You left out the part about weapon inequity in that many small arms don't stand a chance against a smart bomb.
And you left out the part where those smart bombs would be falling on *both* sides, or do you believe the military would not fracture?
The people in the US military are for the most part good and decent people, the sons and daughters of those same people the government would seek to suppress/pacify, heck, many in the US military *are* those resisters. Combined with the "rifle behind every blade of grass and darkened window", and with their C&C/logistics dependent on these same people, and located mostly smack in the middle of what would become hostile-occupied territory, I would not be so quick as to call it a done deal.
Much more likely, it would be a very bloody and costly episode in history, regardless of who "triumphed", as it would almost certainly be a Pyhrric victory if an all-out civil war/rebellion were to occur in the US.
The problem isn't good people with guns vs bad people with guns. The problem is stupid people with guns.
That's why most places require successful completion of a firearm safety & training course. The same stupid people are police. Should we take away the cops' guns?
Personally, I'd rather read headlines like "Stupid Man Shoots Himself Cleaning Loaded Gun" than headlines like "Armed Insane Man Kills 50 School Children In Gun-Free School Zone Before Armed Responders Can Arrive To Stop Him".
I'd like to see a widespread comprehensive firearms handling/safety training course implemented as a mandatory part of basic elementary-level education and a requirement for grade promotion and/or graduation.
If the New York cops are any indication, you're in for a long fight.
If the feces ever truly hits the oscillating rotary air circulation device, any police left that did not take their families and escape to the boonies somewhere would be overwhelmed and decimated in the first few days.
How many cops would simply no longer report for duty if the SHTF? What happens when their food, fuel, & ammo runs out, when the necessary infrastructure to resupply them no longer exists? If the struggle lasts more than a small handful of days, defeat for the government is assured, as the supplies and infrastructure to support/supply the remains of the government would no longer exist.
I'm sure that Russia or China would be happy to help the US government by nuking major population centers at their request. WMDs would be the only way the US government could win a true widespread domestic rebellion. Of course, it would be an almost textbook Pyhrric victory. They'd have very little left to rule over, and that's assuming Russia or China doesn't decide to step in and take over.
So if they tap a wire at the curb, it's a public place, and no warant is required?
So I guess it's OK for me to set up and run a Stingray-type device on private property near FBI/DoJ/DHS/TLA buildings and facilities and/or their individual personnels' home residences then, right?
Be careful what you wish for FBI/DoJ, you just may get it.
Your "belief" does not, however, trump the reality that an increased number of people carrying weapons for self defense purposes creates a safer society.
Citation needed.
Look at it like this: The only effective counter to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. There are more good people than bad people. Bad people will always have access to guns because they do not follow laws or restrictions.Therefor, having more of the general public armed means more good guys with guns than bad guys with guns. Q.E..D.
How about a club for the first legal owner of a black slave in the American Colonies, like black colonist Anthony Johnson, who owned the first legally recognized slave in the American Colonies, black man John Casor?
If you were intellectually honest, you would admit that Washington and many of the other Founders abhorred slavery as evidenced by numerous letters and documents and were doing all they could to bring about it's eventual end while simultaneously trying to convince these same slave-states to join the emerging U.S.
Discrimination against people is wrong. There is no "good" discrimination. There is no "Affirmative Action", only retribution based on hatred carried on, like an endless vendetta. It only keeps the cycle of racial/ethnic/class resentment and hatred alive like domestic violence passes on from generation to generation.
If your tax money went to SpaceX, it would convert them into a government-sponsored institution and would be doomed to be plagued by inefficiencies that do not exist in the purely private sector.
Only true if taxes are the only source of initial capital outlay and income for SpaceX.
Taxes would be paid to SpaceX as agreed-to remuneration according to a contract offered by the government and won through competition by SpaceX. Seeing as SpaceX is a private concern created with private capital which competes for contracts against other competitors not only on contracts with the US space program but also others, your statement fails on that basis.
Why couldn't he have saved $5-6000 working other jobs to buy a used car to use as a cab instead of this renting his cab from a company? Then he could've kept 100% of his earnings, and the fares would also be a lot lower for the consumers.
