" There's quite a bit of case law that you don't have a legal expectation of privacy with regards to information revealed to a third party, e.g. emails stored on a web mail provider's server."
But there is no reason that emails on a server should be "revealed" to that party. Tell me: if you gave someone a sealed envelope and asked them to not read the contents -- even though there is absolutely nothing stopping them from tearing open the envelope and reading it -- does that constitute "revealing" the information?
An ISP has to take positive, affirmative steps to read an email that is stored on their server. Just as someone working for a phone company has to take positive, affirmative steps to access the content of a phone conversation, or your voice mail.
And voice mail, in particular, is comparable. Why should voice mails be private, yet emails not? Explain please.
"Are they? I haven't heard a good argument on why anyone should expect an email to be private. It's read and scanned by countless systems just to get it to its destination."
No, it isn't.
The header is, but that's what the header is for. No intermediate system (or email server, for that matter) has any reason to read or "scan" anything in the body of the email. There just isn't any valid technical reason to do that.
I should point out that as far as "header" information is concerned (i.e., signalling required for source-destination communications), telephone lines are absolutely no different. There is source and destination information that is perfectly analogous to email headers, and then there is the "body" of the message: the actual voice content.
Yet people DO expect phone conversations to be private. So explain to me why there should be any difference.
"Software is always stateful although it can approach stateless behavior. Analog electronics and mechanical systems are generally stateless. Digital systems can be built either way but registers and memories are pretty fundamental so almost all modern digital chips are stateful even if they don't embed cpu's and software."
This is all true, but the very nature of the kinds of applications being discussed demand that they be stateful.
"Collage artists have been around for over a century."
See my point above. But to clarify that point a bit:
I was not referring to whether the photographs that Google uses in its maps should be copyrighted. That is a completely separate issue. And it would be interesting to watch the proceedings if someone were to challenge that.
But my earlier point was: *IF* we take it as a given that they are copyrighted, then does this work infringe? I think there are some great arguments that it does.
"It doesn't. The artist is not selling his work as maps, or as advertising, or as a way to synergize advertising and mapping. He's not giving directions."
Yes, it does. The maps are copyrighted works belonging to Google. His work is provably derivative of those copyrighted works. And it is a trivial derivation... quite literally, just about anyone could do it. Maybe not as well, or as attractively... but maybe even more so.
So the question is: is the derivation process enough to protect him from copyright infringement? Highly questionable.
Trademarks are not copyrights. And Warhol's works are paintings. There are some rather huge differences there.
Using your logic, you are saying I could take an Ansel Adams photograph, turn it upside down, and call it art of my own? Just asking.
"Is it just a "coincidence" that Assange is accused of sexually assaulting two Swedish women while he was in Sweden at the time?"
That is very nearly a tautology. Is it a coincidence that Darwin found Galapagos tortoises in Galapagos? Would anyone in their right mind have "accused" him of finding them in Texas?
If you're going to make an accusation against someone, whether it is true or not, if you want people to believe you, it has to make sense.
But that is all beside the point. Assange has publicly stated, many times -- and with damned good reason -- that he doesn't want to go to Sweden for the simple reason that he is concerned about then being given to the United States.
While it may be true that it is up to Sweden to decide whether he is guilty of that particular crime, his concerns appear to be quite valid.
I might add that he and his legal representative VOLUNTEERED to face the accusations in Sweden at an earlier time, and the government then refused. It was only after the U.S. began to apply pressure that he was formally charged.
"... but just because data could be incorrectly used doesn't make it inherently worrying."
Yes, it does.
This doesn't really tell you anything meaningful about an individual. Everybody studies differently, and a technique that works well for one person may not work well or at all for another.
Some people like to take copious notes while listening to a lecture or reading a text. Others prefer to pay more attention to the original material and forego the notes. Etc. There is a whole spectrum here. So what is this supposed to accomplish?
Which brings us to this famous quote from a President who was mostly unremarkable: Lyndon B. Johnson.
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
This is not legislation, of course, but the point is: whenever you do something like this, you are obliged to weigh the good AND the bad that it may do. Considering that there is scant evidence that it will do much good, but there is great potential for abuse, offhand I would call this a bad thing.
Reliably finding all "bugs" is not possible without an intimate knowledge of exactly what the software is trying to accomplish. You can find certain kinds of errors algorithmically (what amount to "compile time" errors), and even prevent many kinds of run-time errors.
