The Phillipines is poor enough that a storm like kills a lot of people, but it's getting richer fast. I'm not a geothermal engineer, but I'd assume a very expensive bit of building a geothermal plant is creating the boreholes in the first place, and then keeping them from collapsing. If the hole survived it should be much cheaper to repair then it was to build in the first place. IOf there was enough business to justify it then there's probably enough to justify rebuilding it at a lower price.
Hell, if they had a good insurance policy it won't cost them a dime. Their rates will skyrocket in the future, but at least they'll have their electricity back.
If you're selecting hundreds of targets you aren't being selective.
They can select whoever they please, thanks to this information. I wouldn't be so quick to trivialize the situation.
because the US is so decentralized that there's no way to control it through 15 people.
Corporations have managed to bribe many of our officials pretty easily.
If we had actual corruption we'd have a completely different set of problems in DC. After all, Tim Cook could cut a check bigger then all campaign spending in the last decade combined next Tuesday.
The problem we get in DC is that all these schmucks actually that corporatist BS, because the American people think a career steeped in corporatist BS is a better qualification for high office then being a bricklayer.
The Founding Fathers succeeded quite well in creating a Federal government that literally cannot oppress it's citizens most of the time.
Not nearly well enough, as far as I'm concerned. I see this as a very serious, very dangerous problem, regardless of how 'decentralized' you think our awful system is.
Be careful what you wish for.
The great weakness in our system's protection of freedom has always been (and will always be) the very lack of central control that makes it so hard for the Feds to actually oppress people directly.
If they can't oppress me without loads of paperwork (warrants, explanations of their reason for investigating, etc.), and the KKK gets one guy in the system that grants paperwork, the KKK can't be oppressed ever. And instead of worrying about the Federal government's overly broad warrants granting them a record of damn-near-everything, you have to worry that the KKK will kill you for criticizing the dude who allows them get away with killing people.
Note that unlike Stasi-style oppression this shit has actually happened in the US. Jim Crow was possible solely because the anti-racist majorities of most Southern states (and, at the time, Mississippi and South Carolina were majority black) were oppressed by a white, upper-class minority with access to weapons and a solemn promise from President Hayes that no inconvenient Jack-Booted Thugs from DC would be allowed to interfere in their murderous campaign.
Read this article's comments. Whose talked about stop-and-frisk besides me? Abortion? Anything but the NSA?
Just because they don't constantly talk about it in every article doesn't mean it's not a concern.
There's concerns and there's concerns.
In this country people (particularly white people like me), have a very long and sordid history of declaring the most trivial infringement on their rights is the first step to dictatorship, while tolerating literal slavery directed at non-white people. Generally most of the complainers say they're for freedom for everybody, but they don't actually do anything about it.
I'm not saying NSA-PRISM complaints are trivial. But they are complaints about a program that is authorized by a warrant (even if it's a bad warrant). It has resulted in real-world inconvenience to a very small number of people, most of whom are clearly over-reacting because (like Cartman on South Park) there's no way in hell the NSA cares whether they live or die. OTOH Stop-and Frisk is not even technically in compliance with the Fourth because there's no warrant granted. It results in massive inconvenience to a very large group of people.
And, true to form, the very very white denizens of Slashdot freak out at least three times a week about the NSA-PRISM thing which inconvenienced them, but they only talk about stop-and-frisk when somebody else forces them to.
Keep in mind that no reign of terror is ever gonna make a press release saying "we're such idiots that we didn't know this guy was a threat until Assange told us." The victim might make such a press release, but only if he a) survived, b) correctly deduced that he'd been outed by Assange (instead of assuming it was all his jealous brother-in-law's fault or something), and c) wants to be publicly identified as a CIA shill every day for the rest of his life.
Moreover this isn't the worst we know of. Quite a few Chinese activists have experienced problems that may be related to being outed.
Most importantly as non-Zimbabweans it's very difficult for us to judge the result. If the generals started out as credible commanders of the military, and they could've been bribed into supporting truly free elections Zimbabwe would be a free country today. If they were just assholes who'd peaked in their careers, and couldn't control the troops,
I completely understand why Manning would be jailed,and he probably does too. But why has the New York Times suffered the same fate as Assange is likely to face if he leaves the embassy. Because they can touch him but not the NYT.
Mostly because the Courts haven't ruled leaks sits have the same protections boring old journalists get.
This actually isn't a gimme for either side. The Courts gave journalists an out because the Constitution can't work without journalists getting scoops, and journalists had proven themselves responsible enough to be trusted with the ability to get said scoops.
The first bit could easily apply to Wikileaks. Their problem is the second bit, because they went crazy and dumped a bunch of un-redacted diplomatic cables into the wild regardless of whether the country needed to know the info there. I think I already mentioned that two Zimbabwean Generals who'd spoken to the US Embassy got in huge trouble. The American people had no need to know the general's names, those generals had a fairly reasonable expectation that their conversations would remain private, and as a result a) the Generals were charged with treason, which allowed b) Mugabe to keep a significant amount of control over his armed forces.
More importantly the Federal Judiciary today is a lot more national Security-Friendly today then it was back in the days of the Pentagon Papers.
If Snowden had sent his data to Wyden then it would not have been revealed.
Maybe. Maybe not. It would depend on the tactics Wyden chose to use.
Going public in a big press release probably wouldn't be his first thing, because then it would be a public battle of him vs. Obama (he loses most Democrats), and him vs. the national Security Establishment (he loses most Republicans). He gets no traction in Congress, and nothing changes. Which is pretty much what we got.
But he could propose bills, and actually tell government-skeptical Tea Party Republicans why they should vote for crazy-ass-liberal-Wyden's bill. If the NSA director flat-out lied to him he could publicly refute the lie.
Politics is all about timing. If Wyden/Amash/etc. had been able to prepare for these leaks and had bills ready when the story broke we might actually have solved the problem. If they'd had time to convince their colleagues this was serious, and not just a bunch of internet-Fanboi-techno-nerd whining because their pretty computers got watched the problem may have been solved. But they didn't, so the thing that always happens happened: the media freaked out, some loser moderate who opposes change because moderates suck created a meaningless bill, everyone got distracted, and nothing will change.
This is the worst of all worlds. You know to be paranoid about what the NSA did, but you have absolutely no clue what the NSA is doing now because nobody is gonna leak that shit. And since the law is just gonna change to make it easier for the NSA to do the next evil thing you really should be incredibly fucking paranoid right now.
The scandals around Australia and the U.S. spying etc is not an excuse for saying that it should not have been revealed to the world. We need to know that the NSA and others are spying on us and how they are doing it.
