"All this has gone on, not a single person charged with anything. "
Are we discussing the same thing? If we're talking about the Mueller Investigation, then multiple people have been charged - and multiple people have already pled guilty.
1) George Papadopoulos, admitted guilt.
2) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, admitted guilt.
3) Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, was indicted in October in Washington, DC on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, false statements, and failure to disclose foreign assets. He’s pleaded not guilty on all counts.
4) Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, was indicted on similar charges to Manafort. He admitted guilt.
5-20) 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted on conspiracy charges, with some also being accused of identity theft.
21) Richard Pinedo: a Californian who admitted guilt.
22) Alex van der Zwaan: a London lawyer who admitted guilt.
And the examples you give of indictment recommendations - and I don't dispute that the recommendations were made - all come from a partisan Congress which voted largely on party lines. That is hugely relevant given that all of the individuals you cite have been singled out and made subjects of personal attacks by the sitting President. This is so far from "the norms" of the way that government should be run that it shouldn't be necessary to point it out.
For what it's worth, I'm personally deeply sceptical of the FBI... Far too many examples of fabrications, lies, mis-representation of facts. For example, the San Bernadino iPhone debacle... That's why I offer the thought that perhaps they have lost their way. They are either "cloak-and-boots" brigade [looking to jump in like superheroes and save the day], or they are doing this for self-aggrandisement, to drum up bigger budgets and larger departments and larger salaries.
I also happen to think that Comey knew *exactly* what he was doing when he went public, against the wishes of his rank-and-file agents, with the announcement of the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation, yet kept quiet about the Trump investigation. Total bias. Everything he has said since is merely his attempt to justify his actions whilst looking in the rear-view mirror.
To your point, though, one thing gets lost in all the noise of this sort of debate. Whether they like it or not, every single serving employee of the FBI, from the director down to the most junior admin clerk, is a public employee. The people they monitor pay their wages. The people that pay their wages have every right to demand that they conduct themselves transparently, fairly and with absolute honesty.
In fact, if it weren't for the nature of the current President, I'd be entirely happy with root-and-branch reform of the FBI.
Do I remotely believe the FBI narrative with respect to encryption? No.
Do I think that the current administration will seize on this reporting [despite the current President's absolute loathing for the Post and its owner] and use it as another weapon to undermine the credibility of the FBI in the eyes of the public? Yes, absolutely.
Whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not, we need the FBI. The FBI was, when it was introuduced, [IIUC] the only agency with the authority to pursue a crime [and criminals] across state borders. Unfortunately, what has happened since then has been the gradual "bloating" of all government agencies, with departments fighting each-other for larger budgets and more status. When the DHS was introduced, the Executive started a turf war that continues to this day - and in one sense this whole "unbreakable encryption" debacle is just a part of that - because the best thing that the FBI can do to underscore it's value is to actually solve crimes, so within the FBI there will inevitably be a narrative which says, "anything which prevents us or delays us from solving crimes will make us look bad and must therefore be destroyed..."
So the thing which is pushing the FBI to wage their war on encryption likely has far less to do with "organised crime, paedophiles and terrorists" and everything to do with, "making us look like a better agency than the DHS thanks to our conviction rates."
I should caution us here, however, from thinking that, "Well, stuff them, this clearly isn't our problem..." It is. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most important one to me is that the concept of "demonstrating ability via some grade-school metrics", which has permeated every workplace, now drives people [including FBI Agents and Directors] to make questionable decisions. One of the most horrific examples of this was U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who insists to this day that her office acted "appropriately and reasonably" when bringing charges against Aaron Swartz. In that case, even though Aaron had a legal right to the documents he was obtaining, even though the owner of the documents looked at the facts and withdrew their complaint, Ortiz pressed ahead. The ruthless pressure that drove Ortiz to get a conviction cost Aaron his life. That is NOT ok.
Ortiz has continued to spin a narrative that Aaron was offered a plea deal (which he rejected because it would have prevented him for running for public office, which he most dearly wanted to do) whilst conveniently forgetting the mandacious way they went about building their case, the way that they destroyed not just Aaron but Quinn Norton too.
This is the problem.
We need the FBI.
But we need them to act with honesty, integrity and candor at all times. By failing to do this, they undermine not just their credibility, but the support of the public at the time when they most desperately need it, in the face of an Executive that is clearly determined to either destroy them, or bend them to his will...
The thing to bear in mind here is that Cambridge Analytica managed to obtain only a relatively small percentage of information about Facebook Users. The information it managed to obtain was either information voluntarily provided by users in response to a survey, or publicly-visible information carried by "friends" of the relatively small number of users who took their survey.
Facebook have access to data on ALL their users. They have the complete history of all their users. They have a vast trove of information about what their users do when they are not on the Facebook platform, thanks to a combination of cookies delivered by their servers and the beacons they place all across the Internet, courtesy of Facebook "Like" buttons on popular web sites.
Cambridge Analytica are only getting this level of scrutiny because Christopher Wylie basically left regulators with no choice, after publicly telling the world what CA had the ability to do. An equivalent FB insider, anyone who chose to reveal the full scope of what FB can do, would scare most people silly.
It's amazing to think that people are getting worked up about this relatively small data set obtained by this relatively tiny company, when the data is being held by this behemoth call Facebook, run by a guy who makes no secret of his political ambitions. Talk about elephant in the room.
The problem is that some of the laws governing use of computers - such as the above - have been written so broadly, with such vague definitions, that a prosecutor given the facts of this case, could pretty much decide whether or not to prosecute based on how they feel that day.
As per the description in the linked Wikipedia article, take a look at "Criminal Offenses under the Act" and consider (a)(1) and (a)(2), both of which cover "access to a computer system... exceeding authorized access". A prosecutor can argue that a user of the system was not intended to write a script to iterate through detail pages - and from that one argument can build a case to show criminal activity under the terms of the act.
Please note, I am not for one moment arguing that to do so would be fair, rational, or even sane, I am just pointing out that this is how the law works. As the entirely relevant saying goes:-
"The law may upset reason, but reason may not upset the law."
A scenario frighteningly similar to this case resulted in a federal prosecutor bringing a whole host of charges against Aaron Swartz, which, tragically, ended when he took his own life. We can only speculate, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence in that case to suggest that either the prosecutor was out to make a name for herself, or that Aaron, with his eloquence, brilliance and passion for justice, was making a few people sufficiently nervous that the idea of having him barred from public office [because having a conviction would do that] would be in their interests...
