The US has not requested extradition and will not. They have no grounds for extradition. He has not broken any US Law. He did not compromise our national secrets, those who stole the information and leaked it to him did that and they are the ones criminally liable.
I just love how people have kept this myth of the US wanting to extradite him alive. They never had grounds to extradite him.
The US does not and has never had any legal grounds to extradite him to the US or to Gitmo. Gitmo is out of the question anyway because he is not an unlawful combatant captured in a war zone with no allegiance to any organized military force that could earn POW status.
He has not broken any US laws. He did not leak the information, he did not direct the collection of the information leaked by those who did leak it to him. He is not legally liable for the protection of said leaked US secrets.
He will not be extradited to the US, there is nothing we can request extradition for.
The US has no claim for him. We don't torture POW's or journalists. And he's not a POW anyway. He has no cause to appeal to the UN human rights commission for his arrest for skipping bail while awaiting an extradition hearing regarding his warrant of arrest for rape in Sweden.
The US has zero claim to extradite him. He has broken no US law that he could be subject to.
Nobody with half a brain accused him of Treason. He's not a US citizen, he can't commit treason against the US, he has no expectation of loyalty to it. Not even for releasing the footage of the lawful Apache combat actions. (The actions in the footage are not crimes under the Laws of Land Warfare as outlined in the various conventions.)
As to Assange, he cannot be held criminally liable for any of the classified data leaked to Wikileaks and published by him on the site. He never agreed to protect the information from release. The traitors that released it, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are the ones facing criminal charges, as they both signed lawful contracts to protect the secrets of this nation.
The way it works is: If I have a security clearance (I did until it expired after I retired from the Army) and I give you classified information I should be protecting, I am then criminally liable for my actions or inactions that allow the security compromise and the release of the classified information. You however are not. As a US citizen there is a tenuous responsibility that you might hold for receiving but it's not commonly prosecuted unless you also have a clearance. But if you are a citizen of a foreign nation, like Assange, even if that nation is closely allied with the US. You are under no obligation at all to protect that information.
Now, if you directed me to collect and give you information, then you fall into the realm of conducting international espionage actions. If caught in the US you can be arrested and confined until such time as we trade you back to your home country. But more likely we would just declare you persona non-grata and kick you out of the country. If discovered conducting such activities in another country, we could ask them to do the same things and if allied they might, but they would not extradite you to the US. You would be subject to their laws regarding captured spies.
The US has never asked anyone to arrest him with the intention of extraditing him. We have nothing we can extradite him for. I won't deny that we might have quietly encouraged the Swedish government to press the issue and the British to make the arrest for extradition to Sweden with the intent of at least making it harder for him to run Wikileaks and leak secrets our own traitors have given him. But Extradition to the US is out of the question. There is literally nothing we can extradite him for. He did not violate any US law that he is subject to.
But they don't transmit anything unless the device is activated by the trigger phase. What is captured is coming after the trigger phrase. My Alexa gets triggered all the time when someone calls for my son Alex. My Android phone used to get triggered occasionally by a catch phrase a Talk radio host on a local station used to use frequently. But over time it learned and those trigger incidents were reduced. As I'm sure my Alexa will learn the difference in Alex and Alexa and stop triggering without the final syllable.
They still require the trigger phrase before they start recording. So if you are planning to commit a crime, unplug and turn off your smart devices so you don't accidently say a trigger phrase. If you are committing an illegal home intrusion, expect to be recorded by home security systems anyway so just don't do it.
Because ideally Amazon should be anonymizing the voice captures. All the agents should get is the voice clip, with at most a regional indicator. But otherwise they should get no details about who said it, where or when it was said. The point is to transcribe the words recorded and feed them back into the system with the capture so that it can learn to recognize those variants of the words.
Maybe in the future if there is demand, they could consider adding a sub routine that could identify captures that indicate serious life threatening crimes and feed those directly to the local authorities.(who would then listen and if they decide it is an actual criminal act, rather than dialogue captured from a nearby TV,) then they could pull the location and respond. But not via transcribers in another country who may be working on captures that are hours or even days old.
