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US Anti-Encryption Law Is So 'Braindead' It Will Outlaw File Compression (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The bill released Thursday by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein to force U.S. companies to build backdoors into their encryption systems has been further dissected by experts. In less than 24 hours after the Court Orders Act of 2016 draft was released, 43,000 signatures have been added to a petition calling for the bill to be withdrawn. Bruce Schneier, the writer of the books on modern cryptography, said the bill would make most of what the NSA does illegal, unless no such agency is willing to backdoor its own encrypted communications. "This is the most braindead piece of legislation I've ever seen," Schneier told The Register. "The person who wrote this either has no idea how technology works or just doesn't care." Schneier says cryptographic code will be affected by this legislation, as well as "lossy compression algorithms" that are used to reduce the size of images for sending through email, which won't work in reverse and add back the data removed. Files that can't be decrypted on demand to their original state, and files that can't be decompressed back to their exact originals, all look the same to this draft now. He said even deleted data could be covered in this legislation.
...where nobody seems to know how they continue to get elected.
Of course the politicians involved are retards. They're just doing what the FBI and NSA are telling them to do. So far as these stunningly mindless halfwits are concerned, computers are magic bosses and those weirdo nerdy wizards should just do what they are told.
Want better politicians, don't elect fucking morons.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
there just isn't anything else to say. this is legislation in the ISIS category meant to hammer society back to 600 AD.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The Revolution Started.
Feinstien doesn't even know what the internet is to start off with. Unless they were a pioneer in technology and 80 year old politician has no business at all trying to do anything tech related. She is so far out of her element here it's not even funny. I have a background in farming, mechanical design, IT, and a few other things and this would be like me trying to write legislation on knitting, which I know nothing of.
For those who didn't immediately make the connection, the words "no such agency" in the summary was a reference to the nickname for the NSA. It would have been better if they capitalized it as No Such Agency.
I wonder if that's covered?
An interesting comment on The Register pointed out that how the law is written it would ban the use of one way hashes to store passwords.
Please share your views here, too.
http://www.feinstein.senate.go...
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
elect? Wow that is a whole new level of dead.
Suppose I use some third-party encryption that is made available anonymously or from another country, so there's no company to compel to reverse it. (Think TrueCrypt, or something from Schneier's Applied Cryptography.) Now suppose I plead the fifth and refuse to decrypt it. What then? We start blocking any site that hosts such a thing? Burn books on cryptography? Ban people from running compilers? Code escrow of all source with the NSA on pain of death?
Sure, there's the obligatory XKCD wrench decryption, but otherwise... I'm not sure how this makes a lick of sense.
I will always forever continue to use the most secure encryption methods possible, and will never be compelled to decrypt it for anyone, ever, period. End of story.
The person who wrote this either has no idea how technology works or just doesn't care.
Are the sponsors just ignorant do-gooders, or are they just sucking up to someone?
(Or both.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I mostly blame it on people voting strictly based on AGAINST A party and not the actual candidate... yayyy so excited for Hilarity
Suppose I implemented a freely available and easily obtainable encryption algorithm...
This is the problem. The mindless retards who write this kind of legislation are so incredibly stupid they don't understand that outlawing encryption is like trying to outlaw Pi, nuclear fission or Fermat's theorem.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If it bans any algorithm "that can't be decrypted on demand to their original state", that pretty cuts out MP3s, and pretty much every streaming audio and video service. Good luck with that...
If lossy compression is affected, wouldn't compiling be affected too?
It's like the ban on exporting encryption software or source files which had the simple workaround of a bound book of source code being sent overseas to legitimately write compatible software.
If passed, workarounds would be found.
Worst-Case: Tech Industry leaves America for saner shores (it's not like these companies are all that patriotic).
All to prevent fundamentalists from destroying America, well, wait what?
