Slashdot Mirror
DHS Detains Mayor of Stockton, CA, Forces Him To Hand Over His Passwords
schwit1 writes: Anthony Silva, the mayor of Stockton, California, recently went to China for a mayor's conference. On his return to San Francisco airport he was detained by Homeland Security, and then had his two laptops and his mobile phone confiscated. They refused to show him any sort of warrant (of course) and then refused to let him leave until he agreed to hand over his password.
The Supreme Court has ruled that warrants are not required or needed at border checkpoints. Fix that wording now editors.
The only three lines you need to learn:
"Am I being detained?"
"I would like my lawyer present."
"No comment."
The recent rulings have been that laptop searches are unconstitutional. The courts have said this is so because a ) laptops and phones contain highly personal information, much more so that suitcases normally do, and b) customs is to be searching for things like products being smuggled in, or drugs. Hard drives can't contain drugs and wouldn't contain smuggled products. Two recent examples include:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
The Obama administration has argued that they don't need a warrant, but the courts have ruled against them.
Ask and you shall receive, about 200 Million people, including several entire states.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your...
surrenders them to Chinese authorities without a peep of complaint, and brings them back to the US and is surprised when federal spooks demand to have a look at the physical and software surveillance devices that have been installed into it, isn't paying any attention to the world and has zero grounds to complain TLDR if you're important or powerful, don't willingly allow yourself to become an espionage attack vector for our first or second most powerful enemy
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
Silva was under separate investigations in 2012 and 2013 for sexual battery. He was also alleged to have secretly taped female juveniles changing clothes at his residence. However, no charges were brought due to the prosecutor's decision that there wasn't hard evidence of the allege crimes. My guess is that the authorities are looking for evidence of those crimes as well as any crimes committed while in China.
As you say, your case has flaws. The glaring one is:
> Also, assume the cops have a reputation for being
> professionals who act professionally
That's a pretty massive assumption. And I don't see how anybody paying attention to the news could miss the rampant police abuse and misconduct. Perhaps twenty years ago, before cellphone cameras, dash cameras, and body cams; you might be able to make that assumption, simply out of ignorance. But now? You'd be pretty daft to do so. And in your example, I'd operate under the assumption that any questioning of me is an attempt to railroad me into a false charge of drunk & disorderly or disturbing the peace or some such. It's just safer that way. My employer gives paid time off for jury duty or to bear witness in court; so doing so would be no inconvenience to me. And being arrested on a fabricated charge, even if it is minor and quickly dismissed, would be a bigger problem than missing out on a couple hours of sleep.
Best to treat them like poisonous snakes: Avoid them when possible. Keep any interaction as brief and minimal as possible. And don't try to handle them yourself... leave it to the trained professionals (ie. your lawyer).
Imagine all the people...
Stockton has a port. Getting cargo shipped to said port generates revenue from dock fees, import fees, transship fees, fees for trucks coming into the port not to mention all the working types. China is one of the worlds largest exporters - so yes, the mayor of Stockton has a reason to be in China, drumming up business.
Define "fair share" please. Seriously, pick a percentage. Most business require significant capital, and choosing investments wisely is vital to the economy (see bubbles for why), so capital should get more than 0%, right? So what's the labor/capital ratio for pre-salary profits that seems right to you - what part to labor as pay, what part to capital as net profits? 80% labor? More?
Once you've committed to a number, look up total US corporate earnings as a percentage of total US salaries, and see if we're actually that different from what you think is fair (publically traded companies are about half of the US economy, and the P/E of the S&P500 is a good stand-in for that). Of course, most small business owners also work their asses off, so you might want to give them some credit (that's the non-public-stock half of the economy).
Willing to do the homework, or just want to rant in ignorance?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> IMHO I think "Star Wars" was actually more for defense from an invasion than to knock down missiles. I doubt it would have worked to do either goal; it's only now that we are developing lasers powerful enough to do anything to a distant flying object.
I worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative (the proper name for the project) in the 1980's. It was most certainly for knocking down missiles, all the math depended on it. As far as working or not, very few people understand the concept of "layered defense". SDI had 7 layers: two Boost Phase intercepts, three Midcourse intercepts, and High and Low terminal intercepts. Each layer only has to deal with what the previous layer missed. Assume, because the actual numbers were classified and I don't remember them after 30 years, that each layer is 60% effective, meaning 40% of warheads get through to the next layer. With 7 layers, only one in 610 warheads hits their targets. That kind of number is "survivable". Japan survived two warheads, and the US could survive about 15 or 20, due to being a larger country. This breaks the "Mutually Assured Destruction" concept, because the US would have plenty of undamaged assets to shoot back with.
But you don't need a fully functioning missile defense to apply leverage to the Russians. If you have only two functioning layers, and they are only 40% effective each, only 36% of Russian warheads get through. They have to build 2.78 times as many warheads to destroy their priority target list. The more functioning layers, and the higher their effectiveness, the worse their targeting problem gets, rapidly. The Russians may be deficient in some ways, but they had plenty of good mathematicians. They could see the threat of a layered defense, and they could not afford to build enough missiles to counter it. They could also not build their own SDI system, because Western technology was generally more advanced. So coming to the negotiating table to reduce missile counts was the only viable option, which is exactly what they did in 1991. In that sense, the SDI program helped win the Cold War.
Whether Reagan himself had a technical understanding of the project was irrelevant. That was between DARPA, Congress, and the defense contractors. As a former actor who did westerns, his job was making speeches other people wrote, and looking tough to the Russians. He was a figurehead for the nation. Tons of smart people did the real work.
Getting back to your lasers, we had two kinds as *advanced options* in SDI, airborne and space-based. Airborne were a boost phase system, designed to shoot at ICBMs while the rocket was still firing. That makes them an easy target, rockets have huge thermal signatures for targeting. But also they are fragile. Heat the nozzle of a rocket a few hundred degrees while operating, and it can easily fail, same for shock heating part of the fuel tanks. You don't have to melt them, just cause a gas explosion as the fuel boils, it does the rest. Space-based lasers were upper boost phase or early midcourse. They could get a clearer shot when the rocket was in the upper atmosphere, or starting on the ballistic trajectory. Physically the rocket was approaching the same altitude as the laser, so the distance was smaller. Both involved megawatt class lasers based on chemical combustion energy.
But remember, these were not the baseline, they were advanced options. And the US was making credible progress in laser technology. So it was not a matter of having them ready to use. It was a matter of the Russians believing the nation that beat them to the Moon could develop high powered laser weapons if they put their minds to it. After the Strategic Arms treaties were signed, the push to develop SDI technologies ended, so they have piddled along for the last few decades, and battlefield lasers and railguns are now entering field use. There was no rush because there was no enemy threatening enough.