It isn't that they can't get competent people to crack an "electronic safe", the problem is that the electronic safes are exponentially harder to crack than the physical ones.
So, what you're saying is that if someone designed a better physical safe that was much harder to crack, it would be OK for the police to demand that you open it?
Eventually, this ends up as "well, it's just so darn hard to prove people are guilty, so let's just find ways we can throw them into jail without any effort on our part".
So, the simple solution to this is to keep both encrypted data on your hard drive and an "encrypted" paper diary.
It doesn't matter if the paper diary is really encrypted or if it is just gibberish. I doubt that you would be compelled to "decrypt" the diary, and then it's pretty easy to point out to the judge that for all the police know, the data on the hard drive is a copy of the diary, and if you can't be compelled to reveal the key for one, then why should you be compelled to reveal it for the other?
The drive containing evidence will be cloned through a "hardware write blocker", a device designed and certified to ignore all ATA/SATA/SAS/SCSI/whatever commands that have the potential to modify data on the drive, and only allow readback.
<paranoia level="extreme">So, what you are saying is that it is during the cloning process that the incriminating evidence is added to the original drive, and it thus part of the clone.</paranoia>
It is not considered a confession but rather evidence that has been located.
How do you know it is evidence?
Search warrants are generally limited in scope, so unless it spells out what they expect to find and unless they have some evidence other than "it's encrypted", there probably isn't enough grounds for a search warrant that allows decryption.
For example, if a search warrant was looking for a specific weapon, then looking at computer files would not be permitted. If the search was looking for evidence of purchase of a gun, then you might be able to look at computer files. In either case, unless there was some other evidence that led you to believed that the weapon was in the possession of the suspect, or that they had purchased the gun, there wouldn't be enough to issue a search warrant.
So, unless there is some evidence that the suspect would store evidence on their computer (other than the encryption itself), the search warrant probably doesn't cover forcing decryption.
I would also suspect that there could be a defense based on "speaking in code". If the police had intercepted a communication from you where you said "sport the bligglet" and soon after that the person you were speaking to killed someone, they might infer that you had ordered the killing, but they cannot force either you or the killer to "decrypt" the statement.
The cop in the coffee shop is an LEO, and yes, once he had a warrant he could compel you to type in your password, in the same way he could compel you to open your safe.
Nothing can "compel" you to open your safe or decrypt the data, although a judge could threaten you with contempt of court.
But, in the case of the safe, the LEO wouldn't care, as they have people that can open it. So, the real issue here is that the DOJ doesn't have people that are competent at doing their jobs (which, in this case, is gathering evidence). The solution is for the DOJ to hire electronic "safe crackers", just like they have physical ones.
Capitalism probably requires democracy. The reverse might not be strictly true, but it would be very hard to imagine a government with the mindset that every person has an equal say in the governing of the people and yet not allow capitalism.
In other words, capitalism is not necessary for democracy, but any true democracy is very likely going to have a capitalist economy, so if there is no capitalism, it probably isn't a democracy.
Except that copyright infringement is illegal, y'know?
Yes, and there are sections within 17 USC that say exactly how you get to recover damages from copyright infringement, and all of them require a lawsuit (y'know, one of those things that takes place in a court of law).
Likewise, messing with the Internet connection of the infringer is not one of the possible damage recovery for the copyright holder.
So, yeah, it's likely that at least some judges will be quite upset that these companies are colluding to violate US law in order to increase their revenues.
The ISP's will get a lot of negative publicity and customers will switch to a competitor who doesn't cut them off for no reason.
I know nobody on/. will RTFA, but with the fact that most ISPs are monopolies, and the summary basically saying that all the big ISPs are in on this, it should be obvious that the chance of switching to a competitor (by which I mean a company with similar price/performance) is basically zero.
If it were that black and white, we probably wouldn't be discussing this, since no one (not the user, the ISP, or the content owner) really knows if copyright infringement is happening. That cannot be determined until a judge/jury rules on it.
For example, if you do not upload and you already have a license for the content (e.g., downloading a rip of a movie you own), then you might have a case of fair use.
