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Address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
202-456-1111
president@whitehouse.gov

Salary: $400,000

Health Data

And here's his attourney

Translation: For those living "in the public life," there is no expectation of privacy, so to expect those in public life to understand the motivation of those of us who appreciate privacy to keep it is like talking about being poor to someone who has been rich all their life: They just can't understand. Heck, the news media mentiones when the President has a physical. Some congressional districts probably do this for their representatives too. This is probably only one of the reasons privacy advocates have a hard time pleading their cause in the US.

What protections from our government do you think we have?

You at least, presumably, have some sort of military or treaty to protect you, as long as you don't come over here.

I wanted them to LGPL the source code to everyone except PC manufacturers. The source would be open forever but without allowing vertical markets to form. Just think of the innovation we'd see then...

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

Laws can chage and acts like the NET act have changed the definition.

This goes straight to what Microsoft is famous for, "Embrace[ing] and Extend[ing]". It finds itself behind in a market and uses any means necessary to become the leader...

Apple - steals code from Quicktime. Apple settles by selling 50% of non-controllable stock to MS

IBM - develops OS/2 and then takes most of it's core to develop NT.

Sun - develops a standalone JVM implementation that "extends" Java's function... Extended to the point that code written for it only works on Windows. MS finally loses ensuing lawsuit, then strands developers by removing MS Java completely from XP and it's website.

Dr-DOS - adds code that causes a beta copy of Win3.11 to bomb when used under DRDOS. This code doesn't appear in the final release, but this and their anti-competitive actions against DRDOS in Germany, are enough to kill DR-DOS completely. Caldera later wins several lawsuits against MS. Currently, it is alleged that MS has agreements with Caldera to cast Linux in a bad light.

... The list goes on and on, with lots of other smaller companies losing their technologies to MS. MS is a company that cannot be trusted either as a business partner, or as a competitor.

Also see the Privacy Protection Act, 42 USC 2000aa, which limits searches and seizures of "publishers", defined very broadly. Rackspace could have said no.

This is clear prior restraint and a First Amendment violation. No treaty can override that. Remember, the Patriot Act gag order provisions were ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court last week. Further use of those provisions by the Government is questionable and may be illegal.

This is clear prior restraint and a First Amendment violation. No treaty can override that. Remember, the Patriot Act gag order provisions were ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court last week. Further use of those provisions by the Government is questionable and may be illegal.

We have seen multiple times that tightly controlled markets tend to do worse than markets that are more free.

And I can point to a number of other times when a tightly-held monopoly has run amok and trampled the rights of the consumer underfoot.

You can go back a hundred years, or a hundred days for more evidence of this.

Even those countries that have legalized drugs (and sex) have found that such a decision isn't "consequence free" for the individuals nor society.

However, my search results surprised me. The first page I managed to come up with was this, that says: "Fact 9: Europe's more liberal drug policies are not the right model for America. The Legalization Lobby claims that the "European Model" of the drug problem is successful. However, since legalization of marijuana in Holland, heroin addiction levels have tripled. And Needle Park seems like a poor model for America."

So I refined my search terms a bit. Here is a Dutch page about heroin use. Indeed, the amount of heroin users grew from about 10000 in 1977 to 30000 in 1983, but has remained quite stable since and the number of users (in 1998) is estimated to be 25000.

And it struck me, ingenious propaganda that first link was. Indeed, the number of users tripled (albeit has been reducing in recent years), but it could have said as well "the amount of heroin users in the Netherlands has remained constant for 20 years". Which doesn't sound that bad does it?

I am not saying any of this as a racist. I don't think the problem is the "white man" but instead a problem within the black community, specifically the poor family structure. According to planned parenthood

Each year, approximately 19 percent of black women, 13 percent of Hispanic women, and eight percent of white women aged 15-19 become pregnant

The proportion of all births that occurred to unmarried women was 22.1 percent for white women, unchanged from 1999; it declined for black women from 69.1 to 68.7 percent. Among births to Hispanic women, the proportion increased from 42.2 to 42.7 percent

IMO, when the black community can fix these problems, they will experience the same success rate as anyone else. For example, according to the Census Bureau

Black households had the lowest median income. Their 2003 median money income was about $30,000, which was 62 percent of the median for White households (about $48,000).

