If orgs like RIAA, MPAA, WIPO et al have their way, all hardware is going to require some kind of TPM.
This is exactly what they did with Macrovision and VCRs. They lobbied heavily for legislation that made it illegal to sell VCRs without Macrovision chips or at least it was very difficult to obtain a "professional" model without the Macrovision in many first world countries (most people who gave a crap simply bought black market filtering hardware or built it themselves instead). They could very easily make the licensing fees for the legally required TPM chips high enough to squeeze out those pesky open source developers who create software that decrypts their bogus encryption schemes and allows people to skip past the advertisements. You are bang on with your analysis.
For example, one of the biggest variables outside of rent/mortgage is auto insurance. It's really easy to see the difference between Los Angeles and your pick of small town. Granted, the following numbers are just quick and dirty rate quotes, but the point is clear. I am a 26-year-old single male with a clean driving record. For me to insure a 2006 Chevy Cobalt 4-door base model with AllState, the 6-month premium in L.A. is almost 1600 dollars. In Arlington, Virginia, comprable insurance would be one third of what it is in L.A. (500 dollars for six months).
It is interesting that you bring up the auto insurance point when comparing large cities and small towns because here in California something (Proposition 103 - the prop was passed in 1988 but it has taken this long to wind its way through all of the legal challenges in court) has just changed the whole equation when it comes to pricing your auto insurance based upon your geographic location. For more information see California Dumps Zip Code-Based Auto Insurance Rates. What this means for many Californians is an INCREASE in auto insurance rates because the insurance companies are now unable, by law, to charge drivers living in higher accident rate areas more simply because they live in a high accident rate area. The cost of those extra accidents in Los Angeles will now be spread out evenly among the entire pool of insured drivers in California regardless of location. The Los Angeles drivers like this because it means that they will pay less than under the old system, but the people living in the more rural areas will see their rates go up significantly with respect to what they are currently paying. Personally I think that banning the use of a functional statistical correlation, simply because it is unpopular with a large block of California voters, is ridiculous but then again this is the same state that thought it was wise to allocate three (3) BILLION dollars of public taxpayer money, funded by bonds of course so we get to pay interest too (yay!), on stem cell research which, even if it does ultimately prove fruitful, will be hijacked by the drug companies, patented, and sold back to us at ten times the cost (btw thanks for paying for all that risky research for us! and our shareholders thank you too!).
Yeah, I remember that driving through Oregon I was not able to pump my own gas. What is the reason for that? Is pumping one's own gas in Oregon decidedly more dangerous than in any other location in the United States?
Under such a system, you would know who takes responsibility for the facts as they are presented
Take responsibility, without sufficient compensation to offset the risk, for the accuracy of specialized knowledge in our litigious society? Surely you jest, who would want to do that?
1. The 'expert' signs the Wikipeidia article.
2. Someone uses the information and hurts themselves or others.
3. Enterprising lawyer sues...here is the guilty one your honor! the 'expert' who signed the article!
4. Profit...well for the lawyer anyway.
5. Members of the 'class' receive their checks for $0.02 each.
Call centre workers are evaluated based on how long they spend on each call, not on how satisfied the customer is when they've finished
So why not simply tell the customers to f*** off the minute the call is connected? That would probably limit you average call time to a couple of seconds, imagine the efficiency!
Ok, fair enough, but to what extent is Microsoft liable if your attempted hacking, even if your purpose is noble, results in damage to the kernel? If you use a product or modify that product in a way that the manufacturer never intended then how can you say that it is the fault of the manufacturer that your modifications, hacking, or misuse cause the product to fail? The malware writers will of course do what they want and the anti-virus writers have made it their business to try and stop them. However, the anti-virus writers must accept responsibility for their own products even though they don't fully control the underlying system...that was part of the risk they took when they got into the business.
Microsoft should be the one contacting the main antivirus companies around to make sure that their products work without problems with the new version of Windows as soon as it hits the stores.
An interesting sentiment, but look at it from the perspective of Microsoft. They have built a system which they are bound to support, but for which they have not provided certain features that may be needed by certain types of software, namely kernel hooks and the like, because these types of "features" are available to the root kit and virus creators just as much as they are, or could be, available to the anti-virus vendors who are trying to stop them. This results in third party vendors attempting to hack into the kernel to get the functionality they need and whether their intentions are good or bad it can still result in an unstable, wrecked, or compromised system. Should Microsoft have to support these vendors when it was never intended that these types of features would be available?
