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The fact that Obama vocally sticks his nose in the business of so many agencies and goings on in general, where no prior president really has is annoying.

By sticking his nose you mean someone asked him about it in a public forum and he responded to the question? And by "so many agencies", I believe the Department of Justice is a part of the Executive Branch. Something about it put into place in 1789, but I'm sure you're right that only Obama has had anything to do with the Department. I'm sure that no other president has issued Executive Orders to the Department of Justice.

His job is to delegate where he is legally able but largely remain silent unless his voice is needed, which should be rare.

That eerily sounds like a former President who unfortunately delegated everything to subordinates even when they incompetently failed miserably: "You've done a heckuva job, Brownie". But by your statement, I would assume that you would never blame Obama for anything one of the agencies did (IRS Tax Scandal, Benghazi, etc.)

The state of the union is enough. He's cheapened the seat IMHO. And Hillary would be worse since she constantly stumps for the homosexuals, feminists, and other "minorities" while demonizing the Christians and conservatives.

I see. Christians in the US are being persecuted even though every single President has been Christian. Even though the only thing that is stopping you from worshipping in your church today is your church may not be holding services. Yes, the history of US has been against Christians.

Notification and warrant requirements. Almost like a Title III wiretap.

Such cards would be stored in a system classed as a law enforcement intelligence database. It has to be purged after 5 years as per 28 CFR Part 23: https://it.ojp.gov/documents/2...

Cisco is a California corporation. Criminal Liability of a Corporate Officer or Agent

With an embedded firmware device, the end use has no need to agree to any "shrink wrap" license or ToS prior to use. Whatever firmware is provided is used, and "copied" into RAM, under Fair Use - that's a normal and expected part of operation, the purchase would be otherwise worthless. Perhaps, an agreement could be required when deliberately downloading an upgrade, but that is not the case here.

Therefore, the user might never have agreed to allow Cisco to take control of their purchased device, and change it's operating behavior. Cisco was negligent in making "automatic upgrades" a default. They should, at a minimum, have made the default to be "off," and popped up a warning/permission agreement if the user turned it on.

What they have essentially done is to ship a Trojan Horse, the result of which was criminal*.

It hasn't been determined if the terms of their new unilateral contract are reality with the new firmware - but if they capture browsing behavior, they're also in violation of the ECPA, since the automatic download of new firmware would have required no authorization from the user. If they ship new product with firmware which does that, they'll still be criminals, because the user cannot be required to provide authorization for that as a condition of using the product.

*"Whoever...knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer...the term âoedamageâ means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information;..shall be punished..." - 18 USC 1030

JRIC - Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Los Angeles

http://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/news_view/32984

BJA - Bureau of Justice Assistance

http://www.ojp.gov/BJA/

Basically, the BJA appears to be a bridge organization intended to funnel intel to the feds and provide control over local agencies:

http://www.ojp.gov/BJA/about/index.html

JRIC - Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Los Angeles

http://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/news_view/32984

BJA - Bureau of Justice Assistance

http://www.ojp.gov/BJA/

Basically, the BJA appears to be a bridge organization intended to funnel intel to the feds and provide control over local agencies:

http://www.ojp.gov/BJA/about/index.html

Also, I take issue with this meme that 25% of all those incarcerated are locked up ONLY for non-violent drug charges. For that to be true, it would require that ON AVERAGE one in for convicts behind bars was guilty of either using or selling drugs, without any associated crimes, like robbery, assault, possession of a gun, etc., and that is simply unbelievable.

There is a lot of evidence for statistics like this, you can start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#United_States_domestic_policy.

