I have been invloved in studies done at Yale University which show that people who spend more than 20 hours a week online comit less crimes and are more likely to be honest decent human beings.
Of course people who spend 1/8th of their time online aren't going to commit as many crimes. They're too busy reading JonKatz' crap and looking for pr0n to hold up the Circle-K.
The absurd situation in the US where you can't even get a mobile phone without presenting your SS number and photo ID drivers licence (and damn you if you don't have a drivers licence) doesn't exist back in Britain.
Funny, I've got one right here on my desk. I got it by walking into the store, dropping cash on the counter, and walking out. It's sitting next to the no-paperwork handgun, the no-trojan computer, and the key to the mailbox with a fake name on it. (All of which are perfectly legal in my beautiful state. What a crappy example for a cop like me to set!:)
Hey. I'm kind of new here, but I don't see the problem with all of this. What if they catch a terrorist or pedophile? Governments NEED to be able to do things like this for the protection of the citizens.
Funny, I've managed pretty well at busting people without having to invade their private space. Criminal investigations are so easy that you'd think that even kiwi cops could do it.
Unfortunately, for the site maintainer, it is a whole lot easier for a jury to order some damages be paid in a civil case because there's a good chance (i think its: based on a proponderance of the evidence (spelling?))
In most courts in the US, you would indeed be correct. The standard in civil cases is usually the preponderance of the evidence (legalese for 50% plus one). Some states may mandate "clear and convincing evidence" which is a higher standard but still short of the criminal standard.
That being said, there's also considerable variation in how the various states allow for damages. Some allow proportional damages, others will let a defendant be hammered if he's even 1% liable. Copyright, IIRC, would go through Federal courts and I don't know how they handle damages.
There's also a factor called the "culpable mental state." You may be under a law mandating that the jury can only find for the plaintiff if the defendant acted negligently, or you may be under strict liability, meaning that it doesn't matter how hard the defendant tried to obey the law; he can still be stuck no matter how much good faith he showed.
Sucks as it might, I'd think about consulting a competent lawyer. Civil law and procedure is one big hairball and woe is he who tries to navigate it without help.
Also, families? Doesn't marrying
a US citizen make you a citizen?
Nope. Marrying a US citizen CAN lead to citizenship, but first you have to have a massive background check in your home country sent to INS. Then you have to submit the wedding itself to the INS version of an IRS audit. Then you pay several hundred dollars and fill out two pounds of paper. Then you wait two years for an interview. The non-citizen spouse can then be offered permanent residency at that interview, which leads to citizenship in something like 5-7 years.
My wife is Australian. We had to go through all that shit. I'm voting for whichever candidate promises to abolish INS/BP and grant citizenship to anyone who promises to shut the fuck up about how much better it was in the old country.
Given all the money we blow on missile defense systems that don't work (And by the time they do, we could have just applied all of that money/effort to world peace/unilateral nuclear disarmament.)
Question: How do you apply money to world peace? Is there a World Peace Section at the goddamn Texaco StarMart? Let me guess: right next to the hot dogs.
And maybe it's the cop in me talking, but unilateral disarmament my ass. Dealing with the former soviet union is like dealing with sixteen armed, possible mental cases with no languages in common. It's a time for persistence and superhuman patience, but only an idiot would deal with them without some way of escalating if they escalate.
Re:Don't forget the original
on
IT Olympics
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· Score: 1
Actually, Usenet events should be a part of this.
We could add an event "Longest annoying ride on an annoying hobby-horse."
Our contenders:
Rahul Dhesi, of news.admin.net-abuse.email, in the "UUNet is a bigger and more unrepentant spammer than Cyberpromo ever hoped to be" category
TBone, of rec.outdoors.fishing.fly, with his "Catch and Release is pure evil and kills fish and is bad" philosophy
Mike Vandeman, of pretty much every rec.outdoors.* group, riding the hobby horse of "Mountain bikers should all be tortured to death."
Unfortunately, we may need to disqualify everybody from every OS advocacy group and everybody who's ever complained about the moderator in rec.hunting.