Also, if the content holders are filing DMCA notices, then there is already a legal procedure to respond to those, and it doesn't involve a $35 "independent review". If the content holders are not filing DMCA notices, then neither the ISP nor the user is legally required to do anything, and any action by the ISP will likely result in a class-action lawsuit.
The real issue here is that the RIAA/MPAA isn't happy with the laws they paid for, and now want stricter ones, but can't get those passed. This is an end-around on the courts and the legislatures, and I suspect both will be pretty upset about their power being taken away.
>But "big content" (oh, populism... you are endlessly entertainingly retarded) does allow people to download things legally, although you have to pay.
Where do I send my money to be able to legally download the just-released Lord of the Rings extended editions in full Blu-Ray quality (including audio and all extras), and play it on whatever device I want?
Seriously, if I could do that, I would. But, "big content" won't let their content out in the format that end users want, and that really is one of the largest reasons why there are "pirates". I "pirate" Blu-Ray disks every week, because there is no 100% legal way for me to copy the content to my hard drive, or to copy it to my portable media player.
the screen just turns black when I am receiving or making a call
I believe it's supposed to do that, but only when you hold it up to your head. So, you could be doing something that confuses the sensors. I know that if I put too much of my hand over the screen while on a call, the screen will go black on my HTC Thunderbolt. Hitting "Home" solves that for me, as once the phone app doesn't have the focus, it won't black the screen.
But really, the failure rate for A would be 5% whereas the rate for B would be 3.75%.
In short, the article's author is an idiot.
Then, too, there's the people who just walk into the store with the broken hardware because they know it is broken ("it doesn't turn on"), so that also would skew the results. But, the biggest skew of all is the fact that only support calls were part of the survey.
Having run a help desk, I can definitely say that the brighter people don't contact support until it is the last resort, while other people might call for every little thing that is different from their normal experience, except that they won't remember that their phone got a software update a few days before they called.
How could it be the OS? This is about hardware faults, and in fact has nothing to do with Android.
Because a "hardware fault" might be caused by the drivers in the OS.
In other words, if one of the radios in the phone stops working, how can the tech know for sure if the hardware failed or the software is having problems talking to the hardware because the driver has a fault?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The "cargo cult" metaphor means performing an act to replicate an outcome even though the factors that led to that outcome are not in place.
It might fit here if you think about the fact that a walled-garden iPad is fine for some people, and others copy them (by purchasing) even though the factors that make the iPad useful are not there. This could be especially true because the many influential groups (media, management, etc.) are ones where the iPad works well for them (they can consume a lot of other media and do enough creation), and thus say how good the device is, and others who don't have the same starting conditions copy them in hopes of achieving the same result.
But I'm not sure how this database might actually map to the files.
Pretty much every one of the "cddb" systems use the track count plus the starting frame count of each track as the "hash" to index the CD.
The only difference I can see is that the software I use (J. River Media Center) stores any corrections you have made to the CD in a local database, and uses that one first. If there is no hash match there, then it uses an online DB. This way, the "correct" metadata (i.e., what you want the tags to be) you have entered for the CD is always there if you re-rip the disc. Album art is not preserved in the local DB, but everything else seems to be.
It is true that audio CDs don't use ECC as CD-ROMs do
Although CD-Audio discs don't have the additional error correction that CD-ROMs use, they do have some error correction...specifically 8 bytes of CIRC per 24 bytes of data.
If you have the right CD-ROM drive, it will return the full 33 bytes per frame to the ripping application. This allows the software to perform error correction instead of the drive.
No two files produced by ripping the identical CD are identical.
This is not true. If you use the correct hardware or software, then you can reliably extract the exact same PCM from the CD.
If you then convert to a non-raw format (WAV, FLAC, MP3, etc.), you'll end up with a different file unless you use the exact same software with the exact same options.
I guess people who think this is easy have like 25 CDs and they're all single-disk sets from major artists with 100% accurate id3 info.
I can see not backing up your music due to the size (although I do), but not backing up the local database for your music application seems to say you don't bother to back up your data at all.
