Ah yes. The standard USA answer. "I want to be able to exercise my rights." "That's silly, you should submit to authority, even when they are not following the law and just having rights, even if it's illegal to actually exercise them, should be enough." I have to justify my wish to be able to exercise my rights, and the cops don't need to justify illegal actions to prevent people from exercising their rights. I think the reasons behind that make a more interesting question.
You make my case for me. You casually ignore my stated belief that you should nail bad cops. (You also state that 'good cops' commit felonies to cover up 'bad cops'... wouldn't that make all parties involed 'bad cops'?) You paint me as a person who thinks we should submit to authority. But in this thread I've made statements about how you cannot forfeit any of your civil rights at any point to convenience yourself. You can't allow a cop to search your vehicle just because he's fishing for something or just trying to ruin your day and you don't want to stir things up. If you have done nothing wrong then you don't submit to the search. Period. I've also stated repeatedly that if you're witnessing a cop breaking the law, nail that officer to the wall and anyone that would cover him along with.
But that's not really the same thing as screaming in the face of some cop deployed to a protest because he's a "facist pig" or because your civil rights means "being able to be as big a dick as you want to cops and not getting arrested", like others in this thread have postulated.
I'm actually a bit of a libertarian in many regards. I don't think that the state should intefere in our lives except where necessary to maintain order. I sure as hell don't think there's any point at which they should suspend our civil rights. But I also think it takes a special kind of stupid to go poking the beehive and act indignant when you get stung. Screaming at cops because they are cops is not a civil right. It's stupid, childish and counterproductive.
You cannot both insist that cops are oppressive thugs that consistently break the law for their own interests and who are just looking for excuses to kick some innocent person's ass, and encourage people to respect officers and support the lawful activities you rely on them to perform.
When you rant about "police", then you paint "police" as a whole as evil and put both citizens and police inherently at odds. By encouraging mistrust of officers in general, you diminish the willingness of citizens to comply with the lawful activities of officers. You actually put both citizens and officers in a mindset that there's a higher likelyhood of conflict and perhaps even violence.
If you want to rail against a bad cop, please, by all means have at it. But you can't stand toe to toe with a line of cops who were deployed to keep protestors out of a private meeting and encourage everyone to believe that they are all evil, and then tell me that you're not undermining lawful activities of law enforcement agents. If you fail to recognize that basic truth then you are dishonestly generalizing and marginalizing for your own purposes. What those purposes might be is an interesting question.
Examples? Don't say, "sometimes criminals lie!" Uh-huh. Sometimes criminals also break the law. If only we had some sort of force of public servants trained, employed and paid to impersonally deal with that.
Seriously? Are you suggesting that generally speaking when cops are called to a crime scene or disturbance, it's more common than not for someone there to say, "Sorry! It was me! My bad! Here, let me put those cuffs on myself for ya!". No. It doesn't happen.
I have 2 friends that are cops. One is on SWAT. Here's an example of something that happened to one this week. She pulls up to a disturbance call she was dispatched to. Drive time was less than 5 minutes. She steps out of the car and the person that called her comes up with a finger wagging in her face threatening a lawsuit because it took the cops so long to show up. She's obviously been drinking. She's got her 2 nephews there with her (2 guys in their 20's). Then she starts yelling and cussing at the people next door who are having a party. The music is audible but not loud, and its only 8pm. The cop finally gets the person who called to calm down enough so that she (the cop) can go next door to talk to the partiers. The caller insists that the music turned way down when the cops showed up. The partiers refuse to open the door, and are standing in the window laughing and insisting that they arent doing anything wrong. So the cop calls in another unit for backup. Eventually they get the owner of the house to come out, and he continues to insist that the music hasn't changed volume at all. At this point the caller is yelling obscenities at her neighbor from her own yard and is being physically restrained by the second cop who arrived so that she doesn't come running over to get in her neighbor's face. They call in another unit for more backup because the situation is deteriorating with the partiers yelling obscenities, the original caller getting more and more physical, and the caller's nephews now standing in the front yard getting more and more pissed at the partiers. The caller, the nephews and the partiers are all getting more pissed at the cops because the cops don't have any evidence to back up anyone's claims, everyone is being hostile to each other and to the cops, and the cops obviously cant just leave without attempting to diffuse the situation. They can't tell anyone to just go home because everyone involved IS home.
This is the kind of no-win situation that cops deal with daily. What do they do? Do they just leave because there's no evidence anyone is really breaking the law? Do they arrest the owner of the party house? Do they cite him for noise disturbance even though they have no evidence? Do they make the party disperse even though they have no evidence that were being disorderly? Do they just hang out all night and babysit? And with any one of the possible choices, is there a chance the cop will get sued or have a complaint filed because a person feels they were wronged by law enforcement?
