All governments become more aristocratic over time. They serve the needs of a smaller and smaller elite few, to the detriment of the greater and greater majority. So the United States was serving a smaller group when women got the vote? When minorities got the vote? And when poll taxes were eliminated?
While your statement makes for a nice soundbite, it's vastly far from true. There are plenty of countries, including the US, that have extended political power to formerly disenfranchised groups.
They just feed the grid when they have excess, and draw from the grid when they don't. Therefore, they are actually *over* 100% since they are expected to feed the grid more often than they draw from it.
Right, but the problem of double-counting remains. There are some utilities in the country that sell "green" energy for a premium, direct to consumers. They claim that this represents energy sourced from wind and solar, anywhere in their network. If 10,000 consumers outside the town claim to be buying wind power, and the 10,000 people in the town also claim to be, then we've got double-counting. Same thing if another 10,000 claim to have bought the TerraPass carbon credits that went to build the plant. You've got to figure out who gets to claim the credit.
It's not a problem with "green" power in any way. In fact, it's great that so many people want it. It's just a standard we have to decide.
When it becomes "mostly common" knowledge that there are servers stuffed with stolen information, a second part of the criminal chain opens. Just what we need -- thieves stealing from thieves. Except here the problem is that the information (your name, address, social security number, bank account numbers) is all digital and can be copied an infinite number of times. If a thief steals from a drug dealer ("rip and run") then the drug dealer knows he's been hit and is likely to take security measures. If thief steals from an identity thief, it might not even be obvious that anything was taken until it's already too late.
This is why it's VERY important to lock down your info in the first place. There are too many leaks in the identity chain already. There's no need to give thieves information, especially if it can be stolen from one thief by another and copied yet further.
On the other hand, maybe there will be online gang wars one day between competing criminal identity theft enterprises?
I can think of plenty of reasons why a legitimate screensaver would want Internet access. There are plenty of screensavers that use Flickr or other photo sites as source images. Others put up ambient environmental data, such as cloud maps or weather. And others put up sports info. People use their screensavers for entertainment, not just prevention of burn-in.
The screensaver should be subject to the same HIGH security standards as everything else. There's no reason to give it more or less permission.
A few idled generators costs nothing in ROI. When something--like a generator--costs tens of millions to build, you measure the interest costs in thousands of dollars per day. The person writing interest checks to UBS or Citibank would very much beg to differ with your assertion that idle capital is free. The money it takes to build something like a generator isn't free. Even if the hydro generators cost nothing to maintain (doubtful), they're still expensive in interest costs if they sit idle.
It's not just the building and server hardware, but local infrastructure, too. More importantly, it's where the big network connections intersect. A big data center in the middle of nowhere (with only 1 route to the outside world) is slow and vulnerable to backhoes. A data center near a major network interconnect (think west side of NY, or One Wilshire in LA) is somewhere useful -- data is close to the major lines and can be routed redundantly.
Until they move the large cross-Pacific network connections to the Hoover Dam, it's going to make sense to keep data centers near network lines.
The First Amendment doesn't require that the government force catalog companies to allow you to opt-out. Rather, the First Amendment allows the government to do that.
The First Amendment is only a restriction on government power. It does not create any responsibilities on private citizens. The government may regulate postal junk mail, but there is no law regulating postal junk mail until the government writes one. Same for electronic spam: The First Amendment (probably) allows the government to regulate electronic spam, but there is no law about it until the government writes one.
Remember, the First Amendment is a restriction on government not on individual actors. To use the cliche example, the First Amendment doesn't make it illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Instead, the First Amendment has been interpreted to mean that a state legislature is allowed to write a law making it illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
There is no need to go 0-60 in under ten seconds if most cars on the road do it in fifteen seconds.
You have clearly never merged onto a freeway in Los Angeles. Particularly on the 110 north of downtown. It doesn't matter how fast other cars accelerate; it matters how fast they're moving toward your rear bumper as you try to get up to highway speed.