I had to re-rip a good chunk of my collection due to data corruption caused by bad memory, but because the database was intact, all the metadata was still there, so I didn't have to manually enter any tag info. That actually made the job harder, in that it took only about 5 minutes per CD, and I had two drives, so I was effectively swapping a disk every couple of minutes.
There is always suid bit, which does that in the system.
There are a lot of things that suid won't allow you to do, like editing crontabs, changing permissions on files (you must be the owner of the file to do that), etc.
I know what sudo does. That doesn't mean I like it. sudo is "for letting unprivileged users" ignore the existence of root, plain and simple.
I don't think you really do know what sudo is there for. The most popular use for it where I work is to allow users to run commands as someone other than themselves, but not root. Although you can do some of this using group permissions on files, you can't do things like edit crontab entries without a tool like sudo.
If you get 100 books to a box, then you either have very large boxes or very small books.
Agreed.
I had to clean out my parents' house, and filled over 50 of the "small" U-Haul moving boxes, and that was for only about 2500 books. I also had to pack up all my books because the bookshelves had to be moved to install new floors. I ended up with about 40 boxes, and I only have about 1500 books (many of mine are thicker than a "standard" book).
When I read a book by a good author I don't see the words at all, I see the characters, hear them speak, see the scenery, smell the smells, etc. I'm there.
I suspect the amount of mind-altering substances you have consumed over the years might have something to do with this.
Say what you will about the quality of the story, but you have to admit that there were a lot of details to keep track of. It was enough to spawn whole communities of people dedicated to documented all the details in order to decipher various puzzles.
Well, of course people had to talk to other people to figure out Lost, because of the contradictions and inconsistencies caused by even the writers not knowing the "answers" before they started writing.
When you make it up as you go along, it's probably going to be confusing for people who are watching.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't that they can't get competent people to crack an "electronic safe", the problem is that the electronic safes are exponentially harder to crack than the physical ones.
So, what you're saying is that if someone designed a better physical safe that was much harder to crack, it would be OK for the police to demand that you open it?
Eventually, this ends up as "well, it's just so darn hard to prove people are guilty, so let's just find ways we can throw them into jail without any effort on our part".
For example, your diary can be used against you in court:
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-02-02/news/mn-18241_1_high-court
So, the simple solution to this is to keep both encrypted data on your hard drive and an "encrypted" paper diary.
It doesn't matter if the paper diary is really encrypted or if it is just gibberish. I doubt that you would be compelled to "decrypt" the diary, and then it's pretty easy to point out to the judge that for all the police know, the data on the hard drive is a copy of the diary, and if you can't be compelled to reveal the key for one, then why should you be compelled to reveal it for the other?
The drive containing evidence will be cloned through a "hardware write blocker", a device designed and certified to ignore all ATA/SATA/SAS/SCSI/whatever commands that have the potential to modify data on the drive, and only allow readback.
<paranoia level="extreme">So, what you are saying is that it is during the cloning process that the incriminating evidence is added to the original drive, and it thus part of the clone.</paranoia>
It is not considered a confession but rather evidence that has been located.
How do you know it is evidence?
Search warrants are generally limited in scope, so unless it spells out what they expect to find and unless they have some evidence other than "it's encrypted", there probably isn't enough grounds for a search warrant that allows decryption.
For example, if a search warrant was looking for a specific weapon, then looking at computer files would not be permitted. If the search was looking for evidence of purchase of a gun, then you might be able to look at computer files. In either case, unless there was some other evidence that led you to believed that the weapon was in the possession of the suspect, or that they had purchased the gun, there wouldn't be enough to issue a search warrant.
So, unless there is some evidence that the suspect would store evidence on their computer (other than the encryption itself), the search warrant probably doesn't cover forcing decryption.
I would also suspect that there could be a defense based on "speaking in code". If the police had intercepted a communication from you where you said "sport the bligglet" and soon after that the person you were speaking to killed someone, they might infer that you had ordered the killing, but they cannot force either you or the killer to "decrypt" the statement.