We don't need to know jack-squat. What we need is it to stop.
Let me put it to you this way:
Would you rather have your internet surveilled, and know about it; or not have your internet surveilled and not know it had ever been surveilled?
Which is something to look for, but it's also something that is pretty easy to detect unless it's a very, very small group.
Or unless they merely use the information to select targets.
If you're selecting hundreds of targets you aren't being selective. If you aren't selecting hundreds of targets you ain't gonna get very far on any issue of import, because the US is so decentralized that there's no way to control it through 15 people. Especially since the more leverage those people give you, the more leverage they have. If Sen. Jones can get your budget passed with no questions asked, then when Sen. Jones says "I'm sorry, if I help you on the Civil Liberties bill nobody will trust me on getting your budget passed" you're pretty fucked. Which means that for blackmail to work in the US you need enough blackmailees that you don't actually need Sen. Jones on every vote.
Like I said the last time the US tried to suppress and/or control actual political movements in the US it just didn't work. The Founding Fathers succeeded quite well in creating a Federal government that literally cannot oppress it's citizens most of the time.
They care so much that after I bring it up they say "oh, yeah, I agree with you on that one too."
And you expect them to do what, exactly?
Perhaps mention it in the context of claims that the government doesn't care about the Constitution, or hell just comment if a stop and frisk story ever makes it through the editors. The only one this year has been in August, and it only got 300 or so comments. They didn't even bother to post a story when Scheindlein's ruling was gutted on appeal.
it's because the people who read Slashdot honestly think that the Federal government having a huge database will necessarily lead to mass oppression
I think it most likely will, eventually. But I wasn't aware that Slashdot readers were all the same.
Read this article's comments. Whose talked about stop-and-frisk besides me? Abortion? Anything but the NSA?
The article is all about the Fourth Amendment, and yet we prefer lengthy battles on whether Assange is a rapist to actually talking about the Fourth Amendment.
On this issue, at least, Slashdot's readership is united.
A lack of centralized power is the reason US Law is so convoluted.
In the US if a Congressman wants to help a group he generally can't do it by changing an existing institution (in this case a tax deduction, or other quirk of the tax code), because the beneficiaries of that institution will panic and call their Congressman. Which means the first Congressman's idea better be incredibly fucking popular if it wants to pass. OTOH, if he proposes a new program the beneficiaries will call their Congressman going "yeah! do that!" and it's much easier to pass.
Which is why we have so many education tax credit programs I can't name them all, and I read the IRS book on them cover-to-cover back in February.
I'm not sure how you do it Australia, but the Canadian party leaders can actually veto any of their MPs renomination, which makes it very difficult for an individual Canadian MP to oppose his government, which means that if the PM has an idea to replace a bunch of tax credits with a single one that can be easily explained in simple English most of Parliament can't go "But dude, I just got an email from a crotchety old bastard who was really fucking crotchety about how HIS LIFE would be RUINED if the Education Credit of 1957 was amended in any way."
the US government has never been able to use mass surveillance as an effective tool of repression.
Maybe not yet. But even if they can't harass a huge number of people, they can still do so for select people.
Which is something to look for, but it's also something that is pretty easy to detect unless it's a very, very small group.
Say there's a 95% chance the target is so cowed he won't write a tell-all book. By dude # 14 there's a 51.3% chance somebody has gone public. If you're blackmailing hundreds it's virtually impossible to keep people from going public. Dozens of them. And if several dozen people are like "Dudes, the NSA is totally blackmailing me," then a) the other 95% of blackmailees have cover to come out with their own stories, and b) it's much harder for the government to convince the people that the victims are lying.
There's a reason CoIntelPro failed miserably.
And yet all Slashdot seems to be in full-panic mode about the NSA, while ignoring stop-and-frisk.
I don't know about other people, but I don't ignore it. The reason people are focusing on the NSA is because it's such a widespread violation of people's rights. I would imagine that people who actually care about this sort of thing also care about stop-and-frisk.
They care so much that after I bring it up they say "oh, yeah, I agree with you on that one too."
What they don't do is submit an article for publication on slashdot's front page three times a week. Or bring it up when somebody mentions the NSA. Or really acknowledge that the issue exists unless somebody (aka: me) mentions it.
Partly that's because there's no news. But I get the feeling that the reason there's news on Assange/Snowden/etc. isn't that the news is particularly interesting -- who really gives a shit that some anonymous asshole thinks Assange won't be prosecuted even if like six extremely improbable things (starting with him leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy) happen -- it's because the people who read Slashdot honestly think that the Federal government having a huge database will necessarily lead to mass oppression, whereas stop-and-frisk is just the BS you have to put up with if you're black in America.
You really do not understand the US military at all if you think there was ever any question of Chelsea Manning getting locked up forever. It's a hierarchical organization. Manning disobeyed general orders not to leak classified information. He disobeyed his oath to follow all Constitutional laws. And he did it by giving everything to an organization that the US Military considers to be Anti-American. You can criticize the military for it's decision to crucify Manning, and I will agree with you on that point to a (fairly limited) extent. But any fair-minded person has to allow that any hierarchical organization with it's own court system is gonna crush the dude who ratted it out.
My problems with Snowden (and, to a lesser extent, Manning) are not that they revealed classified information per se. It's that they revealed so much of it. Why is it a scandal that Australia spies on the only country in it's region it would have a logical reason to spy on? Why is it a good thing for Mugabe to find out exactly which Generals in his Army could be converted to his Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai? I really don't like that they both violated their oaths to the US Government. But what I truly can't forgive, is that they have no clue how to influence the government.
Take these leaks. The whole timeline was predictable. Everybody freaked out for two weeks, then something else happened and the news media went "ooh! shiny!" and now Feinstein's bill is considered a "solution" to NSA-snooping despite the fact it places approximately zero restrictions on NSA snooping. That's exactly what happens when you release information to the American people through the media. They freak out, the news coverage is saturation, then (because the world is fucking everything) some other shit happens and the people/media start freaking out about that.
If Snowden had sent his packet to Wyden's office Wyden would have been able to control the debate, and had a shot at reforming the system. He didn't, so control defaulted to the higher-ranking Feinstein, and Snowden basically destroyed his life for nothing. Along the way he gave up numerous surveillance tactics the US is probably trying to use on countries he probably disapproves of more then the US.
BTW, your CIA link to Assange's accuser is not very convincing. It's an indirect connection to a group that has ties to a group which is CIA-involved, but not black-ops-CIA-involved. Given that all Assange's supporters are interested in international politics, and the US has it's fingers in pretty much every political conflict in the world, it would be more surprising if neither accuser was involved with a group involved with a group that has worked with the CIA then the other way around.
