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Yes you do. At least in the USA, anyway. Grabbing someone is not assault. Battery, maybe, but not assault. "Assault" is a verbal threat of harm, not the actual physical harm itself (that would be "battery"). And if there's no threat, there's no assault. And if there's no harm at all, there's no battery.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvus/definit ions.htm#simple_assault

Grabbing at someone can easily be construed as an assult.

No, a citizens arrest requires that you witness an illegal act and have the power to detain the criminal. Such things can include shoplifting, murder, copyright infringement, failure to yield to an electric signal, jaywalking, statutory sodomy, or many other offenses, both small and large, misdemeanor and felony. At least in the USA, anyway.

http://www.criminalattorney.com/pages/firm_article s_citizens_arrest.htm

It varies by state, but most states only allow it if the arrestee has committed a felony.

You don't have to prove anything, in fact, you're the proof. You witnessed their crime and will be considered "evidence" in the case against the person you arrest. You simply detain the person until the police can take custody of them, then you file a police report against them as a witness of their crime. It is illegal to file a false police report. And as a witness, you open yourself up to the possibility of being picked apart like carrion by a lawyer/vulture in a court of law, possibly ending with a conviction for filing a false report, perjury, or contempt of court (depending on the judge's mood that day).

If you are not legally allowed to make a citizen's arrest (which is usually the case if the person committed only a misdemeaner, which is what shoplifting is classified under) you may be charged with assault, even if you don't injure the other person. Again, it depends on where you are, but in many places you've assaulted someone if you simply touch them without their consent. Simple Assault is assault without a weapon. Note that the degree of assault depends on if you actually hurt them or not as well, so assault isn't always just the threat of violence.

but the actual statistics say the opposite

A better citation would be this, though it doesn't give a nice breakdown of recidivism rates either, because such statistics vary greatly depending on what exactly you're looking at. And it's not really a citation, but wikipedia page gives some recividism figures that are a good deal lower than the similar figures for most non sex-related crimes.

As a parent, I cannot begin to say how important the Megan's Law website has been for me. I was shocked to see about 20 convicted child molesters live in my area. I had no idea how prevalent it was.

In my experience, people look up their zip code in the registries and are shocked at how many sex offenders live in their neighborhood. Of these, a smaller percentage look at each entry and learn about these people's crimes (had sex with his age 16 girlfriend when he was 19? public urination? Many states put these people on the sex offender list too.) (To be fair, not every state gives detailed information on the exact crimes these people are convicted of.) And of these, a much much smaller percentage actually do anything useful with this information, like warn their kids to stay from these specific houses. People will use this information to prove arguments, to drive by and check out these houses, etc. ... but very few actually want their kids to avoid these houses, or to take another route to school. (And it's debatable how useful such measures would be anyways, since if somebody really wanted to prey on your children, they probably wouldn't do it from their front yard anyways.)

Personally, I don't think the sex offender registries are that useful. The only thing they seem to be used for is 1) for people to look at and be shocked, 2) amusement, to look at all the pictures and crimes of the criminals, and 3) to look for people to harass, either by doing things like putting up fliers warning the entire neighborhood about this guy, or in extreme cases doing things directly to the person, like destroying his property or even assaulting him.

Personally, I see the sex offender registries as policitcal constructs used to further the careers of various politicians on the backs of criminals who have generally already paid their debt to society (some are on probation or parole, but most are not.) People like to claim that sex offenders have a higher rate of recidivism, but the actual statistics say the opposite. And if a given criminal really is believed to be a danger to society, he should not be released from prison at all, sex offender or not.

I'd feel better (i.e. they wouldn't offend my sense of right and wrong so badly) about the criminal registries if they 1) only listed only the most serious crimes (non concentual rape? yes. child molestation? yes. concentual sex with your underage girlfriend? no!) and 2) also covered other serious non-sex related (but violent crimes) like murder, but alas, they do not.

Tell that to the folks that wrote this one.

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/17-18red. htm

Language evolves...

Who'da thunk it.

Or a pretty stiff jail sentence. From COPYRIGHT FELONY ACT:

"(1) shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, with a retail value of more than $2,500;

That would be eight or maybe nine. And my parents and I had a similar agreement at that age. However, I don't think it's safe anymore to allow your eight year old to wander a large shopping mall alone.

That would be eight or maybe nine. And my parents and I had a similar agreement at that age. However, I don't think it's safe anymore to allow your eight year old to wander a large shopping mall alone.

