The point you missed is that when one makes a voice call there is immediate feedback on whether or not the call got through. If it didn't go through one tries again. With text messaging, that feedback is not there. There is no way of knowing whether or not the message got through. It does not matter that text is not a replacement for voice. If the text message does not get through but the sender assumes it does the incident will not be responded to and people can die.
Now, instead of getting multiple phone calls about a traffic accident, the dispatcher can much more quickly ignore the duplicates.
You may want to look into emergency dispatch systems before commenting. First it is not a dispatcher that filters duplicate calls it is the 911 operators. Second, in large systems there can be a large number of 911 operators. The way most systems work is that when a 911 operator takes a call she posts a note on the system for all other operators to see. When a duplicate call comes in it is identified by checking the posted list. It does not matter if the call comes in by test or voive the list still needs to be updated.
This is an ideal way of sending information when you want to report that you saw something that may need their attention, but you personally don't need a response.
Anything important enough to use the 911 system is important enough to to have a conversation about. Do you really want thousands of people sending messages to 911 about trivial matters? Also, as in the case of accidents or assault, the caller can be a valuable witness to the incident. Taking a recording as it is happening can be very important. Duplicates are not an issue as the more witnesses the better. This information is lost by using a single text message. By the way, when 911 operators are talking on the phone they typing the information into the system so the dispatches can pass it along to the responders. They can not type a reply to the texter and keep the system updated at the same time.
Text messages are short. Is the average citizen going to be able to cram all the information needed by 911 into 160 characters. In almost all cases a 911 operator will need more information so a two way conversation is necessary.
Have you ever tried to type on a touch screen when under stress? I have enough trouble when completely calm.
Slashdot has a few thousand posts a day. Facebook has a few billion posts a day. That is a difference by a factor of a million. Even if Slashdot has only one moderator, I suspect there are more, do you really think it is valid for Facebook to hire and pay a million moderators? Spam is an issue on Facebook and, unless you have a better viable idea (moderators are not), software is the only viable tool to effectively combat it.
Face it, Slashdot is a relatively small community when compared with Facebook. Slashdot is generally made up of tech savvy people. These factors decrease the usefulness of spam on Slashdot so Slashdot is generally not a target of spam. On the other hand, Facebook is a million times larger and is populated by people who are generally not tech savvy. Facebook is a huge target. They must keep the majority of their customers happy and a majority like spam filters. You can't please everyone all the time but Facebook is doing their best.
And my bottom line reads: isn't it better to get an extra spam message rather then a forever missing good message?
Is it better to get 80% spam messages than to forever miss.01% good messages? We are not talking a one to one ration of spam to missing. If that was the case then the filters need adjusting. What we are talking about is more like thousands of spam vs a few missing. As Google has stated for every missing good message identified they use that information to adjust the filters. I believe that would be considered "dynamic learning".
The other issue is that comparing Slashdot where at most a few thousand posts are made per day and Facebook where on average 3.2 billion Likes and Comments are posted each day. There is no way Facebook can effectively moderate all those posts using people. They have to use technology.
And I would leave Slashdot as soon as they'd start filtering posts.
I guess this is the last time I will see you here then. Take a look at the lower right corner of every post. That flag is to report inappropriate comments. Here are a couple of quotes from the FAQ;
How do I report abuse? Below and to the right of each comment is a small "Anti" symbol; click on this, and (optionally) explain why you consider the comment abusive. (Slashdot discussions are and should be robust; only cry "Abuse!" for comments that are utterly without redeeming value -- spam, racist ranting, etc. For everything else, use the other moderation options.) Reported comments will be reviewed and moderated by the editors, if appropriate.
Are there anti-troll filters? A handful of filters have been put into place to try to make sure that people don't abuse the system. For instance, the same person can't post more than once every 120 seconds. Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short span, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user... a cooling off period, if you will.
If you believe you've been unfairly banned, let us know, so we can fix it.
So yes, Slashdot has is filtering posts though by human intervention. We will miss you.
The people celebrating yesterday understand this and are not disputing it
That is a big assumption. It is equally possible that the people celebrating yesterday do not know about the increase in fossil fuel consumption and related increase in CO2 levels. They may be so focused on the "dangers" of nuclear power that nothing else registers. The 15% reduction may or may not be attainable and by August there may be shortages. At that time I bet there will be even bigger protest demanding Japan turn those reactors back on. Would you rather have the reactors come on line in a slow controlled manner or as a last ditch effort in response to blackouts and protests? If there is ever a time corners would be cut it would be in the latter case.