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Won't forcing all US-made encryption software to include backdoors simply force all encryption software developers overseas??? Any company that wants to remain in the US will have to contract it's encryption out to a non-US company. Thanks, DiFI, for sending my job offshore!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
i don;t think you know sen. shitforbrains all that well.
Ok, Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, explain to me how to insert a back door into a one-time pad encryption system! (One-time pad (OTP), also called Vernam-cipher or the perfect cipher, is a crypto algorithm where plaintext is combined with a random key. It is the only existing mathematically unbreakable encryption.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Very true, especially with presidential elections it isn't so much "I like hime, i'm voting hime" but "I don't like the other person, so i'm voting for the opponent"
Not like it matters there, since the electoral college chooses the president.
In addition to requiring all encryption products in the future must have backdoors, it also requires that all encryption software from the past already have been backdoored unless you want to have to brute-force it in response to a court order to "render technical assistance".
If passed, this would open up a novel new extortion attack where you intentionally use non-backdoored software to encrypt some data, thoroughly delete the unencrypted versions, create a lawsuit where that data is part of discovery, and then get your opponent in the lawsuit (who is conspiring with you) to ask the court to order the company which distributed the encryption tool to render the technical assistance needed to decrypt. Thus the company will be on the hook for the cost of all the needed electricity to run all the CPUs or GPUs to brute-force the encryption key, except that you conveniently offer that if they can help work out a settlement in the lawsuit (i.e. pay you or your conspirator), then maybe the lawsuit can be dropped, thus vacating the court order.
You must be kidding. US cyber security does understand cyber space and all the cyber threats that go along with it. The problem is that we can't have cyber citizens in cyber space sending each other unbreakable cyber data. What about cyber terrorists? How would we stop their cyber threat?
Obviously we need the cyber capability to crack this cyber data.
Cyber is serious people, super cyber serious.
Thanks for listening,
Cyber Bob
If the court has a search warrant, the fifth may not cover your refusal to decrypt - if your ownership of the encrypted data is not in doubt (e.g. there is proof that you authored the document) then your knowledge of the decryption key is not incriminating since it merely demonstrates your ownership of the data which is already known by other means; ergo the Fifth wouldn't apply. Now the contents of the document may well incriminate you, but the decryption key itself would not be covered, so legally you must cough it up. If the court is demanding you decrypt the document in order to prove that you own it, *that* would be covered by the Fifth.
The situation is analogous to a locked chest - if the chest is in your house and there is a search warrant for the contents of that chest, you are legally obliged to hand over the key so it can be searched (if you don't then the court can jail you for contempt, order its destruction to get at the contents, etc). Even if it contains your stash of drugs, the handing over of the key isn't covered by the Fifth since the chest is in your possession so the possession of the key isn't incriminating even though the key will allow the court to discover the incriminating evidence inside. This is an annoying distinction, but one that has hundreds of years of law behind it. If the chest is in a public park and the court suspects but does not know that you own it, your refusal to hand over the key would be covered by the Fifth.
Back to the encrypted document hypothetical - you'd be tossed in jail for contempt of court for refusing to comply with a legal search warrant, where you would rot until you handed over the decryption key or until your refusal becomes moot (the court acquires the encryption key some other way, case is dropped for other reasons, etc).
Even worse, suppose you use one-time pad encryption, and they can't prove who has the pad?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Um... IIRC, a southern state (Tennessee?) passed a law defining pi as exactly 3 because it made calculations easier. This explains a lot about the mental capacities of legislators.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
".. unless No Such Agency is willing to backdoor its own encrypted communications."
How many people think there won't be an exemption added to allow "authorized Federal agencies and their agents" to use encryption?
It doesn't matter what this law will say. What matters--and this is of course true of every law--is how it will be enforced. They don't care about MP3s or even cryptography as such. What they care about is being able to decrypt the communications they want to decrypt. It's much easier from their point of view to write an overly broad law even if it appears stupid because it's only the enforcement that counts, and they control the enforcement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
Hey now, the sluts have done nothing so bad that they deserve to be compared to Feinstein!
