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Home Secretary Requests Fingerprint-Activated iPods
John Reid, Home Secretary, has called upon tech manufacturers to improve the security on their gadgets to help with his recent push to frustrate criminals. Inviting Apple, Sony, and several others to his crime fighting summit Reid hopes to attack the rising robbery numbers in the most recent Home Office figures.
...because nobody would ever find the owner's fingerprint in their home!
This is yet another case of legislation coming up with the wrong solution to the right problem.
There is no such thing as security when you have physical access to the device. It's a useless "summit" that will do little more than raise the cost of these devices on consumers.
...thieves have not only been stealing the iPods, but cutting off their victim's fingers as well. Given this new threat, the Home Secretary is calling for iPods controlled by brain waves.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
"Our systems are full of vulnerabilities, our windows don't lock, and you can open the door to the main office with a credit card, but at least my iPod is secure!"
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/2 1/2326240
.... But how does this stop criminals/terrorists/undefined bad guys?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
For the criminals!
And the solution is to force vendors to give the government more tools to monitor you!
Oh, wait, you aren't citizens, but subjects. Your rights are privileges granted by the monarch, and so can be revoked at the pleasure of the government.
What's a Home Secretary?
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Why fingerprint-activated iPods? So no one but me can find out what's on my iPod? (Like I care if anyone knows that I listen to Disturbed, Metallica, or Puddle of Mud?) So no one will steal it? How fast before the thieves figure out how to disable the fingerprint scanner? All this'll do is drive up the cost of iPods, as if Apple didn't already charge and arm and a leg for the things.
My blog
Wifi enabled players + municipal wifi + device ID + central revocation list = frustrated criminals.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Now when they steal my iPod not only will they get a few thousand pounds worth of music, they will also get the fingerprint data I was forced to use as the password for my bank account.*
You don't have enough fingers to generate unique passwords for everything!
*Yes, I am aware they could be stored as a hash. Some electronics companies will probably do so - but all of them? And how many will use a good hash that has decent properties for the application? I'm guessing at one, and that will only be due to an accident.
Beep beep.
would offer the ultimate in security for the theft adverse iPod owner.
So why mess about with half measures like fingerprint activation? After all, if you stick it someplace where the sun don't shine, ain't nobody gonna know you're iPodding. Ignoring the obvious question of who the hell would try to steal an anally inserted iPod, who would purchase an (obviously) stolen / used anally insertable iPod?
Why the market for stolen iPods would close up tight.
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Trying to get a handle on this kind of theft is like trying to get your hands around some liquid. There's just no way to contain the stuff, it's going to come leaking out between your fingers somehow.
This reminds me a bit of the statistic I heard where more and more people are, in the face of those microchip car keys, just breaking into homes and stealing the keys rather than breaking into the car. If they need me to activate my device before they can take it, they're just going to pull a gun or knife on me.
Let's demand fingerprint-activated guns!
A user activatable but then non-reversible lock that requires your iPod to check in with Apple every time it syncs to ensure its serial number isn't on a list of stolen ones. Then provide a means to access any/all serial numbers you have registered to you and lock them down.
If you don't want your iPod tied to to needing a net connection to sync, don't enable the feature. If you want to know that anyone who mugs you for it gets a worthless lump of metal and plastic - and you're fine with the trade off - turn it on.
It doesn't even need to be that universally used to take a bite out of crime. If people quickly learn the $50 iPods guys in the pub offer them (which, let's face it, they know are stolen but think they're getting a great deal and so don't care) may well not work, they're not going to hand over the $50. You don't have to disable every last stolen one to make buying a stolen one enough of a gamble that people stop doing it and thus they stop being desirable to steal.
Yes, it would become a potential pain for retailers who accept returns but a simple app could let retailers check the iPod hadn't been locked down before accepting returns. Given Apple "authorizes" retailers, this would give them a finite list of people to distribute it to and increase the value of being an authorized retailer.
Why UNIX?
"I'm sorry sir. Your identity has been compromised, and we are revoking all known authenticators. Your physical characteristics are no longer valid to autheticate your personal identity. You have been added to the list of unconfirmable citizens. Please turn in your face and fingers to the Department at the earliest possible opportunity."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...just won't work. I can't quite put my finger on it though.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
One of the biggest problems with biometric authentication is the lack of ability to revoke a compromised biometric key. Sure you can revoke rights based on a fingerprint, but then you've no way to use it again. Lifting fingerprints with gelatin isn't really that hard. See http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0205.html#5 for more information on the gummy-bear fingerprint reader bypass technique.