Seriously -- try to merge on this (source) ramp with a 53 hp motor. Yes, that's 65-miles-per-hour freeway traffic on the left, a stop sign on the right, and maybe 20 feet of merge between the two. It's 100% real and not atypical on the 110.
There is a point at which a car becomes so slow that it's unsafe. In LA, that's well before a 20-second zero-to-sixty. On some freeways, 15 seconds is a little dicey.
I'm not saying that anybody needs 500 hp -- you're probably right about that. But 53 hp is probably insufficient in many conditions too.
People want to be entertained And there's nothing wrong with that. He thinks the "surplus" of time we have (beyond what's required to fill basic needs) should be used to create more knowledge. A lot of people--most, it seems--have voted with their behavior and decided that they'd rather use that "surplus" time to entertain themselves.
The point of human existence isn't just the creation of more knowledge. Sure, all else being equal, an activity that creates more knowledge is better than one that creates less. But, being entertained is a good in and of itself. Gaining pleasure from seeing something funny, or interesting, or beautiful is a good thing. We work hard so that we can be entertained.
He'd like everyone to have more sophisticated taste in entertainment, but who is he to judge? If Joe Sixpack enjoys watching Seinfeld, so be it. If it makes Joe Sixpack happy to watch TV then that's great! The world is one person happier for it. Not everyone prefers highbrow culture (his examples of "museums and public libraries") and it's very close to class-ist to suggest that anything but highbrow culture is a waste of time.
And don't pretend that people were once productive all the time. Storytelling has been around for as long as we have had language.
By "problem" I meant "question," not "difficulty." It puts the courts in the role of assigning power between Article I and Article II, a very different question than just interpreting laws.
You can probably Google the file extension or some information in the header to determine the format and/or software. Not everything is on Google. If we're talking tapes, we're probably talking old mainframe-level systems. That means the problem might even be at the level of accessing the tape at all. The data coming off the tape is still just a string of ones and zeroes to them.
This isn't a question where they've got a file sitting on their desktop called "Data.abx" and all they need to do is figure out what program creates an ".abx" file. In all likelihood, there's an old custom or semi-custom mainframe system that wrote this to the tape that didn't format in FAT32. (Nor would it make sense to even both with a filesystem on this type of backup system -- you're not backing up files, you're backing up a database.) From looking at a stream of data dump, there's no way to immediately make sense of it. If there's no file headers, there's not as much of a clue as to where to start. It just looks like an endless string of hex (2 million records is a lot of data).
Somehow I doubt that this is just an Access file, sorry. Or even a SQL dump. They're not complete idiots.
The problem with your example is that this is going to end up being a Youngstown Steel problem. The President will claim that the state secret privilege is a power granted to him by Article II of the Constitution, and thus Congress can't limit that power--just as Congress can't interfere with his power as Commander in Chief (itself a hotly debated point).
The result will be that the Executive will be doing one thing, the Legislature another, and the Judiciary will be left to decide which branch has a stronger claim to power in this case. The last time this happened was the Youngstown Steel case (better known as the "Steel Seizures Case"), above.
It'll be an interesting fight. I'm not picking sides, just laying out what the fight will be.
Why would someone steal the tapes? What is there value. From TFA: The stolen backup tapes hold names, addresses, Social Security numbers and health information
On the black market these days, a full identity (name, SSN, address, bank information, etc) can go for $14 each. If the tapes had full identities, that's 2 million x $14 = $28 million payday for a bunch of crooks. Even assume a "volume discount" for these guys and they're still in the many million dollar range. Even if it's just name, address, and SSN there's some value on the black market for these tapes.
When you're breaking into a vehicle filled with stuff that looks like computer equipment, it's hard to know whether the data is going to be social security numbers (valuable), credit card numbers (valuable), medical records (valuable if there's addresses and SSNs), or routine corporate records (not all that valuable). Enough data brokers are sloppy enough with their security that there's a good chance to get some identity information that has value.
