I dunno. I could believe that if you don't use government-provided roads, depend on government-provided police to keep the burglars away while you sleep, depend on the government to keep the [insert latest boogieman country here] from invading, depend on corporations that only exist because of government charters, use government to protect you from the most egregious abuses and thefts of those corporations, provide a money supply so you don't have to pay your ISP with cabbages and eggs, keep the mining company just uphill from you from building crappy earthen dams that will maybe collapse and wipe you off of your land, and depend on the government to keep melamine out of the milk you buy. And don't depend on government to allow you to "own" the patch of gawdforsaken land on the mountaintop that you live on and never leave.
Social Security measure was supposed to be like the Welfare program; it was a catchall for the people who got old, who were unlucky in life, and meant primarily as a feel good measure about society. Charity is another name for it, and again, it was supposed to be something only a handful would even consider using; the vast majority of future retirees were supposed to still use a Savings account.
Well, and the pension that the retiree's employer would provide for the rest of their life. Let's not forget that.
The API... is a copyright-protected work. It is LICENSED for the purpose of writing programs that run on JVMs, not competing platforms. It is OWNED by Oracle, not you.
Facts cannot be copyrighted. It remains to be seen if an API can be.
I do RPG programming on AS400 and just about every manual is labeled by IBM that it is tied to the software license, can't be reverse engineered, blah, blah.
They can print anything they want in a manual. That doesn't make it law, or enforceable.
How about we skip all that and just hold people responsible for their actual actions that actually harm others, instead of creating a police and nanny state because we're afraid someone may misuse their freedom in some minor way "we" don't approve of?
But how to determine their 'actual action'? Would you be ok with data recorders that log all the actions, so we can hold them responsible? Or do you just want to throw up your hands and say "Oh, there's no way to know, we have to trust what they tell us because they wouldn't lie."
And should we do the same for everyone else? Trust truck drivers (who get paid by the mile) to take long, relaxing rests cross-country instead of being wired on white crosses? Trust school bus drivers not to drink too much from the bottle they keep beneath the seat? Trust that dump truck driver not to get distracted by the TV he's got propped up on his dash?
Personally, I'd rather have neither the data recorder nor the game-boy dashboard. But I do know that if the driver has access to that game-boy, some of them will be using it. Some of them are already texting, reading, drinking coffee, chatting on the phone, applying makeup, or all of the above, we know that some of them will be playing Angry Birds. And these are people who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time.
I'm sure that extra "freedom" is worth your life (and that of your children, given that they're from your gene pool). But, you know, after you've been squished into a twisted ball of metal and shredded meat, whether the perp is "held responsible" isn't going to be real important to you.
So if those of us who live outside the U.S. use an American service - any American service - like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Messenger or perhaps mobile kit like an iPhone, are our messages thrown into the NSA Ueber-Surveillance-Database as well?
Oh, not just those. A lot of Internet traffic goes through the US or US companies, even when the US isn't an endpoint.
If this is the case, the U.S. is breaking dozens and dozens of national/regional laws.
Is this a surprise to you? The US government doesn't give a damn about the law, if it's not to their advantage. (Not to imply that other national governments are different, I suspect they're not.)
There is also International Law to consider. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quoted in my signature, makes it very clear that it is illegal to arbitrarily invade someone's privacy.
So, has your country started arresting the implicated current and former US officials and employees when they come through customs? Why not?
I very much remember a Dutch supermarket introducing their discount card some 20 years ago. They openly stated that they wanted to track what people bought (linking separate purchases through this discount card), in order to put products that were often bought in tandem closer together in the shelves. Better for sales, convenient for customers.
A few years later the card was cancelled. It didn't have the desired result. Sure they got a huge database of linked purchases, but they did not manage to get any useful connections out of it.
Maybe 20 years ago. But more recently, the discount chain Target was in the news because their data analysis was so good, they were mailing ads for baby stuff to women before the women's families even knew they were pregnant, based on analysis of purchases and other data.
