"I was mostly interested to see if there were vulnerabilities in the Google Authenticator mechanism/implementation; it seems that this is not the case."
For the standalone authenticator, the security largely comes from the security of the built-in hash function. If that's broken, so are a lot of things.
Barring that, the goal would be to extract the secrets from the app. Google likes to use time-based, which means that a cloned token won't get out of sync, and won't be detected (though it does protect against attacks where someone says the first OTP is wrong, gets a second one, then redirects you with the first, leaving them with the second).
On a rooted device (particularly ones with non-standard bootloaders), it's reasonably easy to extract those secrets if you get your hands on the device, even if it's just to modify the device to log the decryption password. Once you have the secret, you have all the tokens you want.
You seem to believe that transsexualism is a mental disorder.
It is, and it shares a number of characteristics with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. It tends to describe symptoms (rather than a specific underlying etiology), though there is a reasonable amount of information that suggests that in some of the cases it's related to disruption of the prenatal testosterone washes in the womb, leading to desires for behaviour (and identification) often seen in the other sex. In animal models, this tends to manifest as behaviour such as male rats exhibiting female mating and nesting patterns.
A conflict between one's brain and body will cause problems (something seen even in individuals in supportive environments), which makes it a disorder. Likewise, it's situated in the brain (as the body itself is generally in line with the chromosomes) - the brain improperly rejects the body in which it's housed. That's a mental disorder.
The American Psychiatric Association
Rather than pointing out that your argument is an argument from authority, I would point out that the APA does not get to define whether or not something is a disorder. Homosexuality (for example) didn't magically become "not a disorder" in 1973. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes political lobbying, and despite being a professional body, there is a lot of politics in play.
There are a significant number of individuals pushed into transition unnecessarily (particularly in the butch lesbian community), and there are plenty of cases where people would have been better off without transitioning. It's a very high price to pay for many people, and while it may be worth it for some, that is not always the case. Rushing people into it with "it's not a disorder, it's all normal, and healthy, and right" is not a good thing. It's a serious process to be undertaken when the alternative is worse.
Christopher Hambrook — who claimed to be a transgender woman named Jessica — has attacked four vulnerable females between the ages of five and 53 in Montreal and Toronto over the past 12 years.
Hambrook, 37, pleaded guilty in February 2013 to two counts of sexual assault and one count of criminal harassment involving two women — a deaf and homeless Quebec woman and a Toronto survivor of domestic violence — while he was living at a Dundas St. W. shelter and the Fred Victor women’s shelter in January and February 2012.
Maddison began hormone treatment while in prison, and was transferred to a women's prison (Mulawa Correctional Centre) in 1999. She underwent sex reassignment surgery while in prison in 2003. At Mulawa, it was alleged that Hall had sexual relations with several female prisoners, allegations that resulted in Hall being returned to a male prison after 3 months. Hall was charged with rape in relation to one incident, but the charge was dropped due to the victim having left the country upon being released from prison in fear of her safety.
Richard Masbruch brutally raped and tortured a Fresno woman in 1991. Today, in a case that may be the first of its kind, he lives in a women’s prison.
Masbruch, who was reclassified by prison officials as a woman after he castrated himself, is the focus of an inmate complaint that says Masbruch is a danger to other prisoners at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. (Fresno Bee)
Not for things like homicides. The police work to catch anyone who does it, and don't just "let it slide" because someone is white.
When adjusted (for population size), the black crime offender rates are much, much higher. It's well documented that (for example), most murder of white people is done by white people, and murder of black people is done by black people.
If they were just not prosecuting white murderers, you wouldn't see 83.5% of murder convictions for white victims be against white offenders. 90% of the convictions for black victims are against black people.
Even if we assume that the 6.5% difference between the two is solely a result of racism (so blacks and white pick their victims race at the same preferential rate), it still doesn't come close to explaining why 49.4% of solved murders are committed by a population that's roughly 14% of the population.
If we accept that 1/3 of murders go unsolved, and assume the police are racists (and act in favour of whites, and against blacks), that is going to mean that murders of white people get priority and murders of black people do not. Given the huge bias in victim selection by whites and blacks, that only makes the numbers worse, as that means that black murderers are more likely to go free and white murderers are more likely to get caught.
