The difference between this case and the "fishing expedition" prohibitions generally attributed to the rights described in the 4th amendment of the US Constition is that she was crossing the border; she was technically not "on US soil." This distinction has lots of legal precedence in the United States for searches at border crossings. Whether this should extend to searching *information* on a device is evolving law (evolving through court cases such as this one). You can find other cases through a Google search.
I believe the right to search people, including citizens, at the border is fairly well-established. But as you mention and some others have pointed out in more detail, whether or not that extends to information on a phone, and beyond that to information services that may be made accessible by the search of the phone, is a debatable question currently being worked out through the court system.
Contraband could be present in your papers... for example, if you are importing child pornography a search of your papers would be required to find that pornography. I'm just playing devil's advocate here; I'm personally of the opinion that searching mobile phones or laptops belonging to citizens at the border should be off-limits to the border guards (without a warrant), and extending a search of such devices at the border to remote electronic services made accessible by the device search should be right out (without a separate warrant). But you can't just dismiss hundreds of years of prior practice wherein searches of everything being brought over the border was legal in order to ensure contraband wasn't being brought in, and taxes/tariffs/duties weren't being properly remitted. That behavior goes all the way back to the beginnings of the US. I think that the question here is to what extent "information" differs from the traditional goods that one might be importing and which have been subject to search all along.
The US government maintains the right to search you and everything you are bringing into the country at a border crossing. I don't think this has been the subject of too much dispute in the past. What is up for debate here is whether that right to search extends to information present on an electronic device that you possess, rather than just searching the physical confines of that device. And is it only a US citizen entering the US that might have a right to privacy in the information that a device they possess contains, or would non-US citizens have privacy rights as well?
In what way did this event involve the Russians? I don't have any problem believing the Russians are bad actors. Their whole "pretend we are doing nothing and that it is sad how everything thinks we are bad guys" while they are busy playing every dirty trick in the book is so time-worn that it deserves nothing but raised eyebrows at this point. But...
The news article that this Slashdot post is about describes how a cybersecurity exercise that involved an external web page (built by a third party involved in the test) had that web page spotted by yet another third party (who then reported it to the DNC) and whereupon it ended up being reported by the DNC as an action by a malicious actor. This can happen when the cybersecurity response function isn't 100% up to date on what the cybersecurity testing function is involved in, unfortunately. But there is no evidence in the report that it is part of a desensitization action on the part of the Russians (in this case), because the Russians didn't create the false alarm.
You might be able to make a case that the DNC cybersecurity response function was overly sensitive due to previous Russian actions, but properly evaluating threats is something every cybersecurity function has to deal with.
I'd like to see a court case. Wouldn't this be thrown out as an obvious violation of free speech? Sure intel could not hire someone who benchmarks their stuff, or fire someone who benchmarks it and happens to work at intel, but I'd think that is it.
"Free speech" in the United States typically means rights against federal government regulation described in the 1st amendment to the US constitution. There isn't a general prohibition against a contract requiring someone not to talk about something - non-disclosure agreements specifically limit an individuals ability to speak about certain matters. IANAL; I have no idea how likely it is that a prohibition on publishing benchmarks contained in a firmware license for firmware necessary to patch security vulnerabilities in a chip would be found valid or invalid by a court. However, I don't think a winning argument against it would be based on it being a violation of free speech.
Isn't it an open question whether using the AT&T phone service as a critical authentication component puts a duty on AT&T to secure their phone service?
Doesn't the organization that decided to use the AT&T phone service as a critical authentication component bear some responsibility for their choice?
If I secure my $100M gold stash in a storage locker protected by a $40 Masterlock padlock, do I get to sue Masterlock for $100M when the thieves use a bolt cutter to remove the lock and take my gold?
