It has happened to innocent people over the last 5 years. Jose Padilla (held without charge for over three years, finally indicted over the objection of the government, not yet tried), Khaled el-Masri (arrested in the Balkans, transported around the secret prison system, tortured, later released), Maher Arar (Canadian & Syrian citizen arrested while changing planes in the US, deported to Syria and held for a year on US orders); and that's just off the top of my head.
In the distant future, when western civilization falls because people didn't want to get their hands dirty fighting to save it, who will speak out?
Puh-leaze. Are you listening to yourself? You're just reaching for stupid hyperbole because you can't answer my charges, and it's making you sound like an utter tool. Terrorism is not going to cause the end of Western Civilization. Not now, not then, not ever. Western civilization has weathered much, much worse in the last thousand years and not only survived but came out the other side wiser for the experience (go learn about the Thirty Years' War, or the Mongol invasions, or the Black Death sometime). However, your apparent favorite way to combat terrorism is very likely to erode our democracy and our liberty until it exists only in name. That is a real threat to America--but even that would not be the end of Western civilization.
And for the record, I am fighting terrorism. I'm also fighting the creeping authoritarianism that's growing in response to the fear that terrorism has engendered.
You should ask her if she'd rather have live children held incommunicado in some prison based solely on the government's say-so, with no legal recourse to challenge that detention, subject to undisclosed interrogation techniques, with no legal recourse to challenge that treatment as the interrogators have been indemnified, with no guarantee that they will ever come to trial, and with the knowledge that if they ever come to trial they will be faced with secret evidence from secret accusers that can't be impeached.
All of these things are forbidden by the Constitution. Does that sound like a "degree" of freedom to you?
Here, let me anticipate your next response: "If they're innocent then they don't have anything to worry about." Such is the response of authoritarians throughout time when challenged. I'll leave you to ponder the sheer ridiculousness of that statement when you live under a legal system founded on the presumption of innocence. And I'll close with one final thought: When they finally come for you, who will speak out?
Don't be intentionally obtuse; you only make yourself look foolish.
However, in answer to your ridiculous accusation: I will tell Ms. Smith that we will do everything possible within the law to bring the perpetrators to justice. I will tell Ms. Smith that everything was done that could be done within the law to prevent the attack. I will tell Ms. Smith that we will discover if more could have been done within the law to prevent the attack, and if there was something within the law that was not done, we will do so in the future--and we will hold those who failed, even ourselves, up for public accountability. I will tell Ms. Smith that if I could have switched places with her children I would gladly have done so, because I believe that liberty and the rule of law are worth my life; others died defending my liberty and I can do no less.
You have let fear overwhelm you, and it sickens and saddens me. It sickens me because you would let your fear drive you toward supporting un-American law, un-American attitudes, and an un-American police state. It saddens me because I used to believe that Americans were built of sterner stuff. Are you so cowardly that you assume others are as fearful as you? Where is your spine; where is your gut; where is your steadfastness in the face of danger?
The fallacy in your rebuttal is that our elected officials are responsible for more than just protecting us. They must also provide justice, promote our welfare, and guarantee our liberties. Remember this?
We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and ensure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity [...]"
While the Preamble doesn't create or grant power, it's use in jurisprudence is as a statement of intent that guides interpretation of the Constitution.
You assert that fear is beside the point; yet it is your fear that leads you to support the abrogation of guaranteed liberties by our elected officials. But protection of that liberty is just as important a responsibility as providing physical safety--our founders understood this, and intentionally placed these responsibilities on an equal footing. Our elected officials have a responsibility to explain to us that there are limits to providing physical safety imposed by their concomitant responsibility to protect our liberties.
But they haven't. In fact, they've intentionally manipulated fear in order to convince people that their safety is more important than their liberty; which is false. And at least some of these elected officials have done so because it grants them temporary political ascendency.
That's reprehensible. And you share in that guilt because you actively enable it.
I agree with this 100%, but we are not talking about the "chains and slavery" here. We are talking about a computer that monitors phone calls made to known terrorist hot-spots overseas looking for key words. Hardly "chains and slavery". Before you claim a slippery slope, keep in mind that rights are not absolute and are limited already. To assume that tapping overseas phone calls today is equal to some sort of authoritarian government control is hyperbole.
