Encryption is ALWAYS breakable by brute force. Question is how long does it take? Seconds? Hours? Months? Years? Decades? This is usually determined by key sizes. The longer the key, the longer it takes to brute force. (generally)
Um, not quite, one time pads are provably impossible to break by brute force since the message can be decoded into any message of the right length.
An aside: if, by your statement, corporations (organizations) are not people, but are made up of people, then why do corporations get to have free speech? Organizations are not people, they are made up of people. People have free speech rights, organizations do not.
First I will say I disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling on this matter, and that corporations as an entity should not enjoy rights like free speech. I thought about including that in my original post but it detracted from the post and made it long-winded and disjoint so I removed it. But as for your question, the reason they currently enjoy those rights is because 1) Congress has define a corporation as a person, which lead to 2) the Supreme Court ruled that as a result, corporations have the same rights as individual persons. While I can see some of the arguments in support of the free speech claim for corporations, namely that the corporation is acting on behalf of the collective where each member has freedom of speech, and therefore as a whole still do (many voices versus one), it creates problems in areas that corporations do not have equivalence with individuals, such as having the corporation "speak" for the group even though some members disagree with the statements, such as in political donations.
The issue here with the IRS and NSA is the same. The IRS or NSA can issue a statement that is an official pronouncement of the org, decided on by its management, the officials vested with the power to do so, and can therefore legitimately be labeled as a statement by the organization. Just because many people, rather than one, decided on what to say doesn't mean it loses the right to free speech. The reverse however does not necessarily map the same, like having the management perform an illegal action, such as a director lying to the press or Congress, and as a result labeling it as an action of the corporation. The shareholders voted the management into place to make sound decisions for the corporation, and Congress or the executive branch placed persons in the management roles of government agencies to do likewise, and when they operate within that granted authority they represent the entity, but when they act outside their given authority they are acting for themselves, not for the entity.
Excuse me, but when people represent coporations and institutions, they do indeed make such entities lie.
Especially, since they, as people, are not held personally responsible?
Only within the concept of Personification, namely treating something that isn't a person as if it is. An organization is not a person, even if it is comprised of people, and can therefore not make decisions, rather the people within it make decisions. The purpose of personification is to apply an attribute to the collective, namely in this case, for the speaker to imply that since some at the IRS and NSA lie, everyone at the IRS and NSA are liars which is clearly not the case. Or do you really believe of the tens of thousands of people employed by these agencies none of them have morals? If you do, remember that Snowden worked for them so that means, even though he left, he is by association also a liar?
If you were right, who are responsible for the lies then?
The people, who under penalty of perjury, knowingly made statements they knew to be false, or otherwise made the decisions that the laws were not to be obeyed by those within their organizations. You know, the people who are committing the crimes. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater may be a common tactic, but is as bad today as it was when that phrase was invented. The fact that in almost none of these cases have perjury or other charges been brought against them is a different problem that needs fixing.
The problem with a conspiracy theorist is that all available evidence will be viewed in whatever way is possible to support their beliefs, and any evidence that contradicts it will be dismissed as fabricated or lies. The result is that it is not possible to have a real discussion or debate with them since the purpose of such interactions can never occur given that their beliefs can never be changed. I am not sure what the true story is in regards to what Snowden did or did not complain about, but Ready, Fire, and maybe then think about Aim, is the wrong way to debate it, and makes the presenter look foolish.
Just do a search on "IRS lies to congress". PLENTY of citations there. Here'sjustafew.
Just to be pedantic, organizations don't lie, people do, though I know there is a great tendency to personify organizations. The IRS didn't lie to Congress, people in the IRS lied to Congress. Likewise, the NSA didn't lie in (fill in an occurrence here), people belonging to the NSA lied. At times, multiple high-ranking personnel of such organization, even the heads, may have even ordered such lies to occur. Labeling these situations as "ThreeLetterAgency lied" is designed to imply that all personnel of such agencies therefore also lie, and that is not true, but it make for great ad hominem attacks, and is widely used here on Slashdot.
You are mostly correct. While the 2 or 4 year limit to collect on a debt is based on a statute of limitations from the last account activity by the consumer (not when it was incurred), the 7 year credit report limit is based on the last time the credit status was reported to the agency, and the creditors are not allowed to report after the debt is written off. Each report on the same account is independent, so as the 7 year timeframe approaches, the 7+ year old reports disappear leaving only those less than 7 years old. If he can claim the reports were inaccurate, due to factors such as he was no longer the condo owner so it was not legally his debt, then he could challenge them and potentially get them removed or corrected. If they fail to investigate and correct, they can be liable under FDCPA, FCRA, and various state laws.
what the heck are these people thinking? Putting valuables in your house, and installing windows so people can see right in? It's like they're INVITING robberies!!!
