I'm afraid there's ample precedent for mandatory monitoring. For many years, it's been the law of the land in the US for aircraft.
It is illegal to operate an aircraft within 30 miles of a large airport without a monitoring device that informs the FAA of your position and altitude. (From successive positions, they can derive speed as well.)
How does this differ from requiring a speed monitoring device in every car?
I wouldn't assume that this case takes the fast appeal track. IANAL, but my reading of the Expediting Act is that three things are necessary for the expedited appeal to take place:
1. One party (presumably the DoJ) asks for it, 2. The district judge issues an order stating that the case is of general public importance to the administration of justice, 3. The Supreme Court accepts the appeal.
Points 1 and 2 would seem to be a slam-dunk. The DoJ desperately wants this resolved quickly, and Judge Jackson is in no mood to have his decision come before the Circuit Court of Appeals again, if that can be avoided. (Besides, this case is genuinely one of "public importance".)
The wild card here is point 3: acceptance by the Supreme Court. They could hear the case, but they could just as easily choose to refer it to the Circuit Court, and then perhaps hear an appeal from that decision.
On the one hand, this seems to be the type of case for which the Expediting Act was designed: a case of national importance, where delay would have widespread repercussions. On the other hand, the Court has such a crush of cases, it must defer or decline action on all but the most vital ones.
So, the Expediting Act really only offers a potental for fast resolution, which may or may not be realized.
A con-con establishing a Theocracy? Gimme a break. Any proposed amendments would not just have to be "shown" to the states, but would have to be ratified by three-quarters of them. That is an exceedingly tough standard, even for proposals that have attracted 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress.
Also, what makes you think that people would want to elect such looney-tune delegates to a Con-Con? The Congress and the states could establish a theocratic monarchical totalitarian dictatorship at any time, without a Con-Con. Why do you fear not fear that too?
What makes you think that the people of the US are too stupid to trust with the design of their own government? If, as you seem to claim, a majority of Americans hate the First Amendment and are clamoring for its repeal, and such a repeal would sail through a Con-Con and be ratified, why do we hear no such proposals now? (State-sponsored school prayer, as distasteful as I would find it, hardly amounts to a theocracy.)
You can squat on a domain name, and as a European (residing in Europe) you most likely could not be sued under this bill, for lack of 'personal jurisdiction'. In that case, the name itself could be sued! (That's what in rem means.)
If a US court had jurisdiction over the registrar (NSI, for example), it could order the transfer of the name.
Maybe, if we live so long. The appeals court seems to be in no hurry.
The re-hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been scheduled for Dec. 16, 1999. The first time the 9th Circuit heard the case was in December of 1997, and they took a year and a half, until May 1999 to decide. Based on this we can "extrapolate" (using Arthur C. Clarke's term) the following timeline:
12/1997: 9th Circuit appeal hearing 5/1999: 9th Circuit decides 12/1999: 9th Circuit en banc re-hearing 5/2001: 9th Circuit decides again 10/2001: Supreme Court takes case 5/2002: Supreme Court decides case (they take pride in making prompt decisions)
Or course, the 9th Circuit may be faster or slower this time around, and the Supreme Court may not take the case, but this is as good a guess as any. The real problem is that no one knows what legal tricks (new regulations, new legislation) the government may pull to delay this even longer. It's already taken most of this decade.
What will the closed-source vendors do if you spot them a 2.5-year head start from now?
If implemented properly, a system like this could be of considerable value in a corporate e-mail system. In the case of a lawsuit, ad-hoc corporate records (like e-mail) are, in general, a Bad Thing. The way a corporate lawyer explained it to me was:
If the record is harmful to you, it can be used in evidence. If it helps you, it's inadmissable.
(He went on to say that that's an oversimplification, but still largely true.)
So, one would like to erase all e-mail after a certain time. Of course, the problem is that while most e-mail is ephemeral and would not be missed, some must be preserved. Any automatic deletion system would either delete important data (in which case the users would keep private copies), or fail to delete all that it should. Also, data backup systems try very hard to preserve data, and would likely defeat the mail-reaping systems unless carefully designed and maintained.
I don't know how these people are implementing their system, but one way would be to require sender and recipient to have on-line access to a key server. It could work like this:
sender requests a key of specified lifetime from server, which generates a new key,
sender uses key to encrypt message, then discards key,
receiver requests key from server, decrypts message, and discards key and decrypt when done,
until the lifetime expires, receiver can repeat the above step as desired,
finally, when the lifetime expires, server discards key.
The vital benefit of this system is the ability to stand in front of the judge and say:
"Sorry, your honor, but we have no way to recover those messages, and here's why."
I'm afraid you're not grasping the full potential of electronic democracy. It's quite true that most people (including me) are simply not interested in dealing with the vast majority of legislative issues, and are quite happy to delegate this job to representatives. However, there are always some issues that a voter does have an interest in, and would like to vote on directly.
My personal experience with direct democracy (New England town meetings) confirms this. In my experience, the Meeting will delegate the mass of mundane business to the Town boards and committees, by the simple expedient of adopting their recommendations unchanged (and often unanimously). However, if an issue is of wide interest, and especially if some voters feel poorly represented by the board's recommendations, they will vigorously exercise their rights to debate and vote their minds.
Electronic democracy allows us to update the ancient idea of representation, without forcing anyone to decide an issue themselves, unless they want to. The current system 'represents' a person by the candidate whose views are marginally more acceptable to a plurality of voters in a gerrymandered election district. Why not instead let the voter choose his or her own representative?
To my mind, the most promising system of electronic democracy would
allow a voter to designate a 'default' vote, such as "vote the same as Joe Blow" (presuming that Joe Blow has held himself out as a representative, and therefore publishes his votes), and
allow a voter to cast a direct vote on any issue, if and when desired.
We could still have elected legislators, to conduct fact-finding, draft proposed laws, etc., and, of course, hold themselves out as voting representatives. But, the final say would always be with the voting public.
Of course, such a system would be fiercely opposed by the entrenched political powers, since it would give the power to the people, instead of leaving it with the political bosses, where it belongs.:-)
An S-Corp does give you some options for health insurance. For one thing, it makes it easier to buy from some sources (like the Mass. Business Association, that we deal with). Also, it provides ways to fully deduct the insurance costs from taxes.
In general, the self-employed can only take a partial deduction for medical coverage. However, with an S-Corp this only applies to coverage for owners of the firm. This gives two ways to get full deductibility, at least for married people:
let E be the Entrepreneur who runs the business, and let S be E's spouse.
1. E owns the business, which employs S and provides family medical coverage, thus covering E indirectly, or 2. S owns the business, which provides coverage for E.
Talk to your accountant if you are interested in using one of these methods.
(Aside: We used NASE for a year, and I got a bad feeling about it. The salesman said 'no paperwork' and no hassles for coverage. We didn't have any major medical problems and therefore did not reach the deductibles, so I didn't find out about coverage hassles, but the paperwork was a chore. When they said 'no paperwork' they meant 'no paperwork from us', so I had to deal with bills from each medical provider, sometimes months after the date of service. We're now with Harvard Pilgrim's POS plan, which is more expensive but easier to deal with.)
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I'm afraid there's ample precedent for mandatory monitoring. For many years, it's been the law of the land in the US for aircraft.
It is illegal to operate an aircraft within 30 miles of a large airport without a monitoring device that informs the FAA of your position and altitude. (From successive positions, they can derive speed as well.)
How does this differ from requiring a speed monitoring device in every car?
I wouldn't assume that this case takes the fast appeal track. IANAL, but my reading of the Expediting Act is that three things are necessary for the expedited appeal to take place:
1. One party (presumably the DoJ) asks for it,
2. The district judge issues an order stating that the case is of general public importance to the administration of justice,
3. The Supreme Court accepts the appeal.
Points 1 and 2 would seem to be a slam-dunk. The DoJ desperately wants this resolved quickly, and Judge Jackson is in no mood to have his decision come before the Circuit Court of Appeals again, if that can be avoided. (Besides, this case is genuinely one of "public importance".)
The wild card here is point 3: acceptance by the Supreme Court. They could hear the case, but they could just as easily choose to refer it to the Circuit Court, and then perhaps hear an appeal from that decision.
On the one hand, this seems to be the type of case for which the Expediting Act was designed: a case of national importance, where delay would have widespread repercussions. On the other hand, the Court has such a crush of cases, it must defer or decline action on all but the most vital ones.
So, the Expediting Act really only offers a potental for fast resolution, which may or may not be realized.
A con-con establishing a Theocracy? Gimme a break. Any proposed amendments would not just have to be "shown" to the states, but would have to be ratified by three-quarters of them. That is an exceedingly tough standard, even for proposals that have attracted 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress.
Also, what makes you think that people would want to elect such looney-tune delegates to a Con-Con? The Congress and the states could establish a theocratic monarchical totalitarian dictatorship at any time, without a Con-Con. Why do you fear not fear that too?
What makes you think that the people of the US are too stupid to trust with the design of their own government? If, as you seem to claim, a majority of Americans hate the First Amendment and are clamoring for its repeal, and such a repeal would sail through a Con-Con and be ratified, why do we hear no such proposals now? (State-sponsored school prayer, as distasteful as I would find it, hardly amounts to a theocracy.)
You can squat on a domain name, and as a European (residing in Europe) you most likely could not be sued under this bill, for lack of 'personal jurisdiction'. In that case, the name itself could be sued! (That's what in rem means.)
If a US court had jurisdiction over the registrar (NSI, for example), it could order the transfer of the name.
Maybe, if we live so long. The appeals court seems to be in no hurry.
The re-hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been scheduled for Dec. 16, 1999. The first time the 9th Circuit heard the case was in December of 1997, and they took a year and a half, until May 1999 to decide. Based on this we can "extrapolate" (using Arthur C. Clarke's term) the following timeline:
12/1997: 9th Circuit appeal hearing
5/1999: 9th Circuit decides
12/1999: 9th Circuit en banc re-hearing
5/2001: 9th Circuit decides again
10/2001: Supreme Court takes case
5/2002: Supreme Court decides case (they take pride in making prompt decisions)
Or course, the 9th Circuit may be faster or slower this time around, and the Supreme Court may not take the case, but this is as good a guess as any. The real problem is that no one knows what legal tricks (new regulations, new legislation) the government may pull to delay this even longer. It's already taken most of this decade.
What will the closed-source vendors do if you spot them a 2.5-year head start from now?
If the record is harmful to you, it can be used in evidence. If it helps you, it's inadmissable.
(He went on to say that that's an oversimplification, but still largely true.)
So, one would like to erase all e-mail after a certain time. Of course, the problem is that while most e-mail is ephemeral and would not be missed, some must be preserved. Any automatic deletion system would either delete important data (in which case the users would keep private copies), or fail to delete all that it should. Also, data backup systems try very hard to preserve data, and would likely defeat the mail-reaping systems unless carefully designed and maintained.
I don't know how these people are implementing their system, but one way would be to require sender and recipient to have on-line access to a key server. It could work like this:
sender requests a key of specified lifetime from server, which generates a new key,
sender uses key to encrypt message, then discards key,
receiver requests key from server, decrypts message, and discards key and decrypt when done,
until the lifetime expires, receiver can repeat the above step as desired,
finally, when the lifetime expires, server discards key.
The vital benefit of this system is the ability to stand in front of the judge and say:
"Sorry, your honor, but we have no way to recover those messages, and here's why."
My personal experience with direct democracy (New England town meetings) confirms this. In my experience, the Meeting will delegate the mass of mundane business to the Town boards and committees, by the simple expedient of adopting their recommendations unchanged (and often unanimously). However, if an issue is of wide interest, and especially if some voters feel poorly represented by the board's recommendations, they will vigorously exercise their rights to debate and vote their minds.
Electronic democracy allows us to update the ancient idea of representation, without forcing anyone to decide an issue themselves, unless they want to. The current system 'represents' a person by the candidate whose views are marginally more acceptable to a plurality of voters in a gerrymandered election district. Why not instead let the voter choose his or her own representative?
To my mind, the most promising system of electronic democracy would
allow a voter to designate a 'default' vote, such as "vote the same as Joe Blow" (presuming that Joe Blow has held himself out as a representative, and therefore publishes his votes), and
allow a voter to cast a direct vote on any issue, if and when desired.
:-)
We could still have elected legislators, to conduct fact-finding, draft proposed laws, etc., and, of course, hold themselves out as voting representatives. But, the final say would always be with the voting public.
Of course, such a system would be fiercely opposed by the entrenched political powers, since it would give the power to the people, instead of leaving it with the political bosses, where it belongs.
An S-Corp does give you some options for health insurance. For one thing, it makes it easier to buy from some sources (like the Mass. Business Association, that we deal with). Also, it provides ways to fully deduct the insurance costs from taxes.
In general, the self-employed can only take a partial deduction for medical coverage. However, with an S-Corp this only applies to coverage for owners of the firm. This gives two ways to get full deductibility, at least for married people:
let E be the Entrepreneur who runs the business, and
let S be E's spouse.
1. E owns the business, which employs S and provides family medical coverage, thus covering E indirectly, or
2. S owns the business, which provides coverage for E.
Talk to your accountant if you are interested in using one of these methods.
(Aside: We used NASE for a year, and I got a bad feeling about it. The salesman said 'no paperwork' and no hassles for coverage. We didn't have any major medical problems and therefore did not reach the deductibles, so I didn't find out about coverage hassles, but the paperwork was a chore. When they said 'no paperwork' they meant 'no paperwork from us', so I had to deal with bills from each medical provider, sometimes months after the date of service. We're now with Harvard Pilgrim's POS plan, which is more expensive but easier to deal with.)