Actually, defunding this program has an enormous impact on pending court cases. One cannot argue that Congress has authorized this program if Congress has voted to deny it funding. As such, the executive branch would then be running an unauthorized program against the express will of the legislature. At that point, the primary argument against court challenges - that this is legal because it has Congress' stamp of approval - is moot and the court challenges actually have a better chance of having the program declared illegal.
At that point, if the executive branch continues running it, they risk massive backlash and someone (not someone -too- high up of course) will probably go to prison.
You should probably ask Tesla about that since they're already doing it in some stations in California.
“We actually have grid storage going on at some of our Supercharging stations,” said Musk, noting that two stations in California currently have 500 kilowatt-hours of combined energy storage—with the potential of “putting out a megawatt if need be.”
“The chargers are generating energy cumulatively throughout the course of the week, and it cumulatively adds up to more than what the cars consume,” said Musk. “So it's actually capable of going completely off-grid,” and of continuing to charge cars when the power goes out.
So that's a solution that does exactly what you claimed is not possible and has never been done, and it's doing it today, right now.
Right now, battery technology and charging methodology are still lacking for mass-market EV adoption. Personally, I'm thrilled that Tesla is releasing cars with reasonable range for commuters (I drive 75mi each day I commute - 160 is probably the minimum I would want in an EV),... Once battery tech gets to a point where it's long range enough for 99% of commuters and it's not $10k/pack, we'll be very ready for mass adoption of swap stations, charging points and all the economic activity that will enable/sustain it.
The low-end Tesla Model S will do over 200 miles, so your 160 mile requirement is met. The Supercharging stations are free and will add 150 miles of range in 20-22 minutes once the upgrades are completed (per Musk). The existing stations take a whole 30 minutes. 20 - 30 minute stop after 3 hours of straight highway driving? Completely reasonable, especially since such trips are rare for just about everyone.
As for it supporting 99% of commuters? Ok, so the low-end Model S has a range of >200 miles (Tesla says 230, EPA says 208, let's say 200 on a bad day). Per the US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb13-41.html) there are just 600,000 people who travel more than 50 miles each way to work. That's 0.2% of the population and that's half the range of the Model S on a bad day. This puts the likely number of people commuting >100 miles each way somewhere in the range of 0.001% or so. For those people, (all ~3,000 of them), the low-end Model S probably won't cut it unless they can charge at work. If they're commuting over 200 miles each day to work, they're likely not working at a car wash, so there's at least a decent chance some percentage of them will be able to charge at work and complete their 3+ hour daily commute. (This, by the way, is ridiculous. If you're commuting 3+ hours a day to work, sleep in your office or your car and join the YMCA so you can shower and change, then go home on the weekends. Or FFS move closer or telecommute.)
So yet again, the Model S meets your demand for range. Is the pack expensive? Sure, for now, and so's the car. But that isn't the point; the point is that it's an EV that's affordable for a sizable group within the US (all those people driving Audis and BMWs) and which actually works in the real world. By your own standards, it works. By any reasonable measure, it works. Unless you're commuting 200+ miles round-trip each day and putting 70,000+ miles on your car each year (and according to the US Census, you aren't), the Model S works fine for nearly everyone.
If you come to me and say that the Nissan Leaf (75 mile range) or the Ford Focus Electric (76 mile range) or the Smart ED (68 mile range) won't work for a big chunk of the US population and I say you're absolutely right. I'd be afraid to drive the thing to the grocery store in a major metro area for fear that I'd get stuck in traffic and end up calling for a tow. 60 miles 'til E is when I fill up my gas tank. Why? Because I don't like stopping unexpectedly or worrying unnecessarily about when I'll run out. But how in the world can you say that with a vehicle that goes 200 miles or more between charges and which starts out every day fully charged? It's the perfect daily commuter; you'd -never- have to fill the thing up at a 'station' of any kind unless you were going on a long trip. Consider taking the 7-minute stops at the gas station you'd typically make once a week (that's over 6 hours a year pumping gas into your car) and using a quarter of that time to plan the two road trips a year your average Joe does that go over 200 miles. Find a Supercharger station along the way, stop for 20 - 30 minutes (have a bite to eat while it's charging), and complete your trip. If that's too much trouble for you, take some of the money you've saved from not filling your gas tank (in the range of $2,000/yr average) and rent a really nice car for the week and then realize what a pain in the ass it is
What current EVs are *not* is a replacement for an automobile for more general transportation purposes. They are not yet a replacement for a standard gasoline/diesel vehicle, and I would actually like for these electric car companies to work to that end (as I am sure they are). If I am complaining, it is mostly so that people are aware that what they are giving is not good enough for me, but I certainly don't want to discourage others from buying it if it is perfectly acceptable for them. After all, early adopters will provide the capital to get features that I want, so please, keep buy them if you like them.
I'm confused. Tesla has provided cars that go over 200 miles between charges, can be charged at home for a few bucks per "tank" (rather than $50+), and is providing a network of rapid chargers that will give you (per Musk's announcement on the upgraded Superchargers) 150 miles of additional range in 20 - 22 minutes for FREE. Even beyond that, you'll have the option to pay the cost of a tank of gas and swap the battery in half the time it takes to fill your traditional tank if you're so impatient that you can't be bothered to wait 20 minutes after driving for 3 hours straight.
What the fuck are you doing with your existing gas engine car that makes that not better in every conceivable way? Hauling a boat up the side of Mount Everest? While the Volt and some other EVs are certainly no replacement for the masses in the US (arguably, they'd work great in much of western Europe), the two vehicles Tesla has produced both end up being fantastic drop-in replacements for gas powered cars in all but the edge cases.
Nobody does a 300 mile commute to work every day. Nobody does a 300 mile trip to the grocery store. If you just drive the low end of the range of the Model S every day, you're claiming to put 73,000 miles a year on your car and you're full of shit. There's probably 4% of the US population that couldn't use a Model S as a drop-in replacement for their gas powered car today. There's probably 1% or less who couldn't use a Model S for a drop-in replacement in a year from now when the Supercharger network is upgraded and vastly expanded.