Actually, you're misinformed. We're talking about a computer that monitors calls made to foreign countries. And then monitors every call that phone makes thereafter. And then monitors the phones at the other end the same way. I don't need to claim "slippery slope;" we're already halfway down and the traction is gone.
Saying I want to give the government a bit more control when it comes to national security does not mean that I want to live in China.
I would rather in a nuclear fireball as a free man than die of old age in chains. I am not afraid. You should not be afraid. Your cowardice in the face of "what ifs" is shameful.
There's also a good case that there were multiple bombs in Oklahoma City too...
No there isn't. The building collapsed as it did because the reinforced joints of the support columns and the structural support beams at each floor was intended to resist shearing forces of high winds (Oklahoma? Tornados? Heard of them? Hello?), not the overpressure of a blast wave coming up from below. When the wavefront hit, the floors simply lifted up on the pressure wave and pulled the reinforcing rods out of the columns. When the floors came back down, the rods obviously didn't go back where they came from, and the rest is simply gravity.
How's about the menu command "Go | Go to Folder..." then?
Except that the menus are physically removed from the application and they cause the user to have to make far greater mouse movements than otherwise needed.
Except that the menus pinned to the edge of the screen makes them larger targets to hit, and thus are actually faster to use.
The Carter administration left us with the biggest f'ing mess in our entire history. One that we are still fighting today: Iran and the Muslim problem at large.
Um, no. That honor belongs to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1953 changed the standing policy established under Truman that the U.S. would not back extra-diplomatic actions against secular and democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in the oil field dispute between Iran and the U.K., despite British pressure to do so. Eisenhower changed the policy, the CIA and MI6 funded the coup, and the Shah was installed--thus neatly setting the stage for the Islamic Revolution a generation later and empowering a fundamentalist jihadist movement.
You can bet the Iranians haven't forgotten this, even if we have.
Eisenhower was a Republican, in case you didn't know.
I work for one of the largest PKIs in existence, and let me tell you--users don't "get" certificates. You give them these instructions and they're just gonna fsck it up. Royally. And repeatedly. And then hand over the keypair to anyone who asks. Simply put, software keypairs are weakly protected at best. If it's on the HD, it's eventually going to get exfiltrated. Guaranteed. Especially once it's clear to intruders that these keys are useful for getting their hands on real money.
The only answer is hardware tokens. That's where the real fun begins. If by "cleanly interface" you mean "create a mass of stinking shit" then I'd agree, but if not then you're clearly smoking crack. My PKI also happens to include one of the largest smartcard deployments on the planet. The standards are confusing, the implementations mutually incompatible, Windows does one thing and Mac does something else and Linux something that looks like what the Mac does but not really... Believe me, I've just come off three days of debugging a smartcard library on Linux for use with the cards issued by my PKI and it's not fun; one simple unimplemented call caused a cascade of errors that took forever to track down. And even if you get a card working on all three platforms, the card maker will go and change the stock on you or there's a new OS release and you get to start all over again...
And that's without even getting into terminal attacks. Don't get me started. Oh, too late. Since the token and the token terminal typically have no user interface of their own, you really have no idea when your token is being used or not. And it's easy to keylog a PIN. So I only have to wait for you to insert the thing and then I get to go to town. Where would you like your signed and non-repudiatable death threat mailed today? And terminals with displays and keypads cost too much to deploy in any quantities, so there's no practical help there...
Let me put it succinctly: Human-computer interfaces in the security realm in general and PKI in particular suck large bricks through glass pipettes, sideways. That's a phenomenal amount of suckage, in case you can't figure it out. Which is not to say that you can't make it work--you can, but it takes a lot of people a lot of time spending a lot of money, forever, to make it usable.
The difference being that during the Clinton and Carter years, both the Echelon and Carnivore programs were subject to strict oversight, unlike the NSA call database and internet traffic monitoring programs today. In contrast, the SWIFT data mining program--while it may still violate US law--seems to have much better oversight in place, but this is arguably because the database in question is foreign-owned and they insisted.
