The main caveat here is that any hardware which has been outside of your custody even once must never be trusted again, but that's a small price to pay compared with the alternatives. The government can still get to you if they want you bad enough, but it's much more likely that small fish will escape the net and get lost in the noise. As long as the story remains plausible, nobody's going to ask too many questions of the average citizen.
You could always combine the use of HTTPS with TOR, to further obscure the source. It won't provide absolute protection, but it will substantially up the ante on tracking the communications back to the source. If a militant and closed government like Iran cannot shut down TOR, how much less can an open and democratic one like Canada? It should also be noted by those everywhere who love privacy and wish to see it preserved that running TOR exit nodes is a public service and strikes a blow against oppressive governments and overreaching bureaucrats everywhere. The more nodes there are in more countries the more secure the network becomes so if you want to help and are able to do so, please consider running a TOR exit node.
the Greens or Libertarians get 10% of the vote they should have 10% of the seats in congress.
Libertarians are generally fair minded people and would accept such a result if that was how the system worked. However, I remain unconvinced that either the far left or the far right would be prepared to accept such a hypothetical result. The Greens are generally considered to be a left leaning party, so I wonder whether or not they would actually be prepared to accept 10% of the seats going to Libertarians if that truly was the result of the election.
The root issue, is that you are joined to a group without your knowledge. That is such a blatant security hole, it can not possibly be accidental.
From what I understand this isn't a security hole, but rather a deliberate design decision made by Facebook to "nudge" more people into group memberships. It's absolutely in keeping with the general contempt and lack of respect that Facebook has for user privacy and privacy in general. They say that they "care" about privacy, but their actions consistently demonstrate otherwise.
Even if it was one dumb ass coder, don't you think that the team implementing "groups" would have had someone that realized the security problem?
The people who work at Facebook are likely "true believers" in the mission of Facebook, which is to bring about the end of privacy as we know it. Indeed, they celebrate this destruction of privacy as a social good. They may lament the results in this case, outing a gay child to a hostile parent, but that doesn't change their belief in either the mission or the core principles as outlined by Zuckerberg on numerous occasions.
This is a choice by Facebook which once again screws over users
Yes. Precisely that.
I really hope this one brings up a class action law suit and makes those two teens a good sum of money.
I asked that question elsewhere in this discussion before looking into the matter a bit more for myself. Unfortunately, due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, it's now extremely difficult to hold Facebook liable for any such actions. Indeed, the courts have taken a very broad view of this particular safe harbor when it comes to libel or defamation torts against ISPs or Internet forum operators for the actions of their users. This means that Facebook is practically immune from responsibility for anything that others say about you on Facebook. It may not even matter if you can prove negligence on the part of Facebook because the precedents are so strong. So if you sue Facebook they will simply file a motion to dismiss with prejudice, citing those precedents. It's very likely that such a motion will be granted and you will simply end up paying Facebook's attorney fees for your trouble.
Freedom ends on the day that people are no longer willing to fight and die to defend it. The Islamists are willing to kill to suppress our freedoms. The only question for us is what will we do to protect them? If the answer is "not much" then we may yet witness the deaths of many freedoms that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died to preserve. We should stand up to these Islamists as we did with Fascists and the Communists before them, persuading where possible and killing when necessary to protect the freedoms that we all hold dear.
and in a few cases including privacy of people who aren't even on facebook themselves
That could be a legally actionable offense, especially here in California which has strict rules and stiff penalties for impersonation of another person online. Perhaps an attorney out there can comment, but if someone doesn't join Facebook and someone else either impersonates them or takes actions on Facebook which defame them in public, would they have a case? Couldn't they sue both Facebook and the user(s) in question for defamation of character and win a judgement? Facebook has offices and assets here in California so doesn't that make them even more vulnerable to such a lawsuit?
There is no "friending" involved, and there is no control by the recipient of the invite to the group.