In the two US states in which I have resided as a property owner, the tax records record the size of your lot, the square footage of your house, the quality of the construction, and some other parameters that are then used in a formula to calculate the "assessed value" of your property. Comparable property sales are used to establish how and how much the parameters contribute to the value. The assessor only makes an in person visit every few years, to confirm that the parameters appear to be correct. You can appeal an assessment based on errors in fact (square footage is wrong, for example) or reasons why the comparable properties used for valuation are not valid indicators of the value of your property. Recent sales carry more weight than older sales. Standard houses (in a subdivision of similar houses) have more direct comparables than more unique, custom one-of-a-kind houses or houses in unique locations (either good unique or bad unique).
All of this leaves open the question of whether the assessor picks a value first, then seeks comparables to justify the value, or finds comparables first, then sees what the impact on the assessed value is. And there can be a lot of wiggle room in what is "comparable", and how non-exact matches are adjusted up or down to get a comparable value.
Getting serious for a moment, the problem is that people seem to have forgotten the Robustness Principle http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc793.html (section 2.10) is a good rule for human intercourse as well as computer intercourse. Jon Posted captured it in writing for the Internet RFCs, but I think it existed long before that.
As a side note, isn't it a characteristic of bullies that they take offense at small slights so that they have the opportunity to pummel people? Perhaps those who take offense too quickly are bullies at heart.
I guess I *have* been insensitive. I didn't even know banana allergies were a thing, but this https://www.yorktest.com/could-you-have-a-banana-allergy-or-intolerance/ says they are, with from 0.1% to 1.2% of the population being affected. I'll have to tell those people that the stickers represent the number of banana trees that I have sterilized, like the images of enemy flags on an ace's plane.
It would appear that most people have zero clue about how these things work. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a lower-level security worker was trying to sound the alarm for years but being squelched until a couple of big data breaches were published a year (or more?) ago. Then it takes this long before a change percolates through the system... The "oh, look - bright and shiny!" crowd always seems to undermine common sense.
I've met/worked for a number of CIOs. Some of them are competent, many are not. The worst ones are the ones who don't really understand anything about computers, programming, or even IT in general.
We study science (including computer science) so that we understand how the world works. We study engineering (including software engineering) so that we know how to apply science to solving problems in an effective and efficient manner. Not everyone needs to be a scientist or an engineer; many people are excellent mechanics (or programmers) without a higher level of study. But hiring the right person for the job depends on knowing what is needed to get the job done, and a hiring manager who doesn't understand this doesn't really understand *their* job.
A computer scientist *may* also be a good software engineer, or a good programmer (or not - it depends on their interests and their training). A person trained in another discipline altogether may have picked up enough knowledge of computers that they are a good programmer, but it is unlikely that they are a good software engineer or computer scientist unless they have had years of experience performing those tasks.
CIOs are often business people who fell into managing IT departments (the worst [in my experience] are the finance folks who "own" IT because finance depends on computers to get their jobs done). The smart ones know the limits of their knowledge, and use domain expertise within their departments. The others cuss and fume and have generally antagonistic relationships to the people who work under them because they really don't understand what they are managing.
That's funny... I dropped out of college to get laid. Got a decent job (along with some tail) after chasing a girl to another part of the country. Eventually went back to school so that I could get a degree, telling myself and others that I only needed to get the piece of paper to get the salary (because I could do the work already). When the dust had settled and I had a number of years of experience under my belt, I realized that I had learned a great deal at college, not all of which would have been available to me with on the job learning. Oh, I also scored a great salary right out of school (because I had the piece of paper). On the other hand, I have two friends who went to the same vocational high school as I did and who work in the same field. They have also been very successful, without college degrees. It is a funny world.
Read some history. Or even just the Wikipedia page. While it ended up a mess, the Soviet had impressive economic success at first.
