but I'm baffled to hear you suggest that there is no source code. There is, it's in C, it's widely available and it's under the GPL no less.
Back when I was downloading DeCSS, and I must admit, I haven't looked at it in nearly a year, all I was able to find, after examining many sites was the executable. Any references to "DeCSS source code" actually pointed to the css_auth package that I refer to in my post which is not a complete DeCSS package. I also remember reading several discussions in which people asked about DeCSS source code and the conclusion was that Jon Johansen had not released it. He may have done so since, but as of about a year ago (after this California suit was brought), it was certainly not as widely available as the DeCSS executable.
I just read the decision, and I thought it was terrific. When I read the quote from the trade secrets act on page 10 of the opinion, point (3) really bothered me. Point (2) didn't, as it is long established that the First Amendment right to free speech is alienable, that is, it can be signed away in contract. But point (3) seemed to restrict the free speech rights of others who don't enter into a contract. I wondered how this could be constitutional, and I was very pleasantly surprised several pages later to see the court rule that that provision of the law is indeed unconstitutional! What a great decision!
But I found one fatal flaw in the decision, which could basically negate the conclusions when the case goes to trial.
On page 2 of the opinion, in the factual background section, the court states "DeCSS consists of computer source code which describes a method..." and in a footnote describes computer source code as "the language in which computer programmers write their computer programs."
Later in the opinion, in their analysis of the applicability of Junger vs Daley they first quote from that decision: "Because computer source code is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas about computer programming, we hold that it is protected by the First Amendment." And further add "If the source code were compiled to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas."
And a careful reading of the opinion makes it clear, they rely heavily on this analysis of Junger vs Daley in reaching their decision to reverse the preliminary injuction.
The problem is there is an error in their factual background. DeCSS is not source code, but rather a precompiled Windows executable! As far as I know, Jon Johansen has never even released the source code, and even if he as done so by now, he hadn't at the time this suit was brought. I haven't read all the trial documents, so I don't know how this error crept in, but it quite clearly an error. There was a source code package called "css_auth" which was to be included in a Linux DVD driver, and it had the effect of authorizing a DVD-ROM drive to read the keys required for DVD movie playback, but DeCSS is something different entirely, and it is clearly compiled object code, and not source!
You may object at this point that there really isn't a difference between source and object code, as was pointed out by Dr. Touretzky in his testimony in the MPAA vs 2600 case in New York, but this court clearly defines the difference between the two as it understands it, then clearly mislables DeCSS as "source code".
Don't get me wrong, I sure hope Bunner wins this case, but the fact that the one decision in his favor is based on a major factual error does not bode well.
Well, the problem with your scheme would be addressing. In a standard SDRAM module, each chip contains only one bit of each byte. A memory lookup addresses exactly one bit in a chip, and one capacitor is checked. Your scheme of using ternary DRAM as binary DRAM would involve examine several capacitors for each bit lookup. I think this would slow down the addressing efficiency considerably.
But, if the computer uses ternary logic, then to keep the one to one correspondence between capacitors and lookups (which I think would be necessary for efficiency) one could use a three state system: not charged, and charged with either of two polarities. This, I think, would be as efficient as far as timing goes, and give you the 50% savings in size.
It occurred to me while reading the article that even if you could build a ternary microprocessor with more bang for the buck than the standard binary variety, in order to be useful in a microcomputer, you would need ternary RAM as well, so I began think about the problem.
Most desktop computers use dynamic RAM to achieve high densities at low cost. (It's not unusual for new desktop systems to have 1G of RAM in about 4 modules.) They work on the principal of charging tiny capacitors. Charged represents a 1 for instance and not charged represents a 0. But capacitors can be charged in one of two polarities (one plate negative with respect to the other, or positive). Thus it seems that it would be a small step to go from binary dynamic RAM to ternary. The supporting electronics and refresh circuitry would be a bit more sophisticated, but the capacitor array might be basically the same, resulting in increased capacity (log3/log2) with about the same real estate! So perhaps dynamic RAM is really optimal in ternary as well.