Everyone I have ever met says they have simple taxes.... You really need to read the paperwork that you are sent because many people take a chintzy $350 job helping their cousin cater a banquet...
Well, there you go. Seriously, $350 to cater a banquet? How about a carry-in? Or being "paid" with a free meal? It sounds like you live in a different social circle than the majority of people.
The $350 wasn't what the banquet cost, it's what the caterer paid the person expecting a free 1040EZ and a big tax refund. Neither of which is gonna happen, because I have to file a full 1040 ($100 or so), I have to file additional tax forms (we charge by the form), the caterer doesn't withhold on a 1099, the taxpayer owes Social Security and Medicare tax, etc.
$350 for one job is probably a bit much. It would be 20-30 hours of work. But plenty of people help out their cousin's catering business for 4 hours once every couple of months for $10-$15 an hour. Others get chintzy jobs helping clean up leaves. And if they get paid on a 1099 they get screwed at tax time.
If you know the Tax Code ok, or you actually have simple taxes*, software works fine.
You have to be somewhat familiar with the tax code because there's no easy way for us to translate tax law into simple English, so it's very easy for people to misinterpret one of the numerous questions the software asks. If you do that you a) don't get a deduction you deserve or b) do take a deduction and get screwed if you get audited. I'm a bit out-of-practice, but the student debt/tuition credit/HOPE credit/etc. nexus of Feds giving people tax breaks for paying for college in particular is very easy to screw up.
*Everyone I have ever met says they have simple taxes. Then they drop the annuity on the table and call it a W2. If you have any income besides interest on a bank account or a W2 you do not have a tax form H and R Block defines as "simple." You really need to read the paperwork that you are sent because many people take a chintzy $350 job helping their cousin cater a banquet, get a 1099, and are then surprised that I am legally required to put that on a Schedule SE and a Schedule C or C-EZ attached to a full 1040, and by the time you pay me for all those forms AND the self-employment tax you're losing money. The really big numbers at the top will tell you exactly what form it is. They'll be 1098, 1099, or W2.
a) I'm not the government. I have a Constitutional right to ignore "innocent until proven guilty." I pre-decide criminal cases all the time. I thought OJ did back when I was 12. I thought Zimmerman did it. I thought Casey Anthony should be convicted, until the Jury convinced me the Prosecution hadn't presented it's case beyond a reasonable doubt. I still think she did it. I despised the Steubenville rapists before they were charged. Why would I be nicer to Assange then any of those other people?
b) Really?
How are the CIA gonna do that in Sweden? It's not like the Swedish cops won't notice that the woman responsible for ending Assange's career dies at 27. It's not like Greenwald has been prevented from publishing his stuff. Hell, why couldn't our theoretical bribee tell her handler she was gonna spend her bribe money in Rio? Then she gets to publish whatever she wants.
Yeah she'd be stuck there forever if the US can actually kill pretty Swedish girls in the Swedish streets, but she'd be fucking rich and she'd be in fucking Rio.
So Assange slept with a woman who has "zero or perhaps one" degree of separation from the CIA? On a scale of 1-10 how stupid is that? And I'm taking you at your word that she's that close to the CIA, because you haven't presented any proof. More importantly he's been charged with two rapes. If one victim is lying but the other isn't he's still a rapist.
I didn't say I blamed him for staying in the Embassy. He is really good at pissing people off, and if he went to Sweden he could easily become a convicted rapist. And he has to allow for the possibility that we'll screw up and arrest him ourselves.
I doubt we'll do it. He's perfectly neutralized at the moment.
BTW, this is actually the major reason I doubt the CIA had anything to do with what happened to him in Sweden. Nobody's that good.
Basically it boils down to historical perspective. Every year for the entire existence of the Republic some asshole has been breaking the Constitution. The fact that the tech guys at the NSA are doing it a new way that their new tech allows is not particularly surprising, and is not particularly alarming. Yeah they have a lot of fucking data, but without google's budget in analysts/data gurus/etc. they can't use it to actively oppress any but a tiny minority, and there's no evidence they're even doing that. Hell, despite the fact the US has possibly the least moral record among big powers that act Democratic, the US government has never been able to use mass surveillance as an effective tool of repression. Under our system it's much easier to not have the data ever enter the government's hands, because if the thugs murdering innocent black people aren't Federal employees there can be no inconvenient writs of Habeus Corpus. You will note that a strict interpretation of the Fourth Amendment actually makes it impossible to stop this kind of oppression, because you can't get a search warrant if everyone is so intimidated they won't testify.
In other words NSA snooping should be stopped, but panicking is likely to result in a worse situation then before. And yet all Slashdot seems to be in full-panic mode about the NSA, while ignoring stop-and-frisk.
OTOH, the Courts just ruled stop-and-frisk is legal. The states are restricting abortion rights. I can tell you exactly how an evil state governor could use stop-and-frisk-like policies to oppress his people. It already happened. That was a major basis of the North's racist policies prior to the Civil Rights movement. This is a reason to panic, particularly since the Appeals Court not only over-ruled the pro-freedom District Court ruling, it also made a point of humiliating the Judge who made it.
Hell, I voted last week. It wasn't counted because my ID was stolen, and as an internet user, I don't get bills sent to my home via the post office. Ohio's voter ID law is based entirely on having a piece of paper with an address that matches your voter registration, and I move a lot, it's unlikely that my replacement ID will have the right address. This is exactly how the South, which included majority black states, managed to impose Jim Crow on it's population. What's likely to happen in Ohio is that Kasich will analyze the results, and tweak the law to disenfranchise a few hundred or a thousand more Democrats while keeping Republicans voting. And that is a huge reason to panic because this is exactly how the South imposed Jim Crow on black people.
But since the best dystopian, government oppression sci-fi comes from people who live in the UK, and the UK government could easily oppress people by using a database (and wouldn't bother with chintzy workarounds like voter ID, or party-militia Klansman), all-Slashdot is in full-panic about the NSA.
a) If you have any evidence that he used the line on either one feel free to present it. So far all we've got is that you remember he claims he used it once.
b) The problem with bribing people is there's no guarantee they stay bribed. In this case if either woman had a mysterious $100k deposited into her bank account she could easily turn that into a lot more simply by writing a tell-all book about the experience. More importantly there's no guarantee a woman the CIA offers to bribe this way says yes, so if the CIA actually tried this strategy there'd be a couple hyper-ethical girls running around in Sweden who knew that a) the CIA offered them money to accuse Assange of rape, and b) that somebody mysteriously accused Assange of rape. That book gets you on the Daily Show.