The cop in the coffee shop is an LEO, and yes, once he had a warrant he could compel you to type in your password, in the same way he could compel you to open your safe.
Nothing can "compel" you to open your safe or decrypt the data, although a judge could threaten you with contempt of court.
But, in the case of the safe, the LEO wouldn't care, as they have people that can open it. So, the real issue here is that the DOJ doesn't have people that are competent at doing their jobs (which, in this case, is gathering evidence). The solution is for the DOJ to hire electronic "safe crackers", just like they have physical ones.
Democracy requires capitalism?
Capitalism probably requires democracy. The reverse might not be strictly true, but it would be very hard to imagine a government with the mindset that every person has an equal say in the governing of the people and yet not allow capitalism.
In other words, capitalism is not necessary for democracy, but any true democracy is very likely going to have a capitalist economy, so if there is no capitalism, it probably isn't a democracy.
Except that copyright infringement is illegal, y'know?
Yes, and there are sections within 17 USC that say exactly how you get to recover damages from copyright infringement, and all of them require a lawsuit (y'know, one of those things that takes place in a court of law).
Likewise, messing with the Internet connection of the infringer is not one of the possible damage recovery for the copyright holder.
So, yeah, it's likely that at least some judges will be quite upset that these companies are colluding to violate US law in order to increase their revenues.
The ISP's will get a lot of negative publicity and customers will switch to a competitor who doesn't cut them off for no reason.
I know nobody on /. will RTFA, but with the fact that most ISPs are monopolies, and the summary basically saying that all the big ISPs are in on this, it should be obvious that the chance of switching to a competitor (by which I mean a company with similar price/performance) is basically zero.
And copyright infringement is definitely illegal.
If it were that black and white, we probably wouldn't be discussing this, since no one (not the user, the ISP, or the content owner) really knows if copyright infringement is happening. That cannot be determined until a judge/jury rules on it.
For example, if you do not upload and you already have a license for the content (e.g., downloading a rip of a movie you own), then you might have a case of fair use.
Also, if the content holders are filing DMCA notices, then there is already a legal procedure to respond to those, and it doesn't involve a $35 "independent review". If the content holders are not filing DMCA notices, then neither the ISP nor the user is legally required to do anything, and any action by the ISP will likely result in a class-action lawsuit.
The real issue here is that the RIAA/MPAA isn't happy with the laws they paid for, and now want stricter ones, but can't get those passed. This is an end-around on the courts and the legislatures, and I suspect both will be pretty upset about their power being taken away.
>But "big content" (oh, populism... you are endlessly entertainingly retarded) does allow people to download things legally, although you have to pay.
Where do I send my money to be able to legally download the just-released Lord of the Rings extended editions in full Blu-Ray quality (including audio and all extras), and play it on whatever device I want?
Seriously, if I could do that, I would. But, "big content" won't let their content out in the format that end users want, and that really is one of the largest reasons why there are "pirates". I "pirate" Blu-Ray disks every week, because there is no 100% legal way for me to copy the content to my hard drive, or to copy it to my portable media player.
Do you really think they're expecting to give these refunds?
Do you really think Sony expected the PlayStation Network would be down an entire month?
the screen just turns black when I am receiving or making a call
I believe it's supposed to do that, but only when you hold it up to your head. So, you could be doing something that confuses the sensors. I know that if I put too much of my hand over the screen while on a call, the screen will go black on my HTC Thunderbolt. Hitting "Home" solves that for me, as once the phone app doesn't have the focus, it won't black the screen.
But really, the failure rate for A would be 5% whereas the rate for B would be 3.75%. In short, the article's author is an idiot.
Then, too, there's the people who just walk into the store with the broken hardware because they know it is broken ("it doesn't turn on"), so that also would skew the results. But, the biggest skew of all is the fact that only support calls were part of the survey.
Having run a help desk, I can definitely say that the brighter people don't contact support until it is the last resort, while other people might call for every little thing that is different from their normal experience, except that they won't remember that their phone got a software update a few days before they called.