I'm not an electrical engineer; the above is merely speculation off the top of my head. Does anyone more qualified than myself have any thoughts on this?
I assume that someone will save it from starwars.com and post it elsewhere...
I'm guessing that it will probably be encrypted. At the very least it will be copyrighted so even if it is posted somewhere else, they will probably be required to take it down.
I do sympathize with you though. I purchased the DVD, but I have neither a DVD-ROM drive, nor do I use Windows.
a web site would probably have to use HTML 1.0, resulting in a very boring web.
Perhaps a more "boring" web, but probably a much more useful one. How many websites have you been to that feature flashing graphics or animations where useful information is conveyed in them.
The earliest web specifications allowed for hypertext and embedded graphic images, sufficient to convey almost all the information presented on the web. Remember, the web was conceived as an information delivery tool, not an advertising medium!
If so then their customers do have something legitimate to complain about.
Right! Their customers have something legitimate to complain about. Safesurf is not one of their customers.
People who subcribe to an ISP certainly have a right to complain and take their business elsewhere if the ISP is not giving them full access to the Internet. But content providers do not have an automatic right to have their web content carried by all ISPs all over the world.
It is really ironic (which I think was the point of the original post) that Safesurf, of all people, would seem to assert that it is!
I read the RIAA comment referred to in which they "deny" requesting a right to hack.
The first half of their comment seems reasonable. Then they admit that the anti-terrorism bill did contain a provision which would make some of their "technical measures" illegal and subsequently the bill was modified.
What is conspicuously absent from their statement is any mention of which provision in the original anti-terrorism bill was problematic. There were anti-hacking provisions and they were modified so as to apply only to acts whose intended effect is to influence or cause harm to the government (I'm paraphrasing here.) Does anyone know if that is the "fix" they are referring to, or is it something else? And can anyone think of a "technical measure" which is legitimate that would have been prohibited by the first draft and not by the final bill?
If one reads the article carefully, one would discover that this "encryption" technique makes use of the wave nature of sound to both obscure the data in transit, and reconstruct it at the final destination.
There is no analogy for web traffic which travels over IP which is sent as discrete packets of bytes. They resulting packets cannot be made to interfere with each other at the destination to produce plaintext, nor do they interfere and reflect and become distorted in transit!
The closest analogy would be to split a message into many small parts and send them along different paths in the hopes that no one could catch them all in transit, but then timing isn't really an issue at all as others have suggested. Also, anyone bugging your connection to the internet (your ISP for instance) could still catch all the packets, ditto for the source. Some have suggested splitting keys and sending some parts by snail-mail, others by FedEx, others by e-mail to different accounts which you read on different machines, and that is really a form of security through obscurity, not encryption, whereas the sonar technique is more like encryption in that even if an adversary knew that information was being send and knew from where, they could't recover the plaintext unless they were at the target location.
Perhaps quantum cryptography is a better analogy to what's going on, but it's not a perfect one either as there are fundamental differences between accoustical waves and quantum wavepackets.
Well, perhaps you're not checking luggage, especially if you're on a weekend trip.
A couple of years ago I was on a weekend trip and had only one carry-on bag. While I was visiting my friend, my portable CD player broke and I had to carry back a broken one. I thought nothing of it, but I guess if it happened today and I was targetted for a search, I would be out a CD player, or possibly in jail indefinitely as a "potential material witness".
Very good point. Also, because the NSA's mandate forbids spying on U.S. citizens in the U.S. any such information they gather couldn't be used against you in a court of law since it would have been illegally obtained. So you are protected in a sense.
The FBI on the other hand has no such restriction. Anything they gather by lawful means can be used against you in a court of law.
Indeed, Disney is known for this. They have two entire movies, their "Fantasia" series, which liberally copy music without permission from the creators.
Actually, this isn't true. Of course, they didn't pay to use music for which the copyright had expired, but they paid quite a bit to Igor Stravinsky for the use of music from his ballet The Rite of Spring. In fact, when the movie was released on video, they paid royalties to his estate.