I don't have a Model S or a Roadster, though I'd love to if I could. I do, however, get irritated at the utterly irrational bullshit spewed by people who are convinced that no EV ever produced will ever work for them. Tesla could make an EV that does 0-60 in 1.5 seconds, has a 4,000 mile range, sees 1% range reduction in Antarctic Winter temperatures, works underwater, flies in the air at Mach 5, self-drives, self-parks, seats 12 comfortably, and there would STILL be people here bullshitting that it just won't work for them.
Cut the crap. If you have an actual issue with the functionality of the car, spell it out and make damn sure it makes sense. Then consider whether it applies to more than 2% of the other 300 million people in this country. I've yet to see someone come up with a real problem with these cars; just imaginary scenarios that don't exist in real life.
And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology.
You mean like every cordless personal electronic device has been doing for 40 years?
You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.
You mean like every electric vehicle every produced does?
Besides, the power draw is going to be around 30 MW regardless on whether you fast- or slow charge the car. When charging slow, the time per car increases, and the number of cars simultaneously charging increases proportionally.
What if you drew the powered needed during off-peak hours? Since Tesla's footing the bill for it (Supercharger station charging is free and will always be free per Musk), that would seem to make the most sense anyway.
You seem to have come up with problems that have been solved for decades; even centuries if you're talking pure energy storage solutions.
If only there were some way to store electricity that you draw off the mains during off-peak times so it could be delivered quickly when people need it...
Unless and until someone comes up with better technology for charging and batteries than Tesla (and nobody's within 10 years of them), Tesla will be the gold standard by which any others are measured. Smart car manufacturers will license Tesla's tech as quickly as possible with a long term agreement and save the R&D. Lock it in at the cheap price point now and then sit back while everyone else struggles to catch up. Musk is very big into sharing the amazing technology he comes up with because he isn't looking to make a buck; he's looking to change the world (this usually results in making a buck along the way anyway).
Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota; they'd be stupid not to license the tech now. Musk will keep it cheap, they'll have access to the supercharging network, and they'll be able to mass produce within a few years.
I wish it would hold, but I give that about 1 chance in 20.
The problem is that he isn't being asked to provide the encryption key (information, i.e. testimony) but rather access to a digital area he provably has access to. It's as if the police came to your house with a search warrant, you refused to let them in, and they couldn't break down the door. They don't just go home and call it a day, they get the judge to compel you to open the door to allow them to execute a lawful search. This guy has locked a digital container and the police have been unable to break the lock. If they have a valid search warrant for the digital container, then Feldman can be compelled to provide them access. Not the key (information, i.e. testimony), but access.
They got the order quashed because the law isn't yet crystal clear and this is a situation that cannot be undone. If the order stood and Feldman were to comply, the genie would be out of the bottle. This simply keeps the genie in the bottle until the question can be ultimately resolved and I think existing law is clear enough to say that in the end, Feldman will have to unlock the container (decrypt the drive) to allow the police access to whatever's inside.
That depends entirely on what those records are and who's receiving the subpoena. Firstly, if it's a third party receiving the subpoena (your accountant, for instance), there exists no Fifth Amendment question. One cannot assert a Fifth Amendment privilege on behalf of a third party.
However, you're almost certainly talking about an individual receiving a subpoena for their own records. In this case, the only situation in which one can be compelled by a court to produce such records is within the scope of the "Required Records Doctrine". That doctrine holds that records which must be maintained in order to comply with existing government regulations are public documents insofar as the government has the legal right to inspect them at any time as established by law in order to confirm regulatory compliance.
In other words, if you're running an oil drilling operations for instance, and the EPA requires that you have an environmental impact adviser on staff at all times, and the law states that the EPA can inspect certain payroll documentation at any time in order to confirm you're in compliance, then the government already has rights to those documents. If the IRS has regulations which allow them to inspect certain other documents at any time in order to confirm you're in compliance with tax laws and regulations, then the government already has rights to those documents as well.
In other words, these are documents you maintain with the express purpose of reporting them to the government in order to show compliance with the law. As such, a Fifth Amendment privilege cannot apply since these are public documents (at least in terms of compliance checking). By doing whatever activity it is you're doing that requires these documents, you're already consenting to government inspection of them. As such, you're not producing evidence; rather you're being compelled to produce public documents per the existing relationship.
Now if you have financial documents which the government does not already have a right to see by law, then a subpoena compelling you to produce them runs into Fifth Amendment issues. For instance, if you murder your wife and you purchase a shovel to dig her grave, the court cannot compel you to produce the receipt for the shovel because it has no existing rights to that document. On the other hand, if you use your company funds to purchase the shovel, you may have a stickier situation. If you keep detailed records of the allowance and ice cream truck money you give you kids (and that somehow has something to do with the case, and the government can show that those records exist and that you have them - because without those two things, we don't even reach this point), it's highly unlikely a court can compel you to produce them.
One final example to tie it all together. Let's assume you're on trial for animal abuse. The court likely cannot compel you to produce your vet bills, but they most certainly can require your vet to produce them. This changes if there's a law in your state which says that all animal owners must maintain vet bills for x number of years and that the "Animal Companion Protection Agency" of the state can inspect those records at any time. Because of the fact that the government has a right to those specific records, the court can then compel you to produce them. Now if the "Animal Companion Protection Agency" only has the legal rights to inspect vet records for regular checkups, shots, and spay/neuter operations, then the court cannot compel you to produce the vet records relating to injuries your animal has sustained. As the government does not already have rights to those specific documents, you cannot be compelled to produce them. A smart cop or prosecutor would compel you to produce the records for checkups and shots and then get the court to compel that vet (or those vets if you've used more than one) to release the remainder of the records.
Again, you're not being compelled to produce evidence; you're being compelled to produce very specific things which the government already has a right to inspect. Anything outside of that remains firmly protected behind the Fifth Amendment privilege.