When Qwest said "If you can get a FISA judge to say it's OK, we'll comply," and the NSA refused to take it to a judge, that was a bit of a clue that what was being asked wasn't on the up-and-up. FISA hardly ever refuses requests.
It's not clear, but while the study appears well-constructed in terms of controlling for different demographic factors, but did they control for environmental disparities? Could different levels of environmental pollution between the US and UK explain at least some of the results?
Usually when people say things like this, it's code for "I disagree with something popular and I clearly know better than the peasants."
Just thought you should know.
A 1,200 lb mule can carry up to 240 lbs of pack, eats grasses found nearly everywhere, will be reasonably quiet when well-treated, is smart enough not to walk off a cliff when the mule skinner isn't paying the best of attention, and will cost you under US$2000 per head. In addition, we know mules can be combat-trained, as mule trains were used to pull artillery on battlefields, and when worse comes to worst, you can eat it.
This thing can carry a bit more, eats gasoline, makes as much noise as a gas turbine, will happily stroll into harm's way, and will likely cost on the order of a luxury car per unit. While there will be no training needed, when it breaks down it's just so much spare parts.
Part of the reason for wanting something that can go anywhere is that the trucks you currently have *can't*. So how are you going to refuel the mechanical mule? Can this thing pack enough spare fuel *and* have enough capacity left to be useful?
Game console had a "Computer Programming" cartridge that allowed simple 8048 assembler/machine code. That's what I learned to program on, writing a hangman game.
Followed by a Timex Sinclair 1000, a TI-99/4A, and then an Amiga 1000 when they shipped.
And that was it until college. Since I lived in the terminal room I didn't need my own.
Several Niven stories, set in his "State" universe (where Integral Trees/Smoke Ring is set). You're likely thinking about _A World Out of Time_ or the short story that it was developed from, "Rammer."
Perusing the DoJ report you linked to, it shows that in 1999, you were about 1.5 times more likely to have your house robbed or car stolen in the UK, but twice as likely to be raped and 4 times more likely to be murdered in the US (using the reported/1000 population rates). While the totals of all these show an overall rate in the UK as 1.45 times higher in the UK, the difference is nearly entirely in property crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
It has happened to innocent people over the last 5 years. Jose Padilla (held without charge for over three years, finally indicted over the objection of the government, not yet tried), Khaled el-Masri (arrested in the Balkans, transported around the secret prison system, tortured, later released), Maher Arar (Canadian & Syrian citizen arrested while changing planes in the US, deported to Syria and held for a year on US orders); and that's just off the top of my head.
That's also not counting the innocent people being placed on watch lists for no good reason.
In the distant future, when western civilization falls because people didn't want to get their hands dirty fighting to save it, who will speak out?
Puh-leaze. Are you listening to yourself? You're just reaching for stupid hyperbole because you can't answer my charges, and it's making you sound like an utter tool. Terrorism is not going to cause the end of Western Civilization. Not now, not then, not ever. Western civilization has weathered much, much worse in the last thousand years and not only survived but came out the other side wiser for the experience (go learn about the Thirty Years' War, or the Mongol invasions, or the Black Death sometime). However, your apparent favorite way to combat terrorism is very likely to erode our democracy and our liberty until it exists only in name. That is a real threat to America--but even that would not be the end of Western civilization.
And for the record, I am fighting terrorism. I'm also fighting the creeping authoritarianism that's growing in response to the fear that terrorism has engendered.
You should ask her if she'd rather have live children held incommunicado in some prison based solely on the government's say-so, with no legal recourse to challenge that detention, subject to undisclosed interrogation techniques, with no legal recourse to challenge that treatment as the interrogators have been indemnified, with no guarantee that they will ever come to trial, and with the knowledge that if they ever come to trial they will be faced with secret evidence from secret accusers that can't be impeached.
All of these things are forbidden by the Constitution. Does that sound like a "degree" of freedom to you?
Here, let me anticipate your next response: "If they're innocent then they don't have anything to worry about." Such is the response of authoritarians throughout time when challenged. I'll leave you to ponder the sheer ridiculousness of that statement when you live under a legal system founded on the presumption of innocence. And I'll close with one final thought: When they finally come for you, who will speak out?
