"You're mistaken. The DoJ can seize anything that's named on their warrant. The warrant must be based on probable cause to believe that the persons or things seized were involved in a crime. They don't have to prove anything in the sense you're implying."
You are assuming. I didn't say they had to "prove" anything. I did write "show", but I intended that to include probable cause. I could have worded it better.
More to the point, however: probable cause or not, in regard to those who they feel were violating the law, they ALSO seized digital "assets" of thousands or millions of legitimate customers, who cannot now retrieve that data. And DOJ seems to have little to no regard for that fact.
"So if the warrant (which I have not seen) named Carpathia Hosting's servers then Carpathia Hosting's servers are the things to be seized. In this case, DoJ "seized" them by freezing access to them."
I am aware of that. My whole point was that if so, the warrant was inappropriately (and, frankly: unconscionably, unjustifiably, and unjustly) broad, because it takes in legitimate business material and intelligence that thousands of people relied on for doing honest business. That is not to be taken lightly.
"... based on today's news it looks like the finger pointing is only escalating."
Which is why I am trying to call attention to this gross injustice. Would it be legitimate to shut down all of Amazon if a small percentage of people used it for nefarious purposes, like trading in counterfeit goods? Of course not. In fact that has happened with both Amazon and Ebay, and the result was that to the extent practical the responsible parties were brought to justice, but the legitimate customers were left alone.
Would that have been the same, if corporate officers at Amazon or Ebay were in collusion? I doubt it very much. Likely the corporations would be allowed to continue in legitimate business while the criminals were prosecuted.
The main thing here is that I think there has been a great deal of different treatment just because of the nature of their business. (I.e., files rather than tangible goods.) And I do not think that difference is justified. Instead, it is driven by lobbying for protectionism by corporate interests, which is an injustice in itself.
"As I pointed out in this thread though, their hands could be tied by the rules of evidence in criminal court. It may be that to allow less intrusive seizures in the future, laws may have to be modified to allow the government to take and use copies of original evidence in court."
No, that is contradictory. DOJ says it already has the evidence it needs... but the majority of the files and business information (which, since it isn't evidence, is presumably legitimate) are being left to languish on servers that are no longer in use, and are in danger of being destroyed. Or destroyed beyond recovery for any further business purposes, anyway.
There is no matter of evidence or evidentiary rules involved; that is already past.
Looking back, I see that you were replying to a claim that most antarctic ice is less than 10,000 years old. I had been looking at the other parts of the comment that mentioned glaciers in BC.
My apologies. I was not taking your statements in the proper context.
"Not sure why I'm debating with someone who just makes claims without any facts, but here is some more information for you to consider."
I didn't need to make any claims about facts. The burden lies with you to show that your facts actually constitute evidence of your point. You had failed to show any logical link between your facts and the particular issue you were discussing. Were we supposed to just assume some kind of relationship? I don't think so.
"Basically, Antarctica is a snow and ice 'factory' with ice depths on the Polar Plateau reaching 15,000 feet (the continent's average ice thickness is 7,000 feet). Thus, one of Antarctica's most important resources is its ice. It is said that Antarctica's ice accounts for 70% of the world's fresh water."
Wikipedia says about 61%. So that's ballpark. But my point is: you singled out two known, particularly deep pockets of ice in the Antarctic, and appeared to be claiming that was some kind of proof that glaciers in BC were more than 76+k years old, without even mentioning how one related to the other. Again: were we supposed to just assume that some relationship existed there, based on your unsupported word? Or was it your place to point out how they are related? Since such a relationship is essential to the point you were trying to make, I have to wonder why you left it out.
"Now when you consider that Antarctica is essentially a desert that only averages two inches of snow a year, think about how long it takes to build up 7000 feet of ice."
Great. Now show us how the depth of all that ice in Antarctica is evidence for great age of glaciers in British Columbia. Seems to me, your claim that Antartica only averages 2" of snow a year, while parts of British Columbia may get tens of feet, is actually evidence against your assertion.
And unless such a relationship can be demonstrated, it is still a straw-man argument.
"You must see that warming on a global scale is going to be harmful in certain respects (rising sea levels especially), and why does it have to be man-made?"