However, in this case I think it would be inflammatory to suggest that the case would ever have gone that route. What does worry me, however, is that cases like this, which can be argued to be crimes because of a badly-formed, poorly-worded law, can result in miscarriages of justice unless they are caught in the bud.
As I'm trying to show here, the wording of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, even though it has been amended six times since it first made it on to the statute books, remains inflexible and out-of-touch with reality. The last amendment, for example, was in 2008. Think about all the technological breakthroughs we've seen in the last 10 years and ask yourself whether any of them might fall foul of some of the provisions of this act?
Maybe as a compromise we could set a high bar for the prosecution; maybe it's enough to demand that they show malicious intent - but if all we do is "raise the bar" for a conviction, we do nothing to stop vexatious or pointless cases being brought before a Court. The only way to do that is to change the law.
The legal profession adopted a saying which goes all the way back to ancient Greece [circa 4th Century BC]:-
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine..."
Meaning that although changes to the law and the framework of justice might take a while to be developed, once done, the result tends to be pretty comprehensive. Of course, this means that there is a dynamic tension between "Justice" (which moves slowly) and anything which is dynamic and develops quickly.
What is perhaps most interesting [and most troubling] about this story is the fact that, once again, we see a failure of the incumbent justice system to acknowledge that it has a weak spot when it comes to potential or actual technology-based crime.
In this specific case, the linked article merely says that the Police Department received information which has prompted them to drop the case. What they don't say is that they will even consider a review of the way that they make determinations concerning this type of computer crime. And there's the rub. It's a little unfair to be too critical of Nova Scotia Police in this instance - all the evidence before them is that this is an isolated incident [although the article cites 11 different IP addresses had come across and exploited the same vulnerability that the un-named 19-year-old was facing potential charges for. So this one case has died a natural death and everyone returns to their default setting, but no corrections have been made to the way that law enforcement interpret this type of event.
Within the legal profession there may be the mistaken view that "technology merely allows us to automate things we used to do by hand, to alleviate the effort required" and thus that whatever laws would have been applied to the manual equivalent of a technology-enabled process can be re-applied to an automated one.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. Even before work on "Artifical Intelligence" started, we had plenty of evidence to show us that techniques such as BDA (Big Data Analytics) could achieve things that no human ever could.
It won't be popular with Justice Departments, but in most if not all cases these organisations need to have a complete rethink about the way that the law intersects with technology. This doesn't mean that justice's slow-moving wheels need to turn faster, but it does mean that they need to develop ways of coping with things that do.
As we now know to be true, in 2008, agencies and individuals in the United States committed a massive amount of fraud in the run-up to what is in all possibility one of the worst financial crimes yet seen.
Although many of the victims of that crime were American citizens who lost jobs and homes because of the bankers' greed, they were not the only ones. Investors and savers and pensioners the world over have been absolutely devastated because of that one event, with literally tens of thousands of people across the world working into their 70s and 80s - literally until they drop dead - because of that massive amount of financial mis-management.
I appreciate that the 2008 financial crimes and the subsequent emissions scandal are two very different crimes, but how come not one US banker is serving time for what happened in 2008? How come the United States hasn't given up any of the culprits to those nations whose citizens have been robbed?
The American people have every right to be angry with the emissions scandal. What was done was wrong. I am not trying to argue otherwise. However, I am pointing out that when crimes span countries, justice is far from even-handed.
I would absolutely stand with the environmental campaigners of the United States and demand justice for the way that VAG conspired to cheat emissions testing for their vehicles. However, that would be conditional upon fair and even-handed exercise of justice. We simply can't go around selectively choosing how to serve justice.
For example, it also wasn't fair for the United States to bring a misdemeanour charge and $100,000 in fines against former General David Patreus and then convict Chelsea Manning of 19 charges including theft and espionage and then sentence her to 35 years in prison. In order for justice to work, it not only has to be fair, it has to be seen to be fair.
I'm not for one moment suggesting that the United States should not seek compensation from Volkswagen, but if they are going to ask for it, then they need to offer up an equal amount of justice for all those outside the United States who have been wronged or injured by the actions of US citizens. Anything less is hypocrisy - and it serves to undermine any good that the United States tries to do in the world.
Just point out that the UK's Customs and Revenues Service will be taking a very detailed look at Facebook's tax returns, with a view to implementing necessary corrections in legislation that will prevent Zuck from off-shoring his profits to some tax haven.
Nothing will get a mega-corp CEO in the room like a threat to their profits.
When this topic is discussed, not just on forums like/., but in the media in general, it is often characterised as "the right to repair". It's *way* more than that...
First, it's also the "right to upgrade"... It gives us the chance to buy a piece of generic technology and then adjust it to suit our own requirements. For example, to buy a generic laptop and then add extra memory and/or a large hard drive - if that's what we need. Or buy a second battery so that we can double our time away from a mains outlet for those of us who really do use a laptop when we're out and about...
Second, it's all about the right to continue to use our devices for a reasonable amount of time. Imagine a scenario where you took your car in to a dealer for a mechanical fault and were told, "Sorry, this vehicle is three years old - we can't get the parts any more. But we can sell you a new car..." It's all too easy to dismiss this as scare-mongering, but when the only source of parts is a manufacturer, the moment they stop providing replacement parts for something you've bought, you're dead in the water. That will force you to make another purchase and keep their profits rolling in.
And of course it fuels a tendency to "buy up" - to purchase a machine with more capacity or storage than we might want - at hugely inflated prices - because we know that if we run out of space there is no opportunity to upgrade.
It's a shameful thing to have to say, but I think we're getting to [or have reached, or maybe even passed] the point where we need a "Code of Ethics" for manufacturers - for example in the consumer electronics sector it would be reasonable to expect that vendors will continue to stock parts for devices for 5 years after a particular model is withdrawn from sale. Motor vehicles might need a longer support window; other devices might survive with less.
But the bottom line is that without this, we're not consumers, we're victims. Maybe the approaching mid-terms is time to get some support for legislation...
I find myself thinking, "No... that's just too implausible..." Then I remember all of the stunts that Intel have pulled down through the years [the most recent of which was the issuing of patches for Spectre and Meltdown that would have slowed down *AMD* processors as well as Intel's own... and I realise that, actually, yes, what you write is entirely possible.