Median money income for Hispanic households was about $33,000 in 2003, which was 69 percent of the median for White households.

Asian households had the highest median income among the race groups. Their 2003 median money income was about $55,500, 117 percent of the median for White households.

The above was not to start a flame or be racist. It is just MHO on what is causing the biggest issues in the black community; those being high crime percentage, high percentage of out of wedlock child births and poor family structure. Affirmative action won't fix these problems. No government social policy would fix these problems. Each Black American will need to make the change for themselves, and then they as a community can have unlimited success like any other American.

ECHELON used to listen in to unencrypted satallite traffic and undersee cables. (Places you can listen without gething cought, it was designed against rusians and their friends remember). The point of the ukusa community is to intercept satallites the usa cant get.

I think it is unlikely that collection systems involved echelon have been extended to listen into more then what CALEA allows (telephone networks with the help of telephone companies). As even doing CALEA richt isn`t easy acording to the general acounting office I doubt it is integrated into echelon... but this is a tinfoil hat thread for a reason.

The thing is connecting sattalite traffic to people is easy, connecting IP traffic on a backbone to people is not that easy. So looking for voip traffic on a few backbone mostly going to outside the USA isn`t gonna do much good if you hava a warrant for a specific persons phone traffic.

The point of these laws is to make sure people cant avoid being listened into by police (with a warrant, easy to get and extend though) or by TLA`s (without anyone knowing, let alone a judge) by using skype or even cheaper VoIP systems. Sofar these systems fall outside CALEA. The goal is not to to tap into a suspects internet traffic just for the internet traffic. The biggest police snooping country in the world is probably the only country in the world that has a dedicated system forced on providers to tap into any IP traffic. Guess? guess again? its the Netherlands with 10.000 telephone taps a year (scoresheet, great round numbers).

Perhaps you are thinking of carnivore. Since "carnivore, the crappy sniffer for screwing up importand investigations without any regard for integrity of evidence or civil liberties" sound bad... Lets call it dcs2000 and solve this problem once and for all.

1. Justice Department blocks M$'s acquisition of Intuit Quicken in 1994, fearing it would raise software prices and diminish innovation
   
2. embracing Sun's Java into their own Windows-specific API which resulted in a lawsuit that ended in Sun's favor
   
3. the infamous Halloween memos that outlined M$ strategy to blocking Linux from the market
4. The web browser war against Netscape now Mozilla
5. M$ was found to be bankrolling the SCO/IBM/Linux debacle against the open source movement
   
6. neutralizing w3c compliance by distributing Windows-eccentric webpage API libraries that lock Internet webpages into IE
7. ITEF rejecting M$ patent pending proprietary Sender-ID as too restrictive and puts too much control into M$'s hands
8. A list of M$ innovations^W plagliarisms
   

1. Justice Department blocks M$'s acquisition of Intuit Quicken in 1994, fearing it would raise software prices and diminish innovation
   
2. embracing Sun's Java into their own Windows-specific API which resulted in a lawsuit that ended in Sun's favor
   
3. the infamous Halloween memos that outlined M$ strategy to blocking Linux from the market
4. The web browser war against Netscape now Mozilla
5. M$ was found to be bankrolling the SCO/IBM/Linux debacle against the open source movement
   
6. neutralizing w3c compliance by distributing Windows-eccentric webpage API libraries that lock Internet webpages into IE
7. ITEF rejecting M$ patent pending proprietary Sender-ID as too restrictive and puts too much control into M$'s hands
8. A list of M$ innovations^W plagliarisms
   

• Crisis intervention.
• Emergency shelter.
• Emergency transportation.
• Counseling.
• Criminal justice advocacy.