And what does making a WMD sound like? Is it a WMD or is it a chemical experiment for school? Or a home inventor at work building the next super duper vacuum to sell? Or a couple retired military buddies talking about some of the IED's they ran across in Iraq back in the Day?
Yep, Google admitted they did this outright years ago. That was a big part of the purpose for their Google Voice phone and voicemail systems. To get voice and speech recordings to train their voice recognition systems.
But what people still don't seem to get is that these devices are not recording 24/7. They monitor for the trigger names to activate, "Hey Google", "OK Google", "Hey Alexa", "Hey Siri", "Hey Cortana" "Hey Galaxy" etc...
So when the devices are activated then they record. Now they can be triggered by similar sounding phrases. When OK Google first became available on Radio Host on my local talk station had a phrase he used that occasionally triggered my phone. My Amazon Dot gets triggered occasionally when someone calls my son by his name Alex. But otherwise they only listen for the trigger phrases and only record once triggered.
This is mostly not news. I do feel for the employees who hear distressing captures and can't do anything about them. I doubt they are even listening in real time and hopefully all the captures they process are anonymized making it even more difficult to be able to do anything about what they hear. I would hope that these companies all strip the time, location and network details of the captures before sending them to their employees.
The purpose of the capture is to train the service to better understand the words and the variables of human speech idiosyncrasies, not actually monitor what is being said. Teach it to handle variations in accents and dialects. I grew up in a town called Layton. Most residents swallow the T in a glottal stop. People who didn't grow up there do pronounce the T. These systems need to be able to tell those differences as well as more extreme accent and dialectic differences in pronunciation.
How much science fiction is now factual? ex. How many fictional stories had people using pocket computers (pocket brains was a common term, or mobile communicator devices they wear or carry in a pocket that give them global communication abilities. Fiction and not technologically possible when many such devices were posited into fictional worlds but what do most of us carry in our pockets? A smart phone with incredible computing power that can communicate around the world by voice commands alone.
Just because it was fiction when written doesn't mean it wont remain fiction either. Doesn't mean that fiction will become fact either but you can't just dismiss something because it was written as fiction.
Except last year when much of the west was suffering an extremely dry winter. This very same excuse was used. The Jetstream is flowing further north, allowing strong High pressures to set up off the west coast pushing all the moisture up through Canada to then drop down into the great plains. This is the new norm because of climate change, the warmer planet has changed the flow of the jet stream.
Now this year it's the warmer climate has changed the flow of the Jetstream to aim right at the west coast pushing one or more storm systems through per week every week of this winter and the west has enjoyed a very wet (but not record breaking wet) winter, as has the Midwest.
So which is it? Is dryer the new norm or is it wetter. Because we've been given the same excuses the last two years for totally different results.
Or is it really just normal variations in the weather.
It is safer, far safer. When you were smoking, any tobacco product you were not only getting your addictive but otherwise non-carcinogenic and non harmful (except in extreme doses) Nicotine, but you were getting all the poisons and proven carcinogens in the tar and tobacco smoke.
Yes you may still be coughing as you vape, but you already did the damage with your years of smoking. What you aren't doing is continuing to add more tar and other tobacco residues to your lungs.
You can discretely vape indoors. Don't use strongly flavored juices. I've never vaped or smoked but worked with those who do both. Smokers I can smell from 10 feet away even though they only smoke outside on their breaks. I've had a co-worker vaping in the cubical next to me and the only reason I knew he was doing it was because I saw him doing it. I never smelled it.
Now that you've kicked the tobacco, start buying juices with slightly less nicotine. Get used to that level and then step down again. That co-worker in the cubical next to me. No longer vapes. Like you he smoked for years. He tried to stop a few times but never with any luck because of the nicotine addiction. But after switching to vaping he was able to start reducing his nicotine concentration and got it down to zero. After a few weeks of that, one day he realized he'd forgotten his e-cig. He'd never forgotten his cigs or e-cig before but then when he thought about it he realized he'd been using it less and less as he had no addiction to satisfy. He wasn't quite done then but shortly did put the e-cig away and hasn't needed it since.
I've seen this time and again. And I'll say it time and again, I'd rather work surrounded by people actively vaping then near someone who reeks of his smokes from his last break two hours ago.
