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US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr. Kurt Opsahl of the EFF said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service. "There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties. We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy." Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, requiring a court order for surveillance on U.S. soil. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.
I don't see any red flags...
I, for one, welcome the impending removal of our old tyrannical police-state masters. www.ronpaul2008.com
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
If google cannot find anything about you then you have misspelt your name.
If nothing comes up then you were switched at birth and can find information by typing in your correct name.
I only found out about this when I discovered my real birth name is inanimate carbon rod.
liqbase
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
The difference being that while I trust no one, I trust the government with the information even less, because they have the power to screw me over to such a greater degree.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
"Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information."
Yes, lets 'redfine' privacy to mean "we know what you do, we will just be responsible with the information"
It has NOTHING to do with Google. If the government wants to change what privacy means to THEM, they need a constitutional amendment. Unless they simply want to continue to trample the document, which I wouldn't doubt for a moment.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I got about 334,000 for [First] [Last]. In the first 10 pages none of them are mine. I also googled my "[First Name] [Last Name]" [hometown] and got about 685 results. I am very careful about what I put out there, I know that I cant control everything but that is why people use usernames and not real names. All I need to do for a new Identity is create a new one and even then people will rip it off. I know that if someone really wanted to get all my info they could but they would need to invest some serious time into it and even then there is no reason to rethink privacy because there should always be a shield of privacy on the internet. If anything we should be repairing the privacy wall between the consumers and the providers.
if the US government--president, NSA, CIA, FBI--are willing to give up their secrecy.
What is intolerable, however, is for government officials to have a lot of information on private citizens, but for private citizens to have little information on the government.
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
Definitely. For one, I can choose not to interact with certain private parties if they piss me off. But I probably can't choose to ignore the government and have to interact with it on some level.
Also, private parties can't demand I hand over certain private information -- sure, they might decide not to do business with me, but the government seems to think it's priviledged to anything and everything since the Patriot Act. Good luck turning them down.
Now it's no longer based on evidence that a crime was done -- we are welcomed to the pre-emptive society. Pre-emptive wars. Pre-emptive invasion of my privacy (without warrant) based on crimes that might happen. I'm just waiting to be pre-emptively thrown in jail.
I find it interesting that this government official is trying to sell us on the government safeguarding our information. HAH! What a joke.
Next Spring, almost every state will have political caucuses and conventions which will set the state parties' platforms.
Attend your local caucus or convention and try to get elected as a delegate to the state convention.
Introduce resolutions that value freedom and privacy. Lobby to get them passed.
Send a message to Washington: Privacy is important. Anonymity is an essential part of privacy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The article notes that kids reveal much private information about themselves on myspace and facebook. Some fear that this information can damage a kids employment prospects. Heres an idea: People could post legal terms of service on their social networing pages declaring that employers and prospective employers are forbidden from looking at or copying from the pages. Such terms would be like No Trespassing signs on land. Some case law supports the notion that terms posted on a web site can restrict the right of visitors to gather information off the site. Arguably, if an employer grabs information off of a site in violation of posted terms, and that leads to termination of an employee, then the employee could sue the employer for violating the terms of the web site. Even if the terms are not legally binding on the employer, they could be ethically binding.
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
If you believe you can have privacy, security and anonyminity you are wrong. You might get any two of those. Maybe.
If you main fear is the US government, think again. Your information is a marketable commodity and nobody is doiung anything to prevent commerce using that commodity. How many businesses are involved in trading information that you believe should be private? Do you believe the government should put an end to all such activity?
It isn't going to happen.
Google my pseudonym and anything written by me is obscured in a sea of fanfics, fanpics, and completly unrelated person's posting information. Type my real name into google and you'll find 3 entries relating to me: two of which are useful but could have been found before the Internet. Nothing has changed; only the speed of things have changed. If someone really wishes to find me, they would, but the majority of the information would come from offline. Preserving anonmity is still a keystone of the freedom of privacy; whether you choose to maintain it or not is you own business.
Demented But Determined.
I'll bet you don't know what specific "essential liberty" Franklin was referring to, do you?
That quote is Ben Franklin saying Quakers in Pennsylvania who "g[a]ve up [their] essential liberty" of BEARING ARMS paid for by the government against Indian and French raids during the French and Indian Wars (known in Europe, IIRC, as the "Seven Year War") deserved what they got: killed.
Your oh-so-fucking-precious quote is a small part of a diatribe against blind, stupid pacifism: those that give up their essential liberty of armed self-defense deserve what they get. You'd know that if you bothered to read the whole damn letter.
Quit taking it out of context.
The 4th ammendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated [...]". I think the attempt is to narrowly define "secure", here. If someone can unreasonably search all your papers, effects, etc., *but* that does not give you reasonable cause to feel "insecure", is that a 4th ammendment violation? There's rhetorical ground to be muddied, somewhere between "privacy" and "security". Now, I myself consider it inherently unreasonable for a citizen to accept government guarentees of security at face value, but that seem to be the arguement that's being put forward here.
Also, about googling your own name; I just did that and although there were over 1.5 million results, none of them were about me as far as I could tell
I guess I should be relieved, although I'm kind of disappointed that I'm not important enough to have my privacy violated.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
A detailed search on google will reveal WAY too much info on people. Certainly more than you'd want released to just anyone.
... laws will not change this fact ... this sucks. If google can build databases of people le, why can't the US govt ? At least US govt has this freedom of info act. Google obeys only the laws they truly have to.
More than this
Outlawing google also seems like a stupid thing to do.
He just makes the point that we can't have it both ways. We can't have a searchable internet and the privacy standards of 1960. It just doesn't compute.
God, will it ever get here?
The Bush administration is systematically perverting the American Constitution.
I swear I would vote for anyone that said they would restore and enforce the Constitution, who would prosecute those who have subverted and raped it, and who would roll back the stoled powers of the Executive branch.
Even better, if they would turn the current system of campaign contributions by corporations into treasonous acts and punish all involved in the harshest possible manner.
We have the finest government money can buy. And that sucks.
-- Donald Kerr
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater
"Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr."
Great! We should give Kerr a dose of his own medicine by posting about how "Donald Kerr likes having sex with a sheep", "Donald Kerr was arrested for soliciting sex in a public washroom", "Donald Kerr was indicted for embezzling $5 million dollars", "Donald Kerr was convicted of sexually assaulting an 82-year-old woman after tazering her", "Donald Kerr helped funnel funds to Al-Quaida", "Donald Kerr was found wandering naked in a local park, claiming to have been abducted by aliens, who then probed his body", "Donald Kerr is a vocal proponent of scientology", "Donald Kerr is president of the Washington Brittney Speares fan club", "Donald Kerr controls a bot-net of 250,000 PCs", "Donald Kerr accepted 'gifts' of $4.5m from Microsoft", "Donald Kerr wants to track people via bluetooth".
After all, Google is now a "good source" for Donald Kerr.
(Note to the humour-impaired - the above is fair comment satire directed at a public officials' political policy statements, and in no way is an endorsement of Mr. Kerr's positions on privacy OR sex with a sheep)
And the penalties for it.
The Bush administration has shit all over the Constitution and this country. They have committed treason.
Yes, there is something fundamentally different: After they take away your rights and screw you over, they can get themselves immunity. Private businesses generally cannot do that.
This guy is basically advertising a surveilance state, were everybody has to trust the government without reserve. Not a good idea. Historically that has always lead to a catastrophy. Unfortunately there will not be any allied armies to free the US population. I advise to stop this now with all possible legal means. A free society has to live with a real risk of terrorism. That is what makes it free: People have the freedom to go bad. If you remove that freedom, you cause much, much more damage that terrorists ever could do directly. All this "war on terror" is really a power-grap in disguise by power-hungry people without even a shred of ethics. You do not want to be ruled by this type of evil.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
On the New Hampshire auto license plates reads one of my favorite sayings: Live Free, or Die. This man would rather capitulate, and is therefore lost.
We will struggle, those that believe in liberty and freedom, against the tides that would try to drown us with rationalisms, excuses, and the madness of fealty to the corrupt and mindless sycophants of government.
There was a reason the founding fathers worded their documents they way that they did-- there was another King George that tried to shove fealty down our throats. This minor duke in his administration would have us believe that liberty and freedom != anonymity. He is wrong.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Actually, any stories posted on /. that tend to expose the current administration for what it is tend to get these kinds of posts. Me thinks the Bush administration is watching and trying to prevent people from discussing their treason.
Really, I don't need to read beyond this. Does the US have a privacy problem with personal data held by corporations without regulation? Yes. Does the US have a privacy problem with novel government surveillance methods without (serious) oversight? Hell Yes. Can one be used to excuse the other in any way shape or form? Hell no!
This guy should not be the standard bearer for the dialog that the US needs to have over privacy in the age of information technology.
If I change my name to "John Doe"?
Bad terrorists kill thousands. Bad government kill millions. Their fear mongering and our cowardice are poisoning our nation's leadership.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
For those of you who want to protect their privacy, I've made a light Firefox add-on which generates randomly some queries on Google to make your search profile noisier and less exploitable. The queries keywords are extracted from RSS flows so you can personalize them. Moreover, the program simulates some clicks on Google search results (and ads).
For further information go on: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fuzzy-search/
It's a beta version and any comments are appreciated.
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd waterboard us, you know.
The EFF is wrong. There is no difference because they are one and the same, meaning that the Government does provide us with services, in fact it is their only job to provide us with services... that's why we pay taxes and elect officials.
If we want to protect our privacy in the new age of information, we must have policies in place which reflect the real world, not a fantasy world where you can be an anonymous citizen (which is impossible BTW) who simply goes about his/her business without interference from some agency or another. Just being a U.S. citizen guarantees gov interference in your life... it's part of the social agreement we all participate in and some people don't even think of it as interference or intervention.... they think of it as guidance, assistance and public service.
Non-participation in elections, public functions and other types of government activities does not absolve you as a citizen from being accountable or from the limitations or responsibilities of being a citizen. You simply don't gain the benefits of active involvement and yet still bear the burden.
So rather than ignore reality, we should embrace it. We should make sure that despite the government knowing about our personal and private activities... they can not stop safe and sane activities only regulate abusive versions of such where they begin to impede on others right to such things. I'd go so far as to say we should repeal many laws which govern personal liberty and at the same time enhance penalties for behaviors which impede upon others liberties. What I'm talking about is removing laws about DOING drugs and making more strict laws about ABUSING drugs or acting out while on drugs ie: violent behavior, negligent behavior, etc. The same should be done regarding things like decency laws, laws related to sexual behavior (stop prohibition on sex for hire and start regulating it so it is safe for the public)....
This type of limited regulation of course has been impossible up until now... better to ban it completely when we don't really know and can't find out who is abusing what... but now we have the ability to monitor without interfering unless and until it is necessary to regulate an abusive situation. As long as such monitoring is open and transparent to the public as well as the government no one agency (in the general sense) can over-regulate or abuse the use of the information without several other agencies checking and balancing them.
There's nothing more free than the truth. If everyone knows what everyone is doing and becomes accustomed to it then everyone can freely do as they will without fear of punitive judgement, as long as they don't break any laws... which is another discussion (see recommendations above).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Is Donald Kerr's house in Google StreetView? What's the link?
"so this kind of thing only works to screw with American citizens and accomplishes nothing of significance"
And this is news? America's biggest enemy is definitely within. It is lack of education and an easily terrified populace that can be manipulated with a few "support our troops" and "with us or agin' us" slogans.
I think Osama bin Laden hit the jackpot with his 9/11 attack. He spent some 19 lives and a few tens of thousands of dollars and in return, he, through the current moronic, paranoid, and opportunistic administration, has thoroughly destroyed what used to be the most powerful and respected Nation on earth.
What this guy Kerr and the rest of the Bush Regime and it's merry henchmen haven't figured out yet is that the real trick is to protect a free society without interfering with it's ability to function as one. This guy fits Mr. Justice Brandeis observation that the real encroachments on liberty come, "from men of zeal, but without understanding." This guy fits that cookie cutter perfectly-- his reach exceeds his grasp. And because that's common in government, they're fast becoming a bigger threat to the ordinary citizen than the often notional terrorists are.