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I do not know what to make of this. I just thought it needed to be shared. 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://muse.jhu.edu/ 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://nasw.org/ 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://www.fhi.org/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:02:06 http://www.centerfordrugsafety.org/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:02:06 http://www.fda.gov/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:41:37 http://www.personalmd.com/ 16872638 ohio senate bill 17 2006-03-29 01:45:09 http://www.hslda.org/ 16872638 ohio senate bill 17 2006-03-29 01:45:09 http://www.ohiosenatebill17.org/ 16872638 ohio victim counseling service prosecute 2006-03-29 01:46:34 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.sexualassaultresources.org/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://odmrdd.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.odvn.org/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.ag.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 multiple drug interactions paroxetine 2006-03-30 12:57:21 16872638 multiple drug interactions safety 2006-03-30 12:57:56 16872638 drug interaction checker safety 2006-03-30 12:58:47 16872638 dictionary words that start with 2006-03-30 14:05:03 http://dictionary.reference.com/ 16872638 dictionary words that start chu 2006-03-30 14:06:58 http://www.hyperdic.net/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.womanabuseprevention.com/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.survivorinfo.org/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.musc.edu/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://escapinghades.pandys.org/

I do not know what to make of this. I just thought it needed to be shared. 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://muse.jhu.edu/ 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://nasw.org/ 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://www.fhi.org/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:02:06 http://www.centerfordrugsafety.org/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:02:06 http://www.fda.gov/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:41:37 http://www.personalmd.com/ 16872638 ohio senate bill 17 2006-03-29 01:45:09 http://www.hslda.org/ 16872638 ohio senate bill 17 2006-03-29 01:45:09 http://www.ohiosenatebill17.org/ 16872638 ohio victim counseling service prosecute 2006-03-29 01:46:34 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.sexualassaultresources.org/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://odmrdd.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.odvn.org/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.ag.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 multiple drug interactions paroxetine 2006-03-30 12:57:21 16872638 multiple drug interactions safety 2006-03-30 12:57:56 16872638 drug interaction checker safety 2006-03-30 12:58:47 16872638 dictionary words that start with 2006-03-30 14:05:03 http://dictionary.reference.com/ 16872638 dictionary words that start chu 2006-03-30 14:06:58 http://www.hyperdic.net/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.womanabuseprevention.com/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.survivorinfo.org/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.musc.edu/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://escapinghades.pandys.org/

The Continental Congress regularly received quantities of intercepted British and Tory mail. On November 20, 1775, it received some intercepted letters from Cork, Ireland, and appointed a committee made up of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Johnson, Robert Livingston, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson and George Wythe "to select such parts of them as may be proper to publish." The Congress later ordered a thousand copies of the portions selected by the Committee to be printed and distributed. A month later, when another batch of intercepted mail was received, a second committee was appointed to examine it. Based on its report, the Congress resolved that "the contents of the intercepted letters this day read, and the steps which Congress may take in consequence of said intelligence thereby given, be kept secret until further orders."

Well, if the NRA says so, then it must be true! :-)
(which is ridiculous - 4.5 million is 1.5% of the entire USA population!),

Which is why I decimated their numbers.

But you make the fundamentally flawed assumption that each person who used a gun that way only did so once. If you live in a ghetto where you can't even walk home from the grocery market without worry of assault, then you may use your gun in that fashion on a weekly basis.

As for "solving that problem" - well few governments have solved the problems of ghettos yet, if I were stuck in one I would not hold my breath. The ghettos where legal ownership of firearms has been banned have usually seen increases in the violent crimes rate (c.f. Washington DC, banned guns in 1973 but as of the mid-90s had a murder rate 8x the national average - sorry I don't have numbers for mid-2000s, they weren't readily available without a deep search). You can also look at over-all violent crime rate, despite about 4.5 million new firearms purchases per year, the total violent crime rate in the USA has declined by about 60% since 1993. So, I'd say that "pumping even more firearms into the hands of ordinary people" does not hurt and probably helps.

Additionally, only 6% of all violent crimes in the USA were committed by a person with a gun. Yet, almost 4 times that amount of violent crimes involved a weapon - gun, knife, etc. So, in the USA at least, less than 1 out of 15 violent crimes are committed with a gun, while more than 1 out of 6 violent crimes involve a non-gun weapon. Sounds to me like knives and such are a bigger threat to regular people than guns.