Put simply, the low number of black convictions for white murders means that it's impossible that they are simply being caught at higher numbers for those cases. They are 14% of the offenders for white murders, in line with their population representation. It can't be that the police are ignoring white murders and only solving black murders, as the clear rate on cases is too high.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from the numbers is that blacks are significantly more likely to offend, not just more likely to be convicted.
With murder, the police don't just "let it slide" for white people. When 14.3% of the population is committing more than 43% of the murder in the country, there's a problem.
I once worked out that if you removed blacks from the US population, our murder rate dropped down to the high end of Europe's. IE it would still be 'problematic' by European standards, but no longer an outlier.
Try removing the hispanic population. For murders (for example), they represent 17% of the population, but 1/3 of the murder offenders. Back them out of the statistics, and the US murder rate is no longer on the high end of Europe's - almost like the US doesn't have a gun problem, it has a minority with guns problem.
You might want to try the same statistics removing the poorest 10-20% of the population.
It helps a bit, but isn't quite as effective as removing the black population is at bringing the number down.
If you look at the murder statistics, you can see that of the white offenders with known ethnicity, 532/1477 of the offenders were hispanic. Given that hispanics are around 17% of the population, their rate is significantly higher than for non-hispanic whites (but still lower than for blacks). They are also disproportionately poor (like blacks).
Murder statistics are less biased than (for example) drug convictions, as the police are less likely to selectively enforce murder laws, and wealth is less likely to be able to get someone out of a conviction. Enough wealth will, but that applies to rich blacks as well as rich whites.
This is consistent with the observation that crime rates for the hispanic population tend to be higher than for non-hispanic whites, but lower (in general) than blacks.
So you're assuming group A on average commits a more severe form of X? Even though X is "stole $100 worth of goods"? Perhaps you don't understand what "same crime" was meant by the GGP? Because you're coming up with great bullshit to justify your bias.
For low level felonies, it's not so much the degree of severity, as the history. First time offenders are far more likely to get leniency. Gang offenders are much less likely.
People considered less likely to reoffend tend to get probation and dropped charges. Generally, this means acting out of impulse (wealthy), rather than out of necessity (poor).
Furthermore, one of the biggest (and least talked about) attributes is the ability to show remorse. Having gone through the system myself, as well as having friends who are attorneys, and working towards a potential career in the criminal justice system (which has provided opportunities to speak with former prosecutors and defence attorneys in a variety of situations), one of the biggest things anyone can do to get leniency is to accept responsibility, demonstrate what appears to be genuine remorse, and show a willingness to try to make amends.
Attitude matters. A lot. If you talk to police officers, you will find that how you treat them affects how they treat you.
Look at Sandra Bland - she managed to talk her way into a ticket, and had an disrespectful attitude. Belligerence turned into failure to comply with a lawful order, which turned into "assaulting a police officer". If you watch the video, you can see how it happens, and what she did. Had she been respectful, or faked it, she would have gotten off with a warning.
This same attitude is seen all-too-often in the courts, with prosecutors, with judges, with victims. I can't speak as to whether it's a function of them resenting an oppressive system, difficulties in expressing empathy and emotion in a manner that is consistent with what the system expects, rebellion against what they perceive as attempts to control them, cultural differences, or an inability to feel the emotions themselves, but I've seen (as have a number of those I have spoken to over the years) that black individuals are less willing to feel (or at least pay lip service to) the system.
The system does not respond well to disrespect, and that tends to result in punishment. One of the ways this happens is with plea deals, which black defendants are less likely to accept (for whatever reason). With mandatory minimums, three strikes laws, juries that automatically believe the police, and a ridiculous number of laws that one can break, this doesn't end well.
I would like point out that blacks are more likely be arrested for the same crime, and given a harsher penalty.
One of the recent studies on the disparities had a number of issues when the data was looked at closely. It looked at Cook County.
The lowest level felony (level 4) was where the most disparity was. Most arrests never went to jail, as they were dropped. They were dropped 45% of the time for nonwhites, and 40% of the time for whites. While white people were more likely to be sentenced to supervision or probation, they were also significantly less likely to be repeat offenders. Repeat offenders tend not to get supervision or probation.