No, they cannot force you to produce evidence and the court cannot order you to do so. Nor can the court hold you indefinitely until you produce evidence against yourself. Access yes, but not evidence.
The analogy would be more like this: you're a survivalist who has made his home in a Cold War bomb shelter. You're a suspect in the kidnapping of three women. The police have taped telephone conversations in which you say things like "I got them chained up in the bedroom, they aren't going anywhere". You left home to go to work and the police arrested you there. They get a search warrant for your home. Your home being a Cold War bomb shelter, they can't get in. They tried drilling the hinges, ramming the door; it's a bomb shelter. They have no way in.
The judge can then order you to provide access pursuant to the search warrant. Now if they don't find their missing kidnap victims, the police cannot force you and the judge cannot order you to produce them. If you've got them in a secret room behind a bookshelf, you do not have to offer that information up, nor can you be compelled by court order to provide that information. And that's the real difference here: access vs information. Critically, when you're providing the former, you're inherently providing the latter. Specifically, you're demonstrating that you own/have access to the place being searched. Unless the police already know that information well enough to prove it in court, you cannot be compelled to provide it by providing the access.
So if they have property records showing that you own the Cold War bomb shelter, you can be compelled by a court to provide the police access. If the police simply think you've taken up residence there or are otherwise using it, but they have no evidence to show that, the court cannot compel you to provide access. Information is protected as testimony by the Fifth Amendment. Access to specific places you own or control is not.
Going back to your farm example, providing your wife's body would be providing information the police do not already have. As such, the judge cannot compel you to provide it. However, if property records confirm the farm is your's and you've erected a Star Trek force field around the thing such that the police cannot get inside to execute a search warrant looking for her body, you can be compelled to get the police past your force field so they can conduct their search. If you've hidden her body on your neighbor's farm or a secret area under your barn and the police don't find the body, nobody can compel you to produce it. Producing the body would prove you knew where it was. This provides information to the government which it did not already have. Therefore, compelling you to provide its location would present a Fifth Amendment problem.
Back to the issue at hand, the encrypted hard drive is treated as a safe the police cannot open. If they can prove you have access to it (i.e. you have the ability and the lawful right to unlock it) and they can show good reason to believe they'll find specific evidence therein, you can be compelled to provide access. Doesn't matter whether it's a safe in the wall or an encrypted hard drive. Failing to comply with the court order means the judge simply jails you until you comply. Providing the encryption key or combination lock code would be providing information (which is a Fifth Amendment problem), but providing access is not. Ergo, you can be compelled to unlock the container (be it wall safe or hard drive encryption) to provide access to the police for a search pursuant to a warrant, but you cannot be compelled to provide information regarding its unlocking (e.g. the wall safe combination code or the encryption key for the hard drive).
Access yes, but not information which the government does not already have.
My country was born when a group of doctors, lawyers, and farmers came to realization that the slim chance of gaining liberty was worth taking up arms against the most powerful military the world had ever seen. They didn't come to that realization in secret; they signed and publicly posted an open letter of treason against the Crown, who controlled the world's most powerful military, and who would have gladly put each of them to death for their treasonous act. They then proceeded to fight not one, but two wars against the world's most powerful military to secure the rights they believed all people were entitled to enjoy. They were not seasoned soldiers or military strategists who knew how to fight the armies of the Crown; they were doctors, lawyers, and farmers who were almost certainly about to die in a completely futile effort. One of the states that arose during this period adopted the motto "Live free or die".
In the spirit of their realization and their actions, please allow me to be the first to say: Fuck your safety. Being free isn't safe. Safety is never, never worth the cost of losing freedom.
I quite honestly wish that all the people who think as you do would go back to England. I think it'd return this country to a much better state; one where we still had balls and did great things.
Until Elon Musk starts a company to do this, I'll consider it basically suicide. When Elon Musk tells me it can be done and he puts together something that can do it, I'll sign up in a heartbeat.
Can we please stop using the safe example unless someone can cite a case where the "foregone conclusion" idea was applied to that? If the government has a safe they can just cut it open. The original "foregone conclusion" case was in 1976 - it's hardly an ancient legal doctrine, and that makes me suspicious. Somehow before that we managed to arrest, try and convict thousands (millions?) of criminals, including such illustrious figures as Al Capone, without the invention of this exception.
Doe v. United States - 487 U.S. 201 (1988): a defendant can be compelled to provide a key to a safe. United States v. Boucher: (referencing Doe v. United States): a defendant cannot be compelled to provide a password, but can be compelled to provide the unencrypted contents. From that case, the act of producing documents in response to a subpoena can be considered incriminating only when the existence of the subpoenaed material is previously unknown to the government or where production would implicitly authenticate the documents. United States v. Fricosu: a defendant can be compelled to provide the unencrypted contents of a password.
In those cases, it was affirmed that where the government can show knowledge of both your ownership/control of the container and evidence of specific incriminating evidence being contained therein, you can be forced to unseal said container pursuant to a search warrant. The actually password cannot be compelled (Doe v. United States, United States v. Kirschner), but access to the unencrypted contents can be.
Also, the doctrine you're looking for is called the "act-of-production doctrine". It holds that the act of a witness in producing documents or materials may have a testimonial aspect for purposes of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to the extent that the act of production provides information about the (1) existence; (2) custody; or (3) authenticity, of the documents or materials produced. Absent those, no testimonial aspect exists and thus, no Fifth Amendment privilege. You cannot be compelled to produce testimony against yourself. You can be compelled to produce evidence the government already knows exists if they know where it is and that you control it.
Even if you do accept the suspicious "foregone conclusion" doctrine, the safe analogy doesn't work. Opening the safe is providing physical access to something. Decrypting the hard drives is giving them information about evidence that they already possess.
In both cases, you're providing access to evidence. In both cases, said evidence can be files (paper files in a safe or digital files on a storage device). It's all about access. You're merely providing access to evidence the government knows exists and knows you control. The government may know (based on, for instance, recorded phone conversations) that you keep your "uncooked" tax documents in the safe under your desk / the encrypted hard drive in your laptop. What they don't have (until you're compelled to provide access) is the actual evidence in hand. In both cases, they want access to the container so the files therein can be retrieved.
