meeting kind of thing, where I am restricted to get information. This community has enough of people who have blogs and twitter accounts, if something of real interest will be there, we'll know. And "professional" journalists... Yeah, I really don't like journalists.
Classic Register reporting there, managing to turn what I assume is actually a fairly regular occurrence of having a meeting with companies they work closely with into a conspiracy. Of course the press aren't invited. Do MS often invite the press to sit in on meetings?
It is a fairly regular occurrence, but I think a global outage of this scope warrants a _little_ bit more transparency. These are not some small private companies, they are huge corporations which supply software that runs a lot of infrastructure and have a big impact on society as a whole. Maybe we should have access in such cases. Or throw them out of public/government systems and refuse further contracts until they are more transparent.
If you invite the press to the summit, the real meeting will happen somewhere else, because productive meetings do not happen in public. Public stages are for posturing and soundbites.
You should really watch live, unedited footage of parliament, or local council committees, or anything of that nature. You'll see that most of these meetings are in fact boringly productive and void of anything "entertaining".
Microsoft called it a summit and invited companies and government. Whether their complaints are valid or not, the article's characterization seems more accurate to me than "a meeting with companies".
One assumes the information divulged there has a public interest angle if it is about the most common operating system, one of the largest cloud providers, etc.
My guess is that there is non-public information involved, and a lot of hard discussions that are not good for the gossipy press.
Just like you never, ever see a meeting/phone call between Biden and Xi livestreamed on YouTube in full detail. They may give you a summary but that's it.
I don't see there is anything worth reporting about.
That is completely true, it doesn't have to be then.
But surely "the summit where they are literally working out the future of windows security" is the best place to report on the future of Windows security? Why do I get the impression you think that makes it inferior?
> So…some friendly government officials and security vendors but no press or members of the public ensure "the highest level of transparency" in Microsoft's book?
Sometimes the message you need your 'partners' to receive is: "Yes, we fucked up 3 times, but over the same period you lot fucked up 100 times so we're going to severely curtail what you can do, if you don't like it tough"
And if you're Linus Torvalds you can just say that in public.
But if you're a business with a PR department and lawyers, and some of these partners are actually important to your business and you want to maintain a good relationship with them?
Then it's probably a lot easier for you to deliver the message clearly and frankly if you do it behind closed doors.
That makes a bit of sense. I'm stuck in this weird place where part of me wants information to be free (read; actual transparency) but the other part of me knows I don't understand all of it and will likely misinterpret or misrepresent it alongside millions of other people and multiple media outlets that generally don't know enough about a thing to be drawing conclusions about it. Having a foot in both of those camps is exhausting. It's a conundrum.
I would rather live in a world where information is free and we learn to deal with that rather than one where information being free is subject to whatever powerful group is in charge at that moment, whose interests will never align with citizens'
> information being free is subject to whatever powerful group is in charge at that moment
The mainstream media outlets dont really change hands often. The vast majority of people are already subject to the whims and biases of said media organisations. More information being available is unlikely to change that. We already can't parse the amount of information available today.
> vast majority of people are already subject to the whims and biases of said media organisations
The least-informed people, today, are not the ones who shun mainstream media.
I take this to imply a dichotomy that does not exist: it isn't just MSM vs the rest. There is a lively, informative section of the press which is dedicated to specialist topics, or specialist treatment of current affairs, etc. Le Monde Diplomatique is a great example of this: a relatively narrow readership, fortnightly publication, and high quality articles written by experts who are good at communicating with the public.
By contrast, most people who talk about non-MSM outlets are referring to places that publish actual fiction, YouTube channels, or thinly veiled propaganda outlets.
> More information being available is unlikely to change that.
No, it's not. Education is though.
> We already can't parse the amount of information available today.
You're right, we can't. But more ignorance is hardly the solution I'd opt for.
Why does ‘more ignorance’ matter if the current smaller quantity is already beyond you?
(And realistically for pretty much everyone, zero prospects of grasping even 90% of what’s currently available)
Just because it's beyond me or you doesn't mean it's beyond everyone else.
The point GP made that it seems most people have missed, is that we need to recognize that we almost always lack the necessary context and expertise to understand something. One potential response to that realization is more ignorance, yes, I suppose. Another might be looking for people with the necessary expertise to understand something and get their input on it.
Getting the input from someone, means not getting the input from someone else… in that unit of time.
So it doesn’t make a difference?
(Assuming there are way more potential inputs than you have lifespan to receive, which is already the case)
And I’m pretty sure it’s the case for everyone, since even if someone is 10x smarter than Einstein, they will still only have 24 hours a day. And their neurons have a chemical upper limit in processing speed.
What point are you trying to make, exactly?
I’m not sure, because I was the one who asked you, why does this matter?
I'm not going to argue for the sake of arguing. If you have a position you're arguing from, at least try to articulate it, otherwise I'm done with this conversation.
Huh?
Whose education, then? People can be educated in all sorts of different ways.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.
Who would be educated? Everyone, I would hope.
Whose education would they be given? As in, what education plan? I would say one devised by teachers and educational experts, the goal of which (in the context of this discussion) would be to educate children on things like critical thinking, media literacy, recognizing propaganda, etc.
I mean they could be educated in something other than our standard tradition. For example someone educated in NK under the ideology of "the Juche idea" will have very different reactions to media than we would have.
> where information is free and we learn to deal with that
We’ve tried that. We’re probably in the era with the greatest individual access to information in human history. It’s mostly void screaming and sound bite selecting. We should still fight for free information. But that doesn’t mean we should be forced to give up the benefits of privacy and confidential dealings.