Another issue with the study is that it did not take into consideration gang affiliation, which can serve as a significant multiplier for punishment. White or black, if you come to the judge wearing a suit, expressing remorse, accepting the consequences and asking for leniency, having a history of being law abiding, you're probably not serving any serious time. If you come in with lots of tattoos and a bad attitude, you're going to have a problem.
I personally have had the misfortune of dealing with the "justice" system. They threatened to kill me, lying to get a search warrant, and throwing the book at me when they didn't find what they wanted. I lawyered up and took the deal (for a crime I should never have been charged with), and I walked away. The record was expunged a few years later.
Speaking with my attorney, as well as a number of other attorneys (and former prosecutors) in my criminal justice classes, one of the biggest disparities is that black defendants refuse to take the deal, and tend not to show remorse. I can't comment on whether or not they actually feel it at the same rate as whites, but several of the defence attorneys commented on how difficult it is for them to get the defendant to appear contrite. Many of them approach the entire system as if it exists to oppress them, and they have a chip on their shoulder.
They may be right about it - I certainly would have loved to try to tell the court that I was threatened with death for saying no to a "voluntary" search. I'd love to see the officer pay for doing it. I'd love to, but it wasn't going to happen. There were only two ways for my case to go down - fight it, and serve a mandatory minimum of 5 years, or take the deal and walk away. With my defence attorney, his black clients tended to want to fight it, and wouldn't believe him when he told them what would happen.
"And why haven't terrorists used biological weapons successfully before if there is such a risk from them?"
The same reason nobody 3d printed firearms for a long time. There are a certain number of people out there that will be inclined to behaviour like that, and at some point it moves past early adoptors. When these intersect, we start to see things being used.
Drones have existed for a while, but the technology has gotten cheaper and now there are large numbers of them in civilian hands. Inevitably, this led to someone putting a handgun on a drone. It wasn't that we didn't have drones that could be bought or made, nor that there weren't handguns - it just took both being popular enough to get an intersection.
Computers have existed for a while, but it took a certain degree of time to have critical adoption. Once that happens, we get computer viruses. Cell phones took a while to get ubiquitous, and with time we started to see cellular malware.
When bio-engineering gets cheap enough (and it will), and available enough (and it will), we will start to see biological warfare. It's inevitable.
Is there any way to audit whether the dm-crypt installed on your device matches the source code? Few people compile their own kernel, so it seems that it would be easy for Google or cellular carrier to slip a back door into the module.
It's intended to have a chain of trust. The hardware verifies the boot partition, and the boot partition verifies the other partitions. If the signature on the system partition matches, then dm-crypt was not tampered with.
It's a hardware key. The good news is that you can unlock it if you want.
When you transition from a locked state to an unlocked state, the device is wiped. If the device is unlocked, there is a warning on the boot screen.
So, if an evil organization tries to backdoor your phone (or you just want to flash another OS on it), the data is lost and a warning comes on. You are free to do as you want with the device. Should you wish to re-sell the phone, you can restore it to factory.
This is more a discussion about mobile devices, which (unless you jailbreak them) don't trust the user.
Barring a root exploit (which do exist for a bit, and are patched when found), a keylogger on android is much less of a possibility. With Apple, the crypto is handled in hardware, and a keylogger gets to be near impossible (though phishing is not).
Oh, they have their place. In terms of raw stopping power, in a single target, with time to line up the shot (for example, an aggressor breaking down a door), a TASER is a rather effective device, and will outperform most handguns. Unlike a firearm, it doesn't rely on a CNS shot or blood loss to stop the threat. One hit, and the threat is stopped.
There are plenty of situations where a TASER is the wrong tool for self-defense, but to say they aren't dependable is absurd.
That number's not really important, as it could be perfectly legitimate transfers, like from parent to (presumably adult) child or between good friends who know that the other is not a criminal. No harm there.
Of the 40% cited (likely from this study), 39% of the approximately 40% were transfers to friends and family. 4% were from gun shows, but a good percentage of those were likely from licensed dealers, and thus subject to background checks.
It's acquisitions, though, not purchases. 39% of the approximately 40% of acquisitions not done through a FFL are from either friends or family members, and the vast majority of those were likely purchased from FFLs, or acquired from friends or family.
There was a recent self-defense case in which a woman put 5 of her 6 rounds into a single burglar, who was still mobile for a period of time. Had there been a second attacker, she would have had no ammunition left in her firearm.