Personally, I think biometrics are great as a username equivalent, but should not be relied on for authentication. There is sound reason to have (1) something you have with (2) something you know in a good authentication system. The ability to revoke and re-generate either component is needed.
-Michael
Why finger prints?! Why not just use the good `ol numeric 4-digit password? Seems to be working fine for the majority of people who use banking machines every day.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I for one welcome our in-soviet-Russia joke nazis!
Thief-proofing and iPod reduces the chance of a mugging victim needing to go out to buy another iPod.
So, a faulty and easy to defeat mechanism will be added to an already paying-for-premium device to raise the cost even further without providing true benefit to the consumer. Lovely. Just lovely.
The question becomes... will this information(the fingerprint information) be sent back to Apple via an update? Will this be tied into law enforcement systems so that non-criminals are indexed along with criminals? Will this be used to produce defacto arrest warrants for people, based on their music consumption?
But mainly... just an expensive add on bloatware that shouldn't be there in the first place.
Winged Power Photography
You will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070430/ap_on_hi_te/mi nd_reading_toys
Instead of securing iPods, and eventually TVs, Blenders, Toasters, Cars and Flashlights (or 'torches') maybe the Home Secretary could try securing Criminals in Jail. Besides, I am sure that turning over an unusable iPod to a mugger would be prosecutable as fraud.
http://visualizecommonsense.com/
There is no such thing as security when you have physical access to the device. It's a useless "summit" that will do little more than raise the cost of these devices on consumers.
... but there could be punishment!
Well, maybe not security
I propose that we build a small quantity of plastic explosives or thermite into every new portable device. They will take commands from the GSM cellular network and, upon command from the manufacturer, on receiving word from the original purchaser that the device has been stolen, explode/melt and blow/burn pieces of the device into the criminal's (or person who received said stolen property) face/hands/thighs. It will also have the handy side-effect of securely deleting confidential data. We'll just need some laws to indemnify manufacturers and owners from said criminals' lawsuits, and after that, we'll just let the problems work themselves out.
I foresee this having a slight negative impact on the used-equipment-on-eBay market, but overall I think it'll be a good thing.
What could possibly go wrong?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Wouldn't it be much better to improve the education system and take other measures to actually reduce the level of crime?
What Mr. Reid proposes is that I should take measures that cost me money to reduce the value of my possessions to criminals. It would make it also harder for me to sell my iPod on eBay if I want to replace it with a better model. It would be much better to give kids a decent education so they can find decent jobs instead of becoming criminals, and/or to make the risk of detection and the punishment for crime higher to actually deter criminals.
The Mythbusters already proved that the fingerprint scanners are ridiculously easy to defeat. Why are people still promoting this?
Like the endless parade of anti-IP-infringement measures, like the endless surveillance and mail-sifting programs, this is yet another result of a bunch of people facing (or creating) a social problem, and then trying to convince themselves that a nifty gadget will fix it.
And it's the latest in a long parade.
What they've got is a culture that favors the instigator, rather than the victim, in robbery, street violence, and general antisocial behavior. Here are their solutions so far:
--Cameras
--Electronic tags
--New Databases (rather like many large companies, the UK government loves greating A New Database to solve any kind of problem)
--Magic dream iPods that can't be stolen or some such rubbish
It's a simple choice -- you can either address a problem, or you can talk about how cool it would be if a gadget would make it go away.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Only if I can use both of my middle fingers to unlock it.
I'm ambidexterous, you know.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
What, you mean my car's head unit's non-changeable bluetooth pin of 1234 isn't secure?
lock and that was a high end door lock that the according to the manufacturers, the "liveness-sensing" reader has never failed.4 )#Episode_59_.E2.80.94_.22Crimes_and_Myth-Demeanor s_2.22
the ones likely to be in ipods are likely to be a lot less costly and are like a lot easer to beat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_
Yeah, now they'll cost an arm, leg and finger! As in, I assume that your finger will allow me to play your iPod, even if it is not attached to your hand!