So, to be fair, Disney does seem to respect the intellectual property rights of others.
That doesn't mean I like everything they do, but lets be fair.
When was the last time you heard of any US citizen being able to do much without presenting their social security number?
I do think there is definite abuse there. Too many people require SSNs.
But there is a huge difference between SS cards and the proposed ID cards.
When you apply for a social security card you aren't fingerprinted and photographed for a database. Thus, the card can't be used to track you when you choose not to show it. I don't know of a mechanism to allow tracking even when you do use your SSN.
With a national ID card, not only would the fact that your face and fingerprints are in a national database lead to easy tracking, but everytime you present your card, it could be swiped through a scanner that calls up your picture on a video screen. This would make the cards tamperproof, but suppose those database queries were logged? The government would have a complete record of everywhere you've been! And it could go back indefinitely, or at least to the time you first obtained the card.
I worry about a time when you have to swipe your card through a reader just to buy a loaf of bread or get on a bus, or enter a freeway in your car. And even if you don't, video cameras combined with face recognition technology and the database of faces would do the tracking for you. You could even throw away the card, and it wouldn't protect you.
I hope people realize that this is irreversible. Even if laws requiring a card were repealed and people could throw away their cards, the face and fingerprint database would remain, forever. Consider this before supporting a hasty legislative fix to the terrorist problem.
What is so wrong about the card? If you would like to have an ID card, something that the US do _NOT_ have, and it carries your picture and your fingerprint, what again is so wrong with that.
The problem isn't the card, so much, as the database that goes with it. When they take your digital picture, and scan your fingerprints, they don't just go on the card, but also in a database. American people have rejected time and time again mandatory fingerprinting of all citizens. The card is just a smokescreen which diverts attention away from the database. With a database of fingerprints and faces, combined with video cameras and face recognition technology, the government could literally track your every move and there isn't a damn thing you could do about it.
In my homecountry, Germany, you have to register with the city you live in, tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one. They can always track you. You have to have an ID card. It carries your address, height, weight, place of birth and your picture. If you move within the country (see above) you have to have it updated.
Well, that's a good enough reason right there. Looks like you answered your own question.
Is there any technical or financial reason why the CDR manufactures wouldn't overcome the protections?
Not technical or financial, but legal. The DMCA forbids selling devices which circumvent copy protection measures on works in the digital domain, which CDs clearly are.
There is a flaw in Mr. Levy's reasoning. He claims that with people will switch from snail mail to e-mail to avoid the risk of getting anthrax in the mail.
But the person who determines the mail format (e- or snail) is the sender not the receiver, and I don't see how you would get anthrax sending mail (unless, of course, you were mailing anthrax, in which case e-mail wouldn't be an option anyway.)
So I don't see how the anthrax scare could be responsible for an increase in e-mail and decrease in snail mail.
By the way, how long do you think it will be before some hacker figures out how to send anthrax as an e-mail attachment. With all the security holes found in Outlook to date, it wouldn't surprise me if people start dying. Wasn't one of the Florida anthrax cases caused by bacteria found on the keyboard? Something to think about.
The REAL issue is where you have to present said ID card.
And an equally important issue which many people don't consider is the database that goes with the ID. If you took a poll and asked people if they would object to a law requiring all citizens to go the police station to be photographed and fingerprinted for a database, most would probably object.
But 7 out of 10 Americans support the idea of a mandatory ID card with photo and fingerprints, as long as they're not required to show it to too many people. But the point that many people miss is that the photo and fingerprint that go on the card ALSO go into a database. You can rip up the card the following day, but they still have your photo and fingerprints on file. Once your photo is on file, video cameras coupled with face recognition software could allow authorities to track your every move. Who needs to ask for a card, when the camera/database will ID you in a second?
What we need to be wary of are these side effects of these ID card schemes which I believe are the real reasons behind them.
i dont know if it's a LAW per se, it might just be something they prefer you do.
Well, that's a critical distinction. I believe one of the primary purposes of these schemes is to build a photographic database of all citizens. This would only work if all citizens were required by law to obtain an ID card.