According to TFA, the person who created the group was already a friend of the two students in question. They had set their privacy preferences to hide those friends from certain other friends in their network, namely their parents. However, when their new friend setup this "Queer Choir" group, he set it's status as a "public" group to be in his own words "loud and proud". Unfortunately for him, he didn't realize that Facebook announces membership in new public groups to ALL friends, regardless of any other "privacy" settings. This combined with the fact that any friend can add you to a group, you can leave after being added but you cannot prevent the initial add (Facebook pushing those limits again), combined to produce the aforementioned "outing" of the students' sexual preferences to their parents. This is a perfect example of why people should NOT trust Facebook and in fact should refuse to use it. Facebook is always pushing the privacy envelope and playing fast and loose with personal information. Unless you're completely comfortable living a public life with no secrets, you shouldn't use Facebook. The existence of "privacy settings" merely creates an illusion of control and a false sense of security. It's another case of "bitten in the arse by Facebook" and how did Zukerberg refer to some of the first users of Facebook again? I believe that the word he chose was "dumbshits". Maybe he was right.
Didn't people learn anything from the Iranian centrifuge incident? They even worked this angle in Battlestar Galactica. Accepting commands or inputs into driving decisions from external sources is just asking for trouble.
I'm getting sick of this new generation of "Me, Me, Me! Mine! Mine! Mine!"
Look who's talking. This is exactly what you're doing when you demand that someone else give you something as if it were a "right" for you to receive it. Nobody deserves to receive any good or service except that which has been mutually agreed upon through freedom of contract. If the Occupy Wall Street hippies spent half as much time working to provide what other people want as they did beating drums and rolling around in their own filth, they wouldn't have to demand that people give them a living instead of earning it.
Not everything that is desirable is a human right.
I agree completely, but try telling that to a self described "progressive" and you'll see just how crazy some people can be. I swear, the sense of entitlement amongst those people is absolutely stunning.
it still doesn't mean that it can't be gotten into
It would require either breaking AES or physical access to the router for an extended period of time. Neither is likely in any case because the potential value of an additional cracked wireless network is too low to justify such extreme measures; especially considering how many wifi networks remain completely unsecured, knowingly or otherwise.
Nothing forms the foundation of a bright future quite like issuing a manifesto.
It must also be rambling, or else it's not a true manifesto because all true manifestos are always rambling and go on rambling for many pages because that is what true manifestos do, they ramble until the manifesto is true because rambling is what they do.
But do you want a cheeseburger? Especially one with cheese, bacon, medium rare, fries on the side... mmm...
I liked the part where the women could remember, "two all beef patties with lettuce, cheese and special sauce on a sesame seed bun" while standing in front of the White House, but not the Pledge of Allegiance.
This is false. We are long past the days of the British Empire.
Perhaps not as far off as you might suppose. To suggest that the average American is more cultured and civilized than the average Victorian era Englishman is laughable. If anything, the level of the public discourse has declined substantially since the days of the British empire. One need only glance at Twitter to see the truth of the matter.
it's also a notion that didn't exist before WWII
Clearly it was a lesson learned at great cost. Isolationism was the rule of the day before Dec 7th 1941 proved decisively otherwise.
Furthermore, when our government tries to assert itself in such a way where we attempt to set a world agenda, we tend to anger other countries and alienate them, thus diminishing our influence rather than amplifying it, as was the case during GWB's presidency.
It would be a mistake, in my estimation, to retire the military option, which will be the effect of severe cuts, simply because the card was not well played by certain previous Presidents.
Final point: We could make major cuts to our military without diminishing its capacity to wage war and continue functioning as it is.
No. Wrong. It has long been the policy of our nation's military to maintain sufficient forces to fight two (2) major wars and a third regional conflict all while simultaneously protecting the homeland. We have not always achieved that level of readiness, but it remains the goal and the gold standard of US military strategic planning. Given the dual threats of Russia and China as well as numerous regional powers, such as Iran and North Korea, this is a necessary and prudent policy and there exists a substantial body of documents, essays and books written by many top ranking military officers, both current and former, who support essentially this same policy.
so that makes it unlikely that the person is going to be held liable for the criminal action of another as the basis.