In other words the fact that nobody has cashed in on this story is pretty god evidence the CIA isn't mysteriously manipulating the situation.
I'll agree it's possible Assange's innocent. I'll agree that he almost certainly wouldn't be convicted in US Court, because he-said/she-said means Reasonable Doubt to every jury ever. But if the US could actually arrange this kind of thing it would have happened to a lot of people not named Julian Assange.
Goddammit I was wrong about Wikipedia using the phrase "charged with rape." This is what I get for reading the google summary, rather then the actual article.
What's actually going on is under Swedish law he can't be charged until he's questioned again, and that will only happen in Sweden. Which makes the "not charged" argument a bit circular. People reading it will assume that he's not been charged because he's got a good case and might not go to trial, when the fact is he hasn;t been charged because he's figured out a way to flee the accusations that has worked so far.
And what was the connection? There are only 9 million people in Sweden. There's a CIA guy at the Embassy. 90% of the country is probably within three or four degrees of separation from the CIA, politically active people are probably much closer because Sweden has a fairly low population/politician ratio and the CIA's job is to talk to politicians.
As for charges, keep in mind Sweden does not have a version of the British legal system. The words we use in English don't necessarily fit what's happening very closely. In this case the Public Prosecutor has said they want to prosecute, but they can't actually charge him until he's in Sweden.
It's pretty impressive that after years of thinking up explanations all Assange can come up with is "one of these chicks I allegedly raped is exactly like most of the rest of the country," and "I can't be charged until I leave the Ecuadorian Embassy, therefore I;m staying in the Embassy."
What happened was Assange convinced both to have sex. One claimed he intimidated her into doing the deed. The second insisted he agree to her terms and conditions (ie: condom), and later on she woke and he was fucking her without a condom.
Both would be rape in the US, but it would be very difficult to get a conviction in either case because they're he-said/she-saids and US Juries have a very expansive view of reasonable doubt in sexual assault cases.
Swedish Law is not a clone of British law. Which means terms we're familiar with (such as "charged") don't always apply in the same way they do in the States, Canada, or the UK.
In this case their prosecutors have confirmed they aren't just after him for questioning, they want to charge him. I don't know why they haven't. It's possible you can't formally do that in Court in Sweden until the accused is in custody or something; but it's close enough to "charged" that wikipedia uses that phrase.
Of course he's got a side to the story. This is why many people prefer going to Court to holing up in a friendly Embassy.
But a) there're two charges, so even if one is frivolous he's an asshole, and b) it would be very hard for the US to arrange for Assange to scorn a lover so petty she accused him of rape.
Assange is charged with rape in Sweden. I know his supporters love to claim that the charges are fake, but it's not like the Swedish Justice system is widely considered to be corrupt. Hell, they have statements from Swedish women saying he did it. I could believe the CIA faked a video of Assange. But faking people is just not technically possible. Believing the CIA found two (not one, but two) women Assange'd take to his bed, and that both would agree to charge him with rape afterwards, and that neither one of them snitched to the media? That I have trouble with. Especially since to find two you'd have to interview dozens, somebody would probably figure out what was going on, and then she'd have every reason to snitch to the media.
Assange could walk around the US for exactly as long as it took the Swedes to file an extradition request. Since Accused rapist Assange is more useful to the US then freedom fighter convicted on trumped-up charges (and charges would not be a sure thing, given that he didn't do anything inside the US and he isn't a citizen) he would be turned over to the Swedes before US charges could be filed.
In many ways the Supremes actually need dueling lower Court rulings to do their jobs because with dueling lower court rulings they can see what both sets of Judge's did, and decided which works. It also generates a lot of paperwork (briefs, arguments, etc.) that the Supreme Court needs but has no experience creating on it's own.
"Even citizens with rights have to follow procedure."
So what you're saying is in order to remove all our rights all the government has to do is make the procedures difficult and esoteric enough that no one could follow them? I hate to bring up Kafka in situations like this but this seems a bit too like something out of Kafka.
It is according to EPIC, because EPIC never bothered to try appealing to the Circuit Courts. According to everyone else they should have gotten a ruling from the Circuit Courts before they went to the Supremes.
The Supreme Court is just not set up to be the main battle ground in a case like this. For them to do their jobs they need a lot of legal briefs, a lot of evidence, etc. of the kind a Circuit Court case produces. They aren't equipped to produce such things themselves.
15 The FISC and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ("Court of Review") only have jurisdiction to hear petitions by the Government or recipient of the FISC Order, and neither party to the order represents EPIC's interests. Other federal courts have no jurisdiction over the FISC, and thus cannot grant the relief that EPIC seeks.
The only people that can appeal the order are the Feds and the people that the feds are ordering around. EPIC, despite having their metadata vacuumed up, have no standing under the law to appeal to the FISA court.
It's easy for you and others to say "[Epic] didn't follow the proper appeals process" but AFAIK none of you have actually elucidated what the proper appeals process is under the law.
EPIC has, with citations, laid out their case, starting on Page 14 (PDF) "Nuh uh" isn't an insightful or interesting rebuttal.
I believe the proper Appeals process starts with an Appeal to the Appeals Court. I'm not sure which Circuit Court they were supposed to use, but they shoulda used that Circuit.
Which they're supposed to lose, because Congress and the Administration have been very careful to follow the letter of Supreme Court precedents and Appeals Courts are not supposed to crack down on people following the letter of the Supreme Court rulings. They're supposed to let that shit happen, and then the Supremes step in and fix the rulings.
Okay okay, sure it doesn't appeal to the whole process.
But we are talking about something that seems, to me, like it would end up in the Supreme Court anyway. If true, why spend a bunch of time and money just stalling the inevitable.
Because everybody says that they'll go all the way to the Supreme Court. Most don't actually try. Most of the rest of the time 6 Justices like the lower court ruling, so they don't take up the case.
More importantly the entire point of having a Court system is that it has to be extremely predictable. It has to decide the same way every time. If the Supremes are gonna intervene early in some cases (but not others) they have to have some boring-ass, ancient rule they use. Remember all the crap they took for Bush vs. Gore? That's the only case I know of where they didn't force everyone to go through every step of the Appeals process.
Which means the boring ass rule is "Fuck you, unless you're Georgie Bush's son and the alternative is Al Gore doing something about global warming."