I'll see your anecdote and raise you a personal observation:
My wife has had a Storm since the month they were released and has had no issues at all.
How could it be the OS? This is about hardware faults, and in fact has nothing to do with Android.
Because a "hardware fault" might be caused by the drivers in the OS.
In other words, if one of the radios in the phone stops working, how can the tech know for sure if the hardware failed or the software is having problems talking to the hardware because the driver has a fault?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The "cargo cult" metaphor means performing an act to replicate an outcome even though the factors that led to that outcome are not in place.
It might fit here if you think about the fact that a walled-garden iPad is fine for some people, and others copy them (by purchasing) even though the factors that make the iPad useful are not there. This could be especially true because the many influential groups (media, management, etc.) are ones where the iPad works well for them (they can consume a lot of other media and do enough creation), and thus say how good the device is, and others who don't have the same starting conditions copy them in hopes of achieving the same result.
But I'm not sure how this database might actually map to the files.
Pretty much every one of the "cddb" systems use the track count plus the starting frame count of each track as the "hash" to index the CD.
The only difference I can see is that the software I use (J. River Media Center) stores any corrections you have made to the CD in a local database, and uses that one first. If there is no hash match there, then it uses an online DB. This way, the "correct" metadata (i.e., what you want the tags to be) you have entered for the CD is always there if you re-rip the disc. Album art is not preserved in the local DB, but everything else seems to be.
It is true that audio CDs don't use ECC as CD-ROMs do
Although CD-Audio discs don't have the additional error correction that CD-ROMs use, they do have some error correction...specifically 8 bytes of CIRC per 24 bytes of data.
If you have the right CD-ROM drive, it will return the full 33 bytes per frame to the ripping application. This allows the software to perform error correction instead of the drive.
No two files produced by ripping the identical CD are identical.
This is not true. If you use the correct hardware or software, then you can reliably extract the exact same PCM from the CD.
If you then convert to a non-raw format (WAV, FLAC, MP3, etc.), you'll end up with a different file unless you use the exact same software with the exact same options.
I guess people who think this is easy have like 25 CDs and they're all single-disk sets from major artists with 100% accurate id3 info.
I can see not backing up your music due to the size (although I do), but not backing up the local database for your music application seems to say you don't bother to back up your data at all.
I had to re-rip a good chunk of my collection due to data corruption caused by bad memory, but because the database was intact, all the metadata was still there, so I didn't have to manually enter any tag info. That actually made the job harder, in that it took only about 5 minutes per CD, and I had two drives, so I was effectively swapping a disk every couple of minutes.
There is always suid bit, which does that in the system.
There are a lot of things that suid won't allow you to do, like editing crontabs, changing permissions on files (you must be the owner of the file to do that), etc.
I know what sudo does. That doesn't mean I like it. sudo is "for letting unprivileged users" ignore the existence of root, plain and simple.
I don't think you really do know what sudo is there for. The most popular use for it where I work is to allow users to run commands as someone other than themselves, but not root. Although you can do some of this using group permissions on files, you can't do things like edit crontab entries without a tool like sudo.
If you get 100 books to a box, then you either have very large boxes or very small books.
Agreed.
I had to clean out my parents' house, and filled over 50 of the "small" U-Haul moving boxes, and that was for only about 2500 books. I also had to pack up all my books because the bookshelves had to be moved to install new floors. I ended up with about 40 boxes, and I only have about 1500 books (many of mine are thicker than a "standard" book).
When I read a book by a good author I don't see the words at all, I see the characters, hear them speak, see the scenery, smell the smells, etc. I'm there.
I suspect the amount of mind-altering substances you have consumed over the years might have something to do with this.
Say what you will about the quality of the story, but you have to admit that there were a lot of details to keep track of. It was enough to spawn whole communities of people dedicated to documented all the details in order to decipher various puzzles.
Well, of course people had to talk to other people to figure out Lost, because of the contradictions and inconsistencies caused by even the writers not knowing the "answers" before they started writing.
When you make it up as you go along, it's probably going to be confusing for people who are watching.