Take a look at this - in 2003-2004, according to the chart England, where handguns had been banned for about 7 year already, had a violent crime rate of about 4% of the population. While for about the same time period, the USA had a rate of about half that. The studies are different, so the numbers aren't directly comparable, but still a 100% increase in violent crime without handguns than with handguns, even if it is only 10% that's a remarkably strong argment in favor of arming citizeens.

I am 35, and have never *ever* been even remotely in the situation to need a gun to protect myself or my property. Neither has *anybody* else that I happen to know. I live in Europe.

It's nice to be a member of the upper-middle socio-economic class, isn't it? I have had just about the exact same experience here in the USA. But, I recognize that not everyone is so privileged and try not to draw false conclusions from my anecdotal experience.

Well, if the NRA says so, then it must be true! :-)
(which is ridiculous - 4.5 million is 1.5% of the entire USA population!),

Which is why I decimated their numbers.

But you make the fundamentally flawed assumption that each person who used a gun that way only did so once. If you live in a ghetto where you can't even walk home from the grocery market without worry of assault, then you may use your gun in that fashion on a weekly basis.

As for "solving that problem" - well few governments have solved the problems of ghettos yet, if I were stuck in one I would not hold my breath. The ghettos where legal ownership of firearms has been banned have usually seen increases in the violent crimes rate (c.f. Washington DC, banned guns in 1973 but as of the mid-90s had a murder rate 8x the national average - sorry I don't have numbers for mid-2000s, they weren't readily available without a deep search). You can also look at over-all violent crime rate, despite about 4.5 million new firearms purchases per year, the total violent crime rate in the USA has declined by about 60% since 1993. So, I'd say that "pumping even more firearms into the hands of ordinary people" does not hurt and probably helps.

Additionally, only 6% of all violent crimes in the USA were committed by a person with a gun. Yet, almost 4 times that amount of violent crimes involved a weapon - gun, knife, etc. So, in the USA at least, less than 1 out of 15 violent crimes are committed with a gun, while more than 1 out of 6 violent crimes involve a non-gun weapon. Sounds to me like knives and such are a bigger threat to regular people than guns.

Take a look at this - in 2003-2004, according to the chart England, where handguns had been banned for about 7 year already, had a violent crime rate of about 4% of the population. While for about the same time period, the USA had a rate of about half that. The studies are different, so the numbers aren't directly comparable, but still a 100% increase in violent crime without handguns than with handguns, even if it is only 10% that's a remarkably strong argment in favor of arming citizeens.

I am 35, and have never *ever* been even remotely in the situation to need a gun to protect myself or my property. Neither has *anybody* else that I happen to know. I live in Europe.

It's nice to be a member of the upper-middle socio-economic class, isn't it? I have had just about the exact same experience here in the USA. But, I recognize that not everyone is so privileged and try not to draw false conclusions from my anecdotal experience.

I see. In 2001 there were about 14 million arrests in the United States. Of that number, you can point to one case where someone has been held without being charged with a crime because (or so the government argues) he is a very special case, suspected of being involved in a very special act, the 9/11 attacks, which Congress has defined as tantamount to an act of war against the United States, little different from Pearl Harbor. And you feel this proves the Fourth Amendment is going down the toilet? That we all should shiver in our beds because the Feds might arrest us at any moment, for no reason at all?

No, of course you don't. Not really. If you really seriously believed you could be arrested and imprisoned for no reason whatsoever -- and tortured, forsooth -- you would be much more careful about saying things like this in public. You'd act like people did in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, when you really could be arrested in the middle of the night for nothing at all and then tortured or killed. You'd whisper these kinds of suspicions only to your most trusted friends, and certainly not blat them out carelessly on a public bulletin board for everyone to read -- including the government. The fact that you so easily and openly slam the government is the clearest possible proof that you don't really fear it.

Using this data, I summed the categories and plotted the totals. I see noise around a constant value from 1979 thru 1982 with a modest decrease for one year in 1983 that doesn't look like noise, followed by a *large* increase starting in 1984 and which peaks in 1994. The Clinton violent crime decline is significant through 2000, but then the slope flattens (but still declines.) The radical decrease during the Clinton administration is pretty amazing. It was during the time when the slope had begun to flatten that this trend came up in class. Without doubt the Clinton years where atypical, and to suggest that the crime rate has been declining since the 1980s is contrary to fact.