The problem for us as consumers is that this sort of thing is virtually impossible to stop. We've already seen the "Intel Inside" and "Made for Windows" campaigns, in which Intel and Microsoft, respectively, both paid out vast amounts of money to strategic partners. For Intel it was anyone willing to take Intel chips over AMDs - essentially Intel were paying the costs of their OEM's marketing... For Microsoft it was offering to pay large amounts of money to hardware manufacturers, to help them write drivers for Windows - and to integrate such drivers more tightly with Microsoft's kernel and the Windows Update process.
AFAIK, all of that is entirely legal and above board. I don't recall nVidia being subjected to the same sort of anti-trust scrutiny has Intel has faced over the years, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to remind them to play fair...
Thanks to the crypto-currency miners, nVidia have a narrow window of opportunity to make a shed-load of money... They are experiencing a situation in which people are buying their cards as fast or faster than they can make them.
This market-driven scarcity gives nVidia plausible deniability when it comes to any situation in which they may "have no available product" to ship to OEMs that do not play by their rules.
It is such a shame that nVidia would choose to take advantage of a situation like this to try and squeeze AMD out of the market. Especially as the people that suffer the most are the enthusiasts willing to pay for this sort of technology, because a crippled or market-squeezed AMD is bad for innovation, bad for price competition and will lead to the sort of stagnation in the sector that we've seen from Intel in the CPU space.
I've been a user of nVidia technology since they bought out the 3dfx/Voodoo technology, but if this article has substance then I think it will be time to move to AMD.
It would be nice to see a government regulator take a look at this.
Let's consider the two examples of both a collection of paper newspapers [for example in a library or museum or similar archive] and those of an on-line web site.
Let's also consider that a case has been brought by a former [and reformed] convict, seeking to have their criminal past erased via the "right to be forgotten".
Does the "right to be forgotten" apply only to the digital realm, or to the record of criminal past regardless of where it is lodged?
What about the nature of the crime itself? Suppose the criminal act at the heart of the question is one of historic significance. Could a library or newspaper make a case against removal of the content on the grounds that the event is part of a historical context - for example because it took place amidst a more significant backdrop? There have been plenty of cases in history where say a single act - an assault, a murder, something like that - has set of a race riot, for example. The initial criminal act becomes significant because it acts like the spark that sets off the broader event. If the perpetrator of such a trigger event serves time for their crime and returns to society, would it even be possible to implement the "right to be forgotten"?
These are likely all valid question. Unfortunately, these are all questions that are ignored by our lawmakers, either because they simply don't understand the consequences of technology on our lives, or because they do and they are afraid that there are no easy answers - so they have "kicked the question in to the long grass" in the hope that we'll forget the question is there at all.
... that in the UK, there is a law on the Statute, the "Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, 1974", which allows for past crimes to be "forgotten" when the convicted criminal has both served time adjudged and shown - through a period of time in which no relapses have taken place - that they have put their criminal past behind them.
Although I don't know the specifics of the case in question, the argument offered by the former convict seems quite compelling: they have served their time, paid their debt to society, and even have a law of the land there to back them up... only to have this undermined by a web search engine.
This doesn't in any way suggest that Google or Bing or Duck Duck Go would be deliberately flouting such laws, merely that the internet has a long memory.
However, there are some interesting aspects to this. For example, Google is just an indexing system; it's possible that a search will merely find references to old newspaper articles covering the story of a conviction and sentencing for a crime long past. This takes us back on to the circular treadmill of the argument used when discussing things like bittorrent and P2P file sharing sites - is a search engine breaking the law for pointing at pirated content? Is a search engine breaking the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for pointing to articles covering long-paid-for crimes?
One of the most difficult adjustments that we're having to make as an "internet society" is the fact that the internet never forgets. As aspects of the digital realm form such embedded parts of our lives, the way that the internet functions [with things like data retention] is going to become only more important, only more sensitive.
In this particular case I wonder if the plaintiff - the former criminal - was interested merely in removing the conviction from search engines, or in reminding content publishers of their obligations under the same law? It's obvious why the plaintiff would target Google - the engine acts like a gateway and aggregator to the content, but Google will only spider and index what is already there. What about the ultimate publishers?
all the Three Letter Agencies around the world decided to scramble resources to determine if they could identify any form of structure underlying the quantum nature of the universe being leveraged to support this [P]RNG technique - and in so doing discovered a layer of structure or order that underpins the quantum realm.
Let's face it, when you consider the budgets these TLAs get to play with, they must be orders of magnitude more than theoretical physicists and mathematicians - and we already know that the NSA has more PhD mathematicians than anywhere else... They might actually manage a much better crack at it than the physics labs...
I think this is a fair argument as a general rule, with the caveat that there will always be exceptions to that singular rule. However, we've also had people who have become successful in multiple industries/sectors... Elon Musk: SpaceX/Tesla/etc, Sir Richard Branson: Virgin [Airlines, Media, Foods, Financial Services, etc].
What is a little harder to determine is whether or not we've always had serial entrepreneurs of this magnitude and perhaps didn't really see earlier examples of people being ultra-successful in multiple fields, or whether this is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Just a guess here, but maybe the reason for declining this isn't solely down to the identity of the current FCC Chair.
If the FCC were to agree to this request and provide the details, they also set a precedent - a legal precedent - in which they have turned over materials in this way. Once they do this, anyone who in future might want to get access to other FCC materials would then be able to cite this case in support of their argument for disclosure.
I do not agree with this as grounds for refusing the request.
Everything our governments do for us, is paid for by us. There will necessarily be certain aspects of security for which a government would have no choice but to decline a request on the grounds of national security. However, the conditions for claiming these grounds should be clearly and explicitly defined and kept under constant review. There should be an independent "insider" with the authority to review any documents that a sitting government of the day refused to disclose. There should be robust appeals mechanisms.
At the end of the day, governments exist to serve the people that elect them. When a government - or a branch of government - refuses a request like this, they make an implied statement of "we are more important than you", or "we are superior to you". At it's mildest, this is how corruption in office starts. At the worst, this is how dictatorships form.
There need to be limits on this, of course. The public have a right to understand anything that any FCC Chair has said or done in their capacity as a member of the FCC, paid for by the public dime. There is a right for transparency in decision-making and government to help ensure that government remains fair and free from corruption and outside influence.
In hindsight, perhaps this was the wrong request to make. It has allowed the FCC to decline a request for something that would most likely have been merely embarrassing to the current FCC Chair, but in so doing creates the precedent that I mention above. Perhaps this powder should have been kept dry for something a little more egregious, and/or something that could not have been "reasonably refused".