But there is simply no way to prevent the program from doing something unintentional (like cutting the wrong thing) without prior detailed knowledge of the actual intent.
"So, when will Wikileaks start releasing Soviet and Communist archive material? Thats right, Assange probably doesn't consider them "bastards" to be crushed. Well, he going to Ecuador if he can, isn't he?"
Assange is retreating to Ecuador because many of those "free Western" democracies you seem so fond of have given him little choice.
"I would have thought there would be more. I have 6 or 7 accounts but they represent either a website or sometimes a business. Only one with my name."
The 20 million "fake" accounts they're referring to aren't "placeholder" accounts or alternative accounts such as you describe. They're literally fake accounts, used for the sole purpose of inflating somebody's number of followers.
And if you ask me, making use of such a "service" is pretty pathetic.
"And there lies the truth about Twitter: For the most part, Twitter is now simply an extension of commercial branding, as in "Nothing To See" and "Nothing Of Value Was Lost"... I mean, if you're really interested in reading Justin Bieber's latest drama in 140 chars... Twitter is now (and has been for some time) simply an extension of the corporate promotion game."
I didn't mean it quite literally. But I don't think the nunchuck controller is really that heavy. Especially if you removed the case and the buttons (figuratively speaking) and just used the accelerometer.
"Wrong again. The Internet is a bunch of interconnected networks, some private, some not so much. I manage a VPN that connects my company's private network to one managed for us by a major hosting provider."
No, I am not wrong. This is a PRIVATE NETWORK. It is not the internet. As far as we know, it is not connected anywhere to the internet. Your comparison is just wrong.
Your private network, whether it is connected to the internet or not, is YOUR private network. Deal with it how you like.
"The mere fact that our networks are so connected does not, in any way shape or form, grant me the right to bang away in an attempt to gain unauthorized access to the resources on their network, nor they ours. Their network is theirs. Mine is mine. To suggest otherwise (again, absent any agreements specifically addressing the matter), is just stupid."
So fucking what? What does that have to do with MY comment about THIS situation? Answer: exactly zero. The thing is, if you look back and read what I actually wrote, I suggested no such thing.
I did not say they had authorization or any kind of legal rights. I simply said that if they are on the same network, the security of one is necessary to the security of the other. I said nothing about legality or permissions. Who are you arguing with? It sure as hell isn't me.
I should clarify what I mean about the motion not mattering.
Different conductors sweep the baton around different ways. But they will have common features related to the motions (when the upbeats and downbeats are, cues, and so on). It is the timing of the motions, rather than the gross motions, that are most important.
Seldom does the exact motion of the baton matter. Different conductors have different styles. But you could modify a Wii controller to follow the motion of the baton and turn it into pressure or some other kind of signal.
I would say this is absolutely true. But as others have pointed out, pentesting the private practice's servers without permission might well have been illegal, and the same could be said for doing it the other way around.
"By your logic, the entire Internet is fair game for the hospital's pen testers. I hate to have to tell you this, but it's not, nor is any specific network interconnected to the hospital's network, absent specific agreements spelling out such terms."
Bullshit. The internet is not a private network. There is a whole world of difference.
But as I pointed out to someone else above, the legality of it does not change the validity of my statement.
Sure, it may be illegal to do what they did. They should have gotten permission first. But it might also be necessary in order to fully confirm the network's security.
"This is not entirely true either. If they are attacking a server not owned by the hospital and is owned by the private company, that would be an illegal attack. If you are connected to a network through your ISP you have no right to try to attack some other server on the ISP's network."
The legality of it has absolutely no bearing on the truth of my statement. It may be illegal, but it's also essential to security.
All you did was point out another failure of current law.
Agree, this is great. Although being attacked by a turtle is not actually such a rare thing. But the other is hilarious. I bet if someone looked diligently they could find all sorts of such combinations.
Slashdot Mirror
" There's quite a bit of case law that you don't have a legal expectation of privacy with regards to information revealed to a third party, e.g. emails stored on a web mail provider's server."
But there is no reason that emails on a server should be "revealed" to that party. Tell me: if you gave someone a sealed envelope and asked them to not read the contents -- even though there is absolutely nothing stopping them from tearing open the envelope and reading it -- does that constitute "revealing" the information?