I'm well aware that you might need a driver's license substitute if you wanted to buy booze or cigarettes or pay for things with checks, but it's quite another matter if there is a law saying that on your 18th birthday, you must go to the DMV and get fingerprinted and photographed.
As I've said many times in the past, it's not the card, it's the database!
Well, the idea is, I think, to not only have a card, but a database. The card could contain a barcode for instance, and when swiped through a scanner, if it is a valid ID number, your photo and fingerprints will appear on screen. Pretty hard to forge something like that. You'd not only have to create a fake card, but somehow hack into the database to add your fake identity.
in NJ (and most, if not all, other states) if you are 18 or older, you're required to obtain an ID card from the Dept Motor Vehicles regardless of if you drive or not.
What??? I lived in NJ for 3 years. I'd never heard of such a law. Is it new? Can you provide a reference?
The only part of what they did that could be called remotely fraudulent was using misspellings of common names to fool people. If so, that is a trademark issue, and should be settled in courts.
What seems to bother the FTC here is that these sites appear to hold people "captive". What they might call captive, I might call aggressive use of JavaScript in advertising. I really am not comfortable with the government making decisions about the proper way to use JavaScript, and yes, I've been held "captive" by pop-up sites before. I generally just restart the browser. I certainly never asked the government to get involved!
In other words, if you could convince me that it's not the government's responsibility, then I would argue that it's the browser maker's responsibility rather than the user's.
Actually, I think it is the user's responsibility to choose a browser that behaves the way they want. No one is forcing them to use Explorer or Navigator. There are many browsers to choose from, most of which are free, and several of which allow you to disable pop-ups without turning off Javascript. I much prefer to choose for myself what features I want rather than the government telling me which features my browser is allowed to have!
Slashdot Mirror
but I'm baffled to hear you suggest that there is no source code. There is, it's in C, it's widely available and it's under the GPL no less.
Back when I was downloading DeCSS, and I must admit, I haven't looked at it in nearly a year, all I was able to find, after examining many sites was the executable. Any references to "DeCSS source code" actually pointed to the css_auth package that I refer to in my post which is not a complete DeCSS package. I also remember reading several discussions in which people asked about DeCSS source code and the conclusion was that Jon Johansen had not released it. He may have done so since, but as of about a year ago (after this California suit was brought), it was certainly not as widely available as the DeCSS executable.
I don't have my copy of the Webster dictionary with me, but my Oxford dictionary (British) lists both spellings: license and licence.
I think the American legal system uses the Webster dictionary, so can anyone who has one handy check to see if both spellings are permissible?
I just read the decision, and I thought it was terrific. When I read the quote from the trade secrets act on page 10 of the opinion, point (3) really bothered me. Point (2) didn't, as it is long established that the First Amendment right to free speech is alienable, that is, it can be signed away in contract. But point (3) seemed to restrict the free speech rights of others who don't enter into a contract. I wondered how this could be constitutional, and I was very pleasantly surprised several pages later to see the court rule that that provision of the law is indeed unconstitutional! What a great decision!
But I found one fatal flaw in the decision, which could basically negate the conclusions when the case goes to trial.
On page 2 of the opinion, in the factual background section, the court states "DeCSS consists of computer source code which describes a method..." and in a footnote describes computer source code as "the language in which computer programmers write their computer programs."
Later in the opinion, in their analysis of the applicability of Junger vs Daley they first quote from that decision: "Because computer source code is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas about computer programming, we hold that it is protected by the First Amendment." And further add "If the source code were compiled to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas."
And a careful reading of the opinion makes it clear, they rely heavily on this analysis of Junger vs Daley in reaching their decision to reverse the preliminary injuction.
The problem is there is an error in their factual background. DeCSS is not source code, but rather a precompiled Windows executable! As far as I know, Jon Johansen has never even released the source code, and even if he as done so by now, he hadn't at the time this suit was brought. I haven't read all the trial documents, so I don't know how this error crept in, but it quite clearly an error. There was a source code package called "css_auth" which was to be included in a Linux DVD driver, and it had the effect of authorizing a DVD-ROM drive to read the keys required for DVD movie playback, but DeCSS is something different entirely, and it is clearly compiled object code, and not source!