I am willing to qualify my statement this far, though: It would appear that my country is the most violent, per capita, of any industrialized nation on earth.

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.

"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey.

Not even the DOJ disputes that the program engaged in domestic surveillance.

I quote, you jackass:

The program only applies to communications where one party is located outside of the United States.

That's the whole damn controversy, here-- domestic surveillance without FISA warrants. Nobody except wingnut wackjobs are arguing that this has not occurred. The administration itself has taken the tack of inventing fatuous legal "justifications" involving the AUMF (which anyone with half a brain can see were conclusively kicked to the curb by the Supreme Court in Hamdan).

Furthermore, by all accounts this surveillance is performed by 'tapping' everything in sight and sorting it out later, so it's even worse than the DOJ admits it is.

If you don't understand what's going on, maybe you should refrain from assuming a position.

It's things like this that make me thank the gods for institutions like the ACLU and the EFF.

Even for mild offences like check kiting, or smoking dope. Whatever your sentence is you have to add being raped several times a week to it.
That's what passes for law and order here. Being raped for all crimes no matter how minor.

Prison rape isn't as prevalent as you might think. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/svrca04.htm Though I wouldn't want to be in the .3% that it does happen to. For that matter I don't want to be in the other 99.7% either.

Do I walk down the street and feel conscience of other people's skin color? No.
 
Well then you're a fool.
 
  Some people in America still might but it's only due to their ignorance.
 
Amazing how you liberal geeks trust stats and studies for something as speculative as global warming, but refuse to accept the empirical link between race and violent crime

That's why the most common reason why people are put in gaol ( jail for Yanks ) is for non-payment of medical bills.

Don't make stuff up, it tanks the credibility of the rest of what you're saying. Violent offenses make up over 50% of those sentenced to prison as of 2004. I've never heard of *anyone* going to jail because of non-payment of medical bills; it's incredibly rare as the system has a bunch of "safety nets" built in. There's plenty you can do before jail becomes relevant.

The US system is what everyone else in the western world points at, and say "at least we're not that fucked up yet".

Now, this part has more truth to it. The WHO lists the US as 37th in Healthcare, well below most other developed nations and 72nd in overall health (that's right down there with Iraq at 75th, althogh in the US's case obesity is probably largely the issue). Of course, this data is from 1997 and healthcare has changed since then, but you get the picture. Many people in the US are starting to go to India to have medical procedures done (yes this is true) because it's cheaper to fly to India and have an Indian doctor perform the surgery or whatever procedure than have a US doctor do it. See here if you're interested.

You come across as ignorant and pedantic. But I;ll give you the benefit of the doubt:

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

Here, have a nice read. Pay attention as to how carefull Judge Jackson defines Microsoft's monopoly. Read up and reply to this. I have been waiting for someone to actually tell me why Judge Jackson was wrong, but everyone seems to cower away when they get the facts. Pun intended...

To dig further into the numbers, in 2004, 11,344 people were murdered with a firearm in 2004. On the other hand, according to the NHTSA website, there were 38,253 fatal car crashes in 2004, killing 42,636 people, or well over 3 times as many people killed by automobiles as by firearms. According to your logic, we shouldn't be allowed to own cars, either, because if we didn't own cars, there wouldn't be so many of them in the country, and thus far fewer people killed, right?

Sounds more like you're the no brainer.

To dig further into the numbers, in 2004, 11,344 people were murdered with a firearm in 2004. On the other hand, according to the NHTSA website, there were 38,253 fatal car crashes in 2004, killing 42,636 people, or well over 3 times as many people killed by automobiles as by firearms. According to your logic, we shouldn't be allowed to own cars, either, because if we didn't own cars, there wouldn't be so many of them in the country, and thus far fewer people killed, right?

Sounds more like you're the no brainer.

• Purchased from 13.9
• • Retail store 8.3
  • Pawnshop 3.8
  • Flea market 1.0
  • Gun show 0.7
• Friends or family 39.6
• Street/illegal source 39.2

You are an idiot. Because the statistics simply don't agree with you.

But you're also an idiot because legislating gun laws isn't going to do a damn bit of good. 80% of guns used in crimes (That's eight-zero-percent) were purchased or obtained through illegal means.

Plus, guns were used in only 6% of the 4.8 MILLION violent crimes that took place in 2004. (Also from the same website).