The NSA has a lot more data to work with, more computing power, and presumably more and better analysts. And access to data that Google can only dream of.
I think the whole Bush/Obama thing is a total distraction - and it works for too many people. It's unfortunate it is in the summary because as I see it what is happening is the that the government is travelling further down the same path - regardless of which party controls which branch. The idea that Obama is better or worse is meaningless, by and large they are exactly the same.
No, they are not the same. But the effects of the seduction of power are the same on both of them. And not just them, but governments around the world. Because in that position, every policeman, every government official, believes that they will use the power for good and not abuse it. It's not just what party is in power, because the glittering tools for surveillance that are available would likely seduce any of them, Republicrats and Greebitarians alike. In any case, a lot of the players remain the same no matter what party is in power -- technocrats, apparatchiks, and police will remain the same no matter who is at the top of the ticket. As time goes on, the tools get more and more powerful, less and less expensive, and easier to use. Meanwhile, the forces of entrenched interests throw oil upon the fire.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, other than to make me ruler of the world. I would never abuse those tools, not even to save the children or stop the terrorists*.
Genetically Hispanics fall into many categories. Many are white, but other options exist, specifically black Hispanics.
Genetically, the whole racial classification thing is bullshit, anyhow. It's tribalism, it's not genes. And depends on your point of view, somebody I see as "Hispanic" may not see much in common between Puerto Rico and Spain. Where I am, we have "African Americans" and "Somali Americans", never mind that Somalia is in Africa, the two groups have completely different histories and almost nothing in common except (sometimes) skin color.
(Never mind that the killer was actually hispanic; not part of the white majority. News orgs like NBC have twisted the story.)
Every questionnaire I have ever filled out classed Hispanics as white. You sayin' they're not? It's not clear that "Hispanic" is the right term for Zimmerman in any case, his mom was Peruvian but nobody has described his dad as "Hispanic". The police report described Zimmerman as "white". So who's twisting the story?
Not that it really matters. Hispanics can be just as bigoted as (other) whites or any other group. If you think that American minorities all get along, you must live somewhere where there aren't any.
Depends on how many minutes you need. T-mobile prepaid, after you've spent $100 ("Gold"), expiration is 1 year. So (at the extreme) a $10 (35 minute) card would cost out at $0.83/month. Of course, if you need more than 3 minutes/month, there are other deals.
How is this "bad"? Do you understand what is being discussed here? Gawker is not asking for your password for Google/Twitter/Facebook. Rather, the ask Google (for example) to authenticate you, and Google answers YES, or NO
Ok, so maybe you can tell us how this thing works.
How does Google know who I am? (Let's say, I block things like google cookies and google analytics.)
Inquiring minds want to know. And don't want to share knowledge with google.
I find it interesting that these two sites assume everyone that is on their forums have FB, etc accounts....are there other sites out there following this assumption?
The political site TPM recently shifted to this policy. They had been allowing OpenID as well, but dropped that because, um, trolls could get accounts there. Shocking, I tell you, who would have thought?
Of course, you'll still have to select which of your FB, twitter, google personas to use.
"Ignorance of the law" was no excuse because the king who said that had all the laws posted in common language in the city square so that everyone could know the laws.
Are we talking Hammurabi (1772 BC) and his code? It's true he did the posting, though since only a few people could read and most of them worked for the government, it's hard to know how much it helped anybody aside from later historians. But there's no evidence he quipped about "ignorance of the law".
Interestingly, it's also an early example of government regulation of wages and prices (ferryboat rental will cost you 3 gerahs a day, and a day laborer gets 6 gerahs a day during the busy season).
It's been a long time since Babylon was a major power.
Just like mainstream journalists then. Yet they aren't being detained, because they tell the right lies.
That, and they aren't charged with unrelated crimes. The ones that are charged with unrelated crimes tend to be arrested and tried.