How many people do you know that could deal with this kind of thing every day for years and not be a bit frayed?
belittled, mistrusted, and portrayed as criminals.
Which country do you live in where this is the predominant attitude toward the police? It must be some sort of quasi-anarchy, because I'm fairly sure there are a lot more civilians than police in every single country.
Have you been reading this thread? Here are some quotes just from this topic:
antagonising the police" isn't a crime
Part of genuine civil liberty is the ability to be as big of a dick to the cops as you want and not get arrested.
"You're out of order. Do your f'ing job properly."
I turned to my wife and said "It's good to be home".
There's no person who is immune to endless abuse and slander. If you continue trying to elicit a reaction, you would be foolish to be surprised when you eventually get one. At some point the cop getting pissed off is the appropriate reaction, and the asshats in this thread that would paint the cop as evil because of it are the same ones attempting to undermine the lawful authority of officers in general from the start.
Now whether that was the appropriate response here I wont comment because I havent read all sides of it yet.
In this particular case I'm a bit uneducated. From the sound of it the cops did cross a line, but I havent read enough to come to a conclusion for myself.
However, that's not what I was addressing. I was speaking to a line of reasoning that says its ok to be as big a dick as you want to police and that it's perfectly legal. That's obviously a false assertion.
A lot of these situations are a result of a mismatch between the respect police officers have earned by putting their own life on the line to deal with lowlifes day in and day out, and the self righteous activist nutjobs that feel it's perfectly valid to portray 'law enforcement' as a whole as corrupt and brutal oppressors.
Look, there are bad cops, and everyone knows it. However, in general cops are people who really do want to help, and who put up with the worst behavior by the worst of society pretty much every day they are on the job. They are rewarded by the general public by being lied to, belittled, mistrusted, and portrayed as criminals. There are people in this thread happily making the case that cops are outright evil, and that it's a citizen's right to be as rude as possible to them.
You are promoting a perception that cops are out to get ya and that people have a right to despise them, and then acting surprised when cops are inherently defensive. Whats truly amazing is that you fail to recognize it entirely.
And you wonder why cops are defensive and sometimes hostile?
Look at it from their perspective: They put their own ass on the line every day. They swear to uphold the law. They promise to put themselves in danger to prevent harm to innocents. And then they spend all day every day being told "It wasn't me" and "That's not mine, I don't know where it came from" and "Well I didn't know" and "I can't believe you pulled me over for XYZ". They get lied to from start to finish day after day, and in pretty much any interaction they have with the public one or more parties is pissed off about their presence. People are pissed because the cops were called, or because the cops didn't get there fast enough, or because there's nothing the cops can do, or because the cops are required to do something. And then you deal with the apparently appreciable percentage who think it's a citizen's right to be as rude as they want to the cops.
And when all is said and done, your average chucklehead suggests that if a complaint is lodged against a dirty cop that cops in general will arrange an "accident".
Civil Liberty doesn't really have anything to do with a right to be a biligerent asshole to law enforcement. Civil Liberty is your rights to continue a peaceful life, without harming others, and without the state interfering beyond what is required to ensure a rule of law. When you're a biligerent asshole to cops you undermine their ability to enforce the law, and ensure a lawful society. This is not to say, of course, that if an officer is abusing their authority that you must remain silent. But it certainly doesnt suggest that you can be a dick just to be a dick and there wont be very real and quite legal ramifications.
At 16 I did a lot of really stupid things. But it takes a special kind of stupid to think that being a biligerent ass to cops is going to turn out well.
Obviously illegal search of a trunk is far less harmful than gassing. So is the search ok? Just let that one slide? Ok, how about entering your home? If searching your trunk is ok, then entering your house is only a small step further. And if that's ok, then how about searching your home? How about detaining you without a warrant or cause? How about detention indefinately?...
If you're going to selectively enforce your rights, which ones do you enforce? Who chooses? Where do you draw the line on what is 'worth it' and what is not? How long will it be before you realize that you didn't protect your rights and you now find that the precedent is set, and you no longer realistically have them?
According to the Freedom Forum Organization, legal systems, and society at large, recognize limits on the freedom of speech, particularly when freedom of speech conflicts with other values or rights.[27] Limitations to freedom of speech may follow the "harm principle" or the "offense principle", for example in the case of pornography or "hate speech".[28]
When you're openly antagonizing police, or ridiculing them, or mocking them, or deliberately attempting to incite anger from them, you undermine the system of law enforcement. You are quite purposefully attempting to diminish the ability of the officer to do the duty he is sworn to perform, and you are actively interfering in the lawful duties of the state.