(1) It doesn't have to be man-made. Granted. In fact I think it's probably not, and as I have already stated elsewhere, I have done my homework on the subject. BUT:
(2) Harmful in what respects? Rise in sea level? Wait a minute. Think about the ACTUAL predictions of most of the models. Even the IPCC, with its questionable science and conclusions, hasn't predicted more than a meter rise over the next hundred years, worst-case. And most warming models have predicted a lot less.
A 1-meter rise hardly qualifies as anything even remotely resembling a catastrophe for most coastal regions. Yes, it might be a problem for some little islands, and even some low-lying coastal areas. But keep in mind we are talking about having 100 years to deal with and compensate for the problem, if it ever becomes one.
(3) "May be" possible and beneficial to reduce the warming? By how much and at what cost? Remember that some economists have said that even if the worst predictions about CO2 are correct (meaning that reducing CO2 might have a noticeable effect), it would nearly bankrupt humanity to very significantly affect it over that hundred years. One estimate was that for the cost of reducing warming by 0.5 degrees C over 100 years by reducing CO2, we could completely ELIMINATE world hunger, even adjusting for increased population levels.
It is just not a matter of "can we?" It is also a matter of "How difficult would it be, and should we?"
"You're saying the studies on global warming and the suggestions by well respected scientists across the board stem from "bad science"?"
Yes.
Scroll up a bit and see my link to "No, Virginia, Cooler Objects Cannot Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer." The majority of models (maybe nearly all of them) which are based on "radiative forcings" by CO2 -- and that category itself makes up most of the CO2 warming models -- are based on flawed ideas about "back radiation" that violate basic principles of physics.
Just as the climate scientists have repeatedly claimed "Non-scientists should listen to actual climate scientists about climate science," physicists are now saying "Climate scientists should start listening to physicists about physics."
"They just want people to be taxed more for some reason?"
Tax might be a small part of it, but also may be something of a red herring. It is more about control: by regulating something as basic as CO2, governments gain a huge amount of control over commerce, economy, and citizen activity that they did not have before. That is not something to dismiss as trivial. It is anything but.
I'll try to perhaps be clearer about what I meant:
It is at least conceivable that there exist deep ice deposits in a few places that may be a million years old or more.
But even if so, their existence says absolutely nothing about MOST ice deposits, or how deep they are, or whether they are more than even 10 years old.
"Just a quick search finds obvious differences from that concept..."
Just a quick application of logic shows this to be a straw-man argument. The depth of some ice deposits has absolutely no relationship to the volume of ice overall, or when it was deposited.
"We can easily calculate what the measured CO2 increase by itself does to the global energy balance of a static system."
This is where you are wrong. It has been shown that most of the models (at least) that are based on radiative forcings due to CO2 are based on flawed physics. See No, Virginia, Cooler Objects Cannot Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer. Their whole premise is based on a falsehood. So no, we can't "easily measure" it, at all. The attempts to model it to date have been fatally flawed.
Further, even if we could measure that, it is largely irrelevant because the single biggest hurdle to predicting climate is that it is anything but static!
"Majority of the worlds population lives by the ocean. It is hard to see how the winners outweigh loosers on this one."
Again, pretty much irrelevant to the discussion. If warming (which has occurred) forces them to move, then they'll have to move. However, even the most dire predictions of warming have predicted no more than a meter rise over the next 100 years, and most models (however flawed they may be) predict a good bit less. That is hardly a catastrophe for most coastal regions. And please don't go on about storms affecting the coasts, unless you can show me some genuine evidence that warming will make them worse. Existing evidence suggests otherwise. (Just one example: warming or not, total global cyclonic energy has been at a 40-year low.)
"When Al Gore goes on TV and streches the truth to the point of being indisingushable from a lie his action has no effect of any kind on reality. This is not the Matrix and Al Gore is not Neo."
Nonsense. It has a very major effect on reality, by influencing public opinion. This is a very dangerous thing. Probably more dangerous than any real amount of warming.
"Yet they still watch mostly partisian "news" and listen to crackpots on talk radio. By continuing to watch the "BS" they are getting exactly what they are asking for."
So you admit that people should stop watching / listening to news about AGW? Because there has been at least as much BS on the "pro" side of the argument as on the other (e.g., your own Al Gore example), and I believe a good deal more.