If the power structure wants to find crimes, they will find crimes. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. "
- Cardinal Richelieu (Prime Minister of France, 1624-1642)
On my Comodo Dragon (Chromium), detected ABP, Ghostory, and EditThisCookie. Missed 5 others. I'd say as "proof of concept" it works, presumably the site doesn't test for every conceivable extension.
Put simply, ICANN has stopped working for a better and more stable public Internet and has instead taken a dive directly into the registrars pockets. I personally would like nothing more than to see the US stick it to ICANN if it will help put them back on the right track (or work towards their outright replacement).
The only flaw I can see in this reasoning, is that the US government has not shown any evidence that it wants "a better and more stable public Internet", at least not when there is any conflict between that and doing the bidding of the corporations who, ultimately, fill every politician's campaign coffers. Or conflict with repressing their political bête noire of the week.
I wonder if ICANN was making unhappy noises about domain seizures.
Right, 'cause ruining somebody's life is always the best way to correct a mistake and will never have unintended consequences... These guys messed up big, but the point of the justice system is to correct and reduce crime - you don't do that by taking away people's livelihood.
You'll "correct and reduce crime" if you create an example strong enough so that no other cop ever falsifies evidence. But even so, nobody wants to take away their livelihood. Dunkin' Donuts is probably hiring.
They didn't follow procedure, that's a command issue - reprimand those in charge, correct the procedure, move forward.
Well, I suppose falsifying records would be "not following procedure". In a criminal justice context, one would hope would be considered more serious than that.
Lying to a cop is a crime. These guys lied to (other) cops. Shouldn't they at the very least be charged with that? It's not like it was inadvertent, they knew that they had signed false statements. Yeah, I know, no cop is going to report a crime committed by another cop, and no prosecutor has the spine to prosecute such a case. But still.
The story behind the first raid was pretty ugly. The raid was not going to happen at first because the police saw that no law was being broken by the site or its operators. Politics somehow overruled the law and the raid occurred. The stuff taken was returned and brought back online within a couple of days because it was all quite illegal. It was the US government's influence which was used to push the Swedish government to step beyond its own laws. And we already know who influences the US government to make them push its influence onto other sovereign nations.
Which, parenthetically, shows why Julian Assange is so unenthusiastic about being extradited back to Sweden.
I lost my copy ages ago and have trawled every 2nd hand bookstore within 50km - no copies.
Uncle Hugo's has copies of damn near everything ever published, and they do mail orders, used is mostly half of cover price. Email them and ask. Shipping to Oz would add a bit, but probably not a deal-breaker.
Cops aren't above the law. Bad cops think they're above the law.
And, for the most part, "good" cops look the other way. The "don't be a squealer" ethic is far stronger with cops than it is with crooks.
But it's probably moot. The prosecutors don't want to get involved either. They work with the cops, it would be professional and electoral suicide, and always the risk that it might become real, physical, suicide. And a jury probably wouldn't convict, anyhow.
You're a complete and utter dumbass if you believe that US foreign intelligence agencies' primary purpose is going after US citizens.
I don't think anyone has said that they believe that "US foreign intelligence agencies' PRIMARY purpose is going after US citizens." Interesting, though that you inserted the qualifier "foreign" there. Are you saying that's instead the primary purpose of domestic intelligence agencies?
Hint: the CIA and NSA, and every other component of the Intelligence Community, DO NOT COLLECT ON US PERSONS unless specifically and explicitly allowed by law or executive order.
Now, however, you've dropped the qualifier "foreign". Perhaps you're right, though how would we know, so long as some executive orders and warrants are secret? Just have to take your word for it? I do recall a judge on the rubber-stamp Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court saying that at least some of the justifications they had been presented with were BS. Not that it stopped them from issuing warrants. Odd, at the time ATT was tapping the internet backbone and giving access to the government, there was no law permitting it (that was retroactively fixed, later).