That being said, if the officers are abusing their authority, document it and file a complaint. Do it repeatedly. Bust them for the --- crimes --- they are commiting. However, you do not have a 'right' to impune their authority nor impede their duty, and no amount of self-righteous indignation, or missinterpretation of law, or exagerated sense of entitlement changes that.
If it's wrong for an officer of the law to indulge in an over-inflated sense of authority, it is just as wrong for you to.
This guy rakes in a ton of cash because people buy useless crap related to a complete stranger, and he's a whore? I'd say he was just
smart enough to exploit the stupidity of people with more money than brains.
So what's your solution? Just give up? Pack up our computers and store them away?
I really don't know what you're fucking point is other than you seem have a desire to throw a temper tantrum. Everyone is fully aware that you will never fully contain malicious code. But you can minimize your risks, and you can mitigate the damage if someone is able to compromise your security. You'd be an idiot to continue using computers and taking no precautions.
As far as Cisco's claims go, they are pretty well founded. We use that hardware at work, and it actually does a pretty good job mitigating the impact from the rampant stupidity of your average userbase. Users who, by the way, seem to think it's pointless to update their software or let their virus scans actually run because of attitudes much like your own.
And you have a problem with calling the police because... ?
By your reasoning, because there are criminals using the street in front of your house (statistically, a criminal must drive by your place at some point), you should demand that the cops set up a checkpoint on your block to investigate everyone that drives by your home to make sure they aren't breaking, or havent in the past broken any laws. They could stop and shit in your yard, and that would interfere with your rights.
Course there's that itsy bitsy issue with illegal search and seizure... Ah fuck it. Screw em. Stop em all.
From the link for the Cisco ASA 5500 Series, which is hardware level security scanning of network traffic :
Market-proven security capabilities-The Cisco ASA 5500 Series integrates multiple full-featured, high-performance security services, including application-aware firewall, SSL and IPsec VPN, IPS, antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, and web filtering services. These technologies deliver strong network- and application-layer security, user-based access control, worm mitigation, malware protection, improved employee productivity, instant messaging and peer-to-peer control, and secure remote user and site connectivity.
Is it fool-proof? Absolutely not. Nothing is. But it's a hell of a lot more than NO, 0, nil, zip, NULL, or Zero.
Here's a thought: Maybe people could take some personal responsibiilty? Maybe people could realize that ultimately the only way to stop hacks, botnets and malware is to install anti-virus software, run your OS updates, and put in a firewall. Maybe we can stop running to the government with a lawsuit every time we stub our little tootsies, educate ourselves, and deal with the consequences when we're too fucking lazy to.
"I would like to see compromised PCs neutered or otherwise stopped. I would like my rights and freedoms not to be tampered with"
.
Interesting quote. And in many aspects its self-contradicting. "Dont you dare interfere with my freedoms. Just go stomp the shit out of everyone else's to see if they might by shitting in my yard."
You don't want them shitting in your yard, build a fence.
The Federal Government was never tasked with protecting stupid people from themselves. It has taken that upon itself and consistently uses it as a political argument to mandate interference in our lives.
"You're too stupid to understand, dont you see? It's all kinda technical, but the bottom line is we're going to have to issue a license for people who are qualified to [insert activity here]."
But the concept here is much better than some of the alternatives which have been talked about, and the ISPs should do good things voluntarily, I think, rather than postpone it all until it becomes mandated by laws that will most likely go way overboard.
What 'good things' exactly?
There's only 2 ways they can tell if you have code on your system that is potentially harmful:
1) Scan you system/network by actively running code on it.
2) Capture and examine the packets leaving your network.
I'm not a tinfoil hat kinda guy, but neither of those makes me feel warm and fuzzy in the slightest. In the most forgiving light this is a case of "the best defense is a good offense". But in anything but the most forgiving light...
Unless there's suspicion that I'm commiting a crime no one has a right to examine my communications. We keep telling ourselves, "Oh it's just this one thing, and it's for everyone's security, so we'll let it slide." Problem is, we've let so much shit slide that there's a massive framework being put into place, intentionally or not, that some nutcase Presidential administration could seriously abuse.
And it couldn't realistically exist today. When a person can hop into a car and travel 200 miles in a couple of hours to deliver literature or mail or whatever, there's really no method to prevent the passage of information without clamping down with totalitarian controls.
Especially when you consider that most developed areas are no longer self-sufficient. Food and water have to be shipped or transported over great distances, and at the very least the people transporting will talk.
The only way the power of the Presidency is abused is if we tell ourselves "Well this President wont abuse it.", and "Well, its just for a little while.", and "It's for their own good.". As soon as we recognize it's never OK for any President, or any Congress to overstep its authority for any reason, then we retain the power the Founders intended us to have.
I'd like to see a rational discussion that comes to wise conclusions and productive outcomes between a person whose information comes from MediaMatters, and a person whose information comes from TheDrudgeReport.