Vaping might have some risk depending on what the juice is made of. But it is vastly safer and preferable to tobacco or weed.
While Nicotine maybe addictive. Unless they are taking extremely high doses it has no other negative effects. So if it keeps them from trying Tobacco products then I'm all for letting teens vape. When they wise up they can work their selves off the Nicotine by moving to progressively lower concentration juices until they aren't getting any nicotine.
This is a bad move. Vaping has helped many long time smokers finally escape tobacco. And many have eventually weaned their self off the nicotine as well.
I wonder how much vaping is cutting into SF's tobacco Sin Tax Revenues?
I have many friends who are teachers, from elementary to HS and college. Not going to post a single one of their email addresses. Because it's not my information to post. If they want spam they can sign up for it.
Will their powers exceed that of the Millennial's ability to melt down over the littlest of imagined slights?;) (the buckets have been there since 2000 so many millennials were exposed.)
A drill press will do. Heck if you are careful a Drill will do. Most 80% lowers come with the mill bit that will fit in any standard drill chuck. Drill press is best for stability and ensuring you only mill out what needs to be milled. A CNC machine is not required.
It is not illegal to manufacture a firearm without a Serial. If you want to transfer that weapon to anyone else then it requires a serial. But you do not have to serialize any firearm you make for your own use. Also the Federal Law does not specify how it is to be serialized so many will just engrave random numbers on a weapon if they do decide to sell or transfer it.
Agreed. My thoughts exactly. It's a home made weapon, it doesn't have to be registered unless he wants to sell it. It doesn't have to have a serial. And as the Lower receiver of an AR doesn't take all that much stress a 3-d printed one is fully capable. It won't last as long but all that will happen is it will develop cracks or deform to where it won't connect to the buffer-tube or the upper receiver. The only way that weapon would have needed a registration is if it was an NFA class of weapon. That could mean fully automatic, a short barreled rifle or with other modifications that make it an Any Other Weapon requiring an NFA stamp.
Now they also mention being a prohibited person, so that's a serious felony there. If he's prohibited (a convicted felon) then he can't have any firearms.
Yes we can, for only $1000 per year since the original warranty expired. (payable up front of course). And while you are paying that we also need you to pay for your Taxes or else the Sheriff is standing on your front porch to arrest you.
Funny you blame Americans but invariably when they do manage to track down one of the spam call groups they are operating from overseas. The last big one was based out of India. Yes there is a problem with the US phone system and it should be quite simple to fix. Prohibit number spoofing. The carriers can implement systems to prohibit any call not originating from the claimed number. But for some reason they refuse to do so leaving us subject to this never ending flow of spam phone calls.
And as I stated before, these scams are not originating in the US.
We are talking Afghanistan. The Panels will be fine. Just the metal in the mounting frames and all the wiring will disappear overnight to reappear a few weeks later as metallic artwork for sale at the base bazaar.
We have a similar device, the location feature is just an extra. I've used it more to figure out where the kid left the watch when he's taken it off. (ex. At the pool during swimming lessons, it fell underneath the bench where he and his brothers' towels were so didn't get picked up and put back on after the lesson ended.)
We've also sent the then 11 y/o across town on the commuter rail system and I use it to ensure he gets off at the right stop to be met by his mother.
It's a slow process, it takes about a minute to poll the device and update the location every time you check it. But if in doubt I can get a general idea of where he is.
Also a local news story covered an attempted kidnapping, thwarted in part due to one of these watches a couple years ago. https://www.ksl.com/article/41008494
And DC should have No Representation or electoral votes in my opinion. It was not conceived to be the equivalent of a state but an independent seat of Government. It's not beholden to any state but it should also be entirely populated by those working to represent the states. We should actively work to remove the permanent population of DC and return it to it's intended purpose. The Seat of the Federal Government where our elected officials from across the nation go to conduct the business of the nation.
My opinion is that it should have no residents who are not subject to being recalled to their home state at the next election. Those permanent bureaucrats necessary to support the functions of the government can live in VA and Maryland.
Slashdot Mirror
The US has not requested extradition and will not. They have no grounds for extradition. He has not broken any US Law. He did not compromise our national secrets, those who stole the information and leaked it to him did that and they are the ones criminally liable.
