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I definitely agree. I think the problem is that the court can't instruct the jury to give extra consideration to a particular piece of evidence, even if it seems to deserve it. As a juror, you're expected to make up your own mind, but you have to begin by considering each piece of evidence as it is presented. Check this out:

Instructing jury...held improper by appeals court

Man rapes woman, confesses to it in jail, at which point DNA evidence collected at the scene is found to match up with his. The defense successfully appeals his conviction because the court instructed the jury that DNA evidence was "reliable" and thus seemed to favor it over other evidence.

In my mind, as long as the proper lab procedures are followed (no one dropped a pizza slice onto the sample, etc), DNA evidence is beyond reliable. Applying Bayes' theorem, even starting from the idea that the person was probably innocent, you still get odds in the area of 10^5 or 10^6 to 1. In geek terms: six nines. Where else in life can you be *that* sure of something?

In any case, if you want to sit on a jury, keep your responses limited to yes and no. Jurors are the most important and powerful people in the courtroom, but everything goes more smoothly for the lawyers if they pack the jury with people who aren't the question-asking type. People who will convict someone on an eyewitness testimony and the fact that he didn't shave before the trial, or let someone off because he seemed nice. This makes the lawyers' job easier.

Implying lack of computing power as incentive to let them do it is short sightedness at best. Secondly, in order to create this profile they need to be allowed to get direct, legal samples. Once they have they have the ability to do anything they want with it. They don't necessarily need to create a full analysis of everyone, just certain targets at the time. Or store the DNA sample itself until they are capable of processing all of them or need that particular one. The potential for abuse is massive, and the potential gain is not necessarily as big as some people would like you to think: http://forensic-evidence.com/site/EVID/EL_dna_instr_bad.html

Here's the issue. How can you say that a tracker that isn't data itself, facilitates anything? That's like having a file with a list of pirate URLs and IP addresses, even if there's descriptions that say like "good place to get illegal stuff". That type of evidence would first have to be accepted by court before it can even be argued before it can even be accepted as evidence before it can even be debated. It doesn't tie you to anything. You still don't explain how they are tied as well to having made money off piracy as opposed to what they did, which is made money off advertising. Whether there is piracy or not if people come to their site and they get paid for the ads, there's nothing illegal about that.

This is the difference of the law vs my opinion or yours. The law wants fact, and unbiased opinion. You can claim all the silly things you want but they won't even make it to trial (which is what I have been saying) if you have no real proof and evidence....and thats what summary judgement and why expert witnesses don't make it to trial (aka daubert hearing) if the lawyer is attentive.

Even moreso, is I don't see any links to the actual charges being filed (or translated to english), nor with a specific definition of what they are being sued for. The slashdot link says "accessory to the crime" and the article says 2 things: "conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden." and "The operation of The Pirate Bay is financed through advertising revenues. In that way it commercially exploits copyright-protected work and performances," prosecutor Hakan Roswall said in a statement" which is basically a null phrase they said to the press which means "we can't tie things to anything they've don3e, but we're going to blow a lot of smoke to the press". Doesn't this make you wonder a little what the REAL claim

Conspiracy is a word that is well defined in law, and its about as easy to prove as claims in impeachment. Conspiracy is a government charge on occasion, not something that the IFPI or any non governmental organization can claim at all. If its not the government claiming that phrase expect it to be a vertical hill that they are trying to walk up aka won't happen.

Any high class lawyer that does well and knows Swedens laws will have this case through in 4-6 years after the MAFIAA is done trying to drag it on in hopes that piratebay will default due to not having enough money (Expect a million claims in the case in hopes that a few stick). In any legal case if you don't have money for appeals you can't even appeal, which is why cases are dragged on (you have to post the money). You and I can debate until our ears are blue but there is no factual proof of anything whatsoever until things are accepted in court.

The Newman link is from 2001.

The judge who decided the original Llera-Plaza motion, which is discussed and critiqued in the following article, reversed himself on March 13, 2002, holding that expert evidence of a "match" was admissible. Judge Pollak had granted the Government's motion for a reconsideration that is mentioned above, and he also reopened the record to hear additional testimony for the prosecution as well as for the defense. In reversing himself in a 60-page opinion, Judge Pollak stated, in part, "In short, I have changed my mind.' The Reliability of Fingerprint Evidence: A Case Report

You'll find links here to many articles on Identification Evidence. For example: Phenotype vs Genotype: Why Identical Twins Have Different Fingerprints

The Newman link is from 2001.

The judge who decided the original Llera-Plaza motion, which is discussed and critiqued in the following article, reversed himself on March 13, 2002, holding that expert evidence of a "match" was admissible. Judge Pollak had granted the Government's motion for a reconsideration that is mentioned above, and he also reopened the record to hear additional testimony for the prosecution as well as for the defense. In reversing himself in a 60-page opinion, Judge Pollak stated, in part, "In short, I have changed my mind.' The Reliability of Fingerprint Evidence: A Case Report

You'll find links here to many articles on Identification Evidence. For example: Phenotype vs Genotype: Why Identical Twins Have Different Fingerprints

Not to mention that fingerprinting is very hard to use even when you're not in a battlefield situation: Lawyer wrongly arrested in bombings: 'We lived in 1984'
PORTLAND, Oregon (CNN) -- The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday it is paying $2 million and apologizing to an Oregon lawyer wrongly accused of being involved with the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain. Brandon Mayfield was arrested in Portland on a material witness warrant in May 2004, less than two months after the bombings. According to an FBI affidavit at the time, his fingerprint was identified as being on a blue plastic bag containing detonators found in a van used by the bombers. The FBI's fingerprint identification was wrong, however, and Mayfield was released several days later.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/29/mayfield.suit/in dex.html

Erroneous Fingerprint Individualizations -- Why do they occur?
Most recently, Dr. Dror was interviewed by the BBC on his research in erroneous "fingerprint identifications" and how they are caused.. Dr. Dror has given us permission to provide a link to the source where the entire interview can be heard and observed. Click on: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~id/bbc.html
http://forensic-evidence.com/site/ID/Err_fingerpri nt.html

I find it hard to believe that these grunts are in any way trained to the level of the FBI's experts and even if they were it'd still be damned hard to identify people from their fingerprints as shown by the frequent misidentifications made by the best FBI and other LEA people.