She's trying to screw an entire country. They're not on the same level at all.
Every file checksum or password hash would be illegal. Maybe even every spreadsheet report without the original data.
Oh, they understand it. They just cannot do anything about it yet. When the full fascism gets implemented, they will have the power to make sure you know that the earth is flat, made 2,000 years ago by some deity that says they are the boss and to never question them, Pi is something only the boss gets to eat, nuclear fission is the method by which you are protected from Satan, Fermat's theorem one thing in a list of similar things that will get you killed by the boss if you find out about them, and encryption is something you never speak of because the boss will rain fire from the sky to destroy the Satanic summoning you are trying to do.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It is no surprise that these clowns wrote this non-starter of a law. They will keep asking to take everything. I wonder who they are shaking down? Tech companies, for donations? Trying to distract the privacy guys so they can ram in the TPP? Who knows.
What you are supposed to get out of this story:
"HEHE Look how SILLY this law is!
That silly old government [with the most educated people in the world filling its offices] keeps making silly dumb laws!
If only we could get people who understood the ISSUES to make laws for us everything would be OK! OH WELLLLL"
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Feigning ignorance to herd people into a viewpoint which is more sympathetic to the subject than the viewpoint of the truth: malicious intent against the viewer.
This law is a power grab. There is nothing ignorant about it. This is pressure on an important area for the rich/high-class/corporate interest.
Don't ever fall for this trick!
Now the question is, why is this site and the referenced news agency helping with this deception? Surely a PROFESSIONAL would be aware of the possibility of this deception? Of course they are.
So why are they helping?
It couldn't be because the tangled interests essentially make the media interest and the corporate interest one body could it?
No, that would be CONSPIRACY and would be very wrong indeed to think about!!!
I think those who wrote this brain dead legislation know exactly what they are doing. There is just too damn much freedom on the internets.
What then? We already went through this a few decades ago when we declared strong encryption as a munition, subject to export restrictions. We're just now getting over the negative repercussions of that little debacle, so naturally, it's time to do the same thing all over again... except its even worse. This time we're denying ourselves strong encryption.
Third party security software not subject to US laws will, of course, proliferate, and the only ones who will be harmed by this are those who actually deign to obey the stupid law. Anyone who has something to hide will just encrypt data at the application level, and there's *nothing* that can be done about that.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I've known Richard Burr since 1994. He was an appliance salesman who wanted to be in Congress. I was a campaign organizer for his opponent in that race. He has no understanding of tech issues which makes it all the more ridiculous that he is Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Burr is doing this because he is up for re-election this November. His opponent in the race is Deborah Ross, an intelligent and hard working former member of the NC House of Representatives and former State Director of the North Carolina ACLU. If you really want to fix the Burr problem, consider making a donation to the Deborah Ross for Senate Campaign. https://secure.actblue.com/con...
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
what do you suppose 50GB entropy.bin contains?
Soon, the only allowed encryption in the U.S.A. will be ROT26.
They'd been trying to make MP3s illegal for almost 2 decades now. Suddenly this bill makes a lot more sense.
I've just read the discussion draft legislation linked in the TFS. There's no "banning" of anything that I can tell. And if this is the most "brain-dead piece of legislation" that Bruce Schneier has ever read, then he hasn't read squat. It's draft legislation, not a final bill to be submitted for a vote.
See, here's one of the reasons why this 'legislation' is so stupid: It's like other countries (or the U.S. for that matter) trying to compel a web hosting service that exists outside their borders to do anything: they have no jursidiction, therefore all they can do is make threatening noises. A de-facto banning of encryption is useless since you can't stop https traffic from outside the country.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
As the bill would technically outlaw thought... since thoughts cannot be reconstructed entirely in their original state afterwards since even the very act of remembering something can and often does make changes to how that thing is remembered.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Feinstein herself has been braindead for some time now, so no surprise here.
