It does not seem, like she has one... We'll have to wait until she — and others like her — retire or die out and get replaced by the new generation of judges. Of course, the new generation will be quite ignorant of details of some other new tech. Such is life today — unlike for the previous part of civilization's history, technology can now change drastically within a human lifetime...
engaging in a pattern of rude, impatient and undignified treatment of self-represented litigants in the courtroom. This included inappropriately interrupting them, addressing them in an angry or condescending or demeaning tone of voice, and threatening to rule against them if they interrupted or annoyed her.
This suggests, our (self-represented) anti-spam crusader annoyed her and lost for that reason — not at all because she does not know, what spam is... I admire his intentions, but he needs to partner with a like-minded lawyer, who would be going to courts leaving Bennet to what he does best — baiting spammers and collecting evidence.
We need to find some way to restore the rule of law
The law already makes it very illegal to impede the execution of a search warrant and to otherwise obstruct justice. If the police come with a search warrant, you must allow them to enter the premises. RIPA logically extends the law into the "digital age".
I dare all of you condemning this recently-passed British law to post a coherent criticism of it...
... no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you."
Not sure about the cake, but the two weeks period is mandated by law. Even if they escort you out the door immediately, they still have to pay you for to more weeks — although you may have to perform your slacking at home (or even at your new workplace).
It works the other way too — you can not quit instantly — if the employer chooses to make you show up for two more weeks, they can.
Why the hell would the US cede any control over the Internet to Iran?
Or China or Russia for that matter?
Although the initial purpose of this year's summit was to cover such issues as spam, free speech and cheaper access, it appears that nations such as China, Iran, and Russia, among others, would rather discuss US control of the Internet.
Of course — why talk about the spam, which allows the "poor" Russians and Chinese to target mostly the "rich" Americans, when you can score countless points at home and stall any meeting for ever complaining the "unfairness" of American control.
And, face it, nobody really wants any transfer to happen — it ain't broken. Everybody loves to bitch about it, but the Internet is doing just fine under US control — and any reduction of our control of it will automatically increase control by all of those wonderful regimes listed.
While I agree that the outside of a letter isn't secret, and can be examined without a warrant, I think that any such rules for e-mail should match a physical letter as to what can be "examined"
Nothing prevents the government from tracing the letter's progress through the (government's) Postal Service either. All stamping of the envelope would also be trackable...
now comes the catch, in the physical mail, you'd have to open the letter to see what was inside, for e-mail all of the "examinable" information simply precedes the message, all you have to do is "keep reading" (if you're sniffing the wire) If you're watching server logs, typically the logs only show a message ID, the sender and the receiver.
The new procedures being implemented consist of requiring the communication providers to archive the headers — it is not like we have to rely on the honesty of millions of human interceptors to turn away from the screen, when message's body is displayed on it right after the headers. If archiving the contents is not mandated, it will not be done — if only to save money and gobs of storage space.
I meant "no new problems" in the 6 years, not "no new courts".
The military commissions are new courts with much more "lenient" rules for admission of evidence.
The military commissions — America's implementation of the "competent tribunals" mandated by the Geneva conventions — apply to people suspected of being unlawful combatants.
Fortunately for US citizens, they haven't been able to use them against us.
Exactly. So, I don't understand, why you keep bringing this up in connection with electronic surveilance. Can we, please, get back on topic?
But, please, don't respond, until the Cool-Aid wears off. Thank you.
Before we in the U.S. get to patting ourselves on the back for not being this bad
It was ruled long ago by the American courts, that the information on the envelope of a letter is not subject to privacy expectations and can be examined by the police without a warrant.
Germany's surveilance of the e-mail headers and connection's IPs is no different — fair game, as long as the contents is not looked at.
It's not right in Germany, and it's not right here.
It's been "right" here and there for decades — possibly, centuries. I can not even find any links quickly, which means, it is certainly a pre-Internet thing...
Thank you for the additional details and elaboration. Politically the detentions don't look very nice, but legally there is nothing wrong with them — note that there are no legal limits on how long the determination of status can last, nor the minimum age (why did you bring up, that some of them were under 18, when detained?)...