Criminal trespass is criminal trespass. It doesn't matter if it was "easy" to get to the photos - they were not yours, or anybody else's, to access without permission.
I don't think the debate is about whether the access of the photos was a crime, rather it is turning into a debate about the thought given, or not, of how sensitive information is being handled, in this case celebrity nude pics of themselves. Having valuables in my house and having windows in my house are both OK, but placing valuables right up against the front windows where a smash-and-grab can get them is stupid. If a person takes nude pics of themselves, then the person better understand that they have introduced the risk that the pics exist and can therefore be stolen. Note that I am not blaming the victim, and it doesn't mean a theft is OK, it isn't and is still illegal, but actions come with consequences. What is flaming the debate here is the difficulty of knowing the dangers involved with the way the pictures were stored. In a perfect world the pictures would be safe, but we don't live in a perfect world and the news has many stories of people's accounts getting compromised and photos, emails, documents,..., all being stolen and posted. I think what sets this episode apart is the scale of the compromise, and who the people are, not really the manner in which it happened.
Most people facing the pointy end of the stick already know about Yelp and its cousins, but the majority of the remainder don't, i.e. the sheep. The problem for businesses is for most business types the sheep don't have any good information sources, and even if they know about Yelp's flaws, see the bad choices as better than nothing. After all, some, maybe even all, of the reviews are real, right?
While people have an inborn desire to see their own actions as right, and therefore the actions of others that conflict with it as wrong, I think your reasoning is flawed. Grasshoppa made some statements that implied information on which he based his decision but he didn't get into the details here on Slashdot. Since he didn't provide the proof of what he said, you labeled him as engaging in "specious reasoning." I think your reasoning is where the specious comes in.
Here, let me give you some concrete examples along the same lines as what grasshoppa said. My wife's business was contacted by Yelp to solicit advertising, which my wife declined. Shortly thereafter, all of the positive reviews for her business disappeared (ALL, and there had been no negative reviews), and some negative reviews appeared. At least two of the negative reviews gave details about their interactions that would have clearly let us identify the party (not by name but by what they describe as occurring - it's a small business), but there had been no such clients, and like with grasshoppa some of the descriptions included things that don't exist at her business but based on the nature of the business could easily be assumed to by a person who had never been there. Those reviews were clearly fakes. About a month after these events (yes, it all happened in about a month), she gets another call from the Yelp salesperson pointing out the negative reviews and telling her if she advertises with them then some moderation of the reviews could be performed. We don't do business with scum so she told them no, politely. A few more negative reviews appeared, another call with the same answer, then no more reviews. Since then we have had clients tell us they have posted positive reviews and the Yelp filtering system hides them, but those fake negative reviews are still there unhidden.
Don't know about you, but the motives and tactics seem fairly straightforward to me, and the timing of events makes the likelihood of it being random trolls virtually impossible.
How is this any different than dash cams on police cars? Police regularly give out warnings while being filmed without any repercussions.
In theory it is the same concept, but in practice it is very different.
1. Dash cams are fixed and (usually) only see what is happening in front of the police car, which is normally on a public right-of-way and therefore where the public could also observe and record*. What happens elsewhere, like when an officer goes inside a private residence, isn't captured by dash cams. A body cam on the other hand would frequently be recording events that are not occurring where the public can see, and this is a significant difference for accountability. It should see what is happening in front of the officer (note, NOT necessarily what the officer is seeing since the officer could be looking to the side) which is where any action of interest is most likely to be.
2. Dash cams use a system located in the car, typically the trunk, and can hold a large amount of high-quality video. Body cams will have stricter limits due to size and weight so may be much more limited on what they can capture.
3. Dash cams are located inside the protected shell of the police car and, short of a crash, should not have frequent failures. Body cams on the other hand will be operating in a much more hostile environment (officer's opinion aside), being exposed to weather, physical trauma, getting material thrown on or over the lens, etc.
We already have a problem of a high "failure" rate for dash cams, and I expect the same issue with body cams. Some here are advocating punishments to officers when a camera stops working, either directly or in how evidence is treated, but this would punish innocent officers whose cameras legitimately fail, since after all, they are operating in truly hostile environments. An officer whose camera seems to consistently fail, or where the officer seems to frequently "forget" to turn it on, are a different matter. We need a way of telling legit from illegit failures so we don't punish the innocent officers in our rush to punish guilty ones.