You may object at this point that there really isn't a difference between source and object code, as was pointed out by Dr. Touretzky in his testimony in the MPAA vs 2600 case in New York, but this court clearly defines the difference between the two as it understands it, then clearly mislables DeCSS as "source code".
Don't get me wrong, I sure hope Bunner wins this case, but the fact that the one decision in his favor is based on a major factual error does not bode well.
In fact, libraries frequently get a discount, similar to bookstores.
Well, the problem with your scheme would be addressing. In a standard SDRAM module, each chip contains only one bit of each byte. A memory lookup addresses exactly one bit in a chip, and one capacitor is checked. Your scheme of using ternary DRAM as binary DRAM would involve examine several capacitors for each bit lookup. I think this would slow down the addressing efficiency considerably.
But, if the computer uses ternary logic, then to keep the one to one correspondence between capacitors and lookups (which I think would be necessary for efficiency) one could use a three state system: not charged, and charged with either of two polarities. This, I think, would be as efficient as far as timing goes, and give you the 50% savings in size.
It occurred to me while reading the article that even if you could build a ternary microprocessor with more bang for the buck than the standard binary variety, in order to be useful in a microcomputer, you would need ternary RAM as well, so I began think about the problem.
Most desktop computers use dynamic RAM to achieve high densities at low cost. (It's not unusual for new desktop systems to have 1G of RAM in about 4 modules.) They work on the principal of charging tiny capacitors. Charged represents a 1 for instance and not charged represents a 0. But capacitors can be charged in one of two polarities (one plate negative with respect to the other, or positive). Thus it seems that it would be a small step to go from binary dynamic RAM to ternary. The supporting electronics and refresh circuitry would be a bit more sophisticated, but the capacitor array might be basically the same, resulting in increased capacity (log3/log2) with about the same real estate! So perhaps dynamic RAM is really optimal in ternary as well.
I'm not an electrical engineer; the above is merely speculation off the top of my head. Does anyone more qualified than myself have any thoughts on this?
I assume that someone will save it from starwars.com and post it elsewhere...
I'm guessing that it will probably be encrypted. At the very least it will be copyrighted so even if it is posted somewhere else, they will probably be required to take it down.
I do sympathize with you though. I purchased the DVD, but I have neither a DVD-ROM drive, nor do I use Windows.
a web site would probably have to use HTML 1.0, resulting in a very boring web.
Perhaps a more "boring" web, but probably a much more useful one. How many websites have you been to that feature flashing graphics or animations where useful information is conveyed in them.
The earliest web specifications allowed for hypertext and embedded graphic images, sufficient to convey almost all the information presented on the web. Remember, the web was conceived as an information delivery tool, not an advertising medium!
If so then their customers do have something legitimate to complain about.
Right! Their customers have something legitimate to complain about. Safesurf is not one of their customers.
People who subcribe to an ISP certainly have a right to complain and take their business elsewhere if the ISP is not giving them full access to the Internet. But content providers do not have an automatic right to have their web content carried by all ISPs all over the world.
It is really ironic (which I think was the point of the original post) that Safesurf, of all people, would seem to assert that it is!
I read the RIAA comment referred to in which they "deny" requesting a right to hack.
The first half of their comment seems reasonable. Then they admit that the anti-terrorism bill did contain a provision which would make some of their "technical measures" illegal and subsequently the bill was modified.
What is conspicuously absent from their statement is any mention of which provision in the original anti-terrorism bill was problematic. There were anti-hacking provisions and they were modified so as to apply only to acts whose intended effect is to influence or cause harm to the government (I'm paraphrasing here.) Does anyone know if that is the "fix" they are referring to, or is it something else? And can anyone think of a "technical measure" which is legitimate that would have been prohibited by the first draft and not by the final bill?