It also looks like it would outlaw Tor. It mentions communication identifying information which basically equates to a user IP address.
... for quite a while now. American voters have got to break free of the 2-party system. If we don't accomplish a major overhaul of elected officials to a new crew of 3rd party/independent faces SOON, it's gonna be game over. We need a critical mass of politicians operating with the firm knowledge that the ammo box is apparently all we voters have left to get our message across if they don't get with the program. :eyeroll:
For starters, I'd say any candidate who can't get behind this simple, direct effort to undo the Citizen's United fiasco... http://www.movetoamend.org/ should be eliminated from consideration. Please add your signature to the cause and mebbe we'll get this in some faces in time to do some good.
I've been preaching and voting for a few decades to try to break the rest of you from the MSM lie that you must vote dem/rep or, horror of horrors, you might get someone from the OTHER party elected...
Do me proud America, show the world we eventually come around and flex our collective freewill might as no other nation in history. Vote every last one of the scoundrels out and replace them with anything BUT dem/rep candidates everywhere possible. If that strikes you as "silly" or "crazy" then answer this for me... how's it going with the dem/rep answers...?
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
19 trillion in debt that lets be honest can never ever be paid back.
I wrote Feinstein about this twice before the release of this bill. Her response assured me that she considered my input, that doesnt seem to be the case though.
By all means, you are free to waste your time in any way that you see fit, no matter how pointless, but asking the rest of us to join in your little farce is idiotic. Dianne Feinstein does not give one tenth of one shit what "her" "constituents" think, unless you mean her corporate masters. No one on her staff (let alone her) will even do more than skim the top of your letter to see what it's about before clicking the button to send you back a form letter than says "fuck you, I'm not interested" in the nicest way possible. Feinstein reliably does what is worst for the people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Outlaw file compression by commercial companies"? I'm pretty sure those two asshats are too fucktarded to realize that non-commercial and non-US entities write software. In fact, I'm pretty sure that no part of my last phone was actually manufactured in the USA. I'm also somewhat curious as to whether the requirements of the law could be met by providing a brute-force decryptor that would meet the requirements of the law by allowing decryption of the file sometime between now and 14 trillion years from now.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You honestly think Feinstein is a Christian?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
more and more sucked into this quicksand. What a waste of good people.
Dear Congress,
Don't let morons introduce tech laws. Have them drafted in a committee with people who actually understand technology.
Thanks,
The People
"It's not encrypion. It's a math problem."
If you want to use my computer, you have to solve a boolean satisfiability problem. The answer is a 16-digit alphanumeric "solution." It's not my fault if you're not smart enough to figure out the solution. And I think it would spoil your eduction if I simply told you the answer. It's one of those things you'll have to figure out on your own. X^D
(This type of wordsmithing is similar to workaround that lawyers use to allow math and CS101 material to be patented. The magic "make math patentable" trick is "you can't patent math, but you can patent an equivalent a physical process." This technique always fools corporate lawyers and patent clerks.)
Her response assured me that she considered my input, that doesnt seem to be the case though.
Sure. She considered it the way one might consider a turd before flushing.
Um... IIRC, a southern state (Tennessee?) passed a law defining pi as exactly 3 because it made calculations easier. This explains a lot about the mental capacities of legislators.
It was Indiana.
And being an Indianan, I hang my head in shame.
When a bill has bipartisan authors and sponsors, watch out! If the party of evil and the party of stupid agree on something, we the people are about to get screwed.
A website could operate in a foreign country, with a cryptographic algorithm coded in javascript. The bill wouldn't touch that, well unless we had our own great firewall.
The same web site could offer a web service to encrypt and decrypt things. Sure, lots of weaknesses there, but if you didn't capture the traffic at the time... Any application could use that web service...