* I don't know the current status of a couple states that have tried to make recording of officers in public a crime.
The general rule of thumb for photographers is that if it can be seen from a public place, it can be photographed from a public place, UNLESS the subject being photographed is on their private property.
I think there are a lot of missing caveats here since if your statement is taken literally, then you are not allowed to take a picture from the sidewalk of me standing in my front yard which is on my private property. It would also make a lot of the Google StreetView a crime.
Except what Verizon is doing is throttling only people with "unlimited" plans during peak times. People on paid usage plans are not subject to the same throttling. This isn't apparent throttling because of congestion, this is Verizon actively saying that because you have an unlimited plan, they will not allow you to use the available bandwidth, while if you drop the unlimited plan and subscribe to a metered plan then you CAN use the available bandwidth. Unfortunately the quote by the Commissioner is being dropped in these later articles where he said that he can see no legitimate claim for reasonable network management to be based on which plan a user subscribes to.
While I disagree with what the government tried to do here, if they did get such a change performed, I would expect that its existence is also not publicized, so the EFF not knowing that it has happened is far from proof that it hasn't.
Also, I take exception with the EFF's line "The government's attempt to change this history was unprecedented." The government attempted to censor part of the record, i.e. remove it from the transcript. The way the EFF phrased it makes it sound like they were trying to substitute what was said with things that were not said, which isn't the case (as far as I know, I am a Slashdot reader so haven't read the actual story).
I think the article is poorly written since it uses the term "warrant" but what it describes is a subpoena. Note the line in the article "requiring a company receiving the warrant to search multiple locations for the information". A search warrant is issued by a court and authorizes the police to enter a premise to search for something. If it was truly a search warrant, then we would be hearing about US authorities showing up in Ireland with a US warrant and demanding entrance in order to conduct a physical search, and potential confiscation of property. Instead, what is happening is the authorities are giving a court issued demand to Microsoft telling them they are compelled to produce the information. That is a subpoena, no matter what term the article's author chose to (incorrectly) use.
So Iran should be able to get evidence that one of its citizens is a Christian, off US servers? I mean it is not like they are persecuted over there or something.
This ruling isn't claiming the US feels it has the right to reach into another jurisdiction and take information it thinks may be evidence, rather, the US feels it can compel people/businesses in its jurisdiction to produce evidence within the control of the entity, even if the information is currently in another jurisdiction. If Iran felt one of its citizens had committed a crime, and that evidence of it was stored on a foreign computer that the accused is known to have access, then you can bet dollars-to-donuts that they would demand the person produce it else, given their system of justice, either use the lack of production as proof that the evidence exists and shows the guilt of the person, or the person would be thrown in jail until such time as they change their mind and produce it.
Yes, I know to some degree the latter is also a possibility in the US since if the court knows the person has something being demanded under subpoena and the person refused to produce it, then they are in contempt of court, and as long as they choose to be in contempt the court can continue to hold them (the violation is self-renewing). A simple rule that the US court system employs (imperfectly) is that illegal actions taken to avoid being charged or convicted will normally have a worse penalty than the original crime. The crimes of destroying evidence, bribing judges or juries, perjury, etc., all have very harsh penalties. Refusing to produce items or information demanded by the court is considers an obstruction to the judicial system so can have a very harsh penalty as well. The main difference in this case is if the information resided on a computer system in the US and the party refused to produce it the court could order it to be seized, while here they cannot. They can still punish the person for not producing it.
The trouble is, as the Entrope mentioned, unless they tell you specifically what information is not to be published, then how are you to know? Making it illegal to publish data about "sensitive areas" means somehow they have to make it clear what areas are sensitive, or else they are creating unrealistic expectations. Imagine a law that said it is illegal to proceed through a green traffic light when an unmarked police car is approaching from a perpendicular direction. How can you obey such a law since ANY car could be an unmarked police car. Same with making a blanket law that is equivalent to saying you may not publish anything the government deems sensitive unless they give you a way to know what information that is.
And in the summary, I don't think the phrase "The mapping competition required citizens to map their neighbourhoods" is phrased very well, since Google doesn't have the legal authority to require people to do anything. Do they stop you from using the Google search page unless you first submit a neighborhood detail?
While I agree the probability is low as compared to how the gloom-and-doomer portray it, I can immediately see a few major issues with your analysis.
1) The CME doesn't have to directly hit the Earth since disrupting the magnetosphere, which is many times the size of just the Earth, is what would be required.
