Tag: politics

Let’s suppose you were the subject of a serious criminal investigation.  Further suppose you were also a prominent and influential public figure.  You know a priori whether there’s anything damning that the investigation may find.  Should you choose to use your influence to affect the credibility of the investigation?  Should you bolster the credibility or undermine it?  Let’s take a game-theoretic approach.

Like almost all game theory analyses we’ll construct a payoff matrix to guide our analysis.  I suggest one axis capture the eventual outcome of the investigation: evidence of wrongdoing found (guilty) vs. no evidence of wrongdoing found (innocent).  The other axis will capture the subject’s three possible actions regarding using their influence: bolster credibility (bolster), do nothing (null), undermine credibility (undermine).

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation – Empty
	Bolster	Null	Undermine
Innocent
Guilty

We now need to consider each possibility in the matrix and assign a relative payoff.  The payoff value represents the utility of the scenario to the subject, that is, how much does the subject benefit based on the scenario represented by each cell.

I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to argue that any “Innocent” outcome will be good for the subject.  Better if the credibility has been bolstered, but slightly worse if the credibility is undermined.

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation – Partial
	Bolster	Null	Undermine
Innocent	20	10	7
Guilty

Again, it shouldn’t be controversial to assume that a “Guilty” outcome will be bad for the subject.  Worse if the credibility is bolstered, but slightly better if the credibility is undermined.

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation – Complete
	Bolster	Null	Undermine
Innocent	20	10	7
Guilty	-20	-10	-7

At a global view, it seems like the only reason to actively undermine the credibility of the investigation is if you believe the outcome will be “Guilty” as it will increase your utility.  That should be concerning to anyone paying attention to current U.S. politics.

I think there is one potential argument for modifying the “Undermine” payoffs.  If the undermining is an attack on the biases and motivations of the investigation, the supporters of the subject may see an “Innocent/Undermine” outcome as better than “Innocent/Null” because “even the biased investigation couldn’t find anything.”  A similar argument could be made about the “Guilty/Undermine” payoff.  The increased nuance becomes important if you think that the subject’s actions are more directly tuned to either the supporters or opposers.

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation – Supporters/Opposers
	Bolster	Null	Undermine
			Supporters	Opposers
Innocent	20	10	14	0
Guilty	-20	-10	0	-14

These supporter/opposer payoffs are probably up for much debate, but I think this is probably a good ballpark.

With an “Innocent/Undermine” outcome, opposers will use the attacks on the credibility of the investigation against the subject.  But, supporters will see it as stronger evidence of innocence (“even the biased investigation couldn’t find anything”).

With a “Guilty/Undermine” outcome, supporters will see it as “proof” that the investigation was biased and not valid.  Opposers will see it as an attempt to evade justice.

What’s interesting is if the subject cares only about supporters then the only better possible outcome than undermining the investigation is to bolster an investigation that finds the subject innocent.  If the subject, knowing a priori the truth of their actions, believes that the likelihood of the investigation concluding “Innocence” is almost zero and cares most about their supporters’ response then undermining the investigation becomes overwhelmingly the best action to take.

Does the President care so little about those who oppose him that he’s willing to take another hit from them in the event that the Mueller investigation finds nothing?  Or is he expecting the investigation to find evidence of wrong-doing and he’s laying the groundwork to salvage the only group possible?  Or is my analysis completely wrong?

In April 2016, Let’s Encrypt went live.  Let’s Encrypt is a group making it significantly easier to encrypt web traffic.  Some entity seems to have begun waging a war of public opinion against them.

Previous to their existence conveniently securing web traffic meant paying money to a company which would then provide you with a “certificate” for your website.  Servers and browsers use these certificates to create a secure communication path between them.  This secure path (denoted by URLs starting with “https://” rather than “http://”) prevents entities between your computer and the website from seeing or altering the data being sent to and from the website.

Because of the cost and inconvenience many websites used unsecured connections.  However, places like banks, shopping, and healthcare providers have pretty much always used secure connections.  It took a few years but eventually social media websites began using secure connections by default as well.

Before Let’s Encrypt, millions of websites only had their content available via unsecured communications.  For many people, like myself, running websites without any goal of making money from them the expense and hassle of certificates wasn’t worth it.  Now, my websites are all available through secured connections, for free, thanks to Let’s Encrypt.  (To be clear, many websites still haven’t taken advantage of this service yet, but they at least have the option now.)

But, if banks and such use secure connections anyway, why do we care about Let’s Encrypt, should I care if “someone” can see that I’m reading this blog post?

Maybe.

On March 28 Congress voted to repeal FCC regulations that prevented your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from spying on your web traffic and using that information to their financial benefit.  The regulations also prevented ISPs from altering your web traffic for similar purposes (e.g., injecting ads into a webpage when you view it).

Maybe you don’t care if Comcast, or AT&T, or Verizon knows you like to knit and shop at JoAnn’s Fabrics.  But maybe you’d be concerned if they started selling information to other companies about you visiting cancer treatment websites, or rape support groups, or divorce attorneys, or any number of kinds of sensitive information.

Using encrypted connections doesn’t solve this problem entirely, but it makes the information available to your ISP a lot less useful.  For example, your ISP would still be able to tell you’re looking at Amazon.com, but they wouldn’t be able to tell if you’re looking at knitting needles or books about infertility treatments.

Regardless of your stance, someone seems to be working hard to turn public opinion against Let’s Encrypt and again make it harder to encrypt web traffic.  Articles like this one: “14,766 Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates Issued to PayPal Phishing Sites” have been showing up all over the Internet recently, all making similar claims that it is Let’s Encrypt’s fault that people are falling for fake PayPal scam websites.

I don’t think it’s actually PayPal behind these articles, because this problem is nothing new, but the concerted, direct attack on Let’s Encrypt is new.

Let’s Encrypt does not verify the identity of the person requesting a certificate (which other certificate providers will do for steep fees, $300+ per year, these “verified” certificates are significantly different than the “non-verified” certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt).  Instead Let’s Encrypt verifies that you control the website for which you’re requesting a certificate, slightly different.

The argument made by these articles is that now someone can get _a_ certificate for “paypall.com” and people will think that the green lock icon on their browser means they’re connected to “paypal.com” instead.  Which it doesn’t and never has.  The “verified” certificates show up differently in your browser.  For example, on this blog you’ll see something like this:

With a “verified” certificate you’ll instead see something like this:

This indicates that the company issuing the certificate verified that the company requesting the certificate is “PayPal, Inc.” and the certificate is for “paypal.com”.

The articles want you believe Let’s Encrypt is somehow at fault if people end up at “paypall.com” with a green lock and think it’s “paypal.com”.  Let’s Encrypt isn’t providing “verified” certificates or trying to solve that problem.  The problem they’re trying to solve is that too much web traffic is unencrypted by default because certificates were expensive and inconvenient.

Someone with a vested interest in being able to read and/or modify your web traffic has been working really hard to get these articles out and make it look like some kind of “public safety” issue.

I have no idea who that entity may be, but it’s making me really annoyed.  Let’s Encrypt is a good thing for anyone that thinks that their Internet communications should be private by default.

Update 3/31: Engadget just ran one of the attack pieces too: “When the ‘S’ in HTTPS also stands for shady“.  Which is the most mainstream source running these articles that I’ve seen thus far.

To be completely clear, when a URL starts with HTTPS it only means that your connection is encrypted between your computer and the website–it has never meant anything about who is running the website is or whether the website operator is trustworthy.