I'm sad to say I must agree with this. Bush was my favorite president until I started to hear of all the violations on our people. All this spying at home and I don't feel a bit safer from terrorists. Quite the opposite with a government for the government instead of the people.
If the government wants to change what privacy means to THEM, they need a constitutional amendment.
The "right of privacy" is a judicial construct. I'm not saying that it is a bad construct, but you'll never see the word "privacy" in the Constitution. In interpreting the 4th Amendment, the Supreme Court has constructed a Constitutional protection of privacy. Maybe the definition of "activist judges" depends on where you sit. Anyway, the courts have acknowledged that this is an implicit, rather than explicit right.
Legislative acts have also defined privacy in their own ways, but the term "privacy" is a difficult one to define with precision when we're dealing with electronic communications. If the limits of privacy are no longer defined by your physical presence, how far does your right to privacy extend? With so much of our lives being lived online, would excessive provisions for privacy actually extend the doctrine further than it was originally intended?
Another question: We place our trust in Google every time we use its services, but why do we place more trust in a profit-maximizing enterprise than in our own government? Ostensibly we can hold our government accountable through elections, but we have less influence on corporations. Sure, we have the power of the wallet, but when's the last time you saw an effective consumer boycott in the information economy?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...the clamps start getting put in place. They turn the screws a thread at a time, make lots of fuzzy statements like "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won." The fight is lost. There is no fight. Submit. Submit.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
I am in no way defending what Mr. Kerr has said here, but, he has probably spent the better part of his professional career in government and is speaking from the ignorant perspective that government exists to better people's lives and therefore equates the US government with any other big business. Unfortunately, because he's probably spent so much time in the government he doesn't understand that there are fundamental differences between businesses that are charged with maintaining the privacy of their customers' data and the government's charge to maintaining the privacy of their constituents... a charge which government has absolutely no penalty for abrogating.
Governments are not under threat of imprisonment, fines, termination, or other severe penalties that private business is when it can be proven that their actions were willfully negligent. Additionally, the government has no fear of "losing business" when they breach an acceptable level of confidentiality with regards to the data they've collected on someone. Business suffers when events like this occur... and Mr. Kerr can have no grasp on the reality of what constitutes suffering in the business world because government life doesn't operate in those terms.
It's a matter of congressional investigation when a breach occurs, and everyone and no one at the same time is held accountable. Very rarely are individuals actually singled out for the same kinds of treatment that has become commonplace in the business-world; the termination of employment at the least, for the mis-handling of confidential data.
So... while I am disappointed that Mr. Kerr cannot see why people would have a problem with not being able to expect and equate anonymity with privacy, I am not at all surprised.
Someone needs to inform these people that [their idea of] security is not the end all. They seem to act as if anything that is in the way of security has to be removed. Difficult to gather intelligence? Sorry. Tough shit. That's unfortunate but you'll have to work with it because we aren't giving up our liberties. I wish I could change everything that makes my job tough to suit my job first but that's not why I'm there.
I must add, that I think they're lying anyway. They will use that excuse to get greater control and a lot of feeble minds right now are bowing to the security threat bs. Grow a backbone already and tell these clowns to get stuffed.
...that the fourth amendment requiring reasonable cause, search warrants and so on was a burden in the past? I do. But the founding fathers understood something very important - the state isn't supposed to be the all-seeing eyes and ears, with the right to pry open every secret and search every bit of private information to make sure you're not doing anything improper. The files KGB and STASI kept on all citizens were seen as a hallmark of totalitarian governments, with their desire to control every bit of their citizens' lives. Every so often it is claimed that acting on suspicion and reasonable cause is not "efficient" enough, and that the government should be proactive through massive, intrusive surveilance without prior suspicion. Forget about showing your papers - that's only a coarse geographical location and doesn't even scratch the surface. A bug on your phone and internet connection is probably in many respects more effective than having an officer tail you around in person. Would you think it was ok if someone stalked you around all the time, as long as he was from the government? Why then do you accept him when he's there but not visible? There's never been a government in history, either through top-down totalitarianism or bottom-up corruption that hasn't vastly abused this information. To give up your anonymity is to give up your privacy and it is the stepping stone to giving up your liberty. While I don't like to quote Ayn Rand, it's the ultimate in gathering dirt on all your citizens. Loyalty to the state will be rewarded and troublemakers punished, starting with extra searches at the airport until you one day wake up and find you must either please the government or you're screwed.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That'd be great, if the government were trustworthy, but last I checked our whole system was built on paranoia about the government overstepping. Second, the 'government' is made of people, people who often-times aren't that honest themselves. I once worked with a guy whose wife worked for the IRS. Through her he had full access to financial info on everyone in our office, and loved to prove it.
That would only be the case if the Constitution defined privacy. As it stands, the Constitution doesn't even MENTION privacy.
Whether privacy should be considered an unalienable right is a worthy topic of discussion. However, as far as I can tell the concept of the right to privacy didn't exist prior to the 20th century. Saying that the right should be respected because it is in the Constitution, when it isn't, is a silly argument, and undermines the legitimate arguments for it. (And just because the Supreme Court does something silly doesn't mean it is no longer silly.)
The clear purpose of the 4th Amendment is to protect citizens against physical and disruptive intrusions into their homes and possessions. It does not exist to explicitly safeguard information from the government. It was neither written nor ratified under any semblance of that meaning. To intentionally interpret the Constitution in a way that is alien to both the words themselves, and to the understanding of both the writers and ratifiers, is blatantly anti-democratic.
"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties."
There is no way to interact with the government except THROUGH private parties. Every individual who works for the government is a PRIVATE PARTY. The fact that they are SUPPOSED to be operating in an official capacity makes little difference to me. All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the bunch (or in this case, to abuse my privacy).
History has demonstrated that these kinds of abuses by individuals acting in an official capacity do happen. As long as there are people involved, there's very little that can be done to safeguard information. This goes both ways; people are the greatest weakness when it comes to safeguarding government secrets as well.
The best solution is to enforce laws like the Privacy Act of 1974. Somewhere in there it prohibits the use of an SSN for anything other than Social Security.
--
This space for rent
Heh. According to the first two pages of my Google search, I am a stunt double, a football player, a reviewer on Amazon, a MySpace bot, and a bigwig at Tower Financial Planning. Looks like I'm about as close to incognito on the web as you're going to find.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Maybe we can invite a Brit to weigh in on whether or not it's irony, but what fascinates me is that many of the same people who cry the loudest about the Bush Administration's actions are also the ones going on about the need for social welfare programs and universal health care.
Look: either the government pervades your life, or it does not.
The debate is healthy, though. Perhaps it will lead to clearer rules of engagement on security and privacy. If you're tasked with ensuring security, you really want clear ROE, so that the next time Mr. Extremist makes history, you can say: "Well, that sucked, but that was the way the public wanted to manage the probabilities."
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Instead of "redefining" privacy to mean "we know your private data, but we'll be responsible with it", how about we re-institute actual privacy? Instead of giving our personal information to companies who lose it or sell it or share it, how about we the people guard our own data? Instead of keeping it on their computers, let's keep it on our own.
In my opinion, software as a service and registration based software are two of the biggest perpetrators of data and privacy violations. They take away your right to manage who knows what about you, forcing you to provide whatever data the "service provider" chooses or dictates that they "need".
1) Make it illegal to force consumers to turn over private information unless it's a functional requirement of the process (not just data mining or marketing enhancement)
2) Make it illegal for companies to sell or share ANY personally identifiable data they collect, even names, phone numbers, and addresses.
3) Dismantle companies that violate privacy laws, retain identifiable customer data, or insist on data that is not a necessity to do business.
It's pretty simple! You own YOUR OWN data. No one else has a right to it. No one can force you to turn it over to do business with them unless it's a functional necessity of doing business and not just a preference. Anyone that violates privacy laws is dismantled.
BUT! BUT! It won't happen, because we live in a fascist corporate pathocracy where companies and money rule politics, the individual citizen, nay citizens period, are not considered, asked, or involved in any decisions, and THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR DATA ALSO. So they can spy on you. It's all to protect YOU from the "terrists" you know.
Nevermind the true terrorists are OUR OWN GOVERNMENT.
Vague "terrorist threats", data mining, advertising, marketing, and "revenue enhancement" ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE REASONS TO DISMANTLE PRIVACY. Money and fear are NEVER reasons to willingly accept oppression or subordination.
Fight for your rights, America. Our rights aren't what some company claims they will recognize, or what our government claims they will 'allow'. These are inherent to our existence, and they are for US to decide, not someone else. Fight for your rights! Wake up before it's too late.
Welcome to the surveillance society.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that
Anyone here perhaps, but there are still many, many people who won't show up in a Google search, or who will show up with only the most benign data. Your profile in Google searches pretty much depends on your activity on the 'net, (or in the public sphere) and on how much information you choose to make available.
None of which is relevant to any discussion surrounding government and privacy. They're supposed to protect you, not roll over and play dead.
Three Squirrels
The Right to Privacy, as put forth by the Constitution of the United States of America, never intended for any one to be anonymous. Anonymous people have no voice in the government because they are unkown and faceless. Only those who stand up to be counted, by their vote and their enumeration in a census, can be a part of the government.
Privacy means that the gevernment can't look into your life without just cause.
As always, this is only my $0.02 worth.
Type my real name into google and you'll find 3 entries relating to me
When I Google my full name I get more than 100 results. None of the results on the first page are about me. Same with the second and third pages, only 1 result is shown on the third one with a link to omitted results.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Treasonist bastard, also know as who you are.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
If that's the case, it isn't working well. According to the Oracle at Google, "Bush" is mentioned "about 18,700" times at Slashdot. Just about as popular as Mr. Gates (21,700 hits).
Treason Onward, comrades!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yes: the government is five times more likely to leak it!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The same cannot be said for our government. There is a significant cost to changing citizenship, if it is at all possible.
Also, Google cannot declare me an 'enemy combatant' and suspend my right to a trial.
Blar.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887
"Any Constitution tant does not take into account the fact that a government can be perverted is useless"
Maximilien de Robespierre
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Nuh-uh. I have an entire disambiguation page on Wikipedia on my name. I'm a trophy, an American political scientist, a Canadian international relations scholar, and the former mayer of Fort Lauderdale.
Without anonymity the small voice with be Bitch SLAPPed into silence!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What scares us is that you shitheads let them get away with it. You almost impeached a president for lying about a blowjob, but you don't take down an administration that is actively dismantling everything your ancestors fought and died for.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Good luck on that mister, there's already 213,000 hits about you on Google!
http://www.google.com/search?q=Anonymous+Coward
The phrase many people have a issue with: government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information., presently it is not properly safeguarded, except for those guarding their data in order to maximize profits on it's resale.
I'll trust the government with my private data when I trust the administrators. Which usually means that they trust us also.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Actually the liberty part refers to living where you want (i.e. on the frontier) - temporary safety was the inclination to move back to the safety of larger cities and abandoning new settlements that were being raided by the Indians. The letter was calling on the government to help fund the weapons with which the settlers could protect themselves, given that it was uneconomical for government troops to protect the frontier.
So the letter wasn't a "diatribe against blind, stupid pacifism" but against government putting up red tape to avoid having to spend money for the protection of settlers.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Specifically papers and unreasonable searches means the government does not get to look at my private documents without a warrant. Back when this amendment was written, if the government wanted to snoop on your documents, it would have to look at your papers, and this amendment would force them to get a warrant. Nowadays most of our documents are electronic, and we transmit them about over networks. Clearly, had the authors of the 4th amendment been alive today they would include "snooping on your email" as "unreasonable searches of your papers".
... to something like : François-D'; delete table taxpayers; while it still works on some sites :-D
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
""These are the times that try men's souls."
FalconThomas Paine
Should there be a Law?
This is so fucking scary ... I can't believe there are people in the US that even think of talking like this Kerr guy.
Text of "1984"
"Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!"
Totally agree. And you can sue them.