To put it another way, consider the automobile manufacturers. If I modify or replace the controller chips in my engine to alter the spark advance, fuel/air mixture, injector pressure, etc for whatever reason then I automatically void any warranty that may have been in effect from the manufacturer. If I blow my engine because of these modifications then that is my fault. How can the manufacturer warranty any unknown hacks that I may attempt on my engine? They can't and they don't. So to what extent should Microsoft be responsible for the actions of third party software vendors? It's a question worth asking.
The problem is that WoW does not have complete open ended PvP in that you cannot kill members of your own side, alliance or horde, who are farming or generally being jerks. The duel is crap because you have to issue the challenge and they can always refuse. The loser of the duel doesn't loose very much either so that makes the duel doubly unappealing. They need to have a server where anyone can kill anyone else at any time for any reason. That may sound like a bad idea, but really some of the best MUDs back in the day used this model with great success. People tend to be more polite, in character, and less of an ass when they can get ganked just for being an ass.
Companies that simply don't care if their machines are zombies will suddenly notice a degradation of their networks but any packet monitoring they do will show all of the packets to have the IP addresses of their machines for both source and destination.
Most routers are set by default or can be configured to drop packets arriving on the external port of the gateway where the IP address of the source is set to an address which is internal to the private network behind the gateway. These types of packets, with doctored source information, are generally a good indicator that some sort of attack, perhaps denial of service, is going on. In the case of spam zombies, where the computers of the home users may be directly connected to the Internet, such an attack might be somewhat more efficacious at the expense of the poor user calling their ISP technical support line and asking why, "the Internet stopped working". The corporate spam zombies would probably not be affected, for the reasons discussed above, because corporate machines are usually behind routers. So basically you will end up nuking some poor home users and the zombie nets will be mostly unaffected.
The Government has no authority to perform cruel and unusual punishment on any person. They are explicitly forbidden to do so by the Constitution.
This is true, but neither are these documents meant to be suicide pacts and there are cases where extraordinary circumstances, such as high probability that a captured suspect has specific knowledge of an eminent attack that will kill thousands, dictate that such methods might be justified as the lesser of two evils once all other measures that can be practically applied to uncover the plot before it reaches fruition, with time remaining to thwart it, have been exhausted.
Admiral Cogswell: Lord Ballmer, the company has moved out of hyperspace and we are preparing too...unk...ack...cough
Lord Ballmer: You and your cogs have failed me for the last time Admiral....Captain Russinovich!
Captain Russinovich: Yes, Lord Ballmer.
Admiral Cogswell: hack....cough
Lord Ballmer: Make ready to deploy our programs beyond their firewall and deploy the company so that nobody can switch OS...you are in command now Admiral Russinovich.
Whether it was a little $ or a lot of $$$, you were a victim if you bought a computer, a stick of ram, or anything related to DRAM during that five year period
Are you really? Did someone force you to spend your money on that DRAM module? If you didn't like the price then why did you buy it? The price gouging argument has some merit when circumstances dictate, such as ripping people off for gas and lodging while they are trying to escape a natural disaster, but since when is DRAM an emergency purchase?
The EFF should do more to call people's attention to the international struggle for human freedom. As long as they do not do this, they remain open to criticism that they are merely defending bourgeous privelege.
Sorry to burst your utopian Marxist bubble, but the EFF specializes in technology related cases and not having infinite resources it must focus them on those cases which most closely match it's mission and expertise. There are many other groups that lobby for the more general causes of human rights and basic individual freedoms, but there is enough room for specialization and with private lobby groups, especially those without big business backing, it is important to concentrate those resources so that the message doesn't become diluted to the point of being worthless. If you protest everything all of the time then nobody wants to listen...you become the boy who cried wolf. One must chose carefuly the battles that one is willing to expend limited resources fighting...don't worry there are enough issues to go around.
Seems like it would be a lot less toxic, and cheaper to boot.
Tungsten is not cheaper and it does not combust like DU does when it impacts at high speed. The performance of the weapon is not based soley on the density of the penetrator.
I want to be the first to predict Google sues eBay for monopolistic practices or some other restriction on open and fair trade!
