0. We have enough information to prove the safe belongs to you so you are confirming nothing. Open it. 1.We have evidence of data and programs being accessed from that computer up to the time we seized it and it was taken from your possession. It has been in legal custody since then and we have not tampered with it. It is not plausible that you do not know the real password. 3. You don't have to tell us the password you just need to provide an unencrypted copy of the contents as the subpoena requires.
Has anyone actually read the 5th? If not here is is: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"
The few words that are relevant here are "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself".
A defendant does not have to answer questions about a case but has to allow lawful searches and provide subpoenaed documents in readable form. If those documents or other evidence is in a safe the defendant is required to open the safe. To me that is the same thing as providing a password.
Another point is that the founding fathers never conceived of a situation where evidence could be hidden in plain sight by using a special word. They never took that into account when they wrote the amendment and interpretation has to change to take that issue into account.
Here are a few differences Buckethead killing me is very different that an accidental outbreak killing billions of people. Would I do something that may kill me? Possibly. Would I do something that may kill billions of people? Probably not. In the later case my probability threshold would be much lower. I never said that an outbreak had the same possibility as flipping 1000 heads in a row; that was just an example of low probability. I believe it is much more likely. In fact all it takes is a dedicated individual; as happened in the case of weaponized anthrax.
Probability is not the only criteria. Consequences are not the only criteria. It is a combination of the two. The two combine to form risk. Hi probability, low consequence is low risk. Low probability extreme consequences is high risk. Yes, there is a low probability of the research causing an outbreak but since the consequences could be billions of deaths I say we should not do it.
I may even support the the kind of research you suggest but that is not waht is being done.
The reserachers are creating deadly viruses that may kill millions of people in hopes of finding out how that become deadly. If one of these deadly viruses gets out the world may be destroyed by the research itself. The issue is the research itself may kill us before nature makes the virus that may or may not kill us.
Bad analogy. This assumes that you want to kill 1/3 of the population. The issue is to try not to kill people. There is an axiom in all decision-making; If you can not deal with the worst case scenario then don't do it. Killing billions of people is a pretty bad worst case scenario.
Bad analogy. The research is not unending knowledge.
And how could you possibly live with yourself knowing one day you might be the one infected with the super flu virus, created in a lab due to the research you allowed, that kills everyone?
The difference is that a super bug may or may not evolve in the wild. It is a certainty that such a superbug will be made in a lab because that is what they are trying to do. The only issue being is whether of not it will get loose. For me the risk of one getting loose is higher than one being created in the wild that could be dealt with due to the research.
I think that your reward for research needs to be re-defined.
Reward of research: Decrease risk of Billions of people dying if natural strains evolve exactly the same as in the research and spread.
The reason for the change from "eliminate" to "decrease" is that there is no gaurantee that the research will be applicable to the virus that evolves in the wild. The reason for removing the last clause is that containment failing is not a reward.
In my estimation the risk of release of a research pathogen outweighs the possible benifit of the research as it applies to viruses in the wild.
How abot this analogy? Lets build a virus that will kill millions of people on the off chance that the research may help with a vaccine for a similar virus that may or may not evolve in the wild.
Research into one virus does not mean that the same research will not be needed to be done for a different virus (one created in the wild). Another point is what if the release happens before a vaccine is created? One now has a virulent strain of virus, that may never have been created naturally, in the wild with no vaccine and millions of people may die before the vaccine is created.
The bottom line is that nature is doing a good enough job of killing us without our help. We are helping by helping by pushing viruses in directions that they may not go in nature and possibly creating pathogens that can kill millions of people because we have not found the vaccine.
Which is better? There is no action that creates zero risk of Billions of people dying.
I never said there was a zero risk. I believe there is a higher risk of billions of people dying if the research is done. Say for example, if the risk of a virus outbreak was 50. Say that the research could deal with 20 points of that risk so now the total risk would be 30. But say the risk of a virulant virus being released was 30. Now you have a total risk of 60. The total risk with research is higher that the total risk without research.