Of course, this is slashdot, and everyone believes there is a secret cabal trying to "keep down the common man" and that the IC's near-sole purpose is spying on US citizens
There's that straw man again. Everyone believes that (some of) the IC does many other things besides spying on US citizens. Well, aside from the NYPD "Intelligence Division", and whoever is on the other end of the wire from those ATT backbone taps. I do hope we're not paying for IC people to make AC posts to/. though. Hopefully they're bright enough to realize that the word of an "Anonymous Coward" doesn't carry much more weight than one would expect, and can figure out how to create a user account.
Without a warrant the law-enforcers are not permitted to do a search, getting a warrant permits them to do so. Usually with a search warrant for a house that means they either ask the owner to cooperate and open the door but if the owner is not cooperative, they will simply break the door. The same principle should logically be applied to search warrant for a hard-drive. Though I would like to see the law enforcers try to break into the hard-drive.:)
Actually, from what I've seen, once they have the warrant they will wait until they know you're not there, and then knock, get no response, and kick the door in. From the cop perspective, this has the benefit that they won't have to deal with the homeowner. And yes, I do know of several instances where it happened that way (in one of them, they were surprised to find that somebody else was there.. trying to open the door, he got just close enough to it so that he got hit by it when they kicked it in).
Actually, even if you're there, the cops are likely to knock, wait three seconds, and then kick the door in. They have no interest in waiting to see if you're going to be cooperative. Maybe that works different in higher income neighborhoods, I don't know.
At least for the Novell lawsuit, they paid the lawyers a lump sum and go them to agree to continue with the case through all appeals without further pay. I don't remember whether that agreement applied to the IBM lawsuit as well.
And that $1.5 million is their TOTAL assets.
This arrangement carries the risk of serious abuse. 1. Have nothing. 2. Find lawyer to sue the world in your name (for a cut of the action) until they get lucky. 3. RISK-FREE PROFIT!
Unless their lawyers, who are now operating on their own dime, can be found liable for judgments against them.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't ask for the government's help.
I dunno. I could believe that if you don't use government-provided roads, depend on government-provided police to keep the burglars away while you sleep, depend on the government to keep the [insert latest boogieman country here] from invading, depend on corporations that only exist because of government charters, use government to protect you from the most egregious abuses and thefts of those corporations, provide a money supply so you don't have to pay your ISP with cabbages and eggs, keep the mining company just uphill from you from building crappy earthen dams that will maybe collapse and wipe you off of your land, and depend on the government to keep melamine out of the milk you buy. And don't depend on government to allow you to "own" the patch of gawdforsaken land on the mountaintop that you live on and never leave.
Social Security measure was supposed to be like the Welfare program; it was a catchall for the people who got old, who were unlucky in life, and meant primarily as a feel good measure about society. Charity is another name for it, and again, it was supposed to be something only a handful would even consider using; the vast majority of future retirees were supposed to still use a Savings account.
Well, and the pension that the retiree's employer would provide for the rest of their life. Let's not forget that.
The API... is a copyright-protected work. It is LICENSED for the purpose of writing programs that run on JVMs, not competing platforms. It is OWNED by Oracle, not you.
Facts cannot be copyrighted. It remains to be seen if an API can be.
I do RPG programming on AS400 and just about every manual is labeled by IBM that it is tied to the software license, can't be reverse engineered, blah, blah.
They can print anything they want in a manual. That doesn't make it law, or enforceable.
Besides, how do you "reverse engineer" a manual?
How about we skip all that and just hold people responsible for their actual actions that actually harm others, instead of creating a police and nanny state because we're afraid someone may misuse their freedom in some minor way "we" don't approve of?
But how to determine their 'actual action'? Would you be ok with data recorders that log all the actions, so we can hold them responsible? Or do you just want to throw up your hands and say "Oh, there's no way to know, we have to trust what they tell us because they wouldn't lie."
And should we do the same for everyone else? Trust truck drivers (who get paid by the mile) to take long, relaxing rests cross-country instead of being wired on white crosses? Trust school bus drivers not to drink too much from the bottle they keep beneath the seat? Trust that dump truck driver not to get distracted by the TV he's got propped up on his dash?