That's okay though, you're probably the same guy who thinks it's okay that the government is spying on its citizens and shredding our constitution as long as it makes you safer. Insert applicable Liberty / Security / deserve neither quote here.

You are an idiot. Because the statistics simply don't agree with you.

But you're also an idiot because legislating gun laws isn't going to do a damn bit of good. 80% of guns used in crimes (That's eight-zero-percent) were purchased or obtained through illegal means.

Plus, guns were used in only 6% of the 4.8 MILLION violent crimes that took place in 2004. (Also from the same website).

That's okay though, you're probably the same guy who thinks it's okay that the government is spying on its citizens and shredding our constitution as long as it makes you safer. Insert applicable Liberty / Security / deserve neither quote here.

A punk kid getting what's coming to him in the form of thirty years in the slammer, now that's worth the three million dollars to incarcerate him. When 2036 rolls around, boy, won't he have learned his lesson.

It's a good thing we have people like you who aren't willing to make the slighest effort to do anything and prefer to throw money that doesn't belong to you at any problem that comes your way. And what a great solution it is: prison really works!

The constitution says "speech". An interactive simulation isn't speech

This law is prohibiting the distribution of text speech.

I am a programmer, a software author. I write software - I write nothing but text. Whetehr it is English language or French language or Chinese language Pascal language or Cobol Language or 6502 opcode language or Pentium opcode language, it is all nothing but pure text. I sell copies of that pure text, and retail stores resell those copies of pure text. Just because you do not happen to be fluent in reading Chinese or reading Pentium opcodesdoes not make a difference. The fact that I can read the contents of a software CD better that you can does not change the fact that it is text and speech.

Your point is already legally dead. Courts have explicitly ruled numerous times that software is indeed "speech" covered under the 1st Amendment.

It just happens to be specially stylized text that some computers are able to read and follow. Text that, if you choose to do so, you can stick into your home computer and get an interesting result. You can "interact" with your own computer after sticking this text into it. So what?

The trying to divide software from "speech" is entirely nonsensical. Computers can read and carry out (some) pure English sentence texts. That pure English is ...as you call it... "interactive". Are you suggesting that a pure English text magically loses it's "speech"-ness when a computer is capable of reading and following those pure English sentences? In fact any software can be described in detail in pure English (there exist tools to automatically generate pure English descriptions of programs), and a computer can execute that English text (there exists interpreters to directly read and execute appropriately written English descriptions).

you have no right to shout FIRE in a crowded theater

That is one of the worst and most missleading cliches about free speech. It is in fact NOT illegal to shout fire in a movie theater. It's not even illegal for me to say I'll give you $10,000 to kill my wife. You know what, I'll give you $10,000 to kill my wife.

There are however entirely non-speech laws making it criminal to do things like deliberately causing the death or injury of people.

If you are in a movie theater with a script and film crew, it is as I said perfectly legal to shout fire in that movie theater because you have no intent or expectation that anyone will be injured. It is impossible to pass a law against the speech itself. It is only nonspeech crimes, or the intent to cause non-speech crimes to occur, which can be criminal.

Here's a link to an excellent report commissined by the US Senate from the DOJ stating that Congress does not have the power to establish any law prohibiting distribution of bomb making instructions. The report explains in detail why no such law can ever be created. It explains that distributing bomb making instructings is itself Constitutionally protected, and that the most congress can do is make laws against the non-speech crime of intending to cause a real non-speech crime by means of that delivering that bomb making information, and law against giving that information to some particular person with actual knowledge that that person intends to use it to commit an actual non-speech crime. (The latter is aiding and abetting the commission of a crime.) I can post (and often *have* posted) the recipie for Nitroglicerine right here on Slashdot, and no law can ever be created to prohibit it.

P.S.
I don't have a wife. I had no intent or expectation to cause the death of anyone when I said I'd give you $10,000 to kill my wife, therefore there was no crime. The speech itself was perfectly legal. And even if I did have a wife, I fully expect that you and everyone else was aware that I was making a point and that there was no intent or expectation to actually cause any death or injury to anyone.

-

Wrong. This about privacy, not data. We all have a right to privacy, it is already the law.

http://www.usdoj.gov/foia/privstat.htm

That's a myth. Most sexual assaults are committed by someone non-related but who is known to the victim, but that covers anything from family friend, to neighbor, to classmate, to someone you talk to on the bus every day. The only group in which a majority of sexual assaults are committed by a family member is 0-5 year old females, and that's understandable considering how rarely a child of that age is out of the direct supervision of a family memeber. Yet even in that age range "majority" is just 51.8% (0-5 males are only 42.4%). See this US Dept of Justice report for nearly all the sexual assault data you could possibly want, the numbers I've quoted come from page 13.