Hmm... I have a strong feeling that, like all other security measures we encounter, they will be far more inconvenient to legitimate users than they will be to "criminals".
It's such an old story in the tech industry, and probably spans back throughout most of mankind's recent history now that I think about it. Just that little bit of extra hassle to do what you're trying to do, that actually won't do much of anything against your average "criminal". For a quick example, note the fact that effectively all computer games since the late 90s require that you keep the game CD-ROM in the CD drive while you play the game.
It's not a huge deal, per se, but it's yet another one of those things that we put up with in order to "stop the criminals", or whatever (even though the so-called criminals laugh at the pathetic "security" as they remove it with a couple clicks).
Then Homeland Security suggested building a stun gun into the ipod for a nasty shock if the finger print security check fails 3 times.
In this case (John Reid), a government minister who is the parliamentary rottweiler - he orchestrates the UK part of the "war on terror", coming up with random "solutions" like this.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
...that'll teach them criminals for sure!
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
Most thieves (in break-in/burglary scenarios) don't give a rats-arse if something is thumb-print protected. They merely look for shiny, valuable looking objects to take.
silly, silly, silly.
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
If people wanted this.. Apple would make it. They apparently don't, why force them to have it?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
John Reid is really, really keen on keeping Biometric information for all UK citizens as part of a national ID project. Naturally enough, a large proportion of the UK population is uncomfortable with the idea. I suspect that this new idea is an attempt to encourage people into thinking that biometric identification is a part of everyday life.
As other poster's have pointed out there are other methods of protecting these sorts of devices (think of your car stereo for example) so it's reasonably clear to me at least that Reid has an ulterior motive.
Why not provide a way to have your iPod customized to the point that it would dent resale value?
If only Apple provided a way to have something like "grahamsz is da c00lest evar" permanantly engraved on my ipod then nobody would want to be seen dead with it (especially not me)....
No, just some assholes with explosives took some journeys on London Tubes and buses a couple of years ago on 7 July. Killed 60 and wounded hundreds. I was on an (unaffected) tube train at the time. It was a grand time for all.
... because it doesn't seem to be in England and Wales.
You wrote: "Doesn't change the fact that, by trampling on individual rights to self defense, Blair et al have increased, rather than decreased, crime." But the crime rate seems to have been headed downward since the mid-1990s, with a slight uptick in 2006.
Crime Statistics for England and Wales
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It will take a lot of money to fund, but there has to be a way to make a fingerprint scanner that won't be fooled by wet gummi bears and other obvious hacks, but yet cheap enough to be used in low cost consumer devices (USB sticks, etc.)
Biometrics as a whole just seems to still be great for James Bond movies, but still hasn't seemed to move out of the Stone Age for reliability, compared to the tried and true system of a key and a PIN.
Khan: I'll agree to your terms, if.... if.... in addition to yourself, you turn over to me all recordings and album covers regarding the band called "Genesis".
Kirk: Genesis? Which one, Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins?
Khan: Don't insult my intelligence, Kirk!
Ever heard of Thomas Hamilton? Yeah he only killed 16 elementary school students.
Kind of hard to do that with a knife, or a bow and arrow.True, but it is a lot easier to do with an illegally owned gun when you know no one will be shooting back. Its also pretty easy with some homemade bombs as I'm sure the IRA has aptly demonstrated by now. It's also pretty easy using some sort of a poison.
Laws that make it illegal to own guns don't stop murder. They don't stop mass murder. Strangely people willing to break the law and commit murder for some reason also don't have a big problem breaking the law and buying or building weapons.
Just look at the numbers and it is pretty clear that strict gun control and gun bans correlate with a slight overall increase in violet crime and murder, just barely within statistical significance. You're not going to stop murder with gun bans as anyone with anything close to a scientific perspective can see.
Yes, lets lock down EVERYTHING in the country, and then to improve security even more, give all the keys to the govenment.
We could not tackle or fix the real problem, no way. The fact we are creating a society where there is NO RIGHT OR WRONG... the only questions one should ask before doing something is "will it benefit me" and "can I get away with it". (the government and big business teach us this lesson every day)
Lets tackle our problems with lack of morality with technological means. Ya right, that will work.
Mr. Reid was then quoted as saying "I don't want none o y'all wankers lookin' at my pr0n!"