I understand the principle behind your argument, but I don't think that it is actually playing out in the real world [at least, not yet].
For example, I have the Signal application from Whisper Systems installed and running on my cell phone. That provides me with secure end-to-end encryption that even Signal themselves can't crack [because at no time and in no way do they ever get access to the private keys that the app uses].
This suggests to me that one of perhaps three or four scenarios may be true:-
1. Whisper Systems have created a back door for the authorities to use. Go look at who the company are, who has reviewed their code. Seems improbable.
2. The authorities have the capacity to detect the use of Signal and then brute force the traffic of each Signal user in order to get at the keys. Seems highly unlikely.
3. We haven't [yet] reached the absolutist position that you articulate...
Perhaps the state would like to ban all encryption that they are unable to crack, but don't want to publicly say that just yet. We've seen enough from the FBI and NSA [United States] and the Home Secretary [United Kingdom] all demanding the right to have back-doors in encryption, but crossing that line also confirms that we live in a totalitarian state. I suspect that this isn't something they want to acknowledge just yet.
Perhaps my choice of phrase here was a bit poor... In this specific context I was referring to the fact that given what we know about the operational characteristics of a Stingray [i.e. uncontrolled access to the network traffic across all devices in range], it's a lot like having terminals in police stations that link to national criminal databases and then allowing everyone to have uncontrolled access to them...
What you'd end up with is police officers using the database to run background checks on the boyfriend or girlfriend of their teenage children, their new neighbour, the couple across the road with the hot wife/husband, etc. So I was trying to show that the current design of the Stingray isn't just bad enough for us as citizens because it allows warrantless surveillance, but also because it can be abused "within the force" using it.
There are countless examples of this sort of abuse happening. Some countries [UK, for example] have very tight access controls and audit logs on all access to the "Police National Computer" [PNC], but this isn't always the case.
For official use of a Stingray or Stingray-like device, then I absolutely agree with you that a warrant must always be required; there can be absolutely no justification for indiscriminate monitoring of cellphone communications without sufficient probable cause to convince a judge to grant one.
We live in an age in which the bluray disk that you buy in the store will only operate correctly in a bluray player and TV that have contain appropriate encryption keys, yet our cell phone network - arguably something in need of *more* protection - lacks even the most basic handshaking or authentication capabilities. As users of this technology, we should be demanding Industry Standards which allow us to control the digital keys of networks and that we trust, so that we can actually look at our handset and determine which tower a device has paired with.
This would not stop the authorities from conducting legal, authorized surveillance, because they could simply get a court order and have the appropriate tower operator[s] grant them access to the traffic. Unless, of course, they were conducting illegal surveillance of people and didn't have a court order, but that's hardly our problem...
In a similar fashion, there was nothing stopping the makers of the so-called Stingray and other devices from having a configurable operator setup process in which, before "standing up" in operating mode, the device requires the operator to provide the number of numbers of a finite [but reasonably] number of handsets that the Stingray is to track. Say, for example, the a maximum of 100 cell phones]. Because the internal working of the Stingray could be designed to only "pair" with handsets on the list, the Stingray could only include data from legitimate targets, thus narrowing the scope for warrantless surveillance.
Both of these techniques are entirely within our capability, today. Both would require only software changes [although I'd concede that the first is more of a protocol change].
The fact that neither of these are even being discussed - that in fact there is no discussion concerning what might need to be done to ensure that surveillance remains proportionate, limited, controlled and of identified targets - should be ringing alarm bells - and not because of some simplistic, idealistic, libertarian dogma.
All the evidence we have suggests that our security services are suffering from "data overload" - that whilst there might be valuable intelligence gathered today, our ability to sift it out of the noise is simply lacking. So far from limiting the ability of security services to "find the bad guys", steps like these would actually enhance our ability to do so, by helping to "filter out the noise".
Facebook [and other companies] have been using a variety of loopholes to smuggle profits out of the UK for years.
If Zuckerberg thinks he can thumb his nose at the UK government and get away with it, he might be in for a very rude awakening. Governments like the UK seem to "turn a blind eye" to multinational companies that off-shore profits, as long as they do so when employing a reasonable number of UK nationals on UK soil - i.e. to provide a reasonable amount of local employment in return.
But that's not the case here - and being rude to a government is not going to help his case much.
Obviously, given the transporter doesn't exist yet, this is all hypothetical. However, assuming that a transporter had been developer for inanimate objects and your question preceded a decision to use it to attempt to transfer a living organism, then a different question becomes relevant:-
What is the mechanism by which the human brain achieves consciousness?
Because, I would argue, you can only answer the second question ("Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?") when you know (1) How the Beaming Down process works; and (2) How the brain acts as the "container" for the mind [assuming it does].
Digging a little bit deeper... If it can be shown that consciousness is achieved merely from the result of a truly massive scale of parallel chemical processes that are taking place in the cells of the brain, then well, it might be possible. It would require technology that could scan the body not to a cellular resolution, but to an *atomic*, or possibly even sub-atomic resolution, instantaneously... then transmit that information to a remote location and reconstitute all that organic matter, with all those chemical "transactions", all synchronised to exactly the same point in time...
On the other hand, if consciousness exists through other means [I'm making this up, but, say quantum super-positioning] then the act of scanning the subject at the point of origin might in fact destroy the "data" before it could be "beamed" anywhere.
This is why my answer is that the OP asks the wrong question. It's not the beaming you need to consider first, it's to understand how consciousness functions at a materials science level. Only then can you start to understand the functional design requirements of the transporter.
I work for a US company but am not based in the US so not on a US contract.
I have been told by my local, in-country HR Team that discussing my salary or performance bonus with colleagues is listed as "gross misconduct" and therefore could result in my immediate termination, with cause.
I'm not aware of this ever being used in anger, but I suspect that it is a useful mechanism to either enforce silence by coercion or to "get rid" of a troublesome employee should the need arise.
I'm guessing that this is going to be governed by the variations in employment law in different countries.
... of a computer manufacturer that builds hardware that makes it easy for the operator to sanitize the exterior of the case, but has a reputation for doing the opposite when it comes to software - and even has a history of loading pre-installing spy-ware:-
There was an issue, but for the life of me I could not recall whether it was trademark or patent. Rather than make a false statement, I decided not to go to that level of detail.
I do appreciate that you ask about an extremely relevant point, but I don't want to dilute the validity of my statement with factual error.
Slashdot Mirror
Are we discussing the same thing? If we're talking about the Mueller Investigation, then multiple people have been charged - and multiple people have already pled guilty.
