Because it wouldn't be justified if he shot 20 people outside a strip club at night, killing six people including four strippers, a DJ, and a customer . . .
Anyway, I find it hard to believe anyone finds the request inappropriate. The only newsworthiness here is on two points:
1) It's chat from inside a game. Seems unusual; therefore, interesting-ish. 2) Did they just call up the company and say "hey, send this to us" and the guy folded or did they actually use a warrant? One would think they did. You know, because why would you risk a case otherwise? On the other hand, it's certainly not out of the question for the government to just say "send us your data on these people" and for the admins to comply without question and without guarding their customers rights whatsoever. You know, the whole telecommunications industry being in bed with the government as far as warrant-less requests over the last decade, for example.
Falsely accusing you of rape, because I don't like you is hardly the same thing as being criminalized for merely saying or writing something violent. Even if we DO try to turn every sixth grader drawing a map of his school or every fifth grade boy drawing pictures of guns into a suspected socio-path that has to be monitored and observed closely for the rest of their life.
That's not the direction we're going. We're rapidly heading in the "mean words are a form of assault" direction. I'm sure there will be a felony level conviction for "meanness" in my life time.
You can exercise your freedom of speech to express your dissent. The consequences for that speech will be that we're going to audit you. Or accuse you of a hideous crime. Or just disappear you and leave your family wondering where you ran off to, fifty years ago.
As long as they used the proper procedure for requesting information off the server logs (ie, a search warrant), then there's no issue here. The problem that one can easily foresee is some sort of automated monitoring of all information - even from video games - to be parsed for profiled styles of communication. I don't know about you, but I assert a certain level of privacy in my conversations - whether they're between two people in a closed environment or via an email or a letter. While everything can be recovered and used in a court of law (again, with proper procedures), that doesn't mean that they should all be actively monitored -- which I think is an obvious eventual path that can be extrapolated from this.
Of course, if what they're doing here is "shitting on free speech", then I have to wonder how the original commenter feels about them using testimony from people who have had conversations with a person who is accused of a crime. Oh noes!
Also, wouldn't it be weird to see them try and auto-parse games for profiled communications? What on earth would you flag that isn't part of common game conversations about every three seconds?
Yeah, we're a funny lot. What with our legal system that presumes innocence until you are found guilty through a fair trial in a court of law before your peers. It's such a whacky idea to expect - neigh, demand - that the procedures be used which protect someone's rights when searching for, requesting, and obtaining evidence of a crime. Why, we should only care about procedures that respect your rights when you are innocent. Of course, until you have been convicted through a fair trial, you ARE innocent. In which case, these rights and all have to be protected for EVERYONE.
But hey, if your country just response to things like "that bitch is a witch!" by drowning her in a pool of water and then cheering that justice has been done . . . well, bully for you.
Nothing wrong with them requesting the information, as long as by "request", they mean "used the proper procedure through the proper channels to officially request a specific type of data from a specific source by means of search warrant".
There's no harm in being as thorough as possible, but at the same time, I would expect that the administrator of those servers sure as hell better refuse to release them unless served with a proper warrant to search for and seize the specific data.
What I find odd is that the insanity plea is completely legitimate, while "crimes of passion" apparently no longer exist. A crime of passion (say, you come home and find your spouse banging your best friend) is essentially the same thing. Even if you knew right from wrong before and after, the moment it occurred you were not in your right might due to extreme duress. Today, we don't consider such things (or so it seems), which is odd. And yet, the insanity plea "god told me to do it" is thrown around constantly.
Your honor, clearly the defendant is not insane. After all, he was playing an MMORPG when he mentioned killing everyone and letting god sort them out. Therefore, this was pre-meditated. And only spontaneous actions qualify as insane!
Even better, we should actively monitor every video game in real time for questionable discussions. In fact, the FBI and NSA should have direct feeds into the chat (audio and text) of all video games that goes straight to their Echalon program (do they even still have that or do they use something else, now?). No human should have the possibility of completely private conversations at any point ever under any conditions, just in case one out of every few dozen million says five lines that may have anything to do with anything. After all, clearly the only way to assign intention or guilt to this guy will be from a few stupid lines in some online game. Otherwise he's clearly going to be found innocent and walk!
Why, I shouldn't even be allowed to think in my own head. Who knows what evil could be lurking inside here?! There should be someway to always know what I'm thinking so that authorities can profile it!
It just shows the ignorance of a small group of people on Slashdot. I guess they somehow missed all the comments about how Google believes privacy is only for people doing things they shouldn't be doing and assume that because a mission statement from the original founders' college days of "do no evil" will continue to apply well into public corporation phase.
I dig google. I use google. I am also suspect of google, like anyone should be.
I have to question that number. What is 800k? That must be about one percent of the entire population of children up to the age of 18 in this country. Every single year. Also, I never understood the places they put these stupid alerts. Fine, put them on highway signs. Put them on the radio. But why put them on the TV of on some little web-widget on someone's web page? Chances are about 100:1 that if I'm watching TV, I'm nowhere near any place that I would see some guy driving down the highway with a kidnapped kid.
Unfortunately, that's about the extent that you can expect in a public school. If Google is really looking to engage and facilitate critical thinking and discovery among children, they might truly be able to offer something for those children who want to have the encouragement and resources for advanced learning, but are typically not served by or even discouraged by the public school system. I was a pretty awful student, when it was my turn, but things like having the same Earth Sciences text book in high school that I had already used in the fifth grade didn't really promote curiosity or education - nor did the teachers who (by choice or force) were stuck catering to the common denominator -- which often meant just trying to get through a class without students humping each other or the teacher getting hit with a text book.
I'd love to see more of this. Companies that bitch about the supposed lack of knowledgeable young people as justification for flooding H1Bs actually doing something about it - even bypassing the public education system, if necessary. Whatever people may say about kids "this generation" (it's always "this generation - fifty years ago, today, and fifty years from now) -- there are always a ton of them who will enthusiastically embrace an opportunity and excel if given just a bit of guidance and resources.
Hell, I'm an adult and I totally want to participate in a Google science fair!
Only hire admins who have a family. Make it a requirement of their contract that their child have a small explosive device implanted in them that is tied to the health of the systems that are administrated. Will not only ensure against nefarious activities, but make five-nines and above almost guaranteed.
A great example of one of our big problems in this country. The government points a finger and says "teh bad guyz is over der!" and we all waddle our turkey-gobble faces across the street to set the guy on fire. It never occurs to us to question how this guy got access to such supposedly confidential information. Certainly, he couldn't be someone's patsy. He couldn't have fallen for a honey-pot. He couldn't be a scapegoat to facilitate an intentional leak of uninteresting "confidential" information so as to discredit certain groups or efforts (or mere principals).
Not saying the guy isn't guilty of anything or even everything. But let's not join the mindless pitchfork crowd.
Also, don't we have a proud history in this country of celebrating those who take risks to uncover things? Why so eager to silence them? Are you one of those guys who believes that the fox should watch over the hen-house and nobody should watch over the fox? I'd hate to think of the implications if we strike the fear of death into people who might want to be rightful whistle-blowers in the future.
And, most baffling about the whole thing, why are people so ready to execute Assange (because they're idiots who believe that Assange is a citizen) and Manly, but when we uncover an actual spy from a government that we have a poor relationship with and was considered our enemy for most of the last fifty years, we send her safely back to her own country, where she becomes the adviser on the board of a bank and a local celebrity? And is given a baby tiger... And is featured in a Maxim layout. . . And does a photoshoot for Playboy . . . And becomes the figurehead of a youth political movement . . . ?
I'm going to show my support by committing a DoS against the credit card companies. On January 15th, I am going to spend so much damn money on my Visa card in so many different transactions. I will totally show them!:)
I said it was almost to the point where it feels that way. Intentional hyperbole aside, I think it's clear that dissent of all flavors (particularly against actual government positions and actions) are slowly being vilified. Refer to recent Napolitano (and others) quotes over the last two months as an example of where they're headed.
Anyway, I'll see your Islam and raise you an Atheist.
Ninety percent of respondents thought whites and blacks could share their vision of society. About 80 percent said the same of Hispanics, Jews and conservative Christians. More than 70 percent said it of immigrants, and 64 percent said it of Muslims. Atheists had the lowest rating at 54 percent.
Asked whether they would disapprove of a child's wish to marry an atheist, 47.6 percent of those interviewed said yes. Asked the same question about Muslims and African-Americans, the yes responses fell to 33.5 percent and 27.2 percent, respectively. The yes responses for Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and conservative Christians were 18.5 percent, 18.5 percent, 11.8 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively. (source)
I would certainly hesitate before letting anyone get the idea that I was an atheist. I probably wouldn't mention it to my neighbors. I wouldn't mention it to a girlfriend's family. I absolutely would not mention it to an employer or colleague or would avoid inadvertently giving the impression that I was. People react viciously and with great prejudice toward it and it is not a stretch to imagine that a "believer" would can your ass for it. Or at least, treat you with great disfavor within the work place.
And, no, I don't necessarily buy that being associated with Islam makes you the most likely to be disappeared within this country. I steadfastly assert that it's anyone voicing too much dissent that crosses the attention of the wrong official. Now, you might be accused of ties to Islam or some terrorist group as part of the justification of harassing or disappearing you (like the guy in Portland a few years ago and several others in the last half decade), but that's more a scapegoat than a reason.
You're right, it's just Wikileaks. Every other violation (suspension of habeas corpus comes to mind, among many others) has been met with such active and significant response by the informed and caring American public. It's just this one isolated incident of Wikileaks where Americans said "you know, I usually put it all on the line to defend our liberties, but I'm gonna take a break today".
We're all part of a government that commits heinous violations on its own people and - often - even worse violations on others. As long as we have Starbucks, Jersey Shore, Facebook, and our mini-vans, we're content to permit it. Neigh, even to justify and defend it.
Why single out 4chan? At least they're doing something.
The second line right there is your problem. When the "something" that is being done is counterproductive, you are not helping.
Promoting protests around the world is counter-productive? It's about the most rudimentary form of protest.
DDoS attacks may certainly be petty and even juvenile (though I do believe it's known that our own government commits them or would), but you use what tools you have in your reach, I guess. Certainly brings attention to your cause (sometimes negative, here, I guess -- sometimes not so negative, when against Scientology). At any rate, I didn't see any mention of DDoS on January 15th. The page I saw linked to in this submission just showed videos of people protesting on the streets, which is still legal.
. . . Though not sure if it's still legal to wear masks while protesting. Certainly not in all states.
. . . And with the caveat that you may need to be restricted to conducting your protest in a barbed-wire chain-link "free speech cage".
Wikileaks isn't even necessarily the most worthwhile reason to get oneself rousted. There are plenty of things which either individually or cumulatively should have rousted more than "meh, that sucks" from the collective population, by now . . .
People say things about how if they had been alive when the Nazi party was taking over Germany, they "would have done something". In reality, if you or I or anyone else who talk big about how much we'd stand up to oppression and violation of liberties and just plain "wrongness" would do no such thing if we stepped back in time.
If we were on the street and saw some brown shirts hauling a jewish family out of their home, making them get on their knees, and putting a gun to their head, you know what we'd do? We'd shut our fucking mouths and look the other way, because we don't want to be next.
My point with that given example was that we do an awful lot of talking about how we should stand up to injustice and fight on principal to retain those ideals that we've lived on for a couple hundred years (and of which many are now considered general "human rights" by the UN, even) . . . but none of us would ever be willing to take the risk of doing anything about it. Except maybe putting a bumper sticker on our cars, a little button on our websites, and if we're really "rebels", going out and standing outside a building with signs . . . on sticks!
Slashdot Mirror
Because it wouldn't be justified if he shot 20 people outside a strip club at night, killing six people including four strippers, a DJ, and a customer . . .
Anyway, I find it hard to believe anyone finds the request inappropriate. The only newsworthiness here is on two points:
1) It's chat from inside a game. Seems unusual; therefore, interesting-ish.
2) Did they just call up the company and say "hey, send this to us" and the guy folded or did they actually use a warrant? One would think they did. You know, because why would you risk a case otherwise? On the other hand, it's certainly not out of the question for the government to just say "send us your data on these people" and for the admins to comply without question and without guarding their customers rights whatsoever. You know, the whole telecommunications industry being in bed with the government as far as warrant-less requests over the last decade, for example.
Falsely accusing you of rape, because I don't like you is hardly the same thing as being criminalized for merely saying or writing something violent. Even if we DO try to turn every sixth grader drawing a map of his school or every fifth grade boy drawing pictures of guns into a suspected socio-path that has to be monitored and observed closely for the rest of their life.
That's not the direction we're going. We're rapidly heading in the "mean words are a form of assault" direction. I'm sure there will be a felony level conviction for "meanness" in my life time.
You can exercise your freedom of speech to express your dissent. The consequences for that speech will be that we're going to audit you. Or accuse you of a hideous crime. Or just disappear you and leave your family wondering where you ran off to, fifty years ago.
As long as they used the proper procedure for requesting information off the server logs (ie, a search warrant), then there's no issue here. The problem that one can easily foresee is some sort of automated monitoring of all information - even from video games - to be parsed for profiled styles of communication. I don't know about you, but I assert a certain level of privacy in my conversations - whether they're between two people in a closed environment or via an email or a letter. While everything can be recovered and used in a court of law (again, with proper procedures), that doesn't mean that they should all be actively monitored -- which I think is an obvious eventual path that can be extrapolated from this.
Of course, if what they're doing here is "shitting on free speech", then I have to wonder how the original commenter feels about them using testimony from people who have had conversations with a person who is accused of a crime. Oh noes!
Also, wouldn't it be weird to see them try and auto-parse games for profiled communications? What on earth would you flag that isn't part of common game conversations about every three seconds?
Yeah, we're a funny lot. What with our legal system that presumes innocence until you are found guilty through a fair trial in a court of law before your peers. It's such a whacky idea to expect - neigh, demand - that the procedures be used which protect someone's rights when searching for, requesting, and obtaining evidence of a crime. Why, we should only care about procedures that respect your rights when you are innocent. Of course, until you have been convicted through a fair trial, you ARE innocent. In which case, these rights and all have to be protected for EVERYONE.
But hey, if your country just response to things like "that bitch is a witch!" by drowning her in a pool of water and then cheering that justice has been done . . . well, bully for you.
Nothing wrong with them requesting the information, as long as by "request", they mean "used the proper procedure through the proper channels to officially request a specific type of data from a specific source by means of search warrant".
There's no harm in being as thorough as possible, but at the same time, I would expect that the administrator of those servers sure as hell better refuse to release them unless served with a proper warrant to search for and seize the specific data.
What I find odd is that the insanity plea is completely legitimate, while "crimes of passion" apparently no longer exist. A crime of passion (say, you come home and find your spouse banging your best friend) is essentially the same thing. Even if you knew right from wrong before and after, the moment it occurred you were not in your right might due to extreme duress. Today, we don't consider such things (or so it seems), which is odd. And yet, the insanity plea "god told me to do it" is thrown around constantly.
Seems fairly irrelevant, to me.
Your honor, clearly the defendant is not insane. After all, he was playing an MMORPG when he mentioned killing everyone and letting god sort them out. Therefore, this was pre-meditated. And only spontaneous actions qualify as insane!
Even better, we should actively monitor every video game in real time for questionable discussions. In fact, the FBI and NSA should have direct feeds into the chat (audio and text) of all video games that goes straight to their Echalon program (do they even still have that or do they use something else, now?). No human should have the possibility of completely private conversations at any point ever under any conditions, just in case one out of every few dozen million says five lines that may have anything to do with anything. After all, clearly the only way to assign intention or guilt to this guy will be from a few stupid lines in some online game. Otherwise he's clearly going to be found innocent and walk!
Why, I shouldn't even be allowed to think in my own head. Who knows what evil could be lurking inside here?! There should be someway to always know what I'm thinking so that authorities can profile it!
It just shows the ignorance of a small group of people on Slashdot. I guess they somehow missed all the comments about how Google believes privacy is only for people doing things they shouldn't be doing and assume that because a mission statement from the original founders' college days of "do no evil" will continue to apply well into public corporation phase.
I dig google. I use google. I am also suspect of google, like anyone should be.
And the rest are mom's boyfriend.
I have to question that number. What is 800k? That must be about one percent of the entire population of children up to the age of 18 in this country. Every single year. Also, I never understood the places they put these stupid alerts. Fine, put them on highway signs. Put them on the radio. But why put them on the TV of on some little web-widget on someone's web page? Chances are about 100:1 that if I'm watching TV, I'm nowhere near any place that I would see some guy driving down the highway with a kidnapped kid.
Google feels more evil every day, but they do just enough wonderful things that they keep us thinking "yeah, but . . .". Grr.
Unfortunately, that's about the extent that you can expect in a public school. If Google is really looking to engage and facilitate critical thinking and discovery among children, they might truly be able to offer something for those children who want to have the encouragement and resources for advanced learning, but are typically not served by or even discouraged by the public school system. I was a pretty awful student, when it was my turn, but things like having the same Earth Sciences text book in high school that I had already used in the fifth grade didn't really promote curiosity or education - nor did the teachers who (by choice or force) were stuck catering to the common denominator -- which often meant just trying to get through a class without students humping each other or the teacher getting hit with a text book.
I'd love to see more of this. Companies that bitch about the supposed lack of knowledgeable young people as justification for flooding H1Bs actually doing something about it - even bypassing the public education system, if necessary. Whatever people may say about kids "this generation" (it's always "this generation - fifty years ago, today, and fifty years from now) -- there are always a ton of them who will enthusiastically embrace an opportunity and excel if given just a bit of guidance and resources.
Hell, I'm an adult and I totally want to participate in a Google science fair!
Only hire admins who have a family. Make it a requirement of their contract that their child have a small explosive device implanted in them that is tied to the health of the systems that are administrated. Will not only ensure against nefarious activities, but make five-nines and above almost guaranteed.
A great example of one of our big problems in this country. The government points a finger and says "teh bad guyz is over der!" and we all waddle our turkey-gobble faces across the street to set the guy on fire. It never occurs to us to question how this guy got access to such supposedly confidential information. Certainly, he couldn't be someone's patsy. He couldn't have fallen for a honey-pot. He couldn't be a scapegoat to facilitate an intentional leak of uninteresting "confidential" information so as to discredit certain groups or efforts (or mere principals).
Not saying the guy isn't guilty of anything or even everything. But let's not join the mindless pitchfork crowd.
Also, don't we have a proud history in this country of celebrating those who take risks to uncover things? Why so eager to silence them? Are you one of those guys who believes that the fox should watch over the hen-house and nobody should watch over the fox? I'd hate to think of the implications if we strike the fear of death into people who might want to be rightful whistle-blowers in the future.
And, most baffling about the whole thing, why are people so ready to execute Assange (because they're idiots who believe that Assange is a citizen) and Manly, but when we uncover an actual spy from a government that we have a poor relationship with and was considered our enemy for most of the last fifty years, we send her safely back to her own country, where she becomes the adviser on the board of a bank and a local celebrity? And is given a baby tiger... And is featured in a Maxim layout. . . And does a photoshoot for Playboy . . . And becomes the figurehead of a youth political movement . . . ?
I'm going to show my support by committing a DoS against the credit card companies. On January 15th, I am going to spend so much damn money on my Visa card in so many different transactions. I will totally show them! :)
Maybe every Anonymous protestor can have a giant Jimmy Wales face on their signs.
Okay, cool. Let's totally stand up to "the man", no matter what happens! Okay? Okay.
You first, though . . .
Yeah, therein you see the problem. You step forward and the entire life of supporters take one giant step back from you.
I said it was almost to the point where it feels that way. Intentional hyperbole aside, I think it's clear that dissent of all flavors (particularly against actual government positions and actions) are slowly being vilified. Refer to recent Napolitano (and others) quotes over the last two months as an example of where they're headed.
Anyway, I'll see your Islam and raise you an Atheist.
+ Atheists are the least electable persons in the country (source: 2007 Gallup poll).
+ Atheists are the least trusted people in America (source: UMN study).
Ninety percent of respondents thought whites and blacks could share their vision of society. About 80 percent said the same of Hispanics, Jews and conservative Christians. More than 70 percent said it of immigrants, and 64 percent said it of Muslims. Atheists had the lowest rating at 54 percent.
Asked whether they would disapprove of a child's wish to marry an atheist, 47.6 percent of those interviewed said yes. Asked the same question about Muslims and African-Americans, the yes responses fell to 33.5 percent and 27.2 percent, respectively. The yes responses for Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and conservative Christians were 18.5 percent, 18.5 percent, 11.8 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively. (source)
I would certainly hesitate before letting anyone get the idea that I was an atheist. I probably wouldn't mention it to my neighbors. I wouldn't mention it to a girlfriend's family. I absolutely would not mention it to an employer or colleague or would avoid inadvertently giving the impression that I was. People react viciously and with great prejudice toward it and it is not a stretch to imagine that a "believer" would can your ass for it. Or at least, treat you with great disfavor within the work place.
And, no, I don't necessarily buy that being associated with Islam makes you the most likely to be disappeared within this country. I steadfastly assert that it's anyone voicing too much dissent that crosses the attention of the wrong official. Now, you might be accused of ties to Islam or some terrorist group as part of the justification of harassing or disappearing you (like the guy in Portland a few years ago and several others in the last half decade), but that's more a scapegoat than a reason.
You're right, it's just Wikileaks. Every other violation (suspension of habeas corpus comes to mind, among many others) has been met with such active and significant response by the informed and caring American public. It's just this one isolated incident of Wikileaks where Americans said "you know, I usually put it all on the line to defend our liberties, but I'm gonna take a break today".
We're all part of a government that commits heinous violations on its own people and - often - even worse violations on others. As long as we have Starbucks, Jersey Shore, Facebook, and our mini-vans, we're content to permit it. Neigh, even to justify and defend it.
Why single out 4chan? At least they're doing something.
The second line right there is your problem. When the "something" that is being done is counterproductive, you are not helping.
Promoting protests around the world is counter-productive? It's about the most rudimentary form of protest.
DDoS attacks may certainly be petty and even juvenile (though I do believe it's known that our own government commits them or would), but you use what tools you have in your reach, I guess. Certainly brings attention to your cause (sometimes negative, here, I guess -- sometimes not so negative, when against Scientology). At any rate, I didn't see any mention of DDoS on January 15th. The page I saw linked to in this submission just showed videos of people protesting on the streets, which is still legal.
. . . Though not sure if it's still legal to wear masks while protesting. Certainly not in all states.
. . . And with the caveat that you may need to be restricted to conducting your protest in a barbed-wire chain-link "free speech cage".
Wikileaks isn't even necessarily the most worthwhile reason to get oneself rousted. There are plenty of things which either individually or cumulatively should have rousted more than "meh, that sucks" from the collective population, by now . . .
I think my point flew over your head.
People say things about how if they had been alive when the Nazi party was taking over Germany, they "would have done something". In reality, if you or I or anyone else who talk big about how much we'd stand up to oppression and violation of liberties and just plain "wrongness" would do no such thing if we stepped back in time.
If we were on the street and saw some brown shirts hauling a jewish family out of their home, making them get on their knees, and putting a gun to their head, you know what we'd do? We'd shut our fucking mouths and look the other way, because we don't want to be next.
My point with that given example was that we do an awful lot of talking about how we should stand up to injustice and fight on principal to retain those ideals that we've lived on for a couple hundred years (and of which many are now considered general "human rights" by the UN, even) . . . but none of us would ever be willing to take the risk of doing anything about it. Except maybe putting a bumper sticker on our cars, a little button on our websites, and if we're really "rebels", going out and standing outside a building with signs . . . on sticks!