Are you embarrassed about the type of porn you view? How about if your friends knew about it? If a prospective employer could check up on it? If your ex-wife's lawyer brought it up in a custody case?
Have you ever had any mental illness, veneral disease, or other condition you don't tell everyone about?
They can't use the information gained from spying in a court of law, since it would be inadmissible evidence. Even if an intelligence agency has full access to someone's Facebook details, the prosecutor needs to obtain the information a second time through legal means.
Also, intelligence agencies are careful not to reveal exactly how much they know. Keeping your sources hidden is one of the basic principles of intelligence.
Governments and powerful organisations should be open and accountable. Individuals should have strong privacy. What's so hard to understand?
If someone hacked into my e-mail account at work and used it to expose something illegal my company had done, I'd be okay with that. If someone hacked into my private e-mail account, I'd think they were a jerk. The first is ok, the second is not.
Assange is not "deciding national security policy" for anyone. Nothing stops your government from trying to keep anything they want secret. It just can't expect the rest of the world to play their game for them.
Why should I hide from my government? It's not like they don't already know who I am.
I think the point is that sites like Facebook enables the government to do this on a massive scale. It means they will have more time to go after you, if you happen to do something illegal or undesirable. But more importantly, it gives the government too much power. Everyone has done something wrong. Those who have the resources to dig deep enough, can jail or destroy the reputation of anyone who opposes them, from Joe Public to Mother Theresa.
Most likely true. People do "heroic" things for all kinds of reasons: fame, ego boost, being desired by the opposite sex, and so on. As long as they don't act irresponsibly, I'm ok with it.
Don't worry, I'm sure sure they can make up one. After all, our Swedish prosecutors managed to put out an arrest warrant for rape because he allegedly broke the condom when having consensual sex...
No, that would mean someone could just bribe the government into looking the other way, and it would suddenly become legal. For example, a corporation could bribe the government of an African nation to look the other way while they dump their toxic waste, but that doesn't make it legal. Or the government could choose to look the other way while someone rigs the election to their benefit, but that doesn't make it legal.
The government is put in power by the people to act on their behalf. The laws act as instructions for the government. When the government breaks the law, they're acting without the people's consent.
There is not any violation of sovereignty to perform a military operation with permission.
Well, if the Pakistani government gave their permission, perhaps we can't criticise the US military for going there, even if it was against Pakistani law. After all, it's the local government's responsibility to enforce their own laws.
But neither can we blame a suspect for defending himself when a special ops team, without legal authority in the country, suddenly shows up outside his door and tries to take him away. If the special ops team kills the suspect when he defends himself, it's manslaughter or worse.
So far, we know too little. We don't know what permission, if any, the Pakistani government gave, we don't know if the special ops team went there with the intention to kill or to capture Bin Laden, and we don't know if they identified themselves or just snuck into the building and started shooting. Perhaps we will never know for sure.
In the case of Bin Laden, most people don't care about due process. But I'm worried about what the US government will do next. What if they go after people like Assange? Leading American politicians have seriously suggested assassinating foreign citizens. What's next - threatening to kill anyone who blows the whistle on places like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo? Will I be put on the list if I donate money to Wikileaks?
True, the US government can often do what they damn well please, since they have by far the largest military budget in the world.
But don't think we haven't noticed how that budget is putting your government deeper and deeper into debt, and the day when you will be denied new loans is getting closer and closer.
How are you going to pay your army then? Declare a state of emergency and let the state take over the industries (i.e, turn socialist)? That's the path Nazi Germany went down, and we know what happened to them.
True - the big players, like China and the USA, are often able to ignore international laws, even the ones they agreed to follow, and get away with it. I was just pointing out the error in believing that everything was fine and legal with the killing of Bin Laden.
Who said Pakistan "never" prosecutes incursions into their territory?
I'm just saying that if Pakistan's government willingly looked the other way when a US special ops team slipped into their country, it doesn't make the ops team's actions legal. The special ops team has no right to apprehend someone under those circumstances, and the target of the operation is in their full rights to use force to defend themselves against being kidnapped - even if they are guilty of a crime.
A suspect is only obligated to surrender to the police or an equivalent government-sanctioned force, not to any vigilante who knocks on their door.
All of this could be academical if it turns out the USA intended to assassinate Bin Laden from the start, as some sources claim.
Not true. First, Pakistani laws apply to all actions perpetrated on Pakistani soil, regardless of who perpetrates them. I think you know this already - after all, if someone visits YOUR country, wouldn't you expect them to be bound by your laws?
Second, laws which restrict the actions of government generally apply to everything the government does, regardless of where they do it. For example, if the government is not allowed to assassinate a head of state, it doesn't automatically become allowed because you step outside the borders of the country. The US constitution contains no exception for actions the government perpetrates on foreign territory. If anything, actions are *more* restricted on foreign territory - for example, the government is not allowed to land troops on foreign soil without consent from Congress.