This could be part of their strategy to eclipse eBay with their own service. They entangle eBay in a long and expensive litigation process to run down eBay's cash reserves as much as possible before they launch their own competing service with great fanfare, "brought to you by the makers of Google Earth with AJAX and all of that other nifty Web 2.0 stuff".
I also predict Google will win, but eBay will try to make it as clunky as possible.
Right. Now eBay looses AND makes the Google payment method clunky so Google launches their auction service and begins head-to-head competition with eBay. Even if Google does not succeed in running eBay all the way out of the market they can batter their stock to the point where Google can make a hostile takeover bid and snap up their former competitor.
Unfortunately they fail to take into account that the fighting during the Desert Storm conflict took place mostly outside of the urban cities. It is not at all surprising that there were fewer civilians hanging around the iraqi tank battalions in the middle of the desert and thus fewer civilian casualities despite the fact that fewer precsision guided weapons were used in the first Gulf War. If you don't believe me then perhaps you would enjoy reading the first hand accounts of Gen. Fred Franks, with extensive battle maps, who commanded the armored spearhead of 7th corps into western Iraq across the desert from Saud Arabia as told in Into the Storm: A Study in Command.
It should not be surprising to people that economics provides the basis for explaining many interesting situations that occur in the real world in relation to computer security. Recall that economics is the study of how humans react to scarcity, or more bluntly how we behave in light of the fact that we cannot simply snap our fingers and have anything we want immediately placed in front of us all of the time (with the possible exception of Bill Gates and a few others, but they are not representative). It is precisely the ability of economics to insightfully solve common conundrums with deliciously counterintuitive explanations that seems to fascinate so many people, as evidenced by the recent success of books such as Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science and Freakonomics, despite the generally boring ways in which the subject is presented by our schools. If it involves human interactions and human nature then, ultimately, it involves economics.
Personally, I suggest collecting the fines from the employees of the company that made the decision to use unlicensed software and fonts. Why should they get off scott free? They're the ones who actually broke the law, the company charter didn't fly its ass up out of the file cabinet and insert the CD in the drive.
Perhaps you have only worked at large companies with formal purchasing guidelines and adequate budgets, but I cannot remember how many times I have been asked by my managers to just, "get it done with the budget/software that we have", with the implicit, "never mind how" or "we will buy the licenses later". The employee who whines about whether the company is violating a software license agreement is the one that gets passed up for promotion at best and at worst...well lets just say that management doesn't like "trouble makers" if you know what I mean.
It was my understanding that United States patent law contains a provision covering the patentability of devices, ideas, methods, or techniques from any body of knowledge that would be generally known to a skilled practitioner of the trade or art in question (i.e. the so called "skilled practitioner" test for obvious patents or prior art). If it is patently obvious then in effect it cannot be patented.
It would be difficult to change the attitude of the typical US driver to match that of the Germans. I wish we could, but I don't see it happening anytime within the next ever.
It would never happen...why just this morning I was passed at high speed on the right shoulder by an older F250 pickup truck with a cheap two shock lift job, balding all-terrain tires, and visible rust/salt corrosion on the body. The driver was using both his cell phone AND eating his breakfast simultaneously. I couldn't see all the way up into the cab but I wouldn't have been surprised to find a super sized coffee in the drink holder to boot. Americans treat driving as a more of a right/chore rather than a privilege/responsibility.
The USB thumb drive is vulnerable to the same types of boot sector viruses and trojan loaders that were making the rounds back when 3.5" floppy disks were in more common use. In fact, there is a recent example, discussed right here on Slashdot, concerning a computer security company which designed just such a virus to show a client how an attack, when combined with a clever bit of social engineering (i.e. the free stuff gambit), could be accomplished. If you are plugging your USB thumb drive into unknown hosts as you go about your day then you are asking for trouble.
Even in public, one has a reasonable assumption that one won't be stalked or spied upon
That is absolutely wrong. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place and anything you do or say in the bank, the convenience store, or any public space or private property open to the public is subject to monitoring and recording. If you don't want people to listen to what you are saying or see what you are doing then don't say or do such things in public, it's that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
If orgs like RIAA, MPAA, WIPO et al have their way, all hardware is going to require some kind of TPM.
