No, I'll still be the first to assert that private communication has a genuine expectation of privacy, and law enforcement has no right to monitor that without probable cause and a warrant. As I said above.
But what you say in public is public. If someone wants to scrape it all and analyze it, well, you made it all public. You said it to the general public, and the general public has the right to do what they will with it. Including analysis.
You don't get to on one hand shout out something to the public and on the other hand expect it to be private. You can have one or the other. Not both.
No, it differs from Stingray in that fundamental respect.
Cell phone conversations are presumed to be private. If you make a cell phone call from a private place, to someone else who is also in a private place, you most certainly have a reasonable expectation of privacy for that call. But Stingray could be intercepting that.
On the other hand, when I post this on Slashdot, I can't reasonably expect that to be private. I'm posting it for anyone who wants to read it.
That's the fundamental difference. It's the difference between someone using a long zoom to take photos through your bedroom window, and you happening to appear on a security tape when you go to the grocery store. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your bedroom. You don't in the grocery store.
You know, the meaning of the triple parentheses isn't exactly a big secret any more. If you want to spew anti-Semitic crap, then at least have the balls to do it openly.
Well, just like it's Twitter's service, it's their API. They can restrict access to it in any way and for any reason they see fit.
If you're in public and attracting attention, it's foolish to presume you're not being recorded. With everyone having an audio and video recorder in their pocket, as well as the massive number of stationary recording devices, chances are good you probably are being recorded at any given time, especially if you're attracting attention. The stenographer would be largely redundant. You can consider that good, bad, or mixed, but such is the world we live in.
It's certainly my hope that Twitter's API doesn't allow access to private or "whitelist only" communication. If it does, that's a problem that goes well beyond this one instance. I can't say I'm terribly familiar with it myself, but I imagine if it had massive security flaws in it like that, we'd have heard about it by now. And if it does and we haven't, we certainly should.
As far as allowing access by non-blocked or logged in only users, that's such a low bar that you're still speaking publicly. For the blocked users, it would be equivalent to that speaker on the soapbox having a restraining order against someone. That one person (or even more than one person) can't come to hear them speak, but everyone else in the world still can. That is, for all intents and purposes, still speaking to the general public.
I could see that to a degree. But that's a different question.
Right now, the First Amendment only covers government action. The Fourth does too. Now, when the government was seeking records, that absolutely should implicate the Fourth Amendment. That should similarly happen with the First if it's the government asking for certain types of speech to be disallowed somewhere.
But the Fourteenth and Nineteenth don't create those employment and public accommodation laws. They, too, only restrict the government. It's laws, like the Civil Rights Act, that put into place the actual protections against discrimination by private actors.
I'm not sure how the constitutionality of requiring Twitter, or Slashdot, or any other platform to let anyone use its services without restriction would come out. I suspect they could readily argue that it violates freedom of association; that they have the right not to be associated with those people, and to kick them off their property. But there might be some success in making "political persuasion" a protected class. Of course, the lawsuits over what exactly falls under that would be nothing if not endless.
But realistically, I think the whole thing is overblown. I saw tons and tons of pro-Trump stuff on social media. Trump himself was certainly never barred from using Twitter, and does so to this day. If Facebook won't even stop flat out lies masquerading as news from being posted, I think they're being pretty permissive.
I don't have any sympathy for secret spy schemes or the mass warrantless interception of private data or communications. The people behind those belong in jail.
But Twitter isn't a private communication. It's public. When you stand up on a soapbox on the street corner and start shouting, yes, that's your free speech right. But a cop can stand there and listen to what you say, even record it if they want. It's a public place.
If you want to communicate privately, use a private medium. The police should certainly be disallowed from monitoring that without probable cause and a proper warrant. But you can't on one hand put something out there to the general public, and on the other expect it to stay private. People need to stop having the illusion that what they post publicly on the Internet has any reasonable expectation of privacy.
The actual problem is this:
The proposal’s terms and conditions stipulate that agencies using the platform must avoid disclosure of the Media Sonar brand or methodology, instead of (sic) encouraging clients to refer to the software as a “proprietary search engine” or “internet tools” in court. The company goes on to state that “general widespread media attention to the platform could result in a significant decrease in efficacy and the overall business model.”