I could take a zip of a known very big file, and just xor all my files with that. (zip is reversable). As long as no one is ever told which very big file I used... (Yes there is one time pad reuse issues there, but realistically, it would probably stump some people.)
Hell, you could deliberately let a vm get infected with ransom ware, and let the ransom maker be responsible for the encryption. All you have to keep secret who has the decryption keys. That would get expensive, but you could do it, well as long as you don't care about losing them much.
You could get a copy of Mersenne Twister code and use that via XOR. Just keep secret the initial seed used for the one file, and don't reuse that key and it should be decent. Of course you again have key reuse issues, but if you only had say one disk to encrypt/decrypt I'd think it could work...
Admittedly all of these are weaker forms of encryption, but this is just what I could think of off the top of my head.... Do they really think all the bad guys are too stupid to figure out how to encrypt something without it being built into a COTS product?
You'd have to ban programming languages too, including all the trivial ones and graphing calculators/etc. Perhaps you would need a security clearance to be permitted to own such dangerous tools..
>> The government should fear the citizens
Sen. Feinstein is in a rather rabid opposition to this idea. She's been proposing one gun ban after another for as long as I can remember.
>> write your own critters to kill this.
Do you really believe they actually read any of the stuff you write? All I ever got back were obviously canned responses with not even a passing resemblance with the things I wrote about.
Um... IIRC, a southern state (Tennessee?) passed a law defining pi as exactly 3 because it made calculations easier. This explains a lot about the mental capacities of legislators.
It was Indiana.
And being an Indianan, I hang my head in shame.
The sad thing is that pi would be 3 in a universe with a different curvature of spacetime. It is clear they are not here in the same reality with the rest of us 3.14159265'ers! If pi is 3 in Indiana, then in that state the angles of a triangle do not add all the way up to 180 degrees.. so many things hypothetically broke when they did that. :(
Every time I pass through Indiana I cannot escape the foreboding feeling that there is something fundamentally "wrong" with the universe around me.. and that no one will tell me what it is. Maybe it is just simple paranoia.. but I don't think so! I will constantly be driving along I-70 and wondering if my GPS is right or not, if the road is where the screen says it is and if I actually am on it where the arrow says I am! If the ratio of the diameter of my tires to their circumference is more than 3 then how can I be sure that my speedometer is right? I am probably speeding if I keep the needle on my speedometer at 70.. but... how can I even be sure that is right seeing as it is governed by angles too?
I wonder if it is a coincidence that Indiana is the state where I lose an hour traveling East from crossing from the central time zone into the eastern time zone.. but no it is because the speed of light shifted with the faulty geometry of spacetime in the state of Indiana! I will constantly be asking myself if I just experienced missing time from being abducted by aliens or if the governing body of the state are just blistering idiots!
I wonder if you could get a speeding ticket in Indiana and argue that their radar gun's reading was wrong because using 3 for pi, does not come up to what the radar gun read out.. I would make Johnny Cochrane spin in his grave screaming: "If Pi is 3.00000000, you must acquit!"
That begs a question that would probably need a legal precedent to determine, if no "encryption" algorithm was used but you still used some other sort of steganography technique they couldn't break, if you are then guilty of a crime. You could have had navajo code talkers translate all of your incoming and outgoing emails as a "value added" service instead of using encryption like those dirty drug dealers and terrorist hackers do, but are you breaking the law? If I tell you, "I put that thing in that place I put it that one time".. will a 3 letter initialed agency bust down my door?
If it becomes illegal to use steganography as well as encryption, then the first amendment and the fourth amendment and the fifth technically go away don't they?
My question here, "How exactly is this constitutional?"
But, that can't be. Indiana isn't in the South, so it can't possibly have done anything like legislating pi. Only Southern states attempt to coerce nature (physis) with laws (nomoi).
Start with a sledgehammer, and file it down to a nice sharp edge. Eh, whatever, as long as we can spy on the state and take away its privacy, it won't matter. But let's all forget about ours. It's gone. But let's not forget that these are elected officials that want to impose this stuff. Y'know, in case you're interested in following the chain of events to its source.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Feinstain understanding encryption.
