Because the GPL is copyleft. There's plenty of material on GNU.org and FSF.org which explains the basic differences. I'll summarize: Copyrights are ways to restrict the users from doing things, copylefts are rules to follow such that you can do whatever you want.
My favorite source for a well-written research paper on the issue, articlev.com, is currently unavailable. I imagine a political lobbyist group managed to get the site taken down through some legal crap.
As far as the right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce: My genuine belief is that, at the time the Constitution was written, "commerce" had a very succinct legal definition that didn't mean "anything under the sun". The definition of "commerce" was probably linked to official incorporation with the government or legal papers involved in the licensing of a stamp such as was available for tea and tobacco and other materials of trade.
> don't have access to all source code of all Microsoft programs
So?
> Random people at CC companies don't have access to the full customer and transaction databases
The secretary and the janitor don't--but the database jockey with the (supposed) security clearance does.
> covering their asses means keeping it from happening
Wow. You really are a newb. Tell another funny.
> their least trustworthy people
That's the funny thing about a security clearance. Once you have it you're automatically not in the set of "least trustworthy people". It doesn't guarantee any particular level of trustworthiness, though.
> the CC companies are inherently untrustworthy
I think you're finally catching on.
> show me the corresponding numbers that indicate the high rate of data leaks among CC accounts
We see articles at least weekly, in various newspapers and on Slashdot, of databases of millions and millions of records of customer data being stolen.
Meaning some underpaid recent graduate was ordered to conduct the search. Who's making sure he didn't send copies of the search results to all of his buddies on IRC?
> shock horror the NSA is revealed to collect logs of every Vista user's browsing habits, programs used, documents produced, email history
Why do you think more and more IT jobs require security clearance? Why are military subcontractors building multimillion dollar IT cube farms? I'm sure the NSA/CIA/FBI/whoever else will be bright enough to carefully segment, scramble, and encode the databases such that they look like little more than pushing numbers to the front-line code-monkeys but, still, it doesn't take a degree in Universal Engineering to correlate the size of the databases with "What on earth could possibly be that big and change that rapidly?"
I worked in a military subcontractor. I didn't stay long enough to get any real juicy evidence on paper but I was there long enough to see which departments were getting more money and have a real good listen to office chatter about contracts and business direction.
Domestic wiretapping? Digitized, filtered, and ready to be handled, manipulated, and mined by IT guys coming back from Afghanistan, Iraq, and entering the private sector after having served their country.
Someone should call ImClone. What's the difference between a "nanoparticle" and a "small molecule"?
I say this mostly in jest to illustrate how overbearing IP can be in today's world. More power (and funding) to the researchers who are pushing this forward.
Because, time and again, the worst is true. Remember "zero day exploits don't exist"?
> Not that this has any relevance
Of course it doesn't. Why are you bothering to reply?
> So you're basing this assumption on politics?
Of course I am. The federal government controls and/or moves and/or has (some part of) influence on the most money of any organization in the United States. It'd be naive to think they're being above board, , and philanthropic with it.
> Sure sounds like
That's because I gave you a filthy monkey. Clean the crap out of your ears.
I doubt it. I haven't made any claims about hard work, sacrifice, or superhuman intelligence in some random homeless guy's journal just to show off how much better I am. If Pudge didn't want the attention he shouldn't have been trolling in my journal.
Why are you pointing me to his projects page or a small biography of him? You're simply reinforcing my suspicion that his success, at least in part, is due to other people doing (at least some of) the heavy lifting for him.
Every great man stands on the shoulders of giants... and all that.
> What would happen to sites like YouTube or movie sites, video, audio sites, if all browsers are suddenly rendered incapable of supporting plugins
Darn. Heaven forbid that users would learn how to save the media to the hard drive and open it with a local application which was specifically forbidden from talking with the open network. That would be too secure for the users and wouldn't promote totalitarian control over content.
What's to say that MS didn't know about this the day Acer began shipping systems with the code and exploited it from Hotmail? Which programmers in what top level positions at Acer knew about this? Which.com companies did they invest in which may have made use of their priveleged knowledge?
Nobody can really know but the fact is that this example is truly only a drop in the bucket. Millions of lines of code have thousands of potential bugs and, from my experience, nearly every bug can be turned into some sort of exploit. Every coder working on code which gets shipped to production systems is potentially the first guy to know about a bug and, therefore, an exploit. A political corollary is that those who write the rules know the loopholes. If the bug is discreet enough not to be noticed in an everyday code audit then that coder is also the guy most likely to be exploiting it.