Again the "don't tell us the password, just give us the decrypted data" is a meaningless distinction. What other use would the government have for the password than to decrypt the drives? Having the accused give them the decrypted data achieves the same ends, and just provides some, ahem, tenuous legal cover to chipping away at the Bill of Rights.
Not true at all. Compelling an individual to provide a password is compelling testimony. You're requiring them to give information stored in their mind. That's a problem for the US Constitution. Compelling that individual to provide access to evidence known to exist in a specific location (e.g. a wall safe or an encrypted hard drive) is not compelling testimony of any kind. You aren't providing self-incriminating information to the government; you're providing
The typical sentence for second degree murder is a max of 25 years. The typical sentence for first degree murder is 40 years.
It makes a difference.
As for the rest of it, you're wrong again. They don't have to drill the safe. Per the US Supreme Court, the court can compel you to open it. See: Doe v. United States - 487 U.S. 201 (1988). The material information regarding ownership or access to the safe is the only Fifth Amendment issue at play in such a situation. Once it's established that you own the safe, you can be compelled by court order to provide access thereto to police.
It's well established that if the government can prove you own or otherwise have access to the safe (i.e. the hard drive) and can prove that a reasonable chance exists that specific, material evidence of a crime can be found inside your safe (e.g. the murder weapon, the uncooked books, or your illegal porn collection), you can be compelled by the court to provide access thereto. The idea being that if the government knows what it's looking for and where to find it, and you have access to where the government is looking, you must provide access. That doesn't mean you have to show them the hidden compartment in your safe where you hid the gun, but you must provide them the access necessary to perform a proper search of your safe.
To rise to the level of self-incrimination, the admission must be something the government doesn't already know. If they know (with reasonable certainty) that you own the safe and that the murder weapon is inside the safe, you must provide access to the safe. If they can't provide evidence that you own or have access to the safe, you cannot be compelled to provide access (because forcing you to provide access necessarily means forcing you to demonstrate that you own or have access to the safe, which would rise to the level of self-incrimination as that is new information that can link you to the crime). Forcing you to demonstrate ownership or access is the Fifth Amendment issue; not the government having said access.
Beyond that, a claim of having "forgotten" a passcode or "lost" a key to something you apparently have regular access to (as an owner or authorized user) while under court order is construed as a refusal to provide access. As such, you can be held in contempt indefinitely until you "remember".
Let's say you killed 5 people with 5 different guns and you put each of those guns in a separate safe. The government comes along and unlocks one of the safes and inside that safe is the purchase receipt for all five safes with your name on it (thus proving you own and have access to all the safes). By your logic, they've got a good case for murder on the basis of what they found in one safe, so they should just leave the other four alone.
What the judge is saying is that now that the government can show that you own (and have access to) the other safes and now that they can show it's likely they'll find the other four guns in those safes, there's no longer a Fifth Amendment question since you're not self-incriminating (by providing previously unknown or unprovable evidence against yourself). Rather, it becomes an issue of restricting access to evidence the government already knows about. In other words, the judge can't force you to open a random safe that may or may not be your's, and you can't be ordered to produce a murder weapon you may or may possess or have access to, but you most certainly can be forced to provide access to an area or container which is provably your's and which is likely to contain material evidence of your crimes.
The change came about because new evidence was introduced making it highly probable that the defendant actually had access to material evidence the prosecution was seeking.
I can't force you to open a random storage locker you may or may not have access to, but if I can later prove to a judge that it's your storage locker (e.g. by providing receipts showing you've been paying for it), and I can show that it's likely we'll find material evidence of your criminal acts in there, the court can order you to open said storage locker.
In this case, they began with storage devices they couldn't prove were the defendant's. As such, they couldn't prove the defendant would have the encryption keys for them. Forcing the defendant to provide the encryption keys would have effectively proven that the storage devices were the defendant's, thus providing incriminating evidence to the prosecution that it did not previously have. Once the prosecution was able to show the judge that the defendant was the owner of the storage devices (and thus would have the encryption keys for them), there was no longer an issue of self-incrimination.
The Fifth Amendment means the government can't force you to reveal information that would incriminate you. It does not mean you can restrict access to evidence of your criminal acts when the government knows where and what that evidence is.
Not sure what Bill Nye's cooking up with those beakers and flasks, but I hope it's nothing more complex than Folgers coffee. The guy is a complete idiot when it comes to science and he shows his ass whenever he's brought in as an "expert" by the media.
The judges said a parent's duty of maintenance did not expire when their children reached adulthood, but continued unchanged until they were able to prove either that their children had reached economic independence or had failed to do so through culpable inertia. An adult son who refused work that did not reflect his training, abilities and personal interests could not be held to blame. "You cannot blame a young person, particularly from a well-off family, who refuses a job that does not fit his aspirations," the judges said.
even in the US contracts entered into by a minor are considered invalid.
You're incorrect. In the US, minors can enter into contracts, but up until their 18th birthday, they can unilaterally rescind any contracts entered into while they were a minor for any reason. As such, one can enter into contracts with minors so long as one accepts the risk therein. Once a minor hits 18, any contracts entered into while they were a minor become fully enforceable unless they've already rescinded them.
"So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for?"
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, defunding this program has an enormous impact on pending court cases. One cannot argue that Congress has authorized this program if Congress has voted to deny it funding. As such, the executive branch would then be running an unauthorized program against the express will of the legislature. At that point, the primary argument against court challenges - that this is legal because it has Congress' stamp of approval - is moot and the court challenges actually have a better chance of having the program declared illegal.
At that point, if the executive branch continues running it, they risk massive backlash and someone (not someone -too- high up of course) will probably go to prison.
So if the server at the back-end performing password authentication is compromised, you ask everyone to change their password.
What do you do when the server at the back-end is performing biometric authentication?
