I don't get why Facebook is so against it? Theoretically at least they shouldn't be selling personally identifiable data, just aggregate data, so an individual identification won't affect their product.
Most likely because they want to guarantee unique and real human accounts to advertisers, when selling ads.
Also, because it makes it easier to connect accounts to other data they may have access to (credit cards on Zinga's servers, etc.).
I am surprised they don't ask for SSN in US so that they can run credit reports and what not. Enough people are sufficiently stupid to hand it over.
The headline suits from bad translation. What they did is filed a complaint.
If the official is not mis-quoted, then the complaint is as good as pressing charges. From TFA:
Johan Terfelt, who oversees the Finansinspektionen unit for payment providers, confirms that the authority has received the filed charges....
He also states there's no room at all for arbitrary randomness, and gives a careful hint at a possible outcome: "The law states, that if there aren't legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed."
I am fairly certain no one had any legal grounds to deny payments to Wikileaks. How could they?
I look forward to seeing Paypal get a taste of having to follow rules.
They do need to be reigned in.
But perhaps Visa and Mastercard need to be put in their place even more. I can usually avoid PayPal in my everyday life, but Visa and Mastercard together pretty much control the world of online purchases. They cannot be allowed pick and choose who gets the payment and who doesn't.
Aren't there any equivalent US laws? Or is no one in US interested in prosecuting?
They want homosexuality to be illegal and want to imprison of even kill those found committing homosexual acts.
Ha!
A certain Republican presidential candidate (and US Senator, Rick Santorum) that was once leading the presidential polls for a time wants homosexuality to be illegal.
Therefore I conclude that we have bigger issues than WBC.
This is not to say that I condone anything WTC does, but their actions have very little material impact. Senators, on the other hand...
I think there's a distinction between 'freedom of speech', and 'freedom to spread hate'. People don't always recognise the latter (which is why there are so many laws against hate speech).
In United States "laws against hate speech" are unconstitutional. There may be many laws against hate speech in other countries, but if you are talking about US, you are wrong.
You may be thinking of "inciting to violence speech", but pure hate speech (e.g., "[someone] should burn in hell") is not illegal.
I cant answer questions like 'how do you think the company leadership is doing' without effectively giving away who I am - my opinion is based on my position, and thus is easily inferred.
You _could_ try talking to people in different positions (and write from their perspective) to solve that problem:)
It could be that one of your underlings is already writing responses tailored to look like it is written by someone in your position in hierarchy.
Like facial recognition.... I am sure this works wonderfully when it only has 10 or 20 exemplars to compare against, but it fails miserably as it scales up. Good luck conclusively identifying an author when there are over a million profiles to potentially match with.
Or like fingerprints that start giving off larger number of false-positives when compared against a large enough database of entries.
Consider this: they don't have to conclusively identify the original author. It will be good enough to find someone with similar writing (i.e. also a subversive) and charge them instead of the original perpetrator. And good luck proving that you didn't write that
Mmmm, a national database of writing samples collected from everyone in school... that sounds like fun.
There are plenty of laws that aren't enforced, and there isn't a constitutional obligation to press charges. A couple of the Republicans running on the policy that there are obscenity laws that weren't being enfroced, and that they would enforce them.
There should be a constitutional requirement to press charges on the laws, so that bad laws are regularly purged from the books. There was an anti-sodomy law in Texas until as recently as 2003!
Not having to press charges means that DAs get to selectively enforce laws against people they do not like and that is terrible
Of course, if the recreational users all started having half a million dollars in property to confiscate, we'd probably see a shift.
Many recreational users already have that much (or more) property.
Do you think all pot smokers are out of work 20 year olds who live in their parents' basement?
Not at all, but I doubt that $0.5M+ pot smokers see the bulk of the anti-drug enforcement. There is a high risk to accidentally stumble upon someone with connections.