It's quite possible that even barring any laws or regulations restricting/forbidding such a move, the cost of renting a taxi might well be a net savings over footing all the costs of ownership & operation as an individual due to things like group rates for liability insurance and fleet maintenance contract cost savings over costs for individual trips to the local auto mechanic's garage, etc.
That would be different based on the city and state (US)
A friend drove a cab for years and around here that is not how it works. The cab company rents the cabs to the drivers at a set amount per day. The driver can accept jobs that come in across the computer but there will be a small handling charge that is built into the price per mile printed on the side of the cab and used in the meter. If they pick up some one who flags them down or some one who calls their Cell and requests a pickup then there is no handling charge.
The friend of mine that did it treated it like a small business. He had cards made with his cell on them and kept his car immaculately clean. After the first year 90% of his calls were from customers and word of mouth. He would also give discounts to his regulars. Really the discounts were nothing more than him deducting the handling fee from the printed cost.
I don't know enough of the facts & details of the particular situation you describe, but just from your description, that's not too bad. Especially if the driver rents the cabs and pays no maintenance, insurance, tags, etc etc.
Sadly though, that's not typical in many urban/suburban areas with denser populations (where taxis are needed most) in the US. Most often, you see some sort of local taxi commission that's usually corrupt "regulating" a small number of taxi operations, sometimes just one.
NY's system is one of the most infamous, with Chicago's corrupt system at their heels with Washington D.C. in there too, vying for "Most Corrupt & Broken US Taxi System". Many others are equally bad, heck, I haven't even mentioned anything west of the Mississippi, and there are no lack of bad & corrupt taxi systems!
What's happening here regarding the new online independent private taxi services is really not much different in principle to what has and is happening to the old business models for media/news/entertainment monetization, sales, and distribution.
This time, there are a lot of locally-powerful corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, and unions in major cities around the world that stand to personally lose out if the old taxi systems go extinct, never mind the corrupt taxi company owners' anger and resistance.
The politicians and bureaucrats, as is typical with government (and the larger it is, the more "inertial resistance" to change there is), will have to be brought kicking & screaming into the modern age. This is particularly true if that change means those in government lose money, power, and/or control.
what would happen if the cab drivers would also act as Uber drivers? If you can't fight them, embrace them. Haven't seen this anywhere yet.
1. They could not charge as much as they used to. as a regulated taxi.
2. The taxi company would fire them if they found out they also drove for Uber/Lyft.
3. Having been forced to charge less, they'd have to work longer and compete for customers.
4. Being that Uber/Lyft have ways for customers to send feedback to report bad drivers/performance/cleanliness and hold drivers responsible, the former taxi drivers would have to actually put in effort to make the ride safe, comfortable, pleasant, punctual, and convenient.
It is an avoidable risk, in that we can tell idiotic humans to stop flying quadcopters near planes, you fools!
I've only read TFS not TFA, but how do we know that this wasn't a government drone and/or operated by or at the government's direction? Either as part of some unrelated police or intelligence/surveillance operation, or even possibly as a "false-flag" operation to provide the government public opinion leverage for heavily restricting/licensing and/or banning regular citizens from owning/operating drones.
Another point, TFS quotes an altitude of 700 feet for the aircraft. That would mean that a drone would not need to be operated at a very high (or technically 'illegal') altitude to be "near" the extremely low-flying aircraft.
There are a lot of unsupported assumptions being made all around.
That's right! Hand over power to the states! Because unlike the fed, state government officials are totally immune to power grab and corruption!
If you have all the other states along with federal executive/judicial/legislative branches that are not so corrupted to the degree they are currently, the problem would self-correct. The Rule of Law instead of the Rule of Men would prevail.
It's like a computer network; A system built from independent machines with a varied 'ecosystem' of software, hardware, and security systems is a much harder 'nut' to crack than a single machine that operates a network of 'dumb' terminals.
In a very real way, those who wrote the US Constitution were network design geniuses. It makes little difference whether one is discussing a computer network or a government. Whether it's a network for data or for government power, many of the basic principles governing their operation, behavior, and security remain identical.
They were the ones introducing the new & disruptive concepts of their age, like all rights and powers originating from and by the People, and that government exists at the People's pleasure to protect and defend those rights equally, and has only those powers loaned to it by the People, and those powers may be altered or abolished by the People as described in the Constitution as they see fit.