Third, the US constitution clearly talks about the rights of "people", not "citizens". Where it means "citiizen" (for example, who's allowed to run for President), it clearly states so. A foreigner visiting USA has the same constitutional rights to due process as any citizen. Which is the very least you can ask - a country which denies basic human rights to foreign visitors would be despicable.
Fourth, international law grants each country sovereignty over its own territory. Sending troops into a foreign country without its consent could constitute an act of war.
Fifth, there are international agreements covering terrorism - they outline, among other things, who is considered a terrorist, and what countries are required to do to assist in apprehending terrorists.
Books consist of a sequence of n different typographic characters. By assigning a number from 0 to n-1 to each typographic character, any book consisting of m characters can be read as an m-digit number written in base n. Thus, we have proven an isomorphism between books and numbers.
Does that prove that books are just numbers, and that, since numbers aren't copyrightable, books can't be, either?
Sorry, I think the "software is math" argument is silly. Software patents are granted for specific applications of software, as understood in natural language terms, not for specific mathematical algorithms.
There are many other good reasons software patents should be abolished, for example, because they fail the basic rationale for patents. Patents came about to give an incentive to businesses to publicise their inventions, so others could build and improve upon them. But software businesses don't generally keep their algorithms or data structures secret - the exact method you use to traverse hash tables or convert numbers from binary to octal are rarely that important to a software business, and they can be found out anyway through reverse-engineering. Algorithms are considered part of a programmer's toolbox - useful, but not essential, and usually possible to work around if you can't use a specific algorithm. Most research is either shared freely when programmers change jobs, or is financed by universities, so there's no need for an incentive to publish "software innovations".
There's only one problem with that argument - THIS IS NOT A WAR.
Calling it a "war on terror" is just a rhetorical device - it's not a war in the sense of the Geneva convention. A war is an armed conflict between states; this is an armed conflict between a state (USA) and a number of individuals (the terrorists). That means criminal law applies, not martial law.
But I'm not a society, I'm a person, so it makes no sense for me to support rules which only benefit society as such. The same is true for every politician, voter, businessperson, etc. Thus, the rules which only benefit society as such can't be created by individuals, they need to arise spontaneously - or, in other words, they need to be created by society as such.
How do they know when two algorithms are identical when not even theoretical computer scientists can agree on a definition that is useful in practice and theoretically well-defined at the same time?
In other words, are patent lawyers and lawmakers really that retarded?
The court has to make a subjective decision on whether two algorithms are substantially different, just as they do when they decide whether two machines are substantially different. It's not based on mathematical isomorphism, it's based on how obvious an algorithm is to a human expert working in the field.
The legal system doesn't need a comprehensive definition of what an "algorithm" is - they work it out on a case-by-case basis, and base later cases on similarities to previous cases (case law).
Unfortunately, software patents lead to absurd consequences in practice, since programs practically consist of patentable algorithms. As a programmer, it becomes practically impossible to be sure you're not violating someone's patent.
It would also need to be in accordance with local laws - if the Pakistani government gave their informal consent, in spite of the law, it's still a violation of Pakistani sovereignity.
I'm not familiar with Pakistani law, but I doubt it's completely legal to let a foreign special ops team into your country and let them do police work.
While I don't feel particularly sorry for Bin Laden, I'm bothered by the belief many Americans seem to have that they have a right to enforce their laws all over the world.
Sending a special ops team into a foreign country to "bring someone to justice" is kidnapping, and the victim of such an operation is in their rights to defend themselves - even if they're guilty of the original crime.
For the sake of argument, let's say my country, Sweden, decided to try a US military officer for war crimes. While the officer was visiting, say, Germany, Swedish police would sneak up to him and try to arrest him. He would refuse to come peacefully, there would be a firefight, and the officer would be killed.
Would you just shrug and say, "Well, our officer was offered due process and refused it, so it's his own fault for being shot"? Or would you claim that your officer has no obligation to bow to the justice of a foreign nation?
There's a very simple solution to give people free Internet access without opening up your internal network, but it requires three routers.
I simply connected my old wired 100 Mbps router to the Internet, and then hooked up my new, secured WiFi router, and an old, unsecured 10 Mbps WiFi router, to one port each. Each router is on a different subnet, and the wired router has no idea how to route packets between the two WiFi subnets. Since I have a 100 Mbit Internet connection, 10 Mbit feels just about right to donate to the public.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone has something to hide.
Are you embarrassed about the type of porn you view? How about if your friends knew about it? If a prospective employer could check up on it? If your ex-wife's lawyer brought it up in a custody case?