I just love how people have kept this myth of the US wanting to extradite him alive. They never had grounds to extradite him.
The US does not and has never had any legal grounds to extradite him to the US or to Gitmo. Gitmo is out of the question anyway because he is not an unlawful combatant captured in a war zone with no allegiance to any organized military force that could earn POW status.
He has not broken any US laws. He did not leak the information, he did not direct the collection of the information leaked by those who did leak it to him. He is not legally liable for the protection of said leaked US secrets.
He will not be extradited to the US, there is nothing we can request extradition for.
The US has no claim for him. We don't torture POW's or journalists. And he's not a POW anyway. He has no cause to appeal to the UN human rights commission for his arrest for skipping bail while awaiting an extradition hearing regarding his warrant of arrest for rape in Sweden.
The US has zero claim to extradite him. He has broken no US law that he could be subject to.
Nobody with half a brain accused him of Treason. He's not a US citizen, he can't commit treason against the US, he has no expectation of loyalty to it. Not even for releasing the footage of the lawful Apache combat actions. (The actions in the footage are not crimes under the Laws of Land Warfare as outlined in the various conventions.)
As to Assange, he cannot be held criminally liable for any of the classified data leaked to Wikileaks and published by him on the site. He never agreed to protect the information from release. The traitors that released it, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are the ones facing criminal charges, as they both signed lawful contracts to protect the secrets of this nation.
The way it works is: If I have a security clearance (I did until it expired after I retired from the Army) and I give you classified information I should be protecting, I am then criminally liable for my actions or inactions that allow the security compromise and the release of the classified information. You however are not. As a US citizen there is a tenuous responsibility that you might hold for receiving but it's not commonly prosecuted unless you also have a clearance. But if you are a citizen of a foreign nation, like Assange, even if that nation is closely allied with the US. You are under no obligation at all to protect that information.
Now, if you directed me to collect and give you information, then you fall into the realm of conducting international espionage actions. If caught in the US you can be arrested and confined until such time as we trade you back to your home country. But more likely we would just declare you persona non-grata and kick you out of the country. If discovered conducting such activities in another country, we could ask them to do the same things and if allied they might, but they would not extradite you to the US. You would be subject to their laws regarding captured spies.
The US has never asked anyone to arrest him with the intention of extraditing him. We have nothing we can extradite him for. I won't deny that we might have quietly encouraged the Swedish government to press the issue and the British to make the arrest for extradition to Sweden with the intent of at least making it harder for him to run Wikileaks and leak secrets our own traitors have given him. But Extradition to the US is out of the question. There is literally nothing we can extradite him for. He did not violate any US law that he is subject to.
But they don't transmit anything unless the device is activated by the trigger phase. What is captured is coming after the trigger phrase. My Alexa gets triggered all the time when someone calls for my son Alex. My Android phone used to get triggered occasionally by a catch phrase a Talk radio host on a local station used to use frequently. But over time it learned and those trigger incidents were reduced. As I'm sure my Alexa will learn the difference in Alex and Alexa and stop triggering without the final syllable.
They still require the trigger phrase before they start recording. So if you are planning to commit a crime, unplug and turn off your smart devices so you don't accidently say a trigger phrase. If you are committing an illegal home intrusion, expect to be recorded by home security systems anyway so just don't do it.
Because ideally Amazon should be anonymizing the voice captures. All the agents should get is the voice clip, with at most a regional indicator. But otherwise they should get no details about who said it, where or when it was said. The point is to transcribe the words recorded and feed them back into the system with the capture so that it can learn to recognize those variants of the words.
Maybe in the future if there is demand, they could consider adding a sub routine that could identify captures that indicate serious life threatening crimes and feed those directly to the local authorities.(who would then listen and if they decide it is an actual criminal act, rather than dialogue captured from a nearby TV,) then they could pull the location and respond. But not via transcribers in another country who may be working on captures that are hours or even days old.
And what does making a WMD sound like? Is it a WMD or is it a chemical experiment for school? Or a home inventor at work building the next super duper vacuum to sell? Or a couple retired military buddies talking about some of the IED's they ran across in Iraq back in the Day?