When thinking about this with respect to global botnets and zero-day exploits it becomes apparent that the most logical conclusion is that the computing world is under clandestine monitoring (and exploitation) by individuals who associate with both large code bases and Congressional subcommittees--the intersection of the relevant social circles. The unemployed friends of politicians or major military contractors who have a family member working at a major software company would be the first suspects in my book.
This is no longer conspiracy theory. It is simply the largest mathematical intersection of the relevant data sets.
I didn't say it was a metric of productivity. It was actually in a discussion where the fellow was claiming to have made enormous sacrifices in life, and that he had put all sorts of hard work into his job, and that he had an amazing intellect, and those things justified his salary and his position in life.
So I asked him to prove it... and the proof he offered was to count his number of lines of code in CVS from the previous year.
It wasn't my metric. *shrug* Don't blame me. I offered it as an example of "arrogance", not productivity.
> Users don't like having to make choices about the innards of their computer; they just want shit to work
Most users never really even wanted a computer as they were sufficiently happy with snail mail and sticky notes. Wall Street in the early nineties was pretty dull and the politicians of the day really wanted something to spark up life (and profits) so the computer industry went from the realm of scientists, mathemeticians, and hobbyists to a consumer necessity nearly overnight--and not because the population (as a whole) really wanted computers. If one thinks back to the dawn of the home computing windfall, at least from what I saw, it really was a case of nothing else being hyped as much as the computer was. From a business perspective I can see ulterior motives behind this and how those motives have played out over the years. Maybe you can as well.
Once people had computers (and had sunk the $1500 into their first home system), well, now it's just a necessary evil that played better solitaire than the kitchen table.
"Honey! We paid $1500 for that thing and it's too heavy to just throw away!"
So, yes, it follows logically that people don't really want to know about the innards of their computer because, truthfully, most people never really wanted the computer to begin with. Now they're like kudzu--they're everywhere, and they're not going away, and there's so much money in the infrastructure around them that we have to take care of them.
> because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease' they are being told
Hm. In the open source arena, if someone is reading your code, they've obtained it legally. Most people who read OSS code do so to improve the code--not specifically for the purpose of creating a full-fledged exploit with it.
In the Windows world, if someone is reading your code then they are either: 1. an employee of Microsoft or 2. someone who stole the code. In the first case they're ethically barred (not supposed to. *ahem*) from using their corporate knowledge to hack you. In the second case they've already established themselves as a criminal.
Which situation makes you feel more comfortable about knowing that other people can read your code? I choose OSS.
To all those wondering why John bothers to push out the source to id's game engines after the fact, the snippet of code at the very top of this article is a poster child for why. Not only do you get well-programmed and well-optimised 3D engines to modify and learn from, you get gems like the fast invsqrt function to show you that it's not all about the 3D hardware, and that software is arguably even more of a factor when analysing 3D performance
When this software code it turned into a hardware circuit and patented then the magic number on this line,"i = 0x5f3759df - (i>>1);" will be the focus of the patent on the hardware circuit. It becomes very important to know who managed to skillfully approximate that mathematical technique with the code.
Note that the final magic number isn't the one implicated in the paper on lamont.org though the paper does test it with two other possible candidates. Gary Tarolli mentions that he may have changed which particular magic number was used in the final code but that he didn't write the code itself. Likely, if this particular fast square root function is embedded as a circuit and the circuit patented, the legal documents will attribute the code to Gary since he made the most significant contribution of actually choosing which number was used in the code which was released.
The question still remains, though: who wrote the routine?
> Note that we do not count the time needed to find the > largest pancake, only the number of flips; if we wished
I'd be interested in working on the algorithm being used to find the largest pancake.
> to create a real machine to execute this algorithm in linear time, > it would have to both perform prefix reversal (flips) and be able > to find the maximum of a range of consecutive numbers in constant time
They did, at the time, and are today overriding several Constitutional Amendments with laws. How can that be possible? You cannot override the rules that give you the power to write laws with laws. In the heirarchy laws have no power against amendments.
I had a car--a 1999 Saturn SL2 with 94k on it. What is your plan when your registration and/or insurance expires? Insurance is compulsory in many states. Many insurance companies require you to notify them of a change of address--and being homeless is not acceptable. It's certainly against the law to assert to the DMV that your residence, for registration purposes, is somewhere that you don't live. Maybe the night parking thing is working for you. When I had my car on the road (for about a month) I could rarely sleep for more than two hours before a security guard or police officer would wake me and tell me that I couldn't sleep there.