If you want an extreme example, see http://www.afn.org/~guns/ayoob.html . He's been the target of 35 robberies, and in one case ended up firing 105 shots in a few minutes. There were 7 armed robbers.
That's ultimately what makes the difference. A single attacker isn't likely to require 10 handgun rounds. Facing 3 or 4 quickly changes things.
I live in one of the most gun-friendly states in the country (AZ). I've been to a number of gun shows. The vast majority of the dealers are FFLs, which means that you have to follow federal background check laws. Trying to see how "easy" it was to get from a private dealer, I went to most of the dealers in the Crossroads of the West show. In the whole show, I found two private dealers - one for handguns, one only selling long-guns. It was far, far, far less than 40%. Here in AZ, I'd estimate the percentage of guns sold at major gun shows by private sellers to be in the single digit percentage.
The original 40% statistic, by the way, likely came from this:
Bloomberg’s office pointed us to a 1997 study by the National Institute of Justice on who owns guns and how they use them. The researchers estimated that about 40 percent of all firearm sales took place through people other than licensed dealers. They based their conclusion on a random survey of more than 2,500 households.
This is very different from being a "gun show" thing. If you actually read the study, the study looks at transactions (including acquisitions). 19% of people acquired their guns as a gift, and 8 percent obtained them through inheritance or a swap of some kind (often trading one gun for another, which doesn't really increase the number of people with guns).
Again, from the survey: "About 60 percent of gun acquisitions involved federally licensed dealers". 39% of gun acquisitions come from family members or friends. 4% of guns came from gun shows, many of which are licensed dealers. All in all, about 1-2% of gun acquisitions appear to be from private party gun sales at gun shows. This would be consistent with my personal experience.
> they need the extra killing power of an assault rifle.
First off, assault rifles are already banned. Assault rifles have at least one mode where they fire more than one bullet per trigger press.
The "assault *weapon*" bans ban scary features. A bayonet lug, for example, does nothing to the lethality of a gun.
As for the magazine size restrictions, there's a big difference between a self-defense situation and premeditated mass-murder. As recent events have shown, you can put 5 bullets in an attacker, and have him still be functional enough to drive away. Had the burglar not been alone, she and her kids would have been defenseless. In self-defense situations, one often doesn't have a spare magazine, and reloading under that kind of stress is a difficult proposition.
I've personally been in a position with my wife where we had a carload of individuals hollering at us and trying to chase us down and box us in in their car. We managed to keep them on the other side side of the road median, we were luckily close enough to make it to a store, we were lucky enough that they didn't follow us in, and we were lucky that the cops came quickly. I don't know what they wanted, but it wasn't good. One of my sisters was raped about the same time of night by a stranger, and LGBT people are regularly victims of violence.
Had I been forced to defend myself and my wife, there's a big difference between facing four assailants with 5 bullets, and facing four assailants with a larger magazine (like the one that came stock with my current pistol). Someone who is planning a mass murder is free to pre-load as many magazines as they want, like the Virginia Tech shooter (who used standard capacity magazines, including 10 round magazines, which are legal even under states with strict size regulations). Even NY's new 7 round limit grandfathers in pre-ban 10 round magazines, ensuring even the rather strict new laws still wouldn't have limited his ability to go on the rampage he did).
The sandy hook shooter was shooting children, and ended his life as soon as emergency services arrived. An extra few seconds spent reloading in a classroom wouldn't have made a difference. He killed 26 people in about 20 minutes, and even a bolt-action rifle can easily accommodate that.
> Your argument is basically this: we shouldn't ban hand grenades or rocket propelled grenades because some asshole can always make some sarin or fly an airplane into a building using a box cutter.
No. The argument is that politicians are basically saying "Something must be done! This is something, therefore, it must be done!", while none of the offered "solutions" would actually do anything to prevent the problem they are claiming to try to.
In places where the penalty for DUI is higher than hit-and-run, drivers have been known to leave a bloody victim behind. After all, they may not get caught, and if they do, they will still be better off.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm talking about one time passwords.
"I was mostly interested to see if there were vulnerabilities in the Google Authenticator mechanism/implementation; it seems that this is not the case."
For the standalone authenticator, the security largely comes from the security of the built-in hash function. If that's broken, so are a lot of things.