If one reads the article carefully, one would discover that this "encryption" technique makes use of the wave nature of sound to both obscure the data in transit, and reconstruct it at the final destination.
There is no analogy for web traffic which travels over IP which is sent as discrete packets of bytes. They resulting packets cannot be made to interfere with each other at the destination to produce plaintext, nor do they interfere and reflect and become distorted in transit!
The closest analogy would be to split a message into many small parts and send them along different paths in the hopes that no one could catch them all in transit, but then timing isn't really an issue at all as others have suggested. Also, anyone bugging your connection to the internet (your ISP for instance) could still catch all the packets, ditto for the source. Some have suggested splitting keys and sending some parts by snail-mail, others by FedEx, others by e-mail to different accounts which you read on different machines, and that is really a form of security through obscurity, not encryption, whereas the sonar technique is more like encryption in that even if an adversary knew that information was being send and knew from where, they could't recover the plaintext unless they were at the target location.
Perhaps quantum cryptography is a better analogy to what's going on, but it's not a perfect one either as there are fundamental differences between accoustical waves and quantum wavepackets.
Well, perhaps you're not checking luggage, especially if you're on a weekend trip.
A couple of years ago I was on a weekend trip and had only one carry-on bag. While I was visiting my friend, my portable CD player broke and I had to carry back a broken one. I thought nothing of it, but I guess if it happened today and I was targetted for a search, I would be out a CD player, or possibly in jail indefinitely as a "potential material witness".
Very good point. Also, because the NSA's mandate forbids spying on U.S. citizens in the U.S. any such information they gather couldn't be used against you in a court of law since it would have been illegally obtained. So you are protected in a sense.
The FBI on the other hand has no such restriction. Anything they gather by lawful means can be used against you in a court of law.
Indeed, Disney is known for this. They have two entire movies, their "Fantasia" series, which liberally copy music without permission from the creators.
Actually, this isn't true. Of course, they didn't pay to use music for which the copyright had expired, but they paid quite a bit to Igor Stravinsky for the use of music from his ballet The Rite of Spring. In fact, when the movie was released on video, they paid royalties to his estate.
So, to be fair, Disney does seem to respect the intellectual property rights of others.
That doesn't mean I like everything they do, but lets be fair.
When was the last time you heard of any US citizen being able to do much without presenting their social security number?
I do think there is definite abuse there. Too many people require SSNs.
But there is a huge difference between SS cards and the proposed ID cards.
When you apply for a social security card you aren't fingerprinted and photographed for a database. Thus, the card can't be used to track you when you choose not to show it. I don't know of a mechanism to allow tracking even when you do use your SSN.
With a national ID card, not only would the fact that your face and fingerprints are in a national database lead to easy tracking, but everytime you present your card, it could be swiped through a scanner that calls up your picture on a video screen. This would make the cards tamperproof, but suppose those database queries were logged? The government would have a complete record of everywhere you've been! And it could go back indefinitely, or at least to the time you first obtained the card.
I worry about a time when you have to swipe your card through a reader just to buy a loaf of bread or get on a bus, or enter a freeway in your car. And even if you don't, video cameras combined with face recognition technology and the database of faces would do the tracking for you. You could even throw away the card, and it wouldn't protect you.
I hope people realize that this is irreversible. Even if laws requiring a card were repealed and people could throw away their cards, the face and fingerprint database would remain, forever. Consider this before supporting a hasty legislative fix to the terrorist problem.
What is so wrong about the card? If you would like to have an ID card, something that the US do _NOT_ have, and it carries your picture and your fingerprint, what again is so wrong with that.
The problem isn't the card, so much, as the database that goes with it. When they take your digital picture, and scan your fingerprints, they don't just go on the card, but also in a database. American people have rejected time and time again mandatory fingerprinting of all citizens. The card is just a smokescreen which diverts attention away from the database. With a database of fingerprints and faces, combined with video cameras and face recognition technology, the government could literally track your every move and there isn't a damn thing you could do about it.
