No shit. Somebody associated with the security community swears up and down that some trivial-sounding idea only he has can actually do this for cheap. Nothing is stopping that guy from buying an iPhone 5c, and proving it. He does that shit on Youtube, and he'll the hero of a fucking generation for making this case go away.
As for "kiosks in China" why would you need 11 tries at the PIN to do that shit? It's your own phone, with the PIN you put on it. I have no doubt they have to do something to replace the Flash storage on a phone, but trying 11 PINs in a row is not one of them.
First off, why would they keep that particular number? Their entire marketing strategy is based on them not having that number, and numerous other identification codes that have nothing to do with security could be used to tell whether this mainboard was shipped with that display. Use an ID from some other chip on the main board, or ship with a random key, or damn near anything except have a key you can reconstruct yourself.
Secondly, we're don't seem to be talking about the same number.
The way the iPhone locks itself after 10 wrong PINs is it rewrites the number. The dude I'm talking to upthread (and let's see if this little trick actually works in giving you a reference) got this from Apple's site "The metadata of all files in the file system is encrypted with a random key, which is created when iOS is first installed or when the device is wiped by a user."
It's possible that Apple could figure out the key it shipped from the factory. But if the user, or the owner (in this case the County) has ever reinstalled the OS or wiped the phone it would be a totally new key.
I've never heard anyone who even sounded vaguely like he knew what he was talking about say he could access "effaceable memory" and get that number out. Plenty who clearly don't (both Issa and John McCaffee come to mind) act like it's trivial, but it just doesn't work like that.
The whole point of the court order is that they can;t stop the erasing system without a signed re-write of iOS from Apple.
Why would they have that record? They probably could figure out which set of chips went into this particular batch of iPhones, but that isn't gonna help the FBI much.
And, since the number on the chip can be changed (the way the phone resets itself after 10 wrong PINs is wiping the number, which renders the data on the phone undecryptable garage), even if they could figure out the hardware bit of the decryption key it shipped with that may not be the one the phone was using.
The key is derived from a) a chip on the motherboard, and b) your PIN. The chip is specifically designed so that it ain't gonna tell you it's bit unless the PIN is right. You could probably get the hardware bit of the key by destroying the relevant chip to read it, but if you fuck that up the key is gone forever, and you still don't have a PIN. And the whole shebang kills itself (including the hardware bit of the key that you actually need if you wever want to read the iPhone's data) if you enter the wrong PIN 10 times.
The "Chip" you're talking about is the security enclave which is not on the iPhone 5C. The filesystem key is not stored in the security enclave. If you make a copy of the encrypted memory that stores the filesystem key bit for bit, then you've defeated the erasing system. It's also possible the FBI is terribly incompetent given they have multi million dollar forensic labs that can't figure out how to copy this memory.
The 5c has a hardware-defined security code that works roughly how I described. Ars Technica has a fairly good article on how hard it would be to get the relevant info out of the iPhone without the PIN. Secure Enclave's new wrinkle is that most of the process got moved out of the OS into the firmware, not that the architecture of the security system changed.
I am far from an actual CompSci or EE person, so it's probable I'm missing more then a few little wrinkles in this system that are very important to the Slashdot audience, but I think I have abetter handle on the issue then fucking Issa.
You could copy the Flash memory storage, but to actually decrypt that you need a copy of the key that's in chips on the motherboard. Those chips are not designed to tell the world what their key is without the right PIN, and without their key or a centuries+long decryption job the data is simply unreadable. And the chips erase themselves after 10 failed PINs.
So to make your 100-copies you'd have to destroy all the chips in question, because the only way to read it is acid, and acid does not leave chips in workable condition. Which is why Apple was able to seriously argue that the encryption on the 5c was virtually impossible to crack, even for the FBI/NSA/etc.
Basically if anything Issa were talking about was actually remotely possible a) we would not be talking about this because the Judge would never have issued the order, and b) there would be potential false advertisement issues for Apple.
The attack makes sense. The filesystem key is not related to the UID, and the filesystem key is what is erased to prevent brute-forcing, not the encrypted file system on the SSD itself. If you get a copy of the eh, erasable memory (which may or may not be stored on the SSD), then you have the filesystem key. Be it that Apple is very mum about what actually talks to the devices, I don't know where that part of the memory is. Be it that the 5C doesn't even have a security enclave, I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to just find the key and plug in the algorithm. With the security enclave, the phones would be vulnerable to the same attack, but they'd be rate limited by the security enclave meaning a small alphanumeric code could make it impossibly long to get into - but the self destruct system is bypassable.