Court of law? Where have you been the past 6 years?
Right here, thank you very much. The courts are quite functional. They have their problems, but no new ones were introduced in the past 6 years.
You can expect to have more evidence extracted from you via waterboarding.
Mere admission is rather weak evidence — unless corroborated by other kind(s). It is possible, that someone falsely incriminates self just to end the torture, but if the dead body/drugs/explosives/whatever are not found, where the accused said they are, he/she will not be convicted. Prosecutors know about this disincentive to torture very well and do not use it...
You are changing the subject, but I'll bite. Only once, though — don't expect more responses on this.
That's fine, until they ship you to Guantanamo. They don't need a reason for that, nor is there any trial preceding your imprisonment.
"They" do — they need to catch me fighting America without uniform of any other country...
All armies used to execute such people on the spot — they are not prisoners of war and Geneva conventions do not apply to them. America chose to imprison and try them instead, and is now in boiling water over it...
This reminds me of that anecdote from years back about a question asked by a clueless user on how he can "download all of the Internet" at once and take it with him...
Seriously, are we supposed to believe, that "virtually all" of AT&T Internet traffic passes through one facility in San Francisco? It is likely, they have the same rooms in all major nodes, though...
Which brings us back to those earlier laws obliging phone companies to maintain equipment in all central offices, which would allow the government to eavesdrop on anybody's phone calls. Sure, the police needed a warrant to actually perform the eavesdropping. But the equipment and the facilities ("secret rooms") are always there.
What they most likely don't need a warrant for is the statistics — did the number of calls to so-and-so suddenly increase? Did he call such-and-such after this-and-this called him?..
Most likely, NSA is looking for similar things on the Internet — there is a lot of insight to be gained from simply knowing, which sites get more traffic in (possible) correllation with certain events... And then, again, there is a need for the equipment to always be there, so that warranted intercepts of the datastreams can be performed too.
Yes, this is prone to abuse. No, it can not be effectively audited by the public without "compromising" (or even "jeopardizing") "the mission". The only relief comes from the knowledge, that any evidence illegally collected still can not be used against anyone in the court of law...
I don't think the parent was talking about putting privately-funded research into the public domain; the issue is research funded with public monies, by the NIH.
American public funds it, but placing it into public domain — as GGP poster wants — would make it automatically freely available to the rest of the world too.
Making stuff is easy these days — designing, researching, developing it is hard. I would like us to be able to pick and choose, what we give away, and what we keep.
DHS is at pains to point out that REAL ID is not a national identity card program but a set of regulations that direct states how to create their drivers' licenses and state ID cards.
And they are right. The real evil, which allows us all to be tracked from young age to the death is the "Social Security" number.
But that's much harder to get rid of as long as Income Tax is considered acceptable, because the need to track everybody's income must be considered acceptable along with it... And to track you, some sort of a nationwide-unique number is needed.
Don't expect ACLU to lift a finger over this though — "Social Security" itself is the major feather in the Illiberals' hat, and anybody trying to lower taxes must be doing it only "for the rich" and with sole purpose of destroying this or that pet-program.
Civil Liberties are meaningless without financial liberty, but, unfortunately, today's ACLU does not realize that...
Holodomor was not a Chinese thing. Blaming the Chinese pseudo-Communist government for the USSR's mistakes is really a stretch.
Yes. China had its own thing. It may not have been deliberately murderous, but it lead to significant devastation (and loss of life) anyway. Whether Mao was a "pseudo-" or a real Communist is really unimportant...
[...] Leaving the village is everyday practice. Traveling on trains does not require a written permission slip from the village leader. That is silly. [...]
I come from the ex-USSR and most of the details in my post were from either my experience or knowledge of the recent history. The GGP-post claimed, USA is "not that different" from "cold-war Russia", which made my response applicable.
When donating them money in 2006, I specified a "special" address, which contained "from ACLU" in the "Line 1" of the address. The actual address went to "Line 2" of their form. I do this with all establishments I'm dealing with — just in case.
A month or so later invitations to subscribe to "The Nation" (a disgusting uber-Left rag) started showing up bearing the "from ACLU" address...