I am not an economist by any means, so my thoughts here might be just do much drivel. However, I'm not convinced that claimed impressive economic success of the Soviets can be attributed to their political philosophy, at least not in a humanitarian way. The quick conversion of a society from a less efficient to a more efficient means of production can have many losers and a few winners. One way to achieve a rapid change is to change heartlessly. Overall, it may be classified as a good (like ripping a bandaid off quickly), but it is not necessarily in keeping with a humane philosophy except in an extreme view of what is humane. The impressive growth rates during the first three five year plans could be explained by the rapid increase in productivity brought about by industrialization, not by any particular benefit of central planning, similar to the way that the introduction of the Internet into mainstream use in the US brought about a big leap of productivity. In the end, a particular method of management should be evaluated by how well it works over the long term, and it appears to me by that measure that the Soviet approach was not successful.
You are right. There should probably be broader support for the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) http://thecmp.org/about/ and perhaps, a requirement that all citizens undergo basic firearms training. I think it would go a long way towards diminishing the ugly fascination that has developed around firearms, and further the aims of the 2nd amendment towards the ability to form a "well-regulated militia" from the general population.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, just clear. I have seen several posts in this thread that reference the 10th amendment and the fact that it reserves rights for the states. The full text of the 10th amendment is:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The rights aren't just reserved to the states, but to the people as well - everyone (within the United States) other than the federal government of the United States. Which I think doesn't diminish your point, but amplifies it.
That last one... just the worst by the way. In my state, we implemented the Lottery with half of the money collected going into education funding. The very next year, education budgeting from regular state funding was cut by exactly the amount of money brought in by the Lottery, thus making it a complete wash. And its been that way ever since. So even though we voted for the Lottery, we wanted our kids to get more money for education, to improve the entire system... greedy Republican lawmakers figured out how to keep our education levels below average anyways. (my state government is like 80%+ Republicans and has been forever.)
The same thing (lottery money earmarked for education was offset by decreases in education funding from the general budget) happened in my (old) state, which is majority Democrat. Hint - it isn't the label on the politicians, it is the fact that they are politicians. We need to come up with a way to keep politicians out of the government.
I think one of the problems brought out by this discussion is the fact that many people seem to think that the mechanisms that are called "bots" have some kind of independent, conscious, and self-aware existence such as people (members of the species homo sapiens) have. The idea of "Artificial Intelligence" has become very diffuse and is being applied in a wide variety of circumstances. We (members of the species homo sapiens) have yet to create the kind of synthetic independent, conscious, self-aware entities to which a debate over free speech rights might apply, no matter how many times we claim to have created Artificial Intelligence or that mechanisms use Artificial Intelligence. It is a very romantic notion to think that what we now call "bots" are anything like the robots philosophically used in science fiction stories to explore ethics and morality, and this romanticism seems to cloud people's minds.
What we now call "bots" are, as you point out, simply mechanisms employed by people for various communication purposes in place of people. To the extent to which such a mechanism is employed in a context where a reasonable person (member of the species homo sapiens) would expect their communication to be directly with another person (and not a mechanism), it is not a restriction of person's free speech rights to require that the use of a mechanism rather than an actual person be disclosed.
At some future date, we (members of the species homo sapiens) may create synthetic entities that are independent, conscious, and self-aware. At that point a useful (and interesting!) debate will be possible over whether these entities are "people" and should be accorded the rights and privileges that up until now have only been given to members of the species homo sapiens, including the right to not have to identify themselves as "synthetic". But any discussion of this nature based on the current reality of the mechanisms of what we call "bots" or Artificial Intelligence today is premature to the point of ridiculousness.
There is no "self" to which the phrase "bots having to identify themselves" would apply. What we currently have called "bots" are merely mechanisms that simulate behaviors, not conscious and self-aware entities that have a "self". If people (currently understood to be entities of the species homo sapiens) have a reasonable expectation that they are communicating with another person (entity of the species homo sapiens), but are instead communicating with a mechanism, it is useful to require that this distinction be made so that the person can adjust their expectation. It doesn't restrict anyone's free speech rights.