The issue with your statement is that there is no "it". Virus mutation can go in many different directions. If the researchers mutate a virus in one direction and come up with a vaccine that is great for that virus. If nature goes in a slightly different direction and mutates the virus in a different way the reasearch done is useless as the vaccine for the research virus will not work on the wild virus. Even if the research virus has a vaccine there is nothing to say that if the research virus ever escapes that it will not immediately combine with another virus in the wild and make the vaccine ineffective. There is no way to research all possible viruses and come up with vaccines for all of them.
The fact that something with a small probability has not happened in the past does not mean that it will not happen in the future. The issue with this research is that the consequences of release are so grave; death of billions of people.
There are safeguards in place to prevent the escape of a deadly virus. There is also an unknown sequence of events that would lead to the release of a virus. The sequence is unknown or there would be a safeguard in place to stop it. Now equate that sequence of events to flipping a coin 1000 times and all coming up heads; probability 1x(10^-300)%. That is extremely low probability but still may happen.
Think of this analogy; Flip 1000 coins and if they all come up heads kill 1/3 of the earth's population. How many times would you do this test before considering this test to be safe?
In my opinion it is not safe on the first test. It is a risk/reward analysis; to me the risk of killing billions of people is much heavier on my scale of importance than any reward from the research.
Faster for you maybe but this issue is that going through the process of creating links distracts the mind from the topic being studied. Therefore it takes time to get back to the real subject if one has to go through the multiple steps of linking. Alternately one could just leave the book open to the page of interest and open another book next to it; no linking, not distraction.
How much time does it take to set up all the links? Keeping a book open is much faster. Are these panes visible together or are they really more like browser tabs. If they are like tabs that mans that I need to switch from one text to another and can not see both at the same time. Even electronic bookmarks are slower. A sticky note in a book is much easier to find than some label in a list of bookmarks.
Sorry but I have never seen a laptop with a screen big enough to display 8 8.5x11 pages at full size at the same time. That is equivalent to having 4 textbooks open on a table at the same time.
My issue with ereader textbooks is that many times I need multiple textbooks available at the same time. I like to be able to quickly scan between books and look at and compare books. I can not do that if I have to flip between books and the one I just looked at dissapeared. Sorry but I do not have enough cash for multiple ereaders. The time it takes to navigate between different books and the thought necissary to manipulate the e-reader is enough to loose my train of thought.
There are live flu vaccines. From the CDC site; "The nasal-spray flu vaccine — a vaccine made with live, weakened flu viruses that is given as a nasal spray (sometimes called LAIV for “Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine”). The viruses in the nasal spray vaccine do not cause the flu. LAIV is approved for use in healthy* people 2 through 49 years of age who are not pregnant." Here are some of the side effects possible from a LAIV vaccine; "In children, side effects can include runny nose, headache, wheezing, vomiting, muscle aches, and fever. In adults, side effects can include runny nose, headache, sore throat, and cough. Fever is not a common side effect in adults receiving the nasal-spray flu vaccine." Most people would call those side effects the flu. One may not get the same flu as being inocculated against but one may get a lesser case of flu
Furthermore, vaccines aren't used to stop people from getting infected; they're used to stop the movement of a virus from one location to another.
You are completely wrong here. Vaccines stopping people from being infected therefore when people move around they are not infected and therefore can not spread the infection. How do you think a vaccine that does not stop infection stops movement?
The entire idea is that if the vaccine is used correctly, THE VIRUS WILL NEVER REACH YOUR AREA. If it does, the vaccine failed to do its job.
What is your idea on what "correctly" is? Vaccinate everyone in an outbreak area? What about people who travel with the virus before the outbreak is recognized? Vaccinate everyone in the world? Not going to happen unless legislated and then money and vaccine supply is an issue. Trace everyone who left an outbreak area and vaccinate everyone they came into contact with? Given air travel this scenario rapidly becomes "vaccinate the world".