Barring that, the goal would be to extract the secrets from the app. Google likes to use time-based, which means that a cloned token won't get out of sync, and won't be detected (though it does protect against attacks where someone says the first OTP is wrong, gets a second one, then redirects you with the first, leaving them with the second).
On a rooted device (particularly ones with non-standard bootloaders), it's reasonably easy to extract those secrets if you get your hands on the device, even if it's just to modify the device to log the decryption password. Once you have the secret, you have all the tokens you want.
You seem to believe that transsexualism is a mental disorder.
It is, and it shares a number of characteristics with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. It tends to describe symptoms (rather than a specific underlying etiology), though there is a reasonable amount of information that suggests that in some of the cases it's related to disruption of the prenatal testosterone washes in the womb, leading to desires for behaviour (and identification) often seen in the other sex. In animal models, this tends to manifest as behaviour such as male rats exhibiting female mating and nesting patterns.
A conflict between one's brain and body will cause problems (something seen even in individuals in supportive environments), which makes it a disorder. Likewise, it's situated in the brain (as the body itself is generally in line with the chromosomes) - the brain improperly rejects the body in which it's housed. That's a mental disorder.
The American Psychiatric Association
Rather than pointing out that your argument is an argument from authority, I would point out that the APA does not get to define whether or not something is a disorder. Homosexuality (for example) didn't magically become "not a disorder" in 1973. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes political lobbying, and despite being a professional body, there is a lot of politics in play.
There are a significant number of individuals pushed into transition unnecessarily (particularly in the butch lesbian community), and there are plenty of cases where people would have been better off without transitioning. It's a very high price to pay for many people, and while it may be worth it for some, that is not always the case. Rushing people into it with "it's not a disorder, it's all normal, and healthy, and right" is not a good thing. It's a serious process to be undertaken when the alternative is worse.
Here's one.
sexual assault of child, indecency with child
Here's another.
Christopher Hambrook — who claimed to be a transgender woman named Jessica — has attacked four vulnerable females between the ages of five and 53 in Montreal and Toronto over the past 12 years.
Hambrook, 37, pleaded guilty in February 2013 to two counts of sexual assault and one count of criminal harassment involving two women — a deaf and homeless Quebec woman and a Toronto survivor of domestic violence — while he was living at a Dundas St. W. shelter and the Fred Victor women’s shelter in January and February 2012.
Another
Maddison began hormone treatment while in prison, and was transferred to a women's prison (Mulawa Correctional Centre) in 1999. She underwent sex reassignment surgery while in prison in 2003. At Mulawa, it was alleged that Hall had sexual relations with several female prisoners, allegations that resulted in Hall being returned to a male prison after 3 months. Hall was charged with rape in relation to one incident, but the charge was dropped due to the victim having left the country upon being released from prison in fear of her safety.
Another
Richard Masbruch brutally raped and tortured a Fresno woman in 1991. Today, in a case that may be the first of its kind, he lives in a women’s prison.
Masbruch, who was reclassified by prison officials as a woman after he castrated himself, is the focus of an inmate complaint that says Masbruch is a danger to other prisoners at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. (Fresno Bee)
Another
A JURY has been told a woman alleged to have been raped by a transgender man was found with 49 separate injuries.
Nadine Williams, also known as Dean, 39, is on trial at Swansea Crown Court after denying one count of rape and two of assault by penetration.
I can keep going if you would like.
Not for things like homicides. The police work to catch anyone who does it, and don't just "let it slide" because someone is white.
When adjusted (for population size), the black crime offender rates are much, much higher. It's well documented that (for example), most murder of white people is done by white people, and murder of black people is done by black people.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...
If they were just not prosecuting white murderers, you wouldn't see 83.5% of murder convictions for white victims be against white offenders. 90% of the convictions for black victims are against black people.
Even if we assume that the 6.5% difference between the two is solely a result of racism (so blacks and white pick their victims race at the same preferential rate), it still doesn't come close to explaining why 49.4% of solved murders are committed by a population that's roughly 14% of the population.
If we accept that 1/3 of murders go unsolved, and assume the police are racists (and act in favour of whites, and against blacks), that is going to mean that murders of white people get priority and murders of black people do not. Given the huge bias in victim selection by whites and blacks, that only makes the numbers worse, as that means that black murderers are more likely to go free and white murderers are more likely to get caught.