People are independent, conscious and self-aware entities. At this point in time and in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, we have not yet created synthetic entities that are independent, conscious, and self-aware. Until such point that we do, we should not refer to "bots" or so-called "AI"-based mechanisms in any manner that conveys the impression that these are independent, conscious, and self-aware entities - it only serves to confuse the issues being discussed.
In contexts where people expect to be conversing with an independent, conscious, and self-aware entity, I think it is a useful distinction to have the mechanism that is merely simulating such an entity be identified as such. This identification would not harm anyone's free speech rights, it would merely make it clear that whoever is "speaking" is doing so through a simulation mechanism and not by themselves, directly.
At the future point in time when we have created synthetic independent, conscious, and self-aware entities we can have the debate over whether it is a restriction of "free speech" for such an entity to identify itself as synthetic, and whether those entities should have rights the same as the organic naturally-evolved entities of the species homo sapiens. Until then, these proposals are in my opinion only going to make clear that a mechanism that is not independent, conscious, and self-aware is at the other end of a communication when the typical expectation is otherwise, and that is a useful distinction.
Your scenario sounds unlikely. You made no mention of the Windows Technician scam call he would receive from India, during which the caller would gain access to the machine and clear out all of the Chinese malware to avoid competition. It also neglects to add in enough delay caused by the random Microsoft Windows 10 updates and reboots interrupting the Chinese "support technician" and the Indian "Microsoft Technical Support" caller.
The police said the real problem was breaking into an *occupied* house (emphasis mine). Isn't the real problem the fact that the individual broke into a house that wasn't his? The fact that the house was or was not occupied shouldn't be a mitigating circumstance.
His excuse "looking for a WiFi password" isn't a good reason to enter a home that didn't belong to him (trying to find a phone to call 911 for someone dying would be a good excuse in my opinion [if true]). Based on the other circumstances described in the article, I'm disinclined to believe that he was just looking for a WiFi password. Sounds more like a very troubled youth getting kicks acting out. Hopefully the police/justice system will give him the consequences he needs.
All of the discussion about whether or not he could have/should have been shot is moot. He wasn't (fortunately). But the event is certainly a signal that action is required to head off a future problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference between this case and the "fishing expedition" prohibitions generally attributed to the rights described in the 4th amendment of the US Constition is that she was crossing the border; she was technically not "on US soil." This distinction has lots of legal precedence in the United States for searches at border crossings. Whether this should extend to searching *information* on a device is evolving law (evolving through court cases such as this one). You can find other cases through a Google search.
I believe the right to search people, including citizens, at the border is fairly well-established. But as you mention and some others have pointed out in more detail, whether or not that extends to information on a phone, and beyond that to information services that may be made accessible by the search of the phone, is a debatable question currently being worked out through the court system.
Contraband could be present in your papers... for example, if you are importing child pornography a search of your papers would be required to find that pornography. I'm just playing devil's advocate here; I'm personally of the opinion that searching mobile phones or laptops belonging to citizens at the border should be off-limits to the border guards (without a warrant), and extending a search of such devices at the border to remote electronic services made accessible by the device search should be right out (without a separate warrant). But you can't just dismiss hundreds of years of prior practice wherein searches of everything being brought over the border was legal in order to ensure contraband wasn't being brought in, and taxes/tariffs/duties weren't being properly remitted. That behavior goes all the way back to the beginnings of the US. I think that the question here is to what extent "information" differs from the traditional goods that one might be importing and which have been subject to search all along.
The US government maintains the right to search you and everything you are bringing into the country at a border crossing. I don't think this has been the subject of too much dispute in the past. What is up for debate here is whether that right to search extends to information present on an electronic device that you possess, rather than just searching the physical confines of that device. And is it only a US citizen entering the US that might have a right to privacy in the information that a device they possess contains, or would non-US citizens have privacy rights as well?