Microsoft broke the law with regards to how a monopoly is allowed to use its market dominance to break into other markets.

• News release announcing the arrests
• Complaint filed against Edwin Pena
• Complaint filed against Robert Moore

Dan York
Best Practices Chair, VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA)
Producer & Co-host, Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

• News release announcing the arrests
• Complaint filed against Edwin Pena
• Complaint filed against Robert Moore

Dan York
Best Practices Chair, VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA)
Producer & Co-host, Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

• News release announcing the arrests
• Complaint filed against Edwin Pena
• Complaint filed against Robert Moore

Dan York
Best Practices Chair, VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA)
Producer & Co-host, Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

I found the Criminal Information Protection Act which codifies classified information in a trial, but as I expected it is completely written in the context of the government being the plaintiff when they need to use classified information to convict a defendant of espionage, terrorism or leaking. You see the government will divulge classified information to nail you but they wont allow you to use classified information to nail them.

Having researched it I agree that the government will try to just use the state-secret privilege so Hayden wont even make it to the stand. If by some miracle the judge doesn't cave to it and Hayden does have to testify then I assume either CIPA will have to come in to play and be bent to this novel case, or Hayden will just refuse to answer any questions that would divulge classified information because it would in fact incriminate him in the process if he did it in a public court.

The Wikipedia article on the states-secret privilege is quite interesting and probably more interesting than the WSJ article.

Its not even a law, its just a precedent that was established during the McCarthy era where the Air Force used it, apparently fraudulently, to cover up the fact a B-29 crash was due to poor maintenance of the air plane, and was basicly negligence on the part of the Air Force.

"In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 2000, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case."

Just goes to show you that once you let your government establish an illegal and unconstitutional precedent, during times of war or paranoia, to screw you, they can continue to abuse it forever. The Bush administration has been successfully using the fact that Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war to justify denying American citizens basic due process today, and that FDR spied on American cables in World War II to justify spying on Americans now indefinitely.

Another interesting invocation of the "state-secret privilege" was in 2005 in a patent suit brought against none other than AT&T. Apparently a company called Crater Corp thinks AT&T is violating its patents for "WetMate underwater fiber optic coupling devices" which I'm guessing is probably being used by the U.S. to tap and evesdrop on fiber optic cables on the ocean floor. I would assume it must be used for tapping otherwise it wouldn't be classified. Now the U.S. has used underwater tapping technology against the Soviet Union for a long time, both on copper and fiber optic cables, but I bet you the NSA in concert with the U.S. Navy is underwater tapping any fiber optic cable they can't eavesdrop on land with the help of U.S. phone companies. It would be an interesting case to tack in to this case against AT&T.

The "state-secret privilege" was also use to defeat a case brought by Maher Arar, the Canadian detained by the U.S. at a New York Airport on his way home to Canada. You probably remember reading about it here on slashdot. He was shipped by the U.S. to Syria where he was abused for a year or so before Canada finally managed to free him. His crime as best I remember was he signed as a reference on a lease for a friend of a family member

According to the DEA Chemical Handler's Manual, sulfuric acid is a List II Chemical. That means it is one of the chemicals which tends to be diverted to illicit drug labs.

Evidently sulfuric acid gets exported to South America for the manufacture of cocaine. It seems that DEA imposes List II regulatory requirements on all exports, transshipments, and international transactions involving 50 gallons or more of sulfuric acid to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, or Venezuela.

Actually, "Conspiracy Against Rights" (18 USC 241/242) already covers this. The penalty for conspiring to deprive people of their constitutional rights (passed during the civil rights era) is up to 10 years in prison. If kidnapping (would unlawful imprisonment qualify?) is involved, or someone dies as a result, the maximum penalty is death.

See for yourself:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/241fin.htm

-b.

The regulations should control how much you can buy.

Yeah, we tried that. As a result of the lame-ass Patriot Act, allergy sufferers must tie their schedule to that of the pharmacy. Consider the following:

• Thanks to Asscraft, each person is limited to purchasing 9g of pseudoephedrine every 30 days.
• A 30 day supply of Allegra-D contains 7.2g.
• You must present a government-issued ID to purchase Allegra-D.
• Imagine a family in which both parents have allergies, as does their 14-year-old daughter.
• The family needs 21.6g of pseudoephedrine, but are limited to purchasing 18g.