Hamilton was Scottish, but point taken.
So we give everyone a gun, and then the bad guys will think twice? What? That's insanity man...check out Iraq...an armed and polite society!
People still murder even though they know there is the possiblity of the death penalty. Your idea requires that the perp be in a rational state of mind before embarking....I propose that this is NOT the case. Witness how many of these mass murderers suicided at the end...do you think that they were worried about dying?! Do you think they might not go on the rampage if they thought that their high score would be kept low by armed people shooting back? Do you think that the average US gun owner has the skills and training to avoid killing and injuring other bystanders?!
Seems tenuous.
Blar.
The point is that a hot ipod will only get 10% of the retial value from the fence. How much effort will the criminal go to to get $25?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I know I'm sleeping better at night knowing that Homeland Security is focusing it's attention and resources to the critical matter of protecting the nation's valuable mp3 players. Forget about border security, cargo inspection or tracking illegal immigrants. That stuff is peanuts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4396831.st m
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I still don't see why I should be disallowed from being on an even standing with the average criminal. We've established that criminals can and will break the law, and don't care about their personal safety. Me returning fire is not likely to scare them off, but if I am going to get shot, I would like to have a chance at returning the favor. It'd be nice if everyone would just behave themselves and nobody needed guns, but such is not the case.
I tell you what, I'll make a deal:
If the world can come up with and implement a fool-proof 100% successful method to eradicate all use of marijuana from the United States, then I will gladly allow that same method to be applied to firearms and willingly give up any weapons I might own.
Right now the government can't even keep drugs off our streets, can't keep us out of trouble overseas, and can't even keep their damn pants on most of the time. Yet you all expect me to allow these people to decide whether or not I can be as well-armed as the average criminal? That's madness.
People still murder even though they know there is the possiblity of the death penalty. Your idea requires that the perp be in a rational state of mind before embarking....I propose that this is NOT the case. Witness how many of these mass murderers suicided at the end...do you think that they were worried about dying?! Do you think they might not go on the rampage if they thought that their high score would be kept low by armed people shooting back? Do you think that the average US gun owner has the skills and training to avoid killing and injuring other bystanders?!
No, truly crazy people probably won't be worried about people shooting back. But I'd rather people have the ability to shoot back than to be forced to set like lemmings, defenseless.
And yes, the average CCW holder in the US does have the skills and training needed. They visit the range far more often than most cops, and they hit their targets in real shootings far more often. The cops hit the wrong person 30% of the time! I'd rather trust a CCW holder to take out a madman than the cops.
And lastly, no, we don't give everyone a gun. We allow people who wish to carry one to do so. Many people who don't feel up to the task simply won't, as is seen in CCW-friendly states. And for an armed a polite society, check out Switzerland, where every adult male is required to keep a fully-automatic assault rifle (SIG 550) at home in case they're called up by the militia. Their crime rate is extremely low.
In the end, iPods and similar items are not sufficently valuable to bother with extensive access controls. It's doubtful that the UK police could even be bothered to investigate the theft of an iPod.
As for the content, well, that's what backups are for :-)
But yet they expect me to pay my taxes! The failures of government seems like a red herring here. The government forbids citizens from doing many things that criminals do anyway.
I suppose you agree that Iran and North Korea deserve nuclear weapons, right? I mean, the NPFT is not perfectly enforced...look at Pakistan. So why should Iran and North Korea not have their own nuclear weapons?
Blar.
Sounds like a first step towards ..
using biometrics to enforce DRM
Why doesn't Reid try to figure out ways that police officers can be freed from the mountain of paperwork they're forced to create every shift so they can go out on the nosey for scabby crims to smack about/arrest with the minimum necessary force? Then they'd maybe stop some of the muggings where people are getting hurt and killed.
Even if this fingerprinting scheme were adopted, all it'd do is give fences a reason to give the crim buttons for ipod. It wouldn't stop a thing. It might make the muggers more vicious as they'll have to be more prolific to cover their crack tab for the night and really don't want to spend their time asking nicely.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I thought it would have been clear with my previous post, but I guess not. The rate of gun ownership and gun laws in the US or the UK or Iraq is not really an important consideration for what is likely to result in a given level of violence. Iraq doesn't have extreme violence because they don't have anti-gun laws. If it was illegal to own them, they'd get them illegally or use bombs or knives or machetes. Likewise arming everyone isn't going to make the UK a whole lot less violent. Statistically, restricting gun ownership to violent criminals and people with mental problems, while encouraging it for everyone else will decrease crime, very, very, very slightly.