Sorry but outbreaks is LA, San Fran and San Deigo with and outbreak in Tiajuana Mexico would qualify for "pandemic". Take a look at Europe; Say the outbreaks were in Luxumberg, Belgium and Holland. Multiple countries yet a small area but still qualifies as a pandemic. Neither of these examples cover a large area but both qualify as a pandemic because a virus crossed a border.
To me, global means involving countries from around the world. It does not mean two countries next to each other; That would be defined as international. Now if the definition was at least three continents then I agree with "global"
1. Get the flu from the vaccine even though the virus never reached your area. 2. Force Governments to spend billions of dollars on vaccines that are never used. 3. Avoid people, cancel vacations, etc in hopes of not getting disease even though disease is not present.
My issue with the use of pandemic is that the threshold is so low for it's use but people equating it to to events like the Black Death. Fewer people died from the "Bird Flu Pandemic" a few years ago than normally die each flu season. Most people equate pandemic with mass death and that is just not always the case. Pandemic is mainly defined by mutation and spread and not virilance and mortality.
It does not have to be "global scale". Here is a quote from the WHO criteria for declaring a pandemic.
"The Pandemic will be declared when the new virus sub-type has been shown to cause several outbreaks in at least one country, and to have spread to other countries, with consistent disease patterns indicating that serious morbidity and mortality is likely in at least one segment of the population."
So a new flu strain in two countries that could cause death in elderly people would be considered a pandemic. That is far from a global scale. It may eventually become global but does not need to be global to be declared a pandemic.
Say a Doftor has 1000 patients and the national average for files lost by patients is 3% (eg 30) Here are three scenarios; 1. 10 files from the doctor are "at large". Probably patienterror. 2. 60 Files at large. Maybe investigate but probably not too hard. 3. 600 files at large. This is probably due to the doctor and requires deep investigation.
Notice that numbers do not indicate guilt but the need for investigation. The other things is that if for the files to be stolen from patients, the theives have to go to each individual's home, search it and steal the documents. Do you really think that someone is going to commit hundreds, if not thousands of B&Es, to get medical information? It is much easier to break into the DR office or pay the Dr.
The issue isn't when one medical file get sold by a doctor as a single file is useless. usually the problem is when hundreds of files are sold from the same doctor. Plausible deniability goes away when a large number of records, more than the national average, from a single doctor get loose. Sorry but I doubt very much any doctor can legitimately claim that all those documents were lost by individual patients.
When it comes to police in most civilized societies, you get to have a very simple dialogue. You can say: "I refuse to volunteer for any such [delay]; but if you order me to do so, I will comply with any order you give."
The officer would probably reply "You have two choices; you can have your bag swabbed or you can leave the station by those stairs". There is an inaccuracy in your statement; you never "volunteered", you were selected by a random number generator. You have the choice of complying with the request or not riding the train.
Since you have declined consent the officer would ask you to leave as is stated in the poster you walked past and didn't read.. If you continued to ask questions without moving toward the exit you could be arrested for trespassing(or something like that not sure of the exact charge). Then you would be under arrest and subject to search. Therefore by trying to be cute you get searched anyway.
No but you must leave the station and not on a train.
Officer, am I free to go?
Yes but you must leave the station and not on a train.
If the police were confronted by this 90% er 50% more like as little as 10% of the time, it would be such a gigantic waste of their resources that they'd stop violating your rights.
Riding a subway is not a right. When you enter a subway station you are entering a secure area and anyone in that secure area can be inspected. You can decline inspection by leaving.
What bothers me most about this article is that it equates the inspection at a train station to the searches done at airports just because the TSA is involved. At the train station all they do is an explosives swab; not the pat down, scanner, remove the shoes, etc. that is done at the airport.
Slashdot Mirror
Contempt of court is considered due process.