> Get a cheap laptop, preferably with a metal case
I had a laptop--a customized Compaq V2000 (Turion64, Radeon 200M, Debian/LFS/XP Pro, Office 2003 SBE, other goodies). I managed to keep it safe on the streets for about five months before the other street people managed to steal it. I'd like to meet anyone else in real life (ie. stories don't count) who could keep a laptop safe even half that long while living on the open street.
> Keep your body clean inside and out and you'll qualify to donate blood plasma for an average of $50 a week
I've seen many other homeless people get drunk, smoke crack, get tweeked out, and donate plasma the next day. I will not donate blood or plasma as a source of income. I believe there are health risks behind those establishments which do not surface for years down the road--especially if one is donating on a weekly basis. If you're comfortable with it then good for you. I am not.
> Buy stuff from second-hand stores and re-sell on craigslist and ebay
First, that nearly qualifies under a "hustle"--I'm too honest to have a hustle. Second, why would I want to spend my life as a junk reseller? Third, this requires having an interest and proficiency in spending hours combing second hand stores, craigslist, and e-bay. I have no interest in giving my time to any of those establishments.
I have no need for a Skype or cellular telephone and both of them have requirements, restrictions, and technological security considerations which, whether or not my suspicions are well-founded, I find it easier to live without.
> when you can go back on the radar for whatever reason (statute of limitations, maybe?)
How about when I get another job since that's the only thing which put me in this situation to begin with? The management was treating me like a third-class employee, I called them on their bull, and they pulled the strongarm maneuver ("If you don't like it then you can leave."). When I left the company was extremely vindictive and has made it very difficult for me to gain new employment.
The difference between unchecked, unwarranted, illegal surveillance of innocent citizens and kidnapping babies and turning them into superfighters is that one is extraordinarily easy and the infrastructure is already in place while the other is still on the fringes of science fiction, respectively.
Colleges use automatic keyword monitoring systems on telephones and e-mail (for insurance liability purposes). Why is it so difficult to accept that the government, which has a much larger interest, does the same? History shows us that whenever an authoritarian body can do something then they will do it until they are forced to not do it. The US government is no different.
Accept reality my friend. The technology for, and a reasonably attainable level of near comprehensive implementation of, automated monitoring of nearly every telephone and e-mail transaction has been available for fifteen, maybe twenty, years. To try and convince yourself that it hasn't been used is no better than sticking your head in the sand or your fingers in your ears (or both).
True reality:
- Nearly every telephone call, domestic or international, is filtered through automated monitoring systems. - Real citizens, with no terrorist ties, have been subjects of special investigations. - Some of those special investigations have resulted in events which can be described as harassment. - Some of that harassment has resulted in real-world impacts on those citizens' careers, families, and social lives. - There is no recourse because the citizenry will never know when such things have occurred--other than to think,"Holy crap! What did I do to deserve such a long string of such hopelessly bad luck???" - There is no recourse because even if they did know when such a thing had occurred they will never have access to the information which could be used as evidence to prove it - There is no recourse because even if they knew where to begin looking for the proper information they would most certainly be derided as a "conspiracy theorist" (as you have done) by their peers - There is no recourse because even if they could detach themselves from the derision and knew where to begin looking for the proper information there isn't an attorney in the nation which would risk his or her career attempting to prosecute a defamation of character case against a special investigative branch (which may or may not even formally exist) of the FBI/CIA/NSA/military/or some private investigator hired by a federal level Senate or House subcommittee.
There is no policing of or recourse against a large, overbearing, unchecked government. That is reality. The world is not a perfect place where everyone follows the rules--and you should quit posting as if you think it is. The only thing more pitiable than your naivete is the vehemence with which you attack anyone who questions it.
If you conduct a detailed study of the Civil War you'll notice that it really wasn't about slavery, per se: the Civil War, politically, was the assertion by the South that, whatever the moral right or wrong of the issue, it was not within the power of the federal government to legislate on the issue. Never mind that we've converted from pre-Civil War slavery to post-Civil War wage slavery and essentially made slavery legal by giving the slaves a paycheck. No sense in worrying about reality, though, that's never been a big part of politics.
Regardless of who won the Civil War the basic premise is still valid: there are many things which, very simply, the federal government has no legal authority to get involved in.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the GPL is copyleft. There's plenty of material on GNU.org and FSF.org which explains the basic differences. I'll summarize: Copyrights are ways to restrict the users from doing things, copylefts are rules to follow such that you can do whatever you want.