Re:Companies will stab you in the back,...
on
Me-Commerce
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· Score: 1
Just one question: What is an "at-will" employee? The context seems to imply that it is exclusive to Michigan. And, since I work there, I'd like to know how it effects me.
At will means that in the absence of a contract[1], either employee or employer may terminate a relationship 'at will,' meaning without notice and without having to give a reason.
I'm in Colorado, which is also very much 'at will.' I'm a cop, and about half of the jobs in my field here are 'at will,'including anything in the office of an elected official, such as deputy sheriff or deputy district attorney. People in such positions can be let go w/o notice if the new sheriff wins an election and decides he doesn't want any deputies with mustaches. (Very few sheriffs would be that stupid, but it is their legal right)
[1] 'At Will' doesn't extend to blessing a Civil Rights Act violation, FWIW.
what if u don't actually like indie music? i do but whiney feedback drenched white boy guitar pop isn't to everyone's taste for some reason
No joke.
But almost every place in the US has _some_ sort of local music scene. Even this godforsaken rathole known as Denver has hope. It's the first DIY indie Country scene I've ever seen in my life!
I've heard tell that there's also a very active rap/hiphop indie scene, but since I think most rap sounds like egotistical shit I've not paid much attention there.
Anyone know if the NSA has massive fingerprint recognition computers?
They don't need them. The FBI developed a system way the hell back when called AFIS: Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Every fingerpring card ever taken and submitted to any LE agency in the US is entered. Any time a latent print is lifted at a crime scene for examination, it gets entered into AFIS and automagically compared to the database.
And one other little thing...they wanted a 5-year exclusive contract with no commitment on C.P.'s part that they would upgrade any part of their system to keep up with the times. We were to trust that they would.
All colleges get sucked into that part of the deal. At the University of Kansas, all of their *n?x boxen were running Digital, and they had an exclusive contract that said that ONLY DEC could upgrade any software. That's why at least some mail servers were running sendmail 8.8.7 all the way into mid-1999.
I wonder if any of their machines have been 0wn3d yet. Might be a good wake-up call.
It is quite clearly dangerous, and to protect the rights of all Americans, it should be banned.
Me dumb fisherman. Me not understand. You fight censorship by banning censorware?
*shrug*
Whatever lifts your skirt, I guess. It's a free internet. But your suggestion does seem a little, um, counterintuitive.
For example, in Britain they can legally force you to decrypt data, while in the U.S. all I would have to do is invoke my fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.
It wouldn't do you any good. The Fifth applies to the state's compelling you to testify against your self. It says precisely nothing against your case. There is no Fifth Amendment right to refuse to comply with a search warrant.
In the same vein, while the U.S. wiretapping legislation CALEA is forcing ISPs to install the capability for law enforcement to conduct digital surveillance of selected customers (supposedly only with warrant, but you and I both know the reality)
No, I don't know the reality that you're talking about. Of course, I'm just a ticket-writing donut-chomping cop, so I'd have no idea what law enforcement officers would do.
erhm, all IP is monolopy power. Patents, copyright, everything. Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows. You can't make your own Windows and sell it.
Bad analogy. That's like saying that you can't make your own Blazer, because Chevrolet has a monopoly on it. That in no way precludes you from making another two-ton GVWR SUV and marketing it successfully. If it did, there would be no Explorers, Land Cruisers, Discoveries, Pathfinders, et cetera.
The fact that the Fender Stratocaster is made by Fender does not preclude you from making your own guitar with three pickups, 24 frets, tremolo, and double cutaways. If it did, then Hamer would not have made my Chapparal.
Chevy did the gut work on designing the Blazer. Microsoft did the gut work on Windows. Do your own gut work.
I think the fifth amendment protects you from being induced to give information that would lead to incrimination or conviction.
Most crypto-systems involve a key of somekind or even a pass-phrase along with the key. Being induced to give the pass-phrase is tantamount to giving information that would lead to incrimination, IMO.
Not quite true. The Fifth Amendment does not apply to non-testimonial evidence. If I as a peace officer have probable cause to believe that someone has just committed a traffic offense, then he can't refuse to exhibit his license on Fifth Amendment grounds because he's a habitual traffic offender and it's a felony if he drives again.