0. We have enough information to prove the safe belongs to you so you are confirming nothing. Open it.
1.We have evidence of data and programs being accessed from that computer up to the time we seized it and it was taken from your possession. It has been in legal custody since then and we have not tampered with it. It is not plausible that you do not know the real password.
3. You don't have to tell us the password you just need to provide an unencrypted copy of the contents as the subpoena requires.
Has anyone actually read the 5th? If not here is is:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"
The few words that are relevant here are "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself".
A defendant does not have to answer questions about a case but has to allow lawful searches and provide subpoenaed documents in readable form. If those documents or other evidence is in a safe the defendant is required to open the safe. To me that is the same thing as providing a password.
Another point is that the founding fathers never conceived of a situation where evidence could be hidden in plain sight by using a special word. They never took that into account when they wrote the amendment and interpretation has to change to take that issue into account.
That is why a search warrant would be required.
Here are a few differences
Buckethead killing me is very different that an accidental outbreak killing billions of people. Would I do something that may kill me? Possibly. Would I do something that may kill billions of people? Probably not. In the later case my probability threshold would be much lower.
I never said that an outbreak had the same possibility as flipping 1000 heads in a row; that was just an example of low probability. I believe it is much more likely. In fact all it takes is a dedicated individual; as happened in the case of weaponized anthrax.
Probability is not the only criteria. Consequences are not the only criteria. It is a combination of the two. The two combine to form risk. Hi probability, low consequence is low risk. Low probability extreme consequences is high risk. Yes, there is a low probability of the research causing an outbreak but since the consequences could be billions of deaths I say we should not do it.
I may even support the the kind of research you suggest but that is not waht is being done.
The reserachers are creating deadly viruses that may kill millions of people in hopes of finding out how that become deadly. If one of these deadly viruses gets out the world may be destroyed by the research itself. The issue is the research itself may kill us before nature makes the virus that may or may not kill us.
Bad analogy. This assumes that you want to kill 1/3 of the population. The issue is to try not to kill people. There is an axiom in all decision-making; If you can not deal with the worst case scenario then don't do it. Killing billions of people is a pretty bad worst case scenario.
Bad analogy. The research is not unending knowledge.
And how could you possibly live with yourself knowing one day you might be the one infected with the super flu virus, created in a lab due to the research you allowed, that kills everyone?
The difference is that a super bug may or may not evolve in the wild. It is a certainty that such a superbug will be made in a lab because that is what they are trying to do. The only issue being is whether of not it will get loose. For me the risk of one getting loose is higher than one being created in the wild that could be dealt with due to the research.
I think that your reward for research needs to be re-defined.
Reward of research: Decrease risk of Billions of people dying if natural strains evolve exactly the same as in the research and spread.
The reason for the change from "eliminate" to "decrease" is that there is no gaurantee that the research will be applicable to the virus that evolves in the wild. The reason for removing the last clause is that containment failing is not a reward.
In my estimation the risk of release of a research pathogen outweighs the possible benifit of the research as it applies to viruses in the wild.
How abot this analogy? Lets build a virus that will kill millions of people on the off chance that the research may help with a vaccine for a similar virus that may or may not evolve in the wild.
Research into one virus does not mean that the same research will not be needed to be done for a different virus (one created in the wild).
Another point is what if the release happens before a vaccine is created? One now has a virulent strain of virus, that may never have been created naturally, in the wild with no vaccine and millions of people may die before the vaccine is created.
The bottom line is that nature is doing a good enough job of killing us without our help. We are helping by helping by pushing viruses in directions that they may not go in nature and possibly creating pathogens that can kill millions of people because we have not found the vaccine.
Which is better? There is no action that creates zero risk of Billions of people dying.
I never said there was a zero risk. I believe there is a higher risk of billions of people dying if the research is done. Say for example, if the risk of a virus outbreak was 50. Say that the research could deal with 20 points of that risk so now the total risk would be 30. But say the risk of a virulant virus being released was 30. Now you have a total risk of 60. The total risk with research is higher that the total risk without research.