If you don't want to get p0wnd you need to turn off the idiot box and do your homework."
Which I have been doing a great deal of on this subject, for a number of years now, and my conclusion is very different from yours.
"The DoJ claims that there is a large amount of infringing data on the servers and that it would be illegal to allow the account holders to download it."
DOJ bears the burden of proof. Legally, it must show the content is infringing, or release it. If you want to get technical, it should have had to show that any particular content was infringing BEFORE seizing it.
Technically, DOJ is currently breaking the law, because it has "interfered with" thousands or even millions of legitimate business contracts in order to prosecute OTHER PEOPLE who might not be legitimate. The government is specifically prohibited by the Constitution from doing that.
Evidence, however, suggests that at least some quantum effects are non-deterministic and at best probabilistic, which would make them truly random but weighted.
Somehow Penrose made a conceptual leap from quantum probability to a completely deterministic consciousness, but personally I think he stumbled in his attempted leap from physics to metaphysics.
Conceivably, circumstances forced his fully-deterministic brain to come to that conclusion. Maybe that is a tautology, but then so is the idea of a fully-deterministic consciousness.
"In my opinion, Jane Q. Public has demonstrated she doesn't have a clue because if she had read the article, she would see the judge is arguing FOR privacy, not against it."
Irrelevant. My problem isn't with which side he is on, but with the flawed logic he uses, and the ignorance he displays. Example, from TFA:
"... as a matter of technology, such a request could not have been complied with twenty-five years earlier."
Yes, in fact it could, as was proven in court testimony in the early 1990s. Contrary to TV shows as recently as those same years showing police trying to get people to talk for "5 minutes" or more so they could trace the call, in fact the telephone companies have been keeping exact records since the 1950s at the very latest. They have had machines that have been recording the start time, end time, originating number, and destination number of EVERY phone call in the United States. Why did they misinform the police, the Feds, and even Congress about this? For the simple reason that they did not want to provide itemized bills for every call to every customer, which they perceived to be too expensive.
I wonder how many rapes, maimings, and murders could have been prevented, if police had access to this information. And the register machines were in fact computers, capable of doing the very kind of sorting and collating that Kozinski refers to. That's what they were for! There is no "couldn't" about it.
More:
"The idea that law enforcement can now ping your cell phone and find out exactly where you are at any time, with no probable cause and no judicial supervision, is greeted with a big collective yawn."
Absolute bullshit. There was (and has been) a large and still ongoing uproar over this very thing. Federal lawsuits by EFF, EPIC, ACLU, and other organizations are still in the works, supported by tens of thousands of citizens. It is the JUDGES who have been yawning, not the people at all, despite the very clearly expressed will and desire of "the people". Just as Kozinski clearly demonstrates. Shame on him.
"Twenty-five years earlier, it's highly unlikely that the government would have asked for such records and, had it done so, it's likely the telephone companies would've said no. Why? Because twenty-five years earlier both the government and the phone companies would probably have considered this information private and therefore beyond the reach of the governmentâ"at least without a warrant."
This much is true... but the telephone companies themselves have admitted that it was more a matter of economics than any concern for privacy. 25 years ago there was no way for them to profit from the information. My point here is that Kozinski is simply ignorant of the real history of this technology. Instead he is making guesses and baseless assumptions.
THIS is the key quote:
"But Fourth Amendment protections don't turn entirely on the conduct of any one individual; to a large extent they depend on whether we, as a society, treat something as private. If judges and justices, who are known to travel through airports and frequent supermarkets, determine that we, as a society, do not consider telephone conversations private, they may well conclude that individuals do not have legitimate expectations of privacy in such communications."
But where are judges supposed to get these values? From "The People"!!! Judges are not supposed to be making these decisions on their own -- as they clearly have been lately DESPITE public opinion. They are supposed to reflect the values of society. Society HAS spoken on this issue, and what it has said is not what Kozinski says. At all. That is the key issue behind my statement.
More yet:
"... for every Jessica Cutler among us, there are the thousands or millions who are prepared to read their exhibitionistic writ
"What part of "unless failure to do so would pose an immediate threat of grave harm to another person" did you not understand?"