Go and read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers and the associated letters exchanged between the authors of the US Constitution if you want to understand these concepts. Of course if you're already fixed in your beliefs, then you may as well save time & bandwidth.
Because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So, remove the over-reaching power.
The republic was never designed for a federal government with so much power. That was one of the basic tenets of it's design, to not allow the central government too much power.
Break it up like Ma Bell of old. Do away with the unnecessary/harmful/unconstitutional parts, and allow the states more control.
Note; I am not advocating doing away with a central government. Just reducing it's size, scope, power, and cost to more closely resemble what the founding documents say it should look like.
Nobody is going to pay off an official who hasn't enough power to accomplish the goal(s) of the pay off. It's also hard to politically influence a federal agency/department/bureau that does not exist.
And America's modern right often argues that portions of the US Constitution can be safely ignored because CommunistsXXXXXX terrorists.
No, those are Progressives who are in both camps (Left-Right, Republican-Democrat).
Progessives are the problem. As their name suggests, they want government to "progress" past the limits of the Constitution. Progressives are the ones who push for the "living" Constitution that allows "creative" re-interpretations of the limits on government scope & power which enable government abuses and corruption.
Stop electing Progressives in either major Party and things will get better. Keep electing the same Progressives in the major Parties, and things will continue to get worse.
But...but...where will we get future cops and politicians from, if there are no more government-indoctrinated violent and aggressive brain-damaged.individuals being turned out by schools?
Yes, they are a force multiplier for people against both public and private sector corruption, criminality, violence, and tyranny.
That's why unelected bureaucrats creating regulations with the force and criminal penalties of a Federal felony are an unconstitutional abomination and a clear assault on individual freedom and civil rights, plus accomplishing further destruction of the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches of the US government.
Funny how this revelation comes out just before they are about to release their regulations for "drones".
The biggest dangers that drones present from the perspective of those in government are that drones in civilian hands are a force-equalizer and also hamper the ability of those in government to operate without being observed.
Any other reasons for government regulation of drones are secondary to those primary motivations and also serve as a smokescreen to cover for those primary motivations.
Surely there's better tech than what we use today to prevent our automobiles from becoming lethal ovens.
Certainly there is. You can just cook your kids and pets at home, no need to waste the gas going out at all. Home ovens have been large enough to do this for decades now. People are so wasteful!
--Hannibal
Now, see!?
That is the kind of straightforward and direct, logical, practical, problem-solving engineer-style thinking/. *used* to be known for right there, something that seems to have almost disappeared from/.!
It's ok to be a thug who roughs up old shopkeepers to steal form them, and then punch a cop and try to grab a gun? I'm supposed to feel sorry at the death of that kind of low life?
Brown was just trying to "spread the wealth"!
Then an obviously-racist cop stopped him (Wilson is white and Brown was black, so racism on Wilson's part is automatically a fact). Brown was simply defending himself against being prevented from "sharing" more of other people's hard-earned wealth. Brown is a warrior of Social Justice and an obvious victim of racism!/sarc
The cognitive dissonance displayed here by Brown supporters is stunning. The reality-distortion field generated rivals that of Apple/Jobs.
Keep in mind that Einstein is a DHS program for monitoring the security of government networks from an internal point of view. It consolidates information from participating agencies' firewalls, intrusion detection systems, malware detection, anti-virus scanners, etc,. It has nothing to do with monitoring anyone or anything aside from government-owned systems, government-owned internal networks (i.e. the LAN in a government office building), and the actions of government employees using those internal government-owned stems and networks. In other words, it's exactly the same sort of thing every major company, university, or other organization does in their security operations centers.
Whether or not the data should be kept around for research purposes is a worthwhile question, although publishing it would require a lot of sanitization to avoid revealing data that would be useful to attackers (for instance, the name, IP address, and precise version number of every firewall within a given agency).
But in this case it's not about covering up any surveillance or information gathering on public behavior.
How about records of one or more government agencies intruding into other government agency's or branch's networks?
For instance, could there be evidence contained in those logs of TLAs intruding into the networks of Congress, the SCOTUS, etc?