There are millions of people who make up this very scenario and millions more who go to equally polarizing websites for their information. What's worse, there are millions who get the bulk of their information from places like E! and SportsCenter...
So you have physical access to the machine. You want to execute a command but the machine does not give you the authority to execute that command without proof of identity. So you bypass the retina scan, fingerprint, or other biological verification mechanism and you still can't execute the command without bypassing a bunch of other security features which might require a hardware based security token or ID card. It's not impossible but just getting physical access to the machine doesn't guarantee that you'll have the privileges to do anything.
Physical access to the machine means the ability to use machine level communication, circumventing OS security measures.
And when you open the case it self destructs or shuts off. Now you can't execute any command. Physical access does not mean physical control. You can have physical access to a device and still not be able to control the device due to how the device is constructed. A device can be constructed in such a way that the device itself knows when it's being tampered with.
Ok, it shuts down. I'm standing there staring at the power, which means I can power it on and force it into a machine setup to change boot orders, etc. If it self-destructs the data, that sucks if I wanted to steal the data. But it doesn't help much if my intent was to destroy it...
So you make it physically or technically impossible to gain root without biological verification. You have a password which changes every 60 seconds so it's uncrackable, and you put the timing device in the ID card. The ID card along with biological identity verification is extremely difficult to crack. It's not impossible but you won't be able to do it with any kind of ease.
Absolutely correct. You can lock it down with biometrics. Which is great... unless of course you hired me to monitor and maintain your environment and gave me those accesses... Realistically I'm not going to be walking into the NASDAQ datacenter on a whim. If I'm there, it's because you opened the door and/or handed me the keys. Which is why I suggested you probably didnt intend to bring up physical access.
If you've done things right the commands they can execute on that machine will be limited and password protected. You want to write to the machine? Now you have to enter in your key and identity and if someone writes under your name, you'll be the one going to jail.
If it's password protected, it's possible to obtain the passwords. Social engineering, phishing, etc. I can probably walk around at lunch today and obtain 20 passwords from sticky notes on people's desks or in drawers. And I pretty much promise you that better than 20% of the passwords people use at work are the same ones they use for systems like gmail, their bank accounts, their storage unit... People recycle because they don't want to remember multiple passwords. I don't have to crack your work computer. I just have to crack the account system at your gym and there's a notable possibility I'll be able to use it for everything you access. Computers can be secured well. People are still stupid and lazy.
Possible but unlikely. It's possible to hack anything if you have military level precision in your operation.
It's possible to hack anything... That's all I was saying. I never suggested it was a no brainer, or even that there are more than maybe 5 people in the world that could pull it off. But the point is that it's possible, particularly with funding and cover. You can't secure all the people that access NASDAQ either. That kind of attack is wholly outside your control. You could mitigate it by having an automatic scram code built into financial markets, but that would be an artificial mechanism that would interfere in an organic and legit mass correction of the markets too.
You can never say you are 100% secure, and if you do you're ignorant or flat out lying. Even al
If you give me physical access to a machine, there is absolutely nothing that's going to prevent me from having absolute control of all data on the machine if I want it. Period. All I need is about 15 minutes and that time is only based on needing to get through the padlock on the case/rack. I'm guessing you didn't intend to suggest actually gaining physical access though.
Securing a system properly just means you've used security best practices, and you've defended against all known forms of attack. That doesn't mean attackers stop developing new intrusions. If an attacker is able to breach the system and gain root, then they have full access. If you've done things right they still don't have access to the network, and are limited to just that one machine. But there are no gaurantees. That's why there are thousands upon thousands of people whose whole job is watching monitoring tools to detect intrusion attempts.
That being said, consider this: Lets pretend that 100% security at NASDAQ is possible. Now consider the millions of computers all around the globe that are connecting to NASDAQ all day every day from podunk little investment offices in places like Sterling Nebraska. Places that have uneducated or lazy IT staff, or the IT staff is also the accountants and financial advisors. It's not a stretch to build a botnet from those poorly secured machines and coordinate a massive influx of bad transactions all at once. Billions of dollars could change hands in micro-seconds and it wouldn't have a damn thing to do with NASDAQ's security. You'd also have any banking/transaction information from that branch at your disposal.
The nuke codes argument is a straw man. Nukes and the computers with the codes are not connected to open networks. There arent any data paths to them from the outside specifically for the suggested reason. NASDAQ, conversely, inherently requires access to brokerage firms and banks globally at all times.
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Ah yes. The standard USA answer. "I want to be able to exercise my rights." "That's silly, you should submit to authority, even when they are not following the law and just having rights, even if it's illegal to actually exercise them, should be enough." I have to justify my wish to be able to exercise my rights, and the cops don't need to justify illegal actions to prevent people from exercising their rights. I think the reasons behind that make a more interesting question.
