Penalties include up to ten years in prison, or a fine of up to $1,000 and two and a half years in jail.
If you're going to bother at all, don't just quote the penalty, quote the whole statute. It clearly states that intent to use the tools for a criminal purpose is required for prosecution. This is the case in many states, and what it means is that you're free to carry around locksmithing tools as long as you aren't engaged in any criminal activity that would be aided by using those tools.
In other words, you'll incur an additional count if you possess lockpicks (or a sledge hammer, for that matter) while breaking into a house, and you might get charged if you have lockpicks while walking around wearing a ski mask and carrying a canvas sack with dollar signs on it, but other than that you're good to go.
The document says it's something to help you "keep tabs on their children and grandchildren". Something tells me that this isn't actually used by the FBI.
All jokes aside, it actually is fairly secure against some types of intrusions.
And in all likelihood, *much* less secure against others. This strategy is a textbook example of the "security through obscurity" approach. Translated from Brass-to-English, what General Weinstein said was, "hurr durr, nobody remembers how our shit works so we're unhackable". That's fucking stupid.
Maybe the processes really are well-architected and reasonably secure, and the General is just dumbing it down for a lay audience. It's possible to accomplish that with older technology. But the mentality that says "we're secure BECAUSE we're using older technology" hints at an unnerving gap in understanding what constitutes legitimate IT security measures.
Yes, population could soar if nobody died. But so could our knowledge and capabilities, as we could stop losing gobs of it through the most experienced among us randomly logging out of life.
You are mistaken about how cockpit voice recorders work. They record much more than "the last two minutes of talk before a crash". They typically record two hours on a continuous loop, and in the wake of the MH370 event that will probably be increased to eight hours or more.
>It shouldn't be hard to come up with *something* convenient.
It isn't hard, it's actually easy. These are all solved problems. The issue is that the powers that be don't want the problem to be solved, because it benefits them.
I'm leery of reducing a job as important as police officer to call-center working conditions.
That's a straw man argument. Nobody has recommended that we "reduce police officer(s) to call-center working conditions". Recording their on-duty interactions is as appropriate for police officers as it is for pilots. When something goes wrong and innocent people die, the public deserves to know why so that lessons can be learned. That's why we have cockpit voice recorders, and that's why we should have video and audio recording of all police interaction with the public.
If they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, right...?
As I read these responses, I'm forced to wonder: would any of the posters tolerate having every spoken word recorded by The Boss throughout their shift? Even one of you?
That's the case for a great number of ordinary workers, and especially for those whose jobs entail great responsibilities, particularly the safeguarding of human life.
Pilots' every spoken word are recorded by "the boss" during flight. Call center employees interactions with customers are often times recorded by "the boss", heavily scrutinized, and used to evaluate the employee's performance. US government employees with high clearances surrender their privacy almost entirely, and fully expect that their communications are monitored.
The job police do is vital to the functioning of society, but it carries at least as much potential for abuse than any of these others I just mentioned. A police officer who does not perform his job appropriately puts the public at an extreme level of risk. It is appropriate that, given this extreme degree of power, we monitor, check, and balance their behavior through a commensurately extreme degree of supervision.
'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
Isn't it sort of an indictment of our culture that we do something for casual entertainment that we would never allow ourselves to do for the purposes of advancing human scientific knowledge?
So basically, you're a "videophile", and your evaluation of Netflix's stream is colored by the fact that you loathe anything lower quality than IMAX. That'd have been worth mentioning in your original post. Nothing wrong with being a format snob, but don't act like the problem is that Netflix's bar is too low when you know good and well that the real one is that your own personal bar is set very very high.
Have you seen how low bitrate and over compressed Netflix is?
Netflix dynamically scales depending on the quality of the network path between you and them. It's never quite Blu-Ray quality, but if you have good network speeds it's not bad at all. You probably have a crappy internet connection, or a provider who is QoSing Netflix.
Seriously, they're all functionally the same suit, just with three different-but-equally-hokey electro-luminescent designs. I appreciate what NASA is trying to do here in terms of involving the public. Their intentions are laudable. This is as close to literal "bikeshedding" as it gets, though, and so it feels more than a little patronizing. Evidently what NASA thinks that the public cares about is style and no substance. Maybe that's not as untrue as I wish it were, but I can't see something like this as an effective way to pique the interest of "those" people.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think, for the good of the space program, we need to make Justin Bieber an astronaut.
What I'm saying is that a SIM card is a computer designed to operate in a way that I find philosophically repugnant and deleterious to individual rights. As a computer, it both stores and processes data, but is specifically designed to exist as a black box that locks out the owner and frustrate attempts for the owner to exert control over how or what data is processed on their device. Thus, it violates the principles of open computing in a fundamental, and very dangerous, way. The technology is specifically anti-consumer, anti-citizen, and anti-property-owner. SIM cards are not there for your benefit, and do not serve your interests. They are designed and built specifically to disempower you, their owner and operator.
