FWIW, my friend who is a former LEO who shot someone in the line of duty and is now a criminal defense attorney who has defended civilians who have shot and killed others in self defense, is the primary source of my opinion, backed up by statements from officials at the Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigations, who specifically covered these issues in my instructor training course.
Keep in mind that in many states (such as my current state of residence, Colorado), the only thing that is required for instructor certification is an NRA certificate, and the NRA instructor course is all about teaching target shooting and doesn't address the legalities of self-defense at all. So many CCW instructors, unless they've taken the initiative to personally study these issues or consulted with someone else who has, aren't really any more informed on this topic than any other random person.
Prevention of a beatdown which a reasonable person would fear to potentially end in death or serious injury (broken bones, serious lacerations, etc.), yes. Prevention of a beatdown which a reasonable person would expect to end in bruises, a bloody nose, a split lip, etc., no.
And, as I said, by doing this you're effectively opting out of the system. Protest votes are irrelevant. It's not about picking a winner, it's about having an impact, and your approach has none -- it's equivalent to flipping a coin and casting your vote for one of the two major party candidates, or simply not voting at all. None of them have any bearing on the outcome, and neither of them send any significant "message".
If you want to have an impact, and neither of the major parties is offering what you want, then the only way to accomplish anything is to get involved and change one of the parties so it does offer what you want.
You're aware Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, and PRISM's room 641A existed before 9/11. [wikipedia.org] They failed to prevent 9/11, and every terrorist attack since the 70's.
Failure to stop terrorist attacks doesn't indicate lack of utility, it just indicates lack of utility against terrorists. The utility of the NSA is primarily against other nation states; the NSA was very useful during the Cold War, and its predecessor was astoundingly useful during WWII. You can argue that there is no current threat against which the NSA is a valuable tool, but that's a separate argument, which you didn't try to make.
The NIST helps secure our encryption systems.
Actually, it doesn't. NIST is a standards organization. It has run the selection processes for standard cryptographic algorithms lately, but it has always relied heavily on the NSA for technical expertise in the process. This was more visible during the DES standardization process, but you can be sure the NSA was advising for AES and SHA3.
By what amazing feat of mental gymnastics do you arrive at the conclusion that a secret research group can be proven to be helping secure our communications? No, that's asinine. I require evidence.
There is ample evidence in the development of many security technologies. I experienced it personally when I was building a key management system for smart card credit card issuance. The NSA exercised oversight over the design and implementation process, and made some really excellent suggestions that substantially improved the system.
I find it very, very disturbing that in recent years the NSA has apparently abandoned that part of their mission, and has been actively working to subvert strong security. I stop short of saying this means the NSA should be destroyed, but it definitely means it needs new management with the right mandate and proper oversight. And it should probably be pared down to a fraction of its current size.
Unfortunately, information theory tells us we can not have assurances that our communications are not spied on unless we eliminate the secret spying operation.
Actually, we cannot have any such assurances at all, because we can never know that we've eliminated all of the secret spying operations... because they're secret. By definition we can only eliminate the non-secret spying operations.
I will never vote for anyone who is a member of either party.
Unfortunately, this position constitutes opting out of the political process. Duverger's Law means that it's vanishingly unlikely that any third party candidate will achieve any notable political power. If you really want to change things you have to work within the two-party system, which means you need to pick a party and get involved with it, working to push its policies in the right direction.
Actually, deadly force IS an appropriate response to a punch or attempted punch by a stranger on the street. There are many cases of one-punch kills, and even more of people simply being beaten to death. Once you're dazed from a solid punch it's very difficult to defend yourself from the next, which will daze you even more. If you don't end the fight immediately your life is at your attacker's mercy.
You'll want some luck when you argue that in court. Absent some other circumstances like wounds on the back of your head from an assailant pounding your skull on concrete, or other evidence that you had reasonable cause to believe the assailant intended to kill you, you're at risk of going to prison. In most jurisdictions it's on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person in your position would not have expected deadly intent, but in practice it can seem like the burden ends up on the defendant. In analysis of justifiability of use of deadly force you have to keep in mind that there are many gray areas. If you shoot someone you're committing yourself to a game of chance, with your freedom as the stakes.