Google, Apple, Samsung, and every other device manufacturer that has rolled their own voice recognition system.
Yep, Google admitted they did this outright years ago. That was a big part of the purpose for their Google Voice phone and voicemail systems. To get voice and speech recordings to train their voice recognition systems.
But what people still don't seem to get is that these devices are not recording 24/7. They monitor for the trigger names to activate, "Hey Google", "OK Google", "Hey Alexa", "Hey Siri", "Hey Cortana" "Hey Galaxy" etc...
So when the devices are activated then they record. Now they can be triggered by similar sounding phrases. When OK Google first became available on Radio Host on my local talk station had a phrase he used that occasionally triggered my phone. My Amazon Dot gets triggered occasionally when someone calls my son by his name Alex. But otherwise they only listen for the trigger phrases and only record once triggered.
This is mostly not news. I do feel for the employees who hear distressing captures and can't do anything about them. I doubt they are even listening in real time and hopefully all the captures they process are anonymized making it even more difficult to be able to do anything about what they hear. I would hope that these companies all strip the time, location and network details of the captures before sending them to their employees.
The purpose of the capture is to train the service to better understand the words and the variables of human speech idiosyncrasies, not actually monitor what is being said. Teach it to handle variations in accents and dialects. I grew up in a town called Layton. Most residents swallow the T in a glottal stop. People who didn't grow up there do pronounce the T. These systems need to be able to tell those differences as well as more extreme accent and dialectic differences in pronunciation.
How much science fiction is now factual? ex. How many fictional stories had people using pocket computers (pocket brains was a common term, or mobile communicator devices they wear or carry in a pocket that give them global communication abilities. Fiction and not technologically possible when many such devices were posited into fictional worlds but what do most of us carry in our pockets? A smart phone with incredible computing power that can communicate around the world by voice commands alone.
Just because it was fiction when written doesn't mean it wont remain fiction either. Doesn't mean that fiction will become fact either but you can't just dismiss something because it was written as fiction.
Except last year when much of the west was suffering an extremely dry winter. This very same excuse was used. The Jetstream is flowing further north, allowing strong High pressures to set up off the west coast pushing all the moisture up through Canada to then drop down into the great plains. This is the new norm because of climate change, the warmer planet has changed the flow of the jet stream.
Now this year it's the warmer climate has changed the flow of the Jetstream to aim right at the west coast pushing one or more storm systems through per week every week of this winter and the west has enjoyed a very wet (but not record breaking wet) winter, as has the Midwest.
So which is it? Is dryer the new norm or is it wetter. Because we've been given the same excuses the last two years for totally different results.
Or is it really just normal variations in the weather.
NOTICE: The above comment has been found to contain substances known to California to cause cancer.
As has this comment.
It is safer, far safer. When you were smoking, any tobacco product you were not only getting your addictive but otherwise non-carcinogenic and non harmful (except in extreme doses) Nicotine, but you were getting all the poisons and proven carcinogens in the tar and tobacco smoke.
Yes you may still be coughing as you vape, but you already did the damage with your years of smoking. What you aren't doing is continuing to add more tar and other tobacco residues to your lungs.
You can discretely vape indoors. Don't use strongly flavored juices. I've never vaped or smoked but worked with those who do both. Smokers I can smell from 10 feet away even though they only smoke outside on their breaks. I've had a co-worker vaping in the cubical next to me and the only reason I knew he was doing it was because I saw him doing it. I never smelled it.
Now that you've kicked the tobacco, start buying juices with slightly less nicotine. Get used to that level and then step down again. That co-worker in the cubical next to me. No longer vapes. Like you he smoked for years. He tried to stop a few times but never with any luck because of the nicotine addiction. But after switching to vaping he was able to start reducing his nicotine concentration and got it down to zero. After a few weeks of that, one day he realized he'd forgotten his e-cig. He'd never forgotten his cigs or e-cig before but then when he thought about it he realized he'd been using it less and less as he had no addiction to satisfy. He wasn't quite done then but shortly did put the e-cig away and hasn't needed it since.
I've seen this time and again. And I'll say it time and again, I'd rather work surrounded by people actively vaping then near someone who reeks of his smokes from his last break two hours ago.