Biometrics is the dumbest authentication scheme on the face of the planet and anyone who relies on it is a moron.
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20120046795
You should probably ask Tesla about that since they're already doing it in some stations in California.
“We actually have grid storage going on at some of our Supercharging stations,” said Musk, noting that two stations in California currently have 500 kilowatt-hours of combined energy storage—with the potential of “putting out a megawatt if need be.”
“The chargers are generating energy cumulatively throughout the course of the week, and it cumulatively adds up to more than what the cars consume,” said Musk. “So it's actually capable of going completely off-grid,” and of continuing to charge cars when the power goes out.
So that's a solution that does exactly what you claimed is not possible and has never been done, and it's doing it today, right now.
Any other questions, sport?
Right now, battery technology and charging methodology are still lacking for mass-market EV adoption. Personally, I'm thrilled that Tesla is releasing cars with reasonable range for commuters (I drive 75mi each day I commute - 160 is probably the minimum I would want in an EV), ... Once battery tech gets to a point where it's long range enough for 99% of commuters and it's not $10k/pack, we'll be very ready for mass adoption of swap stations, charging points and all the economic activity that will enable/sustain it.
The low-end Tesla Model S will do over 200 miles, so your 160 mile requirement is met. The Supercharging stations are free and will add 150 miles of range in 20-22 minutes once the upgrades are completed (per Musk). The existing stations take a whole 30 minutes. 20 - 30 minute stop after 3 hours of straight highway driving? Completely reasonable, especially since such trips are rare for just about everyone.
As for it supporting 99% of commuters? Ok, so the low-end Model S has a range of >200 miles (Tesla says 230, EPA says 208, let's say 200 on a bad day). Per the US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb13-41.html) there are just 600,000 people who travel more than 50 miles each way to work. That's 0.2% of the population and that's half the range of the Model S on a bad day. This puts the likely number of people commuting >100 miles each way somewhere in the range of 0.001% or so. For those people, (all ~3,000 of them), the low-end Model S probably won't cut it unless they can charge at work. If they're commuting over 200 miles each day to work, they're likely not working at a car wash, so there's at least a decent chance some percentage of them will be able to charge at work and complete their 3+ hour daily commute. (This, by the way, is ridiculous. If you're commuting 3+ hours a day to work, sleep in your office or your car and join the YMCA so you can shower and change, then go home on the weekends. Or FFS move closer or telecommute.)
So yet again, the Model S meets your demand for range. Is the pack expensive? Sure, for now, and so's the car. But that isn't the point; the point is that it's an EV that's affordable for a sizable group within the US (all those people driving Audis and BMWs) and which actually works in the real world. By your own standards, it works. By any reasonable measure, it works. Unless you're commuting 200+ miles round-trip each day and putting 70,000+ miles on your car each year (and according to the US Census, you aren't), the Model S works fine for nearly everyone.
If you come to me and say that the Nissan Leaf (75 mile range) or the Ford Focus Electric (76 mile range) or the Smart ED (68 mile range) won't work for a big chunk of the US population and I say you're absolutely right. I'd be afraid to drive the thing to the grocery store in a major metro area for fear that I'd get stuck in traffic and end up calling for a tow. 60 miles 'til E is when I fill up my gas tank. Why? Because I don't like stopping unexpectedly or worrying unnecessarily about when I'll run out. But how in the world can you say that with a vehicle that goes 200 miles or more between charges and which starts out every day fully charged? It's the perfect daily commuter; you'd -never- have to fill the thing up at a 'station' of any kind unless you were going on a long trip. Consider taking the 7-minute stops at the gas station you'd typically make once a week (that's over 6 hours a year pumping gas into your car) and using a quarter of that time to plan the two road trips a year your average Joe does that go over 200 miles. Find a Supercharger station along the way, stop for 20 - 30 minutes (have a bite to eat while it's charging), and complete your trip. If that's too much trouble for you, take some of the money you've saved from not filling your gas tank (in the range of $2,000/yr average) and rent a really nice car for the week and then realize what a pain in the ass it is
What current EVs are *not* is a replacement for an automobile for more general transportation purposes. They are not yet a replacement for a standard gasoline/diesel vehicle, and I would actually like for these electric car companies to work to that end (as I am sure they are). If I am complaining, it is mostly so that people are aware that what they are giving is not good enough for me, but I certainly don't want to discourage others from buying it if it is perfectly acceptable for them. After all, early adopters will provide the capital to get features that I want, so please, keep buy them if you like them.
I'm confused. Tesla has provided cars that go over 200 miles between charges, can be charged at home for a few bucks per "tank" (rather than $50+), and is providing a network of rapid chargers that will give you (per Musk's announcement on the upgraded Superchargers) 150 miles of additional range in 20 - 22 minutes for FREE. Even beyond that, you'll have the option to pay the cost of a tank of gas and swap the battery in half the time it takes to fill your traditional tank if you're so impatient that you can't be bothered to wait 20 minutes after driving for 3 hours straight.
What the fuck are you doing with your existing gas engine car that makes that not better in every conceivable way? Hauling a boat up the side of Mount Everest? While the Volt and some other EVs are certainly no replacement for the masses in the US (arguably, they'd work great in much of western Europe), the two vehicles Tesla has produced both end up being fantastic drop-in replacements for gas powered cars in all but the edge cases.
Nobody does a 300 mile commute to work every day. Nobody does a 300 mile trip to the grocery store. If you just drive the low end of the range of the Model S every day, you're claiming to put 73,000 miles a year on your car and you're full of shit. There's probably 4% of the US population that couldn't use a Model S as a drop-in replacement for their gas powered car today. There's probably 1% or less who couldn't use a Model S for a drop-in replacement in a year from now when the Supercharger network is upgraded and vastly expanded.
I don't have a Model S or a Roadster, though I'd love to if I could. I do, however, get irritated at the utterly irrational bullshit spewed by people who are convinced that no EV ever produced will ever work for them. Tesla could make an EV that does 0-60 in 1.5 seconds, has a 4,000 mile range, sees 1% range reduction in Antarctic Winter temperatures, works underwater, flies in the air at Mach 5, self-drives, self-parks, seats 12 comfortably, and there would STILL be people here bullshitting that it just won't work for them.