I guess allergies are about as unpatriotic as you can get.

Aside from this being patently illegal...

Is it, now?

The only statute the President claims as authority is the Congressional authorization for the use of force. He says that as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces he can order it.

Does it really need to be spelled out further? Here: he says it's a military operation, so he can ignore all those other laws that say he can't do it. He doesn't dare use the common term for that authority, and nobody else in a position of responsibility wants to use the words either. "Martial law" tends to provoke rather emotional reactions.

Up until now, getting phone records does not require a warrant.

No doubt that last is the provision the Administration found ... inconvenient ... and it's easy to find sympathy for the initial transgression. I can still do that: cut them a break, ok?

But my sympathy and what they're doing now is exactly why we have a Constitution: the good guys might "need" it to start with, but it never stops there, and the crimes it permits are far worse than the crimes it prevents.

And no, I haven't forgotten. I saw the towers fall too. They're going after people who say things they don't like, and now you can't hide. These are men who'll try to hurt you if you do that. If they can't find a way to wreck your career, they'll go after your family.

Ok, now explain away the other symptoms of increased violence - like eight year old shooting other eight year olds on a regular basis. Or road rage. Etc... Etc... (Or consider the fact that most of the shootings to date have been by the disaffected - not by the preppie set that experience most of this pressure.)

I really wish you'd shut up about increased violence already:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

How do you have 'symptoms of increased violence' when violent crime is actually on the decline?? I'm not going to bother to respond to the rest of your drivel, if you can't even get your facts straight.

you are correct, the stats say

"The rate of violent crime victimization in the United States declined by more than half between the years 1994 and 2001."

so we could extrapolate from that the rise of the violent FPS Video games (circa 1994-2006) has contributed to a significant drop in the level of violent crime (as the DOJ doesnt say what is actually responsible for the large drop in numbers)

of course we can prove anything with statistics but something is working, or they are all in jail (1 in 136 us citizens is in prison)

Aj

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/offage.htm (showing the decline in teen violence) is one of the most interesting web pages I've seen in a long time. I'm sure you could draw a mirror line showing the rise in consumption of video games.

Question is, where is the games industry's PR team? Where are the full-page ads showing this data? Why aren't they going out and claiming that video games are saving the nation from teen violence - by allowing teens to harmlesslessly burn off their aggression?

Even if most people didn't beleive it, at least it would create another end to the debate - at the moment politicians can use games as an easy thing to rant on about, because the games industry won't say boo to them. Even saying "well, we only sell them to adults" implies that this stuff is like porn - it's obviously vile, but at least we don't pollute kids. This is the perfect set up for politicos to compare games to cigarettes.

(One problem for the PR team of course would be that that so many entities profit from creating a climate of fear in which everything appears to be getting worse. But that's another topic.)

Even the title of this excellent article - "don't blame the games, blame the parents" - plays along with such a trend, because it implies there is a growing problem for which a cause must be found. In fact there seems to be a declining problem - so who should we thank?

Come on games industry - think about something other than piracy for once, and use this data to start defending yourselves properly...

If the MPAA did what is alleged, it is a felony violation of 18 U.S.C 2701, Chapter 121Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Act. Please dont take my word for it here's a link to an official government site. As they contracted for it a conspiracy may have taken place.

Actually, I agree that piracy is wrong. Be that as it may, two wrongs do not make a right, just two wrongs. Why isn't the FBI investigating alleged felonious conduct by the MPAA? As a champion of the law, I trust you would support such an investigation, let the chips fall where they may? If pirating movies is wrong (agreed), why aren't GPL violations wrong? Do you agree?

Microsoft was found, as a conclusion of law, to have violated U.S.C 15 Sect. 2. The relevant quote from that link:

ORDERED, ADJUDGED, and DECLARED, that Microsoft has violated [...]2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. Sect.[...]2

Here is the full text of section 2:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

Now, it may be that having the case brought as a "Civil Action" makes my use of the word "criminal" incorrect. It also occurs to me that there's a legal distinction between the men who direct a company and the company itself. So, to that extent, I'll retract my statement, apologize and confess to ignorance.