Plus other upstanding citizens may see that drug war (especially war on pot) is senseless when they notice their neighbors being arrested. As of now, I assume many pretend that only "bad" people are arrested for drug-possession crimes.
call it "interstate commerce" if a person smokes a plant that naturally grows in his backyard, never actually engaging in commerce or crossing interstate lines
It also doesn't make any sense to start your sentence in the subject line!
As far as your point, that's definitely not the question for the president. That's a question for the frigging supreme court that screwed things for us in Wickard v Filburn, basically allowing anything to be regulated under interstate commerce clause. So far I believe only one case was NOT permitted under "commerce clause" (specifically: a claim that bringing a gun to school will make the school less safe, school area less desirable, thereby eventually somehow affecting the interstate commerce)
One major effect of the war on drugs (it's not a war on pot) is to channel taxpayer money to the prison system,
Two words: private prisons
That should never have been allowed anywhere under any circumstances. A for-profit prison!
They sign contracts where state guarantees a certain percentage occupation (90%), so it is no surprise when the state works hard to meet that promise
And now these private prisons are selling prisoner labor at under-$1 an hour rates to make more money. How and why is anyone allowed to profit from prisoner labor?
Oh, and some phone company makes a killing at 24c/minute phone calls for prisoners...
What it does not mean is that anything is significantly going to change about what the Federal government does. They've never targeted possession, and they still will not.
Yes, how kind of them.
They did, however, raid quite a few legal and law-abiding dispensaries in CA when they felt like it (despite any promises to keep it low priority)
This sounds like the DMCA move -- we will allow you possession of the [thing] but we will harshly prosecute anyone who manufactures or distributes that [thing] making it difficult to impossible for you to actually get it.
He can't definitely say "I'm not wasting federal resources and money on that shit" because it's still officially illegal at the federal level, and the President is constitutionally bound to follow the laws established by Congress.
Sure he can. He's not saying it because he had found it beneficial to occasionally ramp up raids in CA before and may do so again (for whatever reason).
If he can use signing statements to promise to ignore the law, then he can say anything.
(from the article linked):
The signing statement essentially declares Obamaâ(TM)s intention to ignore requirements in the law, including restrictions on data transfers to Russia, new authorities to detain suspected members of al Qaeda, and sanctions against the central bank of Iran.
You're thinking of the jungle
In a civilized society, there are laws that may actually protect consumers. This lawsuit is a demonstration of that They should at least make it easy for you to figure out what they collect and what they may do with this information - and they have not.
Let's start a petition asking to take our petitions seriously and not in the most condescending and patronizing manner possible.
There already is one, no duplicates allowed. Here is their response.
They are LYING, though
Getting back to the TSA example -- the response literally said "TSA is agile and awesome and by the way, here's our expansion plan for the next 10 years". They are not even pretending, since the response didn't even say "we hear you and we promise to address your concerns"
The situation has gotten so bad that they don't feel the need to even pay lip service and fake a response (notice I am not even talking about DOING something to address the petition).
They don't actually *have* to respond, just because there are the required number of signatures. They've ignored many of these petitions, most recently those petitions regarding state secession following the November elections.
Petition for "please dismantle TSA" got a response written by the director of the TSA. Surprisingly, he wrote how awesome and useful TSA is.
I know! Let's start a petition asking to take our petitions seriously and not in the most condescending and patronizing manner possible.
in general, with few exceptions, countries with less guns have lass gun violence....
Less guns = less gun violence.
Which way does the arrow go, though? As we all know, correlation is not causation...
It could be that fewer (legal) guns lead to less violence on the street i.e., less guns => less violence
It could also be that less violent denizens tend to enact stricter gun control laws (fewer people care or oppose gun control laws). That would be: less violence => fewer guns
Strip all the bullshit away, and what's left is "I want a gun more than I want other people not die from gun-related crime."
There is also "I think that crazy loons will still be able to obtain the same gun (albeit at a higher price), even if I am no longer legally able to own one".
I do not own a gun or particularly want to own a gun, but I am still amazed at the attitude -- "The tragedy involved a gun. If only guns were illegal the tragedy could have been prevented. A crazy person who is planning to go on rampage would respect OTHER laws and would not think of acquiring a gun illegally".