People still murder even though they know there is the possiblity of the death penalty. Your idea requires that the perp be in a rational state of mind before embarking....I propose that this is NOT the case.Look you can argue the psychology and causation mechanisms all you like, but it won't change the numbers. Most criminals have an inherent belief they will not be caught, thus increasing penalties for crimes rarely is an effective mechanism for demotivating crime. Knowing that random people have guns makes them believe themselves to be more likely to be caught, since now there are a lot more armed people out there gunning for them.
Witness how many of these mass murderers suicided at the end...do you think that they were worried about dying?! Do you think they might not go on the rampage if they thought that their high score would be kept low by armed people shooting back?First, mass murderers are the exceptional case, not the rule. No law is going to make much difference to the behavior of the killer in those exceptional cases. If 1 in 50 people, however, are carrying guns, that means there would have been hundreds of armed people at the VA tech massacre and they would likely have killed him before he managed to kill as many helpless victims as he did.
Do you think that the average US gun owner has the skills and training to avoid killing and injuring other bystanders?!Those that have concealed pistol permits generally do, as there is required training in almost every US state that has such permits. Statistically speaking, however, location is more important than training. Police misidentify a person as a criminal and shoot them three times as often as non-police do, because non-police generally act when they are on the scene already and know what is going on, while police are almost always latecomers to the scene.
Seems tenuous.The link between gun laws and violence is tenuous. For the most part, they have little or no affect upon murder and violence rates. The UK does not have lower rates of violent crime than the US because of their gun laws (as evidenced by an objective look at crime statistics in the UK). They have lower rates of violent crime because they have less wealth disparity, socialized healthcare, and partial decriminalization of drugs. If the UK truly wants to lower crime, they should be looking at this last line item and figuring out how to get rid of the rest of their drug-motivated crime. Sure, removing most of the gun restrictions they have might help, but not by enough to be worth wasting time on for that reason. Personally, I just want to make sure people understand that restrictive gun laws and knife laws and the like are simply empty PR designed to make you think the government is doing something, when in truth they are just making empty gestures in lieu of real progress on the violent crime issue.
Why is this moderated as offtopic? A UK government official advocated a technological means of lowering/mitigating crime. The parent poster responded with an alternative proposal. I'm not saying that the previous poster was correct, simply that it seems pretty on topic to me.
Steve Jobs - easily the most stubborn man in high tech meets our alcoholic, belligerent, bullying Minister of the Interior.
At last, Dr. (economics (Marxist ones at that)) John Reid will come up against someone every bit as awkward as him - although unlike Reid, Steve Jobs sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
Apple and Sony will tell Dr. Demento that they don't make their products in the UK, nor do they design their products in the UK and that the UK only represents a tiny part of their market so they see no need to burden themselves with additional costs just so that John Reid can bolster his chances of leading a clapped out Labour Party by looking tough on crime.
I just hope Steve Jobs is a little more blunt about it and shows Reid just where he can stick a music player in order to deter thieves.
The Swiss keep their weapons locked up AT HOME in case the nation is attacked, not as a system of defense against other citizens.
Do you support Iran and North Korea in their pursuit of nuclear arms? They want the ability to shoot back if some nuclear armed state attacks them.
Blar.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
If nuclear weapons are what the feel they need to defend themselves from others, then they will make them. The same goes for criminals, no amount of law will prevent them from getting weapons if that's what they feel they need to ensure their success. No amount of international posturing is going to prevent a country from just building nukes in secret, much like no law will prevent criminals bent on success from obtaining guns. We can't just wave a magic wand and expect nukes and guns to go away, and we also can't expect everyone else to intentionally place themselves at a disadvantage to others. We have nukes, and that scares people, and so they want nukes as well, to put us on even footing. We won't give up our nukes because they might not give up theirs, and there forms a loop of mutual fear. The same is true for guns, knives, or any other weapon. Any way you care to look at the situation, we all lose as long as this loop of mutual fear exists. Breaking the loop is non-trivial. You can't stuff the genie back in the bottle.