Put simply, the low number of black convictions for white murders means that it's impossible that they are simply being caught at higher numbers for those cases. They are 14% of the offenders for white murders, in line with their population representation. It can't be that the police are ignoring white murders and only solving black murders, as the clear rate on cases is too high.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from the numbers is that blacks are significantly more likely to offend, not just more likely to be convicted.
Since the stats show the opposite of what you are saying, that in fact whites commit most violent crimes, I now realize that you are a fucking racist.
In absolute numbers, sure. That's because whites are 77.35% of the population, and blacks are 14.3%.
In terms of rate, blacks commit a disproportionately high number of violent crimes.
With murder, the police don't just "let it slide" for white people. When 14.3% of the population is committing more than 43% of the murder in the country, there's a problem.
I once worked out that if you removed blacks from the US population, our murder rate dropped down to the high end of Europe's. IE it would still be 'problematic' by European standards, but no longer an outlier.
Try removing the hispanic population. For murders (for example), they represent 17% of the population, but 1/3 of the murder offenders. Back them out of the statistics, and the US murder rate is no longer on the high end of Europe's - almost like the US doesn't have a gun problem, it has a minority with guns problem.
You might want to try the same statistics removing the poorest 10-20% of the population.
It helps a bit, but isn't quite as effective as removing the black population is at bringing the number down.
If you look at the murder statistics, you can see that of the white offenders with known ethnicity, 532/1477 of the offenders were hispanic. Given that hispanics are around 17% of the population, their rate is significantly higher than for non-hispanic whites (but still lower than for blacks). They are also disproportionately poor (like blacks).
Murder statistics are less biased than (for example) drug convictions, as the police are less likely to selectively enforce murder laws, and wealth is less likely to be able to get someone out of a conviction. Enough wealth will, but that applies to rich blacks as well as rich whites.
This is consistent with the observation that crime rates for the hispanic population tend to be higher than for non-hispanic whites, but lower (in general) than blacks.
So you're assuming group A on average commits a more severe form of X? Even though X is "stole $100 worth of goods"? Perhaps you don't understand what "same crime" was meant by the GGP? Because you're coming up with great bullshit to justify your bias.
For low level felonies, it's not so much the degree of severity, as the history. First time offenders are far more likely to get leniency. Gang offenders are much less likely.
People considered less likely to reoffend tend to get probation and dropped charges. Generally, this means acting out of impulse (wealthy), rather than out of necessity (poor).
Furthermore, one of the biggest (and least talked about) attributes is the ability to show remorse. Having gone through the system myself, as well as having friends who are attorneys, and working towards a potential career in the criminal justice system (which has provided opportunities to speak with former prosecutors and defence attorneys in a variety of situations), one of the biggest things anyone can do to get leniency is to accept responsibility, demonstrate what appears to be genuine remorse, and show a willingness to try to make amends.
Attitude matters. A lot. If you talk to police officers, you will find that how you treat them affects how they treat you.
Look at Sandra Bland - she managed to talk her way into a ticket, and had an disrespectful attitude. Belligerence turned into failure to comply with a lawful order, which turned into "assaulting a police officer". If you watch the video, you can see how it happens, and what she did. Had she been respectful, or faked it, she would have gotten off with a warning.
This same attitude is seen all-too-often in the courts, with prosecutors, with judges, with victims. I can't speak as to whether it's a function of them resenting an oppressive system, difficulties in expressing empathy and emotion in a manner that is consistent with what the system expects, rebellion against what they perceive as attempts to control them, cultural differences, or an inability to feel the emotions themselves, but I've seen (as have a number of those I have spoken to over the years) that black individuals are less willing to feel (or at least pay lip service to) the system.
The system does not respond well to disrespect, and that tends to result in punishment. One of the ways this happens is with plea deals, which black defendants are less likely to accept (for whatever reason). With mandatory minimums, three strikes laws, juries that automatically believe the police, and a ridiculous number of laws that one can break, this doesn't end well.
I would like point out that blacks are more likely be arrested for the same crime, and given a harsher penalty.
One of the recent studies on the disparities had a number of issues when the data was looked at closely. It looked at Cook County.
