I consider myself well read and politically savvy but I had never heard of this body. When was the last time they made news outside of maybe the narrow interests of federal trial lawyers?

Java isn't something a guy on the street would recognize, but if you were writing to a lay audience, would you describe the Oracle v. Google as involving a "little known programming language?

That wouldn't be good journalism. It would give the reader an inaccurate depiction of what the lawsuit is really about. It would be good lawyering, depending on which side you are on. A classic lawyering tactic is to use the most favorable (to your side) characterization of something you can justify.

> It would give the reader an inaccurate depiction of what the lawsuit is really about

Yeah. Part of the EFF's job is educating us. When they add such slant they lose credibility in my book. They're still great at keeping tabs on government actions that impact tech.

EFF is an advocacy organization. They're like Sierra Club or PETA.[1] They're not in the business of neutral analysis; they're in the business of pursuasion. Their job is not to provide the most reasonable take; it's to give up no ground to their opponents.

[1] Both of which are organizations I hold in high esteem, so that's not a negative comparison.

> Their job is not to provide the most reasonable take; it's to give up no ground to their opponents.

That sounds like a lawyer's perspective. You could say that about anyone working towards any particular goal. Please pardon my disagreement.

One of the EFF's jobs is to educate technologists. When they use slanted language, they lose some readers/"students".

The EFF has many roles, including educating and lobbying the government. Totally fine if you want to call it advocacy too. I often find myself digging for extra facts after reading their slanted positions. I wish they'd do full reporting of both sides more often. C'est la vie.

> Java isn't something a guy on the street would recognize but if you were writing to a lay audience, would you describe the Oracle v. Google as involving a "little known programming language?

If it barely entered the public consciousness, sure.

In the case of Java though, I think it's actually more recognizable than this committee, which personally I'd never heard of. Between the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit, the browser plugin vulnerabilities, and Java just being such a popular computer language... I'd assume a lot of laypeople have heard of it. Though many might not realize JavaScript is a different language.

I could cite you 20 instances where Java made news beyond the narrow interst of programmers.

Anybody who's heard of lots of programming languages has heard of Java. I've heard of lots of committees, but not this one.

> I consider myself well read and politically savvy

> I had never heard of this body

I think you may want to reconsider your self-image.

My point is that the EFF (and whoever was drafting this press release) certainly knows what the Judicial Conference is, and are (is) willfully misrepresenting them through careful word choice.

The only misrepresentation going on is this nonsense that a headline's language should be based on the knowledge of the author instead of the intended audience.

Little known implies that if you ask 100 randomly selected people if they know if it exists, what it is and what it does, a small number, say less than 10 or so (little) will know.

Did you take your educated guess at that fraction?

Most concepts posted about on HN, and for that matter, discussed by the EFF, are "little-known." The inclusion of that description in the headline is obviously intended to make the reader believe that the committee is up to no good in secret, not that most people simply don't know of it.

Why are you pretending that the EFF is writing headlines for HN? We are not the (only) intended audience.

I find it very unlikely that you don't understand this.

Oh well -- the EFF knows that if they write for themselves, there'll be lower-brow comment-threads full of 'lol wtf bbq' and no one will take them seriously because they won't understand. Write accessibly, and well-read nitpickers of a HN-like brow alignment will pick apart their clickbait headlines. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Agreed. Many things in news are little known. That's often what makes it news.

I don't think that's what it means in this context.

I bet if you ask 100 random people, not 10 would know what Stripe is. Not 10 would know what Angular is. But would you ever describe either of those as "little known"?

I think in this situation it implies that even if you're in the domain you aren't aware... and on this it's not really the case right?

and the top of this thread is now a stupid meaningless argument about a word in the title instead of talking about the issue. Well done. Can you guys take that rubbish to reddit or voat or somewhere crappy? I like reading HN, please don't make it a waste of my time.

and since I'm here now I'll throw out my opinion on the meat of the story.