The issue with your statement is that there is no "it". Virus mutation can go in many different directions. If the researchers mutate a virus in one direction and come up with a vaccine that is great for that virus. If nature goes in a slightly different direction and mutates the virus in a different way the reasearch done is useless as the vaccine for the research virus will not work on the wild virus. Even if the research virus has a vaccine there is nothing to say that if the research virus ever escapes that it will not immediately combine with another virus in the wild and make the vaccine ineffective. There is no way to research all possible viruses and come up with vaccines for all of them.
Risk/reward.
The fact that something with a small probability has not happened in the past does not mean that it will not happen in the future. The issue with this research is that the consequences of release are so grave; death of billions of people.
There are safeguards in place to prevent the escape of a deadly virus. There is also an unknown sequence of events that would lead to the release of a virus. The sequence is unknown or there would be a safeguard in place to stop it. Now equate that sequence of events to flipping a coin 1000 times and all coming up heads; probability 1x(10^-300)%. That is extremely low probability but still may happen.
Think of this analogy;
Flip 1000 coins and if they all come up heads kill 1/3 of the earth's population.
How many times would you do this test before considering this test to be safe?
In my opinion it is not safe on the first test. It is a risk/reward analysis; to me the risk of killing billions of people is much heavier on my scale of importance than any reward from the research.
Faster for you maybe but this issue is that going through the process of creating links distracts the mind from the topic being studied. Therefore it takes time to get back to the real subject if one has to go through the multiple steps of linking. Alternately one could just leave the book open to the page of interest and open another book next to it; no linking, not distraction.
How much time does it take to set up all the links? Keeping a book open is much faster. Are these panes visible together or are they really more like browser tabs. If they are like tabs that mans that I need to switch from one text to another and can not see both at the same time. Even electronic bookmarks are slower. A sticky note in a book is much easier to find than some label in a list of bookmarks.
Sorry but I have never seen a laptop with a screen big enough to display 8 8.5x11 pages at full size at the same time. That is equivalent to having 4 textbooks open on a table at the same time.
My issue with ereader textbooks is that many times I need multiple textbooks available at the same time. I like to be able to quickly scan between books and look at and compare books. I can not do that if I have to flip between books and the one I just looked at dissapeared. Sorry but I do not have enough cash for multiple ereaders. The time it takes to navigate between different books and the thought necissary to manipulate the e-reader is enough to loose my train of thought.
There are live flu vaccines. From the CDC site;
"The nasal-spray flu vaccine — a vaccine made with live, weakened flu viruses that is given as a nasal spray (sometimes called LAIV for “Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine”). The viruses in the nasal spray vaccine do not cause the flu. LAIV is approved for use in healthy* people 2 through 49 years of age who are not pregnant."
Here are some of the side effects possible from a LAIV vaccine;
"In children, side effects can include runny nose, headache, wheezing, vomiting, muscle aches, and fever. In adults, side effects can include runny nose, headache, sore throat, and cough. Fever is not a common side effect in adults receiving the nasal-spray flu vaccine."
Most people would call those side effects the flu. One may not get the same flu as being inocculated against but one may get a lesser case of flu
Furthermore, vaccines aren't used to stop people from getting infected; they're used to stop the movement of a virus from one location to another.
You are completely wrong here. Vaccines stopping people from being infected therefore when people move around they are not infected and therefore can not spread the infection. How do you think a vaccine that does not stop infection stops movement?
The entire idea is that if the vaccine is used correctly, THE VIRUS WILL NEVER REACH YOUR AREA. If it does, the vaccine failed to do its job.
What is your idea on what "correctly" is? Vaccinate everyone in an outbreak area? What about people who travel with the virus before the outbreak is recognized? Vaccinate everyone in the world? Not going to happen unless legislated and then money and vaccine supply is an issue. Trace everyone who left an outbreak area and vaccinate everyone they came into contact with? Given air travel this scenario rapidly becomes "vaccinate the world".