What we have is a deficit in expert, diverse journalism. Our media landscape just isn't fit for the amount of information that's out there: ideally, a newish profession would exist that straddles academia and journalism, with more generalise than the former and more specialism than the latter. Having this would let us actually enjoy the benefits of an open society much more freely, and make use of the huge number of semi-experts that are out there in the world thanks to the advent of mass higher education.
> We’re probably in the era with the greatest individual access to information in human history. It’s mostly void screaming and sound bite selecting.
I'm not sure there's much evidence to suggest these are related. It's always been like this. Just because it's easier to see that now doesn't mean we should ignore the benefits this era brought.
> But that doesn’t mean we should be forced to give up the benefits of privacy and confidential dealings.
I don't think anyone suggested this.
> We’ve tried that.
So we keep trying? Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
The world is a complicated and messy place.
If you'd like a counterpoint that complete transparency is not inherently good, you might enjoy this: https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUTIS.pdf
This one sounds like a standard application of Chatham House rules[0]. No press, no snipe reporting, no out-of-context soundbites.
The short version I often use about that rule: "you can quote, but you can not attribute". It's a relatively common practice among certain technology conferences. At least in the UK.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule
I still remember the wonderful times when press simply was not welcome on hacker (security) conferences. OpenBSD even sold a "NO COMMENT" shirt at HAL2001 (Twente). Years later, all that sentiment was (sadly) gone. As if there could come anything good from uninformed journalists writing about deeply techy topics.
Your comment seems to ignore the existence of informed tech people that also act as journalists?
Any recommendations for informed tech journalists?
Jonathan Corbet is great, as the first example I thought of. I don't want to try to make a proper list right now, it feels like it would get nitpicky and waste an hour to do so, but I could point to a lot of sites and blogs that do good tech and security writeups. Many without a day job of "journalist", but in this context they'd still be filling the role as press.
Brian Krebs comes to mind.
netzpolitik.org (German)
few and far between...
Back when hacker conferences existed, before they became corporate infosec cons. A lifetime ago.
Honestly, I was kinda delighted that some "journalists" were offended enough to write this "no transparency" complaint. And I don't feel like this is some Bilderberg Meeting kind of thing, where I am restricted to get information. This community has enough of people who have blogs and twitter accounts, if something of real interest will be there, we'll know. And "professional" journalists... Yeah, I really don't like journalists.
Classic Register reporting there, managing to turn what I assume is actually a fairly regular occurrence of having a meeting with companies they work closely with into a conspiracy. Of course the press aren't invited. Do MS often invite the press to sit in on meetings?
It is a fairly regular occurrence, but I think a global outage of this scope warrants a _little_ bit more transparency. These are not some small private companies, they are huge corporations which supply software that runs a lot of infrastructure and have a big impact on society as a whole. Maybe we should have access in such cases. Or throw them out of public/government systems and refuse further contracts until they are more transparent.
If you invite the press to the summit, the real meeting will happen somewhere else, because productive meetings do not happen in public. Public stages are for posturing and soundbites.
You should really watch live, unedited footage of parliament, or local council committees, or anything of that nature. You'll see that most of these meetings are in fact boringly productive and void of anything "entertaining".
Microsoft called it a summit and invited companies and government. Whether their complaints are valid or not, the article's characterization seems more accurate to me than "a meeting with companies".
One assumes the information divulged there has a public interest angle if it is about the most common operating system, one of the largest cloud providers, etc.
I have a strong standing dislike for Microsoft, but I’ve gotta agree here.
It sounds like they’re having a summit with partners and… those are typically never open to the public, so um?
Are we going to start renaming meetings to “conferences” and then complaining they’re all closed-doors?
El Reg is a clickbait rag, but this isn’t fun snark like they often do - it’s just dumb.
My guess is that there is non-public information involved, and a lot of hard discussions that are not good for the gossipy press.
Just like you never, ever see a meeting/phone call between Biden and Xi livestreamed on YouTube in full detail. They may give you a summary but that's it.
I don't see there is anything worth reporting about.
An entire summit full of non-public information that will surely leak in a few days? All of it about the security around the most popular PC OS?
In what world this is not worth reporting?
On your anecdote, if Biden and Xi decided to make a week-long secret meeting somewhere, the press would be all over it too.
I don't know what the public and press would do other than take up space at an infosec conference.
Disturb it by asking stupid and pointless questions? Hunt after and bother people trying to do actual work there? I only really see negatives.
Best thing I think can reasonably be asked is a streamed press conferences afterwards.
Telling everyone what happened and how it affects the future of Windows security would be a nice start. It wouldn't take a lot of slots.
That can still happen, it doesn't have to happen at the summit where they are literally working out the future of windows security.
Hm.
That is completely true, it doesn't have to be then.
But surely "the summit where they are literally working out the future of windows security" is the best place to report on the future of Windows security? Why do I get the impression you think that makes it inferior?
So much for "Secure Future Initiative".
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/resources/se...
Isn't it a missed opportunity for fostering transparency and rebuilding trust?
> opportunity for fostering transparency and rebuilding trust
Part of trust building is knowing when to be quiet. A friend who tweets everything I tell them isn’t trusted.
Not exactly a top tier analogy with a company that has really shat the bed both technically and in terms of PR, again and again.
Ah, how appropriate coming from the company that wants to upload screenshots to the cloud of people's private computer activities.
Well, it is simple. Stop deploying open-end languages and exposing it on the network.
Unless that was the intent of the meeting.
Anyone going?
The article is from August 28th, the conference was on Sept 10th (two days ago).
The summit was two days ago, September 10th according to the article.
I mean obviously, it's about security. If journalists want to join they must hack it.
[dead]
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The conference was 2 days ago. Your post reads like you haven't gone yet.
Well that’s a lie. The summit was on September 10th.