In what way did this event involve the Russians? I don't have any problem believing the Russians are bad actors. Their whole "pretend we are doing nothing and that it is sad how everything thinks we are bad guys" while they are busy playing every dirty trick in the book is so time-worn that it deserves nothing but raised eyebrows at this point. But...
The news article that this Slashdot post is about describes how a cybersecurity exercise that involved an external web page (built by a third party involved in the test) had that web page spotted by yet another third party (who then reported it to the DNC) and whereupon it ended up being reported by the DNC as an action by a malicious actor. This can happen when the cybersecurity response function isn't 100% up to date on what the cybersecurity testing function is involved in, unfortunately. But there is no evidence in the report that it is part of a desensitization action on the part of the Russians (in this case), because the Russians didn't create the false alarm.
You might be able to make a case that the DNC cybersecurity response function was overly sensitive due to previous Russian actions, but properly evaluating threats is something every cybersecurity function has to deal with.
I'd like to see a court case. Wouldn't this be thrown out as an obvious violation of free speech? Sure intel could not hire someone who benchmarks their stuff, or fire someone who benchmarks it and happens to work at intel, but I'd think that is it.
"Free speech" in the United States typically means rights against federal government regulation described in the 1st amendment to the US constitution. There isn't a general prohibition against a contract requiring someone not to talk about something - non-disclosure agreements specifically limit an individuals ability to speak about certain matters. IANAL; I have no idea how likely it is that a prohibition on publishing benchmarks contained in a firmware license for firmware necessary to patch security vulnerabilities in a chip would be found valid or invalid by a court. However, I don't think a winning argument against it would be based on it being a violation of free speech.
Isn't it an open question whether using the AT&T phone service as a critical authentication component puts a duty on AT&T to secure their phone service?
Doesn't the organization that decided to use the AT&T phone service as a critical authentication component bear some responsibility for their choice?
If I secure my $100M gold stash in a storage locker protected by a $40 Masterlock padlock, do I get to sue Masterlock for $100M when the thieves use a bolt cutter to remove the lock and take my gold?
In the two US states in which I have resided as a property owner, the tax records record the size of your lot, the square footage of your house, the quality of the construction, and some other parameters that are then used in a formula to calculate the "assessed value" of your property. Comparable property sales are used to establish how and how much the parameters contribute to the value. The assessor only makes an in person visit every few years, to confirm that the parameters appear to be correct. You can appeal an assessment based on errors in fact (square footage is wrong, for example) or reasons why the comparable properties used for valuation are not valid indicators of the value of your property. Recent sales carry more weight than older sales. Standard houses (in a subdivision of similar houses) have more direct comparables than more unique, custom one-of-a-kind houses or houses in unique locations (either good unique or bad unique).
All of this leaves open the question of whether the assessor picks a value first, then seeks comparables to justify the value, or finds comparables first, then sees what the impact on the assessed value is. And there can be a lot of wiggle room in what is "comparable", and how non-exact matches are adjusted up or down to get a comparable value.
In the US, a loan that is "forgiven" by the lender counts as income to the borrower, generally. https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/1099-c-tax-form-questions-answers-1282.php
Getting serious for a moment, the problem is that people seem to have forgotten the Robustness Principle http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc793.html (section 2.10) is a good rule for human intercourse as well as computer intercourse. Jon Posted captured it in writing for the Internet RFCs, but I think it existed long before that.
As a side note, isn't it a characteristic of bullies that they take offense at small slights so that they have the opportunity to pummel people? Perhaps those who take offense too quickly are bullies at heart.
I guess I *have* been insensitive. I didn't even know banana allergies were a thing, but this https://www.yorktest.com/could-you-have-a-banana-allergy-or-intolerance/ says they are, with from 0.1% to 1.2% of the population being affected. I'll have to tell those people that the stickers represent the number of banana trees that I have sterilized, like the images of enemy flags on an ace's plane.
My laptop has stickers pulled off of bananas on it. Chiquita sometimes, right now they are Del Monte.