2) I don't believe CMEs are uniform in the direction they occur since they are created by anomalies in the Sun's magnetic field, which like the Earth's, has poles. I could not however readily find any breakdown about distribution versus latitude
3) Your caveat is a big one. Your analysis is treating the CME as if it is a single point in space, equivalent to if the Sun fired a bullet at the Earth. The reality is, as you mentioned, CMEs have width, breadth, and height, and these dimensions are big. A CME may be many times the size of the Earth. CMEsalso spread out as they travel the 1 AU it takes to get here. That last part is both good and bad, since the original strength of the CME at the Sun would devastate the Earth, while the greatly weakened version that reaches this far could at worse cause havoc, not devastation.
In short, the Earth has been flying around this neighborhood for a few billion years, including hosting animal life for a good chunk of that, and so far we haven't seen any CME calamities. The game changer is of course our use of satellites and long haul electrical lines which are prone to disruption or damage from a strong CME, but based on the number of known events, the odds of a massive CME causes widespread damage is very low, though not as low as you calculated (0.0028% in 100 years). There may be a handful of CMEs a year that the Sun puts out that if they were to hit Earth could break things, as you pointed out the Earth is a small target in a very large shooting ranges. If I had to guess based on known statistics, a major ground-based disruption will probably happen about once every 100 years. (reference solar storms of 1859 and of 1989)
And yeah, I know that astrophysicists with a vastly more qualifications than I have came up with these ideas, but in the end, an argument from authority does not make one actually right.
This is actually one of my nits with these kinds of articles. When someone says "Now one physicist has worked out the answer", the use of the phrase "the answer" means in English that the question is now closed. He has found THE answer, meaning the one and only answer, hence the use of the word 'the' instead of the word 'a'. In reality, the article should say "Now one physicist has worked out a possible answer". What he has presented is a theory that he believes is consistent with known physics and observations. That is all it is.
No, like if they want to gain access to data in company ACME Co, they do some research about that company, find people who belong to it, often in specific groups they are particularly interested in (the missile division of ACME for example), then seak out information on these people, like what conferences they have attended (attendee lists are often published on the web) or what projects at the company they are working on (a newsletter on the web mentions them in a small article about the Ramrod SuperAgile Counterstrike Missile System), then send them an email tailored just for them: Hi Joe, we found another missile system using flight parameters that may be interesting for use in the Ramrod. Here is the website..., signed your coworker Frank.
The spam from your bank doesn't normally address you by name, or mention details like your account number or which local branch you use and when. In fact, it is the lack of such details that most people use for clues that it is spam, so when those details are there they typically trust it. That is the gist of the article.
The criminals offer people stuff they want, marketing offers people shit they don't want. Seems simple enough
Except the article is about spear-phishing. In spear-phishing, the emails are tailored to the intended victim, pretending to be from someone the attacker knows or believes the victim trusts, such as an email from their boss or their HR department, and the emails normally include information that the victim assumes isn't public which adds to the email's trust. Such emails may pretend to contain important employee training updates, company newsletters, specific conference information for conferences the target is known to attend, references by project name to projects the victim is working on, etc. This means the spear-phishing email is very different from typical spam which is clearly marketing, or so generic as to be obvious spam. It also means that without confirming the email's legitimacy via out-of-band methods, it may be virtually impossible to verify if it is real or not.
The problem for the defenders is the only real defense against a well crafted spear-phishing email is to instruct people NEVER to open an attachment, to click on a link, to visit a website if so instructed, or even to respond with information that may be requested. But such a world would render most business email useless.
An NSL is quite frankly whatever the author of the NSL wants it to be. Typically, you're right, it's a request for information or access, but it also prevents you from telling ANYONE about it. So, who knows. You don't most likely. Unless you're party to it.
No, an NSL is specifically only for requesting of information.
From Wikipedia: A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena...
A subpoena is a writ issued to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence.
What makes the NSL special, and the reason people believe it is unconstitutional, is 1) it is not directly authorized by a judge, and 2) it can come with the requirement that the recipient not disclose that it happened or that the disclosure occurred.
An NSL is NOT a blank check for the government to order people to do whatever they say. It is very specific in its abilities, and that is only to request information, and possibly (though while the norm, this is not required) to require its existence to be kept confidential. So you see, I do know, as does anyone else who does a cursory lookup about what an NSL is.
Slashdot Mirror
Encryption is ALWAYS breakable by brute force. Question is how long does it take? Seconds? Hours? Months? Years? Decades? This is usually determined by key sizes. The longer the key, the longer it takes to brute force. (generally)
Um, not quite, one time pads are provably impossible to break by brute force since the message can be decoded into any message of the right length.
