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Stingrays, also known as "cell site simulators" or "IMSI catchers," are invasive cell phone surveillance devices that mimic cell phone towers and send out signals to trick cell phones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect's cell phone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby.

So, I think the Stingray is used to track who and where, very similar to having a beat cop standing on the corner who recognizes you and notes that you just walked by. All the discussion here about wiretapping is just FUD.

Wow. Does the Constitution or Bill of Rights still work in your area of the country?

Ten states and DC are completely within the Constitution free zone. The zone covers about 200 million people.

An AC in a previous Snowden story posted this link:

Grant Snowden Clemency

You can sign this petition to pressure the government to pardon Snowden, so he can come back to the states a free man.

Please share this link on your other forums. It is the least you can do for him, after all he has sacrificed for you.

Some people care, and you should care, since the information can and will be used to your detriment any time there is profit in it.

Snowden did us a favor. We owe him one in return.

Bring Snowden Home

Sign it.

We can stand up for those who took decisive action.

We can Bring Snowden Home.

Sign it.

ps

https://www.aclu.org/kyr-photo :)

Hysteria, eh? Well, let's just drag a few facts out. Here we go:

o Straight-up misconduct

o Botched paramilitary police raid data

o Judge, jury and executioners in blue: The death penalty -- without a court

o Warrants "not required" data

o Seizure of property without warrants details

o $2.02 billion dollars in cash and property seizures for/in which no indictment was ever filed

o Other illegal horrors

Just a little information -- what we know -- showing our government at work, cavreader. Now, I don't know how you will characterize this information, but I know how I do: Directly and unequivocally indicative of a systemic breakdown of respect, regard, and understanding of liberty and justice that extends broadly across all areas of law enforcement.

Now, you want to talk nonsense about legal protections in a system where the vast majority of defendants are pressured into plea bargains against a completely uneven scale full of extra charges, almost certain financial ruin, threats of extended incarceration, and outright lies from the police and prosecutor, where the police don't have to defend anything in court -- and which can be, and at times have been, followed up by ex post facto laws increasing punishment after conviction -- fine. But don't expect me to take you seriously, because you obviously don't have even the slightest idea what you're talking about.

The EFF has some specific guides for protecting yourself/cellphone:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/cell-phone-guide-protesters-updated-2014-edition

In terms of documenting police, the ACLU also provides specific guides:
https://www.aclu.org/kyr-photo

What constitutes excessive force in your mind? Ignore the Grand Jury's decision for this question, because we have ample evidence demonstrating that the system does not always work toward justice. You can see how many charges law enforcement agents have had to face, even after they brutally beat a homeless person to death on the street. This is one of at least several similar events where no charges were filed.

It is that question that has many people bothered about this event.

Buried under the racism and claims of execution and murder is a valid concern, which is that law enforcement has undergone a fundamental change in the last few decades which does not benefit society. The slogan of "Protect and Serve the Public" today is invalid, officers are placed above all members of the public and the statement "Officer Safety" has become a mantra justifying any and all actions the officer takes.

The take away we should be discussing is the question I proposed initially. The psychological profiling of potential law enforcement officers is a concern, the militarization of police forces is a concern.

I'm not a pacifist. If an armed suspect is threatening the public, the police have the right to shoot to kill. It's when suspects are not armed that we need to draw a firm line on the amount of force required versus the amount of force used. Unloading a full clip into an unarmed suspect from a vehicle goes beyond necessary force, especially in this case where bullets kept flying after the suspect was 15feet from the vehicle (from the evidence released to the public).

Further reading can be found pretty much anywhere, from cases of officers shooting dogs in yards to tossing flash bangs into the wrong house during an unannounced raid to serve a warrant.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381446/barney-fife-meets-delta-force-charles-c-w-cooke
http://www.sagepub.com/gabbido...
http://www.copwatch.org/databa...

I mean, no one — not even you — has any evidence of it.

except we do. the docs snowden leaked contain entries going back to around ~2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29 PRISM is a clandestine anti-terrorism[1] mass electronic surveillance data mining program launched in 2007 by the National Security Agency (NSA) and government survialence has been consistantly leaked on slashdot since it started in 1997, going back to CARNIVORE, RAPTORE, and this: Narus

Citation needed.