• You don't need any sort of training or a license to purchase an automobile, and you're not required to register it.
• When you buy a car there's no background check, regardless of whether you buy it from a dealer or a private seller.
• You can buy any sort of car you want, and make any kind of modifications to it that you want, without violating any laws (with the caveat that you may run afoul of emissions laws in your state.)
• The ONLY time you need to register the car and obtain a license is when you want to drive the car on the public roads.

The Department of Justice begs to differ...

Asnwer this then: 1/5th the gun deaths in Canada compared to the US. We watch your shows, we listen to your music, we buy the same cars, food, etc. Except we have very strict handgun laws, and you don't. We even have the same % of rifle ownership as the US per capita, its just the limited access to handguns and assualt-style semi-automatics that makes up the difference.

Like someone else said, there are far less people in Canada. So lets compare the statistics on an even playing field. 1. In 2001, there were 842 gun deaths in Canada ( source.)
2. In 2002, there were 10857 gun deaths in the United State. ( source.)
3. The population of Canada in 2001 was 30,007,094. ( source.)
4. The (estimated) population of the United States in 2004 is 293,027,571. (source.)

I've done all the hard math, and this is what I came up with:
The United States has 9.765 times the population of that of Canada. So, we multipy Canada's murder rate by that number, and we come up with 8222 gun deaths. Again, the US gun death rate is 10857. While the number is still about 2500 deaths lower for Canada, no statistic can take into account the fact that the US has far more urban areas with more people packed more tightly together than Canada. That is, to say, it's a lot easier to take 4 steps in the US and shoot someone than it is in Northern Alberta... your next door neighbor could be 4 miles away.

So why is the Native American Church allowed peyote (http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/cfr/1307/ 1307_31.htm), but for the rest of us it's a DEA schedule I
(http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/csa/812.htm)
dr ug?

So why is the Native American Church allowed peyote (http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/cfr/1307/ 1307_31.htm), but for the rest of us it's a DEA schedule I
(http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/csa/812.htm)
dr ug?

CNN clearly shows that gun crime is way down, even Gun Nuts agree that the rate of gun crime is way down, and the Justice Department numbers back this up.

Saying the rate would have dropped anyway is disingenuous as it is totally un-provable. We can't say that the bill prevented crime %100, but we can be %99.9 sure that that is the case.

It's been reported the government is acting almost serious about spam as a criminal enterprise lately (although not as serious as it is about other so-called crimes).

The government's misguided priorities aside, I wonder if the government hasn't finally woken up and begun to consider spam for what it really is, a criminal conspiracy, and rightly defining "criminal conspiracy" to include people knowingly and willingly providing services that furthered the conspiracy.

Rather than actually taking the time to file genuine RICO cases, perhaps they are threatening them (or at least laying out a pretty solid criminal conspiracy cases in the more obvious situations) and some of the people playing ball with spammers aren't going to get scared out of doing that.

Not everyone will get scared, but if enough did, it might just cut off enough of the air supply to spamming to tip the balance in the direction of making spam too expensive and not portable enough to work. It wouldn't go away 100%, but it would be back to the levels of the late 90s when it was far less pervasive.

Anyone can walk around freely and voice opinions in a police state, just as anyone can commit crimes in a law-abiding society. The real question is: what rights can you fall back on when the police take exception to your activities? If the law and the courts can protect you against the police, then you live in a reasonably free society. If not, then you live in a police state, even if it's a comfy, prosperous police state where few people ever find themselves in that position.

You want facts? If the police arrest you without cause, hold you without trial or even charges, deny you access to counsel, conduct secret proceedings, and contradict the courts, then citizens are fundamentally defenseless.