This is exactly what they did with Macrovision and VCRs. They lobbied heavily for legislation that made it illegal to sell VCRs without Macrovision chips or at least it was very difficult to obtain a "professional" model without the Macrovision in many first world countries (most people who gave a crap simply bought black market filtering hardware or built it themselves instead). They could very easily make the licensing fees for the legally required TPM chips high enough to squeeze out those pesky open source developers who create software that decrypts their bogus encryption schemes and allows people to skip past the advertisements. You are bang on with your analysis.
For example, one of the biggest variables outside of rent/mortgage is auto insurance. It's really easy to see the difference between Los Angeles and your pick of small town. Granted, the following numbers are just quick and dirty rate quotes, but the point is clear. I am a 26-year-old single male with a clean driving record. For me to insure a 2006 Chevy Cobalt 4-door base model with AllState, the 6-month premium in L.A. is almost 1600 dollars. In Arlington, Virginia, comprable insurance would be one third of what it is in L.A. (500 dollars for six months).
It is interesting that you bring up the auto insurance point when comparing large cities and small towns because here in California something (Proposition 103 - the prop was passed in 1988 but it has taken this long to wind its way through all of the legal challenges in court) has just changed the whole equation when it comes to pricing your auto insurance based upon your geographic location. For more information see California Dumps Zip Code-Based Auto Insurance Rates. What this means for many Californians is an INCREASE in auto insurance rates because the insurance companies are now unable, by law, to charge drivers living in higher accident rate areas more simply because they live in a high accident rate area. The cost of those extra accidents in Los Angeles will now be spread out evenly among the entire pool of insured drivers in California regardless of location. The Los Angeles drivers like this because it means that they will pay less than under the old system, but the people living in the more rural areas will see their rates go up significantly with respect to what they are currently paying. Personally I think that banning the use of a functional statistical correlation, simply because it is unpopular with a large block of California voters, is ridiculous but then again this is the same state that thought it was wise to allocate three (3) BILLION dollars of public taxpayer money, funded by bonds of course so we get to pay interest too (yay!), on stem cell research which, even if it does ultimately prove fruitful, will be hijacked by the drug companies, patented, and sold back to us at ten times the cost (btw thanks for paying for all that risky research for us! and our shareholders thank you too!).
plus we have attendants that pump the gas for us.
Yeah, I remember that driving through Oregon I was not able to pump my own gas. What is the reason for that? Is pumping one's own gas in Oregon decidedly more dangerous than in any other location in the United States?
Under such a system, you would know who takes responsibility for the facts as they are presented
Take responsibility, without sufficient compensation to offset the risk, for the accuracy of specialized knowledge in our litigious society? Surely you jest, who would want to do that?
1. The 'expert' signs the Wikipeidia article.
2. Someone uses the information and hurts themselves or others.
3. Enterprising lawyer sues...here is the guilty one your honor! the 'expert' who signed the article!
4. Profit...well for the lawyer anyway.
5. Members of the 'class' receive their checks for $0.02 each.
Call centre workers are evaluated based on how long they spend on each call, not on how satisfied the customer is when they've finished
So why not simply tell the customers to f*** off the minute the call is connected? That would probably limit you average call time to a couple of seconds, imagine the efficiency!
Ok, fair enough, but to what extent is Microsoft liable if your attempted hacking, even if your purpose is noble, results in damage to the kernel? If you use a product or modify that product in a way that the manufacturer never intended then how can you say that it is the fault of the manufacturer that your modifications, hacking, or misuse cause the product to fail? The malware writers will of course do what they want and the anti-virus writers have made it their business to try and stop them. However, the anti-virus writers must accept responsibility for their own products even though they don't fully control the underlying system...that was part of the risk they took when they got into the business.
Microsoft should be the one contacting the main antivirus companies around to make sure that their products work without problems with the new version of Windows as soon as it hits the stores.
An interesting sentiment, but look at it from the perspective of Microsoft. They have built a system which they are bound to support, but for which they have not provided certain features that may be needed by certain types of software, namely kernel hooks and the like, because these types of "features" are available to the root kit and virus creators just as much as they are, or could be, available to the anti-virus vendors who are trying to stop them. This results in third party vendors attempting to hack into the kernel to get the functionality they need and whether their intentions are good or bad it can still result in an unstable, wrecked, or compromised system. Should Microsoft have to support these vendors when it was never intended that these types of features would be available?