My favorite source for a well-written research paper on the issue, articlev.com, is currently unavailable. I imagine a political lobbyist group managed to get the site taken down through some legal crap.
As far as the right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce: My genuine belief is that, at the time the Constitution was written, "commerce" had a very succinct legal definition that didn't mean "anything under the sun". The definition of "commerce" was probably linked to official incorporation with the government or legal papers involved in the licensing of a stamp such as was available for tea and tobacco and other materials of trade.
> don't have access to all source code of all Microsoft programs
So?
> Random people at CC companies don't have access to the full customer and transaction databases
The secretary and the janitor don't--but the database jockey with the (supposed) security clearance does.
> covering their asses means keeping it from happening
Wow. You really are a newb. Tell another funny.
> their least trustworthy people
That's the funny thing about a security clearance. Once you have it you're automatically not in the set of "least trustworthy people". It doesn't guarantee any particular level of trustworthiness, though.
> the CC companies are inherently untrustworthy
I think you're finally catching on.
> show me the corresponding numbers that indicate the high rate of data leaks among CC accounts
We see articles at least weekly, in various newspapers and on Slashdot, of databases of millions and millions of records of customer data being stolen.
Please. Express to me more of your naive ramblings.
> Who's making sure that some random intern at Microsoft
Where do you think zero-day exploits come from? Tips from the people actually working on the code. You are such a newb.
> Those people aren't idiots
Of course not. They know how to cover their butts. That does nothing to make sure it isn't happening.
> The CC companies scanned their databases
Meaning some underpaid recent graduate was ordered to conduct the search. Who's making sure he didn't send copies of the search results to all of his buddies on IRC?
> shock horror the NSA is revealed to collect logs of every Vista user's browsing habits, programs used, documents produced, email history
Why do you think more and more IT jobs require security clearance? Why are military subcontractors building multimillion dollar IT cube farms? I'm sure the NSA/CIA/FBI/whoever else will be bright enough to carefully segment, scramble, and encode the databases such that they look like little more than pushing numbers to the front-line code-monkeys but, still, it doesn't take a degree in Universal Engineering to correlate the size of the databases with "What on earth could possibly be that big and change that rapidly?"
I worked in a military subcontractor. I didn't stay long enough to get any real juicy evidence on paper but I was there long enough to see which departments were getting more money and have a real good listen to office chatter about contracts and business direction.
Domestic wiretapping? Digitized, filtered, and ready to be handled, manipulated, and mined by IT guys coming back from Afghanistan, Iraq, and entering the private sector after having served their country.
Keep an algorithm in your head and write down encrypted passwords. An algorithm is easy to remember.
Someone should call ImClone. What's the difference between a "nanoparticle" and a "small molecule"?
I say this mostly in jest to illustrate how overbearing IP can be in today's world. More power (and funding) to the researchers who are pushing this forward.
> You honestly think
No.
> so why assume the worst
Because, time and again, the worst is true. Remember "zero day exploits don't exist"?
> Not that this has any relevance
Of course it doesn't. Why are you bothering to reply?
> So you're basing this assumption on politics?
Of course I am. The federal government controls and/or moves and/or has (some part of) influence on the most money of any organization in the United States. It'd be naive to think they're being above board, , and philanthropic with it.
> Sure sounds like
That's because I gave you a filthy monkey. Clean the crap out of your ears.
I doubt it. I haven't made any claims about hard work, sacrifice, or superhuman intelligence in some random homeless guy's journal just to show off how much better I am. If Pudge didn't want the attention he shouldn't have been trolling in my journal.
Why are you pointing me to his projects page or a small biography of him? You're simply reinforcing my suspicion that his success, at least in part, is due to other people doing (at least some of) the heavy lifting for him.
Every great man stands on the shoulders of giants... and all that.
> What would happen to sites like YouTube or movie sites, video, audio sites, if all browsers are suddenly rendered incapable of supporting plugins
Darn. Heaven forbid that users would learn how to save the media to the hard drive and open it with a local application which was specifically forbidden from talking with the open network. That would be too secure for the users and wouldn't promote totalitarian control over content.
Oh the horror.
What's to say that MS didn't know about this the day Acer began shipping systems with the code and exploited it from Hotmail? Which programmers in what top level positions at Acer knew about this? Which .com companies did they invest in which may have made use of their priveleged knowledge?