That's why I teach that you should assume that any time you shoot someone, you'll go to prison. That isn't actually true, obviously, but it's a good assumption to make because in the moment of a violent encounter you don't have time to sit back and examine your legal position. You have to react immediately, which means your decision is going to be an emotion-based one. By balancing your fear of what will happen if you don't shoot against your fear of years in prison, and only shooting if the former is greater, you have a very good chance of making the legally-justifiable decision, which won't send you to prison. And if you happen to roll snake eyes in the courtroom, well, you believed at the time that prison was the better option.
Again, the uncertainty is why it's a very good idea to carry a non-lethal defensive tool beside your lethal one. Pepper spray to the face is approximately as effective as a gun for stopping an assault, but it's dramatically less likely to land you in jail.
Seems like some of the easiest public sources to recognize and associate faces from would be police mugshot databases and sex offender databases. Will former criminals be actively shunned everywhere they go in public, or even subject to mob violence?
Hopefully.
Because if you once made a mistake your life should be ruined forever, right. Hell, might as well just apply the death penalty for even minor offenses. It would be kinder.
1) Pick an area at around 7pm when it is dark outside and see what lights are not on.
2) Rob the place.
This is why people go to jail. If you want to be successful at robbing houses, just picking houses at random isn't the way to go. You need to find your target, study your target, learn the neighborhood (like it doesn't do you any good to hit a house at 7pm if that is when the neighbor might come over to feed the dog) and plan according.
Identifying people at an airport wouldn't help you avoid dog-feeding neighbors, either.
Cameras are hard to carry after 1 hour let alone an entire day.
Huh? Virtually everyone I know carries a camera with them pretty much every moment they're not in bed. And even then the camera is on the nightstand next to them, charging.
They're easy to see.
Not really. It's easy to prop one in a pocket and turn it on. No one would know it was recording.
Capacity is limited.
Well, this is true of anything. Of course, the limits on the most common type of portable camera are on the order of days of continuous recording -- and they have data connections.
I suspect it'll happen so frequently, that the police in any state won't even bother to charge anyone doing so with a crime after a short while.
On what basis are you supposing that the well-established laws against assault and battery will suddenly be ignored, just because someone is doing something perfectly legal that someone else doesn't like? If you're in public I can take all the pictures of you I want, whether it's with my gargantuan DSLR, my cellphone, Glass, or a spycam disguised as a button on my shirt. If you then initiate violence against me, you're committing a crime. If I respond to your violence with violence of my own, then I'm defending myself, and you'll both suffer whatever pain I inflict on you and get thwacked again by the legal system, because I will press charges.
Google glass purposely looks like glasses +(something) so that google can learn how others react to it.
So you're saying that Google could have made Glass completely indistinguishable from normal glasses? Where would they have put the screen? In spite of the fact that people fixate on the camera, the real innovation and purpose of Glass is the screen, you know. And where would they have put the battery and electronics?
Technology just isn't yet up to creating something like Glass which is indistinguishable from normal glasses. It probably will be in another decade or so, but we're not there yet. Your assumed motive for Google's design is wrong.
This may come as a shock, but sometimes I don't want to kill people. Just beat some sense into them.
Try it and you'll end up in jail, then we'll see who gets "sense" pounded into them. Violence has no place in civil society. Likewise, deadly force is not an appropriate, or legally justifiable, response to a punch. Attitudes like yours are the reason I teach my concealed weapons students to carry pepper spray or a taser in addition to a gun. It is not right or legal to use a gun to defend against a punch, but it isn't wise to get into a fistfight while carrying a gun, so having a non-lethal tool that will end the fight is smart.
The minute you use physical force against someone, deadly force is a legal response.
(Concealed Weapons Permit instructor here)
Bullshit. There is no state in the the US which permits use of deadly force in retaliation for a punch, nor even to prevent less than deadly force being used. Deadly force is only justifiable to prevent the use of deadly force, plus a few select other violent felonies (e.g. rape).
If you shoot someone for punching you in the face, you'd better hope that you can convince the jury you had a reasonable fear that they were going to follow up by beating you to death. Personally, I expect (and hope) that you fail to convince the jury.
