Now instead of the IT dept (me) querying our email archival system or exporting PSTs from users mailboxes, we now have to hire a PI who knows absolutely nothing about our network,...
That is not what the law says, unless you, specifically, are IN THE BUSINESS of investigating crimes and for that purpose collect, analyze, and INVESTIGATE the data that is not generally available to the public.
You aren't. You are in the business of running a computer network. That is what you were employed to do. This section of the law does NOT APPLY TO YOU.
I live in Texas and I am calling my rep over this.
Perhaps you should ask him about the modem tax while you've got him on the line.
Actually, none of the bill you just quoted states anything about WHY the data is being reviewed or analyzed...
YES, IT DOES. Yes, I'm shouting. Stop ignoring the section of the law specifically referred to by the "data not available to the public" clause. "For the purposes of" a specific section means that applies ONLY TO THAT SECTION.
Sec. 1702.104. INVESTIGATIONS COMPANY. (a) A person acts
as an investigations company for the purposes of this chapter if the
person:
(1) engages in the business of obtaining or
furnishing, or accepts employment to obtain or furnish, information
related to:
(A) crime or wrongs done or threatened against a
state or the United States;
(B) the identity, habits, business, occupation,
knowledge, efficiency, loyalty, movement, location, affiliations,
associations, transactions, acts, reputation, or character of a
person;
(C) the location, disposition, or recovery of
lost or stolen property; or
(D) the cause or responsibility for a fire,
libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property;
THAT is a list of the reasons relevant to the collection of the data mentioned in:
(b) For purposes of Subsection (a)(1), obtaining or
furnishing information includes information obtained or furnished
through the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the
content of, computer-based data not available to the public.
The law speaks about being, first, IN THE BUSINESS OF investigating, not the business of repairing broken computers. Second, it lists the things being investigated. "Why this computer crashed" is NOT in that list. It doesn't matter if the answer is "because the owner clicked on a malware-loaded kiddie porn site", because the computer repair tech is not trying to learn if the owner clicked on a malware-loaded kiddie porn site or not, he's looking for why the computer crashed.
IF you are IN THE BUSINESS of investigating the list of crimes or civil infractions listed in the law, AND you are recovering, analyzing, AND INVESTIGATING computer data that is not available to the public towards THAT END, you need a PI license. Anything else is NOT covered by this law.
THAT is what the author says, that is what the enforcer says. End of story.
I did RTFA. And yes, the law was intended to work that way. Unfortunately, that's not what the law says.
Yes, that IS what the law says. It is reasonably clear. If you are in the BUSINESS of investigating criminal acts, you need a PI license. Computer techs, unless working
for a company that is in the BUSINESS of such investigation, are NOT in the business of
investigating criminal acts.
That's what the author of the law said. That's what the licensing bureau chief said.
And since almost any work on a computer involves investigating data on that computer not accessible to the public (the user's firewall settings, for example, aren't available to the public), any such work falls under the "investigation" part and requires a PI license.
The section of the law that refers to "computer data not available to the public" applied only to the section of the law that defines who needs a license. It does NOT, by itself, create a new class of people who need a license. Looking at data "not available to the public" does not automatically mean you need a PI license. If you are not IN THE BUSINESS OF investigating the listed criminal or civil acts under the first section, it does not matter if what you are looking at is data "not available to the public".
The guy who enforces this law went as far as to say that a network tech who looks for a slowdown in performance and finds a virus or "theft of intellectual property" is NOT subject to this law, even though the virus may be the result of a criminal act, or the IP theft result in civil litigation.
The guy who wrote the law says computer techs are not required to have a PI license. The guy who enforces the law says they are not required to have a PI license. The LAW lists who is required to have a PI license, and "computer repair tech" is NOT in that list.
This is a publicity stunt to get money for this new institute, trying to scare people into giving them money to defend against something that a simple reading of the law -- the WHOLE law and not just one sentence -- would tell them doesn't apply to them.
And the law will be enforced based on what it says, not on what anyone thinks it should have said instead.
The person who is responsible for enforcing the law has said how it will be enforced, and people who repair computers are NOT on the list.
Stop spreading FUD. There are more important things to spend time on. There is no story here.
The law's a stretch, but I'm not a lawyer and the prosecutor is, so I'll allow the lawyers and the judge to decide if it's too big a stretch.
I am so trying not to read this as "I, for one, welcome my legal system overlords."
This application of this law has so many legal repercussions that we have every reason to try to prevent a zealous prosecutor from having free rein to create an abysmal precedent. We are not supposed to sit idly by while a politician (elected prosecutor) makes stuff up to improve his conviction percentages. We The People are supposed to be in charge, not Them The Lawyers.
This woman represented herself as a minor instead of an adult.
Yes. Did she get service from MySpace because she did that, or would they have provided service to her anyway? Are the charges based on the fake age, or the fake name?
She used the account to defraud, harass, and endanger a minor.
The article I read said that someone sent a girl harassing messages. There was no mention of fraud. It is arguable that sending someone a message telling them they suck is "endangering" them. (If I scare you without any attempt at physically harming you, are you "endangered"? That is a question.)
It is harassment, yes.
I'm pretty sure that's more serious than saying she has a coincidental name overlap with someone famous.
I didn't say she had a "coincidental name overlap", I used that as an example of when the prohibition against using a fake name applies. I pointed out that there was no fraud involved since MySpace would have given her service no matter what name she used. She didn't get service because she used a false name.
You cannot use a false name for fraud even if the name you use is otherwise nonexistant. The "famous" part is convenient to create a fraud, but if you call yourself "Franking Proctoromiship" while selling fake rolex watches, you are committing fraud using a fake name just the same. Now I suppose someone will tell me that their name is Franking Proctoromiship and I am an insensitive clod.
Not at all. This is a serious issue about which I care.
The point of the law, I assume, is to make it difficult to commit the crimes you mention.
The point of the law is to enact a penalty for committing certain crimes. While there are certain laws that try to make it harder to break others (prohibition on buying certain chemicals so it is harder to make meth, for example), the laws involved here don't. A law against fraud does not make it harder to commit fraud, only that it can be punished when it is.
Your assertion is a lesser degree of saying, well, carrying an assault rifle into the post office shouldn't be a crime because attempted murder is already a crime.
Untrue. My "assertion" is that the law used to be that you could use any name you wished as long as it was not for the purposes of committing fraud. My use of the handle I am using here does not intimidate or scare any reasonable person; it does not make you fear me or do anything out of the ordinary (like cross to the other side of the street). Carrying an assault rifle is already a crime by itself. Carrying one into the post office is not "attempted murder".
I wasn't referring to my example but to the case mentioned in the article.
Comparative words like "major" and "minor" don't mean anything unless they are compared to something else. On a planet where there is no crime at all, stepping on the flowers is a capital offence (and Wesley should have been executed, it would have saved a lot of trouble in the future.) You were saying that the five year sentence would not be issued for a minor crime; most people I know would not call a crime where someone died a minor crime.
but I would argue being charged with a crime and then convicted is worse than just being charged.
A conviction brings some finality to the process. It is a spot from which you can try to rebuild your life. Being "charged" means you are always under suspicion, your property is always "evidence", and your life is open to even more searches for "evidence". "Being charged" means your name is in the papers and you haven't had the chance to clear yourself in a court of law yet.
I was merely pointing out the inaccuracy of that statement, and trying to illustrate that there needs to be leeway in the range of punishment for any crime.
As an example, what if this lady faked her name to gain access to a colleague's pages, and then post doctored pictures to the site to slander the colleague so the impersonator can get a promotion. That is a serious crime right?
Slander is a crime. Fraud is a crime. Already. The name used is irrelevant.
But say, it was to impersonate a person's friend, in order to lure them to a location to kill them, then maybe fifteen years isn't enough.
Conspiracy to commit murder is a crime. Murder is a crime. Already. The name used is irrelevant.
Few, if any, judges would impose the highest sentence for a minor case.
Is this a minor case? Someone died. Is that less a crime than your colleague not getting a promotion?
Also, there is a significant difference between being charged with a crime and being convicted of one.
Tell that to someone who's life is turned upside down because they had the laws twisted into a grotesque form just so they could be charged with something, anything, because what they had done was not actually a crime. Tell that to Steve Jackson, or anyone else whose business has been ransacked and destroyed because of a raid from the government looking for evidence of the crime he was charged with.
Tell that to the Duke lacrosse players.
The conviction of the prosecutor in the latter case is rare. Having a precedent like this in the books will make any case of prosecutorial misconduct for whipping up a frenzy over a "fake name" that much less likely, if not impossible.
This is bad precedent, bad application of marginal law.
Quite right. I don't expect this to be a regularly enforced rule.
Unfortunately, it sets a precedent, and every precedent shows up somewhere else, always more stringently enforced.
US law used to say that using any name one chooses was not illegal as long as it was not for the purposes of fraud.
E.g, if I called myself Tom Cruise and never made any attempt at connecting myself with THE Tom Cruise of acting semi-fame, I'm fine. "Are you THE..." "No I am not." End of problem.
If I went online as "Tom Cruise" and tried selling "Katie's used panties" for $100 each, well, that's fraud, and that makes the use of the name illegal.
The question here is if MySpace would have provided their service to this woman under her "real" name, or did they only do so because of the name she used. If they would have provided the service under any name she used, then there is no fraud. She got nothing she would not have gotten otherwise.
This charge is chilling. I have no doubt nobody expects my birth certificate to contain the words "Obfuscant", and "oahazmatt" doesn't contain that as his legal name, either, I expect.
It actually sets two bad precedents. One is that using a fake name is a felony. The other is that websites can determine when someone is committing a felony, instead of the legislature.
... an arrest warrant in another state that I hadn't been too,...
One time I came back from a business trip, I was grilled a bit about how long I'd lived in Colorado (answer: never). For a year or so after that every time I'd come back into the US, to save time, I'd hand my passport to Immigration and say "I'm not the one from Colorado". Apparently they caught that one, because now I just get funny looks when I say it and I have to explain "well, one time..."
... says the bank does not have to replace your money for at least ten days, even if they find an error, and if they don't see an error, they never have to. Ten days is a long time to have a zero checking account balance for most people. That jumps to twenty days if the account is less than 30 days old, as will happen every fall for incoming students.
Further, they only have to "provisionally credit" the alleged error if the investigation takes more than ten (20) days, and then the account holder has only 5 days to pump more money into the account to keep things from bouncing when the bank decides the "error" was the account holder's fault.
So, with a debit card, your money is GONE and your checks bounce while you take the bank to court to get it back. With a credit card, your money is in YOUR pocket and can be used to hire a lawyer if the credit card company decides against you. That's a significant difference in the law.
Joe Student, the person that is the basis for this discussion, hands his debit/id card to a low-paid attendant at the gym to sign out a basketball. The card gets copied, used at a local store, and the student now has a zero dollar account balance for the next twenty days, and for far longer when the bank decides that the only way the card could have been used was if the student did it or loaned to to someone.
(It's too hard to copy a card, you might say. Remember, the low-paid attendant has a card just like the one he stole, all he has to do is rewrite the mag strip with the stolen card info. He doesn't even have to do that if the thief uses the "X-ray film in the ATM slot" method of stealing the card itself.)
and EFTA agreement provides protection for debit cards with the MasterCard or Visa logo.
I didn't say that Visa or Mastercard or the bank may not have made promises to do certain things -- an "agreement" of some kind. An "agreement" isn't federal law, and most "agreements" get changed on a regular basis. At least, I keep getting notices of changes to my "agreement" at about 6 month intervals, and most, if not all, are in the favor of the card issuer.
What is still true is that the federal law called the Fair Credit Billing Act does NOT apply to debit cards, simply because they are not credit cards. There is no credit involved in a debit card. There is nothing "open ended" about them. YOU are stuck paying for the fraudulent charge, even if for only ten or twenty days, while you don't pay a penny for a fraudulent credit card charge.
Unfortunately, I think you will find that most banks already use credit cards, and most debit cards are from credit unions. I don't know of a hard-and-fast rule that says this, but it is the impression I get from experience with banks/CUs and the advertising they produce.
Many CUs do offer some form of protection, just not legally-mandated protection and not as convenient or customer-friendly. Many say they will investigate and refund a successfully disputed charge within 72 (or some other number) of hours. Or will try to do so. You are still faced with the fact that during the investigation your money is gone gone gone, and if you didn't notice the charge right away, your account could be empty for a lot longer.
It is this difference between "credit limit" and "bank balance" (I guess really I should say "credit union account balance" here) that would make a similar law difficult to formulate. One of my "credit cards" has an unlimited credit limit, which means basically any disputed charge has no effect on my ability to use that card. My CU accounts are not unlimited, and a disputed charge there can cause my checks (legally "drafts", since only banks can do checks, another difference between them) to bounce and generate NSF charges at the CU and with the merchant. The law would have to deal with this problem, which would pretty much tell the CU that they had to give you free money for the time they investigate to prevent bounces.
Unlikely, to say the least. And as long as CUs can wave their hands and distract consumers from the difference, unnecessary from their point of view. And as long as banks can use the difference to their advantage, unnecessary from the bank's point of view.
... the Fair Credit Billing Act requires banks to refund disputed charges, even on debit cards.
Thank you for the link.
If you read the information at the link you provided, you will see the following statement:
The law applies to "open end" credit accounts, such as credit cards, and revolving charge accounts - such as department store accounts.
This law applies only to credit accounts and creditors. Debit cards are not credit. They are a direct line into your bank account. The bank that issued them is not granting you credit. You cannot delay paying a debit card transaction. There is no interest rate, no "minimum monthly payment". If you don't have the money in your account, your bank might initiate an automatic overdraft line of credit, but that's the same action they'd take for an NSF check.
You got lucky with a friendly bank. If they are the ones who told you about the Fair Credit Act, then they are a deceptive friendly bank who wants you to stay with them instead of switching to credit card where you DO have legal protection.
Next time, you might not be so lucky.
... in reality the CC company has the power to wreck your credit report, preventing you from owning a home or even getting a job.
Further along in the material you linked to:
Will my credit rating be affected?
The creditor may not threaten your credit rating or report you as delinquent while your bill is in dispute. However, the creditor may report that you are challenging your bill. In addition, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants who exercise their rights, in good faith, under the FCBA. Simply put, you cannot be denied credit simply because you've disputed a bill.
I don't know of a law that protects debit card holders like this.
This is the big difference between using a credit card and a debit card.
With a credit card, VISA isn't giving you your money back. By LAW, you don't have to pay a disputed charge. You don't give them the money in the first place so they can't "give it back".
With a debit card you are unprotected. Your money is gone. IF the bank wants to give it back to you, they can. If they want to run you through the wringer and make you jump hoops, they can. And then they can say you must have authorized the charge for it to happen, and sorry, your account is now overdrawn.
Not enough people realize this difference. A local university is trying to push a combined debit card/id card onto the students and they are telling the students that their debit card will be protected just like a credit card. They're being told that it won't matter if they HAVE to carry the card every day to use Uni resources and happen to lose it, their bank accounts will be safe. Yes, you can safely hand the dweeb behind the library checkout desk your id/debit card to get that reserved item. You can safely hand the work-study student at the gym your debit card/id to check out a basketball.
All those who want the "convenience" of one card for everything will soon learn the inconvenience of dealing with a debit card fraudulent charge. Maybe it's just a way that the uni is teaching; teaching people to mistrust all government.
With a PI license, they can say, "we found child porn on his computer, and here is the chain of possession, etc."
Other than the law doesn't actually say a computer repair person needs a PI license, your argument would mean that EVERYONE needs a PI license.
The car mechanic may open your glove compartment and find your bag of weed. He needs a PI license to be able to testify to what he found. (Actually, he doesn't).
The pizza delivery boy may see your dime bag of heroin laying on the coffee table when he delivers your pizza. The mailman needs one because he might see something illegal in your mail. The pool boy needs one because he might find the body floating in your pool. The garbage collector needs one, the kid walking down the sidewalk, your hairdresser, your next door neighbor, YOU -- all need a PI license in case they see something illegal.
Imagine that doing a "find . -name file.jpg" or similar might be considered an "investigation".
Read the entire law..
Sec. 1702.104 defines an "investigations company". A person acts as an investigations company if he engages in the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepts employement to obtain or furnish information related to crimes or activity of a person, or location of stolen property, or cause for a fire, libel, etc.
A computer repair business in not in the business of doing any of that. They aren't in the business of obtaining information regarding crimes, they are in the computer repair business. The information they gather is "what doesn't work".
It is 1702.104(b) that seems to be troublesome because it talks about "computer-based data not available to the public."
The fact that 1702.104(b) defines what obtaining information means is irrelevant, since (a)(1) doesn't apply to a computer repair business to start with. Defining what obtaining data means doesn't change the limitations on who 1702.104(a)(1) applies to. It expands the activities of the people who are covered by (a)(1) to include computer searches.
If you start a business tailored specifically to PI's and forensic analysis, say fixing broken computers with the explicit intent of getting the data off of them to determine crimes, cause of fires, etc, then yes, you need a PI license. If you are just replacing a defective CPU or disk, no. You are not in the business of obtaining information listed in (a)(1).
In short, it all revolves around the phrase "in the business of".
This law is a good thing. It may be possible to sue a "computer repair company" that does, as a matter of regular business, "investigate" the content of your computer when you take it in for repair. They've made themselves "in the business of" by looking for information related to crimes. But Joe Technician who sticks to finding the bad bits and replacing them has nothing to worry about. And if you are stupid enough to make kiddie porn the splash logo on your boot screen, or background image after an auto-login, Joe is still able to call the cops, since his job isn't obtaining the information, YOU gave it to him by your actions.
Low voter turnout in the USA is regularly interpreted as people being digusted and disillusioned of the system. A politically correct name to put it is "voter apathy".
"Disgust" is not "apathy". Apathy means you don't care. Disgust means you do.
In truth, low voter turnout is interpreted to mean whatever the person who is interpreting it wants it to mean. If they are arguing that voters are lazy, "here's the turnout numbers". If they want to prove "disgust with the system", again, "here's the turnout numbers".
One thing that disgusts me alot about the process is the people who do assume too much about what a vote, or lack thereof, means. For example, people who say that a vote for Hillary in the primary was evidence the voter wanted her to be President. Not true. At best, they wanted her to be the Democrat nominee (that is, after all, the purpose of the primary vote), and in a large number of cases they simply wanted her to continue in the race to help create chaos. The exact same statement applies to cross-over votes for McCain in Michigan. With the democrat primary not meaning anything there, a lot of dems voted for McCain not because they wanted to see him as President, but to "help" the republicans pick a poor candidate.
Another main disgust factor is the reliance on "exit polls" as proof of anything other than what House says in every episode: people lie. The only vote that counts is the official one, not the vote told to the reporter outside the polling place.
And then, we're going to see this one again I know: the Presidential "popular vote total". Completely irrelevant, but still pranced around to prove something.
Votes for small parties are not protest votes at all.
I'm sorry, the right answer is unacceptable to you?
Why do you automatically assume that "farmer's market" is the right answer for me?
after making a normal 1/2 hour worth of purchases.
Of course, it takes zero time to drive to and from, and to put the purchases away so they don't
simply sit in the car and rot during the day.
Even taking an hour off work is more expensive for some people than buying something from a grocery store.
The point remains: our local cheap grocery store is open 24 hours a day, the farmers market isn't. If it requires taking time off work to go to the farmer's market, then the cost of the farmer's market goes up compared to the grocery store. If the farmer's market has limited selection, like ours does, you wind up going to the grocery store anyway.
I also heard if you tie hundreds of horses together your cart may run as fast as a Ferrari...
Been there, done that.
Your cart goes as fast as the fastest horse can run, minus a bit since he's now dragging the cart AND the other horses.
The vet bills to fix the broken legs of the horses that are slower outweighs the cost savings. RoHS prevents the simple solution to a broken leg.
Like Larry the Cable Guy says: I heard the right thing to do when your horse breaks its leg is to shoot it. So I did. Now I have a horse with a broken leg and a gunshot wound.
And as I indicated above, they would find not only a loud, outraged individual, but a potentially violent individual were they to attempt a body cavity search.
The louder and more outraged you act, and violent, the more they will feel justified in using as many people as it takes to do what they want to do. You can be sure there are more of them than there are of you. And the more the courts will side with them if you ever make it to court. You will not convince them to leave you alone by being loud, outraged and violent.
You MIGHT become an urban legend along the lines of the "don't taze me, bro" guy, but that line is already taken so make sure you use something original. Witty, quick, easy to remember. "Thank you sir may I have another", or "aw, that didn't even hurt".
It's like being the only sane one in an insane asylum. The more you protest and fight against the treatments, the more you prove to the people in charge that you are insane. After all, only an insane person would not want treatments that would make him sane. Only a violent criminal would be violent when dealing with customs agents.
The officer is allowed, required, and in good common sense would, look around the inside of your car...
Of course. But he is limited to 'in plain sight'. He cannot open the glove compartment just to see if you have a weapon under this self-protection justification. He cannot pull out the back seat. He cannot turn on the radio to see what station you were tuned to. Not until he either gets permission to search your vehicle from you, or gets a search warrant.
And that's where the analogy fails. You have to turn on your laptop for them to see what is on it. It isn't 'in plain sight'.
By the way, locking your car to prevent a search is not a good idea. If the cop really wants to search your car and you refuse, he'll simply hold you until he gets a warrant. Then he gets to break your window when you refuse to open it. That, and you are now an uncooperative suspect, and he's going to treat you like you know you are doing something wrong.
That means, instead of you being able to get off by saying "I'm a carpenter" when he finds the crowbar and screwdrivers, he's going to think "burglar tools." It's your funeral.
Not only all those things you said, you forgot that a book is a dandy carbon sink. I have a whole wall of carbon credits on my wall and stacks of carbon credits all over the place. Each one has a title and consumes NO futher energy. I've even read some of them.:-)
I came across the silliest DRM a few days ago. A research group had produced it's translation of a text in PDF and had turned on the "you may not print this" flag. The only way they wanted me to read their work was on-screen. Consuming power the entire time. Tied to one place.
xpdf honored the flag, as did all the Adobe acro-this and acro-that. I downloaded a copy of xpdf and found the one function call that tested the "may this be printed" flag. It now always returns "yes, you may". Of course, I didn't have the truetype library so it wouldn't run anyway, but it did tell me that pdf2ps and other functions would.
Hmm, I said. I tried pdf2ps. No problem. Well, one problem. It tried to set the page size to something invalid for my printer. one pass of sed removed all that. I can now read the text where I want when I want on paper. And the text is bigger than it would be normally!
I honestly doubt you'd be making your comment on a site called "Slashdot" if Gore had never been born.
I honestly don't doubt that there were so many other people involved that we'd not see any difference had Gore not been born. Gore is a late-comer to the Internet; his "initiative in creating" it was hot air and self-agrandizement from a pol seeking votes from geeks. He did nothing to create Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
That is not what the law says, unless you, specifically, are IN THE BUSINESS of investigating crimes and for that purpose collect, analyze, and INVESTIGATE the data that is not generally available to the public.
You aren't. You are in the business of running a computer network. That is what you were employed to do. This section of the law does NOT APPLY TO YOU.
I live in Texas and I am calling my rep over this.
Perhaps you should ask him about the modem tax while you've got him on the line.
YES, IT DOES. Yes, I'm shouting. Stop ignoring the section of the law specifically referred to by the "data not available to the public" clause. "For the purposes of" a specific section means that applies ONLY TO THAT SECTION.
THAT is a list of the reasons relevant to the collection of the data mentioned in:
The law speaks about being, first, IN THE BUSINESS OF investigating, not the business of repairing broken computers. Second, it lists the things being investigated. "Why this computer crashed" is NOT in that list. It doesn't matter if the answer is "because the owner clicked on a malware-loaded kiddie porn site", because the computer repair tech is not trying to learn if the owner clicked on a malware-loaded kiddie porn site or not, he's looking for why the computer crashed.
IF you are IN THE BUSINESS of investigating the list of crimes or civil infractions listed in the law, AND you are recovering, analyzing, AND INVESTIGATING computer data that is not available to the public towards THAT END, you need a PI license. Anything else is NOT covered by this law.
THAT is what the author says, that is what the enforcer says. End of story.
Yes, that IS what the law says. It is reasonably clear. If you are in the BUSINESS of investigating criminal acts, you need a PI license. Computer techs, unless working for a company that is in the BUSINESS of such investigation, are NOT in the business of investigating criminal acts.
That's what the author of the law said. That's what the licensing bureau chief said.
And since almost any work on a computer involves investigating data on that computer not accessible to the public (the user's firewall settings, for example, aren't available to the public), any such work falls under the "investigation" part and requires a PI license.
The section of the law that refers to "computer data not available to the public" applied only to the section of the law that defines who needs a license. It does NOT, by itself, create a new class of people who need a license. Looking at data "not available to the public" does not automatically mean you need a PI license. If you are not IN THE BUSINESS OF investigating the listed criminal or civil acts under the first section, it does not matter if what you are looking at is data "not available to the public".
The guy who enforces this law went as far as to say that a network tech who looks for a slowdown in performance and finds a virus or "theft of intellectual property" is NOT subject to this law, even though the virus may be the result of a criminal act, or the IP theft result in civil litigation.
The guy who wrote the law says computer techs are not required to have a PI license. The guy who enforces the law says they are not required to have a PI license. The LAW lists who is required to have a PI license, and "computer repair tech" is NOT in that list.
This is a publicity stunt to get money for this new institute, trying to scare people into giving them money to defend against something that a simple reading of the law -- the WHOLE law and not just one sentence -- would tell them doesn't apply to them.
And the law will be enforced based on what it says, not on what anyone thinks it should have said instead.
The person who is responsible for enforcing the law has said how it will be enforced, and people who repair computers are NOT on the list.
Stop spreading FUD. There are more important things to spend time on. There is no story here.
I am so trying not to read this as "I, for one, welcome my legal system overlords."
This application of this law has so many legal repercussions that we have every reason to try to prevent a zealous prosecutor from having free rein to create an abysmal precedent. We are not supposed to sit idly by while a politician (elected prosecutor) makes stuff up to improve his conviction percentages. We The People are supposed to be in charge, not Them The Lawyers.
Too much Moutain Dew.
Yes. Did she get service from MySpace because she did that, or would they have provided service to her anyway? Are the charges based on the fake age, or the fake name?
She used the account to defraud, harass, and endanger a minor.
The article I read said that someone sent a girl harassing messages. There was no mention of fraud. It is arguable that sending someone a message telling them they suck is "endangering" them. (If I scare you without any attempt at physically harming you, are you "endangered"? That is a question.) It is harassment, yes.
I'm pretty sure that's more serious than saying she has a coincidental name overlap with someone famous.
I didn't say she had a "coincidental name overlap", I used that as an example of when the prohibition against using a fake name applies. I pointed out that there was no fraud involved since MySpace would have given her service no matter what name she used. She didn't get service because she used a false name.
You cannot use a false name for fraud even if the name you use is otherwise nonexistant. The "famous" part is convenient to create a fraud, but if you call yourself "Franking Proctoromiship" while selling fake rolex watches, you are committing fraud using a fake name just the same. Now I suppose someone will tell me that their name is Franking Proctoromiship and I am an insensitive clod.
Not at all. This is a serious issue about which I care.
The point of the law, I assume, is to make it difficult to commit the crimes you mention.
The point of the law is to enact a penalty for committing certain crimes. While there are certain laws that try to make it harder to break others (prohibition on buying certain chemicals so it is harder to make meth, for example), the laws involved here don't. A law against fraud does not make it harder to commit fraud, only that it can be punished when it is.
Your assertion is a lesser degree of saying, well, carrying an assault rifle into the post office shouldn't be a crime because attempted murder is already a crime.
Untrue. My "assertion" is that the law used to be that you could use any name you wished as long as it was not for the purposes of committing fraud. My use of the handle I am using here does not intimidate or scare any reasonable person; it does not make you fear me or do anything out of the ordinary (like cross to the other side of the street). Carrying an assault rifle is already a crime by itself. Carrying one into the post office is not "attempted murder".
I wasn't referring to my example but to the case mentioned in the article.
Comparative words like "major" and "minor" don't mean anything unless they are compared to something else. On a planet where there is no crime at all, stepping on the flowers is a capital offence (and Wesley should have been executed, it would have saved a lot of trouble in the future.) You were saying that the five year sentence would not be issued for a minor crime; most people I know would not call a crime where someone died a minor crime.
but I would argue being charged with a crime and then convicted is worse than just being charged.
A conviction brings some finality to the process. It is a spot from which you can try to rebuild your life. Being "charged" means you are always under suspicion, your property is always "evidence", and your life is open to even more searches for "evidence". "Being charged" means your name is in the papers and you haven't had the chance to clear yourself in a court of law yet.
I was merely pointing out the inaccuracy of that statement, and trying to illustrate that there needs to be leeway in the range of punishment for any crime.
I agree.
Slander is a crime. Fraud is a crime. Already. The name used is irrelevant.
But say, it was to impersonate a person's friend, in order to lure them to a location to kill them, then maybe fifteen years isn't enough.
Conspiracy to commit murder is a crime. Murder is a crime. Already. The name used is irrelevant.
Few, if any, judges would impose the highest sentence for a minor case.
Is this a minor case? Someone died. Is that less a crime than your colleague not getting a promotion?
Also, there is a significant difference between being charged with a crime and being convicted of one.
Tell that to someone who's life is turned upside down because they had the laws twisted into a grotesque form just so they could be charged with something, anything, because what they had done was not actually a crime. Tell that to Steve Jackson, or anyone else whose business has been ransacked and destroyed because of a raid from the government looking for evidence of the crime he was charged with.
Tell that to the Duke lacrosse players.
The conviction of the prosecutor in the latter case is rare. Having a precedent like this in the books will make any case of prosecutorial misconduct for whipping up a frenzy over a "fake name" that much less likely, if not impossible.
This is bad precedent, bad application of marginal law.
Unfortunately, it sets a precedent, and every precedent shows up somewhere else, always more stringently enforced.
US law used to say that using any name one chooses was not illegal as long as it was not for the purposes of fraud.
E.g, if I called myself Tom Cruise and never made any attempt at connecting myself with THE Tom Cruise of acting semi-fame, I'm fine. "Are you THE..." "No I am not." End of problem.
If I went online as "Tom Cruise" and tried selling "Katie's used panties" for $100 each, well, that's fraud, and that makes the use of the name illegal.
The question here is if MySpace would have provided their service to this woman under her "real" name, or did they only do so because of the name she used. If they would have provided the service under any name she used, then there is no fraud. She got nothing she would not have gotten otherwise.
This charge is chilling. I have no doubt nobody expects my birth certificate to contain the words "Obfuscant", and "oahazmatt" doesn't contain that as his legal name, either, I expect.
It actually sets two bad precedents. One is that using a fake name is a felony. The other is that websites can determine when someone is committing a felony, instead of the legislature.
One time I came back from a business trip, I was grilled a bit about how long I'd lived in Colorado (answer: never). For a year or so after that every time I'd come back into the US, to save time, I'd hand my passport to Immigration and say "I'm not the one from Colorado". Apparently they caught that one, because now I just get funny looks when I say it and I have to explain "well, one time..."
Further, they only have to "provisionally credit" the alleged error if the investigation takes more than ten (20) days, and then the account holder has only 5 days to pump more money into the account to keep things from bouncing when the bank decides the "error" was the account holder's fault.
So, with a debit card, your money is GONE and your checks bounce while you take the bank to court to get it back. With a credit card, your money is in YOUR pocket and can be used to hire a lawyer if the credit card company decides against you. That's a significant difference in the law.
Joe Student, the person that is the basis for this discussion, hands his debit/id card to a low-paid attendant at the gym to sign out a basketball. The card gets copied, used at a local store, and the student now has a zero dollar account balance for the next twenty days, and for far longer when the bank decides that the only way the card could have been used was if the student did it or loaned to to someone.
(It's too hard to copy a card, you might say. Remember, the low-paid attendant has a card just like the one he stole, all he has to do is rewrite the mag strip with the stolen card info. He doesn't even have to do that if the thief uses the "X-ray film in the ATM slot" method of stealing the card itself.)
and EFTA agreement provides protection for debit cards with the MasterCard or Visa logo.
I didn't say that Visa or Mastercard or the bank may not have made promises to do certain things -- an "agreement" of some kind. An "agreement" isn't federal law, and most "agreements" get changed on a regular basis. At least, I keep getting notices of changes to my "agreement" at about 6 month intervals, and most, if not all, are in the favor of the card issuer.
What is still true is that the federal law called the Fair Credit Billing Act does NOT apply to debit cards, simply because they are not credit cards. There is no credit involved in a debit card. There is nothing "open ended" about them. YOU are stuck paying for the fraudulent charge, even if for only ten or twenty days, while you don't pay a penny for a fraudulent credit card charge.
Many CUs do offer some form of protection, just not legally-mandated protection and not as convenient or customer-friendly. Many say they will investigate and refund a successfully disputed charge within 72 (or some other number) of hours. Or will try to do so. You are still faced with the fact that during the investigation your money is gone gone gone, and if you didn't notice the charge right away, your account could be empty for a lot longer.
It is this difference between "credit limit" and "bank balance" (I guess really I should say "credit union account balance" here) that would make a similar law difficult to formulate. One of my "credit cards" has an unlimited credit limit, which means basically any disputed charge has no effect on my ability to use that card. My CU accounts are not unlimited, and a disputed charge there can cause my checks (legally "drafts", since only banks can do checks, another difference between them) to bounce and generate NSF charges at the CU and with the merchant. The law would have to deal with this problem, which would pretty much tell the CU that they had to give you free money for the time they investigate to prevent bounces.
Unlikely, to say the least. And as long as CUs can wave their hands and distract consumers from the difference, unnecessary from their point of view. And as long as banks can use the difference to their advantage, unnecessary from the bank's point of view.
Thank you for the link. If you read the information at the link you provided, you will see the following statement:
This law applies only to credit accounts and creditors. Debit cards are not credit. They are a direct line into your bank account. The bank that issued them is not granting you credit. You cannot delay paying a debit card transaction. There is no interest rate, no "minimum monthly payment". If you don't have the money in your account, your bank might initiate an automatic overdraft line of credit, but that's the same action they'd take for an NSF check.
You got lucky with a friendly bank. If they are the ones who told you about the Fair Credit Act, then they are a deceptive friendly bank who wants you to stay with them instead of switching to credit card where you DO have legal protection.
Next time, you might not be so lucky.
Further along in the material you linked to:
I don't know of a law that protects debit card holders like this.
This is the big difference between using a credit card and a debit card.
With a credit card, VISA isn't giving you your money back. By LAW, you don't have to pay a disputed charge. You don't give them the money in the first place so they can't "give it back".
With a debit card you are unprotected. Your money is gone. IF the bank wants to give it back to you, they can. If they want to run you through the wringer and make you jump hoops, they can. And then they can say you must have authorized the charge for it to happen, and sorry, your account is now overdrawn.
Not enough people realize this difference. A local university is trying to push a combined debit card/id card onto the students and they are telling the students that their debit card will be protected just like a credit card. They're being told that it won't matter if they HAVE to carry the card every day to use Uni resources and happen to lose it, their bank accounts will be safe. Yes, you can safely hand the dweeb behind the library checkout desk your id/debit card to get that reserved item. You can safely hand the work-study student at the gym your debit card/id to check out a basketball.
All those who want the "convenience" of one card for everything will soon learn the inconvenience of dealing with a debit card fraudulent charge. Maybe it's just a way that the uni is teaching; teaching people to mistrust all government.
Other than the law doesn't actually say a computer repair person needs a PI license, your argument would mean that EVERYONE needs a PI license.
The car mechanic may open your glove compartment and find your bag of weed. He needs a PI license to be able to testify to what he found. (Actually, he doesn't).
The pizza delivery boy may see your dime bag of heroin laying on the coffee table when he delivers your pizza. The mailman needs one because he might see something illegal in your mail. The pool boy needs one because he might find the body floating in your pool. The garbage collector needs one, the kid walking down the sidewalk, your hairdresser, your next door neighbor, YOU -- all need a PI license in case they see something illegal.
And businesses don't enforce laws.
Read the entire law. .
Sec. 1702.104 defines an "investigations company". A person acts as an investigations company if he engages in the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepts employement to obtain or furnish information related to crimes or activity of a person, or location of stolen property, or cause for a fire, libel, etc.
A computer repair business in not in the business of doing any of that. They aren't in the business of obtaining information regarding crimes, they are in the computer repair business. The information they gather is "what doesn't work".
It is 1702.104(b) that seems to be troublesome because it talks about "computer-based data not available to the public."
The fact that 1702.104(b) defines what obtaining information means is irrelevant, since (a)(1) doesn't apply to a computer repair business to start with. Defining what obtaining data means doesn't change the limitations on who 1702.104(a)(1) applies to. It expands the activities of the people who are covered by (a)(1) to include computer searches.
If you start a business tailored specifically to PI's and forensic analysis, say fixing broken computers with the explicit intent of getting the data off of them to determine crimes, cause of fires, etc, then yes, you need a PI license. If you are just replacing a defective CPU or disk, no. You are not in the business of obtaining information listed in (a)(1).
In short, it all revolves around the phrase "in the business of".
This law is a good thing. It may be possible to sue a "computer repair company" that does, as a matter of regular business, "investigate" the content of your computer when you take it in for repair. They've made themselves "in the business of" by looking for information related to crimes. But Joe Technician who sticks to finding the bad bits and replacing them has nothing to worry about. And if you are stupid enough to make kiddie porn the splash logo on your boot screen, or background image after an auto-login, Joe is still able to call the cops, since his job isn't obtaining the information, YOU gave it to him by your actions.
"Disgust" is not "apathy". Apathy means you don't care. Disgust means you do.
In truth, low voter turnout is interpreted to mean whatever the person who is interpreting it wants it to mean. If they are arguing that voters are lazy, "here's the turnout numbers". If they want to prove "disgust with the system", again, "here's the turnout numbers".
One thing that disgusts me alot about the process is the people who do assume too much about what a vote, or lack thereof, means. For example, people who say that a vote for Hillary in the primary was evidence the voter wanted her to be President. Not true. At best, they wanted her to be the Democrat nominee (that is, after all, the purpose of the primary vote), and in a large number of cases they simply wanted her to continue in the race to help create chaos. The exact same statement applies to cross-over votes for McCain in Michigan. With the democrat primary not meaning anything there, a lot of dems voted for McCain not because they wanted to see him as President, but to "help" the republicans pick a poor candidate.
Another main disgust factor is the reliance on "exit polls" as proof of anything other than what House says in every episode: people lie. The only vote that counts is the official one, not the vote told to the reporter outside the polling place.
And then, we're going to see this one again I know: the Presidential "popular vote total". Completely irrelevant, but still pranced around to prove something.
Votes for small parties are not protest votes at all.
Most people do view them that way.
Why do you automatically assume that "farmer's market" is the right answer for me?
after making a normal 1/2 hour worth of purchases.
Of course, it takes zero time to drive to and from, and to put the purchases away so they don't simply sit in the car and rot during the day.
Even taking an hour off work is more expensive for some people than buying something from a grocery store.
The point remains: our local cheap grocery store is open 24 hours a day, the farmers market isn't. If it requires taking time off work to go to the farmer's market, then the cost of the farmer's market goes up compared to the grocery store. If the farmer's market has limited selection, like ours does, you wind up going to the grocery store anyway.
Yes, it costs so much less when you consider taking four hours off of work on a Wednesday morning to go to the local farmer's market....
What happened to /.? Why is my comment window suddenly 1/10 the width of the page?
Only if you raise your horses to be polite. Otherwise, slow gets dragged by a faster son of a bitch.
If we were talking about a DOG team, of course, you can raise all your dogs to be polite and they can all still be sons of a bitch.
Been there, done that.
Your cart goes as fast as the fastest horse can run, minus a bit since he's now dragging the cart AND the other horses.
The vet bills to fix the broken legs of the horses that are slower outweighs the cost savings. RoHS prevents the simple solution to a broken leg.
Like Larry the Cable Guy says: I heard the right thing to do when your horse breaks its leg is to shoot it. So I did. Now I have a horse with a broken leg and a gunshot wound.
The louder and more outraged you act, and violent, the more they will feel justified in using as many people as it takes to do what they want to do. You can be sure there are more of them than there are of you. And the more the courts will side with them if you ever make it to court. You will not convince them to leave you alone by being loud, outraged and violent.
You MIGHT become an urban legend along the lines of the "don't taze me, bro" guy, but that line is already taken so make sure you use something original. Witty, quick, easy to remember. "Thank you sir may I have another", or "aw, that didn't even hurt".
It's like being the only sane one in an insane asylum. The more you protest and fight against the treatments, the more you prove to the people in charge that you are insane. After all, only an insane person would not want treatments that would make him sane. Only a violent criminal would be violent when dealing with customs agents.
Of course. But he is limited to 'in plain sight'. He cannot open the glove compartment just to see if you have a weapon under this self-protection justification. He cannot pull out the back seat. He cannot turn on the radio to see what station you were tuned to. Not until he either gets permission to search your vehicle from you, or gets a search warrant.
And that's where the analogy fails. You have to turn on your laptop for them to see what is on it. It isn't 'in plain sight'.
By the way, locking your car to prevent a search is not a good idea. If the cop really wants to search your car and you refuse, he'll simply hold you until he gets a warrant. Then he gets to break your window when you refuse to open it. That, and you are now an uncooperative suspect, and he's going to treat you like you know you are doing something wrong.
That means, instead of you being able to get off by saying "I'm a carpenter" when he finds the crowbar and screwdrivers, he's going to think "burglar tools." It's your funeral.
I came across the silliest DRM a few days ago. A research group had produced it's translation of a text in PDF and had turned on the "you may not print this" flag. The only way they wanted me to read their work was on-screen. Consuming power the entire time. Tied to one place.
xpdf honored the flag, as did all the Adobe acro-this and acro-that. I downloaded a copy of xpdf and found the one function call that tested the "may this be printed" flag. It now always returns "yes, you may". Of course, I didn't have the truetype library so it wouldn't run anyway, but it did tell me that pdf2ps and other functions would.
Hmm, I said. I tried pdf2ps. No problem. Well, one problem. It tried to set the page size to something invalid for my printer. one pass of sed removed all that. I can now read the text where I want when I want on paper. And the text is bigger than it would be normally!
I honestly don't doubt that there were so many other people involved that we'd not see any difference had Gore not been born. Gore is a late-comer to the Internet; his "initiative in creating" it was hot air and self-agrandizement from a pol seeking votes from geeks. He did nothing to create Slashdot.