Never mind TLAs spying on normal everyday citizens. The Executive Branch has been quite cavalier of late in spying on those in the other branches of government, particularly when said other branches may be deciding whether or not to exercise their duty and ability to limit the Executive Branch's power and scope.
This data could provide hard evidence regarding just how extensive and pervasive these practices have become.
If a device is used on the airwaves in the cell phone bands to emulate a tower, then necessarily, it will have to have a transmitter. Is the device type registered by the FCC, does each emulator have a site license? Does each operator have a license to operate the device?
If it is a "cell phone test device" then it must be associated with a properly licensed technician.
The legal requirements to simply operate the device include much more than the rights of the person of interest. For that reason alone, the concealment of the use of the device would be reason enough to throw out any information obtained from it, even before any case law is considered.
IANAL, but I have had 6 different FCC licenses, and have had to jump through many hoops. (I think only 3 are current now).
The FCC is an Executive Branch agency, the same as the NSA, DoJ, etc.
If any bright-boy at the FCC *did* bring up the legal status concerning use of Stingrays FCC-regulation-wise, he'd be told to shut up, and also quite likely put on a surveillance list as a possible security/leak threat. "The most transparent administration in history" is extremely aggressive about stomping on whistelblowers and their families with government jackboots.
Slashdot Mirror
You left out the part about weapon inequity in that many small arms don't stand a chance against a smart bomb.
And you left out the part where those smart bombs would be falling on *both* sides, or do you believe the military would not fracture?
The people in the US military are for the most part good and decent people, the sons and daughters of those same people the government would seek to suppress/pacify, heck, many in the US military *are* those resisters. Combined with the "rifle behind every blade of grass and darkened window", and with their C&C/logistics dependent on these same people, and located mostly smack in the middle of what would become hostile-occupied territory, I would not be so quick as to call it a done deal.
Much more likely, it would be a very bloody and costly episode in history, regardless of who "triumphed", as it would almost certainly be a Pyhrric victory if an all-out civil war/rebellion were to occur in the US.
Strat
Those hawking the 2nd amendment on the grounds that we must be able to overthrow the government are treasonous and unpatriotic.
Yeah, like those Colonial traitors Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et al.
You might want to read up on what those people had to say about firearms and regular citizens vs domestic government.
Sorry, but I'll give their opinions far more weight than yours.
Strat
The problem isn't good people with guns vs bad people with guns. The problem is stupid people with guns.
That's why most places require successful completion of a firearm safety & training course. The same stupid people are police. Should we take away the cops' guns?
Personally, I'd rather read headlines like "Stupid Man Shoots Himself Cleaning Loaded Gun" than headlines like "Armed Insane Man Kills 50 School Children In Gun-Free School Zone Before Armed Responders Can Arrive To Stop Him".
I'd like to see a widespread comprehensive firearms handling/safety training course implemented as a mandatory part of basic elementary-level education and a requirement for grade promotion and/or graduation.
Strat
a Stingray-type device...
is a weapon, and thus regulated
A weapon? Really? Please cite the laws/regulations which classify it as a weapon.
don't try to buy and use a 20mm Gatling gun without attracting unwanted attention.
A Gatling gun? No, probably not. A BOFORS 40mm auto-cannon? Sure! Perfectly legal with the proper forms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If the New York cops are any indication, you're in for a long fight.
If the feces ever truly hits the oscillating rotary air circulation device, any police left that did not take their families and escape to the boonies somewhere would be overwhelmed and decimated in the first few days.
All the infrastructure that makes an effective modern police force possible is run and/or supplied with matériel by the very people and their families the police would be attacking. Does the government have facilities to house, feed, and supply all the necessities of life for every cop and his family, or do you think under such circumstances that they would be safe living among the people they're attacking?
How many cops would simply no longer report for duty if the SHTF? What happens when their food, fuel, & ammo runs out, when the necessary infrastructure to resupply them no longer exists? If the struggle lasts more than a small handful of days, defeat for the government is assured, as the supplies and infrastructure to support/supply the remains of the government would no longer exist.