As far as nuclear weapons, I like to think that if some crackpot actually DOES nuke someone else outside of an openly declared and internationally supported war, there would be such a response from the rest of the world that said crackpot would be immediately and utterly annihilated. No sane human being would witness such an event and say "Well, they deserved it, they believed differently than we do!", much less an empowered nation of mostly sane humans.
As much as I hate the idea of needless death, I hate the idea of my own needless death even more. I refuse to be an easy mark for someone who believes they are entitled to the fruits of my labor by virtue of their lawlessness. I make myself as hard a target as feasible, and if that means I must attempt to kill someone, then I am fully prepared to do that. I have many safeguards before going to that extreme - I have locks on the doors, signs posted, and the law of the land behind me to dissuade the casual from victimizing me. Only those who have decided that their life is worthless enough to waste in the pursuit of my television will get far enough for me to kill them. I am a big fan of de-escalation doctrine, but it is not a solution to all problems. Sometimes are threatened by the violent. If you are not prepared to respond with 110% of the violence you are threatened with, you will become a victim. You don't need to be violent in the first place, but you must be prepared to respond in kind. They are the ones who decide to get violent, not you.
Well now that we have a way, lets officially blacklist that country singer X. Arrest everybody that has X on their iPod!
Think of it this way, guys. This is an opportunity for Apple to "Reinvent the Fingerprint Scanner."
I can see it now, Uncle Jobs on the stage unveiling this amazing reinvention. I think it will inject neurotoxin into whoever's print does not match. An on top of that, it will shout "Exterminate!" like a Dalek! But what if your print doesn't scan correctly and you are injected? Easy, just rescan your print correctly and it will give you a dose of an antidote!
This is exactly what I was going to say. A LOT of crime could be prevented if people were just a bit more careful what they do and display in public.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Fire him. On the spot. For sheer stupidity and completely getting his priorities wrong. Jeeeesus - are this the problems he should care about?
Tie the media files to an individual.. And report their use.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You seem to be having issues with the English language. I said, "Iraq doesn't have extreme violence because they don't have anti-gun laws." I did not say, "Iraq doesn't have extreme violence, because they don't have anti-gun laws." See what a difference a comma can make? To further clarify, I did not make the statement that Iraq does not have extreme violence, only a statement about the cause of Iraq's violence.
And very,very,very slightly is how much, and from what source? You mentioned statistics, let's see them. And the numbers are?Umm, from pretty much every source I've ever been able to find. In fact, I've never seen a single study that showed a positive correlation between strict gun control laws and reductions in violent crime... ever. I've seen plenty that show no correlation or a slight negative correlation. I've seen studies that study "gun crime" but since that is an obvious misstatement of the problem, only diehard anti-gun fanatics would give them any credit, excepting those that misrepresent themselves as the former.
Here are a few citations if you're really interested:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st176/s176c.html
John R. Lott, Jr. & David B. Mustard, Crime, Deterrence and the Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns, 26 J. LEGAL STUD. 1 (1997); [yes I know about his poor methodology it is still better than just guessing though]
Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz, Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, 86 J. CRIM. L & CRIMINOLOGY 150 (1995);
Marvin E. Wolfgang, A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed, 86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 188 (1995).
tbl. 3.109; BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, U.S. DEP'T OF COMMERCE, STATISTICAL ABSTRACT OF THE UNITED STATES, 1966, at 148 tbl. 206 (1966) (showing crime rates from 1959-1964).
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/hosb0207 .pdf
Good to know, I guess we can now stop wasting all this money on prisons.If the purpose of prisons is simply to punish, then yes they do a lot more harm than good in that they promote additional crime via cultural indoctrination and by introducing permanent lifestyle changes. The US has abnormally high rates of imprisonment of the citizenry, compared to the rest of the world and especially compared to industrialized nations with similar per capita. Our rehabilitation programs are broken and mostly our prisons are full of people originally arrested for nonviolent offenses such as drug possession, who later turn to violent crime after spending years in prison being physically and emotionally abused and indoctrinated into a criminal culture while removed from ordinary society.