The problem here is one of practicality and statistics. If ONLY 0.1% of people choose not to vaccinate, there would be little danger: few if any diseases would reach the critical mass necessary for an outbreak.
It is only when a more significant number refuse -- choosing a skewed (almost certainly exaggerated) perception of personal risk over the obvious public benefit -- that real problems arise.
And in fact it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a sense: if too many choose not to vaccinate, they are probably far more likely to succumb to the very diseases the vaccination is supposed to protect against, than any perceived harmful side-effect. Again, that is simply a matter of statistics.
"He's saying that the government's actions are inevitable because the populate don't give enough shits to call them on it."
Splitting hairs at best. If anything, he should not be broaching the subject because as a judge, HE is the one who would be in a position to stop that very thing.
Implying that it is "inevitable" is abdicating the responsibility for which he was elected.
"Now imagine a few years when their kids grow up (or they themselves grow up) and those people become our judges and our police and our political leaders...."
You are simply echoing Kozinski's own "logic"... stating that simply because some people don't choose to exercise a right, then it is okay to remove that choice.
To say that it is flawed logic is an understatement. I don't buy it. Period.
"No it's not the networks, it's the morons in charge of the content."
In many ways I must agree. I have strenuously protested many of the changes made to Slashdot over the last couple of years, which have seemed to add nothing substantial to usability, and instead have added overhead and time, and actually made it MORE difficult to use.
Slashdot Mirror
"You're mistaken. The DoJ can seize anything that's named on their warrant. The warrant must be based on probable cause to believe that the persons or things seized were involved in a crime. They don't have to prove anything in the sense you're implying."
You are assuming. I didn't say they had to "prove" anything. I did write "show", but I intended that to include probable cause. I could have worded it better.
More to the point, however: probable cause or not, in regard to those who they feel were violating the law, they ALSO seized digital "assets" of thousands or millions of legitimate customers, who cannot now retrieve that data. And DOJ seems to have little to no regard for that fact.
"So if the warrant (which I have not seen) named Carpathia Hosting's servers then Carpathia Hosting's servers are the things to be seized. In this case, DoJ "seized" them by freezing access to them."
I am aware of that. My whole point was that if so, the warrant was inappropriately (and, frankly: unconscionably, unjustifiably, and unjustly) broad, because it takes in legitimate business material and intelligence that thousands of people relied on for doing honest business. That is not to be taken lightly.
"... based on today's news it looks like the finger pointing is only escalating."
Which is why I am trying to call attention to this gross injustice. Would it be legitimate to shut down all of Amazon if a small percentage of people used it for nefarious purposes, like trading in counterfeit goods? Of course not. In fact that has happened with both Amazon and Ebay, and the result was that to the extent practical the responsible parties were brought to justice, but the legitimate customers were left alone.
Would that have been the same, if corporate officers at Amazon or Ebay were in collusion? I doubt it very much. Likely the corporations would be allowed to continue in legitimate business while the criminals were prosecuted.
The main thing here is that I think there has been a great deal of different treatment just because of the nature of their business. (I.e., files rather than tangible goods.) And I do not think that difference is justified. Instead, it is driven by lobbying for protectionism by corporate interests, which is an injustice in itself.
"As I pointed out in this thread though, their hands could be tied by the rules of evidence in criminal court. It may be that to allow less intrusive seizures in the future, laws may have to be modified to allow the government to take and use copies of original evidence in court."
No, that is contradictory. DOJ says it already has the evidence it needs... but the majority of the files and business information (which, since it isn't evidence, is presumably legitimate) are being left to languish on servers that are no longer in use, and are in danger of being destroyed. Or destroyed beyond recovery for any further business purposes, anyway.
There is no matter of evidence or evidentiary rules involved; that is already past.
"mega upload had premium accounts FYI"
Probably an insignificant fraction of their business, though. Their other customers reportedly numbered in the millions.
Wait... I retract that.
Looking back, I see that you were replying to a claim that most antarctic ice is less than 10,000 years old. I had been looking at the other parts of the comment that mentioned glaciers in BC.
My apologies. I was not taking your statements in the proper context.