I'm sure that Russia or China would be happy to help the US government by nuking major population centers at their request. WMDs would be the only way the US government could win a true widespread domestic rebellion. Of course, it would be an almost textbook Pyhrric victory. They'd have very little left to rule over, and that's assuming Russia or China doesn't decide to step in and take over.
Strat
So if they tap a wire at the curb, it's a public place, and no warant is required?
So I guess it's OK for me to set up and run a Stingray-type device on private property near FBI/DoJ/DHS/TLA buildings and facilities and/or their individual personnels' home residences then, right?
Be careful what you wish for FBI/DoJ, you just may get it.
Strat
Look at it like this: The only effective counter to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. There are more good people than bad people. Bad people will always have access to guns because they do not follow laws or restrictions.Therefor, having more of the general public armed means more good guys with guns than bad guys with guns. Q.E..D.
Strat
Should we maybe have a white boys club?
*cough*original US government*cough*
How about a club for the first legal owner of a black slave in the American Colonies, like black colonist Anthony Johnson, who owned the first legally recognized slave in the American Colonies, black man John Casor?
If you were intellectually honest, you would admit that Washington and many of the other Founders abhorred slavery as evidenced by numerous letters and documents and were doing all they could to bring about it's eventual end while simultaneously trying to convince these same slave-states to join the emerging U.S.
Discrimination against people is wrong. There is no "good" discrimination. There is no "Affirmative Action", only retribution based on hatred carried on, like an endless vendetta. It only keeps the cycle of racial/ethnic/class resentment and hatred alive like domestic violence passes on from generation to generation.
Strat
Wasn't Soggy Knee where a Native American swim team was killed or something?
Strat
If your tax money went to SpaceX, it would convert them into a government-sponsored institution and would be doomed to be plagued by inefficiencies that do not exist in the purely private sector.
Only true if taxes are the only source of initial capital outlay and income for SpaceX.
Taxes would be paid to SpaceX as agreed-to remuneration according to a contract offered by the government and won through competition by SpaceX. Seeing as SpaceX is a private concern created with private capital which competes for contracts against other competitors not only on contracts with the US space program but also others, your statement fails on that basis.
Strat
Why couldn't he have saved $5-6000 working other jobs to buy a used car to use as a cab instead of this renting his cab from a company? Then he could've kept 100% of his earnings, and the fares would also be a lot lower for the consumers.
It's quite possible that even barring any laws or regulations restricting/forbidding such a move, the cost of renting a taxi might well be a net savings over footing all the costs of ownership & operation as an individual due to things like group rates for liability insurance and fleet maintenance contract cost savings over costs for individual trips to the local auto mechanic's garage, etc.
Strat
That would be different based on the city and state (US)
A friend drove a cab for years and around here that is not how it works. The cab company rents the cabs to the drivers at a set amount per day. The driver can accept jobs that come in across the computer but there will be a small handling charge that is built into the price per mile printed on the side of the cab and used in the meter. If they pick up some one who flags them down or some one who calls their Cell and requests a pickup then there is no handling charge.
The friend of mine that did it treated it like a small business. He had cards made with his cell on them and kept his car immaculately clean. After the first year 90% of his calls were from customers and word of mouth. He would also give discounts to his regulars. Really the discounts were nothing more than him deducting the handling fee from the printed cost.
I don't know enough of the facts & details of the particular situation you describe, but just from your description, that's not too bad. Especially if the driver rents the cabs and pays no maintenance, insurance, tags, etc etc.
Sadly though, that's not typical in many urban/suburban areas with denser populations (where taxis are needed most) in the US. Most often, you see some sort of local taxi commission that's usually corrupt "regulating" a small number of taxi operations, sometimes just one.
NY's system is one of the most infamous, with Chicago's corrupt system at their heels with Washington D.C. in there too, vying for "Most Corrupt & Broken US Taxi System". Many others are equally bad, heck, I haven't even mentioned anything west of the Mississippi, and there are no lack of bad & corrupt taxi systems!
What's happening here regarding the new online independent private taxi services is really not much different in principle to what has and is happening to the old business models for media/news/entertainment monetization, sales, and distribution.
This time, there are a lot of locally-powerful corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, and unions in major cities around the world that stand to personally lose out if the old taxi systems go extinct, never mind the corrupt taxi company owners' anger and resistance.