An aside: if, by your statement, corporations (organizations) are not people, but are made up of people, then why do corporations get to have free speech? Organizations are not people, they are made up of people. People have free speech rights, organizations do not.
First I will say I disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling on this matter, and that corporations as an entity should not enjoy rights like free speech. I thought about including that in my original post but it detracted from the post and made it long-winded and disjoint so I removed it. But as for your question, the reason they currently enjoy those rights is because 1) Congress has define a corporation as a person, which lead to 2) the Supreme Court ruled that as a result, corporations have the same rights as individual persons. While I can see some of the arguments in support of the free speech claim for corporations, namely that the corporation is acting on behalf of the collective where each member has freedom of speech, and therefore as a whole still do (many voices versus one), it creates problems in areas that corporations do not have equivalence with individuals, such as having the corporation "speak" for the group even though some members disagree with the statements, such as in political donations.
The issue here with the IRS and NSA is the same. The IRS or NSA can issue a statement that is an official pronouncement of the org, decided on by its management, the officials vested with the power to do so, and can therefore legitimately be labeled as a statement by the organization. Just because many people, rather than one, decided on what to say doesn't mean it loses the right to free speech. The reverse however does not necessarily map the same, like having the management perform an illegal action, such as a director lying to the press or Congress, and as a result labeling it as an action of the corporation. The shareholders voted the management into place to make sound decisions for the corporation, and Congress or the executive branch placed persons in the management roles of government agencies to do likewise, and when they operate within that granted authority they represent the entity, but when they act outside their given authority they are acting for themselves, not for the entity.
Excuse me, but when people represent coporations and institutions, they do indeed make such entities lie. Especially, since they, as people, are not held personally responsible?
Only within the concept of Personification, namely treating something that isn't a person as if it is. An organization is not a person, even if it is comprised of people, and can therefore not make decisions, rather the people within it make decisions. The purpose of personification is to apply an attribute to the collective, namely in this case, for the speaker to imply that since some at the IRS and NSA lie, everyone at the IRS and NSA are liars which is clearly not the case. Or do you really believe of the tens of thousands of people employed by these agencies none of them have morals? If you do, remember that Snowden worked for them so that means, even though he left, he is by association also a liar?
If you were right, who are responsible for the lies then?
The people, who under penalty of perjury, knowingly made statements they knew to be false, or otherwise made the decisions that the laws were not to be obeyed by those within their organizations. You know, the people who are committing the crimes. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater may be a common tactic, but is as bad today as it was when that phrase was invented. The fact that in almost none of these cases have perjury or other charges been brought against them is a different problem that needs fixing.
The problem with a conspiracy theorist is that all available evidence will be viewed in whatever way is possible to support their beliefs, and any evidence that contradicts it will be dismissed as fabricated or lies. The result is that it is not possible to have a real discussion or debate with them since the purpose of such interactions can never occur given that their beliefs can never be changed. I am not sure what the true story is in regards to what Snowden did or did not complain about, but Ready, Fire, and maybe then think about Aim, is the wrong way to debate it, and makes the presenter look foolish.
Just do a search on "IRS lies to congress". PLENTY of citations there. Here's just a few.
Just to be pedantic, organizations don't lie, people do, though I know there is a great tendency to personify organizations. The IRS didn't lie to Congress, people in the IRS lied to Congress. Likewise, the NSA didn't lie in (fill in an occurrence here), people belonging to the NSA lied. At times, multiple high-ranking personnel of such organization, even the heads, may have even ordered such lies to occur. Labeling these situations as "ThreeLetterAgency lied" is designed to imply that all personnel of such agencies therefore also lie, and that is not true, but it make for great ad hominem attacks, and is widely used here on Slashdot.
If the artificial heart stops, would that count as a "Blue Face of Death"?
You are mostly correct. While the 2 or 4 year limit to collect on a debt is based on a statute of limitations from the last account activity by the consumer (not when it was incurred), the 7 year credit report limit is based on the last time the credit status was reported to the agency, and the creditors are not allowed to report after the debt is written off. Each report on the same account is independent, so as the 7 year timeframe approaches, the 7+ year old reports disappear leaving only those less than 7 years old. If he can claim the reports were inaccurate, due to factors such as he was no longer the condo owner so it was not legally his debt, then he could challenge them and potentially get them removed or corrected. If they fail to investigate and correct, they can be liable under FDCPA, FCRA, and various state laws.
what the heck are these people thinking? Putting valuables in your house, and installing windows so people can see right in? It's like they're INVITING robberies!!!