Cut the crap. If you have an actual issue with the functionality of the car, spell it out and make damn sure it makes sense. Then consider whether it applies to more than 2% of the other 300 million people in this country. I've yet to see someone come up with a real problem with these cars; just imaginary scenarios that don't exist in real life.
And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology.
You mean like every cordless personal electronic device has been doing for 40 years?
You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.
You mean like every electric vehicle every produced does?
Besides, the power draw is going to be around 30 MW regardless on whether you fast- or slow charge the car. When charging slow, the time per car increases, and the number of cars simultaneously charging increases proportionally.
What if you drew the powered needed during off-peak hours? Since Tesla's footing the bill for it (Supercharger station charging is free and will always be free per Musk), that would seem to make the most sense anyway.
You seem to have come up with problems that have been solved for decades; even centuries if you're talking pure energy storage solutions.
If only there were some way to store electricity that you draw off the mains during off-peak times so it could be delivered quickly when people need it...
Unless and until someone comes up with better technology for charging and batteries than Tesla (and nobody's within 10 years of them), Tesla will be the gold standard by which any others are measured. Smart car manufacturers will license Tesla's tech as quickly as possible with a long term agreement and save the R&D. Lock it in at the cheap price point now and then sit back while everyone else struggles to catch up. Musk is very big into sharing the amazing technology he comes up with because he isn't looking to make a buck; he's looking to change the world (this usually results in making a buck along the way anyway).
Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota; they'd be stupid not to license the tech now. Musk will keep it cheap, they'll have access to the supercharging network, and they'll be able to mass produce within a few years.
I wish it would hold, but I give that about 1 chance in 20.
The problem is that he isn't being asked to provide the encryption key (information, i.e. testimony) but rather access to a digital area he provably has access to. It's as if the police came to your house with a search warrant, you refused to let them in, and they couldn't break down the door. They don't just go home and call it a day, they get the judge to compel you to open the door to allow them to execute a lawful search. This guy has locked a digital container and the police have been unable to break the lock. If they have a valid search warrant for the digital container, then Feldman can be compelled to provide them access. Not the key (information, i.e. testimony), but access.
They got the order quashed because the law isn't yet crystal clear and this is a situation that cannot be undone. If the order stood and Feldman were to comply, the genie would be out of the bottle. This simply keeps the genie in the bottle until the question can be ultimately resolved and I think existing law is clear enough to say that in the end, Feldman will have to unlock the container (decrypt the drive) to allow the police access to whatever's inside.
That depends entirely on what those records are and who's receiving the subpoena. Firstly, if it's a third party receiving the subpoena (your accountant, for instance), there exists no Fifth Amendment question. One cannot assert a Fifth Amendment privilege on behalf of a third party.
However, you're almost certainly talking about an individual receiving a subpoena for their own records. In this case, the only situation in which one can be compelled by a court to produce such records is within the scope of the "Required Records Doctrine". That doctrine holds that records which must be maintained in order to comply with existing government regulations are public documents insofar as the government has the legal right to inspect them at any time as established by law in order to confirm regulatory compliance.
In other words, if you're running an oil drilling operations for instance, and the EPA requires that you have an environmental impact adviser on staff at all times, and the law states that the EPA can inspect certain payroll documentation at any time in order to confirm you're in compliance, then the government already has rights to those documents. If the IRS has regulations which allow them to inspect certain other documents at any time in order to confirm you're in compliance with tax laws and regulations, then the government already has rights to those documents as well.
In other words, these are documents you maintain with the express purpose of reporting them to the government in order to show compliance with the law. As such, a Fifth Amendment privilege cannot apply since these are public documents (at least in terms of compliance checking). By doing whatever activity it is you're doing that requires these documents, you're already consenting to government inspection of them. As such, you're not producing evidence; rather you're being compelled to produce public documents per the existing relationship.
Now if you have financial documents which the government does not already have a right to see by law, then a subpoena compelling you to produce them runs into Fifth Amendment issues. For instance, if you murder your wife and you purchase a shovel to dig her grave, the court cannot compel you to produce the receipt for the shovel because it has no existing rights to that document. On the other hand, if you use your company funds to purchase the shovel, you may have a stickier situation. If you keep detailed records of the allowance and ice cream truck money you give you kids (and that somehow has something to do with the case, and the government can show that those records exist and that you have them - because without those two things, we don't even reach this point), it's highly unlikely a court can compel you to produce them.
One final example to tie it all together. Let's assume you're on trial for animal abuse. The court likely cannot compel you to produce your vet bills, but they most certainly can require your vet to produce them. This changes if there's a law in your state which says that all animal owners must maintain vet bills for x number of years and that the "Animal Companion Protection Agency" of the state can inspect those records at any time. Because of the fact that the government has a right to those specific records, the court can then compel you to produce them. Now if the "Animal Companion Protection Agency" only has the legal rights to inspect vet records for regular checkups, shots, and spay/neuter operations, then the court cannot compel you to produce the vet records relating to injuries your animal has sustained. As the government does not already have rights to those specific documents, you cannot be compelled to produce them. A smart cop or prosecutor would compel you to produce the records for checkups and shots and then get the court to compel that vet (or those vets if you've used more than one) to release the remainder of the records.
Again, you're not being compelled to produce evidence; you're being compelled to produce very specific things which the government already has a right to inspect. Anything outside of that remains firmly protected behind the Fifth Amendment privilege.
No, they cannot force you to produce evidence and the court cannot order you to do so. Nor can the court hold you indefinitely until you produce evidence against yourself. Access yes, but not evidence.
The analogy would be more like this: you're a survivalist who has made his home in a Cold War bomb shelter. You're a suspect in the kidnapping of three women. The police have taped telephone conversations in which you say things like "I got them chained up in the bedroom, they aren't going anywhere". You left home to go to work and the police arrested you there. They get a search warrant for your home. Your home being a Cold War bomb shelter, they can't get in. They tried drilling the hinges, ramming the door; it's a bomb shelter. They have no way in.