I have traveled in the Middle East, eastern Europe, and Cuba, all of which have a much higher police presence and authority than the U.S., and I traveled freely, spoke freely, and spent freely in all of those places. Of course, I was never arrested, so I never had the opportunity to experience the police state apparatus directly. And so my experience of those countries was universally that they were warm, beautiful places full of nice people. A lot like America.

Here is the DOJ memo announcing this arrest, quite possibly the only document the DoJ has released with both Ashcorft's name on it and the spelling of warez with a "Z" http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2001/December/01_crm_6 43.htm

MS is spending money, giving it to slashdot/OSDN, to advertise products that 90%+ of the readership isn't interested in, and you're somehow upset about this?

They spend money to gain nothing; OSDN/slashdot gain money and lose nothing.

If the cost of maintaining this site depends on the advertising revenue, MS could gain a hand in censorship. The fact that this site coined the phrase "Slashdot effect" means that it requires a lot of bandwidth, which probably costs heaps considering that the Slashdot effect can even take down professionally hosted sites from what I've seen. The readership can only get bigger, and so will the expenses, and the dependency on whoever the revenue comes from. MS throws money away at staged case studies that reach pre-determined conclusions in favor of MS. Using their deep pockets as leverege to silence critics wouldn't be out of character for the lawbreaking monopoly. They could be, in a sense, simply be adhering to their old pattern of using their dominant position and deep pockets in attempting to "gain market share"- but in this case, that would be the "market share" of Slashdot's revenue.

M$ is a bunch of criminals. You'd think that companies wouldn't want to to business with criminals. But then again, I guess they get forced to just as was found in the findings of fact. Business as usual for microsoft.

As mentioned by one of the other posters...all crimes are artificial.

Many have made the claim that it is not "theft". Actually, even in the eyes of the law it is "theft". Please see the "No Electronic Theft" act at Department of Justice Website.

Even though I believe the "it's not theft, it's copyright infringement" argument to be bunk, this act clearly defines it as "theft". In a legal sense.

"Today's enforcement action is the latest step in our ongoing effort to combat piracy occurring on the Internet," said Christopher A. Wray, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. "This is the first federal law enforcement action against criminal copyright infringement using peer-to-peer networks and shows that we are committed to combating piracy, regardless of the medium used to commit these illegal acts."

"Today we are sending a clear message that federal law enforcement takes piracy seriously," said U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein. "It is illegal to trade in copyright-protected materials on the Internet. This is theft, plain and simple. If you are engaged in this behavior, you are on notice that you are not as anonymous as you may think."

Is copyright 'enforcement' a civil matter or not? I don't get the whole 'arbitrary enforcement' thing the DOJ is doing.

No arrests - just confiscating your stuff.

Vote.

Customize 2k before installing files and instuctions

Uninstall IE and OE, etc from a 2k machine that already has them

Customize Win2k, 2k3, XP before installing

Welcome to the Government of Men.

Unfortunately, the Judges appear to be with Them.

Yes, you do. It's called first sale doctrine

The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner.

You don't remember that little 9-11 thing?

We remember it. We remember that the hijackers all had legitimate, government issued IDs in their own names. We remember that knowing who they were didn't give the government any capability, or desire, to stop them. We remember that a few of them (five?) were on a watch list, but the vast majority of them (certainly more than enough to bring down the WTC) were not.

We also remember that our government has killed far more Americans than Al Qada ever dreamed of killing. See this page. Al Qada may be more ambitious, but our government has more opportunity. Even if their intentions are good, just by accident, our government is going to do a lot of harm, so we would need to limit their power. We certainly have no reason to believe that our government's intentions are good, or that, if they were good, that they would remain that way.

Finally, trivially, we have the fact that the ID requirements allow the airlines to practice price discrimination.

yes

Find me a court decision where Microsoft was decreed to be a "monopoly."
Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market. Note that this was a finding of fact, not a finding of law.

A company doesn't have to be a monopoly to break anti-trust law. If it did, then why did the government bother to sue Microsoft? Clearly MS isn't a monopoly; they have Mac and Linux to worry about, among other OSes.