Why take a chance on that? Secure your network or else pay someone else to do it for you, preferably through a registered business, and save the receipt.
Meanwhile, Obama is trying to cut military spending.
Which would be a major strategic blunder. A powerful military allows the United States to maintain a controlling interest in vital resources and geopolitical affairs. It would be a serious mistake for the United States to abdicate this position of strength to Russia or China. Like it or not, the nation with the most powerful military sets the world agenda. If you think that diplomacy alone can achieve the same results then you're being naive. Look at how Russia and Putin have played Obama for the fool after his attempt to "hit the reset button" on relations. The Russians have managed to put serious pressure on the United States, forcing us to expend many more resources than would otherwise have been necessary, to maintain our vital interests around the world. It's as if Putin has kept our knight, rook and queen busy by adroitly repositioning a few of his pawns. Now is not the time for the United States to retreat from world affairs and leave the military field to the Chinese and the Russians.
but its goal is to encourage transparency to protect its investors. I see nothing wrong with that
To quote the late Milton Friedman, "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
However noble the original goals of Sarbanes-Oxley were and remain, the results of a decade worth of experience suggest that the law as written is substantially flawed needs to be either repaired or repealed and replaced. Sarbanes-Oxley failed to prevent the financial crash and the collapse of publicly traded companies due to accounting frauds. By any reasonable and objective measure, the Sarbanes-Oxley law failed to achieve it's primary objective. Namely to prevent another crises and meltdown of a major publicly traded firm due to "off balance sheet" transactions and accounting frauds.
The fact is taxes have to go up for the middle class if he is going to be revenue neutral. So, either he is lying about being revenue neutral, or lying about not raising taxes on the middle class. Can't have it both ways.
The revenue neutrality of Romney's tax cut plan is based upon the idea of bringing the US economy quickly back to full employment and productivity growth. If this can be done it would, in theory, increase the number of Americans currently paying income tax from 47% to some higher number. This would broaden the base, increasing the total tax revenue, while at the same time supporting the same or even lower rates on all taxpayers. In effect, the number of middle class taxpayers would be increased, but not their rates. Now, whether or not you believe this is up to you, but to call it simply a "lie" is inaccurate and offers nothing in the way of productive rebuttal or counter-argument of this policy position.
Are they including Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility?
Perhaps, but Google didn't actually spend as much money as some people think. The official purchase price was 12.5 billion dollars. However, Motorola Mobility had substantial banked tax losses, booked in previous years, which can be carried forward and written off against taxes on Google profits in subsequent years. After taking this into consideration, the actual long term purchase price to Google was probably closer to 3.5 billion dollars or so.
I think that both of you are missing the essential mater. While it's true that the SEC reserves criminal prosecution for the most egregious cases, relying more upon fines and plea bargaining, it can also be argued, and indeed it has been, that this general strategy really is the most effective use of limited taxpayer resources; allowing the most correction to be achieved for the tax monies spent. Sure, you could increase the enforcement budget of the SEC and expand the number of prosecutors, investigators and associated support staff but what would that accomplish? The courts dockets are already jammed and even tripling the budget of the SEC would allow only a small fraction of additional cases to be investigated and prosecuted. Meanwhile, the US government is still drowning in debt with no viable long term policy to put the financial house in order. Could the SEC do better with what they're given? Probably. Is spending a majority of agency resources on a few high profile prosecutions each year, while letting many smaller fish pass untouched, in the best interests of the American people and the investing public? Probably not.
Slashdot Mirror
they would simply make not disclosing the key to the authorities illegal
Two words: Plausible Deniability.
The main caveat here is that any hardware which has been outside of your custody even once must never be trusted again, but that's a small price to pay compared with the alternatives. The government can still get to you if they want you bad enough, but it's much more likely that small fish will escape the net and get lost in the noise. As long as the story remains plausible, nobody's going to ask too many questions of the average citizen.