This is the war on drugs
Reagan declares war
This is parellel construction, basicly allowing cops to either plant evidence, and effectively nullifies reasonable suspicion.
This is civil foreiture. As you can see, the government can now just take your stuff without having to provide evidence
far less conviction in a court of law, jury of peers or not

Empty words.

hey mr pot, the kettle called, your fucking black.

Geez man ... defensive much? Also, you write like a 10 year old. Might want to work on that.

I can completely defeat both your contentions with just one word: India.

India's HDI lags behind China, yes, but its growth rate has been matching China's as of late. Not sure what you mean by "superpower" ... both India and China have nukes and neither has enough to destroy the world, so ... yeah.

The same cannot be said of ...oh Taiwan, Japan, UK, Germany, France...you know, much of the developed world.

Well, considering each of those countries has less than a tenth of the population of China, I'm not sure why you'd expect their GDPs to match. A fairer comparison, I guess, would be China and the EU. You would call the EU a "superpower", I guess, right? Higher GDP? Probably more nuclear weapons?

And take another look at Japan. It's an almost uninhabitable collection of islands with half the GDP of China, a country with 10 times its population and probably 100 times or more habitable land.

And Taiwan, too. Yeah it's got 5% the GDP of China ... but it's a tiny island with a population 3 times the size of New York City. What more do you want, man?

Umm...not sure if your medication has worn off here.

That's offensive, unfairly stereotypes a class of people who are already disadvantaged, and also is not an argument. Good job.

Woah, target rich environment here.
You think Western governments are "non-authoritarian"?
Western governments that willy nilly trample upon its own constitution and/or basic human rights?

You think there's "free speech" in the West?
There are people on the TSA no-fly list that begs to differ.

That Western governments are not perfect does not mean China is isn't much, much worse. The no-fly list issue is working its way through the courts as we speak.

Besides, it seems every CEO and board of director of every company worth their salt in the developed world differ from your assessment of the Chinese government...they're beating down each other to get into China...while you think they should be getting out of China if I'm reading you correctly.
Let's be clear, businesses don't go to China for altruistic, ideological, benevolent motivations like you. They go there because of MONEY.

Well, Google's not. But, yes, human rights abuses are not generally relevant to foreign investment. I did say earlier that China hasn't been completely incompetent developing its economy.

I don't have a strong opinion on international investment in China either way. Certainly it's probably not a bad option to build a factory there or something in the short-to-medium term. Re financial investment, though, I've heard of pump-and-dump schemes on the China exchange, other crap, "joint ventures" with foreign corps where the foreign corp gets screwed over with industrial espionage ... the legal environment is iffy to say the least.

Businesses are actually moving to Vietnam and places for factories now because Chinese wages are getting too high.

And let me guess, linuxrocks123 because?....democracy hasn't worked out real well for government imposed backdoors and draconian DRM...?

I've been linuxrocks123 for over 12 years. I use it because it's technically excellent, not because of any of that. Not going to say OSS isn't relevant for security, but that's just gravy.

'Director of Europol Rob Wainwright contends that PNR constitutes “reasonable measures” in the fight against terrorism'

and how soon after will such data be used to compile a no-fly list, to be used to harass anyone who criticizes the state security apparatus.

'The U.S. government is blacklisting people as terrorism suspects based on secret standards and secret evidence. People on government watchlists are questioned, harassed, detained, and even barred indefinitely from flying — and the government denies them any meaningful way to correct errors and clear their names' ref

Actually per the patriot act you have to give it to your bank.

Bullshit. This is the only mention of Social Security Number in the text Patriot Act:

2) requiring foreign nationals to apply for and obtain, before opening an account with a domestic financial institution, an identification number which would function similarly to a Social Security number or tax identification number; and

That only says you need something similar to a SSN or a tax identification number which is what an EIN is.

Your insurance company also needs it to report to the irs that you are compliant with the ACA.

Bullshit. EIN number is all they need.

Lots of people need it and have a legal reason for it, sadly.

Prove it. Provide the exact laws and the section and text that say this.

I believe there is a right to anonymous speech, but when you're paying someone else to speak for you, and you're trying to influence the political process, that may be different.

As declared by the Supreme Court several times, money — spent on politics — is speech. "It may be different" as you say — as much as one person's speech may differ from that of another.