The politicians and bureaucrats, as is typical with government (and the larger it is, the more "inertial resistance" to change there is), will have to be brought kicking & screaming into the modern age. This is particularly true if that change means those in government lose money, power, and/or control.
Strat
what would happen if the cab drivers would also act as Uber drivers?
If you can't fight them, embrace them.
Haven't seen this anywhere yet.
1. They could not charge as much as they used to. as a regulated taxi.
2. The taxi company would fire them if they found out they also drove for Uber/Lyft.
3. Having been forced to charge less, they'd have to work longer and compete for customers.
4. Being that Uber/Lyft have ways for customers to send feedback to report bad drivers/performance/cleanliness and hold drivers responsible, the former taxi drivers would have to actually put in effort to make the ride safe, comfortable, pleasant, punctual, and convenient.
So they'd rather protest than compete.
Strat
There are a lot of unsupported assumptions being made all around.
Moderated "Flamebait".
Classic Slashdot.
It is an avoidable risk, in that we can tell idiotic humans to stop flying quadcopters near planes, you fools!
I've only read TFS not TFA, but how do we know that this wasn't a government drone and/or operated by or at the government's direction? Either as part of some unrelated police or intelligence/surveillance operation, or even possibly as a "false-flag" operation to provide the government public opinion leverage for heavily restricting/licensing and/or banning regular citizens from owning/operating drones.
Another point, TFS quotes an altitude of 700 feet for the aircraft. That would mean that a drone would not need to be operated at a very high (or technically 'illegal') altitude to be "near" the extremely low-flying aircraft.
There are a lot of unsupported assumptions being made all around.
Strat
That's right! Hand over power to the states! Because unlike the fed, state government officials are totally immune to power grab and corruption!
If you have all the other states along with federal executive/judicial/legislative branches that are not so corrupted to the degree they are currently, the problem would self-correct. The Rule of Law instead of the Rule of Men would prevail.
It's like a computer network; A system built from independent machines with a varied 'ecosystem' of software, hardware, and security systems is a much harder 'nut' to crack than a single machine that operates a network of 'dumb' terminals.
In a very real way, those who wrote the US Constitution were network design geniuses. It makes little difference whether one is discussing a computer network or a government. Whether it's a network for data or for government power, many of the basic principles governing their operation, behavior, and security remain identical.
They were the ones introducing the new & disruptive concepts of their age, like all rights and powers originating from and by the People, and that government exists at the People's pleasure to protect and defend those rights equally, and has only those powers loaned to it by the People, and those powers may be altered or abolished by the People as described in the Constitution as they see fit.
Go and read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers and the associated letters exchanged between the authors of the US Constitution if you want to understand these concepts. Of course if you're already fixed in your beliefs, then you may as well save time & bandwidth.
Strat
Because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So, remove the over-reaching power.
The republic was never designed for a federal government with so much power. That was one of the basic tenets of it's design, to not allow the central government too much power.
Break it up like Ma Bell of old. Do away with the unnecessary/harmful/unconstitutional parts, and allow the states more control.
Note; I am not advocating doing away with a central government. Just reducing it's size, scope, power, and cost to more closely resemble what the founding documents say it should look like.
Nobody is going to pay off an official who hasn't enough power to accomplish the goal(s) of the pay off. It's also hard to politically influence a federal agency/department/bureau that does not exist.
Strat
And America's modern right often argues that portions of the US Constitution can be safely ignored because CommunistsXXXXXX terrorists.
No, those are Progressives who are in both camps (Left-Right, Republican-Democrat).
Progessives are the problem. As their name suggests, they want government to "progress" past the limits of the Constitution. Progressives are the ones who push for the "living" Constitution that allows "creative" re-interpretations of the limits on government scope & power which enable government abuses and corruption.
Stop electing Progressives in either major Party and things will get better. Keep electing the same Progressives in the major Parties, and things will continue to get worse.
Strat
Do you like the capabilities your pre-frontal cortex gives you, like executive functions, impulse control, etc?
Then don't play football.
Avoidable brain damage is stupid. Avoidable mechanical brain damage twice so.