Personally, I'd rather have neither the data recorder nor the game-boy dashboard. But I do know that if the driver has access to that game-boy, some of them will be using it. Some of them are already texting, reading, drinking coffee, chatting on the phone, applying makeup, or all of the above, we know that some of them will be playing Angry Birds. And these are people who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time.
I'm sure that extra "freedom" is worth your life (and that of your children, given that they're from your gene pool). But, you know, after you've been squished into a twisted ball of metal and shredded meat, whether the perp is "held responsible" isn't going to be real important to you.
So if those of us who live outside the U.S. use an American service - any American service - like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Messenger or perhaps mobile kit like an iPhone, are our messages thrown into the NSA Ueber-Surveillance-Database as well?
Oh, not just those. A lot of Internet traffic goes through the US or US companies, even when the US isn't an endpoint.
If this is the case, the U.S. is breaking dozens and dozens of national/regional laws.
Is this a surprise to you? The US government doesn't give a damn about the law, if it's not to their advantage. (Not to imply that other national governments are different, I suspect they're not.)
There is also International Law to consider. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quoted in my signature, makes it very clear that it is illegal to arbitrarily invade someone's privacy.
So, has your country started arresting the implicated current and former US officials and employees when they come through customs? Why not?
I very much remember a Dutch supermarket introducing their discount card some 20 years ago. They openly stated that they wanted to track what people bought (linking separate purchases through this discount card), in order to put products that were often bought in tandem closer together in the shelves. Better for sales, convenient for customers.
A few years later the card was cancelled. It didn't have the desired result. Sure they got a huge database of linked purchases, but they did not manage to get any useful connections out of it.
Maybe 20 years ago. But more recently, the discount chain Target was in the news because their data analysis was so good, they were mailing ads for baby stuff to women before the women's families even knew they were pregnant, based on analysis of purchases and other data.
The NSA has a lot more data to work with, more computing power, and presumably more and better analysts. And access to data that Google can only dream of.
I think the whole Bush/Obama thing is a total distraction - and it works for too many people. It's unfortunate it is in the summary because as I see it what is happening is the that the government is travelling further down the same path - regardless of which party controls which branch. The idea that Obama is better or worse is meaningless, by and large they are exactly the same.
No, they are not the same. But the effects of the seduction of power are the same on both of them. And not just them, but governments around the world. Because in that position, every policeman, every government official, believes that they will use the power for good and not abuse it. It's not just what party is in power, because the glittering tools for surveillance that are available would likely seduce any of them, Republicrats and Greebitarians alike. In any case, a lot of the players remain the same no matter what party is in power -- technocrats, apparatchiks, and police will remain the same no matter who is at the top of the ticket. As time goes on, the tools get more and more powerful, less and less expensive, and easier to use. Meanwhile, the forces of entrenched interests throw oil upon the fire.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, other than to make me ruler of the world. I would never abuse those tools, not even to save the children or stop the terrorists*.
*terrorist: anyone who disagrees with me.
Genetically Hispanics fall into many categories. Many are white, but other options exist, specifically black Hispanics.
Genetically, the whole racial classification thing is bullshit, anyhow. It's tribalism, it's not genes. And depends on your point of view, somebody I see as "Hispanic" may not see much in common between Puerto Rico and Spain. Where I am, we have "African Americans" and "Somali Americans", never mind that Somalia is in Africa, the two groups have completely different histories and almost nothing in common except (sometimes) skin color.
(Never mind that the killer was actually hispanic; not part of the white majority. News orgs like NBC have twisted the story.)
Every questionnaire I have ever filled out classed Hispanics as white. You sayin' they're not? It's not clear that "Hispanic" is the right term for Zimmerman in any case, his mom was Peruvian but nobody has described his dad as "Hispanic". The police report described Zimmerman as "white". So who's twisting the story?