1) George Papadopoulos, admitted guilt.
2) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, admitted guilt.
3) Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, was indicted in October in Washington, DC on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, false statements, and failure to disclose foreign assets. He’s pleaded not guilty on all counts.
4) Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, was indicted on similar charges to Manafort. He admitted guilt.
5-20) 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted on conspiracy charges, with some also being accused of identity theft.
21) Richard Pinedo: a Californian who admitted guilt.
22) Alex van der Zwaan: a London lawyer who admitted guilt.
And the examples you give of indictment recommendations - and I don't dispute that the recommendations were made - all come from a partisan Congress which voted largely on party lines. That is hugely relevant given that all of the individuals you cite have been singled out and made subjects of personal attacks by the sitting President. This is so far from "the norms" of the way that government should be run that it shouldn't be necessary to point it out.
On that, we absolutely agree.
For what it's worth, I'm personally deeply sceptical of the FBI... Far too many examples of fabrications, lies, mis-representation of facts. For example, the San Bernadino iPhone debacle... That's why I offer the thought that perhaps they have lost their way. They are either "cloak-and-boots" brigade [looking to jump in like superheroes and save the day], or they are doing this for self-aggrandisement, to drum up bigger budgets and larger departments and larger salaries.
I also happen to think that Comey knew *exactly* what he was doing when he went public, against the wishes of his rank-and-file agents, with the announcement of the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation, yet kept quiet about the Trump investigation. Total bias. Everything he has said since is merely his attempt to justify his actions whilst looking in the rear-view mirror.
To your point, though, one thing gets lost in all the noise of this sort of debate. Whether they like it or not, every single serving employee of the FBI, from the director down to the most junior admin clerk, is a public employee. The people they monitor pay their wages. The people that pay their wages have every right to demand that they conduct themselves transparently, fairly and with absolute honesty.
In fact, if it weren't for the nature of the current President, I'd be entirely happy with root-and-branch reform of the FBI.
Do I remotely believe the FBI narrative with respect to encryption? No.
Do I think that the current administration will seize on this reporting [despite the current President's absolute loathing for the Post and its owner] and use it as another weapon to undermine the credibility of the FBI in the eyes of the public? Yes, absolutely.
Whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not, we need the FBI. The FBI was, when it was introuduced, [IIUC] the only agency with the authority to pursue a crime [and criminals] across state borders. Unfortunately, what has happened since then has been the gradual "bloating" of all government agencies, with departments fighting each-other for larger budgets and more status. When the DHS was introduced, the Executive started a turf war that continues to this day - and in one sense this whole "unbreakable encryption" debacle is just a part of that - because the best thing that the FBI can do to underscore it's value is to actually solve crimes, so within the FBI there will inevitably be a narrative which says, "anything which prevents us or delays us from solving crimes will make us look bad and must therefore be destroyed..."
So the thing which is pushing the FBI to wage their war on encryption likely has far less to do with "organised crime, paedophiles and terrorists" and everything to do with, "making us look like a better agency than the DHS thanks to our conviction rates."
I should caution us here, however, from thinking that, "Well, stuff them, this clearly isn't our problem..." It is. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most important one to me is that the concept of "demonstrating ability via some grade-school metrics", which has permeated every workplace, now drives people [including FBI Agents and Directors] to make questionable decisions. One of the most horrific examples of this was U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who insists to this day that her office acted "appropriately and reasonably" when bringing charges against Aaron Swartz. In that case, even though Aaron had a legal right to the documents he was obtaining, even though the owner of the documents looked at the facts and withdrew their complaint, Ortiz pressed ahead. The ruthless pressure that drove Ortiz to get a conviction cost Aaron his life. That is NOT ok.
Ortiz has continued to spin a narrative that Aaron was offered a plea deal (which he rejected because it would have prevented him for running for public office, which he most dearly wanted to do) whilst conveniently forgetting the mandacious way they went about building their case, the way that they destroyed not just Aaron but Quinn Norton too.
This is the problem.
We need the FBI.
But we need them to act with honesty, integrity and candor at all times. By failing to do this, they undermine not just their credibility, but the support of the public at the time when they most desperately need it, in the face of an Executive that is clearly determined to either destroy them, or bend them to his will...
The thing to bear in mind here is that Cambridge Analytica managed to obtain only a relatively small percentage of information about Facebook Users. The information it managed to obtain was either information voluntarily provided by users in response to a survey, or publicly-visible information carried by "friends" of the relatively small number of users who took their survey.
Facebook have access to data on ALL their users. They have the complete history of all their users. They have a vast trove of information about what their users do when they are not on the Facebook platform, thanks to a combination of cookies delivered by their servers and the beacons they place all across the Internet, courtesy of Facebook "Like" buttons on popular web sites.
Cambridge Analytica are only getting this level of scrutiny because Christopher Wylie basically left regulators with no choice, after publicly telling the world what CA had the ability to do. An equivalent FB insider, anyone who chose to reveal the full scope of what FB can do, would scare most people silly.
It's amazing to think that people are getting worked up about this relatively small data set obtained by this relatively tiny company, when the data is being held by this behemoth call Facebook, run by a guy who makes no secret of his political ambitions. Talk about elephant in the room.
Sadly, that's all too simple to answer:-
... exceeding authorized access". A prosecutor can argue that a user of the system was not intended to write a script to iterate through detail pages - and from that one argument can build a case to show criminal activity under the terms of the act.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The problem is that some of the laws governing use of computers - such as the above - have been written so broadly, with such vague definitions, that a prosecutor given the facts of this case, could pretty much decide whether or not to prosecute based on how they feel that day.
As per the description in the linked Wikipedia article, take a look at "Criminal Offenses under the Act" and consider (a)(1) and (a)(2), both of which cover "access to a computer system
Please note, I am not for one moment arguing that to do so would be fair, rational, or even sane, I am just pointing out that this is how the law works. As the entirely relevant saying goes:-
"The law may upset reason, but reason may not upset the law."
A scenario frighteningly similar to this case resulted in a federal prosecutor bringing a whole host of charges against Aaron Swartz, which, tragically, ended when he took his own life. We can only speculate, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence in that case to suggest that either the prosecutor was out to make a name for herself, or that Aaron, with his eloquence, brilliance and passion for justice, was making a few people sufficiently nervous that the idea of having him barred from public office [because having a conviction would do that] would be in their interests...