Nobody can really know but the fact is that this example is truly only a drop in the bucket. Millions of lines of code have thousands of potential bugs and, from my experience, nearly every bug can be turned into some sort of exploit. Every coder working on code which gets shipped to production systems is potentially the first guy to know about a bug and, therefore, an exploit. A political corollary is that those who write the rules know the loopholes. If the bug is discreet enough not to be noticed in an everyday code audit then that coder is also the guy most likely to be exploiting it.
When thinking about this with respect to global botnets and zero-day exploits it becomes apparent that the most logical conclusion is that the computing world is under clandestine monitoring (and exploitation) by individuals who associate with both large code bases and Congressional subcommittees--the intersection of the relevant social circles. The unemployed friends of politicians or major military contractors who have a family member working at a major software company would be the first suspects in my book.
This is no longer conspiracy theory. It is simply the largest mathematical intersection of the relevant data sets.
I didn't say it was a metric of productivity. It was actually in a discussion where the fellow was claiming to have made enormous sacrifices in life, and that he had put all sorts of hard work into his job, and that he had an amazing intellect, and those things justified his salary and his position in life.
So I asked him to prove it... and the proof he offered was to count his number of lines of code in CVS from the previous year.
It wasn't my metric. *shrug* Don't blame me. I offered it as an example of "arrogance", not productivity.
As a medicinal chemist I second this.
> arrogant programmers
Take, for example, this one who claims to have written huge portions of Slashdot by averaging a whopping 4 lines of code/hour.
> Users don't like having to make choices about the innards of their computer; they just want shit to work
Most users never really even wanted a computer as they were sufficiently happy with snail mail and sticky notes. Wall Street in the early nineties was pretty dull and the politicians of the day really wanted something to spark up life (and profits) so the computer industry went from the realm of scientists, mathemeticians, and hobbyists to a consumer necessity nearly overnight--and not because the population (as a whole) really wanted computers. If one thinks back to the dawn of the home computing windfall, at least from what I saw, it really was a case of nothing else being hyped as much as the computer was. From a business perspective I can see ulterior motives behind this and how those motives have played out over the years. Maybe you can as well.
Once people had computers (and had sunk the $1500 into their first home system), well, now it's just a necessary evil that played better solitaire than the kitchen table.
"Honey! We paid $1500 for that thing and it's too heavy to just throw away!"
So, yes, it follows logically that people don't really want to know about the innards of their computer because, truthfully, most people never really wanted the computer to begin with. Now they're like kudzu--they're everywhere, and they're not going away, and there's so much money in the infrastructure around them that we have to take care of them.
> because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease' they are being told
Hm. In the open source arena, if someone is reading your code, they've obtained it legally. Most people who read OSS code do so to improve the code--not specifically for the purpose of creating a full-fledged exploit with it.
In the Windows world, if someone is reading your code then they are either: 1. an employee of Microsoft or 2. someone who stole the code. In the first case they're ethically barred (not supposed to. *ahem*) from using their corporate knowledge to hack you. In the second case they've already established themselves as a criminal.
Which situation makes you feel more comfortable about knowing that other people can read your code? I choose OSS.
Note that the final magic number isn't the one implicated in the paper on lamont.org though the paper does test it with two other possible candidates. Gary Tarolli mentions that he may have changed which particular magic number was used in the final code but that he didn't write the code itself. Likely, if this particular fast square root function is embedded as a circuit and the circuit patented, the legal documents will attribute the code to Gary since he made the most significant contribution of actually choosing which number was used in the code which was released.
The question still remains, though: who wrote the routine?
I would use LFS as an embedded OS.
and I don't even have a system available that I can try it out on.
This homeless thing can be real inconvenient.
> Note that we do not count the time needed to find the
> largest pancake, only the number of flips; if we wished
I'd be interested in working on the algorithm being used to find the largest pancake.
> to create a real machine to execute this algorithm in linear time,
> it would have to both perform prefix reversal (flips) and be able
> to find the maximum of a range of consecutive numbers in constant time
So what's wrong with doing that?
They did, at the time, and are today overriding several Constitutional Amendments with laws. How can that be possible? You cannot override the rules that give you the power to write laws with laws. In the heirarchy laws have no power against amendments.
> Start with a cheap and reliable car
I had a car--a 1999 Saturn SL2 with 94k on it. What is your plan when your registration and/or insurance expires? Insurance is compulsory in many states. Many insurance companies require you to notify them of a change of address--and being homeless is not acceptable. It's certainly against the law to assert to the DMV that your residence, for registration purposes, is somewhere that you don't live. Maybe the night parking thing is working for you. When I had my car on the road (for about a month) I could rarely sleep for more than two hours before a security guard or police officer would wake me and tell me that I couldn't sleep there.
> Get a cheap laptop, preferably with a metal case
I had a laptop--a customized Compaq V2000 (Turion64, Radeon 200M, Debian/LFS/XP Pro, Office 2003 SBE, other goodies). I managed to keep it safe on the streets for about five months before the other street people managed to steal it. I'd like to meet anyone else in real life (ie. stories don't count) who could keep a laptop safe even half that long while living on the open street.
> Keep your body clean inside and out and you'll qualify to donate blood plasma for an average of $50 a week
I've seen many other homeless people get drunk, smoke crack, get tweeked out, and donate plasma the next day. I will not donate blood or plasma as a source of income. I believe there are health risks behind those establishments which do not surface for years down the road--especially if one is donating on a weekly basis. If you're comfortable with it then good for you. I am not.
> Buy stuff from second-hand stores and re-sell on craigslist and ebay
First, that nearly qualifies under a "hustle"--I'm too honest to have a hustle. Second, why would I want to spend my life as a junk reseller? Third, this requires having an interest and proficiency in spending hours combing second hand stores, craigslist, and e-bay. I have no interest in giving my time to any of those establishments.
I have no need for a Skype or cellular telephone and both of them have requirements, restrictions, and technological security considerations which, whether or not my suspicions are well-founded, I find it easier to live without.
> when you can go back on the radar for whatever reason (statute of limitations, maybe?)
How about when I get another job since that's the only thing which put me in this situation to begin with? The management was treating me like a third-class employee, I called them on their bull, and they pulled the strongarm maneuver ("If you don't like it then you can leave."). When I left the company was extremely vindictive and has made it very difficult for me to gain new employment.
> you guys are just plain overreacting
The difference between unchecked, unwarranted, illegal surveillance of innocent citizens and kidnapping babies and turning them into superfighters is that one is extraordinarily easy and the infrastructure is already in place while the other is still on the fringes of science fiction, respectively.
Colleges use automatic keyword monitoring systems on telephones and e-mail (for insurance liability purposes). Why is it so difficult to accept that the government, which has a much larger interest, does the same? History shows us that whenever an authoritarian body can do something then they will do it until they are forced to not do it. The US government is no different.
Accept reality my friend. The technology for, and a reasonably attainable level of near comprehensive implementation of, automated monitoring of nearly every telephone and e-mail transaction has been available for fifteen, maybe twenty, years. To try and convince yourself that it hasn't been used is no better than sticking your head in the sand or your fingers in your ears (or both).
True reality:
- Nearly every telephone call, domestic or international, is filtered through automated monitoring systems.
- Real citizens, with no terrorist ties, have been subjects of special investigations.
- Some of those special investigations have resulted in events which can be described as harassment.
- Some of that harassment has resulted in real-world impacts on those citizens' careers, families, and social lives.
- There is no recourse because the citizenry will never know when such things have occurred--other than to think,"Holy crap! What did I do to deserve such a long string of such hopelessly bad luck???"
- There is no recourse because even if they did know when such a thing had occurred they will never have access to the information which could be used as evidence to prove it
- There is no recourse because even if they knew where to begin looking for the proper information they would most certainly be derided as a "conspiracy theorist" (as you have done) by their peers
- There is no recourse because even if they could detach themselves from the derision and knew where to begin looking for the proper information there isn't an attorney in the nation which would risk his or her career attempting to prosecute a defamation of character case against a special investigative branch (which may or may not even formally exist) of the FBI/CIA/NSA/military/or some private investigator hired by a federal level Senate or House subcommittee.
There is no policing of or recourse against a large, overbearing, unchecked government. That is reality. The world is not a perfect place where everyone follows the rules--and you should quit posting as if you think it is. The only thing more pitiable than your naivete is the vehemence with which you attack anyone who questions it.
If you conduct a detailed study of the Civil War you'll notice that it really wasn't about slavery, per se: the Civil War, politically, was the assertion by the South that, whatever the moral right or wrong of the issue, it was not within the power of the federal government to legislate on the issue. Never mind that we've converted from pre-Civil War slavery to post-Civil War wage slavery and essentially made slavery legal by giving the slaves a paycheck. No sense in worrying about reality, though, that's never been a big part of politics.
Regardless of who won the Civil War the basic premise is still valid: there are many things which, very simply, the federal government has no legal authority to get involved in.