Ah, that's the problem. I was viewing this as a discussion, not a contest. In a discussion it's usually preferable to make some cogent arguments, or at least state some assertions, rather than just spew snark and sarcasm. If you're looking for a contest, I'll bow out and let you find someone else, because I'm not interested.
Yes, not least of which is the therapeutic value. We are social creatures and the vast majority of us require frequent contact with others for emotional and mental health.
It is not worthless. I for one am interested in non-NSA, non-FBI requests too. My local cops probably have more influence on me than the NSA anyways.
Also, it's not true that they can't provide information about NSLs. Google negotiated permission to publish ranges of numbers, and with that precedent established it shouldn't be too hard for others to do the same.
IP isn't just patents. It also includes trade secrets, which is what you're talking about. Trade secret law puts some legal teeth behind your efforts to keep your ideas to yourself.
In other respects, I was disappointed. I think the biggest downer for me was when we were formally advised that reading other patents in the field was potentially dangerous.
IMO, the way to test whether or not the patent system is accomplishing its constitutional goal is to look at how much time practitioners spend looking through the patent library to find solutions to their problems, or ideas they can build upon, with the idea that it's better/faster/cheaper to find a developed patent and license it rather than do the hard work of inventing it yourself. If the patent database is heavily used as a research library, then it has accomplished its goal of contributing to the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Your comment is exactly what corporate attorneys have told me as well, and the fact that it's good advice proves that the system utterly and completely fails the test.
Small businesses sue each other all the time. It's not that expensive to sue. It can be incredibly expensive if the parties choose to make it so, and if you sue a megacorp they'll either write you a check to make you go away, or they'll bury you in lawyers, which means you'll need your own big pile of lawyers. But when Quickie Laundromat sues Quickie Laundromat it doesn't cost very much. The parties do much of the legwork themselves to keep the attorneys' time (and bills) low, and they hire cheap lawyers.
It has been proven that a first responder has actually saved lives before, and not just shown up to do light investigation.
Absolutely, police responding to calls have saved lives and prevented crimes. We saw a good example recently in Arapahoe High School. But that only happens when the police happen to be close enough to respond in time, and if they decide to intervene. Generally they do, if they're around, but they're under no legal obligation to do so, at least in the US.
The bottom line is that the old saw "when seconds count, the police are just minutes away", is absolutely correct. Because they're usually not present when the bad stuff happens, police are primarily responsible for making reports and doing light investigation, just as the GP said.
Right now, Google only packages and provides (rather than sells outright) data to law enforcement.
Actually, Google doesn't do that either. It does respond to subpeonas, warrants and National Security Letters, when those documents are provided per the requirements of the law and are narrow and specific (i.e. no dragnets). See David Drummond's numerous public statements on this topic.
you cannot seriously claim that Google won't package and sell data to ordinary customers in the future. All it takes is a decree from Larry Page, a change in policy, and it's done.
I agree, that is a valid concern. I don't believe it will happen, certainly not while Page and Brin are in charge. But it's a possibility. I'm skeptical that it could be made retroactive, but I suppose even that is a possibility.
When Larry Ellison buys Google in the next 10 years
LOL.
Google is Evil because they Built The Dataset. This data is so valuable and comprehensive, and the pioneering of the techniques to do it over and over again, ever more efficiently and cheaply, that people without scruples want it now, will want it in the future, and will eventually control it.
The dataset will be built, regardless. Personally, I'd much rather that it was Google doing it, because Google actually does care about user privacy. In the long term, this isn't a problem with a technological solution, it's going to require a legislative solution. Either that or we'll evolve a society that simply doesn't care about privacy (which isn't an entirely negative idea; read David Brin's "The Transparent Society"). Personally, I'm skeptical of a world that doesn't allow for personal privacy, so I think we need to address it legislatively. I don't know that we need to be quite as draconian about it as some European nations have, but their legal frameworks provide a good starting point.
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Whilst I understand the dilemma, this is a defeatist attitude & not in the heart of democracy.
You didn't read my post.