These guys were either extremely lucky or knew exactly what they were doing. Or they're complete idiots who are wondering why these tapes won't play on their 8-track player.
Economists would call this a a classic "externalities" problem. It costs a company next to nothing to store vast amounts of data about you, but they don't pay the cost when your data gets spread around.
Right now, there's no reason why a company (or a state government) wouldn't keep as much data about you as it can. Hard drive space is all but free (especially relative to these types of transactional data) and big database engines can rapidly sort through the data when it's needed.
But, the problem is that you personally pay the price when a thief takes off with your name, address, social security number, mother maiden's name, etc. You are the one who has to go and call your credit card companies and pay people to remove your name from databases to clean up the mess.
I'm no fan of government regulation generally, but this seems to be the sort of problem that there's no easy market solution for. I'm quite sure that companies (and governments) would be a lot more careful with personal data if they had to personally call each victim's credit card companies and personally investigate every claim of identity theft. We probably don't need to go that far, but it makes the point.
The search of people flying on any flight is an "administrative search" to look for weapons. It is strictly limited to searching for weapons--if the cops see drugs they can bust you, but they can't look for drugs or evidence of any other crime.
This is not the same search. This is the Customs search at the border and it has nothing to do with flying. Think about going through US Customs after you land in the US. The key is that it's after you've already landed. The government has always been able to look for drugs at US Customs, which has nothing to do with airline safety. (While a couple of kilos of blow might make your flight more entertaining, it's hardly the sort of thing that makes airplanes crash).
There's a very important difference between pre-flight safety searches (applies to any flight, domestic or international) and customs searches (applies to any means of entering the country).
Then put your money where your mouth is and vote the bums out. If Congress writes a law saying "no laptops shall be inspected at the border" then no laptops would be inspected at the border. The courts are not the only way to protect our rights.
but what on your laptop could possibly endanger an airplane?
It's not about airplanes. It's about crossing the border into the US. Presumably, the same rule would apply if you cross the border by car or by train or by boat.
Think about going through international customs at any major airport. You go through US customs after you've already landed. The point is to control smuggling of goods into the US, not to protect airplanes.
The sad part, is this sets a president if it is allowed to stand, and whittles away at everything else.
First, you mean precedent. The President is the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. "Precedent" is what judges use to decide cases.
That said, the border search exception has always allowed the government to search your bags when you cross the border, to look for drugs, guns, agricultural products, etc. Think about passing through Customs at any international crossing -- they get to randomly pull you out of line and dump out the contents of your bag for any reason whatsoever (or no reason whatsoever) and make sure you're not smuggling anything into the country. That understanding of the Fourth Amendment has been on the books for centuries. It might be "right" or "wrong," but there's no doubt that it's been the law for ages.
Why are computers treated any differently than anything else?
That's the entire point of the ruling. The government has always been able to search your bags when you cross the border, to look for drugs and guns coming into the country. That's been on the books for 200 years. The question was whether computers would be treated differently and get more protection than everything else.
What threat does data on a computer pose to an airplane?
It's not about getting on airplanes. This does not apply to domestic flights. It's about stuff crossing the border by any means. Presumably, this would apply just as much if you crossed the border by train or in a car.
The case has nothing to do with airplanes. It has to do with the "border search exception" to the warrant requirement.
I'm not sure where the "problem" is in that analysis. If Bill Gates's foundation cures malaria, then he'll certainly have a legacy as the guy who cured malaria. But just because he gets something out of it (a good legacy) doesn't mean that every single person who won't have malaria in the next 500 years is somehow harmed. In a way, it's a win-win transaction -- Bill Gates gets to feel good about himself and people in sub-Saharan Africa get to not have malaria. There's nothing mutually incompatible about those goals.
Even if Google were covered by HIPPA, there are still problems. HIPPA is far from a complete solution, and it's even worse when the data is in Google's hands. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Google knows too much already.