You make my case for me. You casually ignore my stated belief that you should nail bad cops. (You also state that 'good cops' commit felonies to cover up 'bad cops'... wouldn't that make all parties involed 'bad cops'?) You paint me as a person who thinks we should submit to authority. But in this thread I've made statements about how you cannot forfeit any of your civil rights at any point to convenience yourself. You can't allow a cop to search your vehicle just because he's fishing for something or just trying to ruin your day and you don't want to stir things up. If you have done nothing wrong then you don't submit to the search. Period. I've also stated repeatedly that if you're witnessing a cop breaking the law, nail that officer to the wall and anyone that would cover him along with.
But that's not really the same thing as screaming in the face of some cop deployed to a protest because he's a "facist pig" or because your civil rights means "being able to be as big a dick as you want to cops and not getting arrested", like others in this thread have postulated.
I'm actually a bit of a libertarian in many regards. I don't think that the state should intefere in our lives except where necessary to maintain order. I sure as hell don't think there's any point at which they should suspend our civil rights. But I also think it takes a special kind of stupid to go poking the beehive and act indignant when you get stung. Screaming at cops because they are cops is not a civil right. It's stupid, childish and counterproductive.
You cannot both insist that cops are oppressive thugs that consistently break the law for their own interests and who are just looking for excuses to kick some innocent person's ass, and encourage people to respect officers and support the lawful activities you rely on them to perform.
When you rant about "police", then you paint "police" as a whole as evil and put both citizens and police inherently at odds. By encouraging mistrust of officers in general, you diminish the willingness of citizens to comply with the lawful activities of officers. You actually put both citizens and officers in a mindset that there's a higher likelyhood of conflict and perhaps even violence.
If you want to rail against a bad cop, please, by all means have at it. But you can't stand toe to toe with a line of cops who were deployed to keep protestors out of a private meeting and encourage everyone to believe that they are all evil, and then tell me that you're not undermining lawful activities of law enforcement agents. If you fail to recognize that basic truth then you are dishonestly generalizing and marginalizing for your own purposes. What those purposes might be is an interesting question.
Examples? Don't say, "sometimes criminals lie!" Uh-huh. Sometimes criminals also break the law. If only we had some sort of force of public servants trained, employed and paid to impersonally deal with that.
Seriously? Are you suggesting that generally speaking when cops are called to a crime scene or disturbance, it's more common than not for someone there to say, "Sorry! It was me! My bad! Here, let me put those cuffs on myself for ya!". No. It doesn't happen.
I have 2 friends that are cops. One is on SWAT. Here's an example of something that happened to one this week. She pulls up to a disturbance call she was dispatched to. Drive time was less than 5 minutes. She steps out of the car and the person that called her comes up with a finger wagging in her face threatening a lawsuit because it took the cops so long to show up. She's obviously been drinking. She's got her 2 nephews there with her (2 guys in their 20's). Then she starts yelling and cussing at the people next door who are having a party. The music is audible but not loud, and its only 8pm. The cop finally gets the person who called to calm down enough so that she (the cop) can go next door to talk to the partiers. The caller insists that the music turned way down when the cops showed up. The partiers refuse to open the door, and are standing in the window laughing and insisting that they arent doing anything wrong. So the cop calls in another unit for backup. Eventually they get the owner of the house to come out, and he continues to insist that the music hasn't changed volume at all. At this point the caller is yelling obscenities at her neighbor from her own yard and is being physically restrained by the second cop who arrived so that she doesn't come running over to get in her neighbor's face. They call in another unit for more backup because the situation is deteriorating with the partiers yelling obscenities, the original caller getting more and more physical, and the caller's nephews now standing in the front yard getting more and more pissed at the partiers. The caller, the nephews and the partiers are all getting more pissed at the cops because the cops don't have any evidence to back up anyone's claims, everyone is being hostile to each other and to the cops, and the cops obviously cant just leave without attempting to diffuse the situation. They can't tell anyone to just go home because everyone involved IS home.
This is the kind of no-win situation that cops deal with daily. What do they do? Do they just leave because there's no evidence anyone is really breaking the law? Do they arrest the owner of the party house? Do they cite him for noise disturbance even though they have no evidence? Do they make the party disperse even though they have no evidence that were being disorderly? Do they just hang out all night and babysit? And with any one of the possible choices, is there a chance the cop will get sued or have a complaint filed because a person feels they were wronged by law enforcement?
How many people do you know that could deal with this kind of thing every day for years and not be a bit frayed?
belittled, mistrusted, and portrayed as criminals.