From the DOJ Antitrust Division's website:

[The anti-trust laws] prohibit a variety of practices that restrain trade, such as price-fixing conspiracies, corporate mergers likely to reduce the competitive vigor of particular markets, and predatory acts designed to achieve or maintain monopoly power.
[Emphasis added.]
--http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/overview.html

Rob

It's like Real have lived under some kind of rock for the past six years. I'm sure they've employed this a few times themselves. Is there a different captain at the helm, oe with a Napoleon hat perhaps?

Of course, it could be argued that Apple is approaching a monopoly status with the iPod and should open it up. Given the dislike others have expressed with Real Networks, they must be truly wrestling with their sentiments on this one.

boy, I don't know... check out this link. Looks pretty official to me.

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/cac/pr2004/050.html/ Here's the DOJ's press release for the charges. It's starting to make sence why the Patriot Act was used. This guy was told to take down the episode download and he moved the site overseas. Websites like this can make a TON of money off of Amazon affliate programs and the like. While I doubt he's a terrorist or criminal master mind, this guy had to know what he was doing was wrong and he risked getting raided by the FBI. A lot of fan sites are threatend with that if they don't comply with the C&D orders sent to them. This guy deserves what he gets, what a moron.

What the summary and the biased sob story from Adam, otherwise known as "Arcady" leaves out is that he was hosting full length versions of every SG-1 episode for download . This isn't some nebulous copyright infrigement case of him using logos or names improperly. He was unabashedly and blatantly hosting copyrighted content, i.e. the shows themselves, for download. Somehow he neglects to mention that in his little bullshit "summary", and that when he was ordered to stop, he moved the episodes to a server overseas (and of course slashdot swallows the PATRIOT garbage hook, line, and sinker). The charges were felony trafficking of counterfeit goods and misdemeanor copyright infringement.

The Patriot Act amended many laws that were already on the books that were not directly related to "national security." (Amendements to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are just one example.) Waving that flag around is just a misunderstanding of the Act.

Rambus, it was revealed during the trial, charges a 3.5 percent royalty on DDR DRAM and a 0.75 percent royalty on SDRAM, fairly high by industry standards. In the end, that means Rambus gets about $2 per PC with DDR DRAM and 17 to 20 cents of SDRAM-equipped PCs.

MS wants to get paid a cut for every PC sold.

Virtually all major PC manufacturers find it necessary to offer Microsoft operating systems on most of their PCs. Microsoft's monopoly power allows it to induce these manu- facturers to enter into anticompetitive, long-term licenses under which they must pay royalties to Microsoft not only when they sell PCs containing Microsoft's operating systems, but also when they sell PCs containing non-Microsoft operating systems.

With Rambus it was all about the money.

But MS already has an incredible cash cow, so with microsoft, its all about control. Most of the shenanigins we see are just BG making sure no body screws with that cow. Tying future versions of a 100% standards compliant email server to windows would be one such way.

Try writing microsoft to get a license for an opensource, gpl'd, linux based email server compatible with "sendit-id".

There wont be a lawsuit. No theatrics, no RABMUS or SCO styled lawsuits. But there also wont be that license. Because by default, the new "standard" will not be compatible with GPL.

MS wins without a fight. Look to see alot more of MS tactics like this one.

That's Daniel Baas' conviction. They claimed 5.8 Million in his case in damages.

"Baas faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 or twice the amount of gain or loss, and three years of supervised release."

This for 1 count. This new guy has a buttload of indictments and will be wishing he got Daniel's penalty.

THIS WAS NOT AN INSIDE JOB. Two people from different parts of the country were "hacking" Acxiom at the same time, using the same vulnerability. Neither of them even knew each other. Acxiom's security was a flaming turd.

Search all the Daniel Baas articles and you will find he cracked a password file they had in a public directory on the ftp server. This guy did the same thing. Acxiom should be shutdown for their stupidity.