I use Tor a lot and am not based in the US and am nor american. If America gives itself the legal ability to hack anyone, anywhere regardless of what they are doing then all american networks/nodes/people are open to hacking and posting publicly. That includes all private people, public people, everything from correspondence to baby monitor cameras. It calls for an open season against those countries whereby we air every single persons dirty laundry in as public a way as possible.

It is similar to europeans like UK, where certain people there think they can hack all people everywhere, legally, with complete immunity.

Excuse my parlance but fuck everything about that. That is a system balanced way too far in one direction.

but hey, that guy said 'little-known' about the Judicial Conference of the United States. That's what is important to americans...

Posted without Tor because I still live in a free country and am not afraid of speak up.

If the EFF was able to write posts that weren't full of gross hyperbole and flat out untruths then every comment thread about an EFF statement wouldn't require discussion about how the EFF is misleading people.

They know perfectly well what they are doing. They know it leads to people talking about the stuff they exaggerated rather than the actual issue. They know that it turns away reasonable people. They are gambling that they can whip up an ignorant mob as with SOPA. The difference there was that a bunch of high profile corporations and capitalists had a financial interest in that fight and were happy to fuel the outrage machine to get their way.

What are the untruths and what is misleading people? Keep in mind that not everybody who watxhes EFF is american, I never heard of that group before and I read most of the big tech sites daily since the late 90's.

Why would the EFF want to turn away reasonable people?

Here's the rub (for me). If what you say is correct then to my mind the EFF is doing you a favor. If people don't get at least a little riled up about this then it will go through like all the other rubbish being passed around the world and you will be left with the consequences.

The arrogance is absolutely astounding, on a level with 16th century britain. To think that you can do what you want, to whomever you want, wherever you want in a completely legal manner is disgustingly arrogant and will lead to the same problems as it always has throughout western history.

We have been here before. Technology changes but people (unfortunately) do not. The people pushing this kind of legislation will suffer the least, ordinary americans will take the brunt for them. That is your choice - is this move representative of you and if not - will you do anything to stop it?

edit: excuse my ignorance but this si actually about warrants through proper court mechanisms? I'm okay with proper warrant procedures through proper (ie. not FISA) court systems. I don't hold US courts highly compared to others but every country needs proper procedured.

I agree with most of the goals of the EFF, but their blog is basically one misleading description after another for these things. A comment like yours ends up being the top comment for any links to the blog.

Someone might comment that the gov't does the same thing, but that's no excuse for such intellectual dishonesty.

Agreed, as much as I support the ideals of the EFF, this kind of misleading scare tactic really rubs me the wrong way. It feels like they're compromising the moral high ground in order to elicit a larger response--which I understand might be the straightest path to accomplishing their goals, but it feels dirty.

> The Judicial Conference of the United States is neither a "little-known committee" or in any way secretive or shady, unless one is totally ignorant of how the judicial system works.

The Judicial Conference is currently the subject of a lawsuit for being secretive, shady and duplicitous. (A serious lawsuit on a serious issue, with a serious chance of success.) So I think this statement is a bit subjective.

Sorry, I missed where the meeting notes where posted online.

Or maybe it's that you mean secrets, when legally kept, are not secrets.

Please explain.

Honestly, sounds like you might have a conflict of interest in the matter, or haven't done your research. Only 36 percent of Americans can actually name the three branches of government the Constitution created.

That lack of interest is what makes the EFF framing so ridiculous. There's nothing mysterious about the committee, it's just an implementation detail of the justice system. Calling it little known implies that people who don't even know what to call the judicial branch should for some reason know about the committee.

Ok, ok. Let's get honest here.

Bloggers exaggerate. And commenters like to point that out. Sometimes I hear that commenters even like to overreact to things.

Got it.

Now, I've been following this issue. I did not know about this committee. I daresay I could pull 100 hackers from a room and most of them wouldn't know of it either.

So for purposes of "legal people", yes, you are correct. What a overstatement! But that's not the audience here, and the headline works -- and it is not an exaggeration.

If you're a lawyer, this committee is probably common knowledge.

I'd bet 99 out of 100 non-lawyers wouldn't have a clue about this group of people.