Anonymous speech online (or elsewhere) generally doesn't carry with it an air of credibility that advocacy groups and think tanks try to project.

I don't accept, that concerns such as "air of credibility" are valid arguments against anonymity, Grant.

You are making a common mistake in violating (or calling for a violation of) a sound principle, while it serves your cause — not realizing, the violation, once deemed legitimate, will soon be used by your opponents (and enemies) against you too. This is how the worst things come into and stay in existence...

WTF happened to you, libertines? Where is the spirit of "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."? Unlike Voltaire (or his biographer), you are ready — indeed, anxious — to suppress the opponent's speech (or, at least, his anonymity)... ACLU was not like that even a short time ago — what happened to the new generation?

Generally, groups in favor of net neutrality got better transparency grades, but we looked at both. We weren't targeting one side, and a handful of pro-net neutrality groups received mid-level or lower grades.

Considering the obvious sympathies of both you and the rest of this forum, I'll take your "grades" with a dollop of salt, thank you very much. Not that it matters — if anonymity is a right for "poor" Anonymous Cowards, it is also a right for the "rich" astroturfers.

Finally, our reporting, while taking a lot of work, didn't really unmask or shame anyone.

That's good to hear. It may even be true in letter. But reading the write-up or TFA — it does not seem to be true in spirit. You do deem the actions shameful and you are mere half a step away from suggesting a law to make them illegal too.

Good. The privatization of the prison system is leading to what the ACLU is labeling massive human rights abuses. Coupled with our using the criminal justice system, ultimately ending up with the prison system, to deal with obvious mental health issues, and we've got incredible injustice being done in the name of the law.

That's pretty good, but I would have gone with the "no eat list."

We've got a no-fly list.
We are developing a no-work list.
A no-eat list seems the next logical step.

"US has a darn good track record of living up to the ideals expressed by the Founders"

So the founders were in favor of things like the "constitution free zone" which covers most Americans (by population, not land mass)
https://www.aclu.org/know-your...

- Spying on its own citizens (see Snowden).
- large numbers of citizens in jails and prisons for longer terms for lesser crimes?
- Imperialism via forward operating bases spanning the globe?
- Presidents starting "simi-wars"? Actually more like "armed conflicts", not actual "wars" as only congress can declare war. So war-like but not really...

CBC's article is just a Canadian take on things. The original article (just as scary) is here:

Well, yes. But it's hardly "original" -- this is a problem that has been profiled extensively for years, yet few people seem to realize how far it extends. A couple of times over the past year, when posters on Slashdot mentioned random forfeitures that happened to them, they were met with comments saying, "You must have done something suspicious" or "What's the rest of the story," and I tried to provide links to point out the systemic problem, but have been met with ignorance and resistance.

For a sample of past coverage, here's an extensive piece from The New Yorker a year ago, a piece from Reason in 2012, a piece from Forbes in 2011, pieces in Slate and The Economist from 2010, a detailed piece on NPR from 2008, etc., etc., etc. Here's an extensive account of problems with the system from PBS almost 15 years ago (around the time that legal reform forced money to go to local municipalities in many cases rather than the federal government). The ACLU has been fighting this for decades.

I know some people here may be well aware of this problem, and others may find this shocking and new. Regardless, it's very sad that it may take other countries' shaming us into taking action to fix an unjust assault on our citizens that has been going on for many years.

Yes, because in the U.S. you'd never have for-profit prisons, civil forfeiture, or even outright cops stealing cash under the pretence of fighting crime.

The U.S. certainly wouldn't have issues with police beating minorities or killing them, leading to riots. They wouldn't have a growing number of cases of false imprisonment, or police militarization

It's not a bad idea

Anything, that is "not a bad idea" for a personal vehicle, is also not a bad idea for a person. The argument for mandatory license plates (which we have accepted so long ago, freaks like me objecting appear as, well, freaks), for example, would apply just as convincingly to mandating people not only carry identification at all times, but also keep it visible from distance.

Would you support a law mandating, that people carry personal beacons at all times? Those can be made small enough to make it practical already... In fact, if you aren't careful, your cellphone is already acting as just such a device — should a law prohibit you from turning it off?

