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Obama Wants Broader Internet Wiretap Authority
An anonymous reader writes "The White House plans to deliver a bill to Congress next year that will require Internet-based communication services that use encryption to be capable of decrypting messages to comply with federal wiretap orders. The bill will go beyond CALEA to apply to services such as Blackberry email. Even though RIM has stated that it does not currently have an ability to decrypt messages via a master key or back door, the bill may require them to. Regarding this development, James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology commented on the proposal, saying, 'They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.'"
Screw you over and break promises once we are elected. Ahh.. Hopey Changey....Hopey Changey.
This boss is worse than the old boss. The old boss beat us to get us to work faster. This boss beats us to get his jollies.
There aren't that many terrorists, unless they plan on going back to the 60s and raiding all the anti war movement hippy types and Alex Jones listeners who happen to know what encryption is.
Obama used to hang with that crowd, so presumably he knows how violent and radical they can be from first hand experience.
The sad part is that people will be disappointed in Obama (as they will be disappointed in all politicians) and will vote for the other party that started all this shit in the first place.
So how is this 'democracy (I know you are a republic)' working out for y'all? Ain't it great you can vote what foot you shoot yourself in?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
So? Most academics are so disconnected from the real world their opinion isn't really that valuable directly.
I'm not saying he's wrong in what you quoted, I'm just saying using people in academia as guide to living in the real world really isn't all that intelligent. They are unbalanced people with tunnel vision and a serious lack of ability to understand the way their little piece effects the world in general.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
>>>a modern economy can function without guns (at least on the inside)
The 1900s history of government (and 150 million unarmed citizens executed) disagree with your assertion. Guns are needed, if for no other reason, to keep the government leaders in check (through fear of revolt). Remember "checks and balances from school? Guns are one of those necessary checks upon unrestrained power.
"From time to time the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Jefferson, founder of the Democrats
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You Bush bashers now turn around and defend Obama for doing worse things than Bush ever did. Gotta love hypocrisy. I'll just sit back with my popcorn and enjoy this thread. /munch munch munch
The problem is though it keeps the control on the government. It matters not what the means of fiat currency is, but the fact it is fiat currency is the problem.
What is a "dollar" exactly? It used to be that a dollar was defined as approximately 1/20th of an ounce of gold. The dollars were backed up with gold and you couldn't issue more dollars than there was gold. Until 1964 there was a similar silver standard when it came to our change, (hence why the dime is so small, the dime was made out of silver and the penny was made out of copper, in fact older pennies were much larger than our standard penny today) while the silver wasn't on a 1:1 ratio, it was close enough to the point where your change was backed up with a real standard. But today our coins aren't even made of silver, our cent isn't even copper and even our nickel might be changed in composition soon.
The problem is a dollar has become an imaginary unit of currency developed only by the government. There is nothing stopping the federal reserve from right now adding 1,000,000,000 dollars to our currency base in paper money. Our paper money no longer is redeemable for any "real" money. Paper money is the equivalent in paying in "rare" baseball cards without any guarantee to rarity. For example a 1913 Fatima Premium New York Nationals card is pretty rare because they aren't making them anymore. But the problem is that the US is still printing dollars left and right with no sign of stopping. It doesn't matter if you have $1, $100, or even $10,000 in your billfold right now if the government inflates our currency to nothingness, which is what is happening. There are no checks to how much the government can expand the money base.
We have a lot of debt, expressed in US dollars, the government can simply print money to get rid of that debt right now and screw up our entire economy in the process like Germany did post WW-I, but that is where it is going to end up.
No matter how the US dollar is expressed, credit cards, paper notes, aluminum tokens, it is still only worth what the physical medium it is expressed in is worth when all is said and done. The US dollar is meaningless, it can be inflated and deflated at the government's whim unlike a currency that is backed with something, like gold, silver, oil, etc. which so long as it is full reserve, holds its value.
The rate of inflation that fiat currency has caused can be easily examined by looking at a $20 gold certificate when the dollar was approximately equal to 1/20 of an ounce of gold. That $20 which now won't even buy a dinner for two at a fancy restaurant, would be worth over $1,200 today had they redeemed it in Gold. And this is just over a portion of someone's lifetime, from 1930s-2010.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You're right we could just switch to pieces of plastic, but still as bad an idea as our fiat paper money. From 1800 to 1910 the US dollar lost no value. There were some fluctuations but a dollar in 1910 has the same purchasing power as a 1800 dollar.
In contrast the last hundred years have seen the dollar drop to a mere penny. In other words a dollar today only buys what 1 penny bought in 1910 (a candybar or soda).
That's what happens when you let a private corporation (the central bank) run wild with the printing press. They inflated the money supply approximately 100x and devalued the existing supply (under your mattress or wherever) to 1/100th its previous value. It almost makes saving money pointless because it won't be worth the same amount a decade from now.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Do you really believe there's a moral responsibility to a mortgage-holding bank? They don't attach any moral value to it; they just treat the note as a bit of negotiable paper. If the penalty for default (including loss of creditworthiness) is less than the benefit, it makes perfect sense to do so.
If you got your mortgage from the local banker who never sells the notes, has been known to be forgiving when people get behind in payments for various reasons beyond their control, and is generally a good guy, then maybe there's a moral dimension. But that banker is, if not completely mythical, pretty close.