Nor does the Fifth Amendment prevent me from seizing personal or business records. The Fourth Amendment might, as I would need a warrant supported by probable cause to believe that such records are evidence of a crime. But all a warrant requires is probable cause, shown under penalty of perjury.
Example: Police suspect that I'm smuggling guns into the country. They get a warrant to search my house for guns. When they get there they find that I'm growing marijuana, but no guns. They take the marijuana because it's a controlled substance, but they can't arrest me for it because they didn't have a warrant to search my house for it.
I don't recommend trying to ride on that analogy. In the US there exists what is called the "Plain View" doctrine. That doctrine holds that any evidence is admissible, if an officer sees it in plain view and he is in a place where he has legal authority to be, and does not use "extraordinary means" to view the evidence.
That warrant in your example gave the officer legal authority to be present in the home. As long as the marijuana was out in plain sight, he can seize it, and charge you with your state's version of Cultivation or Manufacturing of a Controlled Substance.
Or at least that's what they told us at the police academy.
If: the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, Israel and all other free nations Your characterization of Japan and Israel as free nations is really interesting. Neither of them have what I would recognize as 'freedom.'
Japan's criminal justice system, in effect, has no prohibition on torture.[1] There is no right to counsel. There is no right to remain silent. And APBNews (a law enforcement website) had some VERY interesting material on the Japanese prison system.
Israel has freedom in the same sense that Alabama did in 1951. Arabs need not apply. And Israeli law has made physical torture explicitly legal under certain conditions (such as whenever the Shin Bet secret police want to torture someone)
[1] In theory, there is, but Japanese courts are extremely reluctant to throw out confessions elicited by torture.
>Do you expect the secret police to come knocking >on your door because you speak out about US >government abuses? Didn't think so. The >situations are not even vaguely comparable.
Have you ever heard about COINTEL PRO? Look into it. For the reader's edification, COINTELPRO means "Counter-Intelligence Program." It was ostensibly a program run by the (US) Federal Bureau of Investigation to prevent foreign intelligence agencies from interfering in domestic politics. In practice, it was a program in which the FBI harassed domestic dissidents.
FWIW, COINTELPRO was shut down when we finally were rid of J. Edgar Hoover. Congress had one look and decided that it was of at best questionable Constitutionality. (Put another way, it was flatly illegal.)
Are similar programs running today? I dunno, but maybe not all that the militias talk about reference Waco is paranoid delusion. That was so incompetently handled that one could reasonably suspect malice.
As for the Seattle situation, it's worth noting that[1] irritants were not used until the rioting actually started. And that most countries would have used troops with live ammunition instead. And would have prevented any publication.
[1] Unless a LOT of Seattle cops perjured themselves. Like all of the officers present at the riot.
>Not really, some PCS/GSM/other digital phones are encrypted, but cellular is no more secure than a CB radio. That's why new(er)scanners have the cellular channels locked out.
Not very well locked out. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1989? 1991?) forbade the sale of new scanners capable of intercepting cell frequencies, except to government agencies. However, there are workarounds. Many scanners are designed for police convenience, such that they can be easily modified to remove the cell blocking.
That was a bone thrown to the cell companies. It saved them from having to spend money to go to the (relatively secure) digital, so they could stay analog for a few years longer.
People do in fact get pulled over for not wearing their seatbelt - or rather, that is a convenient excuse for the stop
That varies from state to state. In Colorado, for example, a stop may only be made for what's called a 'primary' violation. Adult seat-belt violations are not primaries, meaning that they can only be ticketed if the officer stops the car for some other reason and observes the violation.
OTOH, I believe that child seat belt violations are primaries here. FWIW, I'm given to understand that most of the 50 states are similar to ours.
They're a zoned out, unaware menace on the road. Many states, counties, and cities have banned the use of cell phones by the driver of a vehicle
Not entirely true. Some cities have banned the use of cellphones in moving cars (San Francisco area rings a bell to me, for at least one) but IIRC there have been no bans at the state level yet. Colorado has such a bill before the legislature, but I give its odds as being 50-50 at most.