Have you ever had any mental illness, veneral disease, or other condition you don't tell everyone about?
Have you ever left anything out when doing taxes?
They can't use the information gained from spying in a court of law, since it would be inadmissible evidence. Even if an intelligence agency has full access to someone's Facebook details, the prosecutor needs to obtain the information a second time through legal means.
Also, intelligence agencies are careful not to reveal exactly how much they know. Keeping your sources hidden is one of the basic principles of intelligence.
I'd mod parent Insightful, if I hadn't already posted in the discussion.
Governments and powerful organisations should be open and accountable. Individuals should have strong privacy. What's so hard to understand?
If someone hacked into my e-mail account at work and used it to expose something illegal my company had done, I'd be okay with that. If someone hacked into my private e-mail account, I'd think they were a jerk. The first is ok, the second is not.
Assange is not "deciding national security policy" for anyone. Nothing stops your government from trying to keep anything they want secret. It just can't expect the rest of the world to play their game for them.
Why should I hide from my government? It's not like they don't already know who I am.
I think the point is that sites like Facebook enables the government to do this on a massive scale. It means they will have more time to go after you, if you happen to do something illegal or undesirable. But more importantly, it gives the government too much power. Everyone has done something wrong. Those who have the resources to dig deep enough, can jail or destroy the reputation of anyone who opposes them, from Joe Public to Mother Theresa.
Most likely true. People do "heroic" things for all kinds of reasons: fame, ego boost, being desired by the opposite sex, and so on. As long as they don't act irresponsibly, I'm ok with it.
Don't worry, I'm sure sure they can make up one. After all, our Swedish prosecutors managed to put out an arrest warrant for rape because he allegedly broke the condom when having consensual sex...
I think Assange's point is that Facebook is far more effective than any surveillance system oppressive dictatorships can dream up.
No, that would mean someone could just bribe the government into looking the other way, and it would suddenly become legal. For example, a corporation could bribe the government of an African nation to look the other way while they dump their toxic waste, but that doesn't make it legal. Or the government could choose to look the other way while someone rigs the election to their benefit, but that doesn't make it legal.
The government is put in power by the people to act on their behalf. The laws act as instructions for the government. When the government breaks the law, they're acting without the people's consent.
There is not any violation of sovereignty to perform a military operation with permission.
Well, if the Pakistani government gave their permission, perhaps we can't criticise the US military for going there, even if it was against Pakistani law. After all, it's the local government's responsibility to enforce their own laws.
But neither can we blame a suspect for defending himself when a special ops team, without legal authority in the country, suddenly shows up outside his door and tries to take him away. If the special ops team kills the suspect when he defends himself, it's manslaughter or worse.
So far, we know too little. We don't know what permission, if any, the Pakistani government gave, we don't know if the special ops team went there with the intention to kill or to capture Bin Laden, and we don't know if they identified themselves or just snuck into the building and started shooting. Perhaps we will never know for sure.
In the case of Bin Laden, most people don't care about due process. But I'm worried about what the US government will do next. What if they go after people like Assange? Leading American politicians have seriously suggested assassinating foreign citizens. What's next - threatening to kill anyone who blows the whistle on places like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo? Will I be put on the list if I donate money to Wikileaks?
True, the US government can often do what they damn well please, since they have by far the largest military budget in the world.
But don't think we haven't noticed how that budget is putting your government deeper and deeper into debt, and the day when you will be denied new loans is getting closer and closer.
How are you going to pay your army then? Declare a state of emergency and let the state take over the industries (i.e, turn socialist)? That's the path Nazi Germany went down, and we know what happened to them.
Ah, I missed that :)
I agree.
True - the big players, like China and the USA, are often able to ignore international laws, even the ones they agreed to follow, and get away with it. I was just pointing out the error in believing that everything was fine and legal with the killing of Bin Laden.
Who said Pakistan "never" prosecutes incursions into their territory?
I'm just saying that if Pakistan's government willingly looked the other way when a US special ops team slipped into their country, it doesn't make the ops team's actions legal. The special ops team has no right to apprehend someone under those circumstances, and the target of the operation is in their full rights to use force to defend themselves against being kidnapped - even if they are guilty of a crime.
A suspect is only obligated to surrender to the police or an equivalent government-sanctioned force, not to any vigilante who knocks on their door.
All of this could be academical if it turns out the USA intended to assassinate Bin Laden from the start, as some sources claim.
Not true. First, Pakistani laws apply to all actions perpetrated on Pakistani soil, regardless of who perpetrates them. I think you know this already - after all, if someone visits YOUR country, wouldn't you expect them to be bound by your laws?