In my homecountry, Germany, you have to register with the city you live in, tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one. They can always track you. You have to have an ID card. It carries your address, height, weight, place of birth and your picture. If you move within the country (see above) you have to have it updated.
Well, that's a good enough reason right there. Looks like you answered your own question.
Is there any technical or financial reason why the CDR manufactures wouldn't overcome the protections?
Not technical or financial, but legal. The DMCA forbids selling devices which circumvent copy protection measures on works in the digital domain, which CDs clearly are.
There is a flaw in Mr. Levy's reasoning. He claims that with people will switch from snail mail to e-mail to avoid the risk of getting anthrax in the mail.
But the person who determines the mail format (e- or snail) is the sender not the receiver, and I don't see how you would get anthrax sending mail (unless, of course, you were mailing anthrax, in which case e-mail wouldn't be an option anyway.)
So I don't see how the anthrax scare could be responsible for an increase in e-mail and decrease in snail mail.
By the way, how long do you think it will be before some hacker figures out how to send anthrax as an e-mail attachment. With all the security holes found in Outlook to date, it wouldn't surprise me if people start dying. Wasn't one of the Florida anthrax cases caused by bacteria found on the keyboard? Something to think about.
The REAL issue is where you have to present said ID card.
And an equally important issue which many people don't consider is the database that goes with the ID. If you took a poll and asked people if they would object to a law requiring all citizens to go the police station to be photographed and fingerprinted for a database, most would probably object.
But 7 out of 10 Americans support the idea of a mandatory ID card with photo and fingerprints, as long as they're not required to show it to too many people. But the point that many people miss is that the photo and fingerprint that go on the card ALSO go into a database. You can rip up the card the following day, but they still have your photo and fingerprints on file. Once your photo is on file, video cameras coupled with face recognition software could allow authorities to track your every move. Who needs to ask for a card, when the camera/database will ID you in a second?
What we need to be wary of are these side effects of these ID card schemes which I believe are the real reasons behind them.
i dont know if it's a LAW per se, it might just be something they prefer you do.
Well, that's a critical distinction. I believe one of the primary purposes of these schemes is to build a photographic database of all citizens. This would only work if all citizens were required by law to obtain an ID card.
I'm well aware that you might need a driver's license substitute if you wanted to buy booze or cigarettes or pay for things with checks, but it's quite another matter if there is a law saying that on your 18th birthday, you must go to the DMV and get fingerprinted and photographed.
As I've said many times in the past, it's not the card, it's the database!
Well, the idea is, I think, to not only have a card, but a database. The card could contain a barcode for instance, and when swiped through a scanner, if it is a valid ID number, your photo and fingerprints will appear on screen. Pretty hard to forge something like that. You'd not only have to create a fake card, but somehow hack into the database to add your fake identity.
Get off it, come up with a better solution (doing NOTHING is NOT a better solution), or sit down and shut up.
A better solution to what?
in NJ (and most, if not all, other states) if you are 18 or older, you're required to obtain an ID card from the Dept Motor Vehicles regardless of if you drive or not.
What??? I lived in NJ for 3 years. I'd never heard of such a law. Is it new? Can you provide a reference?
The only part of what they did that could be called remotely fraudulent was using misspellings of common names to fool people. If so, that is a trademark issue, and should be settled in courts.
What seems to bother the FTC here is that these sites appear to hold people "captive". What they might call captive, I might call aggressive use of JavaScript in advertising. I really am not comfortable with the government making decisions about the proper way to use JavaScript, and yes, I've been held "captive" by pop-up sites before. I generally just restart the browser. I certainly never asked the government to get involved!
In other words, if you could convince me that it's not the government's responsibility, then I would argue that it's the browser maker's responsibility rather than the user's.
Actually, I think it is the user's responsibility to choose a browser that behaves the way they want. No one is forcing them to use Explorer or Navigator. There are many browsers to choose from, most of which are free, and several of which allow you to disable pop-ups without turning off Javascript. I much prefer to choose for myself what features I want rather than the government telling me which features my browser is allowed to have!