You could always combine the use of HTTPS with TOR, to further obscure the source. It won't provide absolute protection, but it will substantially up the ante on tracking the communications back to the source. If a militant and closed government like Iran cannot shut down TOR, how much less can an open and democratic one like Canada? It should also be noted by those everywhere who love privacy and wish to see it preserved that running TOR exit nodes is a public service and strikes a blow against oppressive governments and overreaching bureaucrats everywhere. The more nodes there are in more countries the more secure the network becomes so if you want to help and are able to do so, please consider running a TOR exit node.
There's one sure fire way to get bureaucrats to shut up: threaten to cut their budget if they mention it again.
the Greens or Libertarians get 10% of the vote they should have 10% of the seats in congress.
Libertarians are generally fair minded people and would accept such a result if that was how the system worked. However, I remain unconvinced that either the far left or the far right would be prepared to accept such a hypothetical result. The Greens are generally considered to be a left leaning party, so I wonder whether or not they would actually be prepared to accept 10% of the seats going to Libertarians if that truly was the result of the election.
Now might be a good time to take our world back.
They've got you outvoted, outnumbered and outgunned which means you lose. Thanks for playing!
Don't blame me, I voted for Saruman.
Is he one of those write-in candidates?
The root issue, is that you are joined to a group without your knowledge. That is such a blatant security hole, it can not possibly be accidental.
From what I understand this isn't a security hole, but rather a deliberate design decision made by Facebook to "nudge" more people into group memberships. It's absolutely in keeping with the general contempt and lack of respect that Facebook has for user privacy and privacy in general. They say that they "care" about privacy, but their actions consistently demonstrate otherwise.
Even if it was one dumb ass coder, don't you think that the team implementing "groups" would have had someone that realized the security problem?
The people who work at Facebook are likely "true believers" in the mission of Facebook, which is to bring about the end of privacy as we know it. Indeed, they celebrate this destruction of privacy as a social good. They may lament the results in this case, outing a gay child to a hostile parent, but that doesn't change their belief in either the mission or the core principles as outlined by Zuckerberg on numerous occasions.
This is a choice by Facebook which once again screws over users
Yes. Precisely that.
I really hope this one brings up a class action law suit and makes those two teens a good sum of money.
I asked that question elsewhere in this discussion before looking into the matter a bit more for myself. Unfortunately, due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, it's now extremely difficult to hold Facebook liable for any such actions. Indeed, the courts have taken a very broad view of this particular safe harbor when it comes to libel or defamation torts against ISPs or Internet forum operators for the actions of their users. This means that Facebook is practically immune from responsibility for anything that others say about you on Facebook. It may not even matter if you can prove negligence on the part of Facebook because the precedents are so strong. So if you sue Facebook they will simply file a motion to dismiss with prejudice, citing those precedents. It's very likely that such a motion will be granted and you will simply end up paying Facebook's attorney fees for your trouble.
Freedom ends on the day that people are no longer willing to fight and die to defend it. The Islamists are willing to kill to suppress our freedoms. The only question for us is what will we do to protect them? If the answer is "not much" then we may yet witness the deaths of many freedoms that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died to preserve. We should stand up to these Islamists as we did with Fascists and the Communists before them, persuading where possible and killing when necessary to protect the freedoms that we all hold dear.
and in a few cases including privacy of people who aren't even on facebook themselves
That could be a legally actionable offense, especially here in California which has strict rules and stiff penalties for impersonation of another person online. Perhaps an attorney out there can comment, but if someone doesn't join Facebook and someone else either impersonates them or takes actions on Facebook which defame them in public, would they have a case? Couldn't they sue both Facebook and the user(s) in question for defamation of character and win a judgement? Facebook has offices and assets here in California so doesn't that make them even more vulnerable to such a lawsuit?
There is no "friending" involved, and there is no control by the recipient of the invite to the group.