FWIW, my friend who is a former LEO who shot someone in the line of duty and is now a criminal defense attorney who has defended civilians who have shot and killed others in self defense, is the primary source of my opinion, backed up by statements from officials at the Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigations, who specifically covered these issues in my instructor training course.
Keep in mind that in many states (such as my current state of residence, Colorado), the only thing that is required for instructor certification is an NRA certificate, and the NRA instructor course is all about teaching target shooting and doesn't address the legalities of self-defense at all. So many CCW instructors, unless they've taken the initiative to personally study these issues or consulted with someone else who has, aren't really any more informed on this topic than any other random person.
Prevention of a beatdown which a reasonable person would fear to potentially end in death or serious injury (broken bones, serious lacerations, etc.), yes. Prevention of a beatdown which a reasonable person would expect to end in bruises, a bloody nose, a split lip, etc., no.
And, as I said, by doing this you're effectively opting out of the system. Protest votes are irrelevant. It's not about picking a winner, it's about having an impact, and your approach has none -- it's equivalent to flipping a coin and casting your vote for one of the two major party candidates, or simply not voting at all. None of them have any bearing on the outcome, and neither of them send any significant "message".
If you want to have an impact, and neither of the major parties is offering what you want, then the only way to accomplish anything is to get involved and change one of the parties so it does offer what you want.
You're aware Omnivore, Carnivore, ECHELON, and PRISM's room 641A existed before 9/11. [wikipedia.org] They failed to prevent 9/11, and every terrorist attack since the 70's.
Failure to stop terrorist attacks doesn't indicate lack of utility, it just indicates lack of utility against terrorists. The utility of the NSA is primarily against other nation states; the NSA was very useful during the Cold War, and its predecessor was astoundingly useful during WWII. You can argue that there is no current threat against which the NSA is a valuable tool, but that's a separate argument, which you didn't try to make.
The NIST helps secure our encryption systems.
Actually, it doesn't. NIST is a standards organization. It has run the selection processes for standard cryptographic algorithms lately, but it has always relied heavily on the NSA for technical expertise in the process. This was more visible during the DES standardization process, but you can be sure the NSA was advising for AES and SHA3.
By what amazing feat of mental gymnastics do you arrive at the conclusion that a secret research group can be proven to be helping secure our communications? No, that's asinine. I require evidence.
There is ample evidence in the development of many security technologies. I experienced it personally when I was building a key management system for smart card credit card issuance. The NSA exercised oversight over the design and implementation process, and made some really excellent suggestions that substantially improved the system.
I find it very, very disturbing that in recent years the NSA has apparently abandoned that part of their mission, and has been actively working to subvert strong security. I stop short of saying this means the NSA should be destroyed, but it definitely means it needs new management with the right mandate and proper oversight. And it should probably be pared down to a fraction of its current size.
Unfortunately, information theory tells us we can not have assurances that our communications are not spied on unless we eliminate the secret spying operation.
Actually, we cannot have any such assurances at all, because we can never know that we've eliminated all of the secret spying operations... because they're secret. By definition we can only eliminate the non-secret spying operations.
I will never vote for anyone who is a member of either party.
Unfortunately, this position constitutes opting out of the political process. Duverger's Law means that it's vanishingly unlikely that any third party candidate will achieve any notable political power. If you really want to change things you have to work within the two-party system, which means you need to pick a party and get involved with it, working to push its policies in the right direction.
Actually, deadly force IS an appropriate response to a punch or attempted punch by a stranger on the street. There are many cases of one-punch kills, and even more of people simply being beaten to death. Once you're dazed from a solid punch it's very difficult to defend yourself from the next, which will daze you even more. If you don't end the fight immediately your life is at your attacker's mercy.
You'll want some luck when you argue that in court. Absent some other circumstances like wounds on the back of your head from an assailant pounding your skull on concrete, or other evidence that you had reasonable cause to believe the assailant intended to kill you, you're at risk of going to prison. In most jurisdictions it's on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person in your position would not have expected deadly intent, but in practice it can seem like the burden ends up on the defendant. In analysis of justifiability of use of deadly force you have to keep in mind that there are many gray areas. If you shoot someone you're committing yourself to a game of chance, with your freedom as the stakes.