Now, I expected the ACLU to be bi-partisan — and concerned with my privacy. Asking me for money the next year is fair game. But sharing my info with other — completely unrelated — organizations? Very disappointing...
Somehow, nothing but parcels from Amazon has shown up bearing the "from Amazon" address.
The US and China (or even cold war Russia) are not really that different.
Yep... 20 mln citizens have already gone to labor camps and hundreds of thousands executed, while deliberately-induced starvation is killing millions more on conquered lands. No private property can legally exist — all enterprises belong to the State (of Workers and Peasants). It is illegal for peasants to leave their village without the headmaster's Ok (he is the one issuing them passports), and for all others to leave the country. Those suspected of subversion are tried by secret courts — either for the actual subversion, or (in the later stages of the Cold War) for "drug dealing", "gun possession", or homosexuality. It is illegal to own "xerox" machines and other "publishing" equipment.
Hot water is a luxury available in cities, and even the running cold water (where available) could be out for days and weeks at a time. Wait for for an apartment is counted in years (and decades), as is the wait for telephone connection. Cars are small, unreliable, polluting, expensive, but you can't get them anyway. Same is true of electronics and most other manufactured things.
Yes. America is not that different at all...
Total government control over communications
Patently false — the government is seeking access to one particular method of communication — unencrypted e-mails. Whether they get it or not, you are a fool, if you expected privacy of that to begin with...
Privacy ensures that the state doesn't take too much power, because as privacy moves closer to zero and a government's information on its citizens increases towards infinite any reason to bring anyone in on charges can be trumped up.
No, actually, that's not true. Charging you is not enough to bring you in. The government also has to persuade a jury of your peers, and it is not easy. For example, the government knows a lot about the mafia bosses, but locking them up (for very real crimes) continues to be very difficult.
Now, when those thugs do go to prison, quite often it is not for extortions and murders, but for "benign" things like tax evasion.
Which brings me back to what I used to rebut that single argument regarding the loss of the liberty of privacy, which we supposedly lost in exchange for the database in subject... The privacy (from the government) was lost shortly after 1913, when the Constitutional Amendment allowing Congress too levy income taxes was passed, and — naturally — the need to track everybody's income along with it.
We did not lose our privacy to Bush — it happened a long time ago. If Bush's DHS manages to use this information to catch up on some "cold" cases, that's the crappy nickel lining to the dark cloud, that our ancestors invited upon their heads in order to be able to finance America's participation in World War I.
The lady was not searched (before being caught), and nothing was seized...
-- this is information they couldn't have aggregated and searched via normal means
Yes, of course they could! By buying it from Lexis-Nexis, for example. Better yet — from the tax-records and bank-reports. I'm pretty certain, you would dismiss people opposed to income tax as "lunatics", but the problems you are so angry about started, when the tax was introduced (in 1913) — and with it the need to track everybody's income...
In general, it is not illegal to know (and record!) things about someone else. "Information wants to be free," — remember? Just ask a paparazzi...
But you mentioned civil liberties — in plural. Care to offer another candidate?
The rest of your response is political, rather than legal, so I'll ignore it.
First of all, the GGP post mentioned lost civil liberties — in plural. You listed only one candidate. Bad.
A huge government database full of your SSN and other personally identifying information
And your candidate does not qualify — even if this is a privacy loss to begin with (nobody is peering into your window), you had it only because of the past logistical challenges in accumulating and storing all this information. The difficulties, which Lexis-Nexis was successfully overcoming, BTW — for many years.
You did not lose it today. You lost it, when income tax was established — and with it the need to keep track of people's income. Bank accounts must have an SSN associated with the holder (unless not a US-citizen) — and report it to the government... Most of the government's information about you comes from those sources (unless you were ever subject to a law-enforcement investigation). It used to be harder for the government agents to access/use that information, and now it is easier. But it was always legal. And when it was not — such as sharing information between CIA and FBI — it contributed to substantial unpleasantries, which lead people to think, the privacy gain was not worse the loss of life.
The fate of a grandmother is always emotionally appealing — most people have a soft spot for the elderly. But the fact remains — the database helped catch a convicted murderer...