Criminal trespass is criminal trespass. It doesn't matter if it was "easy" to get to the photos - they were not yours, or anybody else's, to access without permission.
I don't think the debate is about whether the access of the photos was a crime, rather it is turning into a debate about the thought given, or not, of how sensitive information is being handled, in this case celebrity nude pics of themselves. Having valuables in my house and having windows in my house are both OK, but placing valuables right up against the front windows where a smash-and-grab can get them is stupid. If a person takes nude pics of themselves, then the person better understand that they have introduced the risk that the pics exist and can therefore be stolen. Note that I am not blaming the victim, and it doesn't mean a theft is OK, it isn't and is still illegal, but actions come with consequences. What is flaming the debate here is the difficulty of knowing the dangers involved with the way the pictures were stored. In a perfect world the pictures would be safe, but we don't live in a perfect world and the news has many stories of people's accounts getting compromised and photos, emails, documents, ..., all being stolen and posted. I think what sets this episode apart is the scale of the compromise, and who the people are, not really the manner in which it happened.
Most people facing the pointy end of the stick already know about Yelp and its cousins, but the majority of the remainder don't, i.e. the sheep. The problem for businesses is for most business types the sheep don't have any good information sources, and even if they know about Yelp's flaws, see the bad choices as better than nothing. After all, some, maybe even all, of the reviews are real, right?
While people have an inborn desire to see their own actions as right, and therefore the actions of others that conflict with it as wrong, I think your reasoning is flawed. Grasshoppa made some statements that implied information on which he based his decision but he didn't get into the details here on Slashdot. Since he didn't provide the proof of what he said, you labeled him as engaging in "specious reasoning." I think your reasoning is where the specious comes in.
Here, let me give you some concrete examples along the same lines as what grasshoppa said. My wife's business was contacted by Yelp to solicit advertising, which my wife declined. Shortly thereafter, all of the positive reviews for her business disappeared (ALL, and there had been no negative reviews), and some negative reviews appeared. At least two of the negative reviews gave details about their interactions that would have clearly let us identify the party (not by name but by what they describe as occurring - it's a small business), but there had been no such clients, and like with grasshoppa some of the descriptions included things that don't exist at her business but based on the nature of the business could easily be assumed to by a person who had never been there. Those reviews were clearly fakes. About a month after these events (yes, it all happened in about a month), she gets another call from the Yelp salesperson pointing out the negative reviews and telling her if she advertises with them then some moderation of the reviews could be performed. We don't do business with scum so she told them no, politely. A few more negative reviews appeared, another call with the same answer, then no more reviews. Since then we have had clients tell us they have posted positive reviews and the Yelp filtering system hides them, but those fake negative reviews are still there unhidden.
Don't know about you, but the motives and tactics seem fairly straightforward to me, and the timing of events makes the likelihood of it being random trolls virtually impossible.
How is this any different than dash cams on police cars? Police regularly give out warnings while being filmed without any repercussions.
In theory it is the same concept, but in practice it is very different.
1. Dash cams are fixed and (usually) only see what is happening in front of the police car, which is normally on a public right-of-way and therefore where the public could also observe and record*. What happens elsewhere, like when an officer goes inside a private residence, isn't captured by dash cams. A body cam on the other hand would frequently be recording events that are not occurring where the public can see, and this is a significant difference for accountability. It should see what is happening in front of the officer (note, NOT necessarily what the officer is seeing since the officer could be looking to the side) which is where any action of interest is most likely to be.
2. Dash cams use a system located in the car, typically the trunk, and can hold a large amount of high-quality video. Body cams will have stricter limits due to size and weight so may be much more limited on what they can capture.
3. Dash cams are located inside the protected shell of the police car and, short of a crash, should not have frequent failures. Body cams on the other hand will be operating in a much more hostile environment (officer's opinion aside), being exposed to weather, physical trauma, getting material thrown on or over the lens, etc.
We already have a problem of a high "failure" rate for dash cams, and I expect the same issue with body cams. Some here are advocating punishments to officers when a camera stops working, either directly or in how evidence is treated, but this would punish innocent officers whose cameras legitimately fail, since after all, they are operating in truly hostile environments. An officer whose camera seems to consistently fail, or where the officer seems to frequently "forget" to turn it on, are a different matter. We need a way of telling legit from illegit failures so we don't punish the innocent officers in our rush to punish guilty ones.