Hillary Clinton asking in an email via home server how to charge her iPad, running for Commander in Chief of the US military.
Motherfuckers are genuinely clueless. This is why God made Hell.
Any bill from Senator "Shoulder Thing That Goes Up" is bound to be stupid to anyone who knows anything about the subject at hand.
Important issues are decided by thin margins often enough; you can make a difference. On the issues you care most about even more so, because other legislatures will have different interests, so they'll listen to your point of view on the issues you know about and care about.
You've made enough intelligent posts to catch my attention, so you are apparently smarter/ better informed than the average citizen.
It's odd you haven't noticed that as an economy swings further toward socialism and communism, that requires more government control, the reduction of liberty. It happens every time. So kinda odd you'd be both inform
Hello, I have wonderful news for you. It was just a bill, it was never made into a law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
A stupid browser bug causes my posts to be submitted as I write, mid sentence. Anyway ...
Kinda odd that you'd be both reasonably well-informed and call yourself a libertarian yet still lean socialist. More socialist/ communist invariably requires more tighter government control of the citizens. Still, at least you have some clue, which is better than most candidates.
At last, a Law that makes illegal using JPEG, MP3, etc.!
It was about time PNG, FLAC and others file formats to be vindicated!
PS: I'm aware of Lossless JPEG and MP3HD extensions. The first is only used in medical and DNG and the later is plainly dead. So, I don't take them into account.
And does that company still count as American company? If not...
Then they send you to prison for refusing to decrypt it?
See the UK for example - the RIP Act - where you can get a sentence of up to 2 years for failing to decrypt, when ordered, anything the police have a 'reasonable belief' that you have the keys to. Several animal rights' activists have already been convicted under this law.
Forget the password for that encrypted backup? Get sent an encrypted email you don't even have the key for? Have some file of randomly generated garbage you used to test drive throughput that might be mistaken for encrypted data? Better hope the police don't go looking for a reason to put you away...
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Hello, I have wonderful news for you. It was just a bill, it was never made into a law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
I know. But the mere fact that it even found a Sponsor is a testament to the scientific ignorance of most politicians.
Providers of communications services and products should protect United States persons’ privacy with strong data security while still complying with court orders and other legal requirements.
They don't seem to understand at all that security is synonymous with encryption and is impossible over an open network without it, the people who wrote this probably just think in terms of storage access and communications as a direct line... In other words they don't know what an internet is.
Don't forget about dead-tree file encoding.
Tens of kilobytes fit on each side of a page.
There was a phony news story back in 1998 saying that Alabama did this, but it's been debunked.
And it looks like the Indiana bill was never passed, so your Hoosier integrity is intact! :)
and we're all gonna be screwed.
Save America -- Re-elect no one.
I'm familiar with the ideals, the dreams that socialist libertarians have. Let's look at how some of those most important ideas have been put into actual practice, how it actually works out.
They dream of worker collectives, such that you don't individually negotiate your pay, the collective does that. To ensure that happens, of course individual negotiation has to be illegal - the company MUST negotiate with the union, and therefore the worker MUST join and financially support the union. Meaning that a percentage of your is under the control of the union bosses (and the politicians they finance). Since wages aren't tied to individual performance, how do you deal with slackers? In practice, you can either MAKE them work, or you can ignore them, meaning that productively (and everyone's pay) suffers. Either authoritarian control or economic failure, those are two options when each worker's well-being isn't tied to their own efforts.
They seek collective ownership of the means of production- of factories, ships, etc. Right now we have VOLUNTARY collective ownership- you can choose to invest $500 or $5000 in a company that is building a new factory and you become a part-owner, a stockholder. Socialists of all stripes seek would have a system in which everyone MUST participate; AMD's new fab WILL be built with your money, whether you like it or not. They don't realize that's just the same as Wall Street except you're forced to finance the new coal mine. That's the only option other than voluntary financing. The mine is either built with money from people who volunteered their savings (in hopes of participating in profits), or it's built with money taken by force. Unless of course no productive facilities are built at all.
