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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.
Way to go, murica.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I think that this is a good thing. Not the idea of people being searched without warrants. I think it's good that a government official, even a lowly one like the mayor of Stockton, suffered this. It is only when government officials are subjected to this outrageous breach of The Constitution, that there is any real hope of it being changed.
So long as it's only the sheeple complaining, illegal searches will continue to be "permissible". When congress critters start getting inconvenienced and their predilection for gay porn starts being made public, then things will change, for our safety.
I hope that many more government officials will be forced to endure these absurd detainments and searches.
the real war of terror is waged by the United States Government, against the citizens. It is a success, fear being the motivator for giving up rights, privacy, freedom.
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...
the war is psychological and the weapons are not physical, nor would the solution be
You got that right. The solution is to stop voting for psychopaths and sociopaths because this is what they do when they are in charge. Bernie is sounding better all the time.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
was politely decline to give passwords without a warrant. Then, if he was not released in a timely manner, make life as difficult as possible for the bureaucrats in question. And if his devices are not returned in a timely manner, make life even more difficult for them. There are devious and not so devious ways to do this, and mostly it isn't difficult. Bureaucrats rely on cooperation from the sheep, and the sheep need to stop being cooperative.
The war is over. The terrorists won.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Vis a vis leading the economy off a cliff - there are Presidents who know how to inspire the economy. I suspect Bernie Sanders would be one of them. I mean do you actually think Hillary Clinton or any of the clown car posse of Republicans would do a better job?
Posting as an AC here, because I know some will view this as troll bait, but it is relevant:
With $100,000 in costs, a few men willing to lose their lives, and some planning, bin Laden managed to bring down the most successful and respected nation on the planet. Self-hatred, fear, paranoid, witch hunts, and general lunacy have taken the US from its pinnacle to a country that is a laughingstock among nations.
With this in mind, as a general, bin Laden can be argued to be the best general in two centuries. Russia couldn't drive wedges between the US and Europe, even when the Bear had troops on every continent. Germany couldn't do this during WWII, even though for a few years, they actually brought peace to the Middle East. bin Laden broke the spirit of the US people, and now they are cowed and bickering with politicians taking advantage of their fears.
The sad thing? Now, because the paths are in place to disseminate propaganda of fear, this mechanism is still in place. Bad guys are after you, the US people suck and don't deserve jobs, day after day. In reality, we have a impotent President, a Congress that needs the pope to not just give a blessing, but an exorcism, and absolutely no solutions for any issues other than "blame the left/right, blame the gun-grabbers/ammosexuals, vote dem/rep next time." Blame doesn't solve jack shit, and pissing contests like this only leave both sides smelling horrifically.
I pray that the US gets a Churchill next election and not another Chamberlain.
> 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.