"Not sure why I'm debating with someone who just makes claims without any facts, but here is some more information for you to consider."
I didn't need to make any claims about facts. The burden lies with you to show that your facts actually constitute evidence of your point. You had failed to show any logical link between your facts and the particular issue you were discussing. Were we supposed to just assume some kind of relationship? I don't think so.
"Basically, Antarctica is a snow and ice 'factory' with ice depths on the Polar Plateau reaching 15,000 feet (the continent's average ice thickness is 7,000 feet). Thus, one of Antarctica's most important resources is its ice. It is said that Antarctica's ice accounts for 70% of the world's fresh water."
Wikipedia says about 61%. So that's ballpark. But my point is: you singled out two known, particularly deep pockets of ice in the Antarctic, and appeared to be claiming that was some kind of proof that glaciers in BC were more than 76+k years old, without even mentioning how one related to the other. Again: were we supposed to just assume that some relationship existed there, based on your unsupported word? Or was it your place to point out how they are related? Since such a relationship is essential to the point you were trying to make, I have to wonder why you left it out.
"Now when you consider that Antarctica is essentially a desert that only averages two inches of snow a year, think about how long it takes to build up 7000 feet of ice."
Great. Now show us how the depth of all that ice in Antarctica is evidence for great age of glaciers in British Columbia. Seems to me, your claim that Antartica only averages 2" of snow a year, while parts of British Columbia may get tens of feet, is actually evidence against your assertion.
And unless such a relationship can be demonstrated, it is still a straw-man argument.
"You must see that warming on a global scale is going to be harmful in certain respects (rising sea levels especially), and why does it have to be man-made?"
(1) It doesn't have to be man-made. Granted. In fact I think it's probably not, and as I have already stated elsewhere, I have done my homework on the subject. BUT:
(2) Harmful in what respects? Rise in sea level? Wait a minute. Think about the ACTUAL predictions of most of the models. Even the IPCC, with its questionable science and conclusions, hasn't predicted more than a meter rise over the next hundred years, worst-case. And most warming models have predicted a lot less.
A 1-meter rise hardly qualifies as anything even remotely resembling a catastrophe for most coastal regions. Yes, it might be a problem for some little islands, and even some low-lying coastal areas. But keep in mind we are talking about having 100 years to deal with and compensate for the problem, if it ever becomes one.
(3) "May be" possible and beneficial to reduce the warming? By how much and at what cost? Remember that some economists have said that even if the worst predictions about CO2 are correct (meaning that reducing CO2 might have a noticeable effect), it would nearly bankrupt humanity to very significantly affect it over that hundred years. One estimate was that for the cost of reducing warming by 0.5 degrees C over 100 years by reducing CO2, we could completely ELIMINATE world hunger, even adjusting for increased population levels.
It is just not a matter of "can we?" It is also a matter of "How difficult would it be, and should we?"
"You're saying the studies on global warming and the suggestions by well respected scientists across the board stem from "bad science"?"
Yes.
Scroll up a bit and see my link to "No, Virginia, Cooler Objects Cannot Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer." The majority of models (maybe nearly all of them) which are based on "radiative forcings" by CO2 -- and that category itself makes up most of the CO2 warming models -- are based on flawed ideas about "back radiation" that violate basic principles of physics.
Just as the climate scientists have repeatedly claimed "Non-scientists should listen to actual climate scientists about climate science," physicists are now saying "Climate scientists should start listening to physicists about physics."
"They just want people to be taxed more for some reason?"
Tax might be a small part of it, but also may be something of a red herring. It is more about control: by regulating something as basic as CO2, governments gain a huge amount of control over commerce, economy, and citizen activity that they did not have before. That is not something to dismiss as trivial. It is anything but.
I'll try to perhaps be clearer about what I meant:
It is at least conceivable that there exist deep ice deposits in a few places that may be a million years old or more.
But even if so, their existence says absolutely nothing about MOST ice deposits, or how deep they are, or whether they are more than even 10 years old.
It's completely irrelevant.
"Just a quick search finds obvious differences from that concept..."
Just a quick application of logic shows this to be a straw-man argument. The depth of some ice deposits has absolutely no relationship to the volume of ice overall, or when it was deposited.