But...but...where will we get future cops and politicians from, if there are no more government-indoctrinated violent and aggressive brain-damaged.individuals being turned out by schools?
Strat
I agree, you're the first one besides myself I've seen mention this.
They have already been used to present evidence of corporate wrong doings.
1 example.
http://consumerist.com/2012/01... [consumerist.com]
Yes, they are a force multiplier for people against both public and private sector corruption, criminality, violence, and tyranny.
That's why unelected bureaucrats creating regulations with the force and criminal penalties of a Federal felony are an unconstitutional abomination and a clear assault on individual freedom and civil rights, plus accomplishing further destruction of the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches of the US government.
Strat
Funny how this revelation comes out just before they are about to release their regulations for "drones".
The biggest dangers that drones present from the perspective of those in government are that drones in civilian hands are a force-equalizer and also hamper the ability of those in government to operate without being observed.
Any other reasons for government regulation of drones are secondary to those primary motivations and also serve as a smokescreen to cover for those primary motivations.
Strat
Now, see!?
That is the kind of straightforward and direct, logical, practical, problem-solving engineer-style thinking /. *used* to be known for right there, something that seems to have almost disappeared from /.!
Bravo Sir, bravo!
Strat
I am on Slashdot! Holy crap! I am so excited!
Nice to see that even Apu reads /.
Strat
It's ok to be a thug who roughs up old shopkeepers to steal form them, and then punch a cop and try to grab a gun? I'm supposed to feel sorry at the death of that kind of low life?
Brown was just trying to "spread the wealth"!
Then an obviously-racist cop stopped him (Wilson is white and Brown was black, so racism on Wilson's part is automatically a fact). Brown was simply defending himself against being prevented from "sharing" more of other people's hard-earned wealth. Brown is a warrior of Social Justice and an obvious victim of racism! /sarc
The cognitive dissonance displayed here by Brown supporters is stunning. The reality-distortion field generated rivals that of Apple/Jobs.
Strat
Keep in mind that Einstein is a DHS program for monitoring the security of government networks from an internal point of view. It consolidates information from participating agencies' firewalls, intrusion detection systems, malware detection, anti-virus scanners, etc,. It has nothing to do with monitoring anyone or anything aside from government-owned systems, government-owned internal networks (i.e. the LAN in a government office building), and the actions of government employees using those internal government-owned stems and networks. In other words, it's exactly the same sort of thing every major company, university, or other organization does in their security operations centers.
Whether or not the data should be kept around for research purposes is a worthwhile question, although publishing it would require a lot of sanitization to avoid revealing data that would be useful to attackers (for instance, the name, IP address, and precise version number of every firewall within a given agency).
But in this case it's not about covering up any surveillance or information gathering on public behavior.
How about records of one or more government agencies intruding into other government agency's or branch's networks?
For instance, could there be evidence contained in those logs of TLAs intruding into the networks of Congress, the SCOTUS, etc?
Never mind TLAs spying on normal everyday citizens. The Executive Branch has been quite cavalier of late in spying on those in the other branches of government, particularly when said other branches may be deciding whether or not to exercise their duty and ability to limit the Executive Branch's power and scope.
This data could provide hard evidence regarding just how extensive and pervasive these practices have become.
Strat
If a device is used on the airwaves in the cell phone bands to emulate a tower, then necessarily, it will have to have a transmitter. Is the device type registered by the FCC, does each emulator have a site license? Does each operator have a license to operate the device?
If it is a "cell phone test device" then it must be associated with a properly licensed technician.
The legal requirements to simply operate the device include much more than the rights of the person of interest. For that reason alone, the concealment of the use of the device would be reason enough to throw out any information obtained from it, even before any case law is considered.
IANAL, but I have had 6 different FCC licenses, and have had to jump through many hoops. (I think only 3 are current now).
The FCC is an Executive Branch agency, the same as the NSA, DoJ, etc.
If any bright-boy at the FCC *did* bring up the legal status concerning use of Stingrays FCC-regulation-wise, he'd be told to shut up, and also quite likely put on a surveillance list as a possible security/leak threat. "The most transparent administration in history" is extremely aggressive about stomping on whistelblowers and their families with government jackboots.
Strat