I too hate to present IDs when traveling by train or air, but I know better, than to blame the current government.
I would rather have her free on the street than lose some of my civil liberties.
Please, list the civil liberties, which you lost because of this database.
but don't justify a massive infringement in civil liberties by saying that it has allowed you to lock up grandma.
The cases like this all they can expose. A caught-up spy or, indeed, a terrorist is too valuable for their capture to be publicized. But, clearly, you would not give the government any benefit of the doubt so go ahead and enumerate the lost civil liberties. Thanks.
If China do decide to buy land off of Russia, is it not a good thing by your argument?
Absolutely. But Russia may refuse to sell — out of nationalist pride or something else. And then things may get ugly.
Major western powers are the main threat here, not China.
A "main threat" where? Japan (itself the number one threat in the East only 70 years ago, BTW) has nothing to fear from the West. Neither does India. Certainly not Taiwan nor South Korea. North Korea or Myanmar — maybe, although the neo-Conservative idea of improving a country by imposing Democracy on it has been disgraced by the rather poor execution in Iraq...
Vietnam — not really, their Communists are increasingly pragmatic. All of them have seen, what happened to Tibet...
Russia (itself a threat to most of its neighbors, BTW) may be beating its chest against "the West", but the West will be much happier buying stuff from them — we don't need their land. But China does.
You changed the subject from who may be the target of China's military, to whether or not "the West" is a bigger threat. I don't think, it is — and I just explained why — but I will not continue. You, clearly, have a different agenda...
The Republic of China is under a persistent threat of a (Mainland) Chinese attack. United States has long ago promised to defend them, so we have to listen carefully (and take notes!), when the current rival — and an unlikely-but-possible future enemy — talks about any kind of war.
Sooner or later China may also decide to begin solving its (over)population issues by expanding into Siberia, whose population density was always far smaller (orders of magnitude smaller) than China's and is now shrinking dramatically. In 10-30 years China will either be purchasing or conquering that land from Russia — if there are any Russians left to notice that is...
Then, of course, there is a long-simmering tension with India, which has resulted in an all-out war as recently as in 1962. And then there is Vietnam, which lost a piece of territory to China, who invaded to, pretty much, punish it for interfering with the Khmere Rouge earlier — a "family dispute" among the Communist thugs.
And last, although not necessarily least, is the continuing (and officially regulated) hatred towards Japan — "justified" or not, it may well escalate into an armed conflict in a decade or two, when an internal crisis inside China may lead its leaders to seek an external war to unify the country. It may be harder for its neighbors to repel, than it was to deal with the desperate Argentinian regime in a similar situation...
No it isn't. We still have one really major step to take (that we can see from here/now). Molecular level construction. I don't mean nano-tolerance specs for things this could print, but by building things at the molecular level you finally get the ability to do self-replication.
I did not say, this device itself is the solution to the problem of manufacturing. I said, it is an illustration of the problem being solved. Surely, it is still cumbersome to produce many things, but it has all been reduced, pretty much, to shipping (of materials and parts) and other logistics.
The molecular-level improvements would be useful, no doubt, but we've been manufacturing things for centuries already... The important part — and my original point — here is, that we are good enough at the manufacturing to value the design of a thing far more than an instance of the thing — for the vast majority of things.
Slashdot Mirror
It does not seem, like she has one... We'll have to wait until she — and others like her — retire or die out and get replaced by the new generation of judges. Of course, the new generation will be quite ignorant of details of some other new tech. Such is life today — unlike for the previous part of civilization's history, technology can now change drastically within a human lifetime...
Then, again, this particular woman has already been cited for:
This suggests, our (self-represented) anti-spam crusader annoyed her and lost for that reason — not at all because she does not know, what spam is... I admire his intentions, but he needs to partner with a like-minded lawyer, who would be going to courts leaving Bennet to what he does best — baiting spammers and collecting evidence.
The law already makes it very illegal to impede the execution of a search warrant and to otherwise obstruct justice. If the police come with a search warrant, you must allow them to enter the premises. RIPA logically extends the law into the "digital age".
I dare all of you condemning this recently-passed British law to post a coherent criticism of it...
