You might try looking at the networks' coverage of Snowden to see how wrong this is. "Liberal" MSNBC and NPR (can't speak for the others) have actually been mostly neutral, sometimes supportive, toward him; Fox is the one insisting he's a traitor or bringing on Washington talking heads who do.

But no, don't do anything drastic like examine your beliefs. Just keep it up with the "both sides are equally bad" meme, but actually requires no critical thought whatsoever.

wooooooooosh

Is there a name for this specific argument? It's straw-manning I guess, but I see it often enough that it deserves to have its own name.

It brings encryption keys to pretty much the same status as locked safes. The government can't just order you to open it on a whim, but they can if they have reasonable prior evidence that there is illegal material contained within. To illustrate:

Scenario 1: As a citizen, I step off the plane after getting back from a foreign country. Not knowing who I am, ICE goons randomly pull me aside and order me to give up the encryption key to my laptop. They have NO reasonable suspicion that doing so will yield illicit material or evidence of wrongdoing, so the Fifth Amendment applies.

Scenario 2: I'm a corporate officer cooking my books, and I brag to my friend that the feds will never catch me because all the incriminating evidence is encrypted. Unfortunately my friend has agreed to cooperate in a plea deal, and relays the details of this conversation. Now the government has reasonable suspicion (actually, at this point I think it's probable cause) that my encryption key is concealing material evidence, and they can probably force me to reveal it.

/. probably won't be happy with that last sentence, but IMO as long as judges interpret "reasonable suspicion" correctly (which is usually the case), it's probably the right call. The government always has been able to force you to open your safe deposit box if they have a warrant, after all. This is nothing new.

No, idiot, they're asking people who were in Boston on Monday taking pictures with their smartphones to look through their photos again. Chances are lots of people inadvertently got photos of the guys, and some of those might be clear enough for identification (as opposed to the crummy security cam footage).

We really need a corollary for Godwin's Law adapted specifically to Bitcoin discussions: as soon as you say, "The US dollar doesn't have any intrinsic value either!", you lose.

You are IGNORANT and EVIL for ignore Earth 4 day simultaneous Time Cube rotation and preaching Academic Religious Singularity... wait.

Bloody hell, I'm on the wrong thread.