Then all politicians are bad for making those laws, and all people are bad for voting in those politicians.
Yes, this would be the logical corollary. Though I am not much for Freud usually, in his Civilization and Its Discontents, he argued that it is possible for society itself to become dysfunctional enough to be considered psychotic in its own right. An individual has no real option at that point to be sane. They can either be sane in and of themselves and be completely out of sync with everything around them or they can be in tune with the consensual reality and be insane in and of themselves.
I rather think we have reached (and surpassed) that point. Certainly we have reached a point where people often find it impossible to be both moral and lawful, even though many people still equate these two qualities. None of the choices from that point are good. But I think we have had many police decide to not continue being enablers and leave the profession. This has largely left us with people in 'law enforcement' who are not aware of the contradiction or do not care. That is not a good outcome, either.
I think the PP's point is that the approach in the article assumes one particular outcome is "desirable" without recognizing that the "too much brain/too distractable" state has distinct situational and evolutionary advantages. Ability to focus to the exclusion of other activity is desirable in a cubicle environment but less so in forest with things trying to eat you. By that measure, the "un-pruned brain" may be the default, "correct" state and the pruned brain the "abnormality". It all depends on what type of environment the brain is trying to work in.
My boss when I worked with the Air Force was an ex-Navy SEAL with ADHD. When someone emptied empty pop-cans into the recycle bin in the nearby break room, he could tell you exactly how many had been dumped. ADHD was a hideous problem in such a busy, noisy place, but it allowed him to actually function better in the field. Since then, I have developed a marked distractability as a result of a neural-muscular condition affecting me in a similar manner. When my condition is bad, I cannot focus on writing or other task work or very long. Sometimes I cannot even follow conversations if I have activity going on other sides (I have to move to line the speaker up with the other noises). Every dog bark, fly buzz, music from the neighbor down-the-road, etc., breaks my focus. But if I walk out into the pasture, I can quickly identify every animal moving in the brush. I can notice and pick out wild-harvestable edible and medicinal herbs as I walk through an area. My nephew is going through ADD-like problems as well, and I have been working with my sister to introduce him to activities where his condition is an advantage so he can deal better, psychologically, with the downsides.
So, anyway, we assume a lot of things are 'defects' --- and in some ways they are--- without taking into account that what humans are typically called on to do has changed dramatically over the last couple-of-hundred years.
Something odd I have noticed, and this bears out with other "afflicted" I have spoken to, is that there is some kind of olfactory cross-wiring. A strong odor, such as from an essential oil, will distract the other parts of the brain sometimes to allow task work. This is sometimes used to help ADD students be able to sit and complete homework, for instance. I have also noticed that certain things are easier to multitask than others. I cannot read with a conversation going on nearby, but sketching is easier and may actually help me focus on the conversation. These things probably have some connection, even if incidental/accidental, to tasks people have been traditionally required to perform for survival.
would be if someone who actually designs nuclear bombs today were to look at his plans and say that, "Yes, that would result in a functional atomic bomb."
Anyone who has done so for the US could not comment, even on his published designs. It is (or was?) made very explicit in security briefings that you have to be careful even in how you comment on even unclassified data. If, for instance, you asked me to recommend an unclassified source for statistics on certain Air Force weapons platforms, I would largely not be able to answer because my answer (according to the law as it seems to be interpreted) would have to depend on knowledge of classified data if it was something I had handled during my work with AFSAA. I would, presumably, highlight one source over another based on knowledge of classified topics: not allowed. Similarly, therefore, a physicist or engineer with actual experience with bomb construction (said experience obtained through the terms of a US/NATO security clearance) may not comment in any fashion on this guy's plan even though the plan presumably draws only on unclassified data. Dealing with the nuances of that sort of thing is a pain in the rear, so it ends up being easier to just keep your mouth shut: one of the reasons I did not want to do work like that long term.
But personally, I am much less worried about someone making a bomb than someone making a working bomb. To be a "nuclear power" one would have to construct multiple bombs adjusted on the basis of actual tests (some of which will doubtless fail), just like we did. A nuclear test (even failed) is something which tends to draw attention and is hard to hide. Terrorists could actually get more mileage for less cost out of much less sophisticated approaches. Certain among those are what keep me awake at night, not a lone-wolf building Hiroshima-in-a-can. The other bigger worry is a terrorist getting hold of a working device by hook or by crook from an unstable nuclear power or threatening independent launch in the service of a nuclear power.
John Piña Craven in a book called, I believe, "The Silent War", provides some insight into [alleged] incidents where the former USSR nearly lost control of its nuclear forces (some of the inspiration for Red October, apparently) and how that was one of the fears which finally brought them to the bargaining table. Facing a nuclear holocaust in a war with the US was one thing; the thought of doing so involuntarily was yet another.
The genie is out of the bottle. Living in fear does no good. We just take one day at a time.
Hmmm... I guess the other point is that if I were a physicist of that sort and the plan had an obvious flaw, I might just say, "Yes, sir, great design; that'd do it!" just to hopefully ensnare a nut or two into making the same mistake.
I have never understood people that believe they must impose there beliefs and supposed morals on others.
Largely because they, themselves, gained their belief system by having it imposed on them, often with cruelty, and despite their innate belief that what they were being taught was wrong. If they don't impose their belief on others, then they have to admit that what was done to them was wrong, and then they have to deal with all that pain.
Spirituality is not the problem. Belief in a God who wants us to follow a path ("Torah") as part of our relationship with What Is, is not the problem. Religion often is. Religion is the belief in men who somehow know more about what God wants than you do or what He can communicate with you directly. Religion, at its foundation, is therefore idolatry and forbidden by the cardinal rule of Torah.
Actually, the 9th and 10th Amendments make it pretty darn clear that it was to be taken as a closed document even if the copious notes and essays from the founding period did not (which they do). The Founders very explicitly and directly wanted to create a limited government of expressly delegated powers, one with a more powerful central government than under the Articles of Confederation, true, but strictly limited in nature nevertheless. Many people said so publicly and no one said otherwise--- not in the decisions at the Con Con, not in the public debates leading up to ratification, not in the ratifying conventions, and not in the ratifying instruments accepted by the states--- no one said, "Hey this is a living document and we'll figure it out as we go." Madison, in the Federalist Papers, directly spells out the consequences of the Federal government overstepping its delegated authority with the states in control of the militia. If they believed in a 'living document,' why write the Constitution anyway, when they could have just expanded the government by ignoring the limits under the Articles?
As to the idea that this prevents the government from tackling future circumstances, that is an empty argument. The idea was that it was not the Federal government's job to innovate. The states are in a position to handle many issues on their own, each to its liking (within Constitutional limits on their own authority) and many states do have specific laws on video games. We have amended the US Constitution quite a few times where the states felt that it fell short of what was needed.
The PP is correct. The job of a judge is to enforce the law (starting with the Supreme Law of the Land first and foremost). Nothing more and nothing less. "Congress shall make no law..." is pretty clear.
Social Security is solvent - the worst anyone actually claims about it is it will be falling into a negative range, where intake will be only 75% of outgo, by 2034, and this negative range will last for about 13 to 15 years if no adjustments are made. Some people are calling that bankruptcy.
The problem is that, given that the fund was borrowed by other departments and a balanced budget was not maintained overall as projections required, it is no easier to raise money for, say, the Department of Education to pay Social Security than it is to raise money for Social Security directly. Either requires raising taxes, decreasing benefits, increasing deficits, cutting spending elsewhere, none of which anyone wants to do. This is not a problem with Social Security as conceived (separate argument) but with corrupt government as implemented. Just as with now defunct municipal retirement funds, it is always easier for a politician to spend now and put off the worry to a later Congress or administration. In general, no "temporary" tax will ever get repealed and no cookie jar will ever go unpilfered.
So, pragmatically speaking, Social Security is bankrupt or, rather, is caught up in the general insolvency of its debtor, the US government.
Semi-automatic handguns are similarly useless for any legitimate use. Well, handguns in general are useless.
First of all, there is a world of difference between a semi-automatic weapon and a fully automatic one. A (double-action) revolver is a handgun which will fire every time you pull the trigger. The difference in rate of fire is not why you would choose one over the other. There are a lot of differences in the way they shoot which determines which are appropriate for which people and situations.
Second, the purpose of a handgun is portability, period. Obviously it is a trade-off in effectiveness, but I can carry one everywhere. Since I do not know when I will need one, that is important: if it is ever appropriate to carry a gun, it is nearly always appropriate to carry a gun. That is the same reason I just about always have at least a mini flashlight and some basic first aid supplies on me. No substitute for a full emergency kit but I am more likely to have them when actually needed.
On the farm, a handgun's purpose is to keep a bad guy at bay (or feral dog off of the sheep, whatever) long enough for my wife or I to get the shotgun out. Off the farm it's there to keep them at bay long enough for me to get my family and myself out of there. If I know I am going to to encounter trouble, I don't carry a handgun, I carry a shotgun (or, when an option, go in the other direction). But a handgun is small enough to have with me 24/7; a shotgun is not. Neither is my multi-D-cell maglite. Choose the tool for the need.
I do not know of many criminals who announce robberies or rapes or assaults ahead of time. If there is a twitter function for that, I have not found it yet. That means you have to have something portable.
In theory guns are a great equalizer, but in practice they only help the party who is prepared to carry a weapon for the purpose of employing deadly force. This is more far more likely to be the attacker then the victim.
Actually, that's an over-generalization. Many criminals are not very good at using force, they are simply used to an asymmetrical situation--- bullies--- and do not expect a determined victim. Some criminals are actually trained and skilled (and therefore extremely dangerous) but, on the average, a victim with any skill and training is likely to be more skilled than the attacker if they can keep their heads. And quite a few people are very determined not to be victims; they should be given the choice of how to do it.
Then there is the fact that carrying a gun if you are NOT prepared to employ deadly force puts you in more danger then you would be without one (as the attacker will use it against you).
That I agree with wholeheartedly. You should not carry a gun unless you are willing to learn how to use it, when [not] to use it, and are determined to do so. You should thoroughly consider the moral implications of when to shoot before you pick one up. You also need situational awareness to ensure that it is not taken from you. I find that when I am armed, I am much more aware of what goes on around me because I am subconsciously keeping track of who is close to me and ensuring that my weapon is secure. That is probably something I should be doing when I am not armed as well, but psychology can be tricky that way.
Simply having a gun does not level the playing field. Pepper spray is far more suitable for self-defense against a more powerful attacker.
Not really. I have pepper spray and there are places and times I carry it instead of a gun. There are situations where I would use it in preference to a gun, but it is no substitute. For one thing, it will not stop a determined attacker who is carrying a gun faster than they can hurt you, especially at some range. Of the various options for self-defense, including no resistance, using a gun is the least likely to end with both you and the bad guy injured.
A gun also has a deterrent effect which pepper spray does not. If I pull a gun on a bad guy, 9 times out of 10, he will surrender or run. If I pull pepper spray, I will have to use it more likely than not. On the farm, if I confront an intruder or stranger, the fact that I am (visibly) armed also keeps things very polite. I do not have to threaten or brandish the gun, they just know it is there. If you keep a cool head, it keeps things cool; if you have a hot head, a gun will escalate things. There is no reason to be discourteous until and unless things turn deadly and then you have more important things to worry about.
A gun, like many things, is a tool. It has to be used and handled properly. A lot of people do not like seeing guns because they crystallize issues of justified force, violence, evil, and mortality we do not like to face, but we do face them just the same, usually just unprepared.
Governments around the world do not fear people armed with guns, they fear people armed with cellphones, especially camera-equipped ones.
There were plenty of pictures taken in Myanmar before, during, and after the monks and hundreds of protesters were methodically slaughtered. Governments only fear cameras if the pictures can mobilize a populace. They only fear a populace which can defend itself.
That being said, guns as a defense against tyranny only works if the moral high ground can be taken and kept and that requires extreme restraint in using them. Otherwise not enough of the populace supports it and it fizzles or worse, it succeeds, but does not result in a stable country.
In principle I agree with you, but the thing is that a lot of people saw this sort of thing coming. There has been a lot of commentary and, at least in my own discussions, worry, about the winking incitement to violence that has been broadcast since Obama was elected.
I think the incitement to violence has been more than winking in some cases, but is not as simple as that either. Inciting individuals to violence is not that much different than inciting the state to violence against individuals, a lot of which has been happening, and very blatantly as well. The two together put us on collision course as a society which makes it more and more likely for these confrontations to occur, either for a law enforcement encounter to become deadly when it shouldn't or for individuals to take things into their own hands. The more power the government and corporations have over our lives, the more desperate people become to influence them. It is difficult to tell precisely what variety of nut this guy is, but I do not like the increasing and multi-lateral intolerance.
I love how people on this very forum have had "Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo" at the bottom of every one of their posts for years. And when that shit actually blows up suddenly it "isn't the time for politics."
Believing in the Second Amendment does not mean agreeing with misuse of deadly force. Unilateral use of force is wrong. Lawful possession of firearms is one of the mechanisms we have for balancing the evil which exists in the world and it is a mechanism which the Congresswoman who was shot supported.
Gun control debates are generally not about whether or not guns will exist but about who controls them. Clearly crimes can be committed both by governments and individuals with guns. You cannot take guns away from both and I would argue it is difficult to successfully take them from either.
That's the wrong logic. If someone would like you dead and they don't have a gun then the obstacles are nearly always insurmountable and the feeling passes. With a gun you can do it any time you want, and that increases the temptation.
Your logic only works when you assume that people are on equal footing. A tough street thug can easily kill (or just beat the hell out of) an arthritic octogenarian store clerk without a gun. The store clerk cannot realistically defend himself without a gun. Lawful guns, and concealed-carry handguns in particular, disproportionately help women, the elderly, and the disabled, who tend to be physically less powerful than their attackers.
Being disabled myself, I cannot defend myself from a thug, especially multiple thugs, without a firearm and should not be forced to try. I am skilled with a knife or sword, but would be at a severe physical disadvantage against a healthy opponent. Whatever evil they may cause, firearms level the playing field, and you cannot put the genie back into the bottle anyway.
You mean, on the one hand, the extreme that's packing heat so they can blow away people in Safeway parking lots, and on the other hand, the extreme that doesn't?
Or perhaps the extreme that sends swat teams to raid small farm coops to seize shipments of raw milk cheese? The extreme that sends swat teams into family homes on a faulty warrant for suspected marijuana possession and shoots homeowners in the middle of the night? The extreme that provides a personal security detail to the mistress of a certain city's mayor but won't let a corner newsstand owner in a bad crime district get a firearm permit? The extreme that pays out trillions of dollars to large bankers so they can pay their bonus checks after defrauding the country? The extreme that wages wars across the globe to "spread democracy" by the sword?
There is a lot of crazy going around. It does not matter whether it is tyranny of the individual of tyranny of the majority, both are tyranny. Government is intended to strike a balance, protecting us from both. Neither party is doing so very much.
But as far as I can tell so far, the guy who did this is just a nut and a rotten one--- an equal-opportunity hater.
Well, I just went through and reread the linked text and have read of some of his essays before. I am not entirely unsure that it might not be what he is trying to say; I just think he is saying it very poorly. A lot of people of that mindset couch their explanations in such pseudo-intellectual twaddle that it is hard to actually see the central point.
I admit I have not read his stuff in sufficient depth yet. I am just guessing that if I boil it long enough I'll end up with something like my summary plus some gooey and mostly uninteresting residue. But in any case, I think that what Wikileaks is doing could be justified by that logic, whether Assange is precisely doing it for that reason or not and even if a good bit of it actually comes down to self-aggrandizement.
At one point I was responsible for transferring four classified laptops (they were fully loaded Sun Solaris laptops (by Tadpole, I think) and therefore rather expensive), external hard drives, and a pile of DAT tapes out of the Pentagon to a new secure facility elsewhere. All of the laptops and all of the (4-8GB) tapes were Top Secret. I had all of the paperwork, it was a legitimate transfer, and I followed all of the rules. When I got down to the Metro Station entrance (there is a DC Metro terminal connected directly to the first sub-floor of the Pentagon), I waited in line for the guard to check my paperwork and the file cart with all of the equipment. Unfortunately the guy in front of me had NOT filled out his paperwork correctly and got in a protracted argument with the guard (and yes, the guard was armed). This went on long enough that the exasperated guard waved me through. No one looked at my paperwork. No one looked at the cart or what was on it.
We were told in one of the first security briefings that bad guys will often use the buddy system to work the guards. The first guy causes a minor but hard-to-resolve problem; the second guy walks out with all of the data. I am sure the guards were briefed on this too, but guards are human and have human weaknesses. They get bored, they get frustrated, and their job becomes routine. Often enough they don't want to give people like me trouble who were not causing any trouble for them. The fact that I was standing there politely probably had a lot to do with him waving me through. But a professional would have been calm and courteous and would have acted just like I did... and might have walked out with the whole kit and kaboodle. The equipment I was carrying alone was probably worth $100 grand at the time. Any extra equipment on the cart would have had no paper trail. Luckily I was a good guy; not everybody is.
That is why you need security in depth and you need to use the buddy-system to make sure that one distracted guard doesn't let something by that he should not. But that is expensive and budgets are always under pressure. You also need to have a system where people believe they are on the right side and want to help protect the secrets because they know good people's lives depend on them. Corruption gets people killed as much as loose lips.
But it can't realistically be questioned that harm has been done. The question is essentially whether one believes that governments should ever keep secrets. The position of Assange, and most people here, appears to be "no, they shouldn't, ever." The kindest thing I can say about that position is that it's naive.
I think Assange's point is more that it is much easier to keep a small number of secrets than a large number and that this is incompatible with a manifestly unjust system. If that is his point, I would have to basically agree: you cannot use classification to cover up blatant crimes and violations of your own rules in a leaky intelligence environment. You cannot effectively control a global oppression network without secure communication. At some point the system needs to balance the costs of the two extremes and that is easier to do in a system which has some amount of integrity.
You also run into the problem that a system without integrity, which constantly violates its own rules, cannot use people's conscience as a means to keep secrecy. It is simply not terribly effective to tell someone that they really have to follow procedure because leaking will get a "good guy" killed when the good guys are blowing up children, targeting citizen responders, and trafficking in human slaves. Even if it is only a small percentage of "good guys" doing it, asking someone to cover it up immediately suggests that officials condone the crimes.
Now, if you keep your intelligence apparatus as trim as possible, work hard to weed out the immoral from rising to that level, follow your own rules consistently, don't classify your dinner receipts from the night before to hide them from the taxpayer, and visibly punish people who cross the line, it is a lot more effective when you say to someone "loose lips sink ships." They WANT to protect your secrets.
Is there a cost? You betcha, but there always is. That's just life. But on the balance, I would rather do right and be dead than do wrong and have to live with it.
Actually, in some of the secure facilities I've worked in, the solution was simpler: use PS/2 keyboards and superglue the USB ports. Sometimes the low-tech solutions can be the most reliable. By the same token, make sure the only removable media are read-only optical drives (except for specific stations assigned for controlled copying of data). In quite a few places, MP3/minidisk players were simply not allowed. You could use portable CD-players or put music files on a CD and play them through a classified system. That depended on the facility, though.
The rapid growth of portable electronic devices people now carry is hell on security, unless you strip search workers going in and out. Even calculators and phones can copy enough sensitive stuff to get people killed. Now that Bluetooth has become popular, the devices don't even need to be physically attached to anything, unless that is also physically disabled on every workstation and laptop that gets deployed. As a contractor, I've had to check-in my own equipment at a lot of places, have it inspected and tagged on the way in and out. That included DoD work, obviously, but also, say, IBM and GSK worksites. Annoying as hell, but understandable from their side.
The other problem is that this was already policy in the '90s when I worked in AFSAA in the Pentagon. You were not allowed to copy data to non-classified system without the approval of specific officers who were tasked to examine the data. The data was copied onto a zeroed disk in a clean system, examined directly and in a hex editor. Then, if approved, it was copied for you onto a disk marked unclassified. There were also strict rules about the use of pads of paper (remove the top sheet, put it on a hard surface, write your note; that way you did not leave stray impressions on the pad which might be distributed. In the vaults, they often had pads stamped "SECRET" or "TOP SECRET" to make this less likely.) And there were quite a few applications we used where cut and paste was disabled or limited.
This obviously slowed things down, but that was the whole point. There had been several incidents where people had bypassed the rules and classified data were nearly leaked (the affected unclassified systems had to be scrubbed). Even if you just know that a document contains no classified information, it is quite possible that a file does. Problems were specifically discovered with MS Word files where random data from the system could end up in non-visible portions of the file. Once on an Unclassified system, the classified data might end up in swap space or otherwise be copied to where it should not be and remain after the offending file was wiped. Therefore the entire contaminated system would usually be wiped and reinstalled from a clean image. And, often the offending person would have their career shortened considerably. We dealt with nuclear deployment data and WINTEL (data which could reveal the identity of intelligence sources), so courts martial was always a possibility even, perhaps especially, for inadvertent release.
Personally, I consider release of classified data through idiocy to be a higher offense than doing so on purpose through act-of-conscience. The procedures exist for a reason, and often it is not to make things convenient. Carelessness gets people killed.
About when I stopped doing work there (1997-98) was when they were really going gung ho on the "classified Internet" where classified networks were tunneled over the DoD Unclassified Internet. That made for a lot more mixing of systems and cables which, I think, made it much harder to enforce strict separation. It used to be that there had to be 6' between the Top Secret network cables and the Unclassified network cables (and the cables were color coded). Ostensibly that was to prevent electronic feedback from leaking signals, but I think the real reason was to make absolutely sure the wrong network cable never went to the wrong hub and that someone lost their job if it did. It was absolutely forbidden to patch a classified cable outside of the designated rooms and areas. Classified printers, copiers, and CD burners were usually in designated areas as well. (You were allowed to make Unclassified copies on a Classified copier as long as you ran three blank pages through first to clear any residual images on the drum; you were never allowed to copy Classified data on an Unclassified copier outside the designated areas). Trash, of course, was separated by classification level and classified electronic waste (e.g. bad hard drives) were destroyed. Some manufacturers insisted that we return bad drives for warranty replacement, which was fine, as long as they understood that the platters would be physically destroyed first.
In any case, I am not surprised at this rule as much as surprised that it was allowed to lapse. You cannot 100% prevent leaks of data, but you at least want to make sure it is deliberate, that people are aware of what they are doing and of what the consequences will be.
I wasn't aware that Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin were the only two choices on the 2008 ballot.
Thank you!
And if third parties don't "have a realistic chance" then what does it matter? If both "mainstream" candidates are absolute bozos and will plow the country into the ground (with possible variation in speed and technique), what does it matter whether or not the alternative can win or not? What do you gain even if the evil of two lessers you choose wins?
Voting third party in that case (if there is a third party candidate who is not, themselves, a bozo) at worst will net them an easier time getting ballot access next time. At best, if enough other people have a sudden fit of sense at the same time, it may score an upset, but there is no downside and at least you can remove blame for the situation from your own conscience.
So, for instance, I voted for Chuck Baldwin in 2008. No, I did not expect him to win, but I could not conscience voting for either of the two mainstream candidates, especially after witnessing what the McCain team did to people in his own party (yes, I am Republican, or, at the very least, republican). Also, I would rather have a bad Democrat in office than a bad Republican as a bad Republican (which is unfortunately a lot of them right now) tarnishes the ideals and hurts good candidates. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I voted for Roy Blunt against Robin Carnahan in the recent MO senate election because I saw no credible 3rd party attempt and, unfortunately, Blunt and Carnahan swept their primaries, ensuring that there was no divided loyalty for a 3rd party run (I voted against him in the primary (Chuck Purgason) and in his 2008 run (CP Travis Maddox). I am still not certain I did the right thing there, so, it takes some thought, but often, there is simply nothing to lose. And, as far as "party loyalty" goes, I think that strong 3rd party options increase the health of the mainstream parties.
The real problem we have is with the primaries not generating decent options to choose from in November. We had some 8 or so candidates in the primary for the MO Senate race and any of the other 7 would have been vastly preferable to Blunt. Somehow we end up selecting the most corrupt and unreformable to represent us and this seems to be the case for both Democrats and Republicans (and often enough, even for Libertarians). That is what I strongly believe we need to fix and that takes serious work withing the party structure(s). Many of us have stepped up to the plate in that respect to gain positions on the Central Committees for the purpose of making primary elections and conventions more honest and more honestly representative of supposed party principles. Many of the people on this site may well disagree with the core Republican ideals, but I think we would all be better off to at least have them honestly represented in elections and be able to seriously debate application of those principles rather than extended sessions of "My opponent is even more corrupt than I am."
It is interesting how any government solution to their own screw-up always involves giving them more power. The obvious solution to an "asymmetrical" cyber-security threat to our national infrastructure, from their point-of-view, is more centralization of authority and a big "cybersecurity command" that gets more budget dollars.
The problem with option 3 is that the DMCA exempts them from legal action if they disclose who filed the take down notice to the person and gives them a change to file a counter claim (as the DMCA also spells out).
They are actuallly puting themselves at a greater legal risk by not disclosing who did it.
Very true. But the corporate reflex is always to CYA, not to come clean. A lot of time they get in more trouble for the cover-up than they would have for the offense.
My guess is that Time's legal team or publishing house or right hand knee jerk issued a DMCA while the people answering the phones and writing articles had no idea bout it.
If that's the case, then why didn't Yahoo tell them? (As the summary states they've done in the past.)
Personally, I'm wondering if someone at Yahoo decided to take it down because it personally offended them, and claimed DMCA to cover their asses?
Exactly, the fact that they will not tell anyone, including the actual rights-owner who issued the request is automatically fishy. I see two basic possibilities:
As you suggest, it was someone at Yahoo acting without authorization.
Someone "put pressure" on Yahoo to do it and made the consequences clear if the revealed who.
Yahoo received a completely bogus DMCA request and is too embarrassed to admit that they were taken (and maybe afraid of legal action over the issue).
[You will note that I said there were two possibilities and listed three. Since there is some overlap between them, I took the average number of unique possibilities. It is not because I am too lazy to go back and edit the word "two" after coming up with a third bullet point. That would be ridiculous.]
"And domestically, so he flushed money down the bankster hole... okay, that might have been smart or dumb, not sure yet. But healthcare reform? Seriously, THAT'S what you'd fight to STOP? We here in NZ look at American-style healthcare as a Very Very Bad Idea which we flirted with in the 1980s-90s, and thank goodness we didn't completely go that route. It looks like hell, and we're so glad we don't have the mess you now have to fix."
He flushed an amount fairly close to our yearly GNP down the bankster hole and specifically banksters he had connections with. If we count the type of fraud these Prankster people did as criminal, then what Obama has done (following what Bush started, building on the foundation laid by Clinton...) has to count fairly high on the felony scale.
But the biggest thing is that you misunderstand something critical about American politics and why many of us strongly resist "reform". Reform here means changing the rules so that your cronies will profit instead of someone else's cronies. It has been that way since at least the '60s, probably longer and is largely true of both major parties. Health care "reform" means booting the folks who currently have control of healthcare out and putting your people in all the while leaving the actual *citizens* with less power. Each change of regime results in the pendulum swinging further into insanity with each administration trying to top the criminal aspirations of the previous. That is how they now get away with the House passing a 1000+ page bill that no one had read because it hadn't even been completed at the time of the vote ("Cap and Trade"). The memos and briefs coming out of the Obama Justice Department read word for word similar to those from Bush's with statements about how indefinite detention without charge (or even cause) is fine, the accused have no rights because of the severity of the accusation, and we don't really need to tell anyone, even a judge, who we are wiretapping or having followed. Obama's defense budget still has more money in cost overruns and blatant pay-offs (to mostly the same people as usual) than the GDPs of many countries. So it is not really a matter of what the subject of the bill is these days but rather that it is prudent to not let ANYTHING pass right now [at the Federal level] because we cannot control the time bombs they are writing into them until we get firmer legislation at the State level to protect ourselves from Federal overreach, stupidity, and corruption. I would rather have Ghengis Khan in control of my health options at the moment than a Congressional-appointed committee.
It is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing. I believe Democrats to be wrong about the best way to run the country, but I believe most of them are on the level. I, myself, am a Republican because I look back to ideals the party was actually founded to promote... like personal responsibility, personal charity, and freedom. But the core ideals are not promoted by the top levels of *either* party and grass roots efforts to actually change something are quickly co-opted by monied interests, pork, riders, and 'oversights' in the legislation until they do much more damage than if the problems had been left alone. There is a deep racket here where the 'leadership' treats the citizens exactly like those Pranksters, as if they are useless sheep who can be paid off in bright baubles and trinkets to look the other way... and cheating them isn't really immoral. That attitude infects the citizenry just the same, who try to emulate their 'betters' by making their own racket and trying to get a piece of the pie... and cheating The System isn't really immoral... so in a way, the attitude of the leadership ends up being accurate. That's how we end up with people in charge of liberal policies and promote using our tax money to "help others" who have not paid their own taxes in many years and people do not really find it odd.
Health care 'reform,' if it passes will do no better than utility 'reform' or the many Defense-Industrial budg
"Yes, horrible scenarios I know, but they happen.."
Really? Do they? When? How often? More often than an armed citizen successfully prevents a violent crime? (from 1 to 2 million times per year depending on how you count)
As it turns out, armed citizens shoot the right person more often than the police do and most of the time, they do not have to shoot at all (the mere presence or presentation of the gun deters a criminal). Since eliminating armed citizens would require increasing armed police to replace them, the rate of accidents will go up not down.
As a gun owner, I do have to face the fact that I, or my wife, could mistakenly shoot someone. However, I have given a lot of though in advance about the situations where I might or might not be willing to pull the trigger and accept that fact. As a gun owner I always have the option to not shoot if I cannot be certain whereas a non-gun owner never has the option to shoot even when someone is coming at them with a knife after having stabbed their child. Statistically, people who own guns are hurt less in violent crimes even when they do not shoot. Choice is a powerful thing.
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Then all politicians are bad for making those laws, and all people are bad for voting in those politicians.
Yes, this would be the logical corollary. Though I am not much for Freud usually, in his Civilization and Its Discontents, he argued that it is possible for society itself to become dysfunctional enough to be considered psychotic in its own right. An individual has no real option at that point to be sane. They can either be sane in and of themselves and be completely out of sync with everything around them or they can be in tune with the consensual reality and be insane in and of themselves.
I rather think we have reached (and surpassed) that point. Certainly we have reached a point where people often find it impossible to be both moral and lawful, even though many people still equate these two qualities. None of the choices from that point are good. But I think we have had many police decide to not continue being enablers and leave the profession. This has largely left us with people in 'law enforcement' who are not aware of the contradiction or do not care. That is not a good outcome, either.
OK, Granted. The summary was quite a bit more slanted.
I think the PP's point is that the approach in the article assumes one particular outcome is "desirable" without recognizing that the "too much brain/too distractable" state has distinct situational and evolutionary advantages. Ability to focus to the exclusion of other activity is desirable in a cubicle environment but less so in forest with things trying to eat you. By that measure, the "un-pruned brain" may be the default, "correct" state and the pruned brain the "abnormality". It all depends on what type of environment the brain is trying to work in.
My boss when I worked with the Air Force was an ex-Navy SEAL with ADHD. When someone emptied empty pop-cans into the recycle bin in the nearby break room, he could tell you exactly how many had been dumped. ADHD was a hideous problem in such a busy, noisy place, but it allowed him to actually function better in the field. Since then, I have developed a marked distractability as a result of a neural-muscular condition affecting me in a similar manner. When my condition is bad, I cannot focus on writing or other task work or very long. Sometimes I cannot even follow conversations if I have activity going on other sides (I have to move to line the speaker up with the other noises). Every dog bark, fly buzz, music from the neighbor down-the-road, etc., breaks my focus. But if I walk out into the pasture, I can quickly identify every animal moving in the brush. I can notice and pick out wild-harvestable edible and medicinal herbs as I walk through an area. My nephew is going through ADD-like problems as well, and I have been working with my sister to introduce him to activities where his condition is an advantage so he can deal better, psychologically, with the downsides.
So, anyway, we assume a lot of things are 'defects' --- and in some ways they are--- without taking into account that what humans are typically called on to do has changed dramatically over the last couple-of-hundred years.
Something odd I have noticed, and this bears out with other "afflicted" I have spoken to, is that there is some kind of olfactory cross-wiring. A strong odor, such as from an essential oil, will distract the other parts of the brain sometimes to allow task work. This is sometimes used to help ADD students be able to sit and complete homework, for instance. I have also noticed that certain things are easier to multitask than others. I cannot read with a conversation going on nearby, but sketching is easier and may actually help me focus on the conversation. These things probably have some connection, even if incidental/accidental, to tasks people have been traditionally required to perform for survival.
Anyone who has done so for the US could not comment, even on his published designs. It is (or was?) made very explicit in security briefings that you have to be careful even in how you comment on even unclassified data. If, for instance, you asked me to recommend an unclassified source for statistics on certain Air Force weapons platforms, I would largely not be able to answer because my answer (according to the law as it seems to be interpreted) would have to depend on knowledge of classified data if it was something I had handled during my work with AFSAA. I would, presumably, highlight one source over another based on knowledge of classified topics: not allowed. Similarly, therefore, a physicist or engineer with actual experience with bomb construction (said experience obtained through the terms of a US/NATO security clearance) may not comment in any fashion on this guy's plan even though the plan presumably draws only on unclassified data. Dealing with the nuances of that sort of thing is a pain in the rear, so it ends up being easier to just keep your mouth shut: one of the reasons I did not want to do work like that long term.
But personally, I am much less worried about someone making a bomb than someone making a working bomb. To be a "nuclear power" one would have to construct multiple bombs adjusted on the basis of actual tests (some of which will doubtless fail), just like we did. A nuclear test (even failed) is something which tends to draw attention and is hard to hide. Terrorists could actually get more mileage for less cost out of much less sophisticated approaches. Certain among those are what keep me awake at night, not a lone-wolf building Hiroshima-in-a-can. The other bigger worry is a terrorist getting hold of a working device by hook or by crook from an unstable nuclear power or threatening independent launch in the service of a nuclear power.
John Piña Craven in a book called, I believe, "The Silent War", provides some insight into [alleged] incidents where the former USSR nearly lost control of its nuclear forces (some of the inspiration for Red October, apparently) and how that was one of the fears which finally brought them to the bargaining table. Facing a nuclear holocaust in a war with the US was one thing; the thought of doing so involuntarily was yet another.
The genie is out of the bottle. Living in fear does no good. We just take one day at a time.
Hmmm... I guess the other point is that if I were a physicist of that sort and the plan had an obvious flaw, I might just say, "Yes, sir, great design; that'd do it!" just to hopefully ensnare a nut or two into making the same mistake.
I have never understood people that believe they must impose there beliefs and supposed morals on others.
Largely because they, themselves, gained their belief system by having it imposed on them, often with cruelty, and despite their innate belief that what they were being taught was wrong. If they don't impose their belief on others, then they have to admit that what was done to them was wrong, and then they have to deal with all that pain.
Spirituality is not the problem. Belief in a God who wants us to follow a path ("Torah") as part of our relationship with What Is, is not the problem. Religion often is. Religion is the belief in men who somehow know more about what God wants than you do or what He can communicate with you directly. Religion, at its foundation, is therefore idolatry and forbidden by the cardinal rule of Torah.
Actually, the 9th and 10th Amendments make it pretty darn clear that it was to be taken as a closed document even if the copious notes and essays from the founding period did not (which they do). The Founders very explicitly and directly wanted to create a limited government of expressly delegated powers, one with a more powerful central government than under the Articles of Confederation, true, but strictly limited in nature nevertheless. Many people said so publicly and no one said otherwise--- not in the decisions at the Con Con, not in the public debates leading up to ratification, not in the ratifying conventions, and not in the ratifying instruments accepted by the states--- no one said, "Hey this is a living document and we'll figure it out as we go." Madison, in the Federalist Papers, directly spells out the consequences of the Federal government overstepping its delegated authority with the states in control of the militia. If they believed in a 'living document,' why write the Constitution anyway, when they could have just expanded the government by ignoring the limits under the Articles?
As to the idea that this prevents the government from tackling future circumstances, that is an empty argument. The idea was that it was not the Federal government's job to innovate. The states are in a position to handle many issues on their own, each to its liking (within Constitutional limits on their own authority) and many states do have specific laws on video games. We have amended the US Constitution quite a few times where the states felt that it fell short of what was needed.
The PP is correct. The job of a judge is to enforce the law (starting with the Supreme Law of the Land first and foremost). Nothing more and nothing less. "Congress shall make no law..." is pretty clear.
Social Security is solvent - the worst anyone actually claims about it is it will be falling into a negative range, where intake will be only 75% of outgo, by 2034, and this negative range will last for about 13 to 15 years if no adjustments are made. Some people are calling that bankruptcy.
The problem is that, given that the fund was borrowed by other departments and a balanced budget was not maintained overall as projections required, it is no easier to raise money for, say, the Department of Education to pay Social Security than it is to raise money for Social Security directly. Either requires raising taxes, decreasing benefits, increasing deficits, cutting spending elsewhere, none of which anyone wants to do. This is not a problem with Social Security as conceived (separate argument) but with corrupt government as implemented. Just as with now defunct municipal retirement funds, it is always easier for a politician to spend now and put off the worry to a later Congress or administration. In general, no "temporary" tax will ever get repealed and no cookie jar will ever go unpilfered.
So, pragmatically speaking, Social Security is bankrupt or, rather, is caught up in the general insolvency of its debtor, the US government.
Semi-automatic handguns are similarly useless for any legitimate use. Well, handguns in general are useless.
First of all, there is a world of difference between a semi-automatic weapon and a fully automatic one. A (double-action) revolver is a handgun which will fire every time you pull the trigger. The difference in rate of fire is not why you would choose one over the other. There are a lot of differences in the way they shoot which determines which are appropriate for which people and situations.
Second, the purpose of a handgun is portability, period. Obviously it is a trade-off in effectiveness, but I can carry one everywhere. Since I do not know when I will need one, that is important: if it is ever appropriate to carry a gun, it is nearly always appropriate to carry a gun. That is the same reason I just about always have at least a mini flashlight and some basic first aid supplies on me. No substitute for a full emergency kit but I am more likely to have them when actually needed.
On the farm, a handgun's purpose is to keep a bad guy at bay (or feral dog off of the sheep, whatever) long enough for my wife or I to get the shotgun out. Off the farm it's there to keep them at bay long enough for me to get my family and myself out of there. If I know I am going to to encounter trouble, I don't carry a handgun, I carry a shotgun (or, when an option, go in the other direction). But a handgun is small enough to have with me 24/7; a shotgun is not. Neither is my multi-D-cell maglite. Choose the tool for the need.
I do not know of many criminals who announce robberies or rapes or assaults ahead of time. If there is a twitter function for that, I have not found it yet. That means you have to have something portable.
In theory guns are a great equalizer, but in practice they only help the party who is prepared to carry a weapon for the purpose of employing deadly force. This is more far more likely to be the attacker then the victim.
Actually, that's an over-generalization. Many criminals are not very good at using force, they are simply used to an asymmetrical situation--- bullies--- and do not expect a determined victim. Some criminals are actually trained and skilled (and therefore extremely dangerous) but, on the average, a victim with any skill and training is likely to be more skilled than the attacker if they can keep their heads. And quite a few people are very determined not to be victims; they should be given the choice of how to do it.
Then there is the fact that carrying a gun if you are NOT prepared to employ deadly force puts you in more danger then you would be without one (as the attacker will use it against you).
That I agree with wholeheartedly. You should not carry a gun unless you are willing to learn how to use it, when [not] to use it, and are determined to do so. You should thoroughly consider the moral implications of when to shoot before you pick one up. You also need situational awareness to ensure that it is not taken from you. I find that when I am armed, I am much more aware of what goes on around me because I am subconsciously keeping track of who is close to me and ensuring that my weapon is secure. That is probably something I should be doing when I am not armed as well, but psychology can be tricky that way.
Simply having a gun does not level the playing field. Pepper spray is far more suitable for self-defense against a more powerful attacker.
Not really. I have pepper spray and there are places and times I carry it instead of a gun. There are situations where I would use it in preference to a gun, but it is no substitute. For one thing, it will not stop a determined attacker who is carrying a gun faster than they can hurt you, especially at some range. Of the various options for self-defense, including no resistance, using a gun is the least likely to end with both you and the bad guy injured.
A gun also has a deterrent effect which pepper spray does not. If I pull a gun on a bad guy, 9 times out of 10, he will surrender or run. If I pull pepper spray, I will have to use it more likely than not. On the farm, if I confront an intruder or stranger, the fact that I am (visibly) armed also keeps things very polite. I do not have to threaten or brandish the gun, they just know it is there. If you keep a cool head, it keeps things cool; if you have a hot head, a gun will escalate things. There is no reason to be discourteous until and unless things turn deadly and then you have more important things to worry about.
A gun, like many things, is a tool. It has to be used and handled properly. A lot of people do not like seeing guns because they crystallize issues of justified force, violence, evil, and mortality we do not like to face, but we do face them just the same, usually just unprepared.
Governments around the world do not fear people armed with guns, they fear people armed with cellphones, especially camera-equipped ones.
There were plenty of pictures taken in Myanmar before, during, and after the monks and hundreds of protesters were methodically slaughtered. Governments only fear cameras if the pictures can mobilize a populace. They only fear a populace which can defend itself.
That being said, guns as a defense against tyranny only works if the moral high ground can be taken and kept and that requires extreme restraint in using them. Otherwise not enough of the populace supports it and it fizzles or worse, it succeeds, but does not result in a stable country.
In principle I agree with you, but the thing is that a lot of people saw this sort of thing coming. There has been a lot of commentary and, at least in my own discussions, worry, about the winking incitement to violence that has been broadcast since Obama was elected.
I think the incitement to violence has been more than winking in some cases, but is not as simple as that either. Inciting individuals to violence is not that much different than inciting the state to violence against individuals, a lot of which has been happening, and very blatantly as well. The two together put us on collision course as a society which makes it more and more likely for these confrontations to occur, either for a law enforcement encounter to become deadly when it shouldn't or for individuals to take things into their own hands. The more power the government and corporations have over our lives, the more desperate people become to influence them. It is difficult to tell precisely what variety of nut this guy is, but I do not like the increasing and multi-lateral intolerance.
We need to find a way to turn back.
I love how people on this very forum have had "Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo" at the bottom of every one of their posts for years. And when that shit actually blows up suddenly it "isn't the time for politics."
Believing in the Second Amendment does not mean agreeing with misuse of deadly force. Unilateral use of force is wrong. Lawful possession of firearms is one of the mechanisms we have for balancing the evil which exists in the world and it is a mechanism which the Congresswoman who was shot supported.
Gun control debates are generally not about whether or not guns will exist but about who controls them. Clearly crimes can be committed both by governments and individuals with guns. You cannot take guns away from both and I would argue it is difficult to successfully take them from either.
That's the wrong logic. If someone would like you dead and they don't have a gun then the obstacles are nearly always insurmountable and the feeling passes. With a gun you can do it any time you want, and that increases the temptation.
Your logic only works when you assume that people are on equal footing. A tough street thug can easily kill (or just beat the hell out of) an arthritic octogenarian store clerk without a gun. The store clerk cannot realistically defend himself without a gun. Lawful guns, and concealed-carry handguns in particular, disproportionately help women, the elderly, and the disabled, who tend to be physically less powerful than their attackers.
Being disabled myself, I cannot defend myself from a thug, especially multiple thugs, without a firearm and should not be forced to try. I am skilled with a knife or sword, but would be at a severe physical disadvantage against a healthy opponent. Whatever evil they may cause, firearms level the playing field, and you cannot put the genie back into the bottle anyway.
You mean, on the one hand, the extreme that's packing heat so they can blow away people in Safeway parking lots, and on the other hand, the extreme that doesn't?
Or perhaps the extreme that sends swat teams to raid small farm coops to seize shipments of raw milk cheese? The extreme that sends swat teams into family homes on a faulty warrant for suspected marijuana possession and shoots homeowners in the middle of the night? The extreme that provides a personal security detail to the mistress of a certain city's mayor but won't let a corner newsstand owner in a bad crime district get a firearm permit? The extreme that pays out trillions of dollars to large bankers so they can pay their bonus checks after defrauding the country? The extreme that wages wars across the globe to "spread democracy" by the sword?
There is a lot of crazy going around. It does not matter whether it is tyranny of the individual of tyranny of the majority, both are tyranny. Government is intended to strike a balance, protecting us from both. Neither party is doing so very much.
But as far as I can tell so far, the guy who did this is just a nut and a rotten one--- an equal-opportunity hater.
Well, I just went through and reread the linked text and have read of some of his essays before. I am not entirely unsure that it might not be what he is trying to say; I just think he is saying it very poorly. A lot of people of that mindset couch their explanations in such pseudo-intellectual twaddle that it is hard to actually see the central point.
I admit I have not read his stuff in sufficient depth yet. I am just guessing that if I boil it long enough I'll end up with something like my summary plus some gooey and mostly uninteresting residue. But in any case, I think that what Wikileaks is doing could be justified by that logic, whether Assange is precisely doing it for that reason or not and even if a good bit of it actually comes down to self-aggrandizement.
At one point I was responsible for transferring four classified laptops (they were fully loaded Sun Solaris laptops (by Tadpole, I think) and therefore rather expensive), external hard drives, and a pile of DAT tapes out of the Pentagon to a new secure facility elsewhere. All of the laptops and all of the (4-8GB) tapes were Top Secret. I had all of the paperwork, it was a legitimate transfer, and I followed all of the rules. When I got down to the Metro Station entrance (there is a DC Metro terminal connected directly to the first sub-floor of the Pentagon), I waited in line for the guard to check my paperwork and the file cart with all of the equipment. Unfortunately the guy in front of me had NOT filled out his paperwork correctly and got in a protracted argument with the guard (and yes, the guard was armed). This went on long enough that the exasperated guard waved me through. No one looked at my paperwork. No one looked at the cart or what was on it.
We were told in one of the first security briefings that bad guys will often use the buddy system to work the guards. The first guy causes a minor but hard-to-resolve problem; the second guy walks out with all of the data. I am sure the guards were briefed on this too, but guards are human and have human weaknesses. They get bored, they get frustrated, and their job becomes routine. Often enough they don't want to give people like me trouble who were not causing any trouble for them. The fact that I was standing there politely probably had a lot to do with him waving me through. But a professional would have been calm and courteous and would have acted just like I did... and might have walked out with the whole kit and kaboodle. The equipment I was carrying alone was probably worth $100 grand at the time. Any extra equipment on the cart would have had no paper trail. Luckily I was a good guy; not everybody is.
That is why you need security in depth and you need to use the buddy-system to make sure that one distracted guard doesn't let something by that he should not. But that is expensive and budgets are always under pressure. You also need to have a system where people believe they are on the right side and want to help protect the secrets because they know good people's lives depend on them. Corruption gets people killed as much as loose lips.
But it can't realistically be questioned that harm has been done. The question is essentially whether one believes that governments should ever keep secrets. The position of Assange, and most people here, appears to be "no, they shouldn't, ever." The kindest thing I can say about that position is that it's naive.
I think Assange's point is more that it is much easier to keep a small number of secrets than a large number and that this is incompatible with a manifestly unjust system. If that is his point, I would have to basically agree: you cannot use classification to cover up blatant crimes and violations of your own rules in a leaky intelligence environment. You cannot effectively control a global oppression network without secure communication. At some point the system needs to balance the costs of the two extremes and that is easier to do in a system which has some amount of integrity.
You also run into the problem that a system without integrity, which constantly violates its own rules, cannot use people's conscience as a means to keep secrecy. It is simply not terribly effective to tell someone that they really have to follow procedure because leaking will get a "good guy" killed when the good guys are blowing up children, targeting citizen responders, and trafficking in human slaves. Even if it is only a small percentage of "good guys" doing it, asking someone to cover it up immediately suggests that officials condone the crimes.
Now, if you keep your intelligence apparatus as trim as possible, work hard to weed out the immoral from rising to that level, follow your own rules consistently, don't classify your dinner receipts from the night before to hide them from the taxpayer, and visibly punish people who cross the line, it is a lot more effective when you say to someone "loose lips sink ships." They WANT to protect your secrets.
Is there a cost? You betcha, but there always is. That's just life. But on the balance, I would rather do right and be dead than do wrong and have to live with it.
Actually, in some of the secure facilities I've worked in, the solution was simpler: use PS/2 keyboards and superglue the USB ports. Sometimes the low-tech solutions can be the most reliable. By the same token, make sure the only removable media are read-only optical drives (except for specific stations assigned for controlled copying of data). In quite a few places, MP3/minidisk players were simply not allowed. You could use portable CD-players or put music files on a CD and play them through a classified system. That depended on the facility, though.
The rapid growth of portable electronic devices people now carry is hell on security, unless you strip search workers going in and out. Even calculators and phones can copy enough sensitive stuff to get people killed. Now that Bluetooth has become popular, the devices don't even need to be physically attached to anything, unless that is also physically disabled on every workstation and laptop that gets deployed. As a contractor, I've had to check-in my own equipment at a lot of places, have it inspected and tagged on the way in and out. That included DoD work, obviously, but also, say, IBM and GSK worksites. Annoying as hell, but understandable from their side.
The other problem is that this was already policy in the '90s when I worked in AFSAA in the Pentagon. You were not allowed to copy data to non-classified system without the approval of specific officers who were tasked to examine the data. The data was copied onto a zeroed disk in a clean system, examined directly and in a hex editor. Then, if approved, it was copied for you onto a disk marked unclassified. There were also strict rules about the use of pads of paper (remove the top sheet, put it on a hard surface, write your note; that way you did not leave stray impressions on the pad which might be distributed. In the vaults, they often had pads stamped "SECRET" or "TOP SECRET" to make this less likely.) And there were quite a few applications we used where cut and paste was disabled or limited.
This obviously slowed things down, but that was the whole point. There had been several incidents where people had bypassed the rules and classified data were nearly leaked (the affected unclassified systems had to be scrubbed). Even if you just know that a document contains no classified information, it is quite possible that a file does. Problems were specifically discovered with MS Word files where random data from the system could end up in non-visible portions of the file. Once on an Unclassified system, the classified data might end up in swap space or otherwise be copied to where it should not be and remain after the offending file was wiped. Therefore the entire contaminated system would usually be wiped and reinstalled from a clean image. And, often the offending person would have their career shortened considerably. We dealt with nuclear deployment data and WINTEL (data which could reveal the identity of intelligence sources), so courts martial was always a possibility even, perhaps especially, for inadvertent release.
Personally, I consider release of classified data through idiocy to be a higher offense than doing so on purpose through act-of-conscience. The procedures exist for a reason, and often it is not to make things convenient. Carelessness gets people killed.
About when I stopped doing work there (1997-98) was when they were really going gung ho on the "classified Internet" where classified networks were tunneled over the DoD Unclassified Internet. That made for a lot more mixing of systems and cables which, I think, made it much harder to enforce strict separation. It used to be that there had to be 6' between the Top Secret network cables and the Unclassified network cables (and the cables were color coded). Ostensibly that was to prevent electronic feedback from leaking signals, but I think the real reason was to make absolutely sure the wrong network cable never went to the wrong hub and that someone lost their job if it did. It was absolutely forbidden to patch a classified cable outside of the designated rooms and areas. Classified printers, copiers, and CD burners were usually in designated areas as well. (You were allowed to make Unclassified copies on a Classified copier as long as you ran three blank pages through first to clear any residual images on the drum; you were never allowed to copy Classified data on an Unclassified copier outside the designated areas). Trash, of course, was separated by classification level and classified electronic waste (e.g. bad hard drives) were destroyed. Some manufacturers insisted that we return bad drives for warranty replacement, which was fine, as long as they understood that the platters would be physically destroyed first.
In any case, I am not surprised at this rule as much as surprised that it was allowed to lapse. You cannot 100% prevent leaks of data, but you at least want to make sure it is deliberate, that people are aware of what they are doing and of what the consequences will be.
Thank you!
And if third parties don't "have a realistic chance" then what does it matter? If both "mainstream" candidates are absolute bozos and will plow the country into the ground (with possible variation in speed and technique), what does it matter whether or not the alternative can win or not? What do you gain even if the evil of two lessers you choose wins?
Voting third party in that case (if there is a third party candidate who is not, themselves, a bozo) at worst will net them an easier time getting ballot access next time. At best, if enough other people have a sudden fit of sense at the same time, it may score an upset, but there is no downside and at least you can remove blame for the situation from your own conscience.
So, for instance, I voted for Chuck Baldwin in 2008. No, I did not expect him to win, but I could not conscience voting for either of the two mainstream candidates, especially after witnessing what the McCain team did to people in his own party (yes, I am Republican, or, at the very least, republican). Also, I would rather have a bad Democrat in office than a bad Republican as a bad Republican (which is unfortunately a lot of them right now) tarnishes the ideals and hurts good candidates. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I voted for Roy Blunt against Robin Carnahan in the recent MO senate election because I saw no credible 3rd party attempt and, unfortunately, Blunt and Carnahan swept their primaries, ensuring that there was no divided loyalty for a 3rd party run (I voted against him in the primary (Chuck Purgason) and in his 2008 run (CP Travis Maddox). I am still not certain I did the right thing there, so, it takes some thought, but often, there is simply nothing to lose. And, as far as "party loyalty" goes, I think that strong 3rd party options increase the health of the mainstream parties.
The real problem we have is with the primaries not generating decent options to choose from in November. We had some 8 or so candidates in the primary for the MO Senate race and any of the other 7 would have been vastly preferable to Blunt. Somehow we end up selecting the most corrupt and unreformable to represent us and this seems to be the case for both Democrats and Republicans (and often enough, even for Libertarians). That is what I strongly believe we need to fix and that takes serious work withing the party structure(s). Many of us have stepped up to the plate in that respect to gain positions on the Central Committees for the purpose of making primary elections and conventions more honest and more honestly representative of supposed party principles. Many of the people on this site may well disagree with the core Republican ideals, but I think we would all be better off to at least have them honestly represented in elections and be able to seriously debate application of those principles rather than extended sessions of "My opponent is even more corrupt than I am."
It is interesting how any government solution to their own screw-up always involves giving them more power. The obvious solution to an "asymmetrical" cyber-security threat to our national infrastructure, from their point-of-view, is more centralization of authority and a big "cybersecurity command" that gets more budget dollars.
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The problem with option 3 is that the DMCA exempts them from legal action if they disclose who filed the take down notice to the person and gives them a change to file a counter claim (as the DMCA also spells out).
They are actuallly puting themselves at a greater legal risk by not disclosing who did it.
Very true. But the corporate reflex is always to CYA, not to come clean. A lot of time they get in more trouble for the cover-up than they would have for the offense.
My guess is that Time's legal team or publishing house or right hand knee jerk issued a DMCA while the people answering the phones and writing articles had no idea bout it.
If that's the case, then why didn't Yahoo tell them? (As the summary states they've done in the past.)
Personally, I'm wondering if someone at Yahoo decided to take it down because it personally offended them, and claimed DMCA to cover their asses?
Exactly, the fact that they will not tell anyone, including the actual rights-owner who issued the request is automatically fishy. I see two basic possibilities:
[You will note that I said there were two possibilities and listed three. Since there is some overlap between them, I took the average number of unique possibilities. It is not because I am too lazy to go back and edit the word "two" after coming up with a third bullet point. That would be ridiculous.]
"And domestically, so he flushed money down the bankster hole... okay, that might have been smart or dumb, not sure yet. But healthcare reform? Seriously, THAT'S what you'd fight to STOP? We here in NZ look at American-style healthcare as a Very Very Bad Idea which we flirted with in the 1980s-90s, and thank goodness we didn't completely go that route. It looks like hell, and we're so glad we don't have the mess you now have to fix."
He flushed an amount fairly close to our yearly GNP down the bankster hole and specifically banksters he had connections with. If we count the type of fraud these Prankster people did as criminal, then what Obama has done (following what Bush started, building on the foundation laid by Clinton...) has to count fairly high on the felony scale.
But the biggest thing is that you misunderstand something critical about American politics and why many of us strongly resist "reform". Reform here means changing the rules so that your cronies will profit instead of someone else's cronies. It has been that way since at least the '60s, probably longer and is largely true of both major parties. Health care "reform" means booting the folks who currently have control of healthcare out and putting your people in all the while leaving the actual *citizens* with less power. Each change of regime results in the pendulum swinging further into insanity with each administration trying to top the criminal aspirations of the previous. That is how they now get away with the House passing a 1000+ page bill that no one had read because it hadn't even been completed at the time of the vote ("Cap and Trade"). The memos and briefs coming out of the Obama Justice Department read word for word similar to those from Bush's with statements about how indefinite detention without charge (or even cause) is fine, the accused have no rights because of the severity of the accusation, and we don't really need to tell anyone, even a judge, who we are wiretapping or having followed. Obama's defense budget still has more money in cost overruns and blatant pay-offs (to mostly the same people as usual) than the GDPs of many countries. So it is not really a matter of what the subject of the bill is these days but rather that it is prudent to not let ANYTHING pass right now [at the Federal level] because we cannot control the time bombs they are writing into them until we get firmer legislation at the State level to protect ourselves from Federal overreach, stupidity, and corruption. I would rather have Ghengis Khan in control of my health options at the moment than a Congressional-appointed committee.
It is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing. I believe Democrats to be wrong about the best way to run the country, but I believe most of them are on the level. I, myself, am a Republican because I look back to ideals the party was actually founded to promote... like personal responsibility, personal charity, and freedom. But the core ideals are not promoted by the top levels of *either* party and grass roots efforts to actually change something are quickly co-opted by monied interests, pork, riders, and 'oversights' in the legislation until they do much more damage than if the problems had been left alone. There is a deep racket here where the 'leadership' treats the citizens exactly like those Pranksters, as if they are useless sheep who can be paid off in bright baubles and trinkets to look the other way... and cheating them isn't really immoral. That attitude infects the citizenry just the same, who try to emulate their 'betters' by making their own racket and trying to get a piece of the pie... and cheating The System isn't really immoral... so in a way, the attitude of the leadership ends up being accurate. That's how we end up with people in charge of liberal policies and promote using our tax money to "help others" who have not paid their own taxes in many years and people do not really find it odd.
Health care 'reform,' if it passes will do no better than utility 'reform' or the many Defense-Industrial budg
"Yes, horrible scenarios I know, but they happen.."
Really? Do they? When? How often? More often than an armed citizen successfully prevents a violent crime? (from 1 to 2 million times per year depending on how you count)
As it turns out, armed citizens shoot the right person more often than the police do and most of the time, they do not have to shoot at all (the mere presence or presentation of the gun deters a criminal). Since eliminating armed citizens would require increasing armed police to replace them, the rate of accidents will go up not down.
As a gun owner, I do have to face the fact that I, or my wife, could mistakenly shoot someone. However, I have given a lot of though in advance about the situations where I might or might not be willing to pull the trigger and accept that fact. As a gun owner I always have the option to not shoot if I cannot be certain whereas a non-gun owner never has the option to shoot even when someone is coming at them with a knife after having stabbed their child. Statistically, people who own guns are hurt less in violent crimes even when they do not shoot. Choice is a powerful thing.