However, in this case I think it would be inflammatory to suggest that the case would ever have gone that route. What does worry me, however, is that cases like this, which can be argued to be crimes because of a badly-formed, poorly-worded law, can result in miscarriages of justice unless they are caught in the bud.
As I'm trying to show here, the wording of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, even though it has been amended six times since it first made it on to the statute books, remains inflexible and out-of-touch with reality. The last amendment, for example, was in 2008. Think about all the technological breakthroughs we've seen in the last 10 years and ask yourself whether any of them might fall foul of some of the provisions of this act?
Maybe as a compromise we could set a high bar for the prosecution; maybe it's enough to demand that they show malicious intent - but if all we do is "raise the bar" for a conviction, we do nothing to stop vexatious or pointless cases being brought before a Court. The only way to do that is to change the law.
The legal profession adopted a saying which goes all the way back to ancient Greece [circa 4th Century BC]:-
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine..."
Meaning that although changes to the law and the framework of justice might take a while to be developed, once done, the result tends to be pretty comprehensive. Of course, this means that there is a dynamic tension between "Justice" (which moves slowly) and anything which is dynamic and develops quickly.
What is perhaps most interesting [and most troubling] about this story is the fact that, once again, we see a failure of the incumbent justice system to acknowledge that it has a weak spot when it comes to potential or actual technology-based crime.
In this specific case, the linked article merely says that the Police Department received information which has prompted them to drop the case. What they don't say is that they will even consider a review of the way that they make determinations concerning this type of computer crime. And there's the rub. It's a little unfair to be too critical of Nova Scotia Police in this instance - all the evidence before them is that this is an isolated incident [although the article cites 11 different IP addresses had come across and exploited the same vulnerability that the un-named 19-year-old was facing potential charges for. So this one case has died a natural death and everyone returns to their default setting, but no corrections have been made to the way that law enforcement interpret this type of event.
Within the legal profession there may be the mistaken view that "technology merely allows us to automate things we used to do by hand, to alleviate the effort required" and thus that whatever laws would have been applied to the manual equivalent of a technology-enabled process can be re-applied to an automated one.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. Even before work on "Artifical Intelligence" started, we had plenty of evidence to show us that techniques such as BDA (Big Data Analytics) could achieve things that no human ever could.
It won't be popular with Justice Departments, but in most if not all cases these organisations need to have a complete rethink about the way that the law intersects with technology. This doesn't mean that justice's slow-moving wheels need to turn faster, but it does mean that they need to develop ways of coping with things that do.
As we now know to be true, in 2008, agencies and individuals in the United States committed a massive amount of fraud in the run-up to what is in all possibility one of the worst financial crimes yet seen.
Although many of the victims of that crime were American citizens who lost jobs and homes because of the bankers' greed, they were not the only ones. Investors and savers and pensioners the world over have been absolutely devastated because of that one event, with literally tens of thousands of people across the world working into their 70s and 80s - literally until they drop dead - because of that massive amount of financial mis-management.
I appreciate that the 2008 financial crimes and the subsequent emissions scandal are two very different crimes, but how come not one US banker is serving time for what happened in 2008? How come the United States hasn't given up any of the culprits to those nations whose citizens have been robbed?
The American people have every right to be angry with the emissions scandal. What was done was wrong. I am not trying to argue otherwise. However, I am pointing out that when crimes span countries, justice is far from even-handed.
I would absolutely stand with the environmental campaigners of the United States and demand justice for the way that VAG conspired to cheat emissions testing for their vehicles. However, that would be conditional upon fair and even-handed exercise of justice. We simply can't go around selectively choosing how to serve justice.
For example, it also wasn't fair for the United States to bring a misdemeanour charge and $100,000 in fines against former General David Patreus and then convict Chelsea Manning of 19 charges including theft and espionage and then sentence her to 35 years in prison. In order for justice to work, it not only has to be fair, it has to be seen to be fair.
I'm not for one moment suggesting that the United States should not seek compensation from Volkswagen, but if they are going to ask for it, then they need to offer up an equal amount of justice for all those outside the United States who have been wronged or injured by the actions of US citizens. Anything less is hypocrisy - and it serves to undermine any good that the United States tries to do in the world.
Just point out that the UK's Customs and Revenues Service will be taking a very detailed look at Facebook's tax returns, with a view to implementing necessary corrections in legislation that will prevent Zuck from off-shoring his profits to some tax haven.
Nothing will get a mega-corp CEO in the room like a threat to their profits.
When this topic is discussed, not just on forums like /., but in the media in general, it is often characterised as "the right to repair". It's *way* more than that...
First, it's also the "right to upgrade"... It gives us the chance to buy a piece of generic technology and then adjust it to suit our own requirements. For example, to buy a generic laptop and then add extra memory and/or a large hard drive - if that's what we need. Or buy a second battery so that we can double our time away from a mains outlet for those of us who really do use a laptop when we're out and about...
Second, it's all about the right to continue to use our devices for a reasonable amount of time. Imagine a scenario where you took your car in to a dealer for a mechanical fault and were told, "Sorry, this vehicle is three years old - we can't get the parts any more. But we can sell you a new car..." It's all too easy to dismiss this as scare-mongering, but when the only source of parts is a manufacturer, the moment they stop providing replacement parts for something you've bought, you're dead in the water. That will force you to make another purchase and keep their profits rolling in.
And of course it fuels a tendency to "buy up" - to purchase a machine with more capacity or storage than we might want - at hugely inflated prices - because we know that if we run out of space there is no opportunity to upgrade.
It's a shameful thing to have to say, but I think we're getting to [or have reached, or maybe even passed] the point where we need a "Code of Ethics" for manufacturers - for example in the consumer electronics sector it would be reasonable to expect that vendors will continue to stock parts for devices for 5 years after a particular model is withdrawn from sale. Motor vehicles might need a longer support window; other devices might survive with less.
But the bottom line is that without this, we're not consumers, we're victims. Maybe the approaching mid-terms is time to get some support for legislation...
I find myself thinking, "No... that's just too implausible..." Then I remember all of the stunts that Intel have pulled down through the years [the most recent of which was the issuing of patches for Spectre and Meltdown that would have slowed down *AMD* processors as well as Intel's own... and I realise that, actually, yes, what you write is entirely possible.
The problem for us as consumers is that this sort of thing is virtually impossible to stop. We've already seen the "Intel Inside" and "Made for Windows" campaigns, in which Intel and Microsoft, respectively, both paid out vast amounts of money to strategic partners. For Intel it was anyone willing to take Intel chips over AMDs - essentially Intel were paying the costs of their OEM's marketing... For Microsoft it was offering to pay large amounts of money to hardware manufacturers, to help them write drivers for Windows - and to integrate such drivers more tightly with Microsoft's kernel and the Windows Update process.
AFAIK, all of that is entirely legal and above board. I don't recall nVidia being subjected to the same sort of anti-trust scrutiny has Intel has faced over the years, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to remind them to play fair...
Thanks to the crypto-currency miners, nVidia have a narrow window of opportunity to make a shed-load of money... They are experiencing a situation in which people are buying their cards as fast or faster than they can make them.
This market-driven scarcity gives nVidia plausible deniability when it comes to any situation in which they may "have no available product" to ship to OEMs that do not play by their rules.
It is such a shame that nVidia would choose to take advantage of a situation like this to try and squeeze AMD out of the market. Especially as the people that suffer the most are the enthusiasts willing to pay for this sort of technology, because a crippled or market-squeezed AMD is bad for innovation, bad for price competition and will lead to the sort of stagnation in the sector that we've seen from Intel in the CPU space.
I've been a user of nVidia technology since they bought out the 3dfx/Voodoo technology, but if this article has substance then I think it will be time to move to AMD.
It would be nice to see a government regulator take a look at this.
You've asked the $64,000,000 question.
Let's consider the two examples of both a collection of paper newspapers [for example in a library or museum or similar archive] and those of an on-line web site.
Let's also consider that a case has been brought by a former [and reformed] convict, seeking to have their criminal past erased via the "right to be forgotten".
Does the "right to be forgotten" apply only to the digital realm, or to the record of criminal past regardless of where it is lodged?
What about the nature of the crime itself? Suppose the criminal act at the heart of the question is one of historic significance. Could a library or newspaper make a case against removal of the content on the grounds that the event is part of a historical context - for example because it took place amidst a more significant backdrop? There have been plenty of cases in history where say a single act - an assault, a murder, something like that - has set of a race riot, for example. The initial criminal act becomes significant because it acts like the spark that sets off the broader event. If the perpetrator of such a trigger event serves time for their crime and returns to society, would it even be possible to implement the "right to be forgotten"?
These are likely all valid question. Unfortunately, these are all questions that are ignored by our lawmakers, either because they simply don't understand the consequences of technology on our lives, or because they do and they are afraid that there are no easy answers - so they have "kicked the question in to the long grass" in the hope that we'll forget the question is there at all.
... that in the UK, there is a law on the Statute, the "Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, 1974", which allows for past crimes to be "forgotten" when the convicted criminal has both served time adjudged and shown - through a period of time in which no relapses have taken place - that they have put their criminal past behind them.
Although I don't know the specifics of the case in question, the argument offered by the former convict seems quite compelling: they have served their time, paid their debt to society, and even have a law of the land there to back them up... only to have this undermined by a web search engine.
This doesn't in any way suggest that Google or Bing or Duck Duck Go would be deliberately flouting such laws, merely that the internet has a long memory.
However, there are some interesting aspects to this. For example, Google is just an indexing system; it's possible that a search will merely find references to old newspaper articles covering the story of a conviction and sentencing for a crime long past. This takes us back on to the circular treadmill of the argument used when discussing things like bittorrent and P2P file sharing sites - is a search engine breaking the law for pointing at pirated content? Is a search engine breaking the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for pointing to articles covering long-paid-for crimes?
One of the most difficult adjustments that we're having to make as an "internet society" is the fact that the internet never forgets. As aspects of the digital realm form such embedded parts of our lives, the way that the internet functions [with things like data retention] is going to become only more important, only more sensitive.
In this particular case I wonder if the plaintiff - the former criminal - was interested merely in removing the conviction from search engines, or in reminding content publishers of their obligations under the same law? It's obvious why the plaintiff would target Google - the engine acts like a gateway and aggregator to the content, but Google will only spider and index what is already there. What about the ultimate publishers?
No easy answers here...
all the Three Letter Agencies around the world decided to scramble resources to determine if they could identify any form of structure underlying the quantum nature of the universe being leveraged to support this [P]RNG technique - and in so doing discovered a layer of structure or order that underpins the quantum realm.
Let's face it, when you consider the budgets these TLAs get to play with, they must be orders of magnitude more than theoretical physicists and mathematicians - and we already know that the NSA has more PhD mathematicians than anywhere else... They might actually manage a much better crack at it than the physics labs...
Interesting - if true.
Can you cite any sources?
I think this is a fair argument as a general rule, with the caveat that there will always be exceptions to that singular rule. However, we've also had people who have become successful in multiple industries/sectors... Elon Musk: SpaceX/Tesla/etc, Sir Richard Branson: Virgin [Airlines, Media, Foods, Financial Services, etc].
What is a little harder to determine is whether or not we've always had serial entrepreneurs of this magnitude and perhaps didn't really see earlier examples of people being ultra-successful in multiple fields, or whether this is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Just a guess here, but maybe the reason for declining this isn't solely down to the identity of the current FCC Chair.
If the FCC were to agree to this request and provide the details, they also set a precedent - a legal precedent - in which they have turned over materials in this way. Once they do this, anyone who in future might want to get access to other FCC materials would then be able to cite this case in support of their argument for disclosure.
I do not agree with this as grounds for refusing the request.
Everything our governments do for us, is paid for by us. There will necessarily be certain aspects of security for which a government would have no choice but to decline a request on the grounds of national security. However, the conditions for claiming these grounds should be clearly and explicitly defined and kept under constant review. There should be an independent "insider" with the authority to review any documents that a sitting government of the day refused to disclose. There should be robust appeals mechanisms.
At the end of the day, governments exist to serve the people that elect them. When a government - or a branch of government - refuses a request like this, they make an implied statement of "we are more important than you", or "we are superior to you". At it's mildest, this is how corruption in office starts. At the worst, this is how dictatorships form.
There need to be limits on this, of course. The public have a right to understand anything that any FCC Chair has said or done in their capacity as a member of the FCC, paid for by the public dime. There is a right for transparency in decision-making and government to help ensure that government remains fair and free from corruption and outside influence.
In hindsight, perhaps this was the wrong request to make. It has allowed the FCC to decline a request for something that would most likely have been merely embarrassing to the current FCC Chair, but in so doing creates the precedent that I mention above. Perhaps this powder should have been kept dry for something a little more egregious, and/or something that could not have been "reasonably refused".
I understand the principle behind your argument, but I don't think that it is actually playing out in the real world [at least, not yet].
For example, I have the Signal application from Whisper Systems installed and running on my cell phone. That provides me with secure end-to-end encryption that even Signal themselves can't crack [because at no time and in no way do they ever get access to the private keys that the app uses].
This suggests to me that one of perhaps three or four scenarios may be true:-
1. Whisper Systems have created a back door for the authorities to use. Go look at who the company are, who has reviewed their code. Seems improbable.
2. The authorities have the capacity to detect the use of Signal and then brute force the traffic of each Signal user in order to get at the keys. Seems highly unlikely.
3. We haven't [yet] reached the absolutist position that you articulate...
Perhaps the state would like to ban all encryption that they are unable to crack, but don't want to publicly say that just yet. We've seen enough from the FBI and NSA [United States] and the Home Secretary [United Kingdom] all demanding the right to have back-doors in encryption, but crossing that line also confirms that we live in a totalitarian state. I suspect that this isn't something they want to acknowledge just yet.
Agreed.
Perhaps my choice of phrase here was a bit poor... In this specific context I was referring to the fact that given what we know about the operational characteristics of a Stingray [i.e. uncontrolled access to the network traffic across all devices in range], it's a lot like having terminals in police stations that link to national criminal databases and then allowing everyone to have uncontrolled access to them...
What you'd end up with is police officers using the database to run background checks on the boyfriend or girlfriend of their teenage children, their new neighbour, the couple across the road with the hot wife/husband, etc. So I was trying to show that the current design of the Stingray isn't just bad enough for us as citizens because it allows warrantless surveillance, but also because it can be abused "within the force" using it.
There are countless examples of this sort of abuse happening. Some countries [UK, for example] have very tight access controls and audit logs on all access to the "Police National Computer" [PNC], but this isn't always the case.
For official use of a Stingray or Stingray-like device, then I absolutely agree with you that a warrant must always be required; there can be absolutely no justification for indiscriminate monitoring of cellphone communications without sufficient probable cause to convince a judge to grant one.
We live in an age in which the bluray disk that you buy in the store will only operate correctly in a bluray player and TV that have contain appropriate encryption keys, yet our cell phone network - arguably something in need of *more* protection - lacks even the most basic handshaking or authentication capabilities. As users of this technology, we should be demanding Industry Standards which allow us to control the digital keys of networks and that we trust, so that we can actually look at our handset and determine which tower a device has paired with.
This would not stop the authorities from conducting legal, authorized surveillance, because they could simply get a court order and have the appropriate tower operator[s] grant them access to the traffic. Unless, of course, they were conducting illegal surveillance of people and didn't have a court order, but that's hardly our problem...
In a similar fashion, there was nothing stopping the makers of the so-called Stingray and other devices from having a configurable operator setup process in which, before "standing up" in operating mode, the device requires the operator to provide the number of numbers of a finite [but reasonably] number of handsets that the Stingray is to track. Say, for example, the a maximum of 100 cell phones]. Because the internal working of the Stingray could be designed to only "pair" with handsets on the list, the Stingray could only include data from legitimate targets, thus narrowing the scope for warrantless surveillance.
Both of these techniques are entirely within our capability, today. Both would require only software changes [although I'd concede that the first is more of a protocol change].
The fact that neither of these are even being discussed - that in fact there is no discussion concerning what might need to be done to ensure that surveillance remains proportionate, limited, controlled and of identified targets - should be ringing alarm bells - and not because of some simplistic, idealistic, libertarian dogma.
All the evidence we have suggests that our security services are suffering from "data overload" - that whilst there might be valuable intelligence gathered today, our ability to sift it out of the noise is simply lacking. So far from limiting the ability of security services to "find the bad guys", steps like these would actually enhance our ability to do so, by helping to "filter out the noise".
Facebook [and other companies] have been using a variety of loopholes to smuggle profits out of the UK for years.
If Zuckerberg thinks he can thumb his nose at the UK government and get away with it, he might be in for a very rude awakening. Governments like the UK seem to "turn a blind eye" to multinational companies that off-shore profits, as long as they do so when employing a reasonable number of UK nationals on UK soil - i.e. to provide a reasonable amount of local employment in return.
But that's not the case here - and being rude to a government is not going to help his case much.
Maybe this is the wrong question to ask...
Obviously, given the transporter doesn't exist yet, this is all hypothetical. However, assuming that a transporter had been developer for inanimate objects and your question preceded a decision to use it to attempt to transfer a living organism, then a different question becomes relevant:-
What is the mechanism by which the human brain achieves consciousness?
Because, I would argue, you can only answer the second question ("Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?") when you know (1) How the Beaming Down process works; and (2) How the brain acts as the "container" for the mind [assuming it does].
Digging a little bit deeper... If it can be shown that consciousness is achieved merely from the result of a truly massive scale of parallel chemical processes that are taking place in the cells of the brain, then well, it might be possible. It would require technology that could scan the body not to a cellular resolution, but to an *atomic*, or possibly even sub-atomic resolution, instantaneously... then transmit that information to a remote location and reconstitute all that organic matter, with all those chemical "transactions", all synchronised to exactly the same point in time...
On the other hand, if consciousness exists through other means [I'm making this up, but, say quantum super-positioning] then the act of scanning the subject at the point of origin might in fact destroy the "data" before it could be "beamed" anywhere.
This is why my answer is that the OP asks the wrong question. It's not the beaming you need to consider first, it's to understand how consciousness functions at a materials science level. Only then can you start to understand the functional design requirements of the transporter.
I work for a US company but am not based in the US so not on a US contract.
I have been told by my local, in-country HR Team that discussing my salary or performance bonus with colleagues is listed as "gross misconduct" and therefore could result in my immediate termination, with cause.
I'm not aware of this ever being used in anger, but I suspect that it is a useful mechanism to either enforce silence by coercion or to "get rid" of a troublesome employee should the need arise.
I'm guessing that this is going to be governed by the variations in employment law in different countries.
... of a computer manufacturer that builds hardware that makes it easy for the operator to sanitize the exterior of the case, but has a reputation for doing the opposite when it comes to software - and even has a history of loading pre-installing spy-ware:-
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
There was an issue, but for the life of me I could not recall whether it was trademark or patent. Rather than make a false statement, I decided not to go to that level of detail.
I do appreciate that you ask about an extremely relevant point, but I don't want to dilute the validity of my statement with factual error.
Hope you understand.