We are not talking about accidental shootings here - that was a premeditated attack.
They all survived. How many would have been killed with a firearm? How many more could the baddie have injured or killed with a ranged weapon?
You are predicating all of this on assumption that once guns are banned, no loon like this will be able to get a gun.
I would support banning guns if you could guarantee that it will work. Otherwise, I suspect the wrong people (i.e. those who cause no harm) will be the subject of the law.
Let's at least do a study and figure out who will actually lose access to guns if guns are banned before we try to ban them?
Or, are those the actual city limits where the city has jurisdiction and people just got caught speeding?
A municipality doesn't just end because most of the houses run out. If they're still charging taxes out there, they get to enforce speed limits.
It's not a question of jurisdiction, but of "residential area". At least I assume that's what OP was referring to.
Presumably, once the residential area ends, the speed limit should be raised. Keeping speed limits low once the houses (i.e the reason for keeping speed limits low) ran out is most likely a revenue grab.
Just think how many other people just paid the ticket and didn't contest because they didn't have the time or assumed the judge would sustain the fine?
That's only a part of it.
Much worse is that no matter how many people successfully contest the ticket, the contractor is never fined. Utter lack of penalties for bad behavior encourages bad behavior.
They also have a habit of taking pictures during green lights and submitting tickets for those.
That's the best part
Once you get the citation, it is YOUR problem to try and prove your innocence. If you do prove your innocence (at a greater expense than the ticket), then no penalties are imposed on anyone who was at fault.
The rational behavior for the contractors would then be to introduce a random chance of snapping/citing every passing car to make more money. Unless there are stiff penalties/bans, they will do so, if they are not doing so already.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't get why Facebook is so against it? Theoretically at least they shouldn't be selling personally identifiable data, just aggregate data, so an individual identification won't affect their product.
Most likely because they want to guarantee unique and real human accounts to advertisers, when selling ads.
Also, because it makes it easier to connect accounts to other data they may have access to (credit cards on Zinga's servers, etc.).
I am surprised they don't ask for SSN in US so that they can run credit reports and what not. Enough people are sufficiently stupid to hand it over.
Any accounts set up under fake names will be removed from the site when discovered in order to keep the community safe, according to Facebook.
How does this keep community safe? Facebook is not a dating site.
The headline suits from bad translation. What they did is filed a complaint.
If the official is not mis-quoted, then the complaint is as good as pressing charges. From TFA:
Johan Terfelt, who oversees the Finansinspektionen unit for payment providers, confirms that the authority has received the filed charges ....
He also states there's no room at all for arbitrary randomness, and gives a careful hint at a possible outcome: "The law states, that if there aren't legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed."
I am fairly certain no one had any legal grounds to deny payments to Wikileaks. How could they?
I look forward to seeing Paypal get a taste of having to follow rules.
They do need to be reigned in.
But perhaps Visa and Mastercard need to be put in their place even more. I can usually avoid PayPal in my everyday life, but Visa and Mastercard together pretty much control the world of online purchases. They cannot be allowed pick and choose who gets the payment and who doesn't.
Aren't there any equivalent US laws? Or is no one in US interested in prosecuting?
They want homosexuality to be illegal and want to imprison of even kill those found committing homosexual acts.
Ha!
A certain Republican presidential candidate (and US Senator, Rick Santorum) that was once leading the presidential polls for a time wants homosexuality to be illegal. Therefore I conclude that we have bigger issues than WBC.
This is not to say that I condone anything WTC does, but their actions have very little material impact. Senators, on the other hand...
I think there's a distinction between 'freedom of speech', and 'freedom to spread hate'. People don't always recognise the latter (which is why there are so many laws against hate speech).
In United States "laws against hate speech" are unconstitutional. There may be many laws against hate speech in other countries, but if you are talking about US, you are wrong.
You may be thinking of "inciting to violence speech", but pure hate speech (e.g., "[someone] should burn in hell") is not illegal.
The ultimate AI-ish application would be an astroturfer plugin for chrome probably called "AstroturfBlock".
How is it going to detect whether people were paid to write something?
You also need a blacklist database of known astroturfers (well, their writing samples, you don't need their identity) for this system to work
I cant answer questions like 'how do you think the company leadership is doing' without effectively giving away who I am - my opinion is based on my position, and thus is easily inferred.
You _could_ try talking to people in different positions (and write from their perspective) to solve that problem :)
It could be that one of your underlings is already writing responses tailored to look like it is written by someone in your position in hierarchy.
Anonymous surveys are easily gamed.
Like facial recognition.... I am sure this works wonderfully when it only has 10 or 20 exemplars to compare against, but it fails miserably as it scales up. Good luck conclusively identifying an author when there are over a million profiles to potentially match with.
Or like fingerprints that start giving off larger number of false-positives when compared against a large enough database of entries.
Consider this: they don't have to conclusively identify the original author. It will be good enough to find someone with similar writing (i.e. also a subversive) and charge them instead of the original perpetrator. And good luck proving that you didn't write that
Mmmm, a national database of writing samples collected from everyone in school... that sounds like fun.
I have inherited a number of books and each one of them can be used to decode the message!
There are plenty of laws that aren't enforced, and there isn't a constitutional obligation to press charges. A couple of the Republicans running on the policy that there are obscenity laws that weren't being enfroced, and that they would enforce them.
There should be a constitutional requirement to press charges on the laws, so that bad laws are regularly purged from the books. There was an anti-sodomy law in Texas until as recently as 2003!
Not having to press charges means that DAs get to selectively enforce laws against people they do not like and that is terrible
Of course, if the recreational users all started having half a million dollars in property to confiscate, we'd probably see a shift.
Many recreational users already have that much (or more) property.
Do you think all pot smokers are out of work 20 year olds who live in their parents' basement?
Not at all, but I doubt that $0.5M+ pot smokers see the bulk of the anti-drug enforcement. There is a high risk to accidentally stumble upon someone with connections.
Plus other upstanding citizens may see that drug war (especially war on pot) is senseless when they notice their neighbors being arrested. As of now, I assume many pretend that only "bad" people are arrested for drug-possession crimes.
call it "interstate commerce" if a person smokes a plant that naturally grows in his backyard, never actually engaging in commerce or crossing interstate lines
It also doesn't make any sense to start your sentence in the subject line!
As far as your point, that's definitely not the question for the president. That's a question for the frigging supreme court that screwed things for us in Wickard v Filburn, basically allowing anything to be regulated under interstate commerce clause. So far I believe only one case was NOT permitted under "commerce clause" (specifically: a claim that bringing a gun to school will make the school less safe, school area less desirable, thereby eventually somehow affecting the interstate commerce)
One major effect of the war on drugs (it's not a war on pot) is to channel taxpayer money to the prison system,
Two words: private prisons
That should never have been allowed anywhere under any circumstances. A for-profit prison!
They sign contracts where state guarantees a certain percentage occupation (90%), so it is no surprise when the state works hard to meet that promise
And now these private prisons are selling prisoner labor at under-$1 an hour rates to make more money. How and why is anyone allowed to profit from prisoner labor?
Oh, and some phone company makes a killing at 24c/minute phone calls for prisoners...
What it does not mean is that anything is significantly going to change about what the Federal government does. They've never targeted possession, and they still will not.
Yes, how kind of them.
They did, however, raid quite a few legal and law-abiding dispensaries in CA when they felt like it (despite any promises to keep it low priority)
This sounds like the DMCA move -- we will allow you possession of the [thing] but we will harshly prosecute anyone who manufactures or distributes that [thing] making it difficult to impossible for you to actually get it.
He can't definitely say "I'm not wasting federal resources and money on that shit" because it's still officially illegal at the federal level, and the President is constitutionally bound to follow the laws established by Congress.
Sure he can. He's not saying it because he had found it beneficial to occasionally ramp up raids in CA before and may do so again (for whatever reason).
If he can use signing statements to promise to ignore the law, then he can say anything. (from the article linked):
The signing statement essentially declares Obamaâ(TM)s intention to ignore requirements in the law, including restrictions on data transfers to Russia, new authorities to detain suspected members of al Qaeda, and sanctions against the central bank of Iran.
You install or do not install.
You're thinking of the jungle
In a civilized society, there are laws that may actually protect consumers. This lawsuit is a demonstration of that
They should at least make it easy for you to figure out what they collect and what they may do with this information - and they have not.
Let's start a petition asking to take our petitions seriously and not in the most condescending and patronizing manner possible.
There already is one, no duplicates allowed. Here is their response.
They are LYING, though
Getting back to the TSA example -- the response literally said "TSA is agile and awesome and by the way, here's our expansion plan for the next 10 years". They are not even pretending, since the response didn't even say "we hear you and we promise to address your concerns"
The situation has gotten so bad that they don't feel the need to even pay lip service and fake a response (notice I am not even talking about DOING something to address the petition).
They don't actually *have* to respond, just because there are the required number of signatures. They've ignored many of these petitions, most recently those petitions regarding state secession following the November elections.
Petition for "please dismantle TSA" got a response written by the director of the TSA. Surprisingly, he wrote how awesome and useful TSA is.
I know!
Let's start a petition asking to take our petitions seriously and not in the most condescending and patronizing manner possible.
in general, with few exceptions, countries with less guns have lass gun violence. ...
Less guns = less gun violence.
Which way does the arrow go, though? As we all know, correlation is not causation...
It could be that fewer (legal) guns lead to less violence on the street i.e., less guns => less violence
It could also be that less violent denizens tend to enact stricter gun control laws (fewer people care or oppose gun control laws). That would be: less violence => fewer guns
I think the second option is more likely.
Strip all the bullshit away, and what's left is "I want a gun more than I want other people not die from gun-related crime."
There is also "I think that crazy loons will still be able to obtain the same gun (albeit at a higher price), even if I am no longer legally able to own one".
I do not own a gun or particularly want to own a gun, but I am still amazed at the attitude -- "The tragedy involved a gun. If only guns were illegal the tragedy could have been prevented. A crazy person who is planning to go on rampage would respect OTHER laws and would not think of acquiring a gun illegally".
We are not talking about accidental shootings here - that was a premeditated attack.
They all survived. How many would have been killed with a firearm? How many more could the baddie have injured or killed with a ranged weapon?
You are predicating all of this on assumption that once guns are banned, no loon like this will be able to get a gun.
I would support banning guns if you could guarantee that it will work. Otherwise, I suspect the wrong people (i.e. those who cause no harm) will be the subject of the law.
Let's at least do a study and figure out who will actually lose access to guns if guns are banned before we try to ban them?
Or, are those the actual city limits where the city has jurisdiction and people just got caught speeding?
A municipality doesn't just end because most of the houses run out. If they're still charging taxes out there, they get to enforce speed limits.
It's not a question of jurisdiction, but of "residential area". At least I assume that's what OP was referring to.
Presumably, once the residential area ends, the speed limit should be raised. Keeping speed limits low once the houses (i.e the reason for keeping speed limits low) ran out is most likely a revenue grab.
Just think how many other people just paid the ticket and didn't contest because they didn't have the time or assumed the judge would sustain the fine?
That's only a part of it.
Much worse is that no matter how many people successfully contest the ticket, the contractor is never fined. Utter lack of penalties for bad behavior encourages bad behavior.
They also have a habit of taking pictures during green lights and submitting tickets for those.
That's the best part
Once you get the citation, it is YOUR problem to try and prove your innocence. If you do prove your innocence (at a greater expense than the ticket), then no penalties are imposed on anyone who was at fault.
The rational behavior for the contractors would then be to introduce a random chance of snapping/citing every passing car to make more money. Unless there are stiff penalties/bans, they will do so, if they are not doing so already.