"We can easily calculate what the measured CO2 increase by itself does to the global energy balance of a static system."
This is where you are wrong. It has been shown that most of the models (at least) that are based on radiative forcings due to CO2 are based on flawed physics. See No, Virginia, Cooler Objects Cannot Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer. Their whole premise is based on a falsehood. So no, we can't "easily measure" it, at all. The attempts to model it to date have been fatally flawed.
Further, even if we could measure that, it is largely irrelevant because the single biggest hurdle to predicting climate is that it is anything but static!
"Majority of the worlds population lives by the ocean. It is hard to see how the winners outweigh loosers on this one."
Again, pretty much irrelevant to the discussion. If warming (which has occurred) forces them to move, then they'll have to move. However, even the most dire predictions of warming have predicted no more than a meter rise over the next 100 years, and most models (however flawed they may be) predict a good bit less. That is hardly a catastrophe for most coastal regions. And please don't go on about storms affecting the coasts, unless you can show me some genuine evidence that warming will make them worse. Existing evidence suggests otherwise. (Just one example: warming or not, total global cyclonic energy has been at a 40-year low.)
"When Al Gore goes on TV and streches the truth to the point of being indisingushable from a lie his action has no effect of any kind on reality. This is not the Matrix and Al Gore is not Neo."
Nonsense. It has a very major effect on reality, by influencing public opinion. This is a very dangerous thing. Probably more dangerous than any real amount of warming.
"Yet they still watch mostly partisian "news" and listen to crackpots on talk radio. By continuing to watch the "BS" they are getting exactly what they are asking for."
So you admit that people should stop watching / listening to news about AGW? Because there has been at least as much BS on the "pro" side of the argument as on the other (e.g., your own Al Gore example), and I believe a good deal more.
If you don't want to get p0wnd you need to turn off the idiot box and do your homework."
Which I have been doing a great deal of on this subject, for a number of years now, and my conclusion is very different from yours.
"The DoJ claims that there is a large amount of infringing data on the servers and that it would be illegal to allow the account holders to download it."
DOJ bears the burden of proof. Legally, it must show the content is infringing, or release it. If you want to get technical, it should have had to show that any particular content was infringing BEFORE seizing it.
Technically, DOJ is currently breaking the law, because it has "interfered with" thousands or even millions of legitimate business contracts in order to prosecute OTHER PEOPLE who might not be legitimate. The government is specifically prohibited by the Constitution from doing that.
"One presumes the account holders have paid megaupload, so the server costs can be met out of their frozen accounts."
One presumes incorrectly. Megaupload was an advertisment-supported service. The account holders did not pay Megaupload; they were paid BY Megaupload.
But of course, now that the site is shut down, there is no advertising revenue.
Yep. All of the above. Didn't work for me.
Hard for me to tell, since the Flash blocking in my NoScript did not work at all. Even after restarting Firefox.
I agree completely. Last time I got a good look at a wavefunction I was so excited my feet got all entangled and I pretty much collapsed.
The words are not in order, but that's three anagrams stuck together.
(Slashdot won't let me do this in all caps.) LASS DOTH DOSS SASH; TOLD HALT!
Ooh! Ooh!
SHOT LADS who were out by the lean-to, inspecting the LATH SODS.
Don't forget SHT. LOADS
Evidence, however, suggests that at least some quantum effects are non-deterministic and at best probabilistic, which would make them truly random but weighted.
Somehow Penrose made a conceptual leap from quantum probability to a completely deterministic consciousness, but personally I think he stumbled in his attempted leap from physics to metaphysics.
Conceivably, circumstances forced his fully-deterministic brain to come to that conclusion. Maybe that is a tautology, but then so is the idea of a fully-deterministic consciousness.
"In my opinion, Jane Q. Public has demonstrated she doesn't have a clue because if she had read the article, she would see the judge is arguing FOR privacy, not against it."
Irrelevant. My problem isn't with which side he is on, but with the flawed logic he uses, and the ignorance he displays. Example, from TFA:
"... as a matter of technology, such a request could not have been complied with twenty-five years earlier."