Vaping might have some risk depending on what the juice is made of. But it is vastly safer and preferable to tobacco or weed.
While Nicotine maybe addictive. Unless they are taking extremely high doses it has no other negative effects. So if it keeps them from trying Tobacco products then I'm all for letting teens vape. When they wise up they can work their selves off the Nicotine by moving to progressively lower concentration juices until they aren't getting any nicotine.
This is a bad move. Vaping has helped many long time smokers finally escape tobacco. And many have eventually weaned their self off the nicotine as well.
I wonder how much vaping is cutting into SF's tobacco Sin Tax Revenues?
I have many friends who are teachers, from elementary to HS and college. Not going to post a single one of their email addresses. Because it's not my information to post. If they want spam they can sign up for it.
Will their powers exceed that of the Millennial's ability to melt down over the littlest of imagined slights? ;)
(the buckets have been there since 2000 so many millennials were exposed.)
Why not? Print out a small toy gun that you can then show them.
A drill press will do. Heck if you are careful a Drill will do. Most 80% lowers come with the mill bit that will fit in any standard drill chuck. Drill press is best for stability and ensuring you only mill out what needs to be milled. A CNC machine is not required.
It is not illegal to manufacture a firearm without a Serial. If you want to transfer that weapon to anyone else then it requires a serial. But you do not have to serialize any firearm you make for your own use. Also the Federal Law does not specify how it is to be serialized so many will just engrave random numbers on a weapon if they do decide to sell or transfer it.
A serial is only required on a home made gun if you seek to sell/transfer it to someone else. That's federal law.
Agreed. My thoughts exactly. It's a home made weapon, it doesn't have to be registered unless he wants to sell it. It doesn't have to have a serial. And as the Lower receiver of an AR doesn't take all that much stress a 3-d printed one is fully capable. It won't last as long but all that will happen is it will develop cracks or deform to where it won't connect to the buffer-tube or the upper receiver. The only way that weapon would have needed a registration is if it was an NFA class of weapon. That could mean fully automatic, a short barreled rifle or with other modifications that make it an Any Other Weapon requiring an NFA stamp.
Now they also mention being a prohibited person, so that's a serious felony there. If he's prohibited (a convicted felon) then he can't have any firearms.
Yes we can, for only $1000 per year since the original warranty expired. (payable up front of course). And while you are paying that we also need you to pay for your Taxes or else the Sheriff is standing on your front porch to arrest you.
Funny you blame Americans but invariably when they do manage to track down one of the spam call groups they are operating from overseas. The last big one was based out of India. Yes there is a problem with the US phone system and it should be quite simple to fix. Prohibit number spoofing. The carriers can implement systems to prohibit any call not originating from the claimed number. But for some reason they refuse to do so leaving us subject to this never ending flow of spam phone calls.
And as I stated before, these scams are not originating in the US.
We are talking Afghanistan. The Panels will be fine. Just the metal in the mounting frames and all the wiring will disappear overnight to reappear a few weeks later as metallic artwork for sale at the base bazaar.
We have a similar device, the location feature is just an extra. I've used it more to figure out where the kid left the watch when he's taken it off. (ex. At the pool during swimming lessons, it fell underneath the bench where he and his brothers' towels were so didn't get picked up and put back on after the lesson ended.)
We've also sent the then 11 y/o across town on the commuter rail system and I use it to ensure he gets off at the right stop to be met by his mother.
It's a slow process, it takes about a minute to poll the device and update the location every time you check it. But if in doubt I can get a general idea of where he is.
Also a local news story covered an attempted kidnapping, thwarted in part due to one of these watches a couple years ago. https://www.ksl.com/article/41008494
And DC should have No Representation or electoral votes in my opinion. It was not conceived to be the equivalent of a state but an independent seat of Government. It's not beholden to any state but it should also be entirely populated by those working to represent the states. We should actively work to remove the permanent population of DC and return it to it's intended purpose. The Seat of the Federal Government where our elected officials from across the nation go to conduct the business of the nation.
My opinion is that it should have no residents who are not subject to being recalled to their home state at the next election. Those permanent bureaucrats necessary to support the functions of the government can live in VA and Maryland.