Not sure about the cake, but the two weeks period is mandated by law. Even if they escort you out the door immediately, they still have to pay you for to more weeks — although you may have to perform your slacking at home (or even at your new workplace).
It works the other way too — you can not quit instantly — if the employer chooses to make you show up for two more weeks, they can.
Or China or Russia for that matter?
Of course — why talk about the spam, which allows the "poor" Russians and Chinese to target mostly the "rich" Americans, when you can score countless points at home and stall any meeting for ever complaining the "unfairness" of American control.
And, face it, nobody really wants any transfer to happen — it ain't broken. Everybody loves to bitch about it, but the Internet is doing just fine under US control — and any reduction of our control of it will automatically increase control by all of those wonderful regimes listed.
Nothing prevents the government from tracing the letter's progress through the (government's) Postal Service either. All stamping of the envelope would also be trackable...
The new procedures being implemented consist of requiring the communication providers to archive the headers — it is not like we have to rely on the honesty of millions of human interceptors to turn away from the screen, when message's body is displayed on it right after the headers. If archiving the contents is not mandated, it will not be done — if only to save money and gobs of storage space.
And therefore no conviction either.
I meant "no new problems" in the 6 years, not "no new courts".
The military commissions — America's implementation of the "competent tribunals" mandated by the Geneva conventions — apply to people suspected of being unlawful combatants.
Exactly. So, I don't understand, why you keep bringing this up in connection with electronic surveilance. Can we, please, get back on topic?
But, please, don't respond, until the Cool-Aid wears off. Thank you.
It was ruled long ago by the American courts, that the information on the envelope of a letter is not subject to privacy expectations and can be examined by the police without a warrant.
Germany's surveilance of the e-mail headers and connection's IPs is no different — fair game, as long as the contents is not looked at.
It's been "right" here and there for decades — possibly, centuries. I can not even find any links quickly, which means, it is certainly a pre-Internet thing...
Thank you for the additional details and elaboration. Politically the detentions don't look very nice, but legally there is nothing wrong with them — note that there are no legal limits on how long the determination of status can last, nor the minimum age (why did you bring up, that some of them were under 18, when detained?)...
Right here, thank you very much. The courts are quite functional. They have their problems, but no new ones were introduced in the past 6 years.
Mere admission is rather weak evidence — unless corroborated by other kind(s). It is possible, that someone falsely incriminates self just to end the torture, but if the dead body/drugs/explosives/whatever are not found, where the accused said they are, he/she will not be convicted. Prosecutors know about this disincentive to torture very well and do not use it...
You are changing the subject, but I'll bite. Only once, though — don't expect more responses on this.
"They" do — they need to catch me fighting America without uniform of any other country...
All armies used to execute such people on the spot — they are not prisoners of war and Geneva conventions do not apply to them. America chose to imprison and try them instead, and is now in boiling water over it...
The State received the HAVA-allocated money, but failed to deliver the improvements, that the money was supposed to pay for.
This reminds me of that anecdote from years back about a question asked by a clueless user on how he can "download all of the Internet" at once and take it with him...
Seriously, are we supposed to believe, that "virtually all" of AT&T Internet traffic passes through one facility in San Francisco? It is likely, they have the same rooms in all major nodes, though...
Which brings us back to those earlier laws obliging phone companies to maintain equipment in all central offices, which would allow the government to eavesdrop on anybody's phone calls. Sure, the police needed a warrant to actually perform the eavesdropping. But the equipment and the facilities ("secret rooms") are always there.
What they most likely don't need a warrant for is the statistics — did the number of calls to so-and-so suddenly increase? Did he call such-and-such after this-and-this called him?..
Most likely, NSA is looking for similar things on the Internet — there is a lot of insight to be gained from simply knowing, which sites get more traffic in (possible) correllation with certain events... And then, again, there is a need for the equipment to always be there, so that warranted intercepts of the datastreams can be performed too.
Yes, this is prone to abuse. No, it can not be effectively audited by the public without "compromising" (or even "jeopardizing") "the mission". The only relief comes from the knowledge, that any evidence illegally collected still can not be used against anyone in the court of law...
American public funds it, but placing it into public domain — as GGP poster wants — would make it automatically freely available to the rest of the world too.