The point I am trying to make is that Japan is the 5th largest emitter of CO2. If they increase their CO2 output by 54% they become the 4th. By shutting down the reactors, Japan has caused a significant increase in CO2 emissions and may have a significant effect on Global Warming.
There are other factors than "can Japan get enough power"; rise in the price of natural gas, increase in energy prices overall, slowing of economic growth, etc.
Some more math. The article states that at most 5,500 people attended the celebration. To most of us that seems like a pretty big number. Considering that the population of Tokyo is over 12M that 5,500 people represents 0.05% of the population. That means that one in every 2000 residents of Tokyo showed up. To me, that is not a big ratio. What were the other 1999 people doing? I bet a more than one of them were worried about the electricity supply and/or the effects of additional CO2 emissions and did not go to the celebration.
What'd be the difference between "filtering" and "censoring"?
Filtering is removing things the user does not want to see such as comments unrelated to the topic and/or are just advertising. Censorship is removing content the user wants to see
How would you tell spam and non-spam apart?
There are many algorithms and none are perfect. It is a trade off between false positives and false negatives. A human can easily tell what is spam; it is much harder for a computer. The algorithms attempt to simulate the human decision process.
Will I still be able to read what you filtered out as spam?
Probably not as spam is not posted
Why don't you leave the users themselves to trash what they consider useless on their own?
Because there have been many complaints about spam. Many pages are unusable because the "signal to noise ratio" is too low. To act on these complaints and to keep the system usable spam filters have been implemented.
The numbers I quoted are production number and not capacity numbers. How do you get around a 54% increase in fossil fuel based production with a 15% possible reduction in consumption?
One of the tactics the Japan has been using is to bring older natural gas and coal plants back into operation. Take a look at this article. Here is a quote.
With the loss of nuclear energy, the Ministry of Environment projects that Japan will produce about 15 percent more greenhouse gas emissions this fiscal year than it did in 1990, the baseline year for measuring progress in reducing emissions. In fiscal 2010, Japan's actual emissions were close to 1990 levels. It also raises doubts about whether it will be able to meet a pledge made in Copenhagen in 2009 to slash emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
So by closing of the nuclear power plants is projected to increase overall CO2 emission from Japan by 15%.
If administrators were monitoring students' Facebook activity without being truthful about their identity, that is a breach of trust, Brown said in an interview.
She pretended to be a student so that she could monitor student activity on Facebook. In my mind it is also fraud in that she misrepresented her identity to gain information that she would not normally have access to.
Her actions after she was found out is proof of a guilty conscience. Had she come out and admitted to faking an account and defended why she did it I may have believed that she had been mistaken in her actions. Instead, she ran, hid and quit her job; no apology, no explanation. Those are the action of someone who knew what she was doing was wrong. She may have been forced to resign by the board but that still does not rule out apologizing to the students whose trust she violated.
Before the accident 27% of Japan's energy came from nuclear power. Even if everyone could 15% (which is impossible because many big users are already conserving due to costs) that still leaved 12% unaccounted for. Sure green power can make up for some of that in the long term but in the short term it means increased import and burning of fossil fuels. A 54% increase in fossil fuel base electricity production in one year is significant.
There is also a simple issue with the experiment; the amount of CO2 in the bottles. In 2009 the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 0.0387%. That is 387 parts per million. By allowing the CO2 from the generator to freely flow into the bottle and the fact that CO2 is heavier than air it will displace the regular atmosphere out the top of the open bottle. In effect one will have nearly 100% CO2 in the bottle, lets say 90% to account for some mixing. Between 1960 and 2010 atmospheric CO2 at Muana Loahas increased from 315 ppm to 385 ppm. That is a 20% increase. To go from.0387% to 90% is a 232000% increase. It all comes down to a statement at the 9 second mark in the video; "The problems occur when we have too much carbon dioxide". Obviously a 23200% increase in the concentration of CO2 is too much but where is the line between enough and too much? This experiment does not show that. Comparing the actions of a mostly nitrogen atmosphere to a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere is no where near what is happening on earth.
It is spurious to heap all the the issues from all police agencies together and attempt to use that as justification for not allowing seizure of a server. This case is not about the TSA or riot control; it is about serving a legal warrant.