So it really is binary/ternary. It costs $50 million to build a new car factory. You really do have to decide whether that $50 million is invested willingly (current system) or if it's taken by force. If the money is neither invested willingly nor taken coercively, no factories , ships, or semiconductor fabs can be built.
There was a phony news story back in 1998 saying that Alabama did this, but it's been debunked.
And it looks like the Indiana bill was never passed, so your Hoosier integrity is intact! :)
Maybe for that particular gaffe; but there are so, so many other examples... ;-)
Fortunately, as it stands now in the US I can use the Fifth Amendment as a defense. Regardless, if you are apt to get in much more trouble for what you have in there you can do a few months for contempt standing on your head.
> Every year, they handle the collective pay raise negotiations with the company, usually ending up with some fixed percentage raise for every worker
> But we're still 100% allowed to sit down with our managers and negotiate a further pay raise,
In a world of unlimited budgets, spending $x million on a 5% raise for everyone who punches clock, sober or not, wouldn't deplete the budget and affect in any way your ability to work hard, know your job, and get a 20% raise. On earth, the company has a certain amount of money, say $10 million. Once $9 million of that is spent without regard to performance, only a little bit is left for the motivated workers. My last employer was like that.
At my last employer, everybody got about 2.5% each year. The total budget was increased by about 3%, meaning that 0.5% was available for raises actually based on merit. I studied my field in order to get better at my job. My boss gave me appropriately the maximum raise he could, about 3%. Another company me 85% more. I'm enjoying my new job making almost twice as much and the old employer no longer has one of their best employees.
> You're completely missing the fact that the company is not obliged in any way to keep the slackers and clock-punchers employed.
Top talent, even reasonably competent people, don't seek organizations where they can hope for a 3% increase. 3% companies get the clock-punchers. Remember I mentioned my current employer was able to offer me 80% more, and nexr week I expect an offer that's another 20% higher. My old employer couldn't offer even a 10% raise BECAUSE their budget was mostly exhausted by 3% for everyone, including the drunk. After the highly competent people go to places where their hard work and skill is rewarded, the unionesque shop is left with whomever remains. These are the facts of my experience.
And you are only a single data point. I can tell you that overall, the system has worked great for decades here in Denmark. It has only started showing cracks as a succession of right-wing governments have systematically tried to hollow out the unions' rights and tip the scales even more in favor of the big companies. A number of companies have managed to weasel out of paying any raises at all, apart from in the top management. Forget 3%, how about 0% with absolutely no possibility of a personal raise?
Don't like it? Go ahead and find another job, if you can. There's still a significant job shortage thanks to the financial crisis that started in 2008. You got lucky and found another job, maybe you're in a very specialized field. For the vast majority of people, it's a matter of either sucking it up, or going without a job.
All of the things you complain about are the fault of the company you worked at. If they valued good employees, they would have given you a raise and kept you employed. Instead, they're just going to find someone willing to work for even less, now.
Eat the rich.
Dianne Feinstein is a textbook example of a politician who never let a good crisis go to waste.
She first gained national attention when she became mayor of San Francisco, due to the prior mayor being murdered. She was in the right place and the right time, and eventually rode that wave into the Senate.
Despite coming from Northern California, Senator Feinstein has always been clueless about technology. Many years ago, she was at an Apple event to promote the original Macintosh. She didn't know which button to press on the mouse. Mac mice only had one button.
But, that can't be. Indiana isn't in the South, so it can't possibly have done anything like legislating pi. Only Southern states attempt to coerce nature (physis) with laws (nomoi).
Indiana is pretty much the South of the North. Always has been.