The problem isn't necessarily that Google would misuse any healthcare data -- Google has too much at stake to do anything stupid like sell personal data to the highest bidder. The problem is that any concentration of that much data in one company's hands--from email to search history to medical records--makes a very inviting target for prying government eyes and malicious hackers/crackers.
Think about it -- Google is a multinational business and Yahoo! has shown that the pressure to bow to local demands is often overwhelming (see the Yahoo!-China debacle). Even if the US passed the most privacy-protective laws, there's nothing that would stop China from leaning very hard on Google to give up records for political activists that traveled between the US and China, or even for politicians or others.
Having that much data in one set of hands is mighty dangerous, even if Google itself isn't going to misuse it.
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While your statement makes for a nice soundbite, it's vastly far from true. There are plenty of countries, including the US, that have extended political power to formerly disenfranchised groups.
They just feed the grid when they have excess, and draw from the grid when they don't. Therefore, they are actually *over* 100% since they are expected to feed the grid more often than they draw from it.
Right, but the problem of double-counting remains. There are some utilities in the country that sell "green" energy for a premium, direct to consumers. They claim that this represents energy sourced from wind and solar, anywhere in their network. If 10,000 consumers outside the town claim to be buying wind power, and the 10,000 people in the town also claim to be, then we've got double-counting. Same thing if another 10,000 claim to have bought the TerraPass carbon credits that went to build the plant. You've got to figure out who gets to claim the credit.
It's not a problem with "green" power in any way. In fact, it's great that so many people want it. It's just a standard we have to decide.
This is why it's VERY important to lock down your info in the first place. There are too many leaks in the identity chain already. There's no need to give thieves information, especially if it can be stolen from one thief by another and copied yet further.
On the other hand, maybe there will be online gang wars one day between competing criminal identity theft enterprises?
I can think of plenty of reasons why a legitimate screensaver would want Internet access. There are plenty of screensavers that use Flickr or other photo sites as source images. Others put up ambient environmental data, such as cloud maps or weather. And others put up sports info. People use their screensavers for entertainment, not just prevention of burn-in.
The screensaver should be subject to the same HIGH security standards as everything else. There's no reason to give it more or less permission.
Until they move the large cross-Pacific network connections to the Hoover Dam, it's going to make sense to keep data centers near network lines.
One of these days I'm going to write a play called "Fire!"
That'd be one hot ticket.
we produce only the finest art on youtube.com.
I was totally moved by that video of that guy getting hit in the junk with a baseball. THAT is high comedy.
The First Amendment doesn't require that the government force catalog companies to allow you to opt-out. Rather, the First Amendment allows the government to do that.
The First Amendment is only a restriction on government power. It does not create any responsibilities on private citizens. The government may regulate postal junk mail, but there is no law regulating postal junk mail until the government writes one. Same for electronic spam: The First Amendment (probably) allows the government to regulate electronic spam, but there is no law about it until the government writes one.
As it happens, you can opt-out of postal mailings and the government will enforce your rights to do so. To get off a lot of junk mail lists, go here Or you can remove your name some of the lists that become junk mail lists for a fee.
Remember, the First Amendment is a restriction on government not on individual actors. To use the cliche example, the First Amendment doesn't make it illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Instead, the First Amendment has been interpreted to mean that a state legislature is allowed to write a law making it illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
There is no need to go 0-60 in under ten seconds if most cars on the road do it in fifteen seconds.
You have clearly never merged onto a freeway in Los Angeles. Particularly on the 110 north of downtown. It doesn't matter how fast other cars accelerate; it matters how fast they're moving toward your rear bumper as you try to get up to highway speed.
Seriously -- try to merge on this (source) ramp with a 53 hp motor. Yes, that's 65-miles-per-hour freeway traffic on the left, a stop sign on the right, and maybe 20 feet of merge between the two. It's 100% real and not atypical on the 110.