This is just over-blown propaganda from people with a product trying to get a chance to suckle at the government teat and at the same time trying to dress it up as "not part of the government" and "doing something for the troops".

Ineffective and mendacious hypocrites is probably what they are, but to be charitable they may just be fools.

[There exists] respectable empirically established evidence of the uniqueness of fingerprint patterns. Studies done by many examiners have shown that the fingerprints of identical twins are different, as are the prints of triplets, quadruplets, and quintuplets. In that sense, fingerprint identification has been found to be even more discriminating than the vaunted DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) "fingerprinting" method, which cannot distinguish, by today's technology, between the DNA of identical twins. Since inherited traits for similarity in patterns and sub-pattern types are the most common among people who are very closely related, the difference in the prints of such persons certainly can be taken as empirical evidence of fingerprint individuality. Might we not infer from that experience that all fingerprints of different digits are, indeed, different?

Persons skilled in fingerprint identification, who have literally viewed, scanned, and studied tens--if not hundreds--of thousands of individual patterns, do not doubt this. Clearly, if exact pattern duplication were to exist in the world, at least a single instance of this would have been discovered by now. While such claims have been made often, every case, when examined, has established that the prints of different digits that were allegedly "the same" exhibited indeed clearly visible differences that would not have lead an examiner to an erroneous identification. There simply was no duplication of individual ridge detail in prints from different digits.

Or not.

Actually, you are required to show your driver's license regardless of suspicion when the police set up an "informational roadblock".

Such roadblocks were to gather information about crimes, for instance, asking those stopped if they witnessed an accident. I found this article on the subject. You will note that in 2001 the Supreme Court ruled in City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 121 S.Ct. 447 that a "drug interdiction" roadblock was unconstitional. I saw no evidence that those stopped at informational roadblocks were required to show ID unless the police happened upon evidence that a given driver had committed a crime (e.g., drunk driving). These were, instead, just requests for witnesses to come forward.

Now, I know the airlines have been requiring this for years, with some exceptions (I think people under a certain age, for instance). Whether or not it's an actual federal law doesn't really matter for the purpose of our discussion, because regardless of whether it's the government or the airline requiring it people find it to be perfectly reasonable.

I must disagree. If it was voluntarily done by airlines, market pressure could lead to some carriers choosing to not require it. It could lead to others putting strong consumer privacy protections in place (e.g., not retaining data after flights end, not retaining biometric data, etc.). Private companies setting up their own rules for transactions is far different than federal legislation setting up those rules.

Specifically, are you saying that this law being considered by Congress is going to extend this in some way? [In terms of this question I've assumed we're asking it from the view of whether or not it "should" be Unconstitutional, not whether or not there is precedent that it is.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no federal law currently requiring airlines to require biometric IDs of any type (even photo) for people who wish to fly. There are "secret" rules that the FAA has apparently passed on to the airlines, but no legislative requirement for same.

As to whether it "should" be unconstitutional, something either is or is not. The only way to determine that is to investigate the Constitutional interpretations made by the courts over the years. I believe that the courts should find it unconstitutional as it violates a "right to privacy" recognized by the Supreme Court in prior decisions. I also feel that it is a violation of the rights of citizens to not be subject to warrantless searches.

I interpret the exchange as a meaningless quibble.

Then let's close the books on that and put it behind us.

In fact, other than most discrimination laws, the ACLU is generally in favor of interpreting the Constitution to give the government less power, not more.

That's true, and it's their very nature: Protecting American Civil Liberties.

Maybe "partisan" isn't the right word, but just because someone has more knowledge of the law that doesn't make them right in their interpretation.

I also agree with you about that, but I also feel that it is unwise to summarily dismiss the opinions of knowlegeable people and organizations.

In essence, we can talk about what is Constitutional in terms of what the Supreme Court has already ruled, or we can talk about it in terms of how the Supreme Court should rule, but we need to be careful not to confuse the two.

But the two are very tightly linked. The concept of legal precedence is key to most Supreme Court decisions. How was a given Constitutional word, phrase, sentence, amendment, etc. interpreted in the past? Obviously, the Supreme Court is not infallible and sometimes they have to revisit decisions, but past decisions are key to deciding most new cases.

Looking at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I feel that a federally mandated (or coerced) biometric national ID which allows your travels to be monitored, documented, and analyzed is not at all something with which the framers would have approved.

Criminals have also been identified from their Ear Prints and from Lip Prints.

Criminals have also been identified from their Ear Prints and from Lip Prints.

Sorry to reply to my own post, but after I big of Googling, I've found that while identical twins do not have identical fingerprints, their finger prints are often very similar, according to this site and this site. this site even states that the close similarity between the fingerprints of identical twins was used (before the advent of genetic testing) to distinguish between identical and fraternal twins at birth.