>Better yet, he can decriminalise everything! Then >the jails can be mostly emptied, and 90% of those >people can hit the streets and, rejoicing >and singing merry songs, flood the fscking >country with crack! How empowering:P
Even so, crack use is a victimless act. Even the sale of that crap is a victimless act.
You've seen how overloaded our justice system is, I trust? I'm a cop. I and my department and our District Attorney spend so much time dealing with these damned drug laws that we don't have the time or resources to give the proper attention to criminal acts that really cause harm to other people all by themselves.
The guy that takes up a jail bed for marijuana possession is using space that IMHO could be better spent on someone convicted of domestic assault, child abuse resulting in injury, robbery, fraud, harassment by stalking, etc. That's time that I spend investigating and testifying on drug charges that I could spend getting a handle on the DV/Child Abuse problem in my community.
Nobody in their right mind would endorse hard drug use. However, we (the police, courts, and corrections system) have limited resources that I think could be far better spent elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course people who spend 1/8th of their time online aren't going to commit as many crimes. They're too busy reading JonKatz' crap and looking for pr0n to hold up the Circle-K.
Funny, I've got one right here on my desk. I got it by walking into the store, dropping cash on the counter, and walking out. It's sitting next to the no-paperwork handgun, the no-trojan computer, and the key to the mailbox with a fake name on it. (All of which are perfectly legal in my beautiful state. What a crappy example for a cop like me to set! :)
Funny, I've managed pretty well at busting people without having to invade their private space. Criminal investigations are so easy that you'd think that even kiwi cops could do it.
In most courts in the US, you would indeed be correct. The standard in civil cases is usually the preponderance of the evidence (legalese for 50% plus one). Some states may mandate "clear and convincing evidence" which is a higher standard but still short of the criminal standard.
That being said, there's also considerable variation in how the various states allow for damages. Some allow proportional damages, others will let a defendant be hammered if he's even 1% liable. Copyright, IIRC, would go through Federal courts and I don't know how they handle damages.
There's also a factor called the "culpable mental state." You may be under a law mandating that the jury can only find for the plaintiff if the defendant acted negligently, or you may be under strict liability, meaning that it doesn't matter how hard the defendant tried to obey the law; he can still be stuck no matter how much good faith he showed.
Sucks as it might, I'd think about consulting a competent lawyer. Civil law and procedure is one big hairball and woe is he who tries to navigate it without help.
Nope. Marrying a US citizen CAN lead to citizenship, but first you have to have a massive background check in your home country sent to INS. Then you have to submit the wedding itself to the INS version of an IRS audit. Then you pay several hundred dollars and fill out two pounds of paper. Then you wait two years for an interview. The non-citizen spouse can then be offered permanent residency at that interview, which leads to citizenship in something like 5-7 years.
My wife is Australian. We had to go through all that shit. I'm voting for whichever candidate promises to abolish INS/BP and grant citizenship to anyone who promises to shut the fuck up about how much better it was in the old country.
Question: How do you apply money to world peace? Is there a World Peace Section at the goddamn Texaco StarMart? Let me guess: right next to the hot dogs.
And maybe it's the cop in me talking, but unilateral disarmament my ass. Dealing with the former soviet union is like dealing with sixteen armed, possible mental cases with no languages in common. It's a time for persistence and superhuman patience, but only an idiot would deal with them without some way of escalating if they escalate.
We could add an event "Longest annoying ride on an annoying hobby-horse."
Our contenders:
Rahul Dhesi, of news.admin.net-abuse.email, in the "UUNet is a bigger and more unrepentant spammer than Cyberpromo ever hoped to be" category
TBone, of rec.outdoors.fishing.fly, with his "Catch and Release is pure evil and kills fish and is bad" philosophy
Mike Vandeman, of pretty much every rec.outdoors.* group, riding the hobby horse of "Mountain bikers should all be tortured to death."