Federal prisons were estimated to hold 179,204 sentenced inmates in 2007. Of these, 15,647 were incarcerated for violent offenses, including 2,915 for homicide, 8,966 for robbery, and 3,939 for other violent crimes. In addition, 10,345 inmates were serving time for property crimes, including 504 for burglary, 7,834 for fraud, and 2,006 for other property offenses. A total of 95,446 were incarcerated for drug offenses. Also, 56,237 were incarcerated for public-order offenses, including 19,528 for immigration offenses and 24,435 for weapons offenses.
http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/p07.pdf

According to a federal survey of jail inmates, of the total 440,670 jail inmates in the US in 2002, 112,447 (25.5%) were drug offenders: 48,823 (11.1%) for possession and 56,574 (12.8%) for trafficking.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/sdatji02.pdf

Actually, violent crime has been on a steep downward trend over the last 18 years.

http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

Note: this graph includes all violent crime, not simply homicides.

Violent crime peaked around 1994--before Grand Theft Auto, before Modern Warfare, before Quake. The game industry has exploded during the same time; if violent games had a causative relationship with violent crime, wouldn't the statistics reflect it?

I'm no statistician, but I found this link interesting: http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/fed.htm It looks dated, and given the source our resident tinfoil haberdashers will likely discount it, but I find it interesting that a significant portion of the folks charged aren't necessarily prosecuted. I think that would likely skew the conviction rates that some are citing.

Federal prison is mainly big-time drug users and drug dealers.

Correct. Well, I dunno that it's all big-time, but it mainly drug users/dealers.

State prison is mainly small-time drug users and drug dealers

Incorrect. There are far more violent criminals than drug users/dealers in state prisons.

I can't find a link in 2 minutes of googling, but the proportions haven't changed much since 2000:

In 2000, an estimated 57% of Federal inmates and 21% of State inmates were serving a sentence for a drug offense; about 10% of Federal inmates and 49% of State inmates were in prison for a violent offense.

-- http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm

We don't have a gun culture, what we have is a culture of media-ocrity. Kids spend more time watching television than going to school and the media exalts violence and commercialism. Lately it's been getting slutted up too. Anyone who says that watching eight hours of mass-media television a day won't rot your brain is obviously a dillhole, every system except for a few involving bacteria are garbage in, garbage out all the way. Any "gun culture" you may have believed existed is just an offshoot of our "media culture". It's part of the public paranoia promoted by a news media that shows us only the sensationalistic crap that will ensure their ratings because we as a people have shown that we react well to being shown bright and shiny things.

If we really had a "gun culture" problem then we'd have more firearm deaths than alcohol deaths or auto deaths. In 2001 (easy stats to find) we have around 75,000 alcohol deaths, ~40,000 auto accident deaths, and 29,573 firearms deaths, 57% of which were suicides - which means that they could as easily have been slit wrists or heads in the oven, assuming the statistic is correct. (ho ho)

As you can see from that last link, the total number of deaths is falling over time, and the percentage of suicide is rising... and of course the population is rising in this country. So uh... it looks like what gun problems we have - and there are problems, just as there are problems with knives, and there were problems with swords and bows before them, are being worked out.

So sorry, I don't see your gun culture bit. Guns are tools meant for killing, and we enshrine violence. Guns are just a symptom. They're the most convenient way to kill someone, so of course we're going to use them. Get rid of them and you'll just see more stabbings and stranglings.

Here's a specifically 10 year post release study (State of Ohio's) in PDF

http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/rsorp94.pdf

If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's the basics:
Base recividism rate was 34% - of that 22.3% was for new crimes, the other 1/3 of the total was for technical violations*. Of the 22.3%, sex offenses were 8%, non-sex offenses were 14.3%
Rapists (of adult victims) had the highest chance of repeating, and intra-family molesters the lowest chances. Extra-family molesters were in the middle. That is again not just for the specific crime they were first charged with, or for a sexually related crime, but for criminal acts in general. Once convicted rapists had a 56% chance of commiting some crime within 10 years, but only 17.5% chance of recommitting rape.
      Sex offenders who completed Ohio's basic sex offender programming course had about a 40% lower rate of general repeat offenses, and more than 50% lower chance of specifically sexual offenses.
      Note too, this study compared numbers for people who were actually re-sentenced to prison, not just re-arrested. As they pointed out in explaining this, it was very unusual for a prior sex offender charged with a new sex crime to get a non-prison sentence, and presumably more common for a person charged with a non-sexual crime to get a probation only sentence.
      This is a scientifically well prepared study. They give the number of cases considered very early, disclose their statistical analysis methods, and discuss possible flaws in their methodology in
the opening section (the opening functions much like a standard scientific paper's abstract. It's longer than an abstract in a typical physic or astronomy paper, but probably quite within norms for a sociology publication.)