Second, laws which restrict the actions of government generally apply to everything the government does, regardless of where they do it. For example, if the government is not allowed to assassinate a head of state, it doesn't automatically become allowed because you step outside the borders of the country. The US constitution contains no exception for actions the government perpetrates on foreign territory. If anything, actions are *more* restricted on foreign territory - for example, the government is not allowed to land troops on foreign soil without consent from Congress.
Third, the US constitution clearly talks about the rights of "people", not "citizens". Where it means "citiizen" (for example, who's allowed to run for President), it clearly states so. A foreigner visiting USA has the same constitutional rights to due process as any citizen. Which is the very least you can ask - a country which denies basic human rights to foreign visitors would be despicable.
Fourth, international law grants each country sovereignty over its own territory. Sending troops into a foreign country without its consent could constitute an act of war.
Fifth, there are international agreements covering terrorism - they outline, among other things, who is considered a terrorist, and what countries are required to do to assist in apprehending terrorists.
Books consist of a sequence of n different typographic characters. By assigning a number from 0 to n-1 to each typographic character, any book consisting of m characters can be read as an m-digit number written in base n. Thus, we have proven an isomorphism between books and numbers.
Does that prove that books are just numbers, and that, since numbers aren't copyrightable, books can't be, either?
Sorry, I think the "software is math" argument is silly. Software patents are granted for specific applications of software, as understood in natural language terms, not for specific mathematical algorithms.
There are many other good reasons software patents should be abolished, for example, because they fail the basic rationale for patents. Patents came about to give an incentive to businesses to publicise their inventions, so others could build and improve upon them. But software businesses don't generally keep their algorithms or data structures secret - the exact method you use to traverse hash tables or convert numbers from binary to octal are rarely that important to a software business, and they can be found out anyway through reverse-engineering. Algorithms are considered part of a programmer's toolbox - useful, but not essential, and usually possible to work around if you can't use a specific algorithm. Most research is either shared freely when programmers change jobs, or is financed by universities, so there's no need for an incentive to publish "software innovations".
There's only one problem with that argument - THIS IS NOT A WAR.
Calling it a "war on terror" is just a rhetorical device - it's not a war in the sense of the Geneva convention. A war is an armed conflict between states; this is an armed conflict between a state (USA) and a number of individuals (the terrorists). That means criminal law applies, not martial law.
But I'm not a society, I'm a person, so it makes no sense for me to support rules which only benefit society as such. The same is true for every politician, voter, businessperson, etc. Thus, the rules which only benefit society as such can't be created by individuals, they need to arise spontaneously - or, in other words, they need to be created by society as such.
How do they know when two algorithms are identical when not even theoretical computer scientists can agree on a definition that is useful in practice and theoretically well-defined at the same time?
In other words, are patent lawyers and lawmakers really that retarded?
The court has to make a subjective decision on whether two algorithms are substantially different, just as they do when they decide whether two machines are substantially different. It's not based on mathematical isomorphism, it's based on how obvious an algorithm is to a human expert working in the field.
The legal system doesn't need a comprehensive definition of what an "algorithm" is - they work it out on a case-by-case basis, and base later cases on similarities to previous cases (case law).
Unfortunately, software patents lead to absurd consequences in practice, since programs practically consist of patentable algorithms. As a programmer, it becomes practically impossible to be sure you're not violating someone's patent.
It would also need to be in accordance with local laws - if the Pakistani government gave their informal consent, in spite of the law, it's still a violation of Pakistani sovereignity.
I'm not familiar with Pakistani law, but I doubt it's completely legal to let a foreign special ops team into your country and let them do police work.
New Zealander? Er.. you guys are OK
I can't believe you missed the easiest one!
While I don't feel particularly sorry for Bin Laden, I'm bothered by the belief many Americans seem to have that they have a right to enforce their laws all over the world.
Sending a special ops team into a foreign country to "bring someone to justice" is kidnapping, and the victim of such an operation is in their rights to defend themselves - even if they're guilty of the original crime.
For the sake of argument, let's say my country, Sweden, decided to try a US military officer for war crimes. While the officer was visiting, say, Germany, Swedish police would sneak up to him and try to arrest him. He would refuse to come peacefully, there would be a firefight, and the officer would be killed.
Would you just shrug and say, "Well, our officer was offered due process and refused it, so it's his own fault for being shot"? Or would you claim that your officer has no obligation to bow to the justice of a foreign nation?
There's a very simple solution to give people free Internet access without opening up your internal network, but it requires three routers.
I simply connected my old wired 100 Mbps router to the Internet, and then hooked up my new, secured WiFi router, and an old, unsecured 10 Mbps WiFi router, to one port each. Each router is on a different subnet, and the wired router has no idea how to route packets between the two WiFi subnets. Since I have a 100 Mbit Internet connection, 10 Mbit feels just about right to donate to the public.
That last 0.1 cent must feel realy good for you :)