* I don't know the current status of a couple states that have tried to make recording of officers in public a crime.
there is nothing immoral about offering a worker a better job. if uber does not want to lose their drivers to the competition they can pay better
Except the story is about Uber trying to poach Lyft drivers, not Lyft trying to steal Uber drivers.
The general rule of thumb for photographers is that if it can be seen from a public place, it can be photographed from a public place, UNLESS the subject being photographed is on their private property.
I think there are a lot of missing caveats here since if your statement is taken literally, then you are not allowed to take a picture from the sidewalk of me standing in my front yard which is on my private property. It would also make a lot of the Google StreetView a crime.
Except what Verizon is doing is throttling only people with "unlimited" plans during peak times. People on paid usage plans are not subject to the same throttling. This isn't apparent throttling because of congestion, this is Verizon actively saying that because you have an unlimited plan, they will not allow you to use the available bandwidth, while if you drop the unlimited plan and subscribe to a metered plan then you CAN use the available bandwidth. Unfortunately the quote by the Commissioner is being dropped in these later articles where he said that he can see no legitimate claim for reasonable network management to be based on which plan a user subscribes to.
While I disagree with what the government tried to do here, if they did get such a change performed, I would expect that its existence is also not publicized, so the EFF not knowing that it has happened is far from proof that it hasn't.
Also, I take exception with the EFF's line "The government's attempt to change this history was unprecedented." The government attempted to censor part of the record, i.e. remove it from the transcript. The way the EFF phrased it makes it sound like they were trying to substitute what was said with things that were not said, which isn't the case (as far as I know, I am a Slashdot reader so haven't read the actual story).
I think the article is poorly written since it uses the term "warrant" but what it describes is a subpoena. Note the line in the article "requiring a company receiving the warrant to search multiple locations for the information". A search warrant is issued by a court and authorizes the police to enter a premise to search for something. If it was truly a search warrant, then we would be hearing about US authorities showing up in Ireland with a US warrant and demanding entrance in order to conduct a physical search, and potential confiscation of property. Instead, what is happening is the authorities are giving a court issued demand to Microsoft telling them they are compelled to produce the information. That is a subpoena, no matter what term the article's author chose to (incorrectly) use.
So Iran should be able to get evidence that one of its citizens is a Christian, off US servers? I mean it is not like they are persecuted over there or something.
This ruling isn't claiming the US feels it has the right to reach into another jurisdiction and take information it thinks may be evidence, rather, the US feels it can compel people/businesses in its jurisdiction to produce evidence within the control of the entity, even if the information is currently in another jurisdiction. If Iran felt one of its citizens had committed a crime, and that evidence of it was stored on a foreign computer that the accused is known to have access, then you can bet dollars-to-donuts that they would demand the person produce it else, given their system of justice, either use the lack of production as proof that the evidence exists and shows the guilt of the person, or the person would be thrown in jail until such time as they change their mind and produce it.
Yes, I know to some degree the latter is also a possibility in the US since if the court knows the person has something being demanded under subpoena and the person refused to produce it, then they are in contempt of court, and as long as they choose to be in contempt the court can continue to hold them (the violation is self-renewing). A simple rule that the US court system employs (imperfectly) is that illegal actions taken to avoid being charged or convicted will normally have a worse penalty than the original crime. The crimes of destroying evidence, bribing judges or juries, perjury, etc., all have very harsh penalties. Refusing to produce items or information demanded by the court is considers an obstruction to the judicial system so can have a very harsh penalty as well. The main difference in this case is if the information resided on a computer system in the US and the party refused to produce it the court could order it to be seized, while here they cannot. They can still punish the person for not producing it.
You don't know my enemies! Loan me a few Comcast customer service reps and a catapult, and I'll be a happy man.
The trouble is, as the Entrope mentioned, unless they tell you specifically what information is not to be published, then how are you to know? Making it illegal to publish data about "sensitive areas" means somehow they have to make it clear what areas are sensitive, or else they are creating unrealistic expectations. Imagine a law that said it is illegal to proceed through a green traffic light when an unmarked police car is approaching from a perpendicular direction. How can you obey such a law since ANY car could be an unmarked police car. Same with making a blanket law that is equivalent to saying you may not publish anything the government deems sensitive unless they give you a way to know what information that is.
And in the summary, I don't think the phrase "The mapping competition required citizens to map their neighbourhoods" is phrased very well, since Google doesn't have the legal authority to require people to do anything. Do they stop you from using the Google search page unless you first submit a neighborhood detail?
While I agree the probability is low as compared to how the gloom-and-doomer portray it, I can immediately see a few major issues with your analysis.