*technical violations may include legitimate causes for concern, such as the offender possessing violent or child pornography or hanging around places frequented by children. It is probably fair to add some fraction of these to any real risk assessment, just like it's fair to assume some people didn't get caught. But, in the same way, we should add cases of a prior burglar driving through a posh neighborhood at night or possessing burglary tools in assessing that risk.

      Since I posted this, I've noted quite a number of replies. To clarify some of these: CSOM (mentioned below) is the Center for Sex Offender Management. Their website is a .org, and not directly a .gov site. They are associated with the US Justice Department by a grant, but also with the National Institute of Corrections, and their main focus is training for corrections officials, including probation and parole officers, rather than for either state governments and oversight entities, or education, or the general public. I don't like to quote them because 1. I'm not even sure from their site if they are technically a 501-c non-profit or not. I don't know how much of their funding comes from the DoJ and how much from other sources. 2. They tend to give raw figures without breaking them down into sexual and non-sexual repeat offenses. 3. They make a number of ambiguous statements on their main website and in their publications (i.e. frequently talking about short term and longer term without defining how many years those are). Their publications reference studies, rather than being, themselves studies.

the rate of recidism in sexual crimes is high

An average person is worth about 1/10 hp (75W) on an exercise bike, with the ability to peak up to about 1/4 hp (187W). Folks who are properly trained can do better, but I wouldn't expect your inmate population to fall in the "elite athlete" category. So how many people are currently incarcerated in the US? At the end of 2006, it was slightly more than 2.26 million people. Let's assume you can coax 1/2 of the prisoner population to voluntarily participate. Let's ask for two 2-hour shifts, and schedule for 24-hour operation. That'll require six "teams" of pedalers, resulting in a net population divisor of 12. (75 W per person) * (2.26M persons) * (1/12 participation) = 14.125 MW.

The last time I checked, the local landfill was running a 50 MW generator off the garbage-gas. I don't think the prisoner-generator will contribute enough ... unless you put a lot more people in prison. Hey! There's the solution!

That really surprised me, so I did a quick Google search. I found out rather quickly that about 61% of the US prison population was white as of 1997 http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/glance/tables/cpracetab.htm

The truth of the matter is that this is an excellent tool for law enforcement agencies to work together, period.

The shit hits the fan when something happens and some other agency held the key evidence, or information that ultimately could have saved lives. What happens 6-9 monthes later after the person(s)/group gets caught?

The puzzle gets put together, the media gets a piece of it and the public is screaming that their tax dollars are being wasted on antiquated systems that can't talk to one-another in an age when we have the technology to over-come such situations.

In an effort to respond to the publics outcry the agencies work to come up with a solution, which includes zig-zagging through countless red-tape and legislation.

The agencies now have the know-how, the technology and the money to begin the process of piecing the system together, too bad it has been far too long and the public (mainly the media) has moved on to other things that make money("news").

Now it is time to focus on the other aspect of this system, and the entire process gets put under a microscope, the government is scrutinized for "wasting" tax dollars (remember when we were wasting money on antiquated systems?) on a system that is "invading our privacy" ( privacy is ultimately defined by some agency like the ACLU).

I say GET REAL, if the system fails because of some inane P2P like technology, which we all know that shit doesnt work, except for sharing music, at least we are taking a step in the right direction.

We need systems that talk to one-another and information needs to be disseminated to the people/agencies who need it. The govenment is working with law enforcement agencies in an effort to empower agencies and make our country safer.