Which country do you live in where this is the predominant attitude toward the police? It must be some sort of quasi-anarchy, because I'm fairly sure there are a lot more civilians than police in every single country.
Have you been reading this thread? Here are some quotes just from this topic:
antagonising the police" isn't a crime
Part of genuine civil liberty is the ability to be as big of a dick to the cops as you want and not get arrested.
"You're out of order. Do your f'ing job properly." I turned to my wife and said "It's good to be home".
...In London.
Police always (ALWAYS ALWAYS!) stick together!
Even when
There's no person who is immune to endless abuse and slander. If you continue trying to elicit a reaction, you would be foolish to be surprised when you eventually get one. At some point the cop getting pissed off is the appropriate reaction, and the asshats in this thread that would paint the cop as evil because of it are the same ones attempting to undermine the lawful authority of officers in general from the start.
Now whether that was the appropriate response here I wont comment because I havent read all sides of it yet.
In this particular case I'm a bit uneducated. From the sound of it the cops did cross a line, but I havent read enough to come to a conclusion for myself.
However, that's not what I was addressing. I was speaking to a line of reasoning that says its ok to be as big a dick as you want to police and that it's perfectly legal. That's obviously a false assertion.
A lot of these situations are a result of a mismatch between the respect police officers have earned by putting their own life on the line to deal with lowlifes day in and day out, and the self righteous activist nutjobs that feel it's perfectly valid to portray 'law enforcement' as a whole as corrupt and brutal oppressors.
Look, there are bad cops, and everyone knows it. However, in general cops are people who really do want to help, and who put up with the worst behavior by the worst of society pretty much every day they are on the job. They are rewarded by the general public by being lied to, belittled, mistrusted, and portrayed as criminals. There are people in this thread happily making the case that cops are outright evil, and that it's a citizen's right to be as rude as possible to them.
You are promoting a perception that cops are out to get ya and that people have a right to despise them, and then acting surprised when cops are inherently defensive. Whats truly amazing is that you fail to recognize it entirely.
And you wonder why cops are defensive and sometimes hostile?
Look at it from their perspective: They put their own ass on the line every day. They swear to uphold the law. They promise to put themselves in danger to prevent harm to innocents. And then they spend all day every day being told "It wasn't me" and "That's not mine, I don't know where it came from" and "Well I didn't know" and "I can't believe you pulled me over for XYZ". They get lied to from start to finish day after day, and in pretty much any interaction they have with the public one or more parties is pissed off about their presence. People are pissed because the cops were called, or because the cops didn't get there fast enough, or because there's nothing the cops can do, or because the cops are required to do something. And then you deal with the apparently appreciable percentage who think it's a citizen's right to be as rude as they want to the cops.
And when all is said and done, your average chucklehead suggests that if a complaint is lodged against a dirty cop that cops in general will arrange an "accident".
I'd have a pretty fucking short fuse too.
Civil Liberty doesn't really have anything to do with a right to be a biligerent asshole to law enforcement. Civil Liberty is your rights to continue a peaceful life, without harming others, and without the state interfering beyond what is required to ensure a rule of law. When you're a biligerent asshole to cops you undermine their ability to enforce the law, and ensure a lawful society. This is not to say, of course, that if an officer is abusing their authority that you must remain silent. But it certainly doesnt suggest that you can be a dick just to be a dick and there wont be very real and quite legal ramifications.
At 16 I did a lot of really stupid things. But it takes a special kind of stupid to think that being a biligerent ass to cops is going to turn out well.
So which Constitutional rights are OK to betray?
...
Obviously illegal search of a trunk is far less harmful than gassing. So is the search ok? Just let that one slide? Ok, how about entering your home? If searching your trunk is ok, then entering your house is only a small step further. And if that's ok, then how about searching your home? How about detaining you without a warrant or cause? How about detention indefinately?
If you're going to selectively enforce your rights, which ones do you enforce? Who chooses? Where do you draw the line on what is 'worth it' and what is not? How long will it be before you realize that you didn't protect your rights and you now find that the precedent is set, and you no longer realistically have them?
According to the Freedom Forum Organization, legal systems, and society at large, recognize limits on the freedom of speech, particularly when freedom of speech conflicts with other values or rights.[27] Limitations to freedom of speech may follow the "harm principle" or the "offense principle", for example in the case of pornography or "hate speech".[28]
When you're openly antagonizing police, or ridiculing them, or mocking them, or deliberately attempting to incite anger from them, you undermine the system of law enforcement. You are quite purposefully attempting to diminish the ability of the officer to do the duty he is sworn to perform, and you are actively interfering in the lawful duties of the state.
That being said, if the officers are abusing their authority, document it and file a complaint. Do it repeatedly. Bust them for the --- crimes --- they are commiting. However, you do not have a 'right' to impune their authority nor impede their duty, and no amount of self-righteous indignation, or missinterpretation of law, or exagerated sense of entitlement changes that.