Not that it really matters. Hispanics can be just as bigoted as (other) whites or any other group. If you think that American minorities all get along, you must live somewhere where there aren't any.
Who has a $7/month dumbphone plan?
Depends on how many minutes you need. T-mobile prepaid, after you've spent $100 ("Gold"), expiration is 1 year. So (at the extreme) a $10 (35 minute) card would cost out at $0.83/month. Of course, if you need more than 3 minutes/month, there are other deals.
How is this "bad"?
Do you understand what is being discussed here? Gawker is not asking for your password for Google/Twitter/Facebook.
Rather, the ask Google (for example) to authenticate you, and Google answers YES, or NO
Ok, so maybe you can tell us how this thing works.
How does Google know who I am? (Let's say, I block things like google cookies and google analytics.)
Inquiring minds want to know. And don't want to share knowledge with google.
I find it interesting that these two sites assume everyone that is on their forums have FB, etc accounts....are there other sites out there following this assumption?
The political site TPM recently shifted to this policy. They had been allowing OpenID as well, but dropped that because, um, trolls could get accounts there. Shocking, I tell you, who would have thought?
Of course, you'll still have to select which of your FB, twitter, google personas to use.
"Ignorance of the law" was no excuse because the king who said that had all the laws posted in common language in the city square so that everyone could know the laws.
Are we talking Hammurabi (1772 BC) and his code? It's true he did the posting, though since only a few people could read and most of them worked for the government, it's hard to know how much it helped anybody aside from later historians. But there's no evidence he quipped about "ignorance of the law".
Interestingly, it's also an early example of government regulation of wages and prices (ferryboat rental will cost you 3 gerahs a day, and a day laborer gets 6 gerahs a day during the busy season).
It's been a long time since Babylon was a major power.
Just like mainstream journalists then. Yet they aren't being detained, because they tell the right lies.
That, and they aren't charged with unrelated crimes. The ones that are charged with unrelated crimes tend to be arrested and tried.
If the power structure wants to find crimes, they will find crimes.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. "
- Cardinal Richelieu (Prime Minister of France, 1624-1642)
On my Comodo Dragon (Chromium), detected ABP, Ghostory, and EditThisCookie. Missed 5 others. I'd say as "proof of concept" it works, presumably the site doesn't test for every conceivable extension.
Put simply, ICANN has stopped working for a better and more stable public Internet and has instead taken a dive directly into the registrars pockets. I personally would like nothing more than to see the US stick it to ICANN if it will help put them back on the right track (or work towards their outright replacement).
The only flaw I can see in this reasoning, is that the US government has not shown any evidence that it wants "a better and more stable public Internet", at least not when there is any conflict between that and doing the bidding of the corporations who, ultimately, fill every politician's campaign coffers. Or conflict with repressing their political bête noire of the week.
I wonder if ICANN was making unhappy noises about domain seizures.
Right, 'cause ruining somebody's life is always the best way to correct a mistake and will never have unintended consequences... These guys messed up big, but the point of the justice system is to correct and reduce crime - you don't do that by taking away people's livelihood.
You'll "correct and reduce crime" if you create an example strong enough so that no other cop ever falsifies evidence. But even so, nobody wants to take away their livelihood. Dunkin' Donuts is probably hiring.
They didn't follow procedure, that's a command issue - reprimand those in charge, correct the procedure, move forward.
Well, I suppose falsifying records would be "not following procedure". In a criminal justice context, one would hope would be considered more serious than that.
Lying to a cop is a crime. These guys lied to (other) cops. Shouldn't they at the very least be charged with that? It's not like it was inadvertent, they knew that they had signed false statements. Yeah, I know, no cop is going to report a crime committed by another cop, and no prosecutor has the spine to prosecute such a case. But still.