No, no, and no. If you want to use evidence in court, you must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, including the specifics of how you gathered it. All of that should be available for the opposing party to challenge; that's part of their due process rights. If you don't want to reveal the method of gathering it, you don't get to use the evidence. If you want to defend it as legitimate when challenged, you must reveal the details to show that it in fact is. You don't just get to say "No, it's fine, we promise."
You can't put a back door in something, and only have certain people able to walk through it. If there's a vulnerability in the encryption that can be used to crack it by the service provider, someone else can do the same.
If this were implemented in the UK, it would totally kill Web commerce there. Who's going to put financial details across the Internet when it's as good as sent unencrypted? And if actual encryption is permitted for that purpose, well, then it can be used for any other purpose too.
I don't know why it's so difficult to understand. If you deliberately make something insecure, then it is, by definition, insecure. If it's designed to be secure, then even the designer can't break in, because if they can, someone else could do the same.
I'm an atheist, and have talked to other atheists and non-Muslims too. A lot of them, including me, will sign up for that "Muslim registry" if it ever comes into existence.
So let him make his "undesirables" registry. And let's flood it with so much junk data that it becomes totally worthless.
I got an average of 61 mpg when I drove from Denver to California in my Prius. And that includes through the mountainous sections of I-70 where you're doing heavy hills and constantly having to brake and accelerate again, and with the cruise set at 80 on the flat sections with a 75 mph limit.
Alright, so you live in a rural area. Even if you have to drive, you can drive a hybrid that gets >50 mpg. And that's actually better for you too, since it means you buy a lot less gas for your long commute. So you do that, right?
Alright, I get that. (By the way, I'm taking your invitation in your sig to post any disagreement, I agree that "-1 I disagree" is absolutely not a valid mod.)
I just got done setting up a new OS on this machine tonight. And of course, I installed Steam. It asked for a couple of verifications, but after that, it validated and set itself up. And I can start downloading the games I want. Downloading.. I can play them offline for up to 30 days after downloading them. That's relatively sufficient.
I have no problem paying for things. I've bought hundreds of dollars worth of games on Steam and a couple hundred more worth from GOG, both legitimate, authorized services. Because they don't try to restrict me, Steam much, GOG at all. (GOG is totally, 100%, DRM free.) But they don't try to restrict me the way you're trying to, to "streaming only" or the like. If they did, I wouldn't buy from them. I want download, I want offline usage. Anything without that is hamstrung.
There's a good reason for that. I also pay for a Spotify subscription. And most of the time, I use its streaming service, since I'm either using it at home or at work on wifi. So that works fine. But it allows for download for offline use. And when I was planning a drive through the Rockies in Wyoming and Montana, and then through north Idaho, I needed that, because cell reception would be spotty at the very best. So I needed to create a downloaded, offline playlist, or else be stuck with AM talk radio. So I downloaded a ton of stuff from Spotify onto my phone for the trip.
Now if they'd been monitoring me, that would have looked nothing, nothing at all, like my normal usage pattern. I don't hardly download anything, because I'm usually somewhere that streaming would work just fine. All of a sudden, I'm downloading tons of stuff. I'm planning something nefarious, right?
Well, no. I'm planning nothing more nefarious than a road trip. I just want music and comedy for it. And I don't know exactly what I'd want to listen to, so I downloaded more than I actually needed or could listen to during the trip.
If your viewers can see something, they can save it and record it locally. Let them, and ideally, help them. Ask them nicely not to abuse the privilege by giving it to others, and most will respect that. Try to place shackles on it, and some will break them just for the pleasure of breaking them.
I try to be reasonable. You seem you're trying it, too. But when someone does something blatantly anti-reality, like "You can't save this locally!" when you in fact easily can, it's maddening. Just instead say "Please don't put this on file sharing sites." Magnatune's been around for over a decade, and they actually can't even legally enforce that request, since they use the Creative Commons license with the noncommercial requirement--file sharing isn't commercial sharing, so I could legally put their whole catalog up on a file sharing site and there wouldn't be a damn thing they could do about it unless I made money from it. But I don't, because they ask me nicely not to, and because I like them and want them to succeed. So I pay for my membership there and don't put their stuff up for download, even though I quite legally could.