People should be going to prison for such deceit. We don't hold our officials accountable.

This is not the first time that SJPD has been caught doing things like this. They were caught using Stingrays to monitor cellphones. As with the drones, the Stingrays were paid for with federal money, bypassing local control and oversight.

Just saying "sorry" should not be enough, especially after repeated occurrences of the same deceitful behavior.

It makes searching domestic telco data legal under the "reasonable articulable suspicion" part.
A few hops of friends or the wrong net logs or phone history and most people could be found to be an "agent of a foreign power, associated with an agent of a foreign power, or "in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power"".
Then you get all the metadata legally. The old standard of a "reasonable articulable suspicion" is much lowered by easy new domestic color of law :)
No judge needed and you get the first two hops of tracking friends/family for free. The "foreign power" part ensures any contact with the outside world is an instant total data collection win. Bulk collection is now legal and the laws around it weaker re your internet or financial records. The three hop 'the corporate store" collections showed the real past efforts safe from any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The House's NSA bill could allow more spying than ever. You call this reform? (26 March 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Raiding the "Corporate Store": The NSA's Unfettered Access to a Vast Pool of Americans' Phone Data (08/02/2013)
https://www.aclu.org/blog/nati...
Welcome to the legal lock box of all your calls and aspects of your net use over decades.

Quick, do you vote "yes" or "no" on the Jabberwocky?

This is the most lucid summary I've seen of the current "debate". Quoting:

The things that bug me most about the net neutrality debate are:

0) The whole slow lane/fast lane conception is just wrong. Internet traffic looks nothing like vehicle traffic. On roads, you have only a few lanes to put cars in. On the internet, it's more like you break up the cars and trucks into atoms (packets), mix them all together, pour them through various choke points and reassemble them at their destination no matter in what order they arrive.

Traffic management at these levels IS needed, and managed at a e2e level by a TCP-friendly protocol (generally), and at a router level by queue management schemes like "Drop Tail". Massive improvements to drop tail, fixing what is known as "bufferbloat" with better "active queue management" (AQM) and packet scheduling schemes (FQ) such as codel, fq_codel, RED, and PIE are being considered by the IETF to better manage congestion, and the net result of these techniques is vastly reduced latency across the chokepoints, vastly improved levels of service for latency sensitive services (such as voice, gaming, and videoconferencing), with only the fattest flows losing some packets and thus slowing down - regardless of who is sending them. Politics doesn't enter into it. Any individual can make their own links better, as can any isp, and vendor.

Some links:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra...
https://datatracker.ietf.org/d...
http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra...
http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra...

Furthermore individual packets can be marked by the endpoints to indicate their relative needs. This is called QoS, and the primary technique is "diffserv".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

There are plenty of problems with diffserv in general, but they are very different from thinking about "fast or slow" lanes, which are rather difficult to implement compared to any of the techniques noted above. You have to have a database of every ip address you wish to manipulate accessed in real time, on every packet, in order to implement the lanes.

IF ONLY I could see in the typical network neutrality debater a sane understanding and discussion of simple AQM, packet scheduling, and QoS techniques, I would be extremely comforted in the idea that sane legislation would emerge. But I've been waiting 10 years for that to happen.

We have tested, and have deployed these algorithms to dramatic reductions in latency and increased throughput on consumer grade hardware, various isps and manufacturers have standardized on various versions, (docsis 3.1 is pie, free.fr uses fq_codel, as does streamboost, as do nearly all the open source routing projects such as openwrt)

I really wish those debating net neutrality actually try - or at least be aware of - these technical solutions to the congestion problems they seek to solve with legislation. I wouldn't mind at all legal mandates to have aqm on, by default. :)

It makes a huge difference, on all technologies available today:

https://www.bufferbloat.net/pr...

See also the bufferbloat mailing lists.

1) if we want true neutrality, restrictive rules by the ISPs regarding their customers hosting services of their own have to go - and nobody's been making THAT point, which irks me significantly. In an age where you have, say, gbit fiber to your business, it makes quite a lot of sense from a security

100 miles from the international border itself

And airports. I'm not sure if it's just the airports or also 100 miles around them, but in this case it doesn't matter.