The lowest level felony (level 4) was where the most disparity was. Most arrests never went to jail, as they were dropped. They were dropped 45% of the time for nonwhites, and 40% of the time for whites. While white people were more likely to be sentenced to supervision or probation, they were also significantly less likely to be repeat offenders. Repeat offenders tend not to get supervision or probation.
Another issue with the study is that it did not take into consideration gang affiliation, which can serve as a significant multiplier for punishment. White or black, if you come to the judge wearing a suit, expressing remorse, accepting the consequences and asking for leniency, having a history of being law abiding, you're probably not serving any serious time. If you come in with lots of tattoos and a bad attitude, you're going to have a problem.
I personally have had the misfortune of dealing with the "justice" system. They threatened to kill me, lying to get a search warrant, and throwing the book at me when they didn't find what they wanted. I lawyered up and took the deal (for a crime I should never have been charged with), and I walked away. The record was expunged a few years later.
Speaking with my attorney, as well as a number of other attorneys (and former prosecutors) in my criminal justice classes, one of the biggest disparities is that black defendants refuse to take the deal, and tend not to show remorse. I can't comment on whether or not they actually feel it at the same rate as whites, but several of the defence attorneys commented on how difficult it is for them to get the defendant to appear contrite. Many of them approach the entire system as if it exists to oppress them, and they have a chip on their shoulder.
They may be right about it - I certainly would have loved to try to tell the court that I was threatened with death for saying no to a "voluntary" search. I'd love to see the officer pay for doing it. I'd love to, but it wasn't going to happen. There were only two ways for my case to go down - fight it, and serve a mandatory minimum of 5 years, or take the deal and walk away. With my defence attorney, his black clients tended to want to fight it, and wouldn't believe him when he told them what would happen.
That will be fun for all the women who end up developing PCOS because they are fat. It can drastically increase testosterone levels.
"And why haven't terrorists used biological weapons successfully before if there is such a risk from them?"
The same reason nobody 3d printed firearms for a long time. There are a certain number of people out there that will be inclined to behaviour like that, and at some point it moves past early adoptors. When these intersect, we start to see things being used.
Drones have existed for a while, but the technology has gotten cheaper and now there are large numbers of them in civilian hands. Inevitably, this led to someone putting a handgun on a drone. It wasn't that we didn't have drones that could be bought or made, nor that there weren't handguns - it just took both being popular enough to get an intersection.
Computers have existed for a while, but it took a certain degree of time to have critical adoption. Once that happens, we get computer viruses. Cell phones took a while to get ubiquitous, and with time we started to see cellular malware.
When bio-engineering gets cheap enough (and it will), and available enough (and it will), we will start to see biological warfare. It's inevitable.
Genetics doesn't work that way.
Hint: If you have a child, and then commit suicide, your genes still get passed on.
Is there any way to audit whether the dm-crypt installed on your device matches the source code? Few people compile their own kernel, so it seems that it would be easy for Google or cellular carrier to slip a back door into the module.
It's intended to have a chain of trust. The hardware verifies the boot partition, and the boot partition verifies the other partitions. If the signature on the system partition matches, then dm-crypt was not tampered with.
Who verifies it?
http://source.android.com/devi...
http://source.android.com/devi...
It's a hardware key. The good news is that you can unlock it if you want.
When you transition from a locked state to an unlocked state, the device is wiped. If the device is unlocked, there is a warning on the boot screen.
So, if an evil organization tries to backdoor your phone (or you just want to flash another OS on it), the data is lost and a warning comes on. You are free to do as you want with the device. Should you wish to re-sell the phone, you can restore it to factory.
If you can replace the keys, the NSA can too.
That makes what they do known.
Additionally, that only works if the company has the keys and they aren't locked in a HSM.
This is more a discussion about mobile devices, which (unless you jailbreak them) don't trust the user.
Barring a root exploit (which do exist for a bit, and are patched when found), a keylogger on android is much less of a possibility. With Apple, the crypto is handled in hardware, and a keylogger gets to be near impossible (though phishing is not).
Oh, they have their place. In terms of raw stopping power, in a single target, with time to line up the shot (for example, an aggressor breaking down a door), a TASER is a rather effective device, and will outperform most handguns. Unlike a firearm, it doesn't rely on a CNS shot or blood loss to stop the threat. One hit, and the threat is stopped.