The judge can then order you to provide access pursuant to the search warrant. Now if they don't find their missing kidnap victims, the police cannot force you and the judge cannot order you to produce them. If you've got them in a secret room behind a bookshelf, you do not have to offer that information up, nor can you be compelled by court order to provide that information. And that's the real difference here: access vs information. Critically, when you're providing the former, you're inherently providing the latter. Specifically, you're demonstrating that you own/have access to the place being searched. Unless the police already know that information well enough to prove it in court, you cannot be compelled to provide it by providing the access.
So if they have property records showing that you own the Cold War bomb shelter, you can be compelled by a court to provide the police access. If the police simply think you've taken up residence there or are otherwise using it, but they have no evidence to show that, the court cannot compel you to provide access. Information is protected as testimony by the Fifth Amendment. Access to specific places you own or control is not.
Going back to your farm example, providing your wife's body would be providing information the police do not already have. As such, the judge cannot compel you to provide it. However, if property records confirm the farm is your's and you've erected a Star Trek force field around the thing such that the police cannot get inside to execute a search warrant looking for her body, you can be compelled to get the police past your force field so they can conduct their search. If you've hidden her body on your neighbor's farm or a secret area under your barn and the police don't find the body, nobody can compel you to produce it. Producing the body would prove you knew where it was. This provides information to the government which it did not already have. Therefore, compelling you to provide its location would present a Fifth Amendment problem.
Back to the issue at hand, the encrypted hard drive is treated as a safe the police cannot open. If they can prove you have access to it (i.e. you have the ability and the lawful right to unlock it) and they can show good reason to believe they'll find specific evidence therein, you can be compelled to provide access. Doesn't matter whether it's a safe in the wall or an encrypted hard drive. Failing to comply with the court order means the judge simply jails you until you comply. Providing the encryption key or combination lock code would be providing information (which is a Fifth Amendment problem), but providing access is not. Ergo, you can be compelled to unlock the container (be it wall safe or hard drive encryption) to provide access to the police for a search pursuant to a warrant, but you cannot be compelled to provide information regarding its unlocking (e.g. the wall safe combination code or the encryption key for the hard drive).
Access yes, but not information which the government does not already have.
As a USian, I'd like to respond.
My country was born when a group of doctors, lawyers, and farmers came to realization that the slim chance of gaining liberty was worth taking up arms against the most powerful military the world had ever seen. They didn't come to that realization in secret; they signed and publicly posted an open letter of treason against the Crown, who controlled the world's most powerful military, and who would have gladly put each of them to death for their treasonous act. They then proceeded to fight not one, but two wars against the world's most powerful military to secure the rights they believed all people were entitled to enjoy. They were not seasoned soldiers or military strategists who knew how to fight the armies of the Crown; they were doctors, lawyers, and farmers who were almost certainly about to die in a completely futile effort. One of the states that arose during this period adopted the motto "Live free or die".
In the spirit of their realization and their actions, please allow me to be the first to say: Fuck your safety. Being free isn't safe. Safety is never, never worth the cost of losing freedom.
I quite honestly wish that all the people who think as you do would go back to England. I think it'd return this country to a much better state; one where we still had balls and did great things.
Until Elon Musk starts a company to do this, I'll consider it basically suicide. When Elon Musk tells me it can be done and he puts together something that can do it, I'll sign up in a heartbeat.
Can we please stop using the safe example unless someone can cite a case where the "foregone conclusion" idea was applied to that? If the government has a safe they can just cut it open. The original "foregone conclusion" case was in 1976 - it's hardly an ancient legal doctrine, and that makes me suspicious. Somehow before that we managed to arrest, try and convict thousands (millions?) of criminals, including such illustrious figures as Al Capone, without the invention of this exception.
Doe v. United States - 487 U.S. 201 (1988): a defendant can be compelled to provide a key to a safe.
United States v. Boucher: (referencing Doe v. United States): a defendant cannot be compelled to provide a password, but can be compelled to provide the unencrypted contents. From that case, the act of producing documents in response to a subpoena can be considered incriminating only when the existence of the subpoenaed material is previously unknown to the government or where production would implicitly authenticate the documents.
United States v. Fricosu: a defendant can be compelled to provide the unencrypted contents of a password.
In those cases, it was affirmed that where the government can show knowledge of both your ownership/control of the container and evidence of specific incriminating evidence being contained therein, you can be forced to unseal said container pursuant to a search warrant. The actually password cannot be compelled (Doe v. United States, United States v. Kirschner), but access to the unencrypted contents can be.
Also, the doctrine you're looking for is called the "act-of-production doctrine". It holds that the act of a witness in producing documents or materials may have a testimonial aspect for purposes of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to the extent that the act of production provides information about the (1) existence; (2) custody; or (3) authenticity, of the documents or materials produced. Absent those, no testimonial aspect exists and thus, no Fifth Amendment privilege. You cannot be compelled to produce testimony against yourself. You can be compelled to produce evidence the government already knows exists if they know where it is and that you control it.
Even if you do accept the suspicious "foregone conclusion" doctrine, the safe analogy doesn't work. Opening the safe is providing physical access to something. Decrypting the hard drives is giving them information about evidence that they already possess.
In both cases, you're providing access to evidence. In both cases, said evidence can be files (paper files in a safe or digital files on a storage device). It's all about access. You're merely providing access to evidence the government knows exists and knows you control. The government may know (based on, for instance, recorded phone conversations) that you keep your "uncooked" tax documents in the safe under your desk / the encrypted hard drive in your laptop. What they don't have (until you're compelled to provide access) is the actual evidence in hand. In both cases, they want access to the container so the files therein can be retrieved.