Using the word "steal" is also invalid. To steal something is an unlawful act. The server was seized in accordance with a duly attested, signed and served search warrant and was therefore completely legal.
This is similar to a search warrant served on a vehicle. The police will generally take the vehicle to a secure indoor area to do the search. Following your rules they would not be allowed to do that if the vehicle was used by anyone other than the person being investigated, maybe their spouse or child, as it would inconvenience them.
As I have said before, I bet you would not believe Google if they said they didn't keep logs so why should the police believe the same statement?
Class action suits are started by one or more people by filing with a court. The court then decides if if it might be a class action lawsuit (see Point A under Prayer For relief in the complaint). The judge may stipulate how many more plaintiffs that would be needed to approve the suit as class action and sets a time limit for these possible plaintiffs to join the suit. If the required number of plaintiffs do not join the suit in the required time the case is thrown out. The point is that there must be a case for other possible plaintiffs to join to certify it as class action.
One of the claims in the suit is about a press release sent out January 26, 2012. Here is the full press release. If you scroll down to the bottom you will see the boilerplate about "forward looking statements". It is at the bottom of every press release.
Actually a search warrant can be executed any time during the day within 15 days of it being signed. The police do not need to tell anyone exactly when the warrant will be executed. There is also nothing in the warrant that states that need to tell people when material will be returned. A search warrant only becomes public record after it has been executed.
How would you do that when the information being looked for could be anywhere on any drive on the server and if the server was kept up could be erased, deliberately or accidentally, by anyone with proper access? How do you handle the competing goals of inconveniencing users and making sure all evidence is gathered and all evidence would be admissible in court. One main issue is that a defense attorney will want to analyze the drive that any evidence has been retrieved from to confirm that it has not been tampered with. One can not do that if the server is still live.
For example, if one is performing a search warrant directed at personal and common areas in a house does one allow the other occupants to use the common areas while the search is going on? It is an inconvenience for everyone in the house but it needs to be done for evidentiary reasons. The same thing goes for a server.
Warrants are issues for places and the place stipulated in this warrant included the server at a specific IP.
If the server was so critical what about backup hardware and disk images. What would have happened if the motherboard just died? Since, supposedly, nothing is stored on the server a clone could have been created in hours. Since that did not happen it points to the server not being all that important.
PS. The "F-F-F-Fuck the FBI! Fuck the police!" attitude is juvenile. If we want them to solve crimes the FBI and Police need to be able to serve warrants and gather evidence. If people are inconvenienced; too bad, that is the price we pay for justice. I bet you attitude would change if a loved one received a credible threat.
We collect up the info that was requested and charge them for our time to do so.
Try putting yourself in the FBI's shoes. Would you really accept the word of any company that they searched every nook and cranny of a customer's server and passed all that information on to the police when something as important as a bomb threat is involved? Any colo has a bias in keeping their customers happy and little interest in keeping the police happy. The colo may net even have access to the information as they may not have proper user ids and passwords. The other issue is that the police may want to admit the hard drive into evidence as it is much more reliable that a copy of a copy of incomplete data retrieved by admins untrained in electronic forensic investigation. The defense needs to have access to all data on the server so they can do their own analysis.
I am not saying the repeated concussions are not contributing factors and need to be taken into account. I believe that, much like hockey players, there is a limit to how much abuse the brain can take. This should cause players to retire earlier.
The major emphasis and driving force in this discussion seems to be the issues of depression, violence and suicide in ex-football players. Lets take a look at the lives of football players; 1. From a young age they have been playing a game that means everything to them 2. They form bonds and relationships with their team mates similar to those of soldiers in combat. 3. They are encouraged to be aggressive ever day in practice and games. Suddenly they retire and everything they lived for in the last twenty years is gone. They lose the football family, their aggression no longer acceptable and has no outlet, they can no longer to the thing they love. They are quickly in a very lonely dark place. Is it any wonder that retired players become depressed. The macho aspect of football may even interfere with players getting help as they do not want to be seen as weak. The posted article states that a few players have asked for help but did any of them or their families commit them to a psychiatric institute, or at least counseling, when they were in trouble? Combine situational depression with brain injury and one has a lethal combination.
What they should be doing is apologizing more and, and talking and working with people more before just seizing servers right and left.