People hear this and think "Oh, well, border protection of a small area, no biggie". Except that this "zone" fully encompasses nine states! From https://www.aclu.org/know-your...: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, and Massachusetts. Nine Constitution-Free States. Maryland, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware come very close to being included in this list.

> I went to the hospital a while back and they started collecting all sorts of private data.

It isn't private data so the government does not need a warrant to access it.

Something seems really, really off kilter if so many of us see the federal government's law enforcement agencies as the enemy.

There has been a war on people by certain aspects of The Law for a while now. Read the report - War Comes Home. That's America today.

https://www.aclu.org/sites/def...

It's sad when "insurgent countermeasures" as learned from Iraq actually win law enforcement awards for novel policing!

http://www.businessinsider.com...

âoeOnce it became clear to me that he wasnâ(TM)t talking about checkpoints or fast roping from helicopters," replied Springfield Deputy Police Chief John Barbieri, "that he was talking about going door-to-door, organizing the neighborhood into a collaboration to report crime, to get involved in solving their own problems, it became obvious to me that that was exactly the type of program needed in that neighborhood.â

Less SWAT mentality, more community policing and maybe people will start to trust law enforcement.. Less about "convictions" and more about "giving a helping hand". Imagine that! Policing should be about helping people solve problems, not throwing grades into their homes because of some anonymous drug tip.

Give respect and you'll get it back. Terrorizing communities with SWAT and long jail sentences does not result in much respect.

A few details did slip out over the years via the "Connecticut Four" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and others who went to open courts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05...
http://www.americanlibrariesma...
National Security Letters (January 10, 2011)
https://www.aclu.org/national-...
"...web sites a person visits, a list of e-mail addresses with which a person has corresponded, or even unmask the identity of a person who has posted anonymous speech on a political website."
" provision also allows the FBI to forbid or "gag" anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone about the record demand. "
FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge (May 7, 2008)
https://www.eff.org/press/arch...
"a digital library recognized by the state of California -- and its attorneys in November of 2007. The letter asked for personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user."
FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit (May 8, 2008)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Since the summary links you to a stupid news article and not the guides themselves, here is the ACLU Guide and EFF Guides here.

The EFF guide you linked has not been updated yet to reflect the Riley decision. Some of those answers need to be changed because they are incorrect now. The ACLU "Know Your Rights" manual does not appear to have been updated either, but it simply doesn't address the issue of cell phone searches incident to arrest at all.

You are correct - they have not been updated. Why are they even mentioned in the summary and the article? Either way, I think the sources themselves are more valuable than the silly article.

Since the summary links you to a stupid news article and not the guides themselves, here is the ACLU Guide and EFF Guides here.

The EFF guide you linked has not been updated yet to reflect the Riley decision. Some of those answers need to be changed because they are incorrect now. The ACLU "Know Your Rights" manual does not appear to have been updated either, but it simply doesn't address the issue of cell phone searches incident to arrest at all.

Since the summary links you to a stupid news article and not the guides themselves, here is the ACLU Guide and EFF Guides here.

Too many innocent people are being killed and maimed by SWAT raids, too many SWAT raids are occurring, and too many times there is no repercussion for fucking things

I'll just leave this here. "War Comes Home"

https://www.aclu.org/sites/def...

https://www.aclu.org/national-... I guess being US military personnel associates one with being a lunatic extremest. 4 of those on the list were veterans.

"Librarians' NSL Challenge" (May 26, 2006)
https://www.aclu.org/national-...
https://www.aclu.org/blog/cont...
The US legal system has faced the unconstitutional NSL issue.
Once in light the press and in open court the gov just "withdrew its demand".

"Librarians' NSL Challenge" (May 26, 2006)
https://www.aclu.org/national-...
https://www.aclu.org/blog/cont...
The US legal system has faced the unconstitutional NSL issue.
Once in light the press and in open court the gov just "withdrew its demand".

<grammar mode="nazi">I know a lot of people who ...</grammar>

That aside, there are recent rulings on the topic of the 4th amendment. One in note:

Federal Court Rules on One of the Major Outstanding Constitutional Privacy Questions of Our Time -- 06/12/2014

Based on this event a couple weeks ago:

ACLU of Florida Files Emergency Motion Seeking Cell Phone Tracking Orders Hidden by Sarasota Police and U.S. Marshals -- June 3, 2014

And this is from the 11th circuit, no less.