Making stuff is easy these days — designing, researching, developing it is hard. I would like us to be able to pick and choose, what we give away, and what we keep.
And they are right. The real evil, which allows us all to be tracked from young age to the death is the "Social Security" number.
But that's much harder to get rid of as long as Income Tax is considered acceptable, because the need to track everybody's income must be considered acceptable along with it... And to track you, some sort of a nationwide-unique number is needed.
Don't expect ACLU to lift a finger over this though — "Social Security" itself is the major feather in the Illiberals' hat, and anybody trying to lower taxes must be doing it only "for the rich" and with sole purpose of destroying this or that pet-program.
Civil Liberties are meaningless without financial liberty, but, unfortunately, today's ACLU does not realize that...
Yes. China had its own thing. It may not have been deliberately murderous, but it lead to significant devastation (and loss of life) anyway. Whether Mao was a "pseudo-" or a real Communist is really unimportant...
I come from the ex-USSR and most of the details in my post were from either my experience or knowledge of the recent history. The GGP-post claimed, USA is "not that different" from "cold-war Russia", which made my response applicable.
When donating them money in 2006, I specified a "special" address, which contained "from ACLU" in the "Line 1" of the address. The actual address went to "Line 2" of their form. I do this with all establishments I'm dealing with — just in case.
A month or so later invitations to subscribe to "The Nation" (a disgusting uber-Left rag) started showing up bearing the "from ACLU" address...
Now, I expected the ACLU to be bi-partisan — and concerned with my privacy. Asking me for money the next year is fair game. But sharing my info with other — completely unrelated — organizations? Very disappointing...
Somehow, nothing but parcels from Amazon has shown up bearing the "from Amazon" address.
Yep... 20 mln citizens have already gone to labor camps and hundreds of thousands executed, while deliberately-induced starvation is killing millions more on conquered lands. No private property can legally exist — all enterprises belong to the State (of Workers and Peasants). It is illegal for peasants to leave their village without the headmaster's Ok (he is the one issuing them passports), and for all others to leave the country. Those suspected of subversion are tried by secret courts — either for the actual subversion, or (in the later stages of the Cold War) for "drug dealing", "gun possession", or homosexuality. It is illegal to own "xerox" machines and other "publishing" equipment.
Hot water is a luxury available in cities, and even the running cold water (where available) could be out for days and weeks at a time. Wait for for an apartment is counted in years (and decades), as is the wait for telephone connection. Cars are small, unreliable, polluting, expensive, but you can't get them anyway. Same is true of electronics and most other manufactured things.
Yes. America is not that different at all...
Patently false — the government is seeking access to one particular method of communication — unencrypted e-mails. Whether they get it or not, you are a fool, if you expected privacy of that to begin with...
Except the Register, right? Phew...
As every kid on Slashdot knows, data can not be stolen — when a copy is made, the originals and the backups remain in place.
Who cares for some hardware — the rich owners can buy new, but the poor robbers must've had a difficult childhood.
No, actually, that's not true. Charging you is not enough to bring you in. The government also has to persuade a jury of your peers, and it is not easy. For example, the government knows a lot about the mafia bosses, but locking them up (for very real crimes) continues to be very difficult.
Now, when those thugs do go to prison, quite often it is not for extortions and murders, but for "benign" things like tax evasion.
Which brings me back to what I used to rebut that single argument regarding the loss of the liberty of privacy, which we supposedly lost in exchange for the database in subject... The privacy (from the government) was lost shortly after 1913, when the Constitutional Amendment allowing Congress too levy income taxes was passed, and — naturally — the need to track everybody's income along with it.
We did not lose our privacy to Bush — it happened a long time ago. If Bush's DHS manages to use this information to catch up on some "cold" cases, that's the crappy nickel lining to the dark cloud, that our ancestors invited upon their heads in order to be able to finance America's participation in World War I.
The lady was not searched (before being caught), and nothing was seized...
Yes, of course they could! By buying it from Lexis-Nexis, for example. Better yet — from the tax-records and bank-reports. I'm pretty certain, you would dismiss people opposed to income tax as "lunatics", but the problems you are so angry about started, when the tax was introduced (in 1913) — and with it the need to track everybody's income...
In general, it is not illegal to know (and record!) things about someone else. "Information wants to be free," — remember? Just ask a paparazzi...
But you mentioned civil liberties — in plural. Care to offer another candidate?
The rest of your response is political, rather than legal, so I'll ignore it.
First of all, the GGP post mentioned lost civil liberties — in plural. You listed only one candidate. Bad.
And your candidate does not qualify — even if this is a privacy loss to begin with (nobody is peering into your window), you had it only because of the past logistical challenges in accumulating and storing all this information. The difficulties, which Lexis-Nexis was successfully overcoming, BTW — for many years.
You did not lose it today. You lost it, when income tax was established — and with it the need to keep track of people's income. Bank accounts must have an SSN associated with the holder (unless not a US-citizen) — and report it to the government... Most of the government's information about you comes from those sources (unless you were ever subject to a law-enforcement investigation). It used to be harder for the government agents to access/use that information, and now it is easier. But it was always legal. And when it was not — such as sharing information between CIA and FBI — it contributed to substantial unpleasantries, which lead people to think, the privacy gain was not worse the loss of life.
The fate of a grandmother is always emotionally appealing — most people have a soft spot for the elderly. But the fact remains — the database helped catch a convicted murderer...
I too hate to present IDs when traveling by train or air, but I know better, than to blame the current government.
Please, list the civil liberties, which you lost because of this database.
The cases like this all they can expose. A caught-up spy or, indeed, a terrorist is too valuable for their capture to be publicized. But, clearly, you would not give the government any benefit of the doubt so go ahead and enumerate the lost civil liberties. Thanks.
Absolutely. But Russia may refuse to sell — out of nationalist pride or something else. And then things may get ugly.
A "main threat" where? Japan (itself the number one threat in the East only 70 years ago, BTW) has nothing to fear from the West. Neither does India. Certainly not Taiwan nor South Korea. North Korea or Myanmar — maybe, although the neo-Conservative idea of improving a country by imposing Democracy on it has been disgraced by the rather poor execution in Iraq...
Vietnam — not really, their Communists are increasingly pragmatic. All of them have seen, what happened to Tibet...
Russia (itself a threat to most of its neighbors, BTW) may be beating its chest against "the West", but the West will be much happier buying stuff from them — we don't need their land. But China does.
You changed the subject from who may be the target of China's military, to whether or not "the West" is a bigger threat. I don't think, it is — and I just explained why — but I will not continue. You, clearly, have a different agenda...
The Republic of China is under a persistent threat of a (Mainland) Chinese attack. United States has long ago promised to defend them, so we have to listen carefully (and take notes!), when the current rival — and an unlikely-but-possible future enemy — talks about any kind of war.
Sooner or later China may also decide to begin solving its (over)population issues by expanding into Siberia, whose population density was always far smaller (orders of magnitude smaller) than China's and is now shrinking dramatically. In 10-30 years China will either be purchasing or conquering that land from Russia — if there are any Russians left to notice that is...
Then, of course, there is a long-simmering tension with India, which has resulted in an all-out war as recently as in 1962. And then there is Vietnam, which lost a piece of territory to China, who invaded to, pretty much, punish it for interfering with the Khmere Rouge earlier — a "family dispute" among the Communist thugs.
And last, although not necessarily least, is the continuing (and officially regulated) hatred towards Japan — "justified" or not, it may well escalate into an armed conflict in a decade or two, when an internal crisis inside China may lead its leaders to seek an external war to unify the country. It may be harder for its neighbors to repel, than it was to deal with the desperate Argentinian regime in a similar situation...
I did not say, this device itself is the solution to the problem of manufacturing. I said, it is an illustration of the problem being solved. Surely, it is still cumbersome to produce many things, but it has all been reduced, pretty much, to shipping (of materials and parts) and other logistics.
The molecular-level improvements would be useful, no doubt, but we've been manufacturing things for centuries already... The important part — and my original point — here is, that we are good enough at the manufacturing to value the design of a thing far more than an instance of the thing — for the vast majority of things.