Each and every state down to the smallest municpality needs to dedicate resources to things such as the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative and begin to close the gap of lost information. What the hell are we afraid of? hmmm, maybe the criminals will get caught? Good. oh, "but this information is going to get in the wrong hands..." is that all you got?

It is so funny how people get about their "personal" information, sorry to tell you folks, but most of the "personal" information out there is more than likely readily available through some open records law.

What the hell are you afraid of? getting caught?

The truth of the matter is that this is an excellent tool for law enforcement agencies to work together, period.

The shit hits the fan when something happens and some other agency held the key evidence, or information that ultimately could have saved lives. What happens 6-9 monthes later after the person(s)/group gets caught?

The puzzle gets put together, the media gets a piece of it and the public is screaming that their tax dollars are being wasted on antiquated systems that can't talk to one-another in an age when we have the technology to over-come such situations.

In an effort to respond to the publics outcry the agencies work to come up with a solution, which includes zig-zagging through countless red-tape and legislation.

The agencies now have the know-how, the technology and the money to begin the process of piecing the system together, too bad it has been far too long and the public (mainly the media) has moved on to other things that make money("news").

Now it is time to focus on the other aspect of this system, and the entire process gets put under a microscope, the government is scrutinized for "wasting" tax dollars (remember when we were wasting money on antiquated systems?) on a system that is "invading our privacy" ( privacy is ultimately defined by some agency like the ACLU).

I say GET REAL, if the system fails because of some inane P2P like technology, which we all know that shit doesnt work, except for sharing music, at least we are taking a step in the right direction.

We need systems that talk to one-another and information needs to be disseminated to the people/agencies who need it. The govenment is working with law enforcement agencies in an effort to empower agencies and make our country safer.

Each and every state down to the smallest municpality needs to dedicate resources to things such as the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative and begin to close the gap of lost information. What the hell are we afraid of? hmmm, maybe the criminals will get caught? Good. oh, "but this information is going to get in the wrong hands..." is that all you got?

It is so funny how people get about their "personal" information, sorry to tell you folks, but most of the "personal" information out there is more than likely readily available through some open records law.

What the hell are you afraid of? getting caught?

The truth of the matter is that this is an excellent tool for law enforcement agencies to work together, period.

The shit hits the fan when something happens and some other agency held the key evidence, or information that ultimately could have saved lives. What happens 6-9 monthes later after the person(s)/group gets caught?

The puzzle gets put together, the media gets a piece of it and the public is screaming that their tax dollars are being wasted on antiquated systems that can't talk to one-another in an age when we have the technology to over-come such situations.

In an effort to respond to the publics outcry the agencies work to come up with a solution, which includes zig-zagging through countless red-tape and legislation.

The agencies now have the know-how, the technology and the money to begin the process of piecing the system together, too bad it has been far too long and the public (mainly the media) has moved on to other things that make money("news").

Now it is time to focus on the other aspect of this system, and the entire process gets put under a microscope, the government is scrutinized for "wasting" tax dollars (remember when we were wasting money on antiquated systems?) on a system that is "invading our privacy" ( privacy is ultimately defined by some agency like the ACLU).

I say GET REAL, if the system fails because of some inane P2P like technology, which we all know that shit doesnt work, except for sharing music, at least we are taking a step in the right direction.

We need systems that talk to one-another and information needs to be disseminated to the people/agencies who need it. The govenment is working with law enforcement agencies in an effort to empower agencies and make our country safer.

Each and every state down to the smallest municpality needs to dedicate resources to things such as the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative and begin to close the gap of lost information. What the hell are we afraid of? hmmm, maybe the criminals will get caught? Good. oh, "but this information is going to get in the wrong hands..." is that all you got?

It is so funny how people get about their "personal" information, sorry to tell you folks, but most of the "personal" information out there is more than likely readily available through some open records law.

What the hell are you afraid of? getting caught?