If it's wrong for an officer of the law to indulge in an over-inflated sense of authority, it is just as wrong for you to.
This guy rakes in a ton of cash because people buy useless crap related to a complete stranger, and he's a whore? I'd say he was just smart enough to exploit the stupidity of people with more money than brains.
So what's your solution? Just give up? Pack up our computers and store them away?
I really don't know what you're fucking point is other than you seem have a desire to throw a temper tantrum. Everyone is fully aware that you will never fully contain malicious code. But you can minimize your risks, and you can mitigate the damage if someone is able to compromise your security. You'd be an idiot to continue using computers and taking no precautions.
As far as Cisco's claims go, they are pretty well founded. We use that hardware at work, and it actually does a pretty good job mitigating the impact from the rampant stupidity of your average userbase. Users who, by the way, seem to think it's pointless to update their software or let their virus scans actually run because of attitudes much like your own.
And you have a problem with calling the police because... ?
By your reasoning, because there are criminals using the street in front of your house (statistically, a criminal must drive by your place at some point), you should demand that the cops set up a checkpoint on your block to investigate everyone that drives by your home to make sure they aren't breaking, or havent in the past broken any laws. They could stop and shit in your yard, and that would interfere with your rights.
Course there's that itsy bitsy issue with illegal search and seizure... Ah fuck it. Screw em. Stop em all.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps6032/ps6094/ps6120/product_data_sheet0900aecd802930c5.html
From the link for the Cisco ASA 5500 Series, which is hardware level security scanning of network traffic :
Market-proven security capabilities-The Cisco ASA 5500 Series integrates multiple full-featured, high-performance security services, including application-aware firewall, SSL and IPsec VPN, IPS, antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, and web filtering services. These technologies deliver strong network- and application-layer security, user-based access control, worm mitigation, malware protection, improved employee productivity, instant messaging and peer-to-peer control, and secure remote user and site connectivity.
Is it fool-proof? Absolutely not. Nothing is. But it's a hell of a lot more than NO, 0, nil, zip, NULL, or Zero.
I agree, something should be done.
Here's a thought: Maybe people could take some personal responsibiilty? Maybe people could realize that ultimately the only way to stop hacks, botnets and malware is to install anti-virus software, run your OS updates, and put in a firewall. Maybe we can stop running to the government with a lawsuit every time we stub our little tootsies, educate ourselves, and deal with the consequences when we're too fucking lazy to.
"I would like to see compromised PCs neutered or otherwise stopped. I would like my rights and freedoms not to be tampered with"
. Interesting quote. And in many aspects its self-contradicting. "Dont you dare interfere with my freedoms. Just go stomp the shit out of everyone else's to see if they might by shitting in my yard."
You don't want them shitting in your yard, build a fence.
The Federal Government was never tasked with protecting stupid people from themselves. It has taken that upon itself and consistently uses it as a political argument to mandate interference in our lives.
"You're too stupid to understand, dont you see? It's all kinda technical, but the bottom line is we're going to have to issue a license for people who are qualified to [insert activity here]."
You're wrong. You can count concurrent connections.
You mean by... examining the packets and traffic flow from my network?
But the concept here is much better than some of the alternatives which have been talked about, and the ISPs should do good things voluntarily, I think, rather than postpone it all until it becomes mandated by laws that will most likely go way overboard.
What 'good things' exactly?
There's only 2 ways they can tell if you have code on your system that is potentially harmful:
1) Scan you system/network by actively running code on it.
2) Capture and examine the packets leaving your network.
I'm not a tinfoil hat kinda guy, but neither of those makes me feel warm and fuzzy in the slightest. In the most forgiving light this is a case of "the best defense is a good offense". But in anything but the most forgiving light...
Unless there's suspicion that I'm commiting a crime no one has a right to examine my communications. We keep telling ourselves, "Oh it's just this one thing, and it's for everyone's security, so we'll let it slide." Problem is, we've let so much shit slide that there's a massive framework being put into place, intentionally or not, that some nutcase Presidential administration could seriously abuse.
And it couldn't realistically exist today. When a person can hop into a car and travel 200 miles in a couple of hours to deliver literature or mail or whatever, there's really no method to prevent the passage of information without clamping down with totalitarian controls.
Especially when you consider that most developed areas are no longer self-sufficient. Food and water have to be shipped or transported over great distances, and at the very least the people transporting will talk.
He only has the power if We, The People allow it.
The only way the power of the Presidency is abused is if we tell ourselves "Well this President wont abuse it.", and "Well, its just for a little while.", and "It's for their own good.". As soon as we recognize it's never OK for any President, or any Congress to overstep its authority for any reason, then we retain the power the Founders intended us to have.