An ISP has to take positive, affirmative steps to read an email that is stored on their server. Just as someone working for a phone company has to take positive, affirmative steps to access the content of a phone conversation, or your voice mail.
And voice mail, in particular, is comparable. Why should voice mails be private, yet emails not? Explain please.
"Are they? I haven't heard a good argument on why anyone should expect an email to be private. It's read and scanned by countless systems just to get it to its destination."
No, it isn't.
The header is, but that's what the header is for. No intermediate system (or email server, for that matter) has any reason to read or "scan" anything in the body of the email. There just isn't any valid technical reason to do that.
I should point out that as far as "header" information is concerned (i.e., signalling required for source-destination communications), telephone lines are absolutely no different. There is source and destination information that is perfectly analogous to email headers, and then there is the "body" of the message: the actual voice content.
Yet people DO expect phone conversations to be private. So explain to me why there should be any difference.
That isn't what I asked. What this artist is doing is a lot closer to what I described than what you have described.
Making a mosaic is arguably non-trivial. What this guy is doing is pretty trivial.
"Software is always stateful although it can approach stateless behavior. Analog electronics and mechanical systems are generally stateless. Digital systems can be built either way but registers and memories are pretty fundamental so almost all modern digital chips are stateful even if they don't embed cpu's and software."
This is all true, but the very nature of the kinds of applications being discussed demand that they be stateful.
"Collage artists have been around for over a century."
See my point above. But to clarify that point a bit:
I was not referring to whether the photographs that Google uses in its maps should be copyrighted. That is a completely separate issue. And it would be interesting to watch the proceedings if someone were to challenge that.
But my earlier point was: *IF* we take it as a given that they are copyrighted, then does this work infringe? I think there are some great arguments that it does.
"It doesn't. The artist is not selling his work as maps, or as advertising, or as a way to synergize advertising and mapping. He's not giving directions."
Yes, it does. The maps are copyrighted works belonging to Google. His work is provably derivative of those copyrighted works. And it is a trivial derivation... quite literally, just about anyone could do it. Maybe not as well, or as attractively... but maybe even more so.
So the question is: is the derivation process enough to protect him from copyright infringement? Highly questionable.
Trademarks are not copyrights. And Warhol's works are paintings. There are some rather huge differences there.
Using your logic, you are saying I could take an Ansel Adams photograph, turn it upside down, and call it art of my own? Just asking.
"Is it just a "coincidence" that Assange is accused of sexually assaulting two Swedish women while he was in Sweden at the time?"
That is very nearly a tautology. Is it a coincidence that Darwin found Galapagos tortoises in Galapagos? Would anyone in their right mind have "accused" him of finding them in Texas?
If you're going to make an accusation against someone, whether it is true or not, if you want people to believe you, it has to make sense.
But that is all beside the point. Assange has publicly stated, many times -- and with damned good reason -- that he doesn't want to go to Sweden for the simple reason that he is concerned about then being given to the United States.
While it may be true that it is up to Sweden to decide whether he is guilty of that particular crime, his concerns appear to be quite valid.
I might add that he and his legal representative VOLUNTEERED to face the accusations in Sweden at an earlier time, and the government then refused. It was only after the U.S. began to apply pressure that he was formally charged.
Tell me: do you think THAT was a coincidence?
"I'll bet you're one of these morons who are surgically mated to their Smart Phones..."
You would lose that bet.
"... but just because data could be incorrectly used doesn't make it inherently worrying."
Yes, it does.
This doesn't really tell you anything meaningful about an individual. Everybody studies differently, and a technique that works well for one person may not work well or at all for another.
Some people like to take copious notes while listening to a lecture or reading a text. Others prefer to pay more attention to the original material and forego the notes. Etc. There is a whole spectrum here. So what is this supposed to accomplish?
Which brings us to this famous quote from a President who was mostly unremarkable: Lyndon B. Johnson.
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
This is not legislation, of course, but the point is: whenever you do something like this, you are obliged to weigh the good AND the bad that it may do. Considering that there is scant evidence that it will do much good, but there is great potential for abuse, offhand I would call this a bad thing.
"wow, does it solve the halting problem as well?"
Pretty close to my thoughts as well.
Reliably finding all "bugs" is not possible without an intimate knowledge of exactly what the software is trying to accomplish. You can find certain kinds of errors algorithmically (what amount to "compile time" errors), and even prevent many kinds of run-time errors.