It would appear that most people have zero clue about how these things work. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a lower-level security worker was trying to sound the alarm for years but being squelched until a couple of big data breaches were published a year (or more?) ago. Then it takes this long before a change percolates through the system... The "oh, look - bright and shiny!" crowd always seems to undermine common sense.
I've met/worked for a number of CIOs. Some of them are competent, many are not. The worst ones are the ones who don't really understand anything about computers, programming, or even IT in general.
We study science (including computer science) so that we understand how the world works. We study engineering (including software engineering) so that we know how to apply science to solving problems in an effective and efficient manner. Not everyone needs to be a scientist or an engineer; many people are excellent mechanics (or programmers) without a higher level of study. But hiring the right person for the job depends on knowing what is needed to get the job done, and a hiring manager who doesn't understand this doesn't really understand *their* job.
A computer scientist *may* also be a good software engineer, or a good programmer (or not - it depends on their interests and their training). A person trained in another discipline altogether may have picked up enough knowledge of computers that they are a good programmer, but it is unlikely that they are a good software engineer or computer scientist unless they have had years of experience performing those tasks.
CIOs are often business people who fell into managing IT departments (the worst [in my experience] are the finance folks who "own" IT because finance depends on computers to get their jobs done). The smart ones know the limits of their knowledge, and use domain expertise within their departments. The others cuss and fume and have generally antagonistic relationships to the people who work under them because they really don't understand what they are managing.
I dropped out of college to get paid.
That's funny... I dropped out of college to get laid. Got a decent job (along with some tail) after chasing a girl to another part of the country. Eventually went back to school so that I could get a degree, telling myself and others that I only needed to get the piece of paper to get the salary (because I could do the work already). When the dust had settled and I had a number of years of experience under my belt, I realized that I had learned a great deal at college, not all of which would have been available to me with on the job learning. Oh, I also scored a great salary right out of school (because I had the piece of paper). On the other hand, I have two friends who went to the same vocational high school as I did and who work in the same field. They have also been very successful, without college degrees. It is a funny world.
I am not an economist by any means, so my thoughts here might be just do much drivel. However, I'm not convinced that claimed impressive economic success of the Soviets can be attributed to their political philosophy, at least not in a humanitarian way. The quick conversion of a society from a less efficient to a more efficient means of production can have many losers and a few winners. One way to achieve a rapid change is to change heartlessly. Overall, it may be classified as a good (like ripping a bandaid off quickly), but it is not necessarily in keeping with a humane philosophy except in an extreme view of what is humane. The impressive growth rates during the first three five year plans could be explained by the rapid increase in productivity brought about by industrialization, not by any particular benefit of central planning, similar to the way that the introduction of the Internet into mainstream use in the US brought about a big leap of productivity. In the end, a particular method of management should be evaluated by how well it works over the long term, and it appears to me by that measure that the Soviet approach was not successful.
You are right. There should probably be broader support for the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) http://thecmp.org/about/ and perhaps, a requirement that all citizens undergo basic firearms training. I think it would go a long way towards diminishing the ugly fascination that has developed around firearms, and further the aims of the 2nd amendment towards the ability to form a "well-regulated militia" from the general population.
The rights aren't just reserved to the states, but to the people as well - everyone (within the United States) other than the federal government of the United States. Which I think doesn't diminish your point, but amplifies it.
The same thing (lottery money earmarked for education was offset by decreases in education funding from the general budget) happened in my (old) state, which is majority Democrat. Hint - it isn't the label on the politicians, it is the fact that they are politicians. We need to come up with a way to keep politicians out of the government.