Apologizing for investigating where the evidence leads them? Working with people and giving the warnings of searches so they can erase evidence? Sure your first reaction would be to say "fuck off" but that would not matter if they had a search warrant. By the way, even if the FBI had an excellent reputation (which is impossible in this tin foil hat paranoia world) any criminal would tell the FBI to "fuck off". It would seem that someone pissed off at the FBI's reputation looks a lot like someone who has something to hide.
you catch more flys with honey than vinegar
Actually you catch more criminals by stealth and speed than by broadcasting your intentions. Tell someone you are going to search somewhere and in all likelihood you will not find anything by the time you get there.
Additionally, the shouldn't need to hold computers as evidence for more than a few days. I believe police procedure is to pull and mirror the drives before they do anything to the machine so holding hardware is really just being vindictive.
Copies of evidence are generally less reliable in court as they could have been tampered with. Mirroring is generally to protect the information in case it gets destroyed by accidentally setting off a wipe program. If there is a choice between admitting the original drive into evidence or a backup it is always better to admit the original.
At least have the decency to request the compliance of the company and let them decide to help you track down a scofflaw.
That would just give them time to wipe the drive, reformat it and re-install the disk image. No law enforcement officer is going to give anyone a chance to cover up evidence by telegraphing where they want to search.
It's so hilariously convenient that law enforcement is a barrel of bumbling idiots
Excellent generalization and patently untrue. There are thousands of IT professionals in law enforcement ranging from idiots who get all the press to geniuses who are never seen. If you want to be taken in by the bad press then go ahead and leave yourself open to the ones who can code circles around just about anyone.
As for the "no information on this server" excuse, would you really believe any server owner who said that? Few people would believe that from a large company; why would one believe it from anyone else? Might it be possible that the "annonymizer" is imperfect and there may be usable data on the server? Perhaps the FBI seized to server to cover all their bases. That way if the bombing did happen the FBI can say they did everything possible to prevent it. I believe that the same people who are protesting seizing the server would be blasting the FBI for not seizing the server if a bomb went off.
Slashdot Mirror
The point you missed is that when one makes a voice call there is immediate feedback on whether or not the call got through. If it didn't go through one tries again. With text messaging, that feedback is not there. There is no way of knowing whether or not the message got through. It does not matter that text is not a replacement for voice. If the text message does not get through but the sender assumes it does the incident will not be responded to and people can die.
Now, instead of getting multiple phone calls about a traffic accident, the dispatcher can much more quickly ignore the duplicates.
You may want to look into emergency dispatch systems before commenting. First it is not a dispatcher that filters duplicate calls it is the 911 operators. Second, in large systems there can be a large number of 911 operators. The way most systems work is that when a 911 operator takes a call she posts a note on the system for all other operators to see. When a duplicate call comes in it is identified by checking the posted list. It does not matter if the call comes in by test or voive the list still needs to be updated.
This is an ideal way of sending information when you want to report that you saw something that may need their attention, but you personally don't need a response.
Anything important enough to use the 911 system is important enough to to have a conversation about. Do you really want thousands of people sending messages to 911 about trivial matters? Also, as in the case of accidents or assault, the caller can be a valuable witness to the incident. Taking a recording as it is happening can be very important. Duplicates are not an issue as the more witnesses the better. This information is lost by using a single text message. By the way, when 911 operators are talking on the phone they typing the information into the system so the dispatches can pass it along to the responders. They can not type a reply to the texter and keep the system updated at the same time.
Text messages are short. Is the average citizen going to be able to cram all the information needed by 911 into 160 characters. In almost all cases a 911 operator will need more information so a two way conversation is necessary.
Have you ever tried to type on a touch screen when under stress? I have enough trouble when completely calm.
Slashdot has a few thousand posts a day. Facebook has a few billion posts a day. That is a difference by a factor of a million. Even if Slashdot has only one moderator, I suspect there are more, do you really think it is valid for Facebook to hire and pay a million moderators? Spam is an issue on Facebook and, unless you have a better viable idea (moderators are not), software is the only viable tool to effectively combat it.
Face it, Slashdot is a relatively small community when compared with Facebook. Slashdot is generally made up of tech savvy people. These factors decrease the usefulness of spam on Slashdot so Slashdot is generally not a target of spam. On the other hand, Facebook is a million times larger and is populated by people who are generally not tech savvy. Facebook is a huge target. They must keep the majority of their customers happy and a majority like spam filters. You can't please everyone all the time but Facebook is doing their best.