But of course, if any of this is actually possible Apple's been lying about the security on their smartphones for literally years, and it's likely that almost every country could hack the system.
The whole design is that the drive can only be read with a key. Without the key it's encrypted gibberish. The key is derived from a) a chip on the motherboard, and b) your PIN. The chip is specifically designed so that it ain't gonna tell you it's bit unless the PIN is right. You could probably get the hardware bit of the key by destroying the relevant chip to read it, but if you fuck that up the key is gone forever, and you still don't have a PIN. And the whole shebang kills itself (including the hardware bit of the key that you actually need if you wever want to read the iPhone's data) if you enter the wrong PIN 10 times.
You can't make a copy. That's the whole design of the system.
You can work around that by trying to apply just enough acid to just the right places to get the data off the chip that you would need to copy, but if you fuck it up the chip is ruined and the data is lost forever.
The All Writs Act is quite broad, and says the Courts have the authority to issue any order you can imagine that is "necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." So the Court has the authority to use the All Writs Act to aid the investigation, and get info off the phone. There really isn't any way for Apple to dispute that bit.
Yes there is - because the AWA specifically is not applicable when there is legislation regarding the issue at hand. In this case it's the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
Technically, that's not disputing whether the Courts have the authority to use the All Writs Act to at this point in the investigation of this particular crime (which is what KGIII is wondering about), it's a dispute over whether the All Writs Act gives the Courts the authority to issue this particular Writ. And they'd be disputing on the basis that it is "not agreeable to the principles of law" because they'd be alleging the law says some other act regulates getting data off cell phones.
The vast majority of warrants are actually issued prior to charges being sent down, because charges are what you do after you've got your investigative ducks in a row, not when you're in the middle of looking for evidence. Writs follow the same pattern. This one could actually be part of an investigation where charges have been filed, because their the shooter's neighbor has been charged with supporting terrorism.
But even without that looking into potential contacts of a guy who murdered a dozen-odd people in case he's got a bigger cell or something is a perfectly legitimate use of FBI resources, and since he's dead his Fourth Amendment rights are gone. The owner of the phone retains a privacy interest, but that owner is the County, which wants the phone cracked.
The All Writs Act is quite broad, and says the Courts have the authority to issue any order you can imagine that is "necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." So the Court has the authority to use the All Writs Act to aid the investigation, and get info off the phone. There really isn't any way for Apple to dispute that bit.
What they're disputing the hell out of is whether this specific order is "agreeable to the principles of the law."
K-12, in literally every class I took, it was 90-95% black. My white classmates are literally numbered on the fingers of one hand (April, Jessica, Kyle, the Wojchenski twins, and that's it). I had no problems like you describe.
Because I've been in a lot more classes with black people then you, I've generally been one of two or three white people in the room, and I've never seen anyone get anywhere near the reaction you're talking about. I can see how it could happen, but only if the person in question's got a hell of a lor of both attitude and respect issues.
I spent 13 years going to the Detroit Public Schools, and I have to say the bullshit that comes with being the only white guy in the room is several orders of magnitude less then the bullshit that comes with being the only black guy in the room.
You can get that kind of reaction as the only white guy in the room, but generally to accomplish it you have to really try. For example, if you claim black history month is bullshit because there's no white history month, and maintain it even after you've been unable to name a single damn thing that would be mentioned in white history month (and isn't on the history curriculum normally), you're gonna piss people off.
OTOH, if you're the only black guy in the room, and even dare to make the point that white history month is silly because it is 100% things that fit perfectly well in any American History course; and there's two white guys in the room who have convinced themselves by deductive reasoning that opposing White History Month is by definition racist (practicality of actually doing such a thing be damned!) you're gonna have a really bad day, get a reputation as a racial whiner, and it would probably be a not-bad idea to switch companies before that particular reputation turns everyone against you.
If you were in early-19th century Britain, and the upper classes insisted on belittling their lessors as part of their "culture," that would be bad because the lessors would have no recourse except moving to America/Canada/Australia/etc.
Unless we know who he was talking about, and how (dropping the n-bomb is a bit different then calling them "honey") it's kinda hard to tell what should have happened.
Even Galileo didn't have problems solely because he disagreed with doctrine. He had problems because it was the middle of the Reformation so "problems with doctrine" started a war that would kill 30-40% of Germany's population. They original 1616 trial was an over-reaction to the Reformation, but it did result in an agreement from Galileo to stop teaching the doctrine of Heliocentrism.