Of course, your post is a lot of nonsense as well. Police putting up a fake mobile cell tower with the ability to intercept all calls within a geographical area really has most of nothing to do with the "amazingly complicated" internet.

No Place To Hide

by Glenn Greenwald

The full force and impact of this book on NSA's full spectrum domestic and international surveillance cannot be stressed enough; what we have heard and read in various international news articles is gathered here at one source, to be read to fully grasp the enormity of it all!

When those of us who served in the military, and worked for various organizations for the NSA (Naval Security Group, or NSG, Army Security Agency, or the ASA, USAF Security Service), the agency was strictly forbidden from domestic surveillance --- for that way lies ultimate power!

During Reagan's administration, in 1988, the NSA was transferred from civilian status to the domain of the Department of Defense, under control of the Pentagon.

Such action initiated what Greenwald so aptly describes as its present incarnation of Orwellian dimensions.

Although Glenn cogently describes its financial intelligence spying, only those who have been diligently following the financial investigative journalism of Matt Taibbi, Pam Martens and Nomi Prins will fully appreciate the significance of this.

When NSA's full spectrum intelligence is disseminated to its clients --- the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice, etc. --- it is being likewise dispersed to Wall Street (DOT = Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, DOA = Big Agra, or ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, etc., and DOJ = Wall Street's white-shoe firms, etc.).

This is a slight peek behind the curtain of the unholy financial-intelligence-complex which sits atop the pyramid of control.

Remember that Edward Snowden was a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, and has proven to the world his unimaginable and extraordinary access to the most senstive of NSA programs --- and who owns Booz Allen?

One of the top private equity/leveraged buyout firms (private banks), the Carlyle Group, with the likes of George H.W. Bush as a past advisor, and with the original seed money coming from the Mellon family.

Thusly we must ask just how much access to global financial intelligence do these private banks routinely enjoy, along with their publicly owned cousins, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs?

When NSA intercepts shipments of routers, switches and other network devices to insert backdoor software and hardware to reroute data communications back to them --- it isn't about national security --- just financial intelligence --- had anyone of those traitors ever been concerned with real national security they would have sounded the alarm about the offshoring of jobs, technology and investment to China and elsewhere!

When the Boeing subsidiary, Narus (or other similar firms), aids totalitarian countries to capture pro-democracy activists for torture and death, so too does the NSA help in preemptive arrests of American activists and community organizers, as well as members of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As one National Intelligence Officer is quoted in the book as stating, "...this is about vast profit..."

[Please see the bottom of p. 224 and top of p. 225 to understand why no one should give a rat's ass at the recent firing of New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson.]

This is a fantastic book not to be missed!

Additional sources and pertinent sites:

http://electrospaces.blogspot....

https://www.aclu.org/sites/def...

http://www.mindmeister.com/326...

http://www.wikileaks-forum.com...

Don't be a myopic pedantic idiot.

The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated on drug charges at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.

https://www.aclu.org/criminal-...

Race is associated with economic power.

Or just google the word: affluenza

Dude,

You're making my case. WIPO is irrelevant to US Law without the DMCA. If the Treaty was ratified, but the statute (DMCA) had stalled in the House WIPO wouldn't matter.

You're apparently remembering Edelmen vs N2H2, and you're remembering it wrong. It was not dismissed due to WIPO, it was dismissed because Edelman hadn't been brought to court for violating the DMCA yet, he'd just asked the Courts to declare he had a right to do something he thought could be ruled in violation.

As for Kyoto, you're agreeing with me again. Clinton had a signed treaty that was valid. He didn't have a statute. So he couldn't do much beyond promulgate regulations under statutes Congress had already passed. And at the time none of them seemed to offer him any cover (the Supremes eventually ruled that Obama had to curt carbon emissions due to the Clean Air Act, but in '97-'00 that case hadn't been decided), so he pretty much did nothing.

As for the last point on sovereignty, sovereignty is fucking complicated. Yes, if the sovereign chooses to obey the Treaty it restricts sovereignty. Yes, if the sovereign can be bullied by the international community into obeying the treaty sovereignty is limited. But if a sovereign says "Fuck ya'll, fuck all ya'all" the treaty is irrelevant. This is why Russia was able to seize Crimea.