And my bottom line reads: isn't it better to get an extra spam message rather then a forever missing good message?
Is it better to get 80% spam messages than to forever miss .01% good messages? We are not talking a one to one ration of spam to missing. If that was the case then the filters need adjusting. What we are talking about is more like thousands of spam vs a few missing. As Google has stated for every missing good message identified they use that information to adjust the filters. I believe that would be considered "dynamic learning".
The other issue is that comparing Slashdot where at most a few thousand posts are made per day and Facebook where on average 3.2 billion Likes and Comments are posted each day. There is no way Facebook can effectively moderate all those posts using people. They have to use technology.
And I would leave Slashdot as soon as they'd start filtering posts.
I guess this is the last time I will see you here then. Take a look at the lower right corner of every post. That flag is to report inappropriate comments. Here are a couple of quotes from the FAQ;
How do I report abuse?
Below and to the right of each comment is a small "Anti" symbol; click on this, and (optionally) explain why you consider the comment abusive. (Slashdot discussions are and should be robust; only cry "Abuse!" for comments that are utterly without redeeming value -- spam, racist ranting, etc. For everything else, use the other moderation options.) Reported comments will be reviewed and moderated by the editors, if appropriate.
Are there anti-troll filters? ... a cooling off period, if you will.
A handful of filters have been put into place to try to make sure that people don't abuse the system. For instance, the same person can't post more than once every 120 seconds. Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short span, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user
If you believe you've been unfairly banned, let us know, so we can fix it.
So yes, Slashdot has is filtering posts though by human intervention. We will miss you.
The people celebrating yesterday understand this and are not disputing it
That is a big assumption. It is equally possible that the people celebrating yesterday do not know about the increase in fossil fuel consumption and related increase in CO2 levels. They may be so focused on the "dangers" of nuclear power that nothing else registers. The 15% reduction may or may not be attainable and by August there may be shortages. At that time I bet there will be even bigger protest demanding Japan turn those reactors back on. Would you rather have the reactors come on line in a slow controlled manner or as a last ditch effort in response to blackouts and protests? If there is ever a time corners would be cut it would be in the latter case.
The point I am trying to make is that Japan is the 5th largest emitter of CO2. If they increase their CO2 output by 54% they become the 4th. By shutting down the reactors, Japan has caused a significant increase in CO2 emissions and may have a significant effect on Global Warming.
There are other factors than "can Japan get enough power"; rise in the price of natural gas, increase in energy prices overall, slowing of economic growth, etc.
Some more math. The article states that at most 5,500 people attended the celebration. To most of us that seems like a pretty big number. Considering that the population of Tokyo is over 12M that 5,500 people represents 0.05% of the population. That means that one in every 2000 residents of Tokyo showed up. To me, that is not a big ratio. What were the other 1999 people doing? I bet a more than one of them were worried about the electricity supply and/or the effects of additional CO2 emissions and did not go to the celebration.
What'd be the difference between "filtering" and "censoring"?
Filtering is removing things the user does not want to see such as comments unrelated to the topic and/or are just advertising. Censorship is removing content the user wants to see
How would you tell spam and non-spam apart?
There are many algorithms and none are perfect. It is a trade off between false positives and false negatives. A human can easily tell what is spam; it is much harder for a computer. The algorithms attempt to simulate the human decision process.
Will I still be able to read what you filtered out as spam?
Probably not as spam is not posted
Why don't you leave the users themselves to trash what they consider useless on their own?
Because there have been many complaints about spam. Many pages are unusable because the "signal to noise ratio" is too low. To act on these complaints and to keep the system usable spam filters have been implemented.
You could always click on the flag in the lower right corner of the post and report it as a shill.
The numbers I quoted are production number and not capacity numbers. How do you get around a 54% increase in fossil fuel based production with a 15% possible reduction in consumption?
One of the tactics the Japan has been using is to bring older natural gas and coal plants back into operation. Take a look at this article. Here is a quote.
With the loss of nuclear energy, the Ministry of Environment projects that Japan will produce about 15 percent more greenhouse gas emissions this fiscal year than it did in 1990, the baseline year for measuring progress in reducing emissions. In fiscal 2010, Japan's actual emissions were close to 1990 levels. It also raises doubts about whether it will be able to meet a pledge made in Copenhagen in 2009 to slash emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
So by closing of the nuclear power plants is projected to increase overall CO2 emission from Japan by 15%.