And when he broke it in 1632 he broke the fuck out of it. It was a dialogue between three characters. He had two smart characters who agreed with him, and a not-smart character whose arguments were quotes from the actual Pope. Not-smart was named "Simplicio," which is usually translated as "Simpleton," but that doesn't quite get the connotation right. It's more like Retardo. And by 1632, when he put out the book, the Thirty Tears War was in full swing.
So they put him under house arrest and told him to stop teaching people that the Pope was a moron. He may have been able to get off that second trial, but (as you may have figured out from the whole mess) he was a fucking asshole so literally zero people were willing to show up at the trial and say "the Bible may say the Earth is the center of the universe, but when I look through my telescope that is not what I see." Heliocentrism, after all, is a theory that was invented by a Catholic Priest and had been taught since the 1540s without opposition from the Church hierarchy.
Meanwhile, the Protestants were in full ISIS mode, had forced the trial of Galileo in the first place by strongly implying a Church that tolerated Copernicus' Heliocentric teachings was clearly un-Biblical and therefore not Christian, and were occasionally so ardent that they killed Protestants for being the wrong sort of Protestant. Altho, to be fair, the Catholics in Germany weren't better.
But a few years later Protestants changed their minds, decided that Biblical literalism was silly, and therefore that everything the Catholic Church had done to appease their Biblically-literalist asses was actually why Catholicism was bullshit.
And now scientists, raised in a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant society, repeat their propaganda whenever it suits their purposes.
Sounds awful. Seriously, one party in charge at all times? Nightmare.
Every time ether party controls executive and both houses in the USA, they pass a massive fuckup that costs them the next election. We all let out a sigh of relief as blessed deadlock returns.
With the disadvantage that there's always a ridiculous amount of political bullshit. The first split-control I remember involved the President being impeached for lying about a blow-job. This most recent one included multiple government shut-downs, a barely averted default or two, and the probable-nuetering of the Supreme Court for an entire year as the GOP prays for a) time and b) a Great White Presidential Hope to win a national election and un-do Obama.
Which in turn leads them all into extremely ambitious policy-making if they happen to control all three political institutions for two years at a time. You get everything, you aren't likely to keep it, and it'll be really hard for the other side to undo it, so you say "fuck it let's get ambitious and if it turns into a disaster we'll deal with that later."
And is all working perfectly as the Founders designed. In extreme circumstances the government is supposed to have the power to change damn near anything, because they didn't want people to pull a President Buchanan and say "well gee this huge issue (secession for Buchanan) is, indeed a huge issue, but the text of the Constitution says we're fucked so we're fucked," and the way the system decides circumstances are extreme is electing a bunch of policy-making guys who all agree on shit. The rest of the time every two cents is supposed to be a life-and-death-battle.
And for reasons that no rational person I have ever met can quite articulate, we make this bullshit work. It hasn't worked out well in many other countries that tried it (the Mexican Constitution of 1824 is quite similar to our own, and most Latin American states have tried the bicameral legislature and independent Executive thing). But for us it works fine. Somehow.
OTOH, the Canadian system is also working perfectly. Since it is more normal for their PM to have a majority government then not, there is no pressure on a PM with a majority to rush shit through. So major changes of policy tend to be actually thought through, and when implemented are also actively managed. Contrast this with ObamaCare, which got enacted by rush job due to Lieberman's stubbornness, and can't be amended because the GOP refuses any change that doesn't end the program and the Dems refuse any change that ends the program.
Since the PM literally cannot blame any-one else for anything (the Canadians call this "Responsible Government"), pretty much everything is his fault by definition; this also means that political bullshit is much easier to see through. The Unity of Powers also allows a very interesting Institution called "Question period," where the PM and his Ministers have to sit in parliament for an hour a day answering the questions of the Opposition. The government gets to act pretty much unilaterally, but the Opposition will tend to decide what goes on the evening news; so if the government is failing to manage well this will be reflected in the poll numbers.
So a government designed in pretty much the opposite way to our own is working great in Canada.
Turns out most conventional wisdom is wrong: you can design a government around almost any design principles, and as long as you meet certain fairly low bars (ie: indepedent Judiciary, freeish-type elections, minority rights, etc.); and the people's response to something weird won;t be "fuck it, let's try Trump," you'll be fine.
way more free then some system in which a committee of boring unelected bureaucrats
[Citation needed]
It's an impression, held by the American people at large, not a scientific fact.
But from the trouble the EU is having with the Hungarians, Poles, and Brits it's far from unknown on that side of the Atlantic, either.
I'd say our high-bullshit/insane ridiculousness version of Democracy has it's advantages.
One of the great things about justices voting along party lines is there's no longer any need for supreme court challenges. Just get rid of them and let the senate decide everything. After all the judges have done a wonderful job of upholding your 1st and 4th amendment (except for in large populated areas of the country which are constitutional free zones.
Yep what could go wrong with judges voting on party lines!
But you forget the best part: They're life appointments. Switching a Supreme Court seat is a big fucking deal, which is why there are Republicans who would oppose accepting any Obaman nominee as long as there's a possibility their guy will win in November.
We switch Senate majorities at least once a decade. But the Supremes? Last time that happened Reagan was the Man.
It's perfect for Americans. High-drama, high-stakes for absolutely no fucking sensible reason, involves basing current policy on the bullshit compromise a bunch of slave-holders fit onto a single page 227 years ago, etc.
BTW, I'm not sure this is coming through, but I'm not arguing this is a particular good way to do things. I'm arguing that it is the only way any American you have ever met can possibly conceive of doing things. If God came down from heaven and made me dictator I'd restore the Queen.
They deal with this possibility by not having a separate Executive and Legislative. Since the current legislature is majority Liberal, the current Executive is handpicked by the Liberal party, and the Tories can piss and moan all they fucking want they ain't stopping jack. If some sort of weird circumstance occurred where the Tories could stop some important policy, that would be a "Confidence vote," and since the Liberal government lost the Governor-General would declare Trudeau and the Liberals fired and there'd be a new election.
It's beautifully elegant, and totally useless to the US because it wasn't thought up by a Founding Father.
Cali implemented a "top-two" primary in Prop 14 of 2010. Since then (so 2012 and 2014 for Federal offices) your primary ballot should have all the candidates, from every party on it.
For previous elections I believe the default was that almost anyone could vote in any party primary, but there was a Republican challenge to that practice on the basis that the GOP had a Constitutional right to keep dirty moderates out of it's primary; and IIRC the GOP won.
But I don't have any on-the-ground experience in CA, just OH and MI.
Because we think our high bullshit system, with maximized opportunities for both a) conflict, and b) individual distinction by dealing with said conflict, is c) way more free then some system in which a committee of boring unelected bureaucrats. This has the major disadvantage that it is, indeed, high bullshit, and does involve a certain amount of politicization of every-damn-thing; but the advantage that (unlike certain continental unions on the other side of the Atlantic) that nobody talks about a Democracy deficit and demands the break-up of the country when the committee rules against them.
And given that our economy is actually doing pretty well, and our immigration crisis is mostly a crisis of bullshit politicians trying to bullshit each-other some more, I'd say our high-bullshit/insane ridiculousness version of Democracy has it's advantages.
The number of party labels does not matter nearly as much as laymen think. Which is why all my examples came from systems with more then two parties.
At the end of the day you are choosing either more of the same, or not more of the same. If you want a more sophisticated choice you generally have to either a) participate prior to the main election (the French first round I mentioned, which is actually in force in several states, Primaries in the rest of the US), or choose between varieties of the main flavors (the Germans have many party labels, but the practical difference between the FDP and the CDU is roughly equivalent to the difference between a Wall Street Republican and a SmallTown Republican, not to mention the difference between a Rust Belt UAW Democrat, a Hipster Booklynite, a black activist from South Carolina, etc.).
You can occasionally shoehorn a third point-of-view in (Canada's NDP, or the inept British LibDems are good examples), but P-o-V #4+ are always some sort of regional bloc. In Canada the most prominent one is actually called the Bloc Quebecois.
Politics almost never offers more then two actual practical choices. There's a government. They do shit. You vote for it, or you vote against it. There isn't really another option.
In some systems you can express your disdain for the main party (say the CDU/CSU and SDP in Germany) by voting for a junior coalition partner (the Free Democrats and Greens). In others you can choose to support a Junior coalition partner (say the French Communists) in the first round and then hold your nose and vote Hollande in the second round.
But this isn't that different then choosing to support the Greener candidate in the Democratic primary. Which is why American third parties freaked out when Cali adopted a version of the French system. Rather then decide "hey second is way easier then first, and if we get a dozen or so seconds we'll eventually get lucky and be the only alternative when pro-gun-control Senator Yee gets arrested for gun-running."
In all honesty they need to start by filling it with extreme left wings loonies to counter balance the extreme right wing loonies in the supreme court!
As a near-loony left-winger myself, I'd love it if that happened. Unfortunately Obama's got to get his pick through the Senate.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have an EE, but it seems to me that "Effaceable memory on a FLASH chip" is "chips on the motherboard."
No shit. Somebody associated with the security community swears up and down that some trivial-sounding idea only he has can actually do this for cheap. Nothing is stopping that guy from buying an iPhone 5c, and proving it. He does that shit on Youtube, and he'll the hero of a fucking generation for making this case go away.
As for "kiosks in China" why would you need 11 tries at the PIN to do that shit? It's your own phone, with the PIN you put on it. I have no doubt they have to do something to replace the Flash storage on a phone, but trying 11 PINs in a row is not one of them.
First off, why would they keep that particular number? Their entire marketing strategy is based on them not having that number, and numerous other identification codes that have nothing to do with security could be used to tell whether this mainboard was shipped with that display. Use an ID from some other chip on the main board, or ship with a random key, or damn near anything except have a key you can reconstruct yourself.
Secondly, we're don't seem to be talking about the same number.
The way the iPhone locks itself after 10 wrong PINs is it rewrites the number. The dude I'm talking to upthread (and let's see if this little trick actually works in giving you a reference) got this from Apple's site "The metadata of all files in the file system is encrypted with a random key, which is created when iOS is first installed or when the device is wiped by a user."
It's possible that Apple could figure out the key it shipped from the factory. But if the user, or the owner (in this case the County) has ever reinstalled the OS or wiped the phone it would be a totally new key.
I've never heard anyone who even sounded vaguely like he knew what he was talking about say he could access "effaceable memory" and get that number out. Plenty who clearly don't (both Issa and John McCaffee come to mind) act like it's trivial, but it just doesn't work like that.
The whole point of the court order is that they can;t stop the erasing system without a signed re-write of iOS from Apple.
Why would they have that record? They probably could figure out which set of chips went into this particular batch of iPhones, but that isn't gonna help the FBI much.
And, since the number on the chip can be changed (the way the phone resets itself after 10 wrong PINs is wiping the number, which renders the data on the phone undecryptable garage), even if they could figure out the hardware bit of the decryption key it shipped with that may not be the one the phone was using.
The key is derived from a) a chip on the motherboard, and b) your PIN. The chip is specifically designed so that it ain't gonna tell you it's bit unless the PIN is right. You could probably get the hardware bit of the key by destroying the relevant chip to read it, but if you fuck that up the key is gone forever, and you still don't have a PIN. And the whole shebang kills itself (including the hardware bit of the key that you actually need if you wever want to read the iPhone's data) if you enter the wrong PIN 10 times.
The "Chip" you're talking about is the security enclave which is not on the iPhone 5C. The filesystem key is not stored in the security enclave. If you make a copy of the encrypted memory that stores the filesystem key bit for bit, then you've defeated the erasing system. It's also possible the FBI is terribly incompetent given they have multi million dollar forensic labs that can't figure out how to copy this memory.
The 5c has a hardware-defined security code that works roughly how I described. Ars Technica has a fairly good article on how hard it would be to get the relevant info out of the iPhone without the PIN. Secure Enclave's new wrinkle is that most of the process got moved out of the OS into the firmware, not that the architecture of the security system changed.
I am far from an actual CompSci or EE person, so it's probable I'm missing more then a few little wrinkles in this system that are very important to the Slashdot audience, but I think I have abetter handle on the issue then fucking Issa.
You could copy the Flash memory storage, but to actually decrypt that you need a copy of the key that's in chips on the motherboard. Those chips are not designed to tell the world what their key is without the right PIN, and without their key or a centuries+long decryption job the data is simply unreadable. And the chips erase themselves after 10 failed PINs.
So to make your 100-copies you'd have to destroy all the chips in question, because the only way to read it is acid, and acid does not leave chips in workable condition. Which is why Apple was able to seriously argue that the encryption on the 5c was virtually impossible to crack, even for the FBI/NSA/etc.
Basically if anything Issa were talking about was actually remotely possible a) we would not be talking about this because the Judge would never have issued the order, and b) there would be potential false advertisement issues for Apple.
The attack makes sense. The filesystem key is not related to the UID, and the filesystem key is what is erased to prevent brute-forcing, not the encrypted file system on the SSD itself. If you get a copy of the eh, erasable memory (which may or may not be stored on the SSD), then you have the filesystem key. Be it that Apple is very mum about what actually talks to the devices, I don't know where that part of the memory is. Be it that the 5C doesn't even have a security enclave, I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to just find the key and plug in the algorithm. With the security enclave, the phones would be vulnerable to the same attack, but they'd be rate limited by the security enclave meaning a small alphanumeric code could make it impossibly long to get into - but the self destruct system is bypassable.
But of course, if any of this is actually possible Apple's been lying about the security on their smartphones for literally years, and it's likely that almost every country could hack the system.
The whole design is that the drive can only be read with a key. Without the key it's encrypted gibberish. The key is derived from a) a chip on the motherboard, and b) your PIN. The chip is specifically designed so that it ain't gonna tell you it's bit unless the PIN is right. You could probably get the hardware bit of the key by destroying the relevant chip to read it, but if you fuck that up the key is gone forever, and you still don't have a PIN. And the whole shebang kills itself (including the hardware bit of the key that you actually need if you wever want to read the iPhone's data) if you enter the wrong PIN 10 times.
So you make another copy and try again?
You can't make a copy. That's the whole design of the system.
You can work around that by trying to apply just enough acid to just the right places to get the data off the chip that you would need to copy, but if you fuck it up the chip is ruined and the data is lost forever.
The All Writs Act is quite broad, and says the Courts have the authority to issue any order you can imagine that is "necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." So the Court has the authority to use the All Writs Act to aid the investigation, and get info off the phone. There really isn't any way for Apple to dispute that bit.
Yes there is - because the AWA specifically is not applicable when there is legislation regarding the issue at hand. In this case it's the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
Technically, that's not disputing whether the Courts have the authority to use the All Writs Act to at this point in the investigation of this particular crime (which is what KGIII is wondering about), it's a dispute over whether the All Writs Act gives the Courts the authority to issue this particular Writ. And they'd be disputing on the basis that it is "not agreeable to the principles of law" because they'd be alleging the law says some other act regulates getting data off cell phones.
The vast majority of warrants are actually issued prior to charges being sent down, because charges are what you do after you've got your investigative ducks in a row, not when you're in the middle of looking for evidence. Writs follow the same pattern. This one could actually be part of an investigation where charges have been filed, because their the shooter's neighbor has been charged with supporting terrorism.
But even without that looking into potential contacts of a guy who murdered a dozen-odd people in case he's got a bigger cell or something is a perfectly legitimate use of FBI resources, and since he's dead his Fourth Amendment rights are gone. The owner of the phone retains a privacy interest, but that owner is the County, which wants the phone cracked.
The All Writs Act is quite broad, and says the Courts have the authority to issue any order you can imagine that is "necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." So the Court has the authority to use the All Writs Act to aid the investigation, and get info off the phone. There really isn't any way for Apple to dispute that bit.
What they're disputing the hell out of is whether this specific order is "agreeable to the principles of the law."
You got a really weird class man.
K-12, in literally every class I took, it was 90-95% black. My white classmates are literally numbered on the fingers of one hand (April, Jessica, Kyle, the Wojchenski twins, and that's it). I had no problems like you describe.
And what did you say when you spoke?
Because I've been in a lot more classes with black people then you, I've generally been one of two or three white people in the room, and I've never seen anyone get anywhere near the reaction you're talking about. I can see how it could happen, but only if the person in question's got a hell of a lor of both attitude and respect issues.
I spent 13 years going to the Detroit Public Schools, and I have to say the bullshit that comes with being the only white guy in the room is several orders of magnitude less then the bullshit that comes with being the only black guy in the room.
You can get that kind of reaction as the only white guy in the room, but generally to accomplish it you have to really try. For example, if you claim black history month is bullshit because there's no white history month, and maintain it even after you've been unable to name a single damn thing that would be mentioned in white history month (and isn't on the history curriculum normally), you're gonna piss people off.
OTOH, if you're the only black guy in the room, and even dare to make the point that white history month is silly because it is 100% things that fit perfectly well in any American History course; and there's two white guys in the room who have convinced themselves by deductive reasoning that opposing White History Month is by definition racist (practicality of actually doing such a thing be damned!) you're gonna have a really bad day, get a reputation as a racial whiner, and it would probably be a not-bad idea to switch companies before that particular reputation turns everyone against you.
Depends on the power dynamics.
If you were in early-19th century Britain, and the upper classes insisted on belittling their lessors as part of their "culture," that would be bad because the lessors would have no recourse except moving to America/Canada/Australia/etc.
Unless we know who he was talking about, and how (dropping the n-bomb is a bit different then calling them "honey") it's kinda hard to tell what should have happened.
Even Galileo didn't have problems solely because he disagreed with doctrine. He had problems because it was the middle of the Reformation so "problems with doctrine" started a war that would kill 30-40% of Germany's population. They original 1616 trial was an over-reaction to the Reformation, but it did result in an agreement from Galileo to stop teaching the doctrine of Heliocentrism.
And when he broke it in 1632 he broke the fuck out of it. It was a dialogue between three characters. He had two smart characters who agreed with him, and a not-smart character whose arguments were quotes from the actual Pope. Not-smart was named "Simplicio," which is usually translated as "Simpleton," but that doesn't quite get the connotation right. It's more like Retardo. And by 1632, when he put out the book, the Thirty Tears War was in full swing.
So they put him under house arrest and told him to stop teaching people that the Pope was a moron. He may have been able to get off that second trial, but (as you may have figured out from the whole mess) he was a fucking asshole so literally zero people were willing to show up at the trial and say "the Bible may say the Earth is the center of the universe, but when I look through my telescope that is not what I see." Heliocentrism, after all, is a theory that was invented by a Catholic Priest and had been taught since the 1540s without opposition from the Church hierarchy.
Meanwhile, the Protestants were in full ISIS mode, had forced the trial of Galileo in the first place by strongly implying a Church that tolerated Copernicus' Heliocentric teachings was clearly un-Biblical and therefore not Christian, and were occasionally so ardent that they killed Protestants for being the wrong sort of Protestant. Altho, to be fair, the Catholics in Germany weren't better.
But a few years later Protestants changed their minds, decided that Biblical literalism was silly, and therefore that everything the Catholic Church had done to appease their Biblically-literalist asses was actually why Catholicism was bullshit.
And now scientists, raised in a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant society, repeat their propaganda whenever it suits their purposes.
*woosh*
Sounds awful. Seriously, one party in charge at all times? Nightmare.
Every time ether party controls executive and both houses in the USA, they pass a massive fuckup that costs them the next election. We all let out a sigh of relief as blessed deadlock returns.
With the disadvantage that there's always a ridiculous amount of political bullshit. The first split-control I remember involved the President being impeached for lying about a blow-job. This most recent one included multiple government shut-downs, a barely averted default or two, and the probable-nuetering of the Supreme Court for an entire year as the GOP prays for a) time and b) a Great White Presidential Hope to win a national election and un-do Obama.
Which in turn leads them all into extremely ambitious policy-making if they happen to control all three political institutions for two years at a time. You get everything, you aren't likely to keep it, and it'll be really hard for the other side to undo it, so you say "fuck it let's get ambitious and if it turns into a disaster we'll deal with that later."
And is all working perfectly as the Founders designed. In extreme circumstances the government is supposed to have the power to change damn near anything, because they didn't want people to pull a President Buchanan and say "well gee this huge issue (secession for Buchanan) is, indeed a huge issue, but the text of the Constitution says we're fucked so we're fucked," and the way the system decides circumstances are extreme is electing a bunch of policy-making guys who all agree on shit. The rest of the time every two cents is supposed to be a life-and-death-battle.
And for reasons that no rational person I have ever met can quite articulate, we make this bullshit work. It hasn't worked out well in many other countries that tried it (the Mexican Constitution of 1824 is quite similar to our own, and most Latin American states have tried the bicameral legislature and independent Executive thing). But for us it works fine. Somehow.
OTOH, the Canadian system is also working perfectly. Since it is more normal for their PM to have a majority government then not, there is no pressure on a PM with a majority to rush shit through. So major changes of policy tend to be actually thought through, and when implemented are also actively managed. Contrast this with ObamaCare, which got enacted by rush job due to Lieberman's stubbornness, and can't be amended because the GOP refuses any change that doesn't end the program and the Dems refuse any change that ends the program.
Since the PM literally cannot blame any-one else for anything (the Canadians call this "Responsible Government"), pretty much everything is his fault by definition; this also means that political bullshit is much easier to see through. The Unity of Powers also allows a very interesting Institution called "Question period," where the PM and his Ministers have to sit in parliament for an hour a day answering the questions of the Opposition. The government gets to act pretty much unilaterally, but the Opposition will tend to decide what goes on the evening news; so if the government is failing to manage well this will be reflected in the poll numbers.
So a government designed in pretty much the opposite way to our own is working great in Canada.
Turns out most conventional wisdom is wrong: you can design a government around almost any design principles, and as long as you meet certain fairly low bars (ie: indepedent Judiciary, freeish-type elections, minority rights, etc.); and the people's response to something weird won;t be "fuck it, let's try Trump," you'll be fine.
way more free then some system in which a committee of boring unelected bureaucrats
[Citation needed]
It's an impression, held by the American people at large, not a scientific fact.
But from the trouble the EU is having with the Hungarians, Poles, and Brits it's far from unknown on that side of the Atlantic, either.
I'd say our high-bullshit/insane ridiculousness version of Democracy has it's advantages.
One of the great things about justices voting along party lines is there's no longer any need for supreme court challenges. Just get rid of them and let the senate decide everything. After all the judges have done a wonderful job of upholding your 1st and 4th amendment (except for in large populated areas of the country which are constitutional free zones.
Yep what could go wrong with judges voting on party lines!
But you forget the best part:
They're life appointments. Switching a Supreme Court seat is a big fucking deal, which is why there are Republicans who would oppose accepting any Obaman nominee as long as there's a possibility their guy will win in November.
We switch Senate majorities at least once a decade. But the Supremes? Last time that happened Reagan was the Man.
It's perfect for Americans. High-drama, high-stakes for absolutely no fucking sensible reason, involves basing current policy on the bullshit compromise a bunch of slave-holders fit onto a single page 227 years ago, etc.
BTW, I'm not sure this is coming through, but I'm not arguing this is a particular good way to do things. I'm arguing that it is the only way any American you have ever met can possibly conceive of doing things. If God came down from heaven and made me dictator I'd restore the Queen.
Ever been to Canada?
They deal with this possibility by not having a separate Executive and Legislative. Since the current legislature is majority Liberal, the current Executive is handpicked by the Liberal party, and the Tories can piss and moan all they fucking want they ain't stopping jack. If some sort of weird circumstance occurred where the Tories could stop some important policy, that would be a "Confidence vote," and since the Liberal government lost the Governor-General would declare Trudeau and the Liberals fired and there'd be a new election.
It's beautifully elegant, and totally useless to the US because it wasn't thought up by a Founding Father.
Cali implemented a "top-two" primary in Prop 14 of 2010. Since then (so 2012 and 2014 for Federal offices) your primary ballot should have all the candidates, from every party on it.
For previous elections I believe the default was that almost anyone could vote in any party primary, but there was a Republican challenge to that practice on the basis that the GOP had a Constitutional right to keep dirty moderates out of it's primary; and IIRC the GOP won.
But I don't have any on-the-ground experience in CA, just OH and MI.
Why have a Judicial branch?
Because we think our high bullshit system, with maximized opportunities for both a) conflict, and b) individual distinction by dealing with said conflict, is c) way more free then some system in which a committee of boring unelected bureaucrats. This has the major disadvantage that it is, indeed, high bullshit, and does involve a certain amount of politicization of every-damn-thing; but the advantage that (unlike certain continental unions on the other side of the Atlantic) that nobody talks about a Democracy deficit and demands the break-up of the country when the committee rules against them.
And given that our economy is actually doing pretty well, and our immigration crisis is mostly a crisis of bullshit politicians trying to bullshit each-other some more, I'd say our high-bullshit/insane ridiculousness version of Democracy has it's advantages.
The number of party labels does not matter nearly as much as laymen think. Which is why all my examples came from systems with more then two parties.
At the end of the day you are choosing either more of the same, or not more of the same. If you want a more sophisticated choice you generally have to either a) participate prior to the main election (the French first round I mentioned, which is actually in force in several states, Primaries in the rest of the US), or choose between varieties of the main flavors (the Germans have many party labels, but the practical difference between the FDP and the CDU is roughly equivalent to the difference between a Wall Street Republican and a SmallTown Republican, not to mention the difference between a Rust Belt UAW Democrat, a Hipster Booklynite, a black activist from South Carolina, etc.).
You can occasionally shoehorn a third point-of-view in (Canada's NDP, or the inept British LibDems are good examples), but P-o-V #4+ are always some sort of regional bloc. In Canada the most prominent one is actually called the Bloc Quebecois.
Politics almost never offers more then two actual practical choices. There's a government. They do shit. You vote for it, or you vote against it. There isn't really another option.
In some systems you can express your disdain for the main party (say the CDU/CSU and SDP in Germany) by voting for a junior coalition partner (the Free Democrats and Greens). In others you can choose to support a Junior coalition partner (say the French Communists) in the first round and then hold your nose and vote Hollande in the second round.
But this isn't that different then choosing to support the Greener candidate in the Democratic primary. Which is why American third parties freaked out when Cali adopted a version of the French system. Rather then decide "hey second is way easier then first, and if we get a dozen or so seconds we'll eventually get lucky and be the only alternative when pro-gun-control Senator Yee gets arrested for gun-running."
In all honesty they need to start by filling it with extreme left wings loonies to counter balance the extreme right wing loonies in the supreme court!
As a near-loony left-winger myself, I'd love it if that happened. Unfortunately Obama's got to get his pick through the Senate.