So, that's what I ask. You be reasonable, and I will too. You don't demand I not do things that improve my convenience and in reality are dead easy, and in return, I'll follow your reasonable requests not to put it out there for the whole world. Or you be unreasonable, and I'll be equally so in turn.
Okay, I was with you for a little while (especially on sympathy for the little indie guys, even if you don't have to, throw a couple bucks in their hats if you like their stuff), until you made clear that they're downloading it from you, presumably the authorized distributor.
Especially this piece:
I've seen someone literally sit at their computer for several hours a day for several days in a row, downloading large numbers of files they couldn't possible be using normally, only stopping each time our rate limiter kicked in and blocked further downloads for a while.
So...they downloaded exactly as much as they're allowed to, and then once allowed again, started again? Didn't hack your system, didn't go off to torrent it instead? And they're doing...what wrong again? How do you know how they're using it and if such use is "normally"?
Why on Earth does your system let people do that, if you don't want them to do that? And if they're paying you for some kind of "all you can eat" service, you don't then get to tell them "Well...I meant all you can eat, unless you're REALLY hungry." If they're paying you for that service (presumably they are, I doubt you'd be terribly upset if you were giving the stuff away to start with), just be glad you're being paid. It's cash in the hat. And with how widespread pirate content is, they don't have to throw in a nickel. A similar mistake was made with DRM--you get more grief from the legal option than the illegal one! (Whoever made the statement to you about DRM is a moron, it's not effective anyway and would drive away your users.)
Now, by all means, if you want to go find out who's uploading your stuff somewhere, and go after them, I won't have a bit more sympathy for them than you will, especially if you explicitly told them not to and they turned around and told you to fuck off. But attack that end, not your users. When it comes down to it, you can't know why anyone downloaded such and such thing.
So, it's news to you that drugs have side effects?
All drugs can be dangerous. All drugs are dangerous if taken to overdose. (Look up the effects of an acetaminophen overdose sometime, and you can buy that without so much as a prescription.) And also consider that it's currently illegal, meaning the stuff out there is of varying quality and cut and produced with god only knows what. A real pharmaceutical with strict manufacturing standards and quality control will, by definition, be at least more safe.
But it will still have side effects and be dangerous if you overdose on it. Like...you know...every medicine there is.
Actually, even for harmful drugs, most people who use them are doing us a favor. End of life, regardless of when it comes or how, is often expensive, but people who smoke, use drugs, etc., tend to die much younger. So, less (or no) Social Security collected, less Medicare use, the whole thing. They actually cost the public a great deal less than those who live healthy lives to their 90s.
Or in other words, that's a sanctimonious moralistic argument not at all based in facts. If you're really worried about public spending, thank a smoker next time you see one.
The reason contracts have any meaning whatsoever is because the law stands behind them. If someone breaks a contract, you can count on being able to take them to court and get the situation remedied.
There are plenty of things you cannot put in a contract and expect a court to enforce. Some because they're unconscionable or illegal to start with (such as murder for hire), and some that lawmakers have explicitly passed laws against.
Since it's the law that backs a contract, I certainly don't see why the law can't say "If a contract says X, Y, or Z, we will not enforce that portion of it." That puts you on clear notice that such a provision is not enforceable by the normal means.
Microsoft has developed an encryption method resistant to quantum computers, it claims. Alright? What is that method? How does it differ from current encryption techniques? Why is that well suited to encrypting against quantum computers? How did you come to that conclusion, given that you don't have one to test against? Are we just supposed to believe Microsoft when they say "Trust us, this is secure"?
While it’s true that they will open a physical safe themselves if you refuse, you can indeed be held in contempt if you have the ability to open a safe and refuse to do so when presented with a valid warrant. The “physical safe” analogy is one of the things that’s (unfortunately) applied as an existing-law analogy to crypto.
That's actually only true if they already know for certain it's your safe and you have access to it. Otherwise, admitting that you know how to open the safe (by opening it or providing the combination) is admitting that the contents of it are in fact yours. That's self-incrimination and you can't be forced to do it, though of course with a valid warrant they can still try to break into the safe. They just can't make you admit it's yours, and that's what you're doing if you open it.