More Devil's Advocate :)
I'd like to see a rational discussion that comes to wise conclusions and productive outcomes between a person whose information comes from MediaMatters, and a person whose information comes from TheDrudgeReport.
There are millions of people who make up this very scenario and millions more who go to equally polarizing websites for their information. What's worse, there are millions who get the bulk of their information from places like E! and SportsCenter...
So you have physical access to the machine. You want to execute a command but the machine does not give you the authority to execute that command without proof of identity. So you bypass the retina scan, fingerprint, or other biological verification mechanism and you still can't execute the command without bypassing a bunch of other security features which might require a hardware based security token or ID card. It's not impossible but just getting physical access to the machine doesn't guarantee that you'll have the privileges to do anything.
Physical access to the machine means the ability to use machine level communication, circumventing OS security measures.
And when you open the case it self destructs or shuts off. Now you can't execute any command. Physical access does not mean physical control. You can have physical access to a device and still not be able to control the device due to how the device is constructed. A device can be constructed in such a way that the device itself knows when it's being tampered with.
Ok, it shuts down. I'm standing there staring at the power, which means I can power it on and force it into a machine setup to change boot orders, etc. If it self-destructs the data, that sucks if I wanted to steal the data. But it doesn't help much if my intent was to destroy it...
So you make it physically or technically impossible to gain root without biological verification. You have a password which changes every 60 seconds so it's uncrackable, and you put the timing device in the ID card. The ID card along with biological identity verification is extremely difficult to crack. It's not impossible but you won't be able to do it with any kind of ease.
Absolutely correct. You can lock it down with biometrics. Which is great... unless of course you hired me to monitor and maintain your environment and gave me those accesses... Realistically I'm not going to be walking into the NASDAQ datacenter on a whim. If I'm there, it's because you opened the door and/or handed me the keys. Which is why I suggested you probably didnt intend to bring up physical access.
If you've done things right the commands they can execute on that machine will be limited and password protected. You want to write to the machine? Now you have to enter in your key and identity and if someone writes under your name, you'll be the one going to jail.
If it's password protected, it's possible to obtain the passwords. Social engineering, phishing, etc. I can probably walk around at lunch today and obtain 20 passwords from sticky notes on people's desks or in drawers. And I pretty much promise you that better than 20% of the passwords people use at work are the same ones they use for systems like gmail, their bank accounts, their storage unit... People recycle because they don't want to remember multiple passwords. I don't have to crack your work computer. I just have to crack the account system at your gym and there's a notable possibility I'll be able to use it for everything you access. Computers can be secured well. People are still stupid and lazy.
Possible but unlikely. It's possible to hack anything if you have military level precision in your operation.
It's possible to hack anything... That's all I was saying. I never suggested it was a no brainer, or even that there are more than maybe 5 people in the world that could pull it off. But the point is that it's possible, particularly with funding and cover. You can't secure all the people that access NASDAQ either. That kind of attack is wholly outside your control. You could mitigate it by having an automatic scram code built into financial markets, but that would be an artificial mechanism that would interfere in an organic and legit mass correction of the markets too.
You can never say you are 100% secure, and if you do you're ignorant or flat out lying. Even al
If you give me physical access to a machine, there is absolutely nothing that's going to prevent me from having absolute control of all data on the machine if I want it. Period. All I need is about 15 minutes and that time is only based on needing to get through the padlock on the case/rack. I'm guessing you didn't intend to suggest actually gaining physical access though.
Securing a system properly just means you've used security best practices, and you've defended against all known forms of attack. That doesn't mean attackers stop developing new intrusions. If an attacker is able to breach the system and gain root, then they have full access. If you've done things right they still don't have access to the network, and are limited to just that one machine. But there are no gaurantees. That's why there are thousands upon thousands of people whose whole job is watching monitoring tools to detect intrusion attempts.
That being said, consider this: Lets pretend that 100% security at NASDAQ is possible. Now consider the millions of computers all around the globe that are connecting to NASDAQ all day every day from podunk little investment offices in places like Sterling Nebraska. Places that have uneducated or lazy IT staff, or the IT staff is also the accountants and financial advisors. It's not a stretch to build a botnet from those poorly secured machines and coordinate a massive influx of bad transactions all at once. Billions of dollars could change hands in micro-seconds and it wouldn't have a damn thing to do with NASDAQ's security. You'd also have any banking/transaction information from that branch at your disposal.
The nuke codes argument is a straw man. Nukes and the computers with the codes are not connected to open networks. There arent any data paths to them from the outside specifically for the suggested reason. NASDAQ, conversely, inherently requires access to brokerage firms and banks globally at all times.