This is really a tempest in a teapot. The federal government's interpretation of what constitutes your right to privacy and how they will act to protect it while keeping the country safe is all detailed in the Continuity Annexes of National Security Presidential Directive 51. See item 23 in particular.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html>
They don't understand that one core aspect of privacy is selectiveness. Just because I disclose to the blockbuster clerk a certain piece of information doesn't entitle the government to that info, nor does that disclosure justify their extracting that info under penalty of law.
I guess if I have sex with that blockbuster clerk, I'm obligated to perform those same services on government officials and/or they're justified in demanding that I do as much. You see, I went down on her (blockbuster clerk) so I shouldn't have any problem with the police/government demanding the same treatment, right?
Issues like this go to court, courts are driven by lawyers, lawyers are not ever not even slightly interested in the truth, or what is right (morally/ethically or otherwise). They are only interested in proving whatever their client is paying them to prove.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
This is affirmed by the 9th Amendment, although the right exists independently of it.
You're the sort of person for whom the Bill of Rights was added, because you simply don't understand the concept. The Constitution gives the Federal Government no power to intrude on privacy, therefore the right is retained by the people.
-Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, no. 84
Much US "case law," isn't law (in the exact same sense that our current money doesn't have value). It's not founded on any pure principles of ethics or logic, despite the claims of weasly lawyers and congresscritters, but upon convenience and authority through force. It's a history of progressive ursurpations of powers not granted by the people, and is illegitimate. The king has no clothes.
That some judge states "black is white" doesn't make it so, and simply weakens any legitimacy the law once had.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Are you going to send Google a C & D as well? After all, googling for "Donald Kerr sex sheep" returns this thread as the #1 hit. (Its also #1 for Donald Kerr naked aliens", "Donald Kerr public washroom", and #1 and #2 for "Donald Kerr botnet").
obvious redundant comment...
The fact that our our government is run by people who say such things, shows that the cause is lost.
Without the protection of true anonymous political free speech, there is no such thing as real democracy. The very fabric of real democracy depends on people being able to express their beliefs about what their government should be doing in their name, without any fear of that anonymity being less than 100%.
When true anonymity is gone, all that will be expressed will be biased towards what people believe will get the most positive response from the forces that may be violating the anonymity.
I.e. the political discourse in the country will be deprived of true intelligent conversation, and replaced with nothing but brown-nosers, hoping that what they are saying will gain them some slight social and political benefit for them and their families in the future. Sure the brown nosers will be their always, but if you have true anonymity, then the democratic ideal is that that the people voicing the cold-hard truth will at least have some chance to be heard.
I still have some hope in the checks and balances... But is it ever depressing hearing this kind of utterly stupid/evil shit coming from the people in power.
Bottom Line: Anonymity can be protected. Anyone who says otherwise is a fascist, a coward, or lazy.
-dmc (posted non-anonymously, only because I'd rather be crucified than live in the world that seems to be coming, if things like anonymous free speech are not protected)
...anything to you. Ask Harry Buttle.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
There's no need to do that. The first page of hits for Donald Kerr already reveals that he played a call boy in a 1933 film called Forty Naughty Girls, and that he moonlights as a Scottish Nationalist councillor.
I'm getting tried to typing this over and over, but I must. We can do something about this. Somewhere in the whole of the Internet there must be a good leader or someone with great ideas on what we can do about an over reaching government or, at least, one that has lost it's way. We are the to branch of government, We The People. Once there was spine enough in the population of the US to get made about an increase in tea tax. Oh, I know it was a complicated issue, but people did seem to have a hell of allot more spine. I don't think anything illegal need be done, but I'm sure that there must be brains enough somewhere in this world do so something about this.
Q: How to start?
Q: What can we do collectively?
Q: Should Rob run for political office?
Let's hear ideas and not complaints. Whining dumb person or smart do-gooder?
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Actually, even more to the point is the secret ballot - while the fact you voted is recorded, how you voted should not be traceable to you (unfortunately not always the case).
"Instead of troubling yourself with the invconvenience of hiding your secrets, why don't you put them in this nice simple little lockbox we've made for you? And here's your key. Copies? No, I didn't make any copies. Scout's honour!"
This was predictable based on strategic considerations of the cost of information versus the cost of privacy. I predicted it almost two years ago.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=cost_of_information_versus_cost
"As the cost of information falls, it becomes increasingly harder to control who knows what. The foundation of successful conspiracies is the control of critical information by small, selected groups of individuals.... an increasingly difficult strategy in an era of cheap, easy access to information."
Why hello thar, Mr. Robert Cox.
The scariest part of all this is that according to google I died in an industrial accident a few years ago.
It was a shock when i discovered this, but thankfully measures have been put in place to ensure it never happens again.
liqbase
Seriously people, isn't this kind of attitude in the government exactly why the constitution insisted on the Right to Bear Arms?
So when some ass-hat in Dub GubMint makes wisecracks like this which no reasonable person of sound mind and healthy body would just blindly accept, there's scope for the citizens to rise up in defence of their inalienable rights.
Really, what on earth is holding you all back?
I mean it, what exactly, specifically, is stopping you?
303Million Concerned Citizens cannot possibly be wrong.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I see they've moved on from smoking crack to hallucinogens.
Government provisions for socialized health care do not inherently sacrifice privacy. What gives you that idea? As long as the hospitals (etc) abide to patient confidentiality, and the government pays for these hospitals (etc) to operate, there's no issue.
This is really far from an "all or nothing" debate. That's what the government wants you to believe: that in order to provide you with services, security and safety, we need to be able to get into every facet of your life. Don't let them convince you that's how it has to be.
There are choices to be made about everything. The government can provide health care without access to specific patient information. They can provide security without reading your email and listening to your phone calls. Do not for a second believe that one comes with the other. We have choices.
What?
"gave up [their] essential liberty" of BEARING ARMS paid for by the government"
So essential liberty is the ability to have your word count, maintaining the status quo against something they didn't want, bearing arms were just at tool that gave them a chance.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Traditionally, tortious trespass is trespass, regardless of whether or not there is a sign. Now, it's not trespass if you're thrown on to the private property, or if you run there to take cover from an act of god. But if you are wandering around and merely don't know that it's someone else's property, then you are liable. Of course, tort law varies from state to state. But the general upshot is that a "no trespassing" sign doesn't do much.
Secondly, as mentioned previously, some consider that this might fall under "trespass to chattel." I can't remember the case offhand, but there was a case where IBM attempted to sue a disaffected employee who had been e-mailing current employees. They tried to sue for trespass to chattel, arguing that the e-mail was trespassing on their computers, this failed, however, since trespass to chattel generally requires damage to be done. There was no damage done to the computer from the e-mail, only to the workers' productivity. I imagine similar reasoning could be used to negate any such claims then.
To get back to the point, you are suggesting some sort of electronic shrink-wrap license that binds employers to not use information from a social networking site towards hiring practices. I'm not sure if there's some precedent that would endorse this idea, but my own gut feeling is that it would fail. There isn't an adequate public policy reason to disallow companies from using social network information (in fact, there may be incentive for companies TO do such a thing, to reduce their hiring of 'troublesome' workers). Secondly, since people are willingly volunteering this information to the public at large, it would be hard to argue that one special class of people is not allowed to view or use that information. It's kind of backwards compared to most other privacy issues, where people giving information to a specific class of people are trying to PREVENT the general public from viewing/using it.
And ethically, I, speaking personally now, see nothing wrong with denying someone a job based on information that they have willingly submitted to others. If they had broadcast something on tv that made them less 'hire-able,' the law certainly wouldn't protect it. Therefore, if it's your prerogative to post pictures of you drinking yourself into oblivion or complaining about your awkwardness at social functions, I think it's perfectly reasonable for an employer to deny you a position based on that information. Now, of course, if they deny it to you because of your race, creed, etc. then that would be unfair according to our laws. That, however, is already protected regardless of if you post it on the internet or not. So I am not seeing the reasoning behind not holding people accountable for their own actions here.
P.S. This is just my response to the points you have brought up. The main point of contention from Kerr, that of giving up anonymity in favor of having the government 'safeguard' and be 'responsible' for our private data, I find to be completely ridiculous. Our government should not play the part of some wizened patriarch. It is here to enhance our ability to organize (economically and militarily). It should be a moderator, not a bully.
BLAST! FOILED AGAIN!
*poof*
Obligatory xkcd link.
How the hell did you come to that conclusion? It's a diatribe against the governor refusing to impose taxes to raise money for defense and negotiate for peace with the indians!
... "We have taken every Step in our Power, consistent with the just Rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania, for their Relief, and we have Reason to believe, that in the Midst of their Distresses they themselves do not wish us to go farther." Which as the other poster said means they don't want the fucking army in their backyard.
The giving up of essential liberties refers to the sentence before
With liberty and justice for none?
He's clearly not looking to circumvent existing anti-discrimination laws. Quit picking nits.
The important thing here (and what everyone but you is discussing) is the method that the information was retrieved. Personal information is getting easier to come by because of the Internet. Some of that personal information can legally be used in employment decisions. Welcome to the discussion.
That's not what the language means. To be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" means there are limits to the conditions under which the local constable can rifle through your papers and take whatever he's interested in. It does not mean he can't look over your shoulder if you're reading your papers in the local pub, peeking in the window of your home, or consulting a psychic to tell them what is contained in your papers. The amendment does not protect information or prevent spying. It protects people's lives from being unduly interfered with by physical searches or seizures of their property.
The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.
Damned Constitution always gittin' in th' way of easy snoopin'.
Table-ized A.I.
"Look: either the government pervades your life, or it does not."
Here in grown-up land we call that a false dichotomy.
The Bush administration has shit all over the Constitution and this country. They have committed treason.
I find a contradiction from Whitehouse Republicans. Republican thinking is that you don't let the government do to much because the government is allegedly incompetent. But if the government is incompetent handling the economy and health-care, why would they be competent in handling homeland spying?
Table-ized A.I.
Searched for "Donald Kerblum" and it's not there! I'm still anonymous!
...oh crap
That was the attitude at the time. For all his modern thinking Franklin was not above cynically dismissing the natives rights to fight for their lands. He actually states in the letter that they should have come forward to the authorities with their grievances before attacking and that they would have addressed any legitimate issue they had. Yeah right.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Interestingly enough (at least to me), ~30% of the results from Google for my name are actually about me.
For the record, he was impeached on charges of the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted, but later disbarred, probably because of questions about his honesty in court.
-Peter
......to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.......
I suppose it can be debated whether some ephemeral electronic impulses in some distant computer apply to the above. In the days this was written, any government agent who did want these, had to physically come to the subject persons house or office and take such persons or items with him/her.
It seems that in this day, the only way to keep anything truly secret, is to not tell anyone, anywhere, by any means and make sure it isn't recorded anywhere it is possible for another person to discover said secret(s). Sending a secret out by any electronic device is likely not much different than shouting it from your roof-top.
Maybe Jesus had this in mind what is recorded in Luke 12:3?
"For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor anything hidden that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light. And that which you have spoken in the ear in secret rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops."
This was written long before mankind had our modern means of eavesdropping.
All theory is gray
Fortunately, both /. and political conventions attract more than their fair share of activists.
I've met very few sheeple at political conventions. Most of them were spouses or boy/girlfriends who really didn't want to be there.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Also, Google cannot declare me an 'enemy combatant' and suspend my right to a trial."
I bet they could declare you a terrorist by placing the right search results and adding a few incriminating pages.
The Govt would just follow along, lock you up and declare the evidence as secret.
Easy peasy.
Overzealous "privacy advocates" took things way too far when they attacked the government's collection of publicly available information. It's one thing to be concerned about the creation of travel dossiers but quite another thing to claim the government cannot compile the same information which is available to any Joe Blow (phone books, news articles, web postings, etc.) There is certainly a need for any society to have ability to protect itself by detecting the "bad guys" in its midst. There is also the aspect of "surrendering anonymity", to some extent, to have a modern society (drivers license, credit cards, medical records, etc.) The zealots have helped give credibility to the government's positions where it matters, in the courts and Congress. They sacrificed strategic "victory" for immediate publicity. Stupid.