Posting AC to be a devil's advocate here:

What is ironic is that the NSA isn't a real threat. Nobody gets dragged off in the night. However, there are real intel agencies which will be more than happy to make people disappear. Those are now running unchecked and unfettered now that the "good" (relative here) guys are under the microscope.

In fact, with NIST standards and kernel hardening (SELinux for example), they have done some good to keep the real bad guys out.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but people need to always know who to be worried versus ignored. For me, the NSA isn't on my list. Lots of people/organizations higher up on that (the top being the neighborhood meth-head looking to do a burglary to score some rock to feed his addiction.)

BZZT! Wrong. Thanks for playing. There has been a long history of presidential administrations using the foreign intelligence security apparatus to spy on its enemies, real or imagined. The courts and Congress long took a dim view of this, but apparently they think it's okay now.

The NSA *may* have done some things to help us secure our systems, but they have the apparatus in place (and are using it, to what extent we don't really know) to spy on Americans. Even if (and that's a big 'if') the Obama administration isn't using those facilities to spy on Americans it sees as a threat, there's nothing to stop future administrations from doing so. Devil's advocate indeed.

I'm not a fan of the 3 letter agencies, but Jesus H Christ, try to keep it at least plausible.

Fusion centers + parallel construction = police state apologists need to find a new defense for the indefensible.

The national ACLU, post-Heller, has tried to stake out a position next to the the dead armadillos, but several state affiliates have consistently held (and local and national have occasionally defended) an individual-rights position.

1. Declare certain sites strategic risk sites which means their security personnel have heightened authority to detain and shoot suspects similar to sensitive federal facilities.

Oh, you mean like the constitution free zones which are at the border and cover the majority of americans? And that was recently upheld in court? I'm sure that will never get abused by the government.

Even more wild that you think Mozilla is about building a free web and that somehow that justifies denying rights of people. Well done comrade.

Not actively fighting for a cause is not the same as "denying rights".

Pick your battles, Mozilla is and should continue to fight for the free web, not fight for every injustice in the world.

All I'm asking for is a little perspective.
The US is actively committing serious human rights offenses, and you complain about somebody supporting a proposition that was found illegal by the supreme court.
I think that is disrespectful to the people held up in guantanamo... Or subjected to torture... Or imprisoned without proper trial... the list goes on: https://www.aclu.org/blog/huma...

While the text does not specifically address reuploading that I see, I think it would be very hard to make a case that seeing the same file uploaded again would not constitute being "aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent" [sec 202, squiggle 512 (c) "INFORMATION RESIDING ON SYSTEMS OR NETWORKS AT DIRECTION OF USERS" (1)(A)(ii)]. However, in the absence of a specific statement, I don't see that designing a system to avoid being able to prevent uploading would be illegal. It would probably get questioned and even accused of being contributory, and it would likely have to avoid deduplication or any other automatic comparison of files, which would increase costs, but I don't see that it would be illegal.

Birth control being a civil right isn't even remotely the issue.

Even the ACLU disagrees with you.

I fail to see how this is any worse than ARGUS, which _HAS_ been deployed over US cities as well as foreign conflict zones. The limiting factor is currently the storage space, but its not hard to imagine one of these things flying over every US city in the next decade storing a couple months of video.

Really, this has been going on for years with spy Satellites too, and no one really seems to care because the exact capabilities are still classified, but i'm betting ARGUS is just complementary to what we already have.

Random, link...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/tech...

Actually, the Tenaha TX scandal resulted in an admission of guilt, a mountain of stolen personal assets, a big settlement and a change in the town's police procedures, but the cops involved were quietly eased into other jobs without serving the five consecutive life sentences that would have been morally justified by their actions.

Details: https://www.aclu.org/blog/crim...

the US government basically ignores the constitution

A more accurate description, and less inflammatory therefore less interesting, is "the Border Patrol ignores part of the 4th Amendment".

That might not be how the legal system works in Canada, but there are definitely some countries that have different rules for border towns. For instance, the US government basically ignores the constitution anywhere within 100 miles of a border.

You know a secret warrant is called secret for a reason, right?

https://www.aclu.org/support-o...

http://www.techdirt.com/articl...