You would fail to keep her children (and everyone else's) free. That is a failure far greater. Period.
Don't be intentionally obtuse; you only make yourself look foolish.
However, in answer to your ridiculous accusation: I will tell Ms. Smith that we will do everything possible within the law to bring the perpetrators to justice. I will tell Ms. Smith that everything was done that could be done within the law to prevent the attack. I will tell Ms. Smith that we will discover if more could have been done within the law to prevent the attack, and if there was something within the law that was not done, we will do so in the future--and we will hold those who failed, even ourselves, up for public accountability. I will tell Ms. Smith that if I could have switched places with her children I would gladly have done so, because I believe that liberty and the rule of law are worth my life; others died defending my liberty and I can do no less.
You have let fear overwhelm you, and it sickens and saddens me. It sickens me because you would let your fear drive you toward supporting un-American law, un-American attitudes, and an un-American police state. It saddens me because I used to believe that Americans were built of sterner stuff. Are you so cowardly that you assume others are as fearful as you? Where is your spine; where is your gut; where is your steadfastness in the face of danger?
You assert that fear is beside the point; yet it is your fear that leads you to support the abrogation of guaranteed liberties by our elected officials. But protection of that liberty is just as important a responsibility as providing physical safety--our founders understood this, and intentionally placed these responsibilities on an equal footing. Our elected officials have a responsibility to explain to us that there are limits to providing physical safety imposed by their concomitant responsibility to protect our liberties.
But they haven't. In fact, they've intentionally manipulated fear in order to convince people that their safety is more important than their liberty; which is false. And at least some of these elected officials have done so because it grants them temporary political ascendency.
That's reprehensible. And you share in that guilt because you actively enable it.
Actually, you're misinformed. We're talking about a computer that monitors calls made to foreign countries. And then monitors every call that phone makes thereafter. And then monitors the phones at the other end the same way. I don't need to claim "slippery slope;" we're already halfway down and the traction is gone.
Saying I want to give the government a bit more control when it comes to national security does not mean that I want to live in China.
All we're asking is that if you feel that way that you not take the rest of us with you. "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
I would rather in a nuclear fireball as a free man than die of old age in chains. I am not afraid. You should not be afraid. Your cowardice in the face of "what ifs" is shameful.
No there isn't. The building collapsed as it did because the reinforced joints of the support columns and the structural support beams at each floor was intended to resist shearing forces of high winds (Oklahoma? Tornados? Heard of them? Hello?), not the overpressure of a blast wave coming up from below. When the wavefront hit, the floors simply lifted up on the pressure wave and pulled the reinforcing rods out of the columns. When the floors came back down, the rods obviously didn't go back where they came from, and the rest is simply gravity.
ARgh. Another obtuse mac keyboard command
How's about the menu command "Go | Go to Folder ..." then?
Except that the menus are physically removed from the application and they cause the user to have to make far greater mouse movements than otherwise needed.
Except that the menus pinned to the edge of the screen makes them larger targets to hit, and thus are actually faster to use.
'nuff said.
Um, no. That honor belongs to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1953 changed the standing policy established under Truman that the U.S. would not back extra-diplomatic actions against secular and democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in the oil field dispute between Iran and the U.K., despite British pressure to do so. Eisenhower changed the policy, the CIA and MI6 funded the coup, and the Shah was installed--thus neatly setting the stage for the Islamic Revolution a generation later and empowering a fundamentalist jihadist movement.
You can bet the Iranians haven't forgotten this, even if we have.
Eisenhower was a Republican, in case you didn't know.
The Newton is dead.
Newtons never die, they just get new batteries. And then they get new hardware.
I work for one of the largest PKIs in existence, and let me tell you--users don't "get" certificates. You give them these instructions and they're just gonna fsck it up. Royally. And repeatedly. And then hand over the keypair to anyone who asks. Simply put, software keypairs are weakly protected at best. If it's on the HD, it's eventually going to get exfiltrated. Guaranteed. Especially once it's clear to intruders that these keys are useful for getting their hands on real money.