Unfortunately, we may need to disqualify everybody from every OS advocacy group and everybody who's ever complained about the moderator in rec.hunting.
At will means that in the absence of a contract[1], either employee or employer may terminate a relationship 'at will,' meaning without notice and without having to give a reason.
I'm in Colorado, which is also very much 'at will.' I'm a cop, and about half of the jobs in my field here are 'at will,'including anything in the office of an elected official, such as deputy sheriff or deputy district attorney. People in such positions can be let go w/o notice if the new sheriff wins an election and decides he doesn't want any deputies with mustaches. (Very few sheriffs would be that stupid, but it is their legal right)
[1] 'At Will' doesn't extend to blessing a Civil Rights Act violation, FWIW.
No joke.
But almost every place in the US has _some_ sort of local music scene. Even this godforsaken rathole known as Denver has hope. It's the first DIY indie Country scene I've ever seen in my life!
I've heard tell that there's also a very active rap/hiphop indie scene, but since I think most rap sounds like egotistical shit I've not paid much attention there.
They don't need them. The FBI developed a system way the hell back when called AFIS: Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Every fingerpring card ever taken and submitted to any LE agency in the US is entered. Any time a latent print is lifted at a crime scene for examination, it gets entered into AFIS and automagically compared to the database.
All colleges get sucked into that part of the deal. At the University of Kansas, all of their *n?x boxen were running Digital, and they had an exclusive contract that said that ONLY DEC could upgrade any software. That's why at least some mail servers were running sendmail 8.8.7 all the way into mid-1999.
I wonder if any of their machines have been 0wn3d yet. Might be a good wake-up call.
So what do you plan to do with the people presently in .co.us? You've just kicked the entire Colorado state and local government off the net.
and then open up registration for the .com TLD again. The .com TLD is de facto a US hierarchy
Not really. There are overseas .coms.
It is quite clearly dangerous, and to protect the rights of all Americans, it should be banned. Me dumb fisherman. Me not understand. You fight censorship by banning censorware? *shrug* Whatever lifts your skirt, I guess. It's a free internet. But your suggestion does seem a little, um, counterintuitive.
It wouldn't do you any good. The Fifth applies to the state's compelling you to testify against your self. It says precisely nothing against your case. There is no Fifth Amendment right to refuse to comply with a search warrant.
In the same vein, while the U.S. wiretapping legislation CALEA is forcing ISPs to install the capability for law enforcement to conduct digital surveillance of selected customers (supposedly only with warrant, but you and I both know the reality)
No, I don't know the reality that you're talking about. Of course, I'm just a ticket-writing donut-chomping cop, so I'd have no idea what law enforcement officers would do.
Bad analogy. That's like saying that you can't make your own Blazer, because Chevrolet has a monopoly on it. That in no way precludes you from making another two-ton GVWR SUV and marketing it successfully. If it did, there would be no Explorers, Land Cruisers, Discoveries, Pathfinders, et cetera.
The fact that the Fender Stratocaster is made by Fender does not preclude you from making your own guitar with three pickups, 24 frets, tremolo, and double cutaways. If it did, then Hamer would not have made my Chapparal.
Chevy did the gut work on designing the Blazer. Microsoft did the gut work on Windows. Do your own gut work.
Most crypto-systems involve a key of somekind or even a pass-phrase along with the key. Being induced to give the pass-phrase is tantamount to giving information that would lead to incrimination, IMO.
Not quite true. The Fifth Amendment does not apply to non-testimonial evidence. If I as a peace officer have probable cause to believe that someone has just committed a traffic offense, then he can't refuse to exhibit his license on Fifth Amendment grounds because he's a habitual traffic offender and it's a felony if he drives again.
Nor does the Fifth Amendment prevent me from seizing personal or business records. The Fourth Amendment might, as I would need a warrant supported by probable cause to believe that such records are evidence of a crime. But all a warrant requires is probable cause, shown under penalty of perjury.
I don't recommend trying to ride on that analogy. In the US there exists what is called the "Plain View" doctrine. That doctrine holds that any evidence is admissible, if an officer sees it in plain view and he is in a place where he has legal authority to be, and does not use "extraordinary means" to view the evidence.