Yes, in fact it could, as was proven in court testimony in the early 1990s. Contrary to TV shows as recently as those same years showing police trying to get people to talk for "5 minutes" or more so they could trace the call, in fact the telephone companies have been keeping exact records since the 1950s at the very latest. They have had machines that have been recording the start time, end time, originating number, and destination number of EVERY phone call in the United States. Why did they misinform the police, the Feds, and even Congress about this? For the simple reason that they did not want to provide itemized bills for every call to every customer, which they perceived to be too expensive.
I wonder how many rapes, maimings, and murders could have been prevented, if police had access to this information. And the register machines were in fact computers, capable of doing the very kind of sorting and collating that Kozinski refers to. That's what they were for! There is no "couldn't" about it.
More:
"The idea that law enforcement can now ping your cell phone and find out exactly where you are at any time, with no probable cause and no judicial supervision, is greeted with a big collective yawn."
Absolute bullshit. There was (and has been) a large and still ongoing uproar over this very thing. Federal lawsuits by EFF, EPIC, ACLU, and other organizations are still in the works, supported by tens of thousands of citizens. It is the JUDGES who have been yawning, not the people at all, despite the very clearly expressed will and desire of "the people". Just as Kozinski clearly demonstrates. Shame on him.
"Twenty-five years earlier, it's highly unlikely that the government would have asked for such records and, had it done so, it's likely the telephone companies would've said no. Why? Because twenty-five years earlier both the government and the phone companies would probably have considered this information private and therefore beyond the reach of the governmentâ"at least without a warrant."
This much is true... but the telephone companies themselves have admitted that it was more a matter of economics than any concern for privacy. 25 years ago there was no way for them to profit from the information. My point here is that Kozinski is simply ignorant of the real history of this technology. Instead he is making guesses and baseless assumptions.
THIS is the key quote:
"But Fourth Amendment protections don't turn entirely on the conduct of any one individual; to a large extent they depend on whether we, as a society, treat something as private. If judges and justices, who are known to travel through airports and frequent supermarkets, determine that we, as a society, do not consider telephone conversations private, they may well conclude that individuals do not have legitimate expectations of privacy in such communications."
But where are judges supposed to get these values? From "The People"!!! Judges are not supposed to be making these decisions on their own -- as they clearly have been lately DESPITE public opinion. They are supposed to reflect the values of society. Society HAS spoken on this issue, and what it has said is not what Kozinski says. At all. That is the key issue behind my statement.
More yet:
"... for every Jessica Cutler among us, there are the thousands or millions who are prepared to read their exhibitionistic writ
"What part of "unless failure to do so would pose an immediate threat of grave harm to another person" did you not understand?"
The problem here is one of practicality and statistics. If ONLY 0.1% of people choose not to vaccinate, there would be little danger: few if any diseases would reach the critical mass necessary for an outbreak.
It is only when a more significant number refuse -- choosing a skewed (almost certainly exaggerated) perception of personal risk over the obvious public benefit -- that real problems arise.
And in fact it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a sense: if too many choose not to vaccinate, they are probably far more likely to succumb to the very diseases the vaccination is supposed to protect against, than any perceived harmful side-effect. Again, that is simply a matter of statistics.
"He's saying that the government's actions are inevitable because the populate don't give enough shits to call them on it."
Splitting hairs at best. If anything, he should not be broaching the subject because as a judge, HE is the one who would be in a position to stop that very thing.
Implying that it is "inevitable" is abdicating the responsibility for which he was elected.
"Now imagine a few years when their kids grow up (or they themselves grow up) and those people become our judges and our police and our political leaders. ..."
You are simply echoing Kozinski's own "logic"... stating that simply because some people don't choose to exercise a right, then it is okay to remove that choice.
To say that it is flawed logic is an understatement. I don't buy it. Period.
"No it's not the networks, it's the morons in charge of the content."
In many ways I must agree. I have strenuously protested many of the changes made to Slashdot over the last couple of years, which have seemed to add nothing substantial to usability, and instead have added overhead and time, and actually made it MORE difficult to use.
Addendum:
I just tested it, and the "Block Adobe Flash" option in my NoScript settings doesn't even work.
"i think you need to change the defaults for that. Might be a reason, why some noscript users still use flashblock."
Interface for Flashblock is better. You just click the element, you don't need to go through a menu.