There is a point at which a car becomes so slow that it's unsafe. In LA, that's well before a 20-second zero-to-sixty. On some freeways, 15 seconds is a little dicey.
I'm not saying that anybody needs 500 hp -- you're probably right about that. But 53 hp is probably insufficient in many conditions too.
The point of human existence isn't just the creation of more knowledge. Sure, all else being equal, an activity that creates more knowledge is better than one that creates less. But, being entertained is a good in and of itself. Gaining pleasure from seeing something funny, or interesting, or beautiful is a good thing. We work hard so that we can be entertained.
He'd like everyone to have more sophisticated taste in entertainment, but who is he to judge? If Joe Sixpack enjoys watching Seinfeld, so be it. If it makes Joe Sixpack happy to watch TV then that's great! The world is one person happier for it. Not everyone prefers highbrow culture (his examples of "museums and public libraries") and it's very close to class-ist to suggest that anything but highbrow culture is a waste of time.
And don't pretend that people were once productive all the time. Storytelling has been around for as long as we have had language.
By "problem" I meant "question," not "difficulty." It puts the courts in the role of assigning power between Article I and Article II, a very different question than just interpreting laws.
This isn't a question where they've got a file sitting on their desktop called "Data.abx" and all they need to do is figure out what program creates an ".abx" file. In all likelihood, there's an old custom or semi-custom mainframe system that wrote this to the tape that didn't format in FAT32. (Nor would it make sense to even both with a filesystem on this type of backup system -- you're not backing up files, you're backing up a database.) From looking at a stream of data dump, there's no way to immediately make sense of it. If there's no file headers, there's not as much of a clue as to where to start. It just looks like an endless string of hex (2 million records is a lot of data).
Somehow I doubt that this is just an Access file, sorry. Or even a SQL dump. They're not complete idiots.
The problem with your example is that this is going to end up being a Youngstown Steel problem. The President will claim that the state secret privilege is a power granted to him by Article II of the Constitution, and thus Congress can't limit that power--just as Congress can't interfere with his power as Commander in Chief (itself a hotly debated point).
The result will be that the Executive will be doing one thing, the Legislature another, and the Judiciary will be left to decide which branch has a stronger claim to power in this case. The last time this happened was the Youngstown Steel case (better known as the "Steel Seizures Case"), above.
It'll be an interesting fight. I'm not picking sides, just laying out what the fight will be.
On the black market these days, a full identity (name, SSN, address, bank information, etc) can go for $14 each. If the tapes had full identities, that's 2 million x $14 = $28 million payday for a bunch of crooks. Even assume a "volume discount" for these guys and they're still in the many million dollar range. Even if it's just name, address, and SSN there's some value on the black market for these tapes.
When you're breaking into a vehicle filled with stuff that looks like computer equipment, it's hard to know whether the data is going to be social security numbers (valuable), credit card numbers (valuable), medical records (valuable if there's addresses and SSNs), or routine corporate records (not all that valuable). Enough data brokers are sloppy enough with their security that there's a good chance to get some identity information that has value.
These guys were either extremely lucky or knew exactly what they were doing. Or they're complete idiots who are wondering why these tapes won't play on their 8-track player.
Didn't we try this in Sim City? Look how well that worked out.
Economists would call this a a classic "externalities" problem. It costs a company next to nothing to store vast amounts of data about you, but they don't pay the cost when your data gets spread around.
Right now, there's no reason why a company (or a state government) wouldn't keep as much data about you as it can. Hard drive space is all but free (especially relative to these types of transactional data) and big database engines can rapidly sort through the data when it's needed.
But, the problem is that you personally pay the price when a thief takes off with your name, address, social security number, mother maiden's name, etc. You are the one who has to go and call your credit card companies and pay people to remove your name from databases to clean up the mess.