Slashdot Mirror
The Phillipines is poor enough that a storm like kills a lot of people, but it's getting richer fast. I'm not a geothermal engineer, but I'd assume a very expensive bit of building a geothermal plant is creating the boreholes in the first place, and then keeping them from collapsing. If the hole survived it should be much cheaper to repair then it was to build in the first place. IOf there was enough business to justify it then there's probably enough to justify rebuilding it at a lower price.
Hell, if they had a good insurance policy it won't cost them a dime. Their rates will skyrocket in the future, but at least they'll have their electricity back.
If you're selecting hundreds of targets you aren't being selective.
They can select whoever they please, thanks to this information. I wouldn't be so quick to trivialize the situation.
because the US is so decentralized that there's no way to control it through 15 people.
Corporations have managed to bribe many of our officials pretty easily.
If we had actual corruption we'd have a completely different set of problems in DC. After all, Tim Cook could cut a check bigger then all campaign spending in the last decade combined next Tuesday.
The problem we get in DC is that all these schmucks actually that corporatist BS, because the American people think a career steeped in corporatist BS is a better qualification for high office then being a bricklayer.
The Founding Fathers succeeded quite well in creating a Federal government that literally cannot oppress it's citizens most of the time.
Not nearly well enough, as far as I'm concerned. I see this as a very serious, very dangerous problem, regardless of how 'decentralized' you think our awful system is.
Be careful what you wish for.
The great weakness in our system's protection of freedom has always been (and will always be) the very lack of central control that makes it so hard for the Feds to actually oppress people directly.
If they can't oppress me without loads of paperwork (warrants, explanations of their reason for investigating, etc.), and the KKK gets one guy in the system that grants paperwork, the KKK can't be oppressed ever. And instead of worrying about the Federal government's overly broad warrants granting them a record of damn-near-everything, you have to worry that the KKK will kill you for criticizing the dude who allows them get away with killing people.
Note that unlike Stasi-style oppression this shit has actually happened in the US. Jim Crow was possible solely because the anti-racist majorities of most Southern states (and, at the time, Mississippi and South Carolina were majority black) were oppressed by a white, upper-class minority with access to weapons and a solemn promise from President Hayes that no inconvenient Jack-Booted Thugs from DC would be allowed to interfere in their murderous campaign.
Read this article's comments. Whose talked about stop-and-frisk besides me? Abortion? Anything but the NSA?
Just because they don't constantly talk about it in every article doesn't mean it's not a concern.
There's concerns and there's concerns.
In this country people (particularly white people like me), have a very long and sordid history of declaring the most trivial infringement on their rights is the first step to dictatorship, while tolerating literal slavery directed at non-white people. Generally most of the complainers say they're for freedom for everybody, but they don't actually do anything about it.
I'm not saying NSA-PRISM complaints are trivial. But they are complaints about a program that is authorized by a warrant (even if it's a bad warrant). It has resulted in real-world inconvenience to a very small number of people, most of whom are clearly over-reacting because (like Cartman on South Park) there's no way in hell the NSA cares whether they live or die. OTOH Stop-and Frisk is not even technically in compliance with the Fourth because there's no warrant granted. It results in massive inconvenience to a very large group of people.
And, true to form, the very very white denizens of Slashdot freak out at least three times a week about the NSA-PRISM thing which inconvenienced them, but they only talk about stop-and-frisk when somebody else forces them to.
Keep in mind that no reign of terror is ever gonna make a press release saying "we're such idiots that we didn't know this guy was a threat until Assange told us." The victim might make such a press release, but only if he a) survived, b) correctly deduced that he'd been outed by Assange (instead of assuming it was all his jealous brother-in-law's fault or something), and c) wants to be publicly identified as a CIA shill every day for the rest of his life.
Moreover this isn't the worst we know of. Quite a few Chinese activists have experienced problems that may be related to being outed.
Most importantly as non-Zimbabweans it's very difficult for us to judge the result. If the generals started out as credible commanders of the military, and they could've been bribed into supporting truly free elections Zimbabwe would be a free country today. If they were just assholes who'd peaked in their careers, and couldn't control the troops,
I completely understand why Manning would be jailed,and he probably does too. But why has the New York Times suffered the same fate as Assange is likely to face if he leaves the embassy. Because they can touch him but not the NYT.
Mostly because the Courts haven't ruled leaks sits have the same protections boring old journalists get.
This actually isn't a gimme for either side. The Courts gave journalists an out because the Constitution can't work without journalists getting scoops, and journalists had proven themselves responsible enough to be trusted with the ability to get said scoops.
The first bit could easily apply to Wikileaks. Their problem is the second bit, because they went crazy and dumped a bunch of un-redacted diplomatic cables into the wild regardless of whether the country needed to know the info there. I think I already mentioned that two Zimbabwean Generals who'd spoken to the US Embassy got in huge trouble. The American people had no need to know the general's names, those generals had a fairly reasonable expectation that their conversations would remain private, and as a result a) the Generals were charged with treason, which allowed b) Mugabe to keep a significant amount of control over his armed forces.
More importantly the Federal Judiciary today is a lot more national Security-Friendly today then it was back in the days of the Pentagon Papers.
If Snowden had sent his data to Wyden then it would not have been revealed.
Maybe. Maybe not. It would depend on the tactics Wyden chose to use.
Going public in a big press release probably wouldn't be his first thing, because then it would be a public battle of him vs. Obama (he loses most Democrats), and him vs. the national Security Establishment (he loses most Republicans). He gets no traction in Congress, and nothing changes. Which is pretty much what we got.
But he could propose bills, and actually tell government-skeptical Tea Party Republicans why they should vote for crazy-ass-liberal-Wyden's bill. If the NSA director flat-out lied to him he could publicly refute the lie.
Politics is all about timing. If Wyden/Amash/etc. had been able to prepare for these leaks and had bills ready when the story broke we might actually have solved the problem. If they'd had time to convince their colleagues this was serious, and not just a bunch of internet-Fanboi-techno-nerd whining because their pretty computers got watched the problem may have been solved. But they didn't, so the thing that always happens happened: the media freaked out, some loser moderate who opposes change because moderates suck created a meaningless bill, everyone got distracted, and nothing will change.
This is the worst of all worlds. You know to be paranoid about what the NSA did, but you have absolutely no clue what the NSA is doing now because nobody is gonna leak that shit. And since the law is just gonna change to make it easier for the NSA to do the next evil thing you really should be incredibly fucking paranoid right now.
The scandals around Australia and the U.S. spying etc is not an excuse for saying that it should not have been revealed to the world. We need to know that the NSA and others are spying on us and how they are doing it.