From the article;
If administrators were monitoring students' Facebook activity without being truthful about their identity, that is a breach of trust, Brown said in an interview.
She pretended to be a student so that she could monitor student activity on Facebook. In my mind it is also fraud in that she misrepresented her identity to gain information that she would not normally have access to.
Her actions after she was found out is proof of a guilty conscience. Had she come out and admitted to faking an account and defended why she did it I may have believed that she had been mistaken in her actions. Instead, she ran, hid and quit her job; no apology, no explanation. Those are the action of someone who knew what she was doing was wrong. She may have been forced to resign by the board but that still does not rule out apologizing to the students whose trust she violated.
My bad; I was at least closer to the truth.
According to this Fukushima 4's fuel was removed soon after the disaster and therefore has been shut down for some time.
Before the accident 27% of Japan's energy came from nuclear power. Even if everyone could 15% (which is impossible because many big users are already conserving due to costs) that still leaved 12% unaccounted for. Sure green power can make up for some of that in the long term but in the short term it means increased import and burning of fossil fuels. A 54% increase in fossil fuel base electricity production in one year is significant.
There is also a simple issue with the experiment; the amount of CO2 in the bottles. In 2009 the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 0.0387%. That is 387 parts per million. By allowing the CO2 from the generator to freely flow into the bottle and the fact that CO2 is heavier than air it will displace the regular atmosphere out the top of the open bottle. In effect one will have nearly 100% CO2 in the bottle, lets say 90% to account for some mixing. Between 1960 and 2010 atmospheric CO2 at Muana Loahas increased from 315 ppm to 385 ppm. That is a 20% increase. To go from .0387% to 90% is a 232000% increase. It all comes down to a statement at the 9 second mark in the video; "The problems occur when we have too much carbon dioxide". Obviously a 23200% increase in the concentration of CO2 is too much but where is the line between enough and too much? This experiment does not show that. Comparing the actions of a mostly nitrogen atmosphere to a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere is no where near what is happening on earth.
It is spurious to heap all the the issues from all police agencies together and attempt to use that as justification for not allowing seizure of a server. This case is not about the TSA or riot control; it is about serving a legal warrant.
Using the word "steal" is also invalid. To steal something is an unlawful act. The server was seized in accordance with a duly attested, signed and served search warrant and was therefore completely legal.
This is similar to a search warrant served on a vehicle. The police will generally take the vehicle to a secure indoor area to do the search. Following your rules they would not be allowed to do that if the vehicle was used by anyone other than the person being investigated, maybe their spouse or child, as it would inconvenience them.
As I have said before, I bet you would not believe Google if they said they didn't keep logs so why should the police believe the same statement?
Class action suits are started by one or more people by filing with a court. The court then decides if if it might be a class action lawsuit (see Point A under Prayer For relief in the complaint). The judge may stipulate how many more plaintiffs that would be needed to approve the suit as class action and sets a time limit for these possible plaintiffs to join the suit. If the required number of plaintiffs do not join the suit in the required time the case is thrown out. The point is that there must be a case for other possible plaintiffs to join to certify it as class action.
One of the claims in the suit is about a press release sent out January 26, 2012. Here is the full press release. If you scroll down to the bottom you will see the boilerplate about "forward looking statements". It is at the bottom of every press release.
Actually a search warrant can be executed any time during the day within 15 days of it being signed. The police do not need to tell anyone exactly when the warrant will be executed. There is also nothing in the warrant that states that need to tell people when material will be returned. A search warrant only becomes public record after it has been executed.
Intellectual property law is about reproduction and sale and has nothing to do with seizure during the execution of a search warrant.
How would you do that when the information being looked for could be anywhere on any drive on the server and if the server was kept up could be erased, deliberately or accidentally, by anyone with proper access? How do you handle the competing goals of inconveniencing users and making sure all evidence is gathered and all evidence would be admissible in court. One main issue is that a defense attorney will want to analyze the drive that any evidence has been retrieved from to confirm that it has not been tampered with. One can not do that if the server is still live.
For example, if one is performing a search warrant directed at personal and common areas in a house does one allow the other occupants to use the common areas while the search is going on? It is an inconvenience for everyone in the house but it needs to be done for evidentiary reasons. The same thing goes for a server.
Warrants are issues for places and the place stipulated in this warrant included the server at a specific IP.