In this case, however, the idiot went and bragged to the police that yeah, that stuff is all mine! To extend the safe analogy, that's like saying to the police "Yeah, I know the combination, but I'm not giving it to you!" Now you wouldn't be telling them anything they don't know, so opening the safe is no longer self-incriminating. If he'd kept his mouth shut (first rule of being questioned by the police, keep your fucking mouth shut, they mean it when they say anything you say will be used against you), this case would likely have been decided differently.
While switching trains, I once saw the police arresting someone at the train stop. They were becoming very aggressive and seemed about to become violent with the man they were arresting, despite the fact that he was not threatening them in any way.
I took out my cell phone and began filming. Very shortly after, one of the officers pointed at me and said something (not audible, he was too far away), but all of a sudden, their behavior became very professional, and the arrest proceeded without incident.
If I were in the same situation, I hope someone would do the same. There is no reason police should not be accountable for their behavior while performing their duties. After all, isn't it they who so often say "If there's nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear"? What would be wrong with a video of police officers doing their job properly? If anything, that would protect them if they were later accused of doing something wrong. The only ones with anything to fear from a video recording are those who intend on doing something wrong, and that's the exact time we need them being taped.
Every "liberal" I've ever known (me included) is strongly in favor of the right to film the police in a public place. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, it is a free speech issue.
Much of the Constitution was deliberately written in broad terms, for reasons of futureproofing.
Certainly, not even the smartest attendee of the Constitutional Convention could have ever foreseen DNA tests or GPS tracking or electronic snooping. It wasn't even something they could have conceivably imagined at the time. But the Fourth Amendment is clear on the matter nonetheless:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
(emphasis added)
DNA is, perhaps, one of the most comprehensive pieces of information contained in one's body, one's "person". It can reveal everything from family lineage (ancestry, siblings, and descendants), to congenital diseases or conditions, to the color of one's eyes. It is not equivalent to a fingerprint, which in itself tells you next to nothing about the owner of that finger other than as an identification. The Fourth Amendment is clearly intended to restrict violations of one's person in that way without justifiable cause, even if the particular method of violation is one the Founders would never have conceived of.
And exactly how do they intend to enforce this against sites hosted overseas, provided the owner of the site doesn't live in Singapore either? Do they plan to build really, really long canes?
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'll still be the first to assert that private communication has a genuine expectation of privacy, and law enforcement has no right to monitor that without probable cause and a warrant. As I said above.
But what you say in public is public. If someone wants to scrape it all and analyze it, well, you made it all public. You said it to the general public, and the general public has the right to do what they will with it. Including analysis.
You don't get to on one hand shout out something to the public and on the other hand expect it to be private. You can have one or the other. Not both.
Do us both a favor, and don't presume either one of us for stupid. Here's what that actually means: Triple parentheses
No, it differs from Stingray in that fundamental respect.
Cell phone conversations are presumed to be private. If you make a cell phone call from a private place, to someone else who is also in a private place, you most certainly have a reasonable expectation of privacy for that call. But Stingray could be intercepting that.
On the other hand, when I post this on Slashdot, I can't reasonably expect that to be private. I'm posting it for anyone who wants to read it.
That's the fundamental difference. It's the difference between someone using a long zoom to take photos through your bedroom window, and you happening to appear on a security tape when you go to the grocery store. You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your bedroom. You don't in the grocery store.
Oh, (((their))) cause, is it?
You know, the meaning of the triple parentheses isn't exactly a big secret any more. If you want to spew anti-Semitic crap, then at least have the balls to do it openly.
Well, just like it's Twitter's service, it's their API. They can restrict access to it in any way and for any reason they see fit.
If you're in public and attracting attention, it's foolish to presume you're not being recorded. With everyone having an audio and video recorder in their pocket, as well as the massive number of stationary recording devices, chances are good you probably are being recorded at any given time, especially if you're attracting attention. The stenographer would be largely redundant. You can consider that good, bad, or mixed, but such is the world we live in.