We don't need to know jack-squat. What we need is it to stop.
Let me put it to you this way:
Would you rather have your internet surveilled, and know about it; or not have your internet surveilled and not know it had ever been surveilled?
Which is something to look for, but it's also something that is pretty easy to detect unless it's a very, very small group.
Or unless they merely use the information to select targets.
If you're selecting hundreds of targets you aren't being selective. If you aren't selecting hundreds of targets you ain't gonna get very far on any issue of import, because the US is so decentralized that there's no way to control it through 15 people. Especially since the more leverage those people give you, the more leverage they have. If Sen. Jones can get your budget passed with no questions asked, then when Sen. Jones says "I'm sorry, if I help you on the Civil Liberties bill nobody will trust me on getting your budget passed" you're pretty fucked. Which means that for blackmail to work in the US you need enough blackmailees that you don't actually need Sen. Jones on every vote.
Like I said the last time the US tried to suppress and/or control actual political movements in the US it just didn't work. The Founding Fathers succeeded quite well in creating a Federal government that literally cannot oppress it's citizens most of the time.
They care so much that after I bring it up they say "oh, yeah, I agree with you on that one too."
And you expect them to do what, exactly?
Perhaps mention it in the context of claims that the government doesn't care about the Constitution, or hell just comment if a stop and frisk story ever makes it through the editors. The only one this year has been in August, and it only got 300 or so comments. They didn't even bother to post a story when Scheindlein's ruling was gutted on appeal.
it's because the people who read Slashdot honestly think that the Federal government having a huge database will necessarily lead to mass oppression
I think it most likely will, eventually. But I wasn't aware that Slashdot readers were all the same.
Read this article's comments. Whose talked about stop-and-frisk besides me? Abortion? Anything but the NSA?
The article is all about the Fourth Amendment, and yet we prefer lengthy battles on whether Assange is a rapist to actually talking about the Fourth Amendment.
On this issue, at least, Slashdot's readership is united.
A lack of centralized power is the reason US Law is so convoluted.
In the US if a Congressman wants to help a group he generally can't do it by changing an existing institution (in this case a tax deduction, or other quirk of the tax code), because the beneficiaries of that institution will panic and call their Congressman. Which means the first Congressman's idea better be incredibly fucking popular if it wants to pass. OTOH, if he proposes a new program the beneficiaries will call their Congressman going "yeah! do that!" and it's much easier to pass.
Which is why we have so many education tax credit programs I can't name them all, and I read the IRS book on them cover-to-cover back in February.
I'm not sure how you do it Australia, but the Canadian party leaders can actually veto any of their MPs renomination, which makes it very difficult for an individual Canadian MP to oppose his government, which means that if the PM has an idea to replace a bunch of tax credits with a single one that can be easily explained in simple English most of Parliament can't go "But dude, I just got an email from a crotchety old bastard who was really fucking crotchety about how HIS LIFE would be RUINED if the Education Credit of 1957 was amended in any way."
the US government has never been able to use mass surveillance as an effective tool of repression.
Maybe not yet. But even if they can't harass a huge number of people, they can still do so for select people.
Which is something to look for, but it's also something that is pretty easy to detect unless it's a very, very small group.
Say there's a 95% chance the target is so cowed he won't write a tell-all book. By dude # 14 there's a 51.3% chance somebody has gone public. If you're blackmailing hundreds it's virtually impossible to keep people from going public. Dozens of them. And if several dozen people are like "Dudes, the NSA is totally blackmailing me," then a) the other 95% of blackmailees have cover to come out with their own stories, and b) it's much harder for the government to convince the people that the victims are lying.
There's a reason CoIntelPro failed miserably.
And yet all Slashdot seems to be in full-panic mode about the NSA, while ignoring stop-and-frisk.
I don't know about other people, but I don't ignore it. The reason people are focusing on the NSA is because it's such a widespread violation of people's rights. I would imagine that people who actually care about this sort of thing also care about stop-and-frisk.
They care so much that after I bring it up they say "oh, yeah, I agree with you on that one too."
What they don't do is submit an article for publication on slashdot's front page three times a week. Or bring it up when somebody mentions the NSA. Or really acknowledge that the issue exists unless somebody (aka: me) mentions it.
Partly that's because there's no news. But I get the feeling that the reason there's news on Assange/Snowden/etc. isn't that the news is particularly interesting -- who really gives a shit that some anonymous asshole thinks Assange won't be prosecuted even if like six extremely improbable things (starting with him leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy) happen -- it's because the people who read Slashdot honestly think that the Federal government having a huge database will necessarily lead to mass oppression, whereas stop-and-frisk is just the BS you have to put up with if you're black in America.
You really do not understand the US military at all if you think there was ever any question of Chelsea Manning getting locked up forever. It's a hierarchical organization. Manning disobeyed general orders not to leak classified information. He disobeyed his oath to follow all Constitutional laws. And he did it by giving everything to an organization that the US Military considers to be Anti-American. You can criticize the military for it's decision to crucify Manning, and I will agree with you on that point to a (fairly limited) extent. But any fair-minded person has to allow that any hierarchical organization with it's own court system is gonna crush the dude who ratted it out.
My problems with Snowden (and, to a lesser extent, Manning) are not that they revealed classified information per se. It's that they revealed so much of it. Why is it a scandal that Australia spies on the only country in it's region it would have a logical reason to spy on? Why is it a good thing for Mugabe to find out exactly which Generals in his Army could be converted to his Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai? I really don't like that they both violated their oaths to the US Government. But what I truly can't forgive, is that they have no clue how to influence the government.
Take these leaks. The whole timeline was predictable. Everybody freaked out for two weeks, then something else happened and the news media went "ooh! shiny!" and now Feinstein's bill is considered a "solution" to NSA-snooping despite the fact it places approximately zero restrictions on NSA snooping. That's exactly what happens when you release information to the American people through the media. They freak out, the news coverage is saturation, then (because the world is fucking everything) some other shit happens and the people/media start freaking out about that.
If Snowden had sent his packet to Wyden's office Wyden would have been able to control the debate, and had a shot at reforming the system. He didn't, so control defaulted to the higher-ranking Feinstein, and Snowden basically destroyed his life for nothing. Along the way he gave up numerous surveillance tactics the US is probably trying to use on countries he probably disapproves of more then the US.
BTW, your CIA link to Assange's accuser is not very convincing. It's an indirect connection to a group that has ties to a group which is CIA-involved, but not black-ops-CIA-involved. Given that all Assange's supporters are interested in international politics, and the US has it's fingers in pretty much every political conflict in the world, it would be more surprising if neither accuser was involved with a group involved with a group that has worked with the CIA then the other way around.
Well, there you go. Seriously, $350 to cater a banquet? How about a carry-in? Or being "paid" with a free meal? It sounds like you live in a different social circle than the majority of people.
The $350 wasn't what the banquet cost, it's what the caterer paid the person expecting a free 1040EZ and a big tax refund. Neither of which is gonna happen, because I have to file a full 1040 ($100 or so), I have to file additional tax forms (we charge by the form), the caterer doesn't withhold on a 1099, the taxpayer owes Social Security and Medicare tax, etc.
$350 for one job is probably a bit much. It would be 20-30 hours of work. But plenty of people help out their cousin's catering business for 4 hours once every couple of months for $10-$15 an hour. Others get chintzy jobs helping clean up leaves. And if they get paid on a 1099 they get screwed at tax time.
If you know the Tax Code ok, or you actually have simple taxes*, software works fine.
You have to be somewhat familiar with the tax code because there's no easy way for us to translate tax law into simple English, so it's very easy for people to misinterpret one of the numerous questions the software asks. If you do that you a) don't get a deduction you deserve or b) do take a deduction and get screwed if you get audited. I'm a bit out-of-practice, but the student debt/tuition credit/HOPE credit/etc. nexus of Feds giving people tax breaks for paying for college in particular is very easy to screw up.
*Everyone I have ever met says they have simple taxes. Then they drop the annuity on the table and call it a W2. If you have any income besides interest on a bank account or a W2 you do not have a tax form H and R Block defines as "simple." You really need to read the paperwork that you are sent because many people take a chintzy $350 job helping their cousin cater a banquet, get a 1099, and are then surprised that I am legally required to put that on a Schedule SE and a Schedule C or C-EZ attached to a full 1040, and by the time you pay me for all those forms AND the self-employment tax you're losing money. The really big numbers at the top will tell you exactly what form it is. They'll be 1098, 1099, or W2.
a) I'm not the government. I have a Constitutional right to ignore "innocent until proven guilty." I pre-decide criminal cases all the time. I thought OJ did back when I was 12. I thought Zimmerman did it. I thought Casey Anthony should be convicted, until the Jury convinced me the Prosecution hadn't presented it's case beyond a reasonable doubt. I still think she did it. I despised the Steubenville rapists before they were charged. Why would I be nicer to Assange then any of those other people?
b) Really?
How are the CIA gonna do that in Sweden? It's not like the Swedish cops won't notice that the woman responsible for ending Assange's career dies at 27. It's not like Greenwald has been prevented from publishing his stuff. Hell, why couldn't our theoretical bribee tell her handler she was gonna spend her bribe money in Rio? Then she gets to publish whatever she wants.
Yeah she'd be stuck there forever if the US can actually kill pretty Swedish girls in the Swedish streets, but she'd be fucking rich and she'd be in fucking Rio.
So Assange slept with a woman who has "zero or perhaps one" degree of separation from the CIA? On a scale of 1-10 how stupid is that? And I'm taking you at your word that she's that close to the CIA, because you haven't presented any proof. More importantly he's been charged with two rapes. If one victim is lying but the other isn't he's still a rapist.
I didn't say I blamed him for staying in the Embassy. He is really good at pissing people off, and if he went to Sweden he could easily become a convicted rapist. And he has to allow for the possibility that we'll screw up and arrest him ourselves.
I doubt we'll do it. He's perfectly neutralized at the moment.
BTW, this is actually the major reason I doubt the CIA had anything to do with what happened to him in Sweden. Nobody's that good.
Multiple reasons.
Basically it boils down to historical perspective. Every year for the entire existence of the Republic some asshole has been breaking the Constitution. The fact that the tech guys at the NSA are doing it a new way that their new tech allows is not particularly surprising, and is not particularly alarming. Yeah they have a lot of fucking data, but without google's budget in analysts/data gurus/etc. they can't use it to actively oppress any but a tiny minority, and there's no evidence they're even doing that. Hell, despite the fact the US has possibly the least moral record among big powers that act Democratic, the US government has never been able to use mass surveillance as an effective tool of repression. Under our system it's much easier to not have the data ever enter the government's hands, because if the thugs murdering innocent black people aren't Federal employees there can be no inconvenient writs of Habeus Corpus. You will note that a strict interpretation of the Fourth Amendment actually makes it impossible to stop this kind of oppression, because you can't get a search warrant if everyone is so intimidated they won't testify.
In other words NSA snooping should be stopped, but panicking is likely to result in a worse situation then before. And yet all Slashdot seems to be in full-panic mode about the NSA, while ignoring stop-and-frisk.
OTOH, the Courts just ruled stop-and-frisk is legal. The states are restricting abortion rights. I can tell you exactly how an evil state governor could use stop-and-frisk-like policies to oppress his people. It already happened. That was a major basis of the North's racist policies prior to the Civil Rights movement. This is a reason to panic, particularly since the Appeals Court not only over-ruled the pro-freedom District Court ruling, it also made a point of humiliating the Judge who made it.
Hell, I voted last week. It wasn't counted because my ID was stolen, and as an internet user, I don't get bills sent to my home via the post office. Ohio's voter ID law is based entirely on having a piece of paper with an address that matches your voter registration, and I move a lot, it's unlikely that my replacement ID will have the right address. This is exactly how the South, which included majority black states, managed to impose Jim Crow on it's population. What's likely to happen in Ohio is that Kasich will analyze the results, and tweak the law to disenfranchise a few hundred or a thousand more Democrats while keeping Republicans voting. And that is a huge reason to panic because this is exactly how the South imposed Jim Crow on black people.
But since the best dystopian, government oppression sci-fi comes from people who live in the UK, and the UK government could easily oppress people by using a database (and wouldn't bother with chintzy workarounds like voter ID, or party-militia Klansman), all-Slashdot is in full-panic about the NSA.
a) If you have any evidence that he used the line on either one feel free to present it. So far all we've got is that you remember he claims he used it once.
b) The problem with bribing people is there's no guarantee they stay bribed. In this case if either woman had a mysterious $100k deposited into her bank account she could easily turn that into a lot more simply by writing a tell-all book about the experience. More importantly there's no guarantee a woman the CIA offers to bribe this way says yes, so if the CIA actually tried this strategy there'd be a couple hyper-ethical girls running around in Sweden who knew that a) the CIA offered them money to accuse Assange of rape, and b) that somebody mysteriously accused Assange of rape. That book gets you on the Daily Show.
In other words the fact that nobody has cashed in on this story is pretty god evidence the CIA isn't mysteriously manipulating the situation.
I'll agree it's possible Assange's innocent. I'll agree that he almost certainly wouldn't be convicted in US Court, because he-said/she-said means Reasonable Doubt to every jury ever. But if the US could actually arrange this kind of thing it would have happened to a lot of people not named Julian Assange.
Goddammit I was wrong about Wikipedia using the phrase "charged with rape." This is what I get for reading the google summary, rather then the actual article.
What's actually going on is under Swedish law he can't be charged until he's questioned again, and that will only happen in Sweden. Which makes the "not charged" argument a bit circular. People reading it will assume that he's not been charged because he's got a good case and might not go to trial, when the fact is he hasn;t been charged because he's figured out a way to flee the accusations that has worked so far.
And what was the connection? There are only 9 million people in Sweden. There's a CIA guy at the Embassy. 90% of the country is probably within three or four degrees of separation from the CIA, politically active people are probably much closer because Sweden has a fairly low population/politician ratio and the CIA's job is to talk to politicians.
As for charges, keep in mind Sweden does not have a version of the British legal system. The words we use in English don't necessarily fit what's happening very closely. In this case the Public Prosecutor has said they want to prosecute, but they can't actually charge him until he's in Sweden.
It's pretty impressive that after years of thinking up explanations all Assange can come up with is "one of these chicks I allegedly raped is exactly like most of the rest of the country," and "I can't be charged until I leave the Ecuadorian Embassy, therefore I;m staying in the Embassy."
What happened was Assange convinced both to have sex. One claimed he intimidated her into doing the deed. The second insisted he agree to her terms and conditions (ie: condom), and later on she woke and he was fucking her without a condom.
Both would be rape in the US, but it would be very difficult to get a conviction in either case because they're he-said/she-saids and US Juries have a very expansive view of reasonable doubt in sexual assault cases.
Swedish Law is not a clone of British law. Which means terms we're familiar with (such as "charged") don't always apply in the same way they do in the States, Canada, or the UK.
In this case their prosecutors have confirmed they aren't just after him for questioning, they want to charge him. I don't know why they haven't. It's possible you can't formally do that in Court in Sweden until the accused is in custody or something; but it's close enough to "charged" that wikipedia uses that phrase.
Of course he's got a side to the story. This is why many people prefer going to Court to holing up in a friendly Embassy.
But a) there're two charges, so even if one is frivolous he's an asshole, and b) it would be very hard for the US to arrange for Assange to scorn a lover so petty she accused him of rape.
Assange is charged with rape in Sweden. I know his supporters love to claim that the charges are fake, but it's not like the Swedish Justice system is widely considered to be corrupt. Hell, they have statements from Swedish women saying he did it. I could believe the CIA faked a video of Assange. But faking people is just not technically possible. Believing the CIA found two (not one, but two) women Assange'd take to his bed, and that both would agree to charge him with rape afterwards, and that neither one of them snitched to the media? That I have trouble with. Especially since to find two you'd have to interview dozens, somebody would probably figure out what was going on, and then she'd have every reason to snitch to the media.
Assange could walk around the US for exactly as long as it took the Swedes to file an extradition request. Since Accused rapist Assange is more useful to the US then freedom fighter convicted on trumped-up charges (and charges would not be a sure thing, given that he didn't do anything inside the US and he isn't a citizen) he would be turned over to the Swedes before US charges could be filed.
If you came out with a Constitutional Amendment creating a Constitutional Court I'd be with you.
We'd get our asses kicked, because Americans are all small-c conservatives, but I'd be with you.
As is EPIC got exactly what they were supposed to get.
That's kinda how the system is designed.
In many ways the Supremes actually need dueling lower Court rulings to do their jobs because with dueling lower court rulings they can see what both sets of Judge's did, and decided which works. It also generates a lot of paperwork (briefs, arguments, etc.) that the Supreme Court needs but has no experience creating on it's own.
"Even citizens with rights have to follow procedure."
So what you're saying is in order to remove all our rights all the government has to do is make the procedures difficult and esoteric enough that no one could follow them? I hate to bring up Kafka in situations like this but this seems a bit too like something out of Kafka.
It is according to EPIC, because EPIC never bothered to try appealing to the Circuit Courts. According to everyone else they should have gotten a ruling from the Circuit Courts before they went to the Supremes.
The Supreme Court is just not set up to be the main battle ground in a case like this. For them to do their jobs they need a lot of legal briefs, a lot of evidence, etc. of the kind a Circuit Court case produces. They aren't equipped to produce such things themselves.
From their petition:
15
The FISC and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ("Court of Review") only
have jurisdiction to hear petitions by the Government
or recipient of the FISC Order, and neither party to
the order represents EPIC's interests. Other federal
courts have no jurisdiction over the FISC, and thus
cannot grant the relief that EPIC seeks.
The only people that can appeal the order are the Feds and the people that the feds are ordering around.
EPIC, despite having their metadata vacuumed up, have no standing under the law to appeal to the FISA court.
It's easy for you and others to say "[Epic] didn't follow the proper appeals process"
but AFAIK none of you have actually elucidated what the proper appeals process is under the law.
EPIC has, with citations, laid out their case, starting on Page 14 (PDF)
"Nuh uh" isn't an insightful or interesting rebuttal.
I believe the proper Appeals process starts with an Appeal to the Appeals Court. I'm not sure which Circuit Court they were supposed to use, but they shoulda used that Circuit.
Which they're supposed to lose, because Congress and the Administration have been very careful to follow the letter of Supreme Court precedents and Appeals Courts are not supposed to crack down on people following the letter of the Supreme Court rulings. They're supposed to let that shit happen, and then the Supremes step in and fix the rulings.
Okay okay, sure it doesn't appeal to the whole process.
But we are talking about something that seems, to me, like it would end up in the Supreme Court anyway. If true, why spend a bunch of time and money just stalling the inevitable.
Because everybody says that they'll go all the way to the Supreme Court. Most don't actually try. Most of the rest of the time 6 Justices like the lower court ruling, so they don't take up the case.
More importantly the entire point of having a Court system is that it has to be extremely predictable. It has to decide the same way every time. If the Supremes are gonna intervene early in some cases (but not others) they have to have some boring-ass, ancient rule they use. Remember all the crap they took for Bush vs. Gore? That's the only case I know of where they didn't force everyone to go through every step of the Appeals process.
Which means the boring ass rule is "Fuck you, unless you're Georgie Bush's son and the alternative is Al Gore doing something about global warming."