Umm, you don't know that, at least in the U.S.A., as the data here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm seems to show. From the section under "Offenders", it looks as if most guns used in crimes were obtained non-legitimately/illegally. Interesting also to note that though guns are more numerous than ever, both in totals and in per-person in the U.S.A., gun crime rates seem to be steadily declining, and have been for some time. Makes one wonder what *else* the people who are always in such a hurry to illegalise something 'know'. Just my USD$0.02 Strat

on April 15 2004, Sun's James Gosling, in response to this article and some "slashdot flamage" from the same author, blogged in More on Sun & Microsoft

My last blog entry stirred up a lot of commentary and flamage (and some of the flamage was entertainingly wild: I love the Internet!). Reading through it, it's clear that there's still confusion about the meaning of our "collaboration" agreement with Microsoft.

While it is true that as a part of it we did sign up for Microsoft's Communications Protocol Program that is a part of the US v. Microsoft case, our full agreement both modifies and expands on it to give us a much more broad and useful agreement. It is important to understand that in no way does this lock Sun or Sun customers into interoperating with any Microsoft system on Microsoft's strict terms. Right now, most of our interoperability is achieved through reverse-engineering. We have the option, entirely at our discretion, to access Microsoft's specifications through the collaboration agreement. But before we do so, on a case-by-case basis, we will do an analysis of the business case for the entanglements that such access implies (principally confidentiality and royalties). Right now, the vast majority of the software that we (Sun) produce has free and open specifications and we provide the implementations of a large and growing fraction of it as open source. We are not going to slow down our involvement in the open source community. Right now we have launched no projects that will access any Microsoft specifications under the agreement - we simply have the option to, if we decide that the benefits outweigh the costs.

The ADA prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunity for persons with disabilities in employment, State and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation. It also mandates the establishment of TDD/telephone relay services. (Public Law 336)

prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in all services, programs, and activities provided to the public by State and local governments, except public transportation services. (Title II)

prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in "places of public accommodation" (businesses and non-profit agencies that serve the public) and "commercial facilities" (other businesses). (Title III)

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: THE USA PATRIOT ACT AT WORK

Evidently the Patriot Act is working on a scale not yet approaching:

~ 3000 murdered on 9-11

American Victims of Mideast Terrorist Attacks approximately 700 Americans have been killed and 1,600 wounded in terrorist attacks since 1970. This list also includes injured Americans since Oslo 1993

120,000 Americans of Japanese origin who were detained (not tortured a la Saddam, not abused a la frat party hijinks in Iraq) in American concentraion camps during WWII

The good guys are the ones that aren't convicted of breaking the law.

The second time around he was being held on the grounds that he absconded while on parole from his first criminal sentence (first as an adult).

If you commit a crime while on parole you go back to jail, if you abscond you go back to jail. The sentence does not 'time out' just because you absconded.

The feds did not need a charge because they already had a conviction.

From the DOJ: Kevin Mitnick, who pleaded guilty to a series of federal offenses related to a 2½-year computer hacking spree, was sentenced today to 46 months in federal prison, United States Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced.
Mitnick, 37, pleaded guilty in March to four counts of wire fraud, two counts of computer fraud and one count of illegally intercepting a wire communication. Mitnick's prolific and damaging hacking career, which made him the most wanted computer criminal in United States history, was ended when he was arrested in North Carolina in February 1995.

Kevin made a plea agreement. He admitted he was guilty to much more than the four specimen charges he was sentenced for. He has never claimed that he was innocent. If the DoJ had gone to trial on the original charges Kevin would still be in jail and would not be getting out for another 5-15 years.

Exactly how is a 46 month sentence for a second offense unfair? Kevin caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage by all accounts

Have a look at DOJ vs. United Dominion Enterprises . Now there's a company born to monopolise.

Perhaps if ARM renamed to "We determine your mobile phone cost" there'd be a little more interest.