I don't like, and do my best to avoid using, technology like that. You should, too! Normalizing this kind of technology ultimately causes real harm to real people. Industry and government have a deep and abiding desire to make us all into passive consumers rather than empowered and active users of computers and networks. Technologies like SIM, CableCard, proprietary firmware, etc. are one of the main tools they leverage to accomplish this.
I believe that computer owners should be free and empowered to leverage their property in any way they see fit. Technology should work for, not against, its owner.
Fair point. I can envisage scenarios where modifying the SIM remotely would be helpful. Then again, I can envisage scenarios where it could be a very, very bad thing. My main point was user empowerment - if I can choose between two models of a device, one with a hardware lock, one without... I'll be happy with that.
Not like cellular device security is anything but an oxymoron anyway...
The headline doesn't say anything about the FSF endorsing an "incrementally more free" laptop.
Furthermore, how much of an increment is this, really? Coreboot versus a BIOS? Woop-dee-doo. RMS has been recommending the Lemote Loongson for a long time, and it not only has an open source BIOS, but actually does address some of those other issues like CPU and embedded device firmware. So not only is FSF late to the party, but they're recommending an inferior (from the "free" standpoint) solution.
I'd be OK with this, under one condition - a hardware-based write protection lock that is absolutely 100% not able to be bypassed or circumvented in software.
I'll never understand why this incredibly basic feature that is so easy to design, cheap to implement, and valuable to device security went the way of floppy disks. How awesome would a thumb drive with a hardware write lock be?
This laptop contains proprietary Intel chips. We know that hardware makers like Intel have colluded with governments to insert undocumented die-level and firmware level "features" into their products that could serve as backdoors and otherwise weaken the device's security against sophisticated attackers.
Where is the open source, audited CPU? Ethernet controller firmware? Wireless firmware? Microcode updates?
It isn't for the cop to decide which law to enforce or what line exists
Actually, to a degree it is. It's called "discretion", and if police officers didn't have it, the amount of laws on the books would render them ineffective and (even more) disliked by the community. Discretion can be abused, and laws should be written better, but the alternative to police discretion is a bunch of people over because they were going 65.001 MPH on a highway and making people into sex offenders for having a pee in the alley behind the bar at 2AM.
Slashdot Mirror
Penalties include up to ten years in prison, or a fine of up to $1,000 and two and a half years in jail.
If you're going to bother at all, don't just quote the penalty, quote the whole statute. It clearly states that intent to use the tools for a criminal purpose is required for prosecution. This is the case in many states, and what it means is that you're free to carry around locksmithing tools as long as you aren't engaged in any criminal activity that would be aided by using those tools.
In other words, you'll incur an additional count if you possess lockpicks (or a sledge hammer, for that matter) while breaking into a house, and you might get charged if you have lockpicks while walking around wearing a ski mask and carrying a canvas sack with dollar signs on it, but other than that you're good to go.
The document says it's something to help you "keep tabs on their children and grandchildren". Something tells me that this isn't actually used by the FBI.
All jokes aside, it actually is fairly secure against some types of intrusions.
And in all likelihood, *much* less secure against others. This strategy is a textbook example of the "security through obscurity" approach. Translated from Brass-to-English, what General Weinstein said was, "hurr durr, nobody remembers how our shit works so we're unhackable". That's fucking stupid.
Maybe the processes really are well-architected and reasonably secure, and the General is just dumbing it down for a lay audience. It's possible to accomplish that with older technology. But the mentality that says "we're secure BECAUSE we're using older technology" hints at an unnerving gap in understanding what constitutes legitimate IT security measures.
Overly pessimistic.
Yes, population could soar if nobody died. But so could our knowledge and capabilities, as we could stop losing gobs of it through the most experienced among us randomly logging out of life.
Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young?
---Alphaville
Cody is a gun nut, a pothead, and an anarchist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The only people that don't have someone 'upriver', drink cattle urine instead.
I'm not sure whether or not I have to say this, but I will: milk is not actually the cow's urine. Rather, it's exudate from mammary glands.
You are mistaken about how cockpit voice recorders work. They record much more than "the last two minutes of talk before a crash". They typically record two hours on a continuous loop, and in the wake of the MH370 event that will probably be increased to eight hours or more.
>It shouldn't be hard to come up with *something* convenient.
It isn't hard, it's actually easy. These are all solved problems. The issue is that the powers that be don't want the problem to be solved, because it benefits them.
I'm leery of reducing a job as important as police officer to call-center working conditions.
That's a straw man argument. Nobody has recommended that we "reduce police officer(s) to call-center working conditions". Recording their on-duty interactions is as appropriate for police officers as it is for pilots. When something goes wrong and innocent people die, the public deserves to know why so that lessons can be learned. That's why we have cockpit voice recorders, and that's why we should have video and audio recording of all police interaction with the public.
If they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, right...?
As I read these responses, I'm forced to wonder: would any of the posters tolerate having every spoken word recorded by The Boss throughout their shift? Even one of you?
That's the case for a great number of ordinary workers, and especially for those whose jobs entail great responsibilities, particularly the safeguarding of human life.