That's why I teach that you should assume that any time you shoot someone, you'll go to prison. That isn't actually true, obviously, but it's a good assumption to make because in the moment of a violent encounter you don't have time to sit back and examine your legal position. You have to react immediately, which means your decision is going to be an emotion-based one. By balancing your fear of what will happen if you don't shoot against your fear of years in prison, and only shooting if the former is greater, you have a very good chance of making the legally-justifiable decision, which won't send you to prison. And if you happen to roll snake eyes in the courtroom, well, you believed at the time that prison was the better option.
Again, the uncertainty is why it's a very good idea to carry a non-lethal defensive tool beside your lethal one. Pepper spray to the face is approximately as effective as a gun for stopping an assault, but it's dramatically less likely to land you in jail.
Seems like some of the easiest public sources to recognize and associate faces from would be police mugshot databases and sex offender databases. Will former criminals be actively shunned everywhere they go in public, or even subject to mob violence?
Hopefully.
Because if you once made a mistake your life should be ruined forever, right. Hell, might as well just apply the death penalty for even minor offenses. It would be kinder.
Why?
Far easier to:
1) Pick an area at around 7pm when it is dark outside and see what lights are not on.
2) Rob the place.
This is why people go to jail. If you want to be successful at robbing houses, just picking houses at random isn't the way to go. You need to find your target, study your target, learn the neighborhood (like it doesn't do you any good to hit a house at 7pm if that is when the neighbor might come over to feed the dog) and plan according.
Identifying people at an airport wouldn't help you avoid dog-feeding neighbors, either.
Cameras are hard to carry after 1 hour let alone an entire day.
Huh? Virtually everyone I know carries a camera with them pretty much every moment they're not in bed. And even then the camera is on the nightstand next to them, charging.
They're easy to see.
Not really. It's easy to prop one in a pocket and turn it on. No one would know it was recording.
Capacity is limited.
Well, this is true of anything. Of course, the limits on the most common type of portable camera are on the order of days of continuous recording -- and they have data connections.
I suspect it'll happen so frequently, that the police in any state won't even bother to charge anyone doing so with a crime after a short while.
On what basis are you supposing that the well-established laws against assault and battery will suddenly be ignored, just because someone is doing something perfectly legal that someone else doesn't like? If you're in public I can take all the pictures of you I want, whether it's with my gargantuan DSLR, my cellphone, Glass, or a spycam disguised as a button on my shirt. If you then initiate violence against me, you're committing a crime. If I respond to your violence with violence of my own, then I'm defending myself, and you'll both suffer whatever pain I inflict on you and get thwacked again by the legal system, because I will press charges.
Google glass purposely looks like glasses +(something) so that google can learn how others react to it.
So you're saying that Google could have made Glass completely indistinguishable from normal glasses? Where would they have put the screen? In spite of the fact that people fixate on the camera, the real innovation and purpose of Glass is the screen, you know. And where would they have put the battery and electronics?
Technology just isn't yet up to creating something like Glass which is indistinguishable from normal glasses. It probably will be in another decade or so, but we're not there yet. Your assumed motive for Google's design is wrong.
Please let me know where you live so that I can avoid the place.
He's wrong. There is no such place.
This may come as a shock, but sometimes I don't want to kill people. Just beat some sense into them.
Try it and you'll end up in jail, then we'll see who gets "sense" pounded into them. Violence has no place in civil society. Likewise, deadly force is not an appropriate, or legally justifiable, response to a punch. Attitudes like yours are the reason I teach my concealed weapons students to carry pepper spray or a taser in addition to a gun. It is not right or legal to use a gun to defend against a punch, but it isn't wise to get into a fistfight while carrying a gun, so having a non-lethal tool that will end the fight is smart.
The minute you use physical force against someone, deadly force is a legal response.
(Concealed Weapons Permit instructor here)
Bullshit. There is no state in the the US which permits use of deadly force in retaliation for a punch, nor even to prevent less than deadly force being used. Deadly force is only justifiable to prevent the use of deadly force, plus a few select other violent felonies (e.g. rape).
If you shoot someone for punching you in the face, you'd better hope that you can convince the jury you had a reasonable fear that they were going to follow up by beating you to death. Personally, I expect (and hope) that you fail to convince the jury.
your actions constitute assault
That's a very unusual definition of "assault" you have there.
Ah, that's the problem. I was viewing this as a discussion, not a contest. In a discussion it's usually preferable to make some cogent arguments, or at least state some assertions, rather than just spew snark and sarcasm. If you're looking for a contest, I'll bow out and let you find someone else, because I'm not interested.
Yes, not least of which is the therapeutic value. We are social creatures and the vast majority of us require frequent contact with others for emotional and mental health.
That's what family and friends are for.
Got no arguments of substance, I see.
It is not worthless. I for one am interested in non-NSA, non-FBI requests too. My local cops probably have more influence on me than the NSA anyways.
Also, it's not true that they can't provide information about NSLs. Google negotiated permission to publish ranges of numbers, and with that precedent established it shouldn't be too hard for others to do the same.
IP isn't just patents. It also includes trade secrets, which is what you're talking about. Trade secret law puts some legal teeth behind your efforts to keep your ideas to yourself.
In other respects, I was disappointed. I think the biggest downer for me was when we were formally advised that reading other patents in the field was potentially dangerous.
IMO, the way to test whether or not the patent system is accomplishing its constitutional goal is to look at how much time practitioners spend looking through the patent library to find solutions to their problems, or ideas they can build upon, with the idea that it's better/faster/cheaper to find a developed patent and license it rather than do the hard work of inventing it yourself. If the patent database is heavily used as a research library, then it has accomplished its goal of contributing to the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Your comment is exactly what corporate attorneys have told me as well, and the fact that it's good advice proves that the system utterly and completely fails the test.
Bah.
Small businesses sue each other all the time. It's not that expensive to sue. It can be incredibly expensive if the parties choose to make it so, and if you sue a megacorp they'll either write you a check to make you go away, or they'll bury you in lawyers, which means you'll need your own big pile of lawyers. But when Quickie Laundromat sues Quickie Laundromat it doesn't cost very much. The parties do much of the legwork themselves to keep the attorneys' time (and bills) low, and they hire cheap lawyers.
It has been proven that a first responder has actually saved lives before, and not just shown up to do light investigation.
Absolutely, police responding to calls have saved lives and prevented crimes. We saw a good example recently in Arapahoe High School. But that only happens when the police happen to be close enough to respond in time, and if they decide to intervene. Generally they do, if they're around, but they're under no legal obligation to do so, at least in the US.
The bottom line is that the old saw "when seconds count, the police are just minutes away", is absolutely correct. Because they're usually not present when the bad stuff happens, police are primarily responsible for making reports and doing light investigation, just as the GP said.
Right now, Google only packages and provides (rather than sells outright) data to law enforcement.
Actually, Google doesn't do that either. It does respond to subpeonas, warrants and National Security Letters, when those documents are provided per the requirements of the law and are narrow and specific (i.e. no dragnets). See David Drummond's numerous public statements on this topic.
you cannot seriously claim that Google won't package and sell data to ordinary customers in the future. All it takes is a decree from Larry Page, a change in policy, and it's done.
I agree, that is a valid concern. I don't believe it will happen, certainly not while Page and Brin are in charge. But it's a possibility. I'm skeptical that it could be made retroactive, but I suppose even that is a possibility.
When Larry Ellison buys Google in the next 10 years
LOL.
Google is Evil because they Built The Dataset. This data is so valuable and comprehensive, and the pioneering of the techniques to do it over and over again, ever more efficiently and cheaply, that people without scruples want it now, will want it in the future, and will eventually control it.
The dataset will be built, regardless. Personally, I'd much rather that it was Google doing it, because Google actually does care about user privacy. In the long term, this isn't a problem with a technological solution, it's going to require a legislative solution. Either that or we'll evolve a society that simply doesn't care about privacy (which isn't an entirely negative idea; read David Brin's "The Transparent Society"). Personally, I'm skeptical of a world that doesn't allow for personal privacy, so I think we need to address it legislatively. I don't know that we need to be quite as draconian about it as some European nations have, but their legal frameworks provide a good starting point.