Sorry but outbreaks is LA, San Fran and San Deigo with and outbreak in Tiajuana Mexico would qualify for "pandemic". Take a look at Europe; Say the outbreaks were in Luxumberg, Belgium and Holland. Multiple countries yet a small area but still qualifies as a pandemic. Neither of these examples cover a large area but both qualify as a pandemic because a virus crossed a border.
To me, global means involving countries from around the world. It does not mean two countries next to each other; That would be defined as international. Now if the definition was at least three continents then I agree with "global"
There is a few "risk factors" that are missed.
1. Get the flu from the vaccine even though the virus never reached your area.
2. Force Governments to spend billions of dollars on vaccines that are never used.
3. Avoid people, cancel vacations, etc in hopes of not getting disease even though disease is not present.
My issue with the use of pandemic is that the threshold is so low for it's use but people equating it to to events like the Black Death. Fewer people died from the "Bird Flu Pandemic" a few years ago than normally die each flu season. Most people equate pandemic with mass death and that is just not always the case. Pandemic is mainly defined by mutation and spread and not virilance and mortality.
It does not have to be "global scale". Here is a quote from the WHO criteria for declaring a pandemic.
"The Pandemic will be declared when the new virus sub-type has been shown to cause several outbreaks in at least one country, and to have spread to other countries, with consistent disease patterns indicating that serious morbidity and mortality is likely in at least one segment of the population."
So a new flu strain in two countries that could cause death in elderly people would be considered a pandemic. That is far from a global scale. It may eventually become global but does not need to be global to be declared a pandemic.
Say a Doftor has 1000 patients and the national average for files lost by patients is 3% (eg 30) Here are three scenarios;
1. 10 files from the doctor are "at large". Probably patienterror.
2. 60 Files at large. Maybe investigate but probably not too hard.
3. 600 files at large. This is probably due to the doctor and requires deep investigation.
Notice that numbers do not indicate guilt but the need for investigation. The other things is that if for the files to be stolen from patients, the theives have to go to each individual's home, search it and steal the documents. Do you really think that someone is going to commit hundreds, if not thousands of B&Es, to get medical information? It is much easier to break into the DR office or pay the Dr.
The issue isn't when one medical file get sold by a doctor as a single file is useless. usually the problem is when hundreds of files are sold from the same doctor.
Plausible deniability goes away when a large number of records, more than the national average, from a single doctor get loose. Sorry but I doubt very much any doctor can legitimately claim that all those documents were lost by individual patients.
How about the sign posted at the entrance to the subway when inspections are in progress.
When it comes to police in most civilized societies, you get to have a very simple dialogue. You can say: "I refuse to volunteer for any such [delay]; but if you order me to do so, I will comply with any order you give."
The officer would probably reply "You have two choices; you can have your bag swabbed or you can leave the station by those stairs". There is an inaccuracy in your statement; you never "volunteered", you were selected by a random number generator. You have the choice of complying with the request or not riding the train.
Since you have declined consent the officer would ask you to leave as is stated in the poster you walked past and didn't read.. If you continued to ask questions without moving toward the exit you could be arrested for trespassing(or something like that not sure of the exact charge). Then you would be under arrest and subject to search. Therefore by trying to be cute you get searched anyway.
Officer, am I required to come with you?
No but you may not board the train.
Officer, am I under arrest?
No but you must leave the station and not on a train.
Officer, am I free to go?
Yes but you must leave the station and not on a train.
If the police were confronted by this 90% er 50% more like as little as 10% of the time, it would be such a gigantic waste of their resources that they'd stop violating your rights.
Riding a subway is not a right. When you enter a subway station you are entering a secure area and anyone in that secure area can be inspected. You can decline inspection by leaving.
What bothers me most about this article is that it equates the inspection at a train station to the searches done at airports just because the TSA is involved. At the train station all they do is an explosives swab; not the pat down, scanner, remove the shoes, etc. that is done at the airport.