To put it another way, consider the automobile manufacturers. If I modify or replace the controller chips in my engine to alter the spark advance, fuel/air mixture, injector pressure, etc for whatever reason then I automatically void any warranty that may have been in effect from the manufacturer. If I blow my engine because of these modifications then that is my fault. How can the manufacturer warranty any unknown hacks that I may attempt on my engine? They can't and they don't. So to what extent should Microsoft be responsible for the actions of third party software vendors? It's a question worth asking.
The problem is that WoW does not have complete open ended PvP in that you cannot kill members of your own side, alliance or horde, who are farming or generally being jerks. The duel is crap because you have to issue the challenge and they can always refuse. The loser of the duel doesn't loose very much either so that makes the duel doubly unappealing. They need to have a server where anyone can kill anyone else at any time for any reason. That may sound like a bad idea, but really some of the best MUDs back in the day used this model with great success. People tend to be more polite, in character, and less of an ass when they can get ganked just for being an ass.
Companies that simply don't care if their machines are zombies will suddenly notice a degradation of their networks but any packet monitoring they do will show all of the packets to have the IP addresses of their machines for both source and destination.
Most routers are set by default or can be configured to drop packets arriving on the external port of the gateway where the IP address of the source is set to an address which is internal to the private network behind the gateway. These types of packets, with doctored source information, are generally a good indicator that some sort of attack, perhaps denial of service, is going on. In the case of spam zombies, where the computers of the home users may be directly connected to the Internet, such an attack might be somewhat more efficacious at the expense of the poor user calling their ISP technical support line and asking why, "the Internet stopped working". The corporate spam zombies would probably not be affected, for the reasons discussed above, because corporate machines are usually behind routers. So basically you will end up nuking some poor home users and the zombie nets will be mostly unaffected.
The Government has no authority to perform cruel and unusual punishment on any person. They are explicitly forbidden to do so by the Constitution.
This is true, but neither are these documents meant to be suicide pacts and there are cases where extraordinary circumstances, such as high probability that a captured suspect has specific knowledge of an eminent attack that will kill thousands, dictate that such methods might be justified as the lesser of two evils once all other measures that can be practically applied to uncover the plot before it reaches fruition, with time remaining to thwart it, have been exhausted.
and someone thinks you're scary they can arrest you
What if you are unarmed, but people still think that you are scarry? Can they arrest you then too?
Right, and your average dumbass thug is walking around getting headshots on moving targets. Maybe he is using an auto-aim hack?
Of course failure is not tolerated...
Admiral Cogswell: Lord Ballmer, the company has moved out of hyperspace and we are preparing too...unk...ack...cough
Lord Ballmer: You and your cogs have failed me for the last time Admiral....Captain Russinovich!
Captain Russinovich: Yes, Lord Ballmer.
Admiral Cogswell: hack....cough
Lord Ballmer: Make ready to deploy our programs beyond their firewall and deploy the company so that nobody can switch OS...you are in command now Admiral Russinovich.
Admiral Cogswell: THUNK!
Captain Russinovich: Thank you, Lord Ballmer.
Whether it was a little $ or a lot of $$$, you were a victim if you bought a computer, a stick of ram, or anything related to DRAM during that five year period
Are you really? Did someone force you to spend your money on that DRAM module? If you didn't like the price then why did you buy it? The price gouging argument has some merit when circumstances dictate, such as ripping people off for gas and lodging while they are trying to escape a natural disaster, but since when is DRAM an emergency purchase?
The EFF should do more to call people's attention to the international struggle for human freedom. As long as they do not do this, they remain open to criticism that they are merely defending bourgeous privelege.
Sorry to burst your utopian Marxist bubble, but the EFF specializes in technology related cases and not having infinite resources it must focus them on those cases which most closely match it's mission and expertise. There are many other groups that lobby for the more general causes of human rights and basic individual freedoms, but there is enough room for specialization and with private lobby groups, especially those without big business backing, it is important to concentrate those resources so that the message doesn't become diluted to the point of being worthless. If you protest everything all of the time then nobody wants to listen...you become the boy who cried wolf. One must chose carefuly the battles that one is willing to expend limited resources fighting...don't worry there are enough issues to go around.
Seems like it would be a lot less toxic, and cheaper to boot.
Tungsten is not cheaper and it does not combust like DU does when it impacts at high speed. The performance of the weapon is not based soley on the density of the penetrator.
I want to be the first to predict Google sues eBay for monopolistic practices or some other restriction on open and fair trade!