It's certainly my hope that Twitter's API doesn't allow access to private or "whitelist only" communication. If it does, that's a problem that goes well beyond this one instance. I can't say I'm terribly familiar with it myself, but I imagine if it had massive security flaws in it like that, we'd have heard about it by now. And if it does and we haven't, we certainly should.
As far as allowing access by non-blocked or logged in only users, that's such a low bar that you're still speaking publicly. For the blocked users, it would be equivalent to that speaker on the soapbox having a restraining order against someone. That one person (or even more than one person) can't come to hear them speak, but everyone else in the world still can. That is, for all intents and purposes, still speaking to the general public.
I could see that to a degree. But that's a different question.
Right now, the First Amendment only covers government action. The Fourth does too. Now, when the government was seeking records, that absolutely should implicate the Fourth Amendment. That should similarly happen with the First if it's the government asking for certain types of speech to be disallowed somewhere.
But the Fourteenth and Nineteenth don't create those employment and public accommodation laws. They, too, only restrict the government. It's laws, like the Civil Rights Act, that put into place the actual protections against discrimination by private actors.
I'm not sure how the constitutionality of requiring Twitter, or Slashdot, or any other platform to let anyone use its services without restriction would come out. I suspect they could readily argue that it violates freedom of association; that they have the right not to be associated with those people, and to kick them off their property. But there might be some success in making "political persuasion" a protected class. Of course, the lawsuits over what exactly falls under that would be nothing if not endless.
But realistically, I think the whole thing is overblown. I saw tons and tons of pro-Trump stuff on social media. Trump himself was certainly never barred from using Twitter, and does so to this day. If Facebook won't even stop flat out lies masquerading as news from being posted, I think they're being pretty permissive.
I don't have any sympathy for secret spy schemes or the mass warrantless interception of private data or communications. The people behind those belong in jail.
But Twitter isn't a private communication. It's public. When you stand up on a soapbox on the street corner and start shouting, yes, that's your free speech right. But a cop can stand there and listen to what you say, even record it if they want. It's a public place.
If you want to communicate privately, use a private medium. The police should certainly be disallowed from monitoring that without probable cause and a proper warrant. But you can't on one hand put something out there to the general public, and on the other expect it to stay private. People need to stop having the illusion that what they post publicly on the Internet has any reasonable expectation of privacy.
The actual problem is this:
No, no, and no. If you want to use evidence in court, you must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, including the specifics of how you gathered it. All of that should be available for the opposing party to challenge; that's part of their due process rights. If you don't want to reveal the method of gathering it, you don't get to use the evidence. If you want to defend it as legitimate when challenged, you must reveal the details to show that it in fact is. You don't just get to say "No, it's fine, we promise."
You can't put a back door in something, and only have certain people able to walk through it. If there's a vulnerability in the encryption that can be used to crack it by the service provider, someone else can do the same.
If this were implemented in the UK, it would totally kill Web commerce there. Who's going to put financial details across the Internet when it's as good as sent unencrypted? And if actual encryption is permitted for that purpose, well, then it can be used for any other purpose too.
I don't know why it's so difficult to understand. If you deliberately make something insecure, then it is, by definition, insecure. If it's designed to be secure, then even the designer can't break in, because if they can, someone else could do the same.
I'm an atheist, and have talked to other atheists and non-Muslims too. A lot of them, including me, will sign up for that "Muslim registry" if it ever comes into existence.
So let him make his "undesirables" registry. And let's flood it with so much junk data that it becomes totally worthless.
I got an average of 61 mpg when I drove from Denver to California in my Prius. And that includes through the mountainous sections of I-70 where you're doing heavy hills and constantly having to brake and accelerate again, and with the cruise set at 80 on the flat sections with a 75 mph limit.
Alright, so you live in a rural area. Even if you have to drive, you can drive a hybrid that gets >50 mpg. And that's actually better for you too, since it means you buy a lot less gas for your long commute. So you do that, right?
Alright, I get that. (By the way, I'm taking your invitation in your sig to post any disagreement, I agree that "-1 I disagree" is absolutely not a valid mod.)
I just got done setting up a new OS on this machine tonight. And of course, I installed Steam. It asked for a couple of verifications, but after that, it validated and set itself up. And I can start downloading the games I want. Downloading.. I can play them offline for up to 30 days after downloading them. That's relatively sufficient.