I'm no fan of government regulation generally, but this seems to be the sort of problem that there's no easy market solution for. I'm quite sure that companies (and governments) would be a lot more careful with personal data if they had to personally call each victim's credit card companies and personally investigate every claim of identity theft. We probably don't need to go that far, but it makes the point.
You've got two different searches confused.
The search of people flying on any flight is an "administrative search" to look for weapons. It is strictly limited to searching for weapons--if the cops see drugs they can bust you, but they can't look for drugs or evidence of any other crime.
This is not the same search. This is the Customs search at the border and it has nothing to do with flying. Think about going through US Customs after you land in the US. The key is that it's after you've already landed. The government has always been able to look for drugs at US Customs, which has nothing to do with airline safety. (While a couple of kilos of blow might make your flight more entertaining, it's hardly the sort of thing that makes airplanes crash).
There's a very important difference between pre-flight safety searches (applies to any flight, domestic or international) and customs searches (applies to any means of entering the country).
Then put your money where your mouth is and vote the bums out. If Congress writes a law saying "no laptops shall be inspected at the border" then no laptops would be inspected at the border. The courts are not the only way to protect our rights.
but what on your laptop could possibly endanger an airplane?
It's not about airplanes. It's about crossing the border into the US. Presumably, the same rule would apply if you cross the border by car or by train or by boat.
Think about going through international customs at any major airport. You go through US customs after you've already landed. The point is to control smuggling of goods into the US, not to protect airplanes.
The sad part, is this sets a president if it is allowed to stand, and whittles away at everything else.
First, you mean precedent. The President is the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. "Precedent" is what judges use to decide cases.
That said, the border search exception has always allowed the government to search your bags when you cross the border, to look for drugs, guns, agricultural products, etc. Think about passing through Customs at any international crossing -- they get to randomly pull you out of line and dump out the contents of your bag for any reason whatsoever (or no reason whatsoever) and make sure you're not smuggling anything into the country. That understanding of the Fourth Amendment has been on the books for centuries. It might be "right" or "wrong," but there's no doubt that it's been the law for ages.
Sorry, missing link on preview:
Explanation of the border search exception.
Why are computers treated any differently than anything else?
That's the entire point of the ruling. The government has always been able to search your bags when you cross the border, to look for drugs and guns coming into the country. That's been on the books for 200 years. The question was whether computers would be treated differently and get more protection than everything else.
What threat does data on a computer pose to an airplane?
It's not about getting on airplanes. This does not apply to domestic flights. It's about stuff crossing the border by any means. Presumably, this would apply just as much if you crossed the border by train or in a car.
The case has nothing to do with airplanes. It has to do with the "border search exception" to the warrant requirement.
I'm not sure where the "problem" is in that analysis. If Bill Gates's foundation cures malaria, then he'll certainly have a legacy as the guy who cured malaria. But just because he gets something out of it (a good legacy) doesn't mean that every single person who won't have malaria in the next 500 years is somehow harmed. In a way, it's a win-win transaction -- Bill Gates gets to feel good about himself and people in sub-Saharan Africa get to not have malaria. There's nothing mutually incompatible about those goals.
Even if Google were covered by HIPPA, there are still problems. HIPPA is far from a complete solution, and it's even worse when the data is in Google's hands. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Google knows too much already.
The problem isn't necessarily that Google would misuse any healthcare data -- Google has too much at stake to do anything stupid like sell personal data to the highest bidder. The problem is that any concentration of that much data in one company's hands--from email to search history to medical records--makes a very inviting target for prying government eyes and malicious hackers/crackers.
Think about it -- Google is a multinational business and Yahoo! has shown that the pressure to bow to local demands is often overwhelming (see the Yahoo!-China debacle). Even if the US passed the most privacy-protective laws, there's nothing that would stop China from leaning very hard on Google to give up records for political activists that traveled between the US and China, or even for politicians or others.
Having that much data in one set of hands is mighty dangerous, even if Google itself isn't going to misuse it.