According to TFA, the person who created the group was already a friend of the two students in question. They had set their privacy preferences to hide those friends from certain other friends in their network, namely their parents. However, when their new friend setup this "Queer Choir" group, he set it's status as a "public" group to be in his own words "loud and proud". Unfortunately for him, he didn't realize that Facebook announces membership in new public groups to ALL friends, regardless of any other "privacy" settings. This combined with the fact that any friend can add you to a group, you can leave after being added but you cannot prevent the initial add (Facebook pushing those limits again), combined to produce the aforementioned "outing" of the students' sexual preferences to their parents. This is a perfect example of why people should NOT trust Facebook and in fact should refuse to use it. Facebook is always pushing the privacy envelope and playing fast and loose with personal information. Unless you're completely comfortable living a public life with no secrets, you shouldn't use Facebook. The existence of "privacy settings" merely creates an illusion of control and a false sense of security. It's another case of "bitten in the arse by Facebook" and how did Zukerberg refer to some of the first users of Facebook again? I believe that the word he chose was "dumbshits". Maybe he was right.
Didn't people learn anything from the Iranian centrifuge incident? They even worked this angle in Battlestar Galactica . Accepting commands or inputs into driving decisions from external sources is just asking for trouble.
I'm getting sick of this new generation of "Me, Me, Me! Mine! Mine! Mine!"
Look who's talking. This is exactly what you're doing when you demand that someone else give you something as if it were a "right" for you to receive it. Nobody deserves to receive any good or service except that which has been mutually agreed upon through freedom of contract. If the Occupy Wall Street hippies spent half as much time working to provide what other people want as they did beating drums and rolling around in their own filth, they wouldn't have to demand that people give them a living instead of earning it.
Not everything that is desirable is a human right.
I agree completely, but try telling that to a self described "progressive" and you'll see just how crazy some people can be. I swear, the sense of entitlement amongst those people is absolutely stunning.
it still doesn't mean that it can't be gotten into
It would require either breaking AES or physical access to the router for an extended period of time. Neither is likely in any case because the potential value of an additional cracked wireless network is too low to justify such extreme measures; especially considering how many wifi networks remain completely unsecured, knowingly or otherwise.
How much code could have been written for the same amount of effort as this piece of content-less puffery?
Surely enough to write a license. That's what this manifesto needs, it's own license. They should license the manifesto too.
Nothing forms the foundation of a bright future quite like issuing a manifesto.
It must also be rambling, or else it's not a true manifesto because all true manifestos are always rambling and go on rambling for many pages because that is what true manifestos do, they ramble until the manifesto is true because rambling is what they do.
But do you want a cheeseburger? Especially one with cheese, bacon, medium rare, fries on the side... mmm...
I liked the part where the women could remember, "two all beef patties with lettuce, cheese and special sauce on a sesame seed bun" while standing in front of the White House, but not the Pledge of Allegiance.
It's a sad thing that so many people in the past listened to Friedman
These people may yet come to regret their failure to listen. We shall see.
This is false. We are long past the days of the British Empire.
Perhaps not as far off as you might suppose. To suggest that the average American is more cultured and civilized than the average Victorian era Englishman is laughable. If anything, the level of the public discourse has declined substantially since the days of the British empire. One need only glance at Twitter to see the truth of the matter.
it's also a notion that didn't exist before WWII
Clearly it was a lesson learned at great cost. Isolationism was the rule of the day before Dec 7th 1941 proved decisively otherwise.
Furthermore, when our government tries to assert itself in such a way where we attempt to set a world agenda, we tend to anger other countries and alienate them, thus diminishing our influence rather than amplifying it, as was the case during GWB's presidency.
It would be a mistake, in my estimation, to retire the military option, which will be the effect of severe cuts, simply because the card was not well played by certain previous Presidents.
Final point: We could make major cuts to our military without diminishing its capacity to wage war and continue functioning as it is.