Prisons are certainly not the answer to the US's violence problem, while decriminalization (not legalizing) drugs correlates to an enormous decrease in both violent crime and need for prisons. I believe it is the 2nd or third strongest correlation among sociological traits (depending upon the study you read), as opposed to gun control where the consensus is in the opposite direction and barely significant.
what's tenous is your repeated assertions of fact without any supporting evidence.Look this topic has come up before and I'll repeat the same unanswered challenge to you. I linked to several studies, but only things quickly an easily available on the internet. Show me one credible study that links violent crime and gun control laws [not the idiotic gun crimes]. Just show me one. I dare you. No one has ever produced such a study in all the times I've issued said challenge. And yet people insist on this farcical belief that gun controls laws will somehow magically help because "guns are bad" is an easy thing to assume is right and gives people some hope that there is a single easy change that will help. Gun control laws are a placebo that politicians use to get votes instead of addressing the real problems: wealth disparity, healthcare, addiction treatment, and drug criminalization, all of which show very, very strong correlations with levels of violent crime.
"You make me frown, nazi clown."
Just so you know, your racism is unacceptable.
How about we use that serial number for some good?
Each iPod makes a connection to the computer and iTunes. Why not have it report its serial number? If your iPod is stolen, you can just report it as stolen and it should render it useless. Would not be very hard for apple to at least institute a list of stolen iPod serial numbers? As it stands, they do nothing about it. I bet that if I stole somebodys iPod I could then go to apple support, register it, and send it back to apple for repairs, no questions asked.
It prevents the obvious, trivial risk (petty theft). It's the perfect biometric app since, unlike other proposals use of biometrics (ID cards, credit card authorisation, building access, etc), the biometric is present and presented at the point of use only. Biometric data need never leave the device, or even be present (it could be used as a key for disk contents, for example). It's not necessary that the device be proof against determined attack.
Yes, the robber won't know that you have a new, fingerprint-protected ipod, but like vaccination, once enough of them are in circulation theft should drop.
The second risk protected against is loss of data, again in the case of a trivial attack. That is, my phone has various phone numbers (e.g. home numbers of business colleagues) that I don't really want floating around. My home phone number is likewise floating around in others' phones, and I would bet that almost none of them are password-protected. This would make me feel better if the phone were stolen or just lost.
So where's the problem? It won't pose an onerous burden, doesn't screw the user (there's no data centralisation), helps for two common risks. What's not to like?
(yeah, I know it would need a few fixes for shared ipods etc. Not a big deal).
That occurred at the one place where there was a guarantee of no guns, a school.
Many years ago some terrorist assholes took over a school in Israel and killed a bunch of teachers and little kids (terrorists love killing innocent children). After that incident, the government removed the ban on firearms in schools and, in fact, encouraged the teachers to arm themselves. Terrorists tried taking a school hostage only one more time. It didn't go well for them.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I don't think you know what the word "racism" means. Racist because of the crack about NYC? Get a clue, fool, there are people of several different ethnic groups in NYC. Racist because of the crack about Islamic countries? Islam isn't a race - so how is that racist? (Hint: it isn't.)
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This would be a really good idea, kind of like a lojack for your ipod :)
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Fortunately, this country doesn't have any real crime outside of ipod theft, I guess.
Its not about the theft of the ipod; its about the theft of the copyright music that is on that ipod which only the legitimate owner of that ipod has any right to listen to!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
thieves aren't trying to steal the contents of the drives, they're trying to steal the device itself
Well you obviously don't work for some music industry association.
If you did then you'd know that the whole problem with people stealing ipods is that they will get access to sounds which they do not have any right to hear!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
In any society you have your thieves.
The number of thieves is set by the level of happiness in that society; the more happiness the less thieves, and vice versa.
England is a miserable place, especially if you are poor, therefore more thieves in England.
Making it MORE difficult for thieves will make the thieves LESS happy, so even MORE thieves.
Eventually England will be a place where EVERYONE is a thief of lesser or greater degree, because the IDIOT Brits believe that they can eradicate thieves by INSANE and Draconian laws, instead of simply making people HAPPY.
Oh wait....thats already happened.......
and BTW this 'issue' has sweet frick all to do with iPods or any other innocent electronic device.
You actually called out "Islamic countries" so I suppose I could call you a nationalist or a creedist, but how about we both just settle on calling you a prejudiced fuck.