But there is simply no way to prevent the program from doing something unintentional (like cutting the wrong thing) without prior detailed knowledge of the actual intent.
"It's like looking at Google maps through a kaleidoscope."
For practical purposes, it IS looking at Google maps through a kaleidoscope.
I wonder where this falls in the copyright infringement / fair use spectrum.
"This means that as greenhouse gas emissions grow, so will these crustaceans."
The problem with this scenario is that carbon emissions in the U.S. have gone down, not up.
"So, when will Wikileaks start releasing Soviet and Communist archive material? Thats right, Assange probably doesn't consider them "bastards" to be crushed. Well, he going to Ecuador if he can, isn't he?"
Assange is retreating to Ecuador because many of those "free Western" democracies you seem so fond of have given him little choice.
"I would have thought there would be more. I have 6 or 7 accounts but they represent either a website or sometimes a business. Only one with my name."
The 20 million "fake" accounts they're referring to aren't "placeholder" accounts or alternative accounts such as you describe. They're literally fake accounts, used for the sole purpose of inflating somebody's number of followers.
And if you ask me, making use of such a "service" is pretty pathetic.
"And there lies the truth about Twitter: For the most part, Twitter is now simply an extension of commercial branding, as in "Nothing To See" and "Nothing Of Value Was Lost"... I mean, if you're really interested in reading Justin Bieber's latest drama in 140 chars... Twitter is now (and has been for some time) simply an extension of the corporate promotion game."
If you really think so, you're doing it wrong.
"Alas, the joy didn't last long..."
That's precisely why we need to act against things like CFAA, and -- perhaps most important -- come up with a workable distributed DNS-type system.
I didn't mean it quite literally. But I don't think the nunchuck controller is really that heavy. Especially if you removed the case and the buttons (figuratively speaking) and just used the accelerometer.
"Wrong again. The Internet is a bunch of interconnected networks, some private, some not so much. I manage a VPN that connects my company's private network to one managed for us by a major hosting provider."
No, I am not wrong. This is a PRIVATE NETWORK. It is not the internet. As far as we know, it is not connected anywhere to the internet. Your comparison is just wrong.
Your private network, whether it is connected to the internet or not, is YOUR private network. Deal with it how you like.
"The mere fact that our networks are so connected does not, in any way shape or form, grant me the right to bang away in an attempt to gain unauthorized access to the resources on their network, nor they ours. Their network is theirs. Mine is mine. To suggest otherwise (again, absent any agreements specifically addressing the matter), is just stupid."
So fucking what? What does that have to do with MY comment about THIS situation? Answer: exactly zero. The thing is, if you look back and read what I actually wrote, I suggested no such thing.
I did not say they had authorization or any kind of legal rights. I simply said that if they are on the same network, the security of one is necessary to the security of the other. I said nothing about legality or permissions. Who are you arguing with? It sure as hell isn't me.
I should clarify what I mean about the motion not mattering.
Different conductors sweep the baton around different ways. But they will have common features related to the motions (when the upbeats and downbeats are, cues, and so on). It is the timing of the motions, rather than the gross motions, that are most important.
Seldom does the exact motion of the baton matter. Different conductors have different styles. But you could modify a Wii controller to follow the motion of the baton and turn it into pressure or some other kind of signal.
I would say this is absolutely true. But as others have pointed out, pentesting the private practice's servers without permission might well have been illegal, and the same could be said for doing it the other way around.
"By your logic, the entire Internet is fair game for the hospital's pen testers. I hate to have to tell you this, but it's not, nor is any specific network interconnected to the hospital's network, absent specific agreements spelling out such terms."
Bullshit. The internet is not a private network. There is a whole world of difference.
But as I pointed out to someone else above, the legality of it does not change the validity of my statement.
Sure, it may be illegal to do what they did. They should have gotten permission first. But it might also be necessary in order to fully confirm the network's security.
"This is not entirely true either. If they are attacking a server not owned by the hospital and is owned by the private company, that would be an illegal attack. If you are connected to a network through your ISP you have no right to try to attack some other server on the ISP's network."
The legality of it has absolutely no bearing on the truth of my statement. It may be illegal, but it's also essential to security.
All you did was point out another failure of current law.
Agree, this is great. Although being attacked by a turtle is not actually such a rare thing. But the other is hilarious. I bet if someone looked diligently they could find all sorts of such combinations.