I have no problem paying for things. I've bought hundreds of dollars worth of games on Steam and a couple hundred more worth from GOG, both legitimate, authorized services. Because they don't try to restrict me, Steam much, GOG at all. (GOG is totally, 100%, DRM free.) But they don't try to restrict me the way you're trying to, to "streaming only" or the like. If they did, I wouldn't buy from them. I want download, I want offline usage. Anything without that is hamstrung.
There's a good reason for that. I also pay for a Spotify subscription. And most of the time, I use its streaming service, since I'm either using it at home or at work on wifi. So that works fine. But it allows for download for offline use. And when I was planning a drive through the Rockies in Wyoming and Montana, and then through north Idaho, I needed that, because cell reception would be spotty at the very best. So I needed to create a downloaded, offline playlist, or else be stuck with AM talk radio. So I downloaded a ton of stuff from Spotify onto my phone for the trip.
Now if they'd been monitoring me, that would have looked nothing, nothing at all, like my normal usage pattern. I don't hardly download anything, because I'm usually somewhere that streaming would work just fine. All of a sudden, I'm downloading tons of stuff. I'm planning something nefarious, right?
Well, no. I'm planning nothing more nefarious than a road trip. I just want music and comedy for it. And I don't know exactly what I'd want to listen to, so I downloaded more than I actually needed or could listen to during the trip.
If your viewers can see something, they can save it and record it locally. Let them, and ideally, help them. Ask them nicely not to abuse the privilege by giving it to others, and most will respect that. Try to place shackles on it, and some will break them just for the pleasure of breaking them.
I try to be reasonable. You seem you're trying it, too. But when someone does something blatantly anti-reality, like "You can't save this locally!" when you in fact easily can, it's maddening. Just instead say "Please don't put this on file sharing sites." Magnatune's been around for over a decade, and they actually can't even legally enforce that request, since they use the Creative Commons license with the noncommercial requirement--file sharing isn't commercial sharing, so I could legally put their whole catalog up on a file sharing site and there wouldn't be a damn thing they could do about it unless I made money from it. But I don't, because they ask me nicely not to, and because I like them and want them to succeed. So I pay for my membership there and don't put their stuff up for download, even though I quite legally could.
So, that's what I ask. You be reasonable, and I will too. You don't demand I not do things that improve my convenience and in reality are dead easy, and in return, I'll follow your reasonable requests not to put it out there for the whole world. Or you be unreasonable, and I'll be equally so in turn.
Okay, I was with you for a little while (especially on sympathy for the little indie guys, even if you don't have to, throw a couple bucks in their hats if you like their stuff), until you made clear that they're downloading it from you, presumably the authorized distributor.
Especially this piece:
So...they downloaded exactly as much as they're allowed to, and then once allowed again, started again? Didn't hack your system, didn't go off to torrent it instead? And they're doing...what wrong again? How do you know how they're using it and if such use is "normally"?
Why on Earth does your system let people do that, if you don't want them to do that? And if they're paying you for some kind of "all you can eat" service, you don't then get to tell them "Well...I meant all you can eat, unless you're REALLY hungry." If they're paying you for that service (presumably they are, I doubt you'd be terribly upset if you were giving the stuff away to start with), just be glad you're being paid. It's cash in the hat. And with how widespread pirate content is, they don't have to throw in a nickel. A similar mistake was made with DRM--you get more grief from the legal option than the illegal one! (Whoever made the statement to you about DRM is a moron, it's not effective anyway and would drive away your users.)
Now, by all means, if you want to go find out who's uploading your stuff somewhere, and go after them, I won't have a bit more sympathy for them than you will, especially if you explicitly told them not to and they turned around and told you to fuck off. But attack that end, not your users. When it comes down to it, you can't know why anyone downloaded such and such thing.
So, it's news to you that drugs have side effects?
All drugs can be dangerous. All drugs are dangerous if taken to overdose. (Look up the effects of an acetaminophen overdose sometime, and you can buy that without so much as a prescription.) And also consider that it's currently illegal, meaning the stuff out there is of varying quality and cut and produced with god only knows what. A real pharmaceutical with strict manufacturing standards and quality control will, by definition, be at least more safe.
But it will still have side effects and be dangerous if you overdose on it. Like...you know...every medicine there is.
Actually, even for harmful drugs, most people who use them are doing us a favor. End of life, regardless of when it comes or how, is often expensive, but people who smoke, use drugs, etc., tend to die much younger. So, less (or no) Social Security collected, less Medicare use, the whole thing. They actually cost the public a great deal less than those who live healthy lives to their 90s.
Or in other words, that's a sanctimonious moralistic argument not at all based in facts. If you're really worried about public spending, thank a smoker next time you see one.
The reason contracts have any meaning whatsoever is because the law stands behind them. If someone breaks a contract, you can count on being able to take them to court and get the situation remedied.
There are plenty of things you cannot put in a contract and expect a court to enforce. Some because they're unconscionable or illegal to start with (such as murder for hire), and some that lawmakers have explicitly passed laws against.
Since it's the law that backs a contract, I certainly don't see why the law can't say "If a contract says X, Y, or Z, we will not enforce that portion of it." That puts you on clear notice that such a provision is not enforceable by the normal means.
Much appreciated.
This article is about a waste of time.
Microsoft has developed an encryption method resistant to quantum computers, it claims. Alright? What is that method? How does it differ from current encryption techniques? Why is that well suited to encrypting against quantum computers? How did you come to that conclusion, given that you don't have one to test against? Are we just supposed to believe Microsoft when they say "Trust us, this is secure"?
Prepaid debit cards, and burner cell phones, are only anonymous if you...oh, pay for them in cash!
That's actually only true if they already know for certain it's your safe and you have access to it. Otherwise, admitting that you know how to open the safe (by opening it or providing the combination) is admitting that the contents of it are in fact yours. That's self-incrimination and you can't be forced to do it, though of course with a valid warrant they can still try to break into the safe. They just can't make you admit it's yours, and that's what you're doing if you open it.
In this case, however, the idiot went and bragged to the police that yeah, that stuff is all mine! To extend the safe analogy, that's like saying to the police "Yeah, I know the combination, but I'm not giving it to you!" Now you wouldn't be telling them anything they don't know, so opening the safe is no longer self-incriminating. If he'd kept his mouth shut (first rule of being questioned by the police, keep your fucking mouth shut, they mean it when they say anything you say will be used against you), this case would likely have been decided differently.
While switching trains, I once saw the police arresting someone at the train stop. They were becoming very aggressive and seemed about to become violent with the man they were arresting, despite the fact that he was not threatening them in any way.
I took out my cell phone and began filming. Very shortly after, one of the officers pointed at me and said something (not audible, he was too far away), but all of a sudden, their behavior became very professional, and the arrest proceeded without incident.
If I were in the same situation, I hope someone would do the same. There is no reason police should not be accountable for their behavior while performing their duties. After all, isn't it they who so often say "If there's nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear"? What would be wrong with a video of police officers doing their job properly? If anything, that would protect them if they were later accused of doing something wrong. The only ones with anything to fear from a video recording are those who intend on doing something wrong, and that's the exact time we need them being taped.
Every "liberal" I've ever known (me included) is strongly in favor of the right to film the police in a public place. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, it is a free speech issue.
Much of the Constitution was deliberately written in broad terms, for reasons of futureproofing.
Certainly, not even the smartest attendee of the Constitutional Convention could have ever foreseen DNA tests or GPS tracking or electronic snooping. It wasn't even something they could have conceivably imagined at the time. But the Fourth Amendment is clear on the matter nonetheless:
(emphasis added)
DNA is, perhaps, one of the most comprehensive pieces of information contained in one's body, one's "person". It can reveal everything from family lineage (ancestry, siblings, and descendants), to congenital diseases or conditions, to the color of one's eyes. It is not equivalent to a fingerprint, which in itself tells you next to nothing about the owner of that finger other than as an identification. The Fourth Amendment is clearly intended to restrict violations of one's person in that way without justifiable cause, even if the particular method of violation is one the Founders would never have conceived of.
And exactly how do they intend to enforce this against sites hosted overseas, provided the owner of the site doesn't live in Singapore either? Do they plan to build really, really long canes?