Somehow, replacing ~MS management~ with ~the company MS management direct~, and ~convicted criminal~ with ~convicted of felony conduct~, just doesn't seem to make any real difference in meaning. But I do thank you. In future conversation I'll use the excruciatingly correct terminology.

So, to repeat: to whatever extent my post based on that information constitutes ignorance, or groupthink, I apologize.

A reference for all interested:

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/April/03_ag_266.h tm

Quote:

"Problem #3: Past Legal Obstacles Have Made Prosecuting Child Pornography Cases Very Difficult. Last year, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a federal law that criminalized the possession of "virtual" child pornography, i.e., materials whose production may not have involved the use of real children. This decision has made it immeasurably more difficult to eliminate the traffic in real child pornography. ....

Solution #3: Strengthen the Laws Against Child Pornography in Ways that Can Survive Constitutional Review. Among other provisions, the bill will:

Revise and strengthen the prohibition on 'virtual' child pornography. "

Reminds me of a site that used to run a few years back. When it got shut down the

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_72 6.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/mantovani Indict.htm

Upon shutting down the operation, the USS put up a defacement of sorts, viewable here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041128051935/http://w ww.shadowcrew.com/

Reminds me of a site that used to run a few years back. When it got shut down the

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_72 6.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/mantovani Indict.htm

Upon shutting down the operation, the USS put up a defacement of sorts, viewable here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041128051935/http://w ww.shadowcrew.com/

There is a huge amount of mainstream coverage of this.

NB: I listen to both liberal and conservative radio talk shows on and off, and touch base with both liberal and conservative press when I have the time to do so. In the interestes of full disclosure, I'm pretty jaded about our media.

In general, the liberal portions of the press are formally outraged, but are conveniently ignoring Title 18 USC 2701 (c)(1) http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/usc2701.h tm, which permits the corporations to *voluntarily* disclose these records to anyone they want, including the estranged husbands of battered women, if it suits them.

While the conservative portions of the media are protesting that the operations are perfectly legal, but not pointing to this as a voluntary disclosure (the companies involved were in fact paid $$$ to "volunteer" the records), and are themselves ignoring the fourth ammendment issues and the common law privacy rights issues surrounding the constitutionality of Title 18 USC 2701 (c)(1) in the first place.

Meanwhile, everyone is ignoring the fact that there are two sets of surveillance operations: one, which broke in the news months ago, having to do with actual communications intercepts, and this more recent one, which has to do with collection of information for traffic analysis (and from that, subsequent social network analysis built on top of that).

The liberal side is trying to paint this traffic analysis as if the "communications records" in question were actual recordings of conversations, rather than endpoint identification and call duration; the conservative side is still defending everything as being perfectly legal and above board (techincally, they are correct about the legality, from my reading of the laws, but whether or not this is "above board" really relies on whether the laws being used to collect the information are in fact constitutional).

Nobody is addressing whether or not the Patriot Act provisions mean this same information can be used by law enforcement for non-terrorist related criminal investigations, or what the implications are for tarring people with the same brush, if they happen to have a black sheep in their family who keeps in touch, and therefore associates them with a legitimately identified criminal social network.

I also haven't heard anyone talking about whether or not standard traffic analysis fuzzing techniques are being utilized by The Bad Guys(tm), like intentionally identifying phone numbers associated with groups, and calling them from within multiple points in a covert terrorist network, to link the networks together, and therefore either (a) hide in plain sight, or (b) broaden the target list sufficiently that the investigative requirements would be prohibitive. All it would take is different people calling from the same phone number to the same network connection point with a "wrong number" and being excessively chatty to get the connection time up.

Nobody in the media is talking about what happens when these records, if they are shared, are mined after the fact to provide overwhelming circumstantial evidence in the pursuit of a personal vendetta against a private citizen by a minor official.

All in all, it's a standard media feeding-frenzy, with a lot of noise, no one touching any of the important issues (might kill the goose that laid the golden egg, doing that...), and both sides posturing in no provable or disprovable way that might end up stopping the fun before the subject has been milked for all the public attention that they can wring out of it.

Hope that answers your question.

FWIW: I think my cynicism here is fairly representative of most average "man on the street" U.S. Citizens. Don't take the actions of our government, or the distorted cartoons of those actions, as represented by our media, at face value, and don't take them as being representative of U.S. Citizens in general; we aren't the jackasses our media makes us out to be.

-- Terry