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Coast Guard to Track Ships Using Buoys
nomrniceguy writes "The Coast Guard plans to use dozens of buoys off the U.S. coast to extend the reach of a security system that monitors large vessels heading in and out of ports. The buoys are intended to extend the network's reach -- the Guard now receives the automated data only when a vessel is within about 25 miles of a port. The floating transmitters will relay the information from hundreds of miles off shore, from the middle of Lake Superior and off coastlines from Alaska to Maine."
I was under the impression that the US had spent billions of dollars seeding the north atlantic ocean with passive buoys and magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) as a net to detect and triangulate soviet subs. This is cold war stuff that could perfectly be reused to counter new threats from terrorism, since it's been there and working for decades and, presumably, still in operation. So why deploy new ones?
Roland Piquepaille and Slashdot: Is there a connection?
I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at www.primidi.com [primidi.com] [primidi.com] . It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com [blogads.com] [blogads.com]. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers". Visit Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends (www.primidi.com [primidi.com] [primidi.com]) to see it for yourself.
Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let's talk about money.
Visit http://www.blogads.com/order_html?adstrip_category =tech&politics= [blogads.com] [blogads.com] to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, December XX 2004, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ [blogads.com] [blogads.com], Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net (look it up at http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index [networksolutions.com] [networks
That beyond 11 miles out is international waters, are they allowed to do this? I'm pretty sure it's 11 because that's how the Cruise ship casino's operate, by going into international waters.
International waters is the waters beyond the EEZ(Exclusive Economic Zone), which extends 200 nautical miles from shore.
I gather you didn't bother to read the quote before pasting it in. It starts off with, "To legally enter a U.S. port..." That means that once this is in place, ships without those transmitters won't be allowed to enter U.S. ports. I presume that any ship without the transmitter in working order will be turned away.
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My understanding is countries have a 200Mi. zone of economic interest, and the system has a 100Mi zone.
Also all comercial aircraft are required to file a flight plan, and have transponders that integrate both into Air-Traffic control radars and military IFF, Interegator Friend or Foe, systems and nobody gets hissy over that..
I used to live right on the St Lawerence sea way ( 100ft South of the navigation light at the enterence to the St.Clair River from Lake Huron), and the rivers pilots were stationed 50 Ft. from my house and their radio trafic with river trafic control sounded almost identical to air control. When your pushing ships ranging in beam from 750 ft sea goer's to 1250 ft lakers you don't screw arround. A 100,000 tones of ship don't turn or stop on a dime and they don't share the same space any more than an a Airliner will so with both timing is critical.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
But since you are in international waters, it doesn't matter if its 'anyones business'. If you are there, they can follow you, spy on you, annoy you all they want. It doesn't matter. As you have mentioned, the law doesn't apply out there.
Well, some laws do -- international maritime laws, but none of these apply to the privacy of being able to go unseen.
But back to the point, if you don't want to follow the laws of one country when you are in another -- thats cool. Just don't plan on going back to the other country. The laws of the host country supersede those of your parent country while you are there, but you *CAN* still be charged with breaking your parent countries laws while you are there. Ask Bobby Fisher. Hee had no plans to ever come back to the US, but as a citizen, he will most likely be deported back into US custody for breaking a US embargo.
Same with any number of things. Kill a US citizen while on open waters in international waters and you happen to be a US citizen -- expect to be tried in a US court. They can even drag you out of international waters to do so.
But the whole idea that its 'not anyones business' is a bit childish, isn't it. This is the whole cry of slashdot these days...I don't want anyone snooping on me. I can understand this if we are talking in your own home. But once you are in public, its fair game. I don't care if I have a police escort day after day -- I'd actually feel safer in my neighborhood. I live my life these days with nothing to hide. Its a shame too many others look at their life as something they can't even justify when they are out in public.
Territorial waters extends only 12 nautical miles, yes.
However, there are several other factors under international law.
First, the Exclusive Economic Zone extends to 200 nautical miles. In this zone, "[t]he coastal State may, in the exercise of its sovereign rights to explore, exploit, conserve and manage the living resources in the exclusive economic zone, [and] take such measures, including boarding, inspection, arrest and judicial proceedings, as may be necessary to ensure compliance with the laws and regulations adopted by it in conformity with this Convention."
Second, international law does not merely permit, but requires countries to repress the slave trade, piracy, narcotics trafficing, and unauthorized broadcasting on the high seas (that is, the portion of the ocean outside of national jurisdiction).
Third, all ships on the high seas either fly the flag of a soverign nation and are subject to its laws, or are "without nationality" -- and in the latter case, they are subject to boarding by any state's warships at any time, the lack of nationality itself being sufficient reason.
None of this is new; the first is in the Convention of the Law of the Sea and goes back 25 years, while the international precedents for the second and third date to the ninteenth century and even earlier.
By the way, note that since piracy is, under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea and other international precedents, "any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed . . . against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State", it would be piracy to shoot these buoys even if they were on the high seas instead of in the U.S.'s EEZ. At which point every nation on Earth is obligated to cooperate in your capture.
That's great. Your "right to privacy" (assuming you're in the us) derives from the 10th amendment and various SCOTUS decisions.
In Other Words: Tell it to the rest of the world, bub. They, the international community, the World Court, the UN etc^100 will laugh themselves blue.
Your "right to privacy" is extinguished when you leave the jurisdiction of the US.