There are plenty of situations where a TASER is the wrong tool for self-defense, but to say they aren't dependable is absurd.
That number's not really important, as it could be perfectly legitimate transfers, like from parent to (presumably adult) child or between good friends who know that the other is not a criminal. No harm there.
Of the 40% cited (likely from this study), 39% of the approximately 40% were transfers to friends and family. 4% were from gun shows, but a good percentage of those were likely from licensed dealers, and thus subject to background checks.
Citation needed.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf
It's acquisitions, though, not purchases. 39% of the approximately 40% of acquisitions not done through a FFL are from either friends or family members, and the vast majority of those were likely purchased from FFLs, or acquired from friends or family.
It's a misleading statistic, to be sure.
Best statistics I've been able to find: http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=328876
There was a recent self-defense case in which a woman put 5 of her 6 rounds into a single burglar, who was still mobile for a period of time. Had there been a second attacker, she would have had no ammunition left in her firearm.
If you want an extreme example, see http://www.afn.org/~guns/ayoob.html . He's been the target of 35 robberies, and in one case ended up firing 105 shots in a few minutes. There were 7 armed robbers.
That's ultimately what makes the difference. A single attacker isn't likely to require 10 handgun rounds. Facing 3 or 4 quickly changes things.
I live in one of the most gun-friendly states in the country (AZ). I've been to a number of gun shows. The vast majority of the dealers are FFLs, which means that you have to follow federal background check laws. Trying to see how "easy" it was to get from a private dealer, I went to most of the dealers in the Crossroads of the West show. In the whole show, I found two private dealers - one for handguns, one only selling long-guns. It was far, far, far less than 40%. Here in AZ, I'd estimate the percentage of guns sold at major gun shows by private sellers to be in the single digit percentage.
The original 40% statistic, by the way, likely came from this:
This is very different from being a "gun show" thing. If you actually read the study, the study looks at transactions (including acquisitions). 19% of people acquired their guns as a gift, and 8 percent obtained them through inheritance or a swap of some kind (often trading one gun for another, which doesn't really increase the number of people with guns).
Again, from the survey:
"About 60 percent of gun acquisitions involved federally licensed dealers". 39% of gun acquisitions come from family members or friends. 4% of guns came from gun shows, many of which are licensed dealers. All in all, about 1-2% of gun acquisitions appear to be from private party gun sales at gun shows. This would be consistent with my personal experience.
What gun show loophole?
> they need the extra killing power of an assault rifle.
First off, assault rifles are already banned. Assault rifles have at least one mode where they fire more than one bullet per trigger press.
The "assault *weapon*" bans ban scary features. A bayonet lug, for example, does nothing to the lethality of a gun.
As for the magazine size restrictions, there's a big difference between a self-defense situation and premeditated mass-murder. As recent events have shown, you can put 5 bullets in an attacker, and have him still be functional enough to drive away. Had the burglar not been alone, she and her kids would have been defenseless. In self-defense situations, one often doesn't have a spare magazine, and reloading under that kind of stress is a difficult proposition.
I've personally been in a position with my wife where we had a carload of individuals hollering at us and trying to chase us down and box us in in their car. We managed to keep them on the other side side of the road median, we were luckily close enough to make it to a store, we were lucky enough that they didn't follow us in, and we were lucky that the cops came quickly. I don't know what they wanted, but it wasn't good. One of my sisters was raped about the same time of night by a stranger, and LGBT people are regularly victims of violence.
Had I been forced to defend myself and my wife, there's a big difference between facing four assailants with 5 bullets, and facing four assailants with a larger magazine (like the one that came stock with my current pistol). Someone who is planning a mass murder is free to pre-load as many magazines as they want, like the Virginia Tech shooter (who used standard capacity magazines, including 10 round magazines, which are legal even under states with strict size regulations). Even NY's new 7 round limit grandfathers in pre-ban 10 round magazines, ensuring even the rather strict new laws still wouldn't have limited his ability to go on the rampage he did).
The sandy hook shooter was shooting children, and ended his life as soon as emergency services arrived. An extra few seconds spent reloading in a classroom wouldn't have made a difference. He killed 26 people in about 20 minutes, and even a bolt-action rifle can easily accommodate that.
> Your argument is basically this: