Glenn Beck is an idiot but I haven't heard him come out against the equal protection requirement. He and others have come out against jus soli, which is actually a discussion worth having, IMHO.
It is a 1st amendment issue when you can't tell your family and friends, though, even when it's merely that you were a served a NSL without telling for whom it covered or for what was requested
No it's not. You can't (legally) talk to your family and friends about a trial if you are sitting on the jury. You can't talk to them about Grand Jury proceedings. I'm a poll worker every election year -- I can't legally tell you how a voter who requests assistance marking his or her ballot voted.
None of those are 1st amendment infringements. Neither is a prohibition about discussing your involvement in a criminal investigation.
Actually I screwed up -- it's the 6th amendment that codifies the right to counsel. I shall now smack myself upon the head with my pocket copy of the United States Constitution:)
Agree with the rest of your post, just wanted to correct my own mistake.
I agree with you. But it's stupid to take it to the other extreme and condemn QoS. Do you really think that an ISP should have to allow a customer paying $40/mo (residential) the same access to the pipe during times of congestion as a customer paying many times that (business)? That's just silly. The business customer paid more to get a connection that came with an SLA. The residential customer bought a connection that comes with a TOS stating that they aren't allowed to engage in activities that degrade the network experience for others.
Not withstanding that example of tiered service, there's also the fact that residential customers would presumably prefer that their VoIP phones keep working during times of congestion. You aren't going to notice when your bittorrent download drops 64kbit/s when the neighbor is on the phone. You are going to notice if your phone calls become choppy.....
They absolutely should not have the right to prioritize their own video on demand service at the expense of Netflix or Hulu. They should have the right to prioritize video on demand (or VOIP, or SSH, or RDP, etc.) over FTP downloads and BitTorrent.
I'm sorry but I just don't see it. There's already a precedent for gag orders in criminal investigations. Have you ever served on a Grand Jury? You are sworn to secrecy and it's enforced by law in most states:
215.70 Unlawful grand jury disclosure.
A person is guilty of unlawful grand jury disclosure when, being a
grand juror, a public prosecutor, a grand jury stenographer, a grand
jury interpreter, a police officer or a peace officer guarding a witness
in a grand jury proceeding, or a clerk, attendant, warden or other
public servant having official duties in or about a grand jury room or
proceeding, or a public officer or public employee, he intentionally
discloses to another the nature or substance of any grand jury
testimony, or any decision, result or other matter attending a grand
jury proceeding which is required by law to be kept secret, except in
the proper discharge of his official duties or upon written order of the
court. Nothing contained herein shall prohibit a witness from
disclosing his own testimony.
Unlawful grand jury disclosure is a class E felony.
Here's New York's law on wiretapping disclosures:
250.20 Divulging an eavesdropping warrant.
A person is guilty of divulging an eavesdropping warrant when,
possessing information concerning the existence or content of an
eavesdropping warrant issued pursuant to article seven hundred of the
criminal procedure law, or concerning any circumstances attending an
application for such a warrant, he discloses such information to another
person; except that such disclosure is not criminal or unlawful when
permitted by section 700.65 of the criminal procedure law or when made
to a state or federal agency specifically authorized by law to receive
reports concerning eavesdropping warrants, or when made in a legal
proceeding, or to a law enforcement officer or agency connected with the
application for such warrant, or to a legislative committee or temporary
state commission, or to the telephone or telegraph corporation whose
facilities are involved, or to any entity operating an electronic
communications service whose facilities are involved.
Divulging an eavesdropping warrant is a class A misdemeanor.
Now, it does seem a bit excessive that the person would be prohibited from telling his boss -- I would not have had the ability to install a wiretap when I worked for an ISP without my boss finding out -- but the precedent for gag orders is already well established in the case and statutory law.
So what? I can place you under a citizens arrest in most American jurisdictions if you are trespassing on my property. Ditto for if I catch you stealing my property.
It's not generally a good idea because it exposes you to all sorts of civil liability but it is legal in most American jurisdictions.
I'm expressing my disdain for your flower child like ignorance. I could care less what you or others think.
You equated people who voted to establish Commonwealth status in Democratic elections to people living under the yoke of empire. That's utterly absurd and not deserving of a serious response.
This will be the last time I waste my energy reading or responding to your posts. Have a nice career tilting at windmills:)
No they wouldn't. The mainstream media has many flaws but they do tend to take source protection pretty seriously. Many reporters from mainstream outlets have gone to jail to protect their sources.
Civil disobedience is not a free activity. Sometimes it's worth paying the price for standing up for what you believe in. Rosa Parks was found guilty and assessed a fine. Does that mean she shouldn't have done what she did?
As for colonies, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Marianna Islands, the US virgin Islands, American Samoa, are all official colonies
You are an idiot. Every one of those places voluntarily agreed to maintain their current status at various times throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Puerto Rican statehood is supported by both major political parties but the people there don't want it. Nor do they want to terminate their Commonwealth status. They are exercising their Democratic right to determine their relationship with the United States. I'm sorry if you don't like the course that they decided to follow.
Yes, the NSL law is loathsome. I've never disputed that. I even responded to mcgrew earlier and suggested that I might be inclined to leak the letter to Wikileaks if I received one.
All I'm saying is that there isn't a 1st amendment issue when you prohibit a service provider from telling their customer that he's under surveillance. Interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation is obstruction of justice. That's been illegal since the Common Law (i.e: it predates the United States of America) and has never been ruled to be unconstitutional.
There is a 5th amendment issue here when the service provider is denied the right to confer with his attorney. There is a 4th amendment issue here when the subject of the NSL is denied his right to have a warrant issued before having his communications intercepted. I'm just not seeing a 1st amendment issue though.
As I said, the law is troubling, just not from a 1st amendment perspective. I'm not defending the NSL law. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of claiming a 1st amendment issue exists because you can't reveal the fact that wiretap exists and/or documents were requested during an ongoing criminal investigation.
Neither is your rant that equates military bases there at the behest of the local government to empire. I'd ask you what our "colonies" are supposed to be but I doubt the answer would be worth my time.
That's absurd. Leftists are so fond of making the "fire in a crowded theater" analogy when it suits them (typically in conversations about infringements on the 2nd amendment) but now you claim the 1st amendment is absolute? It's not illegal to shout "fire!" -- it's illegal to do so in a manner that endangers public safety (see reckless endangerment laws). Likewise, it's not illegal to publish a letter that you received from law enforcement -- but it is illegal to interfere with an ongoing investigation (see obstruction of justice laws)
I really don't see the 1st amendment issue here. The NSL law is troubling for other reasons (prohibition on seeking legal advice) but not because you can't disclose the letter while the investigation is still ongoing.
Wikileaks couldn't really have helped because as soon as they provide any information his anonymity is gone because the FBI will have known it was he who leaked the info.
No they wouldn't. They might suspect that but proving it in a Court of Law is an entirely different matter. It's a safe assumption that a fair number of people at the FBI would also have known about the NSL. Since you can't rule them out (it's hard to prove a negative after all) reasonable doubt would exist that the ISP owner leaked the documents.
We don't have an "empire" and free speech has always been something that can be curtailed for an ongoing criminal investigation. National Security really doesn't have anything to do with it. When I was in the ISP business I learned that it's illegal in New York State to tell one of your customers that he's the subject of a electronic surveillance warrant. Are you going to claim that's an infringement on free speech?
This law isn't troubling because the ISP owner can't tell the public about the NSL. It's troubling because he can't even tell his own lawyer. If the law is found to be unconstitutional that will be the reason why.
Climb off your high horse. It's not "spying" on your customers when an automated system puts network traffic into different QoS tiers. The notion that all traffic should be treated equally is absurd. VoIP needs real time routing. Interactive terminal applications (remote desktop/X/VNC/SSH sessions/etc) need real time routing or something very close to it. FTP/Bittorrent/NNTP could care less if the packets spend a few seconds in the queue before going out. HTTP is somewhere in the middle -- the protocol doesn't mind being queued but people expect a web page to open quickly when they follow a hyperlink.
And yes, we could have limited total bandwidth. But that would be stupid. Why should I limit all my customers to 1.5mbit/s when I can allow them to burst at 10mbit/s? The customer doing a short download gets his file faster. The customer doing a large download gets all available free bandwidth in the best case scenario and no less than he would have received under your scheme in the worst case scenario.
1 to 1 contention looks great on paper but does not scale well in the real world.
We ran our operation on two T-3s. That's nearly 90mbit/s. If my small business employer was able to do it back in 2000 I have a hard time believing that a Fortune 500 company like Verizon or AT&T couldn't scale it up to their operation.
BTW, I didn't say that we monitored everyone's web traffic, only that we had access to software that was capable of doing it. We mainly used it for troubleshooting and the occasional law enforcement subpoena.
We could have (charged by the bit) if we wanted, though it would have required some upgrades to our billing system. We were mainly interested in ensuring that business customers weren't buried by teenagers down/uploading tons of music that they'll never listen to. We didn't care how much bandwidth they used, only that they didn't disrupt the experience for everybody else on the network.
Slashdot Mirror
Glenn Beck is an idiot but I haven't heard him come out against the equal protection requirement. He and others have come out against jus soli, which is actually a discussion worth having, IMHO.
It is a 1st amendment issue when you can't tell your family and friends, though, even when it's merely that you were a served a NSL without telling for whom it covered or for what was requested
No it's not. You can't (legally) talk to your family and friends about a trial if you are sitting on the jury. You can't talk to them about Grand Jury proceedings. I'm a poll worker every election year -- I can't legally tell you how a voter who requests assistance marking his or her ballot voted.
None of those are 1st amendment infringements. Neither is a prohibition about discussing your involvement in a criminal investigation.
Actually I screwed up -- it's the 6th amendment that codifies the right to counsel. I shall now smack myself upon the head with my pocket copy of the United States Constitution :)
Agree with the rest of your post, just wanted to correct my own mistake.
I agree with you. But it's stupid to take it to the other extreme and condemn QoS. Do you really think that an ISP should have to allow a customer paying $40/mo (residential) the same access to the pipe during times of congestion as a customer paying many times that (business)? That's just silly. The business customer paid more to get a connection that came with an SLA. The residential customer bought a connection that comes with a TOS stating that they aren't allowed to engage in activities that degrade the network experience for others.
Not withstanding that example of tiered service, there's also the fact that residential customers would presumably prefer that their VoIP phones keep working during times of congestion. You aren't going to notice when your bittorrent download drops 64kbit/s when the neighbor is on the phone. You are going to notice if your phone calls become choppy.....
They absolutely should not have the right to prioritize their own video on demand service at the expense of Netflix or Hulu. They should have the right to prioritize video on demand (or VOIP, or SSH, or RDP, etc.) over FTP downloads and BitTorrent.
I'm sorry but I just don't see it. There's already a precedent for gag orders in criminal investigations. Have you ever served on a Grand Jury? You are sworn to secrecy and it's enforced by law in most states:
215.70 Unlawful grand jury disclosure.
A person is guilty of unlawful grand jury disclosure when, being a grand juror, a public prosecutor, a grand jury stenographer, a grand jury interpreter, a police officer or a peace officer guarding a witness in a grand jury proceeding, or a clerk, attendant, warden or other public servant having official duties in or about a grand jury room or proceeding, or a public officer or public employee, he intentionally discloses to another the nature or substance of any grand jury testimony, or any decision, result or other matter attending a grand jury proceeding which is required by law to be kept secret, except in the proper discharge of his official duties or upon written order of the court. Nothing contained herein shall prohibit a witness from disclosing his own testimony.
Unlawful grand jury disclosure is a class E felony.
Here's New York's law on wiretapping disclosures:
250.20 Divulging an eavesdropping warrant.
A person is guilty of divulging an eavesdropping warrant when, possessing information concerning the existence or content of an eavesdropping warrant issued pursuant to article seven hundred of the criminal procedure law, or concerning any circumstances attending an application for such a warrant, he discloses such information to another person; except that such disclosure is not criminal or unlawful when permitted by section 700.65 of the criminal procedure law or when made to a state or federal agency specifically authorized by law to receive reports concerning eavesdropping warrants, or when made in a legal proceeding, or to a law enforcement officer or agency connected with the application for such warrant, or to a legislative committee or temporary state commission, or to the telephone or telegraph corporation whose facilities are involved, or to any entity operating an electronic communications service whose facilities are involved.
Divulging an eavesdropping warrant is a class A misdemeanor.
Now, it does seem a bit excessive that the person would be prohibited from telling his boss -- I would not have had the ability to install a wiretap when I worked for an ISP without my boss finding out -- but the precedent for gag orders is already well established in the case and statutory law.
But they can handcuff you on their property.
So what? I can place you under a citizens arrest in most American jurisdictions if you are trespassing on my property. Ditto for if I catch you stealing my property.
It's not generally a good idea because it exposes you to all sorts of civil liability but it is legal in most American jurisdictions.
If the President of GM wants you in prison, you'll go to prison.
Citation needed.
I'm expressing my disdain for your flower child like ignorance. I could care less what you or others think.
You equated people who voted to establish Commonwealth status in Democratic elections to people living under the yoke of empire. That's utterly absurd and not deserving of a serious response.
This will be the last time I waste my energy reading or responding to your posts. Have a nice career tilting at windmills :)
No they wouldn't. The mainstream media has many flaws but they do tend to take source protection pretty seriously. Many reporters from mainstream outlets have gone to jail to protect their sources.
Because there is nothing inherent in a corporation that is different from a government
Corporations don't have the power to send armed agents to kick in my door and slap handcuffs on me.....
Civil disobedience is not a free activity. Sometimes it's worth paying the price for standing up for what you believe in. Rosa Parks was found guilty and assessed a fine. Does that mean she shouldn't have done what she did?
Don't you have a hit to take hippie?
Those obstruction of justice laws also violate the First Amendment.
No, they really don't.
As for colonies, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Marianna Islands, the US virgin Islands, American Samoa, are all official colonies
You are an idiot. Every one of those places voluntarily agreed to maintain their current status at various times throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Puerto Rican statehood is supported by both major political parties but the people there don't want it. Nor do they want to terminate their Commonwealth status. They are exercising their Democratic right to determine their relationship with the United States. I'm sorry if you don't like the course that they decided to follow.
Yes, the NSL law is loathsome. I've never disputed that. I even responded to mcgrew earlier and suggested that I might be inclined to leak the letter to Wikileaks if I received one.
All I'm saying is that there isn't a 1st amendment issue when you prohibit a service provider from telling their customer that he's under surveillance. Interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation is obstruction of justice. That's been illegal since the Common Law (i.e: it predates the United States of America) and has never been ruled to be unconstitutional.
There is a 5th amendment issue here when the service provider is denied the right to confer with his attorney. There is a 4th amendment issue here when the subject of the NSL is denied his right to have a warrant issued before having his communications intercepted. I'm just not seeing a 1st amendment issue though.
As I said, the law is troubling, just not from a 1st amendment perspective. I'm not defending the NSL law. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of claiming a 1st amendment issue exists because you can't reveal the fact that wiretap exists and/or documents were requested during an ongoing criminal investigation.
Neither is your rant that equates military bases there at the behest of the local government to empire. I'd ask you what our "colonies" are supposed to be but I doubt the answer would be worth my time.
Yes.
That's absurd. Leftists are so fond of making the "fire in a crowded theater" analogy when it suits them (typically in conversations about infringements on the 2nd amendment) but now you claim the 1st amendment is absolute? It's not illegal to shout "fire!" -- it's illegal to do so in a manner that endangers public safety (see reckless endangerment laws). Likewise, it's not illegal to publish a letter that you received from law enforcement -- but it is illegal to interfere with an ongoing investigation (see obstruction of justice laws)
I really don't see the 1st amendment issue here. The NSL law is troubling for other reasons (prohibition on seeking legal advice) but not because you can't disclose the letter while the investigation is still ongoing.
Put the bong down and step away slowly.
Wikileaks couldn't really have helped because as soon as they provide any information his anonymity is gone because the FBI will have known it was he who leaked the info.
No they wouldn't. They might suspect that but proving it in a Court of Law is an entirely different matter. It's a safe assumption that a fair number of people at the FBI would also have known about the NSL. Since you can't rule them out (it's hard to prove a negative after all) reasonable doubt would exist that the ISP owner leaked the documents.
We don't have an "empire" and free speech has always been something that can be curtailed for an ongoing criminal investigation. National Security really doesn't have anything to do with it. When I was in the ISP business I learned that it's illegal in New York State to tell one of your customers that he's the subject of a electronic surveillance warrant. Are you going to claim that's an infringement on free speech?
This law isn't troubling because the ISP owner can't tell the public about the NSL. It's troubling because he can't even tell his own lawyer. If the law is found to be unconstitutional that will be the reason why.
So much for the first amendment. I'd have posted it all to slashdot, written letters to editors, harrassed my congresscritters, and gone to jail.
Or you could be a little bit smarter about it and send it to a news outlet and/or wikileaks.....
Climb off your high horse. It's not "spying" on your customers when an automated system puts network traffic into different QoS tiers. The notion that all traffic should be treated equally is absurd. VoIP needs real time routing. Interactive terminal applications (remote desktop/X/VNC/SSH sessions/etc) need real time routing or something very close to it. FTP/Bittorrent/NNTP could care less if the packets spend a few seconds in the queue before going out. HTTP is somewhere in the middle -- the protocol doesn't mind being queued but people expect a web page to open quickly when they follow a hyperlink.
And yes, we could have limited total bandwidth. But that would be stupid. Why should I limit all my customers to 1.5mbit/s when I can allow them to burst at 10mbit/s? The customer doing a short download gets his file faster. The customer doing a large download gets all available free bandwidth in the best case scenario and no less than he would have received under your scheme in the worst case scenario.
1 to 1 contention looks great on paper but does not scale well in the real world.
We ran our operation on two T-3s. That's nearly 90mbit/s. If my small business employer was able to do it back in 2000 I have a hard time believing that a Fortune 500 company like Verizon or AT&T couldn't scale it up to their operation.
BTW, I didn't say that we monitored everyone's web traffic, only that we had access to software that was capable of doing it. We mainly used it for troubleshooting and the occasional law enforcement subpoena.
We could have (charged by the bit) if we wanted, though it would have required some upgrades to our billing system. We were mainly interested in ensuring that business customers weren't buried by teenagers down/uploading tons of music that they'll never listen to. We didn't care how much bandwidth they used, only that they didn't disrupt the experience for everybody else on the network.