I think one of the problems brought out by this discussion is the fact that many people seem to think that the mechanisms that are called "bots" have some kind of independent, conscious, and self-aware existence such as people (members of the species homo sapiens) have. The idea of "Artificial Intelligence" has become very diffuse and is being applied in a wide variety of circumstances. We (members of the species homo sapiens) have yet to create the kind of synthetic independent, conscious, self-aware entities to which a debate over free speech rights might apply, no matter how many times we claim to have created Artificial Intelligence or that mechanisms use Artificial Intelligence. It is a very romantic notion to think that what we now call "bots" are anything like the robots philosophically used in science fiction stories to explore ethics and morality, and this romanticism seems to cloud people's minds.
What we now call "bots" are, as you point out, simply mechanisms employed by people for various communication purposes in place of people. To the extent to which such a mechanism is employed in a context where a reasonable person (member of the species homo sapiens) would expect their communication to be directly with another person (and not a mechanism), it is not a restriction of person's free speech rights to require that the use of a mechanism rather than an actual person be disclosed.
At some future date, we (members of the species homo sapiens) may create synthetic entities that are independent, conscious, and self-aware. At that point a useful (and interesting!) debate will be possible over whether these entities are "people" and should be accorded the rights and privileges that up until now have only been given to members of the species homo sapiens, including the right to not have to identify themselves as "synthetic". But any discussion of this nature based on the current reality of the mechanisms of what we call "bots" or Artificial Intelligence today is premature to the point of ridiculousness.
There is no "self" to which the phrase "bots having to identify themselves" would apply. What we currently have called "bots" are merely mechanisms that simulate behaviors, not conscious and self-aware entities that have a "self". If people (currently understood to be entities of the species homo sapiens) have a reasonable expectation that they are communicating with another person (entity of the species homo sapiens), but are instead communicating with a mechanism, it is useful to require that this distinction be made so that the person can adjust their expectation. It doesn't restrict anyone's free speech rights.
People are independent, conscious and self-aware entities. At this point in time and in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence, we have not yet created synthetic entities that are independent, conscious, and self-aware. Until such point that we do, we should not refer to "bots" or so-called "AI"-based mechanisms in any manner that conveys the impression that these are independent, conscious, and self-aware entities - it only serves to confuse the issues being discussed.
In contexts where people expect to be conversing with an independent, conscious, and self-aware entity, I think it is a useful distinction to have the mechanism that is merely simulating such an entity be identified as such. This identification would not harm anyone's free speech rights, it would merely make it clear that whoever is "speaking" is doing so through a simulation mechanism and not by themselves, directly.
At the future point in time when we have created synthetic independent, conscious, and self-aware entities we can have the debate over whether it is a restriction of "free speech" for such an entity to identify itself as synthetic, and whether those entities should have rights the same as the organic naturally-evolved entities of the species homo sapiens. Until then, these proposals are in my opinion only going to make clear that a mechanism that is not independent, conscious, and self-aware is at the other end of a communication when the typical expectation is otherwise, and that is a useful distinction.
Thanks for the insight; I hadn't considered that the charge would ratchet up.
Your scenario sounds unlikely. You made no mention of the Windows Technician scam call he would receive from India, during which the caller would gain access to the machine and clear out all of the Chinese malware to avoid competition. It also neglects to add in enough delay caused by the random Microsoft Windows 10 updates and reboots interrupting the Chinese "support technician" and the Indian "Microsoft Technical Support" caller.
The police said the real problem was breaking into an *occupied* house (emphasis mine). Isn't the real problem the fact that the individual broke into a house that wasn't his? The fact that the house was or was not occupied shouldn't be a mitigating circumstance.
His excuse "looking for a WiFi password" isn't a good reason to enter a home that didn't belong to him (trying to find a phone to call 911 for someone dying would be a good excuse in my opinion [if true]). Based on the other circumstances described in the article, I'm disinclined to believe that he was just looking for a WiFi password. Sounds more like a very troubled youth getting kicks acting out. Hopefully the police/justice system will give him the consequences he needs.
All of the discussion about whether or not he could have/should have been shot is moot. He wasn't (fortunately). But the event is certainly a signal that action is required to head off a future problem.