If the server was so critical what about backup hardware and disk images. What would have happened if the motherboard just died? Since, supposedly, nothing is stored on the server a clone could have been created in hours. Since that did not happen it points to the server not being all that important.
PS. The "F-F-F-Fuck the FBI! Fuck the police!" attitude is juvenile. If we want them to solve crimes the FBI and Police need to be able to serve warrants and gather evidence. If people are inconvenienced; too bad, that is the price we pay for justice. I bet you attitude would change if a loved one received a credible threat.
We collect up the info that was requested and charge them for our time to do so.
Try putting yourself in the FBI's shoes. Would you really accept the word of any company that they searched every nook and cranny of a customer's server and passed all that information on to the police when something as important as a bomb threat is involved? Any colo has a bias in keeping their customers happy and little interest in keeping the police happy. The colo may net even have access to the information as they may not have proper user ids and passwords. The other issue is that the police may want to admit the hard drive into evidence as it is much more reliable that a copy of a copy of incomplete data retrieved by admins untrained in electronic forensic investigation. The defense needs to have access to all data on the server so they can do their own analysis.
I am not saying the repeated concussions are not contributing factors and need to be taken into account. I believe that, much like hockey players, there is a limit to how much abuse the brain can take. This should cause players to retire earlier.
The major emphasis and driving force in this discussion seems to be the issues of depression, violence and suicide in ex-football players. Lets take a look at the lives of football players;
1. From a young age they have been playing a game that means everything to them
2. They form bonds and relationships with their team mates similar to those of soldiers in combat.
3. They are encouraged to be aggressive ever day in practice and games.
Suddenly they retire and everything they lived for in the last twenty years is gone. They lose the football family, their aggression no longer acceptable and has no outlet, they can no longer to the thing they love. They are quickly in a very lonely dark place. Is it any wonder that retired players become depressed. The macho aspect of football may even interfere with players getting help as they do not want to be seen as weak. The posted article states that a few players have asked for help but did any of them or their families commit them to a psychiatric institute, or at least counseling, when they were in trouble? Combine situational depression with brain injury and one has a lethal combination.
What they should be doing is apologizing more and, and talking and working with people more before just seizing servers right and left.
Apologizing for investigating where the evidence leads them? Working with people and giving the warnings of searches so they can erase evidence? Sure your first reaction would be to say "fuck off" but that would not matter if they had a search warrant. By the way, even if the FBI had an excellent reputation (which is impossible in this tin foil hat paranoia world) any criminal would tell the FBI to "fuck off". It would seem that someone pissed off at the FBI's reputation looks a lot like someone who has something to hide.
you catch more flys with honey than vinegar
Actually you catch more criminals by stealth and speed than by broadcasting your intentions. Tell someone you are going to search somewhere and in all likelihood you will not find anything by the time you get there.
Additionally, the shouldn't need to hold computers as evidence for more than a few days. I believe police procedure is to pull and mirror the drives before they do anything to the machine so holding hardware is really just being vindictive.
Copies of evidence are generally less reliable in court as they could have been tampered with. Mirroring is generally to protect the information in case it gets destroyed by accidentally setting off a wipe program. If there is a choice between admitting the original drive into evidence or a backup it is always better to admit the original.
The responsible thing would have been to request the information from the server owners.
That would give the server owner time to wipe it and claim "scheduled maintenance". No officer is going to tell people where they want to search.
Not at will but you can when you have a search warrant specifically designating the server.
At least have the decency to request the compliance of the company and let them decide to help you track down a scofflaw.
That would just give them time to wipe the drive, reformat it and re-install the disk image. No law enforcement officer is going to give anyone a chance to cover up evidence by telegraphing where they want to search.
It's so hilariously convenient that law enforcement is a barrel of bumbling idiots
Excellent generalization and patently untrue. There are thousands of IT professionals in law enforcement ranging from idiots who get all the press to geniuses who are never seen. If you want to be taken in by the bad press then go ahead and leave yourself open to the ones who can code circles around just about anyone.
As for the "no information on this server" excuse, would you really believe any server owner who said that? Few people would believe that from a large company; why would one believe it from anyone else? Might it be possible that the "annonymizer" is imperfect and there may be usable data on the server? Perhaps the FBI seized to server to cover all their bases. That way if the bombing did happen the FBI can say they did everything possible to prevent it. I believe that the same people who are protesting seizing the server would be blasting the FBI for not seizing the server if a bomb went off.