Pilots' every spoken word are recorded by "the boss" during flight. Call center employees interactions with customers are often times recorded by "the boss", heavily scrutinized, and used to evaluate the employee's performance. US government employees with high clearances surrender their privacy almost entirely, and fully expect that their communications are monitored.
The job police do is vital to the functioning of society, but it carries at least as much potential for abuse than any of these others I just mentioned. A police officer who does not perform his job appropriately puts the public at an extreme level of risk. It is appropriate that, given this extreme degree of power, we monitor, check, and balance their behavior through a commensurately extreme degree of supervision.
'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
Isn't it sort of an indictment of our culture that we do something for casual entertainment that we would never allow ourselves to do for the purposes of advancing human scientific knowledge?
So basically, you're a "videophile", and your evaluation of Netflix's stream is colored by the fact that you loathe anything lower quality than IMAX. That'd have been worth mentioning in your original post. Nothing wrong with being a format snob, but don't act like the problem is that Netflix's bar is too low when you know good and well that the real one is that your own personal bar is set very very high.
Have you seen how low bitrate and over compressed Netflix is?
Netflix dynamically scales depending on the quality of the network path between you and them. It's never quite Blu-Ray quality, but if you have good network speeds it's not bad at all. You probably have a crappy internet connection, or a provider who is QoSing Netflix.
Seriously, they're all functionally the same suit, just with three different-but-equally-hokey electro-luminescent designs. I appreciate what NASA is trying to do here in terms of involving the public. Their intentions are laudable. This is as close to literal "bikeshedding" as it gets, though, and so it feels more than a little patronizing. Evidently what NASA thinks that the public cares about is style and no substance. Maybe that's not as untrue as I wish it were, but I can't see something like this as an effective way to pique the interest of "those" people.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think, for the good of the space program, we need to make Justin Bieber an astronaut.
I don't really understanding what you are saying.
What I'm saying is that a SIM card is a computer designed to operate in a way that I find philosophically repugnant and deleterious to individual rights. As a computer, it both stores and processes data, but is specifically designed to exist as a black box that locks out the owner and frustrate attempts for the owner to exert control over how or what data is processed on their device. Thus, it violates the principles of open computing in a fundamental, and very dangerous, way. The technology is specifically anti-consumer, anti-citizen, and anti-property-owner. SIM cards are not there for your benefit, and do not serve your interests. They are designed and built specifically to disempower you, their owner and operator.
I don't like, and do my best to avoid using, technology like that. You should, too! Normalizing this kind of technology ultimately causes real harm to real people. Industry and government have a deep and abiding desire to make us all into passive consumers rather than empowered and active users of computers and networks. Technologies like SIM, CableCard, proprietary firmware, etc. are one of the main tools they leverage to accomplish this.
I believe that computer owners should be free and empowered to leverage their property in any way they see fit. Technology should work for, not against, its owner.
Don't even get me started on how much I hate SIMs... almost as much as CableCard. I don't like being locked out of hardware that I paid for.
Ooooh. USB 3 and everything. Much thanks!
Fair point. I can envisage scenarios where modifying the SIM remotely would be helpful. Then again, I can envisage scenarios where it could be a very, very bad thing. My main point was user empowerment - if I can choose between two models of a device, one with a hardware lock, one without... I'll be happy with that.
Not like cellular device security is anything but an oxymoron anyway...
The headline doesn't say anything about the FSF endorsing an "incrementally more free" laptop.
Furthermore, how much of an increment is this, really? Coreboot versus a BIOS? Woop-dee-doo. RMS has been recommending the Lemote Loongson for a long time, and it not only has an open source BIOS, but actually does address some of those other issues like CPU and embedded device firmware. So not only is FSF late to the party, but they're recommending an inferior (from the "free" standpoint) solution.
Can you link me to one? I still use an old SD card and reader for exactly this reason.
I think my larger point stands anyway, though. Why aren't write locks absolutely bare bones standard on any writable device?
I'd be OK with this, under one condition - a hardware-based write protection lock that is absolutely 100% not able to be bypassed or circumvented in software.
I'll never understand why this incredibly basic feature that is so easy to design, cheap to implement, and valuable to device security went the way of floppy disks. How awesome would a thumb drive with a hardware write lock be?
This laptop contains proprietary Intel chips. We know that hardware makers like Intel have colluded with governments to insert undocumented die-level and firmware level "features" into their products that could serve as backdoors and otherwise weaken the device's security against sophisticated attackers.
Where is the open source, audited CPU? Ethernet controller firmware? Wireless firmware? Microcode updates?
The other three out of four were too fearful of their survey answers being logged by the NSA...
It isn't for the cop to decide which law to enforce or what line exists
Actually, to a degree it is. It's called "discretion", and if police officers didn't have it, the amount of laws on the books would render them ineffective and (even more) disliked by the community. Discretion can be abused, and laws should be written better, but the alternative to police discretion is a bunch of people over because they were going 65.001 MPH on a highway and making people into sex offenders for having a pee in the alley behind the bar at 2AM.