The story behind the first raid was pretty ugly. The raid was not going to happen at first because the police saw that no law was being broken by the site or its operators. Politics somehow overruled the law and the raid occurred. The stuff taken was returned and brought back online within a couple of days because it was all quite illegal. It was the US government's influence which was used to push the Swedish government to step beyond its own laws. And we already know who influences the US government to make them push its influence onto other sovereign nations.
Which, parenthetically, shows why Julian Assange is so unenthusiastic about being extradited back to Sweden.
I lost my copy ages ago and have trawled every 2nd hand bookstore within 50km - no copies.
Uncle Hugo's has copies of damn near everything ever published, and they do mail orders, used is mostly half of cover price. Email them and ask. Shipping to Oz would add a bit, but probably not a deal-breaker.
Cops aren't above the law. Bad cops think they're above the law.
And, for the most part, "good" cops look the other way. The "don't be a squealer" ethic is far stronger with cops than it is with crooks.
But it's probably moot. The prosecutors don't want to get involved either. They work with the cops, it would be professional and electoral suicide, and always the risk that it might become real, physical, suicide. And a jury probably wouldn't convict, anyhow.
You're a complete and utter dumbass if you believe that US foreign intelligence agencies' primary purpose is going after US citizens.
I don't think anyone has said that they believe that "US foreign intelligence agencies' PRIMARY purpose is going after US citizens." Interesting, though that you inserted the qualifier "foreign" there. Are you saying that's instead the primary purpose of domestic intelligence agencies?
Hint: the CIA and NSA, and every other component of the Intelligence Community, DO NOT COLLECT ON US PERSONS unless specifically and explicitly allowed by law or executive order.
Now, however, you've dropped the qualifier "foreign". Perhaps you're right, though how would we know, so long as some executive orders and warrants are secret? Just have to take your word for it? I do recall a judge on the rubber-stamp Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court saying that at least some of the justifications they had been presented with were BS. Not that it stopped them from issuing warrants. Odd, at the time ATT was tapping the internet backbone and giving access to the government, there was no law permitting it (that was retroactively fixed, later).
Of course, this is slashdot, and everyone believes there is a secret cabal trying to "keep down the common man" and that the IC's near-sole purpose is spying on US citizens
There's that straw man again. Everyone believes that (some of) the IC does many other things besides spying on US citizens. Well, aside from the NYPD "Intelligence Division", and whoever is on the other end of the wire from those ATT backbone taps. I do hope we're not paying for IC people to make AC posts to /. though. Hopefully they're bright enough to realize that the word of an "Anonymous Coward" doesn't carry much more weight than one would expect, and can figure out how to create a user account.
Without a warrant the law-enforcers are not permitted to do a search, getting a warrant permits them to do so. Usually with a search warrant for a house that means they either ask the owner to cooperate and open the door but if the owner is not cooperative, they will simply break the door. The same principle should logically be applied to search warrant for a hard-drive. Though I would like to see the law enforcers try to break into the hard-drive. :)
Actually, from what I've seen, once they have the warrant they will wait until they know you're not there, and then knock, get no response, and kick the door in. From the cop perspective, this has the benefit that they won't have to deal with the homeowner. And yes, I do know of several instances where it happened that way (in one of them, they were surprised to find that somebody else was there.. trying to open the door, he got just close enough to it so that he got hit by it when they kicked it in).
Actually, even if you're there, the cops are likely to knock, wait three seconds, and then kick the door in. They have no interest in waiting to see if you're going to be cooperative. Maybe that works different in higher income neighborhoods, I don't know.
At least for the Novell lawsuit, they paid the lawyers a lump sum and go them to agree to continue with the case through all appeals without further pay. I don't remember whether that agreement applied to the IBM lawsuit as well.
And that $1.5 million is their TOTAL assets.
This arrangement carries the risk of serious abuse.
1. Have nothing.
2. Find lawyer to sue the world in your name (for a cut of the action) until they get lucky.
3. RISK-FREE PROFIT!
Unless their lawyers, who are now operating on their own dime, can be found liable for judgments against them.