No. Wrong. It has long been the policy of our nation's military to maintain sufficient forces to fight two (2) major wars and a third regional conflict all while simultaneously protecting the homeland. We have not always achieved that level of readiness, but it remains the goal and the gold standard of US military strategic planning. Given the dual threats of Russia and China as well as numerous regional powers, such as Iran and North Korea, this is a necessary and prudent policy and there exists a substantial body of documents, essays and books written by many top ranking military officers, both current and former, who support essentially this same policy.
so that makes it unlikely that the person is going to be held liable for the criminal action of another as the basis.
Why take a chance on that? Secure your network or else pay someone else to do it for you, preferably through a registered business, and save the receipt.
Meanwhile, Obama is trying to cut military spending.
Which would be a major strategic blunder. A powerful military allows the United States to maintain a controlling interest in vital resources and geopolitical affairs. It would be a serious mistake for the United States to abdicate this position of strength to Russia or China. Like it or not, the nation with the most powerful military sets the world agenda. If you think that diplomacy alone can achieve the same results then you're being naive. Look at how Russia and Putin have played Obama for the fool after his attempt to "hit the reset button" on relations. The Russians have managed to put serious pressure on the United States, forcing us to expend many more resources than would otherwise have been necessary, to maintain our vital interests around the world. It's as if Putin has kept our knight, rook and queen busy by adroitly repositioning a few of his pawns. Now is not the time for the United States to retreat from world affairs and leave the military field to the Chinese and the Russians.
but its goal is to encourage transparency to protect its investors. I see nothing wrong with that
To quote the late Milton Friedman, "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
However noble the original goals of Sarbanes-Oxley were and remain, the results of a decade worth of experience suggest that the law as written is substantially flawed needs to be either repaired or repealed and replaced. Sarbanes-Oxley failed to prevent the financial crash and the collapse of publicly traded companies due to accounting frauds. By any reasonable and objective measure, the Sarbanes-Oxley law failed to achieve it's primary objective. Namely to prevent another crises and meltdown of a major publicly traded firm due to "off balance sheet" transactions and accounting frauds.
The fact is taxes have to go up for the middle class if he is going to be revenue neutral. So, either he is lying about being revenue neutral, or lying about not raising taxes on the middle class. Can't have it both ways.
The revenue neutrality of Romney's tax cut plan is based upon the idea of bringing the US economy quickly back to full employment and productivity growth. If this can be done it would, in theory, increase the number of Americans currently paying income tax from 47% to some higher number. This would broaden the base, increasing the total tax revenue, while at the same time supporting the same or even lower rates on all taxpayers. In effect, the number of middle class taxpayers would be increased, but not their rates. Now, whether or not you believe this is up to you, but to call it simply a "lie" is inaccurate and offers nothing in the way of productive rebuttal or counter-argument of this policy position.
Are they including Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility?
Perhaps, but Google didn't actually spend as much money as some people think. The official purchase price was 12.5 billion dollars. However, Motorola Mobility had substantial banked tax losses, booked in previous years, which can be carried forward and written off against taxes on Google profits in subsequent years. After taking this into consideration, the actual long term purchase price to Google was probably closer to 3.5 billion dollars or so.
I think that both of you are missing the essential mater. While it's true that the SEC reserves criminal prosecution for the most egregious cases, relying more upon fines and plea bargaining, it can also be argued, and indeed it has been, that this general strategy really is the most effective use of limited taxpayer resources; allowing the most correction to be achieved for the tax monies spent. Sure, you could increase the enforcement budget of the SEC and expand the number of prosecutors, investigators and associated support staff but what would that accomplish? The courts dockets are already jammed and even tripling the budget of the SEC would allow only a small fraction of additional cases to be investigated and prosecuted. Meanwhile, the US government is still drowning in debt with no viable long term policy to put the financial house in order. Could the SEC do better with what they're given? Probably. Is spending a majority of agency resources on a few high profile prosecutions each year, while letting many smaller fish pass untouched, in the best interests of the American people and the investing public? Probably not.