1) The CME doesn't have to directly hit the Earth since disrupting the magnetosphere, which is many times the size of just the Earth, is what would be required.
2) I don't believe CMEs are uniform in the direction they occur since they are created by anomalies in the Sun's magnetic field, which like the Earth's, has poles. I could not however readily find any breakdown about distribution versus latitude
3) Your caveat is a big one. Your analysis is treating the CME as if it is a single point in space, equivalent to if the Sun fired a bullet at the Earth. The reality is, as you mentioned, CMEs have width, breadth, and height, and these dimensions are big. A CME may be many times the size of the Earth. CMEsalso spread out as they travel the 1 AU it takes to get here. That last part is both good and bad, since the original strength of the CME at the Sun would devastate the Earth, while the greatly weakened version that reaches this far could at worse cause havoc, not devastation.
In short, the Earth has been flying around this neighborhood for a few billion years, including hosting animal life for a good chunk of that, and so far we haven't seen any CME calamities. The game changer is of course our use of satellites and long haul electrical lines which are prone to disruption or damage from a strong CME, but based on the number of known events, the odds of a massive CME causes widespread damage is very low, though not as low as you calculated (0.0028% in 100 years). There may be a handful of CMEs a year that the Sun puts out that if they were to hit Earth could break things, as you pointed out the Earth is a small target in a very large shooting ranges. If I had to guess based on known statistics, a major ground-based disruption will probably happen about once every 100 years. (reference solar storms of 1859 and of 1989)
And yeah, I know that astrophysicists with a vastly more qualifications than I have came up with these ideas, but in the end, an argument from authority does not make one actually right.
This is actually one of my nits with these kinds of articles. When someone says "Now one physicist has worked out the answer", the use of the phrase "the answer" means in English that the question is now closed. He has found THE answer, meaning the one and only answer, hence the use of the word 'the' instead of the word 'a'. In reality, the article should say "Now one physicist has worked out a possible answer". What he has presented is a theory that he believes is consistent with known physics and observations. That is all it is.
No, like if they want to gain access to data in company ACME Co, they do some research about that company, find people who belong to it, often in specific groups they are particularly interested in (the missile division of ACME for example), then seak out information on these people, like what conferences they have attended (attendee lists are often published on the web) or what projects at the company they are working on (a newsletter on the web mentions them in a small article about the Ramrod SuperAgile Counterstrike Missile System), then send them an email tailored just for them: Hi Joe, we found another missile system using flight parameters that may be interesting for use in the Ramrod. Here is the website..., signed your coworker Frank.
The spam from your bank doesn't normally address you by name, or mention details like your account number or which local branch you use and when. In fact, it is the lack of such details that most people use for clues that it is spam, so when those details are there they typically trust it. That is the gist of the article.
The criminals offer people stuff they want, marketing offers people shit they don't want. Seems simple enough
Except the article is about spear-phishing. In spear-phishing, the emails are tailored to the intended victim, pretending to be from someone the attacker knows or believes the victim trusts, such as an email from their boss or their HR department, and the emails normally include information that the victim assumes isn't public which adds to the email's trust. Such emails may pretend to contain important employee training updates, company newsletters, specific conference information for conferences the target is known to attend, references by project name to projects the victim is working on, etc. This means the spear-phishing email is very different from typical spam which is clearly marketing, or so generic as to be obvious spam. It also means that without confirming the email's legitimacy via out-of-band methods, it may be virtually impossible to verify if it is real or not.
The problem for the defenders is the only real defense against a well crafted spear-phishing email is to instruct people NEVER to open an attachment, to click on a link, to visit a website if so instructed, or even to respond with information that may be requested. But such a world would render most business email useless.
An NSL is quite frankly whatever the author of the NSL wants it to be. Typically, you're right, it's a request for information or access, but it also prevents you from telling ANYONE about it. So, who knows. You don't most likely. Unless you're party to it.
No, an NSL is specifically only for requesting of information.
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From Wikipedia: A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena
A subpoena is a writ issued to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence.
What makes the NSL special, and the reason people believe it is unconstitutional, is 1) it is not directly authorized by a judge, and 2) it can come with the requirement that the recipient not disclose that it happened or that the disclosure occurred.
An NSL is NOT a blank check for the government to order people to do whatever they say. It is very specific in its abilities, and that is only to request information, and possibly (though while the norm, this is not required) to require its existence to be kept confidential. So you see, I do know, as does anyone else who does a cursory lookup about what an NSL is.
Er, I mean on advice of COUNSEL. Damn spell checker.