This could be part of their strategy to eclipse eBay with their own service. They entangle eBay in a long and expensive litigation process to run down eBay's cash reserves as much as possible before they launch their own competing service with great fanfare, "brought to you by the makers of Google Earth with AJAX and all of that other nifty Web 2.0 stuff".
I also predict Google will win, but eBay will try to make it as clunky as possible.
Right. Now eBay looses AND makes the Google payment method clunky so Google launches their auction service and begins head-to-head competition with eBay. Even if Google does not succeed in running eBay all the way out of the market they can batter their stock to the point where Google can make a hostile takeover bid and snap up their former competitor.
I think these statistics speak for themselves.
Unfortunately they fail to take into account that the fighting during the Desert Storm conflict took place mostly outside of the urban cities. It is not at all surprising that there were fewer civilians hanging around the iraqi tank battalions in the middle of the desert and thus fewer civilian casualities despite the fact that fewer precsision guided weapons were used in the first Gulf War. If you don't believe me then perhaps you would enjoy reading the first hand accounts of Gen. Fred Franks, with extensive battle maps, who commanded the armored spearhead of 7th corps into western Iraq across the desert from Saud Arabia as told in Into the Storm: A Study in Command.
It should not be surprising to people that economics provides the basis for explaining many interesting situations that occur in the real world in relation to computer security. Recall that economics is the study of how humans react to scarcity, or more bluntly how we behave in light of the fact that we cannot simply snap our fingers and have anything we want immediately placed in front of us all of the time (with the possible exception of Bill Gates and a few others, but they are not representative). It is precisely the ability of economics to insightfully solve common conundrums with deliciously counterintuitive explanations that seems to fascinate so many people, as evidenced by the recent success of books such as Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science and Freakonomics, despite the generally boring ways in which the subject is presented by our schools. If it involves human interactions and human nature then, ultimately, it involves economics.
Personally, I suggest collecting the fines from the employees of the company that made the decision to use unlicensed software and fonts. Why should they get off scott free? They're the ones who actually broke the law, the company charter didn't fly its ass up out of the file cabinet and insert the CD in the drive.
Perhaps you have only worked at large companies with formal purchasing guidelines and adequate budgets, but I cannot remember how many times I have been asked by my managers to just, "get it done with the budget/software that we have", with the implicit, "never mind how" or "we will buy the licenses later". The employee who whines about whether the company is violating a software license agreement is the one that gets passed up for promotion at best and at worst...well lets just say that management doesn't like "trouble makers" if you know what I mean.
It was my understanding that United States patent law contains a provision covering the patentability of devices, ideas, methods, or techniques from any body of knowledge that would be generally known to a skilled practitioner of the trade or art in question (i.e. the so called "skilled practitioner" test for obvious patents or prior art). If it is patently obvious then in effect it cannot be patented.
Person having ordinary skill in the art
It would be difficult to change the attitude of the typical US driver to match that of the Germans. I wish we could, but I don't see it happening anytime within the next ever.
It would never happen...why just this morning I was passed at high speed on the right shoulder by an older F250 pickup truck with a cheap two shock lift job, balding all-terrain tires, and visible rust/salt corrosion on the body. The driver was using both his cell phone AND eating his breakfast simultaneously. I couldn't see all the way up into the cab but I wouldn't have been surprised to find a super sized coffee in the drink holder to boot. Americans treat driving as a more of a right/chore rather than a privilege/responsibility.
The USB thumb drive is vulnerable to the same types of boot sector viruses and trojan loaders that were making the rounds back when 3.5" floppy disks were in more common use. In fact, there is a recent example, discussed right here on Slashdot, concerning a computer security company which designed just such a virus to show a client how an attack, when combined with a clever bit of social engineering (i.e. the free stuff gambit), could be accomplished. If you are plugging your USB thumb drive into unknown hosts as you go about your day then you are asking for trouble.
Social Engineering w/USB Drives
Taxes are STEALING, good as jesus tells you
"Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor." - Romans 13:7
Even in public, one has a reasonable assumption that one won't be stalked or spied upon
That is absolutely wrong. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place and anything you do or say in the bank, the convenience store, or any public space or private property open to the public is subject to monitoring and recording. If you don't want people to listen to what you are saying or see what you are doing then don't say or do such things in public, it's that simple.