That warrant in your example gave the officer legal authority to be present in the home. As long as the marijuana was out in plain sight, he can seize it, and charge you with your state's version of Cultivation or Manufacturing of a Controlled Substance.
Or at least that's what they told us at the police academy.
the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, Israel and all other free nations
Your characterization of Japan and Israel as free nations is really interesting. Neither of them have what I would recognize as 'freedom.'
Japan's criminal justice system, in effect, has no prohibition on torture.[1] There is no right to counsel. There is no right to remain silent. And APBNews (a law enforcement website) had some VERY interesting material on the Japanese prison system.
Israel has freedom in the same sense that Alabama did in 1951. Arabs need not apply. And Israeli law has made physical torture explicitly legal under certain conditions (such as whenever the Shin Bet secret police want to torture someone)
[1] In theory, there is, but Japanese courts are extremely reluctant to throw out confessions elicited by torture.
>on your door because you speak out about US
>government abuses? Didn't think so. The
>situations are not even vaguely comparable.
Have you ever heard about COINTEL PRO? Look into it. For the reader's edification, COINTELPRO means "Counter-Intelligence Program." It was ostensibly a program run by the (US) Federal Bureau of Investigation to prevent foreign intelligence agencies from interfering in domestic politics. In practice, it was a program in which the FBI harassed domestic dissidents.
FWIW, COINTELPRO was shut down when we finally were rid of J. Edgar Hoover. Congress had one look and decided that it was of at best questionable Constitutionality. (Put another way, it was flatly illegal.)
Are similar programs running today? I dunno, but maybe not all that the militias talk about reference Waco is paranoid delusion. That was so incompetently handled that one could reasonably suspect malice.
As for the Seattle situation, it's worth noting that[1] irritants were not used until the rioting actually started. And that most countries would have used troops with live ammunition instead. And would have prevented any publication.
[1] Unless a LOT of Seattle cops perjured themselves. Like all of the officers present at the riot.
>Not really, some PCS/GSM/other digital phones are encrypted, but cellular is no more secure than a CB radio. That's why new(er)scanners have the cellular channels locked out.
Not very well locked out. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1989? 1991?) forbade the sale of new scanners capable of intercepting cell frequencies, except to government agencies. However, there are workarounds. Many scanners are designed for police convenience, such that they can be easily modified to remove the cell blocking.
That was a bone thrown to the cell companies. It saved them from having to spend money to go to the (relatively secure) digital, so they could stay analog for a few years longer.
That varies from state to state. In Colorado, for example, a stop may only be made for what's called a 'primary' violation. Adult seat-belt violations are not primaries, meaning that they can only be ticketed if the officer stops the car for some other reason and observes the violation.
OTOH, I believe that child seat belt violations are primaries here. FWIW, I'm given to understand that most of the 50 states are similar to ours.
Not entirely true. Some cities have banned the use of cellphones in moving cars (San Francisco area rings a bell to me, for at least one) but IIRC there have been no bans at the state level yet. Colorado has such a bill before the legislature, but I give its odds as being 50-50 at most.
>Better yet, he can decriminalise everything! Then >the jails can be mostly emptied, and 90% of those >people can hit the streets and, rejoicing :P
>and singing merry songs, flood the fscking >country with crack! How empowering
Even so, crack use is a victimless act. Even the sale of that crap is a victimless act.
You've seen how overloaded our justice system is, I trust? I'm a cop. I and my department and our District Attorney spend so much time dealing with these damned drug laws that we don't have the time or resources to give the proper attention to criminal acts that really cause harm to other people all by themselves.
The guy that takes up a jail bed for marijuana possession is using space that IMHO could be better spent on someone convicted of domestic assault, child abuse resulting in injury, robbery, fraud, harassment by stalking, etc. That's time that I spend investigating and testifying on drug charges that I could spend getting a handle on the DV/Child Abuse problem in my community.
Nobody in their right mind would endorse hard drug use. However, we (the police, courts, and corrections system) have limited resources that I think could be far better spent elsewhere.