Again the "don't tell us the password, just give us the decrypted data" is a meaningless distinction. What other use would the government have for the password than to decrypt the drives? Having the accused give them the decrypted data achieves the same ends, and just provides some, ahem, tenuous legal cover to chipping away at the Bill of Rights.
Not true at all. Compelling an individual to provide a password is compelling testimony. You're requiring them to give information stored in their mind. That's a problem for the US Constitution. Compelling that individual to provide access to evidence known to exist in a specific location (e.g. a wall safe or an encrypted hard drive) is not compelling testimony of any kind. You aren't providing self-incriminating information to the government; you're providing
The typical sentence for second degree murder is a max of 25 years. The typical sentence for first degree murder is 40 years.
It makes a difference.
As for the rest of it, you're wrong again. They don't have to drill the safe. Per the US Supreme Court, the court can compel you to open it. See: Doe v. United States - 487 U.S. 201 (1988). The material information regarding ownership or access to the safe is the only Fifth Amendment issue at play in such a situation. Once it's established that you own the safe, you can be compelled by court order to provide access thereto to police.
The hard drives are evidence of nothing. There is absolutely nothing illegal - implied or explicitly so - about hard drives. The evidence is the data contained therein. That data is being locked by a passcode in the same way a safe can be locked with a passcode. (e.g. http://common2.csnimages.com/lf/49/hash/1564/4498347/1/Honeywell-1-Hr-Fireproof-Electronic-Lock-Security-Safe-%5B2.33-CuFt%5D.jpg)
It's well established that if the government can prove you own or otherwise have access to the safe (i.e. the hard drive) and can prove that a reasonable chance exists that specific, material evidence of a crime can be found inside your safe (e.g. the murder weapon, the uncooked books, or your illegal porn collection), you can be compelled by the court to provide access thereto. The idea being that if the government knows what it's looking for and where to find it, and you have access to where the government is looking, you must provide access. That doesn't mean you have to show them the hidden compartment in your safe where you hid the gun, but you must provide them the access necessary to perform a proper search of your safe.
To rise to the level of self-incrimination, the admission must be something the government doesn't already know. If they know (with reasonable certainty) that you own the safe and that the murder weapon is inside the safe, you must provide access to the safe. If they can't provide evidence that you own or have access to the safe, you cannot be compelled to provide access (because forcing you to provide access necessarily means forcing you to demonstrate that you own or have access to the safe, which would rise to the level of self-incrimination as that is new information that can link you to the crime). Forcing you to demonstrate ownership or access is the Fifth Amendment issue; not the government having said access.
Beyond that, a claim of having "forgotten" a passcode or "lost" a key to something you apparently have regular access to (as an owner or authorized user) while under court order is construed as a refusal to provide access. As such, you can be held in contempt indefinitely until you "remember".
Which will likely take months, if not years to complete (with no guarantee of success).
Let's say you killed 5 people with 5 different guns and you put each of those guns in a separate safe. The government comes along and unlocks one of the safes and inside that safe is the purchase receipt for all five safes with your name on it (thus proving you own and have access to all the safes). By your logic, they've got a good case for murder on the basis of what they found in one safe, so they should just leave the other four alone.
What the judge is saying is that now that the government can show that you own (and have access to) the other safes and now that they can show it's likely they'll find the other four guns in those safes, there's no longer a Fifth Amendment question since you're not self-incriminating (by providing previously unknown or unprovable evidence against yourself). Rather, it becomes an issue of restricting access to evidence the government already knows about. In other words, the judge can't force you to open a random safe that may or may not be your's, and you can't be ordered to produce a murder weapon you may or may possess or have access to, but you most certainly can be forced to provide access to an area or container which is provably your's and which is likely to contain material evidence of your crimes.
The change came about because new evidence was introduced making it highly probable that the defendant actually had access to material evidence the prosecution was seeking.
I can't force you to open a random storage locker you may or may not have access to, but if I can later prove to a judge that it's your storage locker (e.g. by providing receipts showing you've been paying for it), and I can show that it's likely we'll find material evidence of your criminal acts in there, the court can order you to open said storage locker.
In this case, they began with storage devices they couldn't prove were the defendant's. As such, they couldn't prove the defendant would have the encryption keys for them. Forcing the defendant to provide the encryption keys would have effectively proven that the storage devices were the defendant's, thus providing incriminating evidence to the prosecution that it did not previously have. Once the prosecution was able to show the judge that the defendant was the owner of the storage devices (and thus would have the encryption keys for them), there was no longer an issue of self-incrimination.
The Fifth Amendment means the government can't force you to reveal information that would incriminate you. It does not mean you can restrict access to evidence of your criminal acts when the government knows where and what that evidence is.
Indefinite detention for contempt of court until you say "Yes".
Not sure what Bill Nye's cooking up with those beakers and flasks, but I hope it's nothing more complex than Folgers coffee. The guy is a complete idiot when it comes to science and he shows his ass whenever he's brought in as an "expert" by the media.
You seem awfully confident about the good sense of a legal system that orders 60 year old men to continue paying an allowance to their 30-something kids.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/italian-adults-living-at-home
Or that decides parents must continue supporting their kids until they find a job that "fits their aspirations".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/06/philipwillan
The judges said a parent's duty of maintenance did not expire when their children reached adulthood, but continued unchanged until they were able to prove either that their children had reached economic independence or had failed to do so through culpable inertia. An adult son who refused work that did not reflect his training, abilities and personal interests could not be held to blame.
"You cannot blame a young person, particularly from a well-off family, who refuses a job that does not fit his aspirations," the judges said.
Facebook could well be fucked.
even in the US contracts entered into by a minor are considered invalid.
You're incorrect. In the US, minors can enter into contracts, but up until their 18th birthday, they can unilaterally rescind any contracts entered into while they were a minor for any reason. As such, one can enter into contracts with minors so long as one accepts the risk therein. Once a minor hits 18, any contracts entered into while they were a minor become fully enforceable unless they've already rescinded them.
Thank you for that.
http://web.archive.org/web/20001219170800/http://slashdot.org/articles/98/11/11/1011216.shtml
"So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for?"