The only answer is hardware tokens. That's where the real fun begins. If by "cleanly interface" you mean "create a mass of stinking shit" then I'd agree, but if not then you're clearly smoking crack. My PKI also happens to include one of the largest smartcard deployments on the planet. The standards are confusing, the implementations mutually incompatible, Windows does one thing and Mac does something else and Linux something that looks like what the Mac does but not really... Believe me, I've just come off three days of debugging a smartcard library on Linux for use with the cards issued by my PKI and it's not fun; one simple unimplemented call caused a cascade of errors that took forever to track down. And even if you get a card working on all three platforms, the card maker will go and change the stock on you or there's a new OS release and you get to start all over again...
And that's without even getting into terminal attacks. Don't get me started. Oh, too late. Since the token and the token terminal typically have no user interface of their own, you really have no idea when your token is being used or not. And it's easy to keylog a PIN. So I only have to wait for you to insert the thing and then I get to go to town. Where would you like your signed and non-repudiatable death threat mailed today? And terminals with displays and keypads cost too much to deploy in any quantities, so there's no practical help there...
Let me put it succinctly: Human-computer interfaces in the security realm in general and PKI in particular suck large bricks through glass pipettes, sideways. That's a phenomenal amount of suckage, in case you can't figure it out. Which is not to say that you can't make it work--you can, but it takes a lot of people a lot of time spending a lot of money, forever, to make it usable.
The difference being that during the Clinton and Carter years, both the Echelon and Carnivore programs were subject to strict oversight, unlike the NSA call database and internet traffic monitoring programs today. In contrast, the SWIFT data mining program--while it may still violate US law--seems to have much better oversight in place, but this is arguably because the database in question is foreign-owned and they insisted.
Virgin rides the Sprint network in the US, has better customer service, and the least hassle of any prepaid plan I've ever dealt with.
When Qwest said "If you can get a FISA judge to say it's OK, we'll comply," and the NSA refused to take it to a judge, that was a bit of a clue that what was being asked wasn't on the up-and-up. FISA hardly ever refuses requests.
(Still waiting on my iLiad.)
It's not clear, but while the study appears well-constructed in terms of controlling for different demographic factors, but did they control for environmental disparities? Could different levels of environmental pollution between the US and UK explain at least some of the results?
Usually when people say things like this, it's code for "I disagree with something popular and I clearly know better than the peasants." Just thought you should know.
Oddly enough, lying in the State of the Union address is also perjury.
Too bad you're wrong on at least two counts.
A 1,200 lb mule can carry up to 240 lbs of pack, eats grasses found nearly everywhere, will be reasonably quiet when well-treated, is smart enough not to walk off a cliff when the mule skinner isn't paying the best of attention, and will cost you under US$2000 per head. In addition, we know mules can be combat-trained, as mule trains were used to pull artillery on battlefields, and when worse comes to worst, you can eat it.
This thing can carry a bit more, eats gasoline, makes as much noise as a gas turbine, will happily stroll into harm's way, and will likely cost on the order of a luxury car per unit. While there will be no training needed, when it breaks down it's just so much spare parts.
Part of the reason for wanting something that can go anywhere is that the trucks you currently have *can't*. So how are you going to refuel the mechanical mule? Can this thing pack enough spare fuel *and* have enough capacity left to be useful?
I think I'll stick with the mule.
Game console had a "Computer Programming" cartridge that allowed simple 8048 assembler/machine code. That's what I learned to program on, writing a hangman game.
Followed by a Timex Sinclair 1000, a TI-99/4A, and then an Amiga 1000 when they shipped.
And that was it until college. Since I lived in the terminal room I didn't need my own.
Several Niven stories, set in his "State" universe (where Integral Trees/Smoke Ring is set). You're likely thinking about _A World Out of Time_ or the short story that it was developed from, "Rammer."
Perusing the DoJ report you linked to, it shows that in 1999, you were about 1.5 times more likely to have your house robbed or car stolen in the UK, but twice as likely to be raped and 4 times more likely to be murdered in the US (using the reported/1000 population rates). While the totals of all these show an overall rate in the UK as 1.45 times higher in the UK, the difference is nearly entirely in property crimes.
What was your point again?