I Googled
Donald Kerr sex sheep
and guess what popped up near the top?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So although the Ninth does get mentioned far more seldom than it should, its existence is critical and quite central to the current privacy debate. It has not been completely ignored.
If you're interested in reading a layman's introduction to the 'right to privacy' as it has developed through several major USSC cases, I might humbly suggest my own "Right to Privacy Primer" (text version) which I wrote a while back and recently updated.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The info you list comes from /. not Google, and not all of what you list is right. Such as "Age 21", heck I don't see where that comes from, looking at my profile there's nothing in it about my age. Now if you read through my posts you will see I am older than 21, even going so far as to say I was stationed in Germany years ago while in the US Army. And unlike what you say, "You live in Missouri", I do not live and have never said I did live in Missouri. I have said though the state I live in, even said the city, if I recall right.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The only "inside-job" aspect of 9/11 was that despite repeated warnings and even a CIA briefing for George Bush on how Osama bin Laden was planning attacks on US targets such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, using airliners as flying bombs, the idiot did nothing. Look for the video of Condoleeza Rice admitting that the written versions of the briefing were sitting on her desk, unopened, until after 9/11. It's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7fQcQdMoxo
His reaction at that school, while reading "My Pet Goat" to the kiddies, after Andrew Card told him the United States was under attack was priceless. He was frozen in fear. He sat there scared shitless and not knowing what to do. It is a famous video. He finally had to be escorted out. Somewhere in that alcohol-damaged brain of his, he knew that he could have stopped it if he wasn't so damn busy partying at the Crawford ranch. That little gem is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WztB6HzXxI -- His famous seven minutes of silence. He's lucky he didn't have urine dripping down his leg caught on video.
It was not an inside job though it might as well have been. It was Bush administration incompetence. Complete, total, and utter incompetence, that led to 9/11. He and his "posse" were too busy partying, bar-b-q'ing, and liquoring up the Saudis. The most vacationing presidenter, EVER. 9/11 was Bush's fault. But he didn't do it.
At the end of the day, you can't use somebody else's computer, and expect privacy. You can't use somebody else's network, and expect privacy. If I jack into your ethernet hub, you're going to have the possibility of reading my traffic unless I use HTTPS / SSH / GPG etc.
That's our real relationship with Comcast, with AT&T and so on. They're snoopy sysadmins on a gigantic scale, and we should treat them like snoopy sysadmins of any other kind: encrypt and tunnel all traffic, and push back technically as hard as we can. P2P has led the way on this, but it's really time we stopped dinking around and started defaulting to HTTPS even on sites like Slashdot.
On the broader level, I did some work on this (ironically, the first draft of the work was done for the USG.)
http://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php
It's a system - built on open source software for the most part (and the remaining stuff could be built) - which provides for a rock solid personal identity card which has three critical properties:
* all your personal data is encrypted, and only a court can decrypt it
* the card has no unique identifiers on it, and you have dozens of cards (that you leave with institutions like your bank to "anchor" your account)
* it's dirt cheap and secure enough to entrust with biometric data like DNA fingerprints.
Concerted effort to produce an open alternative which offers strong security *AND* strong privacy by carrying the debate to a higher technical level than schemes like RealID is long past due.
Phil Zimmerman settled the encryption issue for most of a generation with PGP. It's time for us to consider doing the same for general communications snooping, and then moving out into areas like the poor protection of identity in systems like the Social Security Number-based credit reporting system.
We can do better, and we must.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
.....it would have to look at your papers........
They still have to get a warrant to look at you papers if they are in your HOUSE. Even if they want you HD from your computer, they have to get a warrant and then come and take it. As written the getting of a warrant ONLY applies to you house, not the dumpster or garbage can. You home is your castle, still in a sense.
You might as well get used to the fact, that the Internet is a public highway and anything that litters that highway can be picked up by anyone, including government. If you have a deep dark secret, keep it to yourself. As soon as another person knows it, it is no longer a secret. If you want to convey some special private information that is limited to one or a few individuals, encrypt it, before releasing it onto the public Internet.
All theory is gray
That's fine if it's your opinion, but thankfully it does not seem to have been shared by many of the Supreme Court justices in the last half-century.
Your very literal use of the word "papers" is, IMO, sillier than the expansionist view you seem to abhor. Plus, the Constitution says nothing about said papers being under your direct personal control; you have a right to be secure in the knowledge that the government will not intrude on them, even if they are in, say, a bank's safe deposit box. That's no different from electronic "papers" stored on a remote server.
And while the town constable could perhaps peek over your shoulder if you were reading documents in a pub, he certainly could not conceal himself in your house or other private place (or peep through a window), in order to do so: the key difference between your home and a pub being the implicit assumption of privacy.
Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that "persons, houses, papers, and effects" was meant to be an exclusive list; it reads to me as though it was specifically mean to be broad: that list encompasses practically everything of a possibly private nature that an 18th century man might possess. There is no reason to assume that the intent was limited only to "physical searches or seizures," when that was the only type of search or seizure that existed at the time of writing. The document was as broad as possible at the time it was written; you do a disservice to it with your pedantry.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Point of fact: it's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act not the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, which is a good thing, because FISA is much easier to pronounce than FSIA.
"Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won."
Has this man never voted?
Or, maybe that's a moot point.
Seriously? Your favorite president ever? Have you read any history prior to 2000?
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
... is that citizens don't have a problem with giving up some of their anonymity and/or privacy when it makes sense to protect the common good. What people do have a very large problem with is giving that information to the government, because the government is composed of people who will not just use that information to protect the people, but also to persecute the people who do not act the way the people in charge would like people to act. In addition, the government is not accountable to anyone if they misuse that information, so they have no incentive not to abuse it. The government was founded with branches and a balance of power because the founders knew government could not be trusted, and every subsequent generation of our government has validated that hypothesis. As long as that problem persists unsolved, privacy will be absolutely essential for the people to fight to preserve.
I'll toss a second thought into this mix.
... ... ...
Maybe this is good in a very subtle way. Perhaps if the good US cictizens taste the medicine that their government has comfortably dispensed to the third world for the last half-century, then they might extend their outrage beyond merely "this hurts us" to "so, this is why we are thought of so poorly".
(Citing Talking Heads, melodramatically) perhaps one day we might hear the US cry:
"And you may ask yourself
well, how did I get here?
(Letting the days go by)
And you may tell yourself:
This is not my beautiful house!
My God! What have I done?"
These are the times that try mens souls. Can we design, engineer, and realize technology that makes us more of the best of what we are, and less of the worst? Our government wants to eliminate privacy by suggesting a difference between privacy and anonymity. How absurd. It is the red herring of our Orwellian age. Those who exchange liberty for security deserve neither - B. Franklin Security is not a natural state of being. - H. Keller WTF?! - This should be the official slashdot response to this story. OW42
objectWizard42
NO! Bad! This is not about "feeling" secure, it's about BEING secure. There's a huge difference. If someone can unreasonably search all your papers, effects, etc. then you're not secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, are you? It has nothing to do with how you feel about it. I see people making this fallacy all the time, that it's about feeling secure rather than actually being secure. That's not how it works. There is no rhetorical ground to be muddied.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Er, no, you need to re-read it. It doesn't say The right of the people to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects, while in their houses, it says The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,. That is the person, the house, the paper and the effects are all protected, independently. If you put something in the garbage, you have given it up to be placed in open land. However, if I put it on a remote, password protected server, it is still most definitely protected from unauthorised access and a warrant is required.
Actually its the corporations that put him into power that we should be focusing on. He is just the fall guy for a policy created by organizations that have only one rule, maximize profits for shareholders. Dont shoot the messenger. Now im not saying let him off the hook, im just saying that people are focusing there energy in the wrong place and its preventing corporations from having to take responsibility for their actions.
The Bush administration has shit all over the Constitution and this country.
I would have to say that we put it there so he wouldn't get any on the carpet. Never once did we rub his nose in it. Or put him outside.
What?
Holy 1984 moment. Did that guy actually say that "Privacy" is defined as governments and businesses safeguarding information from outside sources? And that the word "Privacy" we've all grown up to understand is actually "Anonymity"? That's a move straight out of 1984, redefining words to get inconvenient ideas (freedom, privacy, accountability) out of the citizens consciousness. Here's the definition of "privacy" according to Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/privacy Notice, it makes no mention of governments or company's. Here's to that definition never changing.
I just dug up that Kerr was the supervisor on the FBI's Carnivore program while he was Assistant FBI director.
See http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/06/carnivore.hearing/
I think being a plumber is a noble chore. When the toilet overflows you don't need Dostoevsky coming to your house.
I wrote: Anyway, the courts have acknowledged that this is an implicit, rather than explicit right.
You wrote: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
It's an implicit right, the parameters of which have been defined by the courts. In defining implicit rights, the courts have attempted to ensure that they will not get trampled on account of not being explicitly defined in the Constitution. I submit that those rights not defined in the Constitution are constantly under attack, and sometimes as a practical matter they need to be defined in order to delineate those rights held by the people.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You're the sort of person for whom the Bill of Rights was added, because you simply don't understand the concept.
Gee, thanks for enlightening me. I appreciate your insights into my cognitive abilities, too.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It seems I've hit two of the most sensitive issues on Slashdot: Privacy and the Libertarian Impulse.
You can't question unbridled privacy rights on Slashdot, even as a rhetorical exercise.
You can't question the Libertarian Impulse on Slashdot, at least when referring to Google. Government wields force and is dangerous. Enormously wealthy and powerful public corporation driven solely by profit motive doesn't wield force and is therefore non-dangerous. Simple, binary logic, but it seems to work for many folks.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Google has not repeatedly proven itself untrustwory.
The US govt. has.
Therefore Google is more trusted than the US govt.
Do I trust Google without reservations? No. I wouldn't use Google for my data storage center. I don't put my e-mail on Google (or Yahoo, or Hotmail, or...).
This isn't quite privacy, but it's related. I don't trust remotely changable information to not be remotely changed to suite political or economic convenience. And I don't trust what they say about me to be honest, either, but I can't do much about that. Telling the truth never has much effect when you're speaking to someone with an agenda.
Some amount of risk acceptance is necessary. Risks don't go away just because you don't pay attention to them. But that's no reason to feed the monster.
This "privacy advice" is coming from someone speaking for a particularly untrustworthy government, but I wouldn't have trusted Clinton with my information either, and I won't trust the next one either. The government has an agenda, and it's only peripherally related to the purposes of the citizenry. This is true of all branches, but it's most true of the executive, and least true of the judicial. Something about running for office seems to instill corruption into the heart of political candidates. (This was always true, but the FCC decision that stations didn't need to provide equal access to electoral candidates really cranked up the level of corruption.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Speaking as someone whose in-laws live about 3 blocks from where that Airbus that lost its tail on takeoff from JFK went down, I can assure you that it is truly astonishing how little is left when a large plane crashes, and how small the devastation on the ground can be. Unless you think that was staged too.
You work for us Mr. Kerr. I find it very un-American to even suggest that. The right to privacy is patriotic.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Debate is healthy when it's real debate. This has been framed in terms that are so wrong it is shocking. Just a couple of quotes from the article that really stand out:
"Privacy no longer can mean anonymity" - without anonymity there is no such thing as privacy. Traffic analysis is a wonderful tool if we are talking about communications, and if we're datamining for activities then tagging everything with a real id makes it a lot easy. Nothing like removing two freedoms for the price of one.
"Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that" - Erm, if you already have somebodies name then anonymity is hard. Surely the real question is whether you can get it in the first place. Surely not a US politician trying to mislead the public over the terms of a debate. I'm shocked...
The reason that I put this response to you, in this thread, rather than someone else later on is this. Why are you trying to equate the debate with a "liberal" (in the US sense) desire for social control? Most of Europe has had extensive social programs in place for decades without feeling the need for this fascist level of control over people's lives. Do you not think it possible that the two subjects are independent?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
I detect -- and feel -- a tremendous amount of political outrage lately. Where is the tip-over point where this bubbles up into a political candidate who stands against these atrocities? Failing that, where is the tip-over point where we hold mass protests? Failing that, where is the tip-over point where we shoot these fuckers in the head? (That is in fact our final solution as outlined in the Constitution.)
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Is there a slashdot popularity chart - listing the number of times every time the name of a famous person has turned up?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The answer to "with you or against you" is simple: Against you. No decent person makes such a demand. It in itself points to someone unrefined, that does not understand moral, or the rights of other to choose.
Fortunately that statement was mainly from some unrefined, primitive stooge. Most of the world understands that. But personally, if I were a head of a neutral gouvernment, this would have caused me to send a "flash" level inquery whether this was a declaration of war. It is a pity that the quality of "statesmen" has sunk so low, they can get away with this kind of stupidity and insult to a major part of the world.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
How can we get this slimeball fired? Who do you have to write to? Who do you need to pester? Which committees in the Congress oversee this kind of thing?
And yeah, I know, the Dems are the kind of watchdogs that keep their teeth in a glass in the bathroom. But with enough prodding, maybe they'll at least whine a bit.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
And you wonder (maybe you don't) why the US consistently rebukes efforts to set up new bodies exercising international sovereignty, for example, the UN Law of the Sea Convention.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If I could excuse myself from this "Social Security" situation, then I might agree with you.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
HTTPS only works for protecting against people snooping in real-time on things like wireless networks or broadcast domains; there already exist available network firewall devices which (by virtue of the fact that they can see both sides of the HTTPS setup at once) can see inside of HTTPS packets as they're flying by and analyze their content just like anything else.
I bet the NSA can afford a couple of those.
If that is their law, fine. It just strikes me as bizarre to regulate small business in that manner.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Three points, moron:
What if the "terrorist" that broke into your house and raped your wife and children was a government official? What if that same government official moved to silence you when you tried to press charges against him? What if that government official had you hauled off and locked up without due process, without right to see an attorney, without charges, and without ever being able to have a trial? Before you answer, I hope you realize that there are quite a few people, labelled as terrorists, that are locked up under these same conditions. The government has not made any case against them.
How much safer are we? Do you not realize that the Bush administration's war on "terra" has only strengthened radical Islam, strengthened Al Qaeda, destabilized countries like Pakistan (which have majority Muslim populations, missiles, and nukes), led directly to the "election" of Mahmood Amidinijad and the re-radicalization of Iran. If you think we are safer now than we were even on 9/11 itself, you are sadly mistaken and have your head firmly wedged between your butt cheeks.
The Constitution (it is a proper noun, moron) was written long ago - true. However, it is a dman good blueprint for how a free society is managed. If anything, the fault with the Constitution is that it doesn't explicitly call what George W. Bush and company are doing as treason and specify the punishment. Of course, all it would take would be another uncontitutional "signing statement" to be done with that item, just like all of his other ones, but at least people like you might actually sit up and take notice when he violated that particular statute.
You are right about one thing, though. Terrirsts don't care about the Bill of Rights. But then neither does George Bush. How about a police state where you get killed by your own police? Does that work for you?
Two words: secret ballot.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Hm, excuse me, but that sounds like total horse****. In HTTPS, you have a public key for the server, and use it to perform an exchange of a symmetric key. HTTPS is secure even if you can see every byte exchanged between the two devices, that's the point.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
smitty, I think this is a straw argument, this idea that if the government can provide any services to us it absolutely must invade our privacy. This is one of those loopy Reason Magazine assertions that is devoid of meaning and whose only purpose is to make us thing government is a problem.
If we're going to get anywhere as a country, and as a world, we're going to have to stop swallowing this phony conventional wisdom. I've lived and worked in a few places where the residents enjoy a host of public services, far more than we have here in the US: free medicine, free education through University, government pensions, and guess what? They have far more privacy than we have in this country.
In fact, I've recently come back from a symposium in Finland with a side trip to Norway. It was an eye-opener to talk to people who live in a prosperous place, who are quite pleased with their system of publicly funded health care and education, and still believe they are, in fact, running their government instead of the other way around.
The USA is the wealthiest country in the world, one that prides itself on innovation. Well, if we're so goddamn clever, what say we figure out a way to keep families from losing their homes if one of their kids gets sick, and maybe, on this Veteran's Day weekend, figure out a way to keep so many of our returning veterans of our foreign military adventures from becoming homeless (one in four of US homeless are military veterans). While we're at it, maybe we can figure out a way to have elections with results that bear some resemblance to the votes actually cast. Why are so many countries in much worse shape than the US still able to hold elections in which the citizenry have some trust?
No, Smitty, don't get sucked into that Ronald Reagan BS that government is incapable of doing anything right. Just because Reagan's party has spent decades doing their level best to destroy government so his statement can be true doesn't mean there's anything about government that is inherently ineffective or negative.
The last time I had to renew my drivers' license, the DRV was run a lot better than my cable company.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We are gathering
I will trust the government with my secrets when they trust me with theirs.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
And if you care so much about your children, do you not care that in the name of "fightin' terra'", George Bush has decided for them that they will be saddled with a crippling National debt? Do you not care that virtually nothing has been done to combat the real threat to their survival - literally - doing something/anything to combat global warming? Do you not care that their energy future is one of dwindling and unstable fossil fuels and succulent targets for "terrists" -- nuclear power plants?
Are your children growing up in a free country? Really? With "free speech zones" that violate their free speech? With everything they do or say online tracked and matched to them and a liability to them if those in power disagree? Without the guarantees of legitimate elections free from wholesale tampering? How about the ability to just live their peaceful happy lives? See that anywhere in here?
This is the future you are endorsing for your children. Enjoy.
There seems to be an increasingly accepted view in America that the 'founding words' of our esteemed Founders (women most certainly included) are some sort of 'ideal' to be striven for.
Nothing could be further from the truth -- the Declaration, Constitution, et. al. are practical recipes, written by experienced and reflective authors, a group of people that had personally suffered and/or witnessed the murders, intrusions, seizures, violations, wrongs, indignities and humiliations the Documents are meant prevent. This most certainly includes the right to keep private from the "state" communications between individuals.
(Just who the fuck does this current government think they are, anyway? They were too cowardly to go to the original site for their own first "inauguration" (thats another story) because of the protesters, and its been all downhill since that day. They haven't looked a protester in the eyes since, the gutless wonders, instead they spend mass quantities of cash avoiding them and locking them out of public forums. Heaven forbid that they actually tried to match wits with one.)
I also find the political (for lack of a better word) similarities between then and now ironic, to say the least. The American Revolution was pretty much entirely caused by years of increasing economic and physical depredation, abuse and exploitation by the dominant trans-national "entity" of the day, the British East India Company, an entity that at times employed its own military force, established its own governments, etc.
Sound anything like whats happening with the oil in Iraq?
But actually, my favorite part is that smugglers played such a large part in early American history. Dunno why, but that appeals to me sooooooo much. :)
Interesting, too, that lobbyists played a part in the run up to the American Revolution:
And realize that the National debt, that the Bush administration has almost doubled, means that your children will have a lower quality education, lower quality lives, lower quality health care, lower quality roads, lower quality air, lower quality water, lower quality food, lower quality opportunities, and basically lower quality everything.
All in the name of fighting "terra".
I have news for you, bud. People like you, George Bush, and Donald Kerr, are exactly what the terrorists want to happen to us. You destroy this country from the inside thinking you are doing it a favor.
You aren't. You are playing right into their hands.
Isn't it great how with one little change of definition, "privacy" can now mean "we keep private everything we know about you, which is everything."
This guy really should be fired. Out of a cannon. At a wall.
The ______ Agenda
3 years ago 70% of the stuff on the first search page were me, not a single result is today.
I quit posting with any reference to my real name/email. And thanks to recent use in a movie, my pseudonymn is no-longer unique also.
Although you can't delete your online history, it will get diluted quickly.
Thankfully so... most of the occurrences of my real name are due to various software utilities that I've released over the years. On a positive note, at least things like that don't reveal much in the way of private information.
You can read more about Donald Kerr's sex with sheep, as well as Donald Kerr caught on video drinking toilet water!, and Donald Kerr is Anna Nicole Smiths baby's daddy!
Theres also this latest Report: Car driven by naked man kills lawyer. Donald Kerr arrested!"
this is complete and total bullshit. It is illegal. It is anti-American. It is wrong. Americans must dissent. it is the only patriotic thing to do.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'd much rather "reconsider" the current occupants of our public trust/government. If we can't trust them, we shouldn't have them.
The neo-cons are going to find a way to discover that I voted for a non-neo-con? Or that I voted for a member of the Green Party for a parks position because they wanted to increase funding for parks instead of further limit the parks' hours?
I smell a revolution. It smells like Doritos and KFC. Unfortunately, this revolution will result in skyrocketing stock values of Yum! Brands, Inc. and PepsiCo, Inc, and a void of political action.
ON the off chance that you're just a mindless retard, as opposed to a troll:
"He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither." - Benjamin Franklin.
Look, you mindless toolbag of horsecrap, governments throughout history have used "We're keeping you safe" as the vanguard of attacks on liberty. Governments must never be trusted, must always be kept in check, and must always be limited in their scope. My privacy is my inherent right, and if the politicians want access to it, they have to go to courts. Anything else is tyranny.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This prig exemplifies the legacy of 8 years of Republican paternalism, and the sooner the US is shed of them better off both it and the world will be.
In unrelated news: The Onion reports Kerr is wetting his pants about UN criticiam of the US "owning the internet", not because the US will keep information free, but because it wound render that neat little AT&T ["Your World Delivered®"] room obsolete.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Any rights given to you by the opinions of the justices of the Supreme Court can be taken away from you by the opinions of the justices of the Supreme Court. That is the difference between the rule of men and the rule of law. Why anyone would advocate for the former system is beyond me. The founding fathers were quite clear that they preferred the latter.
I didn't claim that "papers" excluded electronic media. The point is that the security discussed in the 4th amendment is security against those papers being disturbed or taken, not security against them being seen, or against the information contained in the papers from being known. So yes, if the government forcibly enters your house, takes your laptop, or interrupts your business, to read your email, that is a clear violation of the 4th amendment. If it is read without disturbing anyone or anything, such action is not at odds with any reasonable interpretation of the 4th amendment.
The whole idea of "expectation of privacy" is purely an invention of the supreme court from the 1960s. It is in no way implied by the 4th amendment.
I agree that the list of objects, "persons, houses, papers, and effects" is intended to be broad. The question is strictly about what kinds of actions are being prohibited, not the kinds of objects upon which the actions are being performed.
Other "conspiracy nut" factoids:
-For the few weeks prior to the event workers at the WTC claim that they saw an increased number of goverment agents in the building, including a massive surge of security near the basement levels of the buildings.
-Forensic architects and demolitions experts found traces of thermite, attributing to how the steel lost its structural integrity. Thermite is not contained in planes, it is placed in demolition charges.
-The "official" story of how the buildings fell (plane impact, ignited jet fuel) cannot be recreated in a lab. However a thermite demolition can recreate how the buildings fell exactly.
-The head of security for the WTC was a relative of George Bush.
-Within 48 hours of the event a massive order for arms production and body bags was placed in companies owned by the Carlisle Group, a company in which the Bush family had substantial stakes in. The Bin Laden family were also investors.
Need we go on?
One bit of feedback I'll offer to your Scandinavian anecdote is the same rebuttal I offer my Swedish friend:
Comparing the situation in a country with a relatively homogeneous population the size of New York City to the USA might be unfair.
In other words, one wonders whether any of those countries would fare so well if you jacked their population up an order of magnitude, and gave it the cultural mish-mash that is the USA. Additionally, and this is a serious question about the foot vote: in which direction, North America or Scandinavia, is there greater human migration? For relatively prosperous countries like your Finland and Norway, I would expect the numbers are small and roughly equivalent. For all the purported superiority of these systems, we don't see a stampede towards the old country.
Working as I do within the realm of DoD acquisition, let me tell you that, while your statement may have merit north of the Potomac River, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is a full-on zoo.
The USA is rich. We have 50 good-sized states to tinker with the possibilities, and let people choose the place that best scratches their itch. Notwithstanding economies of scale, remind me again why we want a one-size-goobers-all solution? If absolute power corrupts absolutely, why concentrate it?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Tom,
You are flamebaiting troll of a Eurotrash snob and I have no idea how you were ever modded so high. But since I can't do anything about that, here are some things to remember:
1. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000 -- and that was prior to 9/11.
2. There were minor protests before the war in Afghanistan and serious protests leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond.
3. Many of the worst allegations regarding domestic civil-liberties infringements involving most U.S. citizens (i.e., the ones who weren't Muslim) didn't come out until after the 2004 election. Before that, the press was focused on such lovely things as Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay (which I grant you are no picnic either).
4. Take a moment and look across the channel at the United Kingdom. They ain't exactly having a civil-liberties hoe-down in England these days.
5. Treating Americans as a unitary group is just as stupid as it would be for people of any other nationality.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
Americans tell Government Official to rethink his job.
I fear that Caesar's army is approaching the Rubicon, as anonymity turns into "Privacy"...
Separation of Power turns into the "Unitary Executive"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#The_George_W._Bush_administration
Prisoners of War turn into "Unlawful Enemy Combatants"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_enemy_combatants#2001_Presidential_military_order
Torture becomes narrowly defined as pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybee_memo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo
Justice for all succumbs to the "State Secrets Privilege"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/elmasri_order_granting_motion_dismiss_051206.pdf
As Thomas Jefferson once said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html
It was true when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, it was true in the Civil War, it was true in the Second World War, and perhaps the time is coming when it will be true again.
You might want to think about which side you're going to be on.
I have to say that anyone who hopes to keep onto the concept of privacy is in for a big shock as technology moves forward, at some point we will know everything about everyone, and the idea of privacy will be a feral relic of our animal heritage.
We should strive to become less animal, wanting privacy means you're trying to be territorial and passive-aggressive, (not in ALL instances) but in many.
This is not to say people don't need their personal space, or at least ILLUSIONS of privacy, but with the technology being developed today that exists at airports and whatnot and into the future, I have no doubt we will be able to see through walls sometime soon and it will slowly penetrate consumer electronics. It will be impossible to stop the gods of commerce in their quest for profit.
The only thing we can do now, is turn our technological eyes and erase the privacy of the gods of commerce.
Not much of a point if you have Time Warner like I do.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Which means, since it is not an enumerated power of the Federal Government to intrude on the right to privacy, that it is a right retained by the people.
Oh, wait, you thought that your statement indicated the opposite, right?
You should remember that the Constitution enumerates the government's powers, not the people's rights. The Constitution does not grant rights - it simply points out a few of them that they specifically wanted to ensure were retained by the people. The rest not mentioned are automatically retained.
The right to privacy is precisely one of these - it was an idea considered so fundamental to society at the time the Constitution was written that it was considered an absurdity to include it in the document.
Turns out they probably should have left it in, huh?
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Treason is playing chess against a Russian and winning. Selling weapons to a declared enemy (post-revolution Iran) and doing a bit of embezzlement on the side is Patriotism.
"Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr.
Clearly, if you know someone's name well enough to type it into the Google query box, that person is NOT ANONYMOUS. Idiot. This article might set the record for fallacies in one article.
Speak untruth inner party member Kerr. Doubleplus ungood.
PopeRatzo, consider also that business is deeply intertwined with government in the USA. A sizeable chunk the people running policy at the appointed level, in the federal government, are fresh through the revolving door from the business side.
Are they in government to make policy that benefits the people, or the businesses? Look to where they go after stepping through the revolving door the second time to answer that question.
I believe that's what drives government to make statements and decisions that impact citizen privacy. Kerr, however, is a career spook. Spookland's interest in thwarting privacy is ostensibly about [preventing] terrorism, but when you consider the massive agglomerated databases of personal and financial history that government is buying/renting from private business, their objectives are not so clear. Let's see where Kerr ends up when his government tenure is over.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
"Donald Kerr is president of the Washington Brittney Speares fan club"
That alone should be a good reason to ostracize him from society. Permanently.
With only sucky unscripted Reality TV shows for distraction, people may actually start reading the news and getting angry.
To anyone who says, "If you're not guilty, you have nothing to hide", Bruce Schneier asks for their internet search history.
When my father-in-law retires in a year or two, the German nanny-state precludes him from doing something obvious like opening up a bicycle repair shop or computer maintenance business (two areas where he could do modest business). He is by law capped at an absurdly low level of income, once he goes into retirement.
If that is their law, fine. It just strikes me as bizarre to regulate small business in that manner.
Yea, several years ago my sister, who's a Certified Public Accountant, CPA, in the US and has her Masters, started an accounting firm with some friends of hers who are also CPAs. At the tyme I got into a discussion with someone in Germany on this and (s)he had said if my sister had tried to start the business in Germany she would have had to get a lawyer to start the business. I don't know if that's true but if so then it only adds to the small business unfriendliness of Germany. Add to that the fact that it's hard to fire an employee for cause there. And in France, there were some riots in France a few years ago because the French government wanted to pass a law to make it easier for an employer to fire someone, but the youth in France was against this. Why would anyone want to try to start a business, or hire more people, if they can't fire those who are hurting the business? A business could go bankrupt having to pay a good employee as well as one who's a financial drain on the business. If a business is already established why would it want to hire more people if it were hard to fire bad ones?
FalconShould there be a Law?
So...ummm, eventually corporations will supply the government with information about the masses and the government will be able to detain us at will. Makes that China Yahooian agreement look fair and balanced, doesn't it?
Catch thy knee before it jerks and do not sleep.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Of course, it only makes sense when you understand "Anonymous Coward" is a pseudonym for Congressman.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It isn't anonymous OR private that I see my doctor, the insurance company knows, the people in the waiting room know. So I am NOT anonymous, nor private about visiting the doctor.
The talk with the doctor isn't anonymous, he can see me, he knows who I am, he got my details on the chart in front of him. It is however assumed to be private, the doctor will NOT share the information with the next patient, even though that patients knows I saw that doctor.
In the same way the insurance company knows what drugs have been prescribed, no anonimty involved but they are still supposed to respect my privacy.
Slashdot knows my ip, I am not anonymous to them, yet they are supposed to keep it private.
Being anonymous is rare. Is voting anonymous? NO. They know who voted and who didn't in most systems. They need to know, to avoid people voting more then once, but your vote itself is anonymous, but NOT oddly enough private (after all, the whole point of voting is to let it be known).
Being anonymous is important for things that could really hurt you, like seeing a doctor about a sexual disease. There are special setups in most countries for this. But oddly enough privacy is given up then, you do not know why I see my regular GP, you can have a bloody guess why I go to a VD clinic.
Many things can't work with anonimity, but we require privacy nonetheless.
I really don't have an answer for how to deal with this in our changing world. As voters we on the one hand seem to want our goverments to "protect" us, but on the other hand we are loath for anything that affects us.
Dangerous driving is in holland one of the top irritations, but speed camera's are just as often seen as one of the great satan's. How does this reconcile? Could it be that voters speak with split tongue? What I really think people want is that the state goes after wrong doers, just as long as the wrong doers ain't them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It isn't anonymous OR private that I see my doctor, the insurance company knows, the people in the waiting room know. So I am NOT anonymous, nor private about visiting the doctor.
Insurance is paying for the visit and it's only right they know what they are paying for. Now if you are willing to pay out of pocket then insurance has no need to know, nor should they. And, even if those in the waiting room go with you into the exam room, more than likely they don't know who you are therefore you are anonymous.
Being anonymous is rare. Is voting anonymous? NO. They know who voted and who didn't in most systems.
But they don't know who specific people vote for, unless they say who the vote for. Actually in the US they are prevented from giving voters a record of their votes just for this reason, nobody can force a voter to vote in a specific way. If receipts were given out an employer say could demand that employees vote for specific candidates, or to vote against them. With no receipt employers don't know how a voter voted.
As voters we on the one hand seem to want our goverments to "protect" us, but on the other hand we are loath for anything that affects us.
You might, and too many others do, but not me. I want less government not more, historically governments have proven to be the greatest terrorists and the greatest threat to freedom and liberty, whether it be NAZI Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or what's his name in Rwanda. Heck, in the US more are killed in accidents every year than all of the US citizens who've been killed by terrorists. Where's the outrage over these deaths?
Dangerous driving is in holland one of the top irritations, but speed camera's are just as often seen as one of the great satan's. How does this reconcile? Could it be that voters speak with split tongue? What I really think people want is that the state goes after wrong doers, just as long as the wrong doers ain't them.
I oppose all traffic cameras that can record license plates or those in the cars, heck even pedestrians. The only legitimate purpose for them is for traffic control such as controlling traffic lights on busy intersections. And maybe, though it's a stretch, to monitor for accidents. I was shocked and dismayed when I went to Germany in the early 1980s and learned they were using cameras to issue tickets. Though the autobahns outside of cities had no speed limits, speed limits on city streets were strictly enforced. You might speed in a city, or loan your car to someone else who speeds, and think you got away with it. But then later you can get a ticket in the mail with the details of when and where the violation took place captured on camera. If you don't pay the ticket on tyme, even if you can prove you were somewhere else and couldn't have been driving when and where the ticket said, you could loose your license to drive.
On the other hand I found it refreshing that parents could order wine for their children while eating out. That was frowned on if not illegal in the US.
FalconShould there be a Law?
We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy
This is probably the most disgusting piece of sleazy hypocrisy I have seen come out of any of the foul orifices of any government official for a long time. What he is saying is something like 'We redefine privacy to mean that only the government and a bunch of companies know everything about you' - IOW 'We don't care about your perceived rights - here suck on this dummy'.
I am no privacy and anonymity fanatic, but at the end of the day, privacy has to mean at least that: 'privacy - the right to have secrets'. There are many cases where it may make sense to share your personal information with others, but the choice should always be yours, and nobody else should have a legal right to know against your will. The right to privacy is a simple consequence of the right to self-determination - the right to make your own decisions. If we lose that, what have we got left?
Not long ago, in another thread someone asked the question: What is the threshold where people should start to take-up arms? My reply: We passed that threshold long ago. I do not obsess about what I am modded however when I was looking over some past journal entries I noticed that this comment had been marked neither up nor down, neither troll nor interesting, neither wheat nor chaff. It was merely left alone. We are already living in tyranny. We are cowed by our government and we are afraid. They should be afraid of the people but they are not. And there are so may questions... Is anyone really considering the unthinkable? Have a we reached the point where diplomacy between the American people and the government is nonexistent? Has our government really reached the point of no return where a revisit to 1776 is inevitable? Will we be thrown into Gitmo or some other secret prison for even publicly typing such a thought as considering revolution against the current government? Will it take an armed citizenry? Are we even an armed citizenry anymore? What about out all those gun laws? I suspect that among the Slashdot crowd, more of us own iPhones than weapons. Oh, I'm sure there will be a few us who posture to the contrary about the weapons we've owned and the training we've had, but even I, who was once in the army, own not a single firearm. If the revolution began today, I would not be ready. Would you? What revolution? The real revolution. Not just of thoughts and ideas and industrialism and technology. The one that protects our rights to those things; and our right to have our lives bettered by them, not controlled by them. Rights that have been encroached on for far too long by every institution we've trusted from Government to Google. I say again that it is long past time. The only thing to do now, is take it underground and get ready. Soon. And if I never post again, then the NSA got me and it's really past time. Come help.
I trust my government as far as I can throw it. And frankly, I'd like to see just how far I can throw parts of my government, like this fellow quoted in the article.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The whole idea of "expectation of privacy" is purely an invention of the supreme court from the 1960s. It is in no way implied by the 4th amendment.
You may want to rethink this belief. In 1890 Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published their now famous article in the Harvard Law Review, entitled simply: "The Right to Privacy". Also though I haven't relocated it yet a USSC ruling in the early 1800s said that the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause included the right to anonymous political speech.
FalconShould there be a Law?
One bit of feedback I'll offer to your Scandinavian anecdote is the same rebuttal I offer my Swedish friend:
Comparing the situation in a country with a relatively homogeneous population the size of New York City to the USA might be unfair.
In other words, one wonders whether any of those countries would fare so well if you jacked their population up an order of magnitude, and gave it the cultural mish-mash that is the USA. Additionally, and this is a serious question about the foot vote: in which direction, North America or Scandinavia, is there greater human migration? For relatively prosperous countries like your Finland and Norway, I would expect the numbers are small and roughly equivalent. For all the purported superiority of these systems, we don't see a stampede towards the old country.
You may want to rethink the statement that Sweden has a homogeneous population. As with other European countries Sweden has a sizable immigrant population:
"Sweden struggles to integrate Muslim immigrants". As TFA says "'Immigrants to Sweden have become political refugees. First there were people from South America, then Iran, Afghanistan and now Iraq,' he said." Fact is is many European nations welcomed foreigners, many from Africa and the Middle East, as workers as early as the 1950s. Maybe not all, I don't know, but many Northern European nations have growing African, Middle Eastern, and Muslim populations.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm not sure that I see what you mean by "cleaner". Just because government intervention is bad in some areas of life, it doesn't logically follow that it must be bad in all areas of life. As an example, there are quite strict privacy laws in Germany and France that run contrarty to this US approach. Both (the US and European) are intervening in the issue of privacy - but with completely opposite results. Are both "bad" just because they are government interventions?
It strikes me as bizarre that someone is prevented from starting up a small business like that, but I don't see the connection to the debate on privacy. The "fascist" level of control that I alluded to was an observation that fascist regimes start by collating information on the population, then use it to begin repression. America is heading down that slippery slope.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
It must be one of the ingredients of mayer-naisse.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Some bullshit artist from the "ministry of truth" redefining the language to suit government convenience.
My privacy means that if you stick your nose in my business uninvited,it's gonna get broken.This includes government clowns.
My privacy means that if you enter my home uninvited,without a legal warrant all in perfect order,you leave on your back with a hole in a major organ.
I swear it's getting to the time for another revolution.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If he were elected, I'm not sure how much of his own agenda he'd be able to accomplish since he can only propose new legislation & veto things he disagrees with, but he could make it VERY difficult for Congress to pass things that there wasn't unanimous agreement about, and he wouldn't be giving the protection of the President's Office to those agents of the executive branch who are blatantly violating the Constitution.
The veto is anyone who wants to be president most powerful weapon. I'd love to see a president that would veto most of the bills passed by congress. In 2004 that's what Michael Badnarik promised. Congress can override vetoes but it isn't homogeneous enough to do it now. That would be a good sight to see, the federal government screeching to a halt.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's rather like giving Jeffry Dahmer the keys to your house because you think he'd be an interesting interior decorator.
Your equation of Ron Paul with Dahmer reveals about you that it does Ron Paul. Paul is nothing like the serial murderer Dahmer.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won" This is typical psychological manipulation. Present someone with limited options that support your own desirable outcome.
Technically speaking "staying alive" isn't a fight that can be won either, we will all die some day. Does that mean we should seek death?
The nature of our relations with each other and the way we gather and share information are changing rapidly and it is difficult for people to keep up. That does not mean that we should just give up and let someone tag you and track you your entire life. We will find a way to balance information and privacy with the need to have information on each other and on everything else.
This is just your government wanting to step in and do what advertisers and spammers already do, track people and use that information for power and profit.
We need a smaller government, MUCH smaller government, that serves when needed, and fades into the woodwork when it is not. The powers that be are fighting to justify themselves and trick people into thinking we need them. We do need leadership but we don't need big brother to run every aspect of our lives. I for one would rather be free and make my own decisions than have some authoritative and conniving master make them for me.
Don't believe the hype, they are lying.
A good definition doesn't necessarily lead to a clear solution in every case, but it should focus on the essential issue at stake. For me, privacy is about personal autonomy. All the other stuff around it, like anonymity, are tools that are useful in protecting autonomy.
Anonymity is often practically indispensable to privacy, but it is merely a tool. An anonymous ballot protects you from people who would use your voting information against you. Anonymity in this case isn't really very important itself. Non-secret ballots are often used where we believe that there is no chance of an individual's decision being improperly interfered with. However, many people would suffer things like employment discrimination based on their voting choices, so we have an anonymous ballot for public elections.
So, Mr. Kerr is right that anonymity really isn't that essential to privacy. However, we should beware of officials who want us to throw out a faulty definition of privacy without having a better one ready to replace it. It's a favorite tactic for those who want to be able to meddle freely.
A good definition of privacy can survive a loss of anonymity as a tool, but that leads in a direction the government does not want to go: transparency. It is enough, if you want to meddle, to be able to. You don't need to actually do anything, you just need a credible threat. When it comes to government collection of private information, free citizens demand ironclad guarantees of what the officials in their pay are up to.
If privacy means being able to escape unreasonable consequences of your choices, anonymity is a pretty damned good way to do it. It's impossible to beat, and nearly impossible to equal in its effectiveness. Giving us something nearly as good means giving us more access to the workings of government than is likely to happen in the near future.
Respecting anonymity is the simplest and most practical means for a moderately decent government to respect the rights of its citizens.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, I think what you're talking about, are the EU laws regarding privacy from public companies, etc. We're arguing in the US to try to keep our privacy from the GOVERNMENT itself....which, while it has been slipping away over recent years, is something we still are trying to hold on to. The citizens in the US should have a reasonable expectation of anonymity from the govt.'s eye on most aspects of their life, short of taxes, or criminal activity. Other than those reasons, the Govt. on all levels should F.O. pretty much...any daily activity or communications, etc, should be private from any and all govt. entities, unless there is suspicion of criminal activity, and they get a court order to investigate.
I think that is the difference in perspective in this discussion between European privacy and US privacy. I do, agree...that our privacy from companies over here needs to be strengthened too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Will they still be the same under President Clinton?
But - and that's the problem - most americans are too dumb and/or lazy to care.
Not that Europe would be that much better. A little, because in most places we have more than two parties that count for something, and thus more choice and all, but the same party we all hate for their lies and corruption will still get 20%, 30% of the votes again. Maybe they lost 10%, but so what, the top honchos are safe no matter.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
.......However, if I put it on a remote, password protected server.......
Only as long as the password holds. On its way to that server, it is on the open Internet. Unless encrypted, anyone can read it. Paper analogy: You put some papers in the garbage, to be picked up by the garbage truck on its way to the municipal incinerator. Unless you shred the papers first, they can be read by anyone who fishes them out of the truck. They are in no way protected by the constitution from any such fishing. Effects, papers, etc. are protected, while in your possession. Putting anything of yours on the Internet or dumpster, means that you have given up possession and it is up for grabs by anyone who happens along. It would be nice if all people refrained from snooping on each other. Unfortunately, we don't live in a nice world. According to some at least, survival of the fittest is still the rule.
All theory is gray
I am saying this to Donald Kerr and other neocon scum. I value my privacy and internet anonymity. I do not appreciate the US government or anyone else meddling in my business. I do not approve of the war on terror, 911 was obviously carried out by the government and a plane DID NOT hit the pentagon. Stay out of my (and everyone else's) god damn business.
I will say this. My internet anonymity will end the day a get a national security letter (NSL) for any reason. As I have said in several posts. Once I get one, I will post it here on slashdot in its complete unedited entirety. With full names, addresses, and anything else that might be on it.
I will also take out full page ads in the newspapers as well printing the NSL as well.
I do not scare easy...I might be too dumb, but I not scared of Christian Evangelical Neocon Republican trash.
I'm starting to think so too....bleh.
Blar.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. I know that the fourth amendment was mentioned specifically in the gp post, but here it is for full effect. If you don't believe that the text is not about privacy, then you have a different understanding of language that I do. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I understand what you are trying to say. The difference is, as an American citizen, I am protected under American law. The problem is that the American government is violating its own constitution. Unfortunately, the Constitution does not protect non-American citizens. It may not be right but I am unaware of a country who puts safegaurds to privacy in place for non citizens. In a perfect world no government would spy on any other government or persons for that matter. As an American I can only stand up for the safegaurds our constitution has put in place for us as American citizens.
You seem to have been misled. While many liberals want the government to make healthcare *available* to all, I'm not aware of any that want it to start making decisions about patient care. It's entirely possible for the government to pay for healthcare, or ensure private groups pay for it, without dictating terms to those who use it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That attitude is certainly something you may chose for your life but such cavalier disregard for life is not held by responsible people.
Yes. Yes it is.
I am a responsible person. I believe the federal government long ago exceeded its Constitutional authority. I believe this intrusion of privacy goes against everything embodied in the US Constitution.
"Responsibility" != scared shitless.
There are few terrorists among us. Very few. To the point of essential non-existence. Once a decade we have a terrorist attack. Sometimes nobody is killed. Other times, several hundred get killed, including children. Other times, a few thousand get killed.
Once. A. Decade.
Meanwhile, thousands of children die each year from neglect or abuse. Tens of thousands of citizens die from preventable causes simply because they can't afford health care. Yet I don't see us going all nutso because of it. Why's that?
This whole "terrorism" thing is a strawman, used by the government to extend their authority. No more, no less. As a responsible American citizen, it is my duty to uphold the US Constitution. I took an oath when I joined the Army to do so. Though I am no longer in the military, I take that oath seriously.
Don't tell me a responsible person doesn't prefer privacy and liberty above life. "Give me liberty, or give me death," used to mean something in this country.
Or do you consider the American Revolutionary War irresponsible?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Hm, excuse me, but that sounds like total horse****. In HTTPS, you have a public key for the server, and use it to perform an exchange of a symmetric key.
The problem is that you don't have "a public key for the server", you have the public key the server just gave you. If I set up a man-in-the-middle machine that answers your query with a fake public key, then forwards your request on to the real server, then your only defense is that the public key I created on the fly was not signed by one of the "trusted" certificate issuers... or was it?
The system is only as trustworthy as your list of trusted cert issuers. Do you trust every company on that list not to produce SSL-inspection hardware that creates trusted signed certs on the fly? Did you check to see if the list changed after you ran the installation disc your ISP gave you to see if it had installed the public key for their SSL-inspection hardware into the trust list?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It was the *real* President. Dick Cheney.
The reports were covered up, not ignored.
Long before he became VP, Cheney helped author a report that stated the only way to enact certain legislation preferred by the neo-con right would involve a "Pearl Harbor-like event." The PATRIOT act was one such piece of legislation.
Within *ten months* of Bush's term, we get a Pearl Harbor-like event. Coincidence? Oh, I think not.
(Actually, I don't think it was engineered by the government, either. But consider: bin Laden was trained by the CIA. He worked in Afghanistan on behalf of the United States under Reagan and Bush Sr. He is also still at large, and the US isn't even looking for him. Coincidence? I don't think so.)
There's too much empirical evidence to indicate high-level complicity in the attacks. The current administration had much to gain from the attacks, by their own statements.
Bush's reaction was genuine. He was scared shitless. You should look to Dick Cheney's reaction-- pushing Bush into a war with Iraq within hours of the attack, for instance.
As a disclaimer: I don't really believe there was a conspiracy before 9/11. There was one *after*, and that's the one we should be looking at, but I believe there wasn't one beforehand. I just like a good conspiracy theory to remind folks that sometimes, things are not like they seem. It's good for skepticism.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
So what you're saying is that if you provide a fake certificate, HTTPS is insecure.
Well.... yes, of course. But that's nothing to do with fancy routers or having both ends of the conversation going over your pipes, that's just a basic property of public key cryptography.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
I read the GP post to say that the Constitution isn't just an ideal to strive for; rather, it's a practical recipe for those ideals. To deviate significantly from the Constitution (which is a practical embodiment of the ideals) threatens the idealism of the Constitution, as well.
At least, that's how I interpreted it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
... because we have judicial oversight. Like in Germany, where the courts ordered the police to delete illegally collected data. Years later it was revealed that "deleting data" in police practice meant to add a "deleted" entry to the data file.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
"For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor anything hidden that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light. And that which you have spoken in the ear in secret rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops."
This was written long before mankind had our modern means of eavesdropping. That's Luke 12:2-3. If you add 12:1 you can spin it as a warning against getting drunk on beer (misinterpreting "yeast") lest you reveal too much to your enemies. But this too is against the full context.
A more complete context is Luke 12:1-12, for being open with your faith. And Luke 11:46-53 as a precursor for Christ as a guest for dinner railing against lawyers (and all because someone took offense at him not washing his hands before dinner).
IANA religious scholar. I side with Douglas Adams on the concept.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
They were convinced during the cold "war" that these huge surveillance organisations were necessary for other soils. Now they have been convinced during this terror "war" that these organisations are necessary for their own soil. It's a slippery slope that was started down decades ago.
Once you can break the rights of one "bad guy", it's easy to paint anyone you want "bad".
The ACLU may not always be popular, but they have the big picture right. Too bad they have the word "American" in front of their name, instead of "World".
Lies about crimes
That's alarming, but not as alarming as the realization that he could not have done any of it, without the help of the 2000 Congress, the 2002 Congress, the 2004 Congress, the 2006 Congress, and the enthusiastic consent of almost every voting American.
If you think 1/20/9 is some kind of salvation date, you are seriously deluded. GWB's values live on. If you vote for someone who agrees Bush should have had all that power, that Bush merely used it for the wrong aims, then you're part of the problem. You're going to vote for Bush even if that's not his name.
You say GWB is perverting the constitution. I say he's just going along with the flow. Stop hating the man, and start hating what he stands for. There are currently no anti-Bush candidates that the polls show as reasonably likely to win the next presidential election. Focusing on that date, 1/20/9, makes you sound like a supporter of the status quo. Are you looking forward to another 4 years that continue the trends of the preceding 16?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
A glance at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sw.html#People
shows for Sweden:
Population: 9,031,088 (July 2007 est.)
Ethnic groups: indigenous population: Swedes with Finnish and Sami minorities; foreign-born or first-generation immigrants: Finns, Yugoslavs, Danes, Norwegians, Greeks, Turks
And for these United States:
Population: 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.)
Ethnic groups: white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.) note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)
So, the US has Sweden beat for population by a factor of 30. Sweden is broken down into "Swedes with Finnish and Sami minorities", whereas the US is listed as 81.7% white.
You can as reasonably compare Firefox and Lynx: both are 'web browsers', no?
This is why I take umbrage at these people that want to just slap a Swedish health-care system on the US. They either haven't thought the concept through in detail, or they stand to make large stacks of cash off the ensuing ruckus.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The solution is to have TOO MUCH information about you, mostly incorrect. Your favorite books are The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. You like to watch the PTL Club and the spice channel. You're a registered Republican but you always vote for Democrats. You're a member of the Sierra Club and the NRA. You're 25 years old and belong to AARP.
They may know where you live and where you work, but good luck figuring out what you think.
The next question is of course, what tools would make this easier? Posting autobots that post as you to hundreds of forums, newsgroups and chat rooms with opinions that are all over the map? Arrange to buy stuff for your luddite friends on the internet in order to build up a huge database of products you buy, little of which you actually use or have any interest in? Arrange to live in each others houses?
If they want information, GIVE IT TO THEM. Bury them in it. The only real means they have of verifying or correcting any of it is to do the legwork they should be doing in the first place instead of relying on a technological solution. We're talking about large bureaucracies, and they're becoming cyber-slackers. Give the beast some gibberish to chew on for awhile, and provide the haystack to hide the needle in...
Well, we DID not re-elect them. In 2006. And the incumbent party leadership STILL rolled over; so - even though there was a clear mandate for change from the voters, the candidates that were turned-over did not represent the constituency within congress that was actually capable of making that change.
When they say "we didn't have enough votes" - they aren't talking about not enough votes to override the vetos. They're talking about not enough votes to override Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the incumbent leadership of the Democratic Party that NEEDS to be flushed out of the system before any real change can happen.
Fuckers are going to PAY - but it's going to take maybe 6 more years to clean out the sewers first, before we can flush the toilet and expect a clean bowl.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So what you're saying is that if you provide a fake certificate, HTTPS is insecure.
What I'm saying is that what the other poster said isn't "horse****". If you jack into my ethernet hub, and it turns out that my ethernet hub is connected to a firewall like this, I can read your HTTPS traffic, if not most of your encrypted traffic. SSH is only protected because it keeps a list of known fingerprints and alerts you if something changed. If you get a completely different certificate for https://www.paypal.com/ tomorrow, as long as the browser can confirm that it was signed by someone it was configured to trust (for instance Microsoft, or AT&T), it won't even bat an eye.
Maybe the other guy was confused, or just confusing, but everything that he said is fully possible.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
What you're talking about is a compromise of the certificate chain. I understand that it's possible, but that's an explicit vulnerability of HTTPS and why we tried hard to keep people from getting dud certs. If you do have a dodgy cert, there's all kinds of approaches to messing business up - DNS hacking, most prominently.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Don Kerr is CIA, but traditionally the NRO and space operations have been Air Force positions. The rationale is to not have too much power over too many intelligence assets. One of the last things Donald Rumsfeld did before his departure was make Kerr director of NRO..
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Wife Alison, and has a daughter, Margo, who is veternarian in Denver. According to this.
She works at
High Plains Veterinary Relief Services
Margot Kerr Vahrenwald, DVM
8*37 E 25th Place
Denver, CO 80238
720-2*4-2747
Here's a picture, and a story which names her daughters Savannah and Caitlin, her two cats Bart and Mish-Mish, and her dog, Tobermory.
According to a story in the Washington Post on home sales:
LEXINGTON ST. N., 2523-Christopher S. Vahrenwald and Margot K. Kerr to Mary Ellen Dudar, $575,621.
So, we do a quick search for him and what do you know, their Property tax record. Looks like she owns her office.
Chris, the husband, appears to be an insurance agent, accident, health and life, according to the Colorado Division of Insurance.
I could go on. Of course, this only uses free information, from Google. And I'm only posting this because of your comment and the fact that he said specifically what he said. All in all, his daughter looks like a pretty nice person so&!*&^^#$*&@#*(HD*&! NO CARRIER
Cool! Amazing Toys.
You had a point, you pointless AC?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unfortunately, Tom, it's not that simple. (Disclaimer: I don't know any of the legal details of this and am working purely from a general picture off the top of my head:)
You see, our congresscritters also have the power to decide just who it is who elects them—that is, they are the ones who get to redraw the voting districts. Thus, over the decades, they have carefully gerrymandered themselves into districts where the vast majority of them can be at least 85-90% sure that they will defeat any opposition, and at least 50% sure that they will do so by a wide margin. So even if 90% of the country hates a particular Representative, you can be sure that the 10% that love him are all in his own district—and that even those who aren't too happy about what he's doing still like him better than the other guy.
Personally, I think this system is insane, as demonstrated by the scandal in Texas a few years ago, where the Democrats in the state government all left the state for a while to make sure that the Republicans there couldn't get a quorum together to gerrymander the districts so that certain key Democrats would not get re-elected.
(It kinda makes me think of certain areas of BattleMaster, except that there they self-select, people who dislike certain leaders who never, ever lose elections leaving the realm, so that said leaders are always assured of the support of most of their realms...and thus remain in power for what is, in game terms, lifetimes...)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
"Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information."
That statement, by itself, does not actually mean anything. It depends on what it means to "properly safeguard" information.
One definition of what it means to "properly safeguard" private information is given in the Constitution: The information shall not be accessed without a warrant, and no warrant shall issue except with probable cause.
Any other definition what is proper to do with private information would seem to require a constitutional amendment.
I know the Constitution is terribly inconvenient for some government officials. Their jobs would be so much easier if they didn't have to abide by all those picky little constitutional details. If they want information, just take it. If they decide that you are a "terrorist" (whatever that means), just throw you in Guantanamo. No trials, no lawyers, no courts, no due process, no checks or balances. Very easy and convenient for the officials. Very dangerous for everyone else.
That kind of power is exactly what Hitler, Stalin, and many other dictators have had, throughout history.
And, that is precisely why we have our Constitution.
So, the US has Sweden beat for population by a factor of 30. Sweden is broken down into "Swedes with Finnish and Sami minorities", whereas the US is listed as 81.7% white.
I noted you gave percentages for the US population but none for Sweden, why? Is it because the population isn't as homogeneous as you say? And while you mention the Finnish and Saami (Inuits in Alaska, Canada, and Iceland and Lapps in Finland and Russia), there is nothing of other Swedish peoplessuch as the ethnic Danes and Germanic tribes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Here in Sweden (the perfectly socialized nanny-state) we have several systems where the
So well in fact, that the debate is not about
Oh, and touching on the work after retirement issue; you're free to keep working as an old age pensioner, but if you make "too much" money in that job, your pension goes down. Seems reasonable to me, I dunno what goes on in Germany.
Money for nothing, pix for free
No, because I was quoting the CIA World Factbook verbatim.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Great for Sweden! There is simply no doubt that the real point is to have a system that everyone is comfortable with.
The point that I'm getting at in this thread is that one cannot expect to transfer something that works within one harmonious population into another, significantly larger one with the same good results.
Case in point to your Southeast: why did perestroika and glastnost (apparently) fail within Russia to bring about a western-style political and economic system? Maybe such did occur, and the media have distorted the situation. Could Garry Kasparov actually win the election, and carry Swedish-style reform there?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Actually, I don't think neither the US nor the Russian Federation are really harmonious populations right now, if they ever were. I do however believe that Swedish-style reforms would work for a pretty large subset of either population, making it a good complementary alternative to existing systems. Then again, I'm generally not a big believer in one-size-fits-all reforms, systems or methods, instead preferring a loose framework of guidelines within which several systems can co-exist, fulfilling slightly different needs in different ways for different people.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Money for nothing, pix for free
Yet, I cannot punt on this lousy Social Security...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Imagine a system where you can choose from a wide variety of health-care "providers". You get a certain minimum emergency care via your federal taxes (as most people don't need that kind of care, it shouldn't be that expensive when the costs get shared by the whole population) and get to pick a method for financing all other needs, be it .gov-organized or private insurance, taking out a mortgage if need be, or simply putting some away in your mattress for a rainy day. Your choice. Also your choice where to go, regardless of financing method. Even with the low-level tax-sponsored .gov insurance, you can get care at the best hospital in the world, albeit only for a brief period or in the basement unless you pad the financing with some other means. Conversely, you can use your private insurance to go to a .gov hospital if that happens to be the one nearby when you get a cardiac arrest or a Nobel prize winning surgeon happens to be there slumming. Or if you just want your money to take you a loooong way on hospital food. Again, your choice. And, if you want to live off in the woods on deer and berries, bartering with the locals for some ointments, that's fine too. Eat a squirrel for me.
That's why I don't like the idea of one-system-fits-all. People aren't peas in a pod.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Yes. There is a fundamental problem, though. Socialism is a belief system. Once civil servants become entrenched in power, they see a divine mandate to putter about with policy and peoples' lives. There is simply too much coupling (in the computer science meaning of the term) with these socialized systems.
A practical implementation that I can somewhat respect is that of the Amish. But there, adherence to the behavioral norm comes at a steep price.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Money for nothing, pix for free
I have heard it said that one of the side-effects of bureaucracy is to disperse blame, and lower individual accountability.
When studying management or organizational behavior in school, the emphasis always seemed to be on policy, procedure, and process.
Yet, when you cross over to a study of history, in stark contrast, you find that all of the points of inflection are centered upon individuals. Typically their ruthlessness, but often sheer greatness (Ghandi) is what actually matters. Bureaucracy, in contrast, seems to be about crushing individuality, and Socialism, perhaps unfairly, gets tarred with the same brush.
Hence the negative view of Socialism on the left side of the Atlantic.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Now to be fair, your comment that "...[liberals do not want government] to start making decisions about patient care" is entirely true. Liberals or, more accurately in this context, social progressives always believe government intervention is a good thing; and are always surprised when this results in losses to individual freedoms and choices.
Should it be that way? Perhaps, perhaps not. But, at least in the US, whenever the Government extorts money (income taxes) it is expected by the populous that they have a right to demand an accounting of how that money is spent. (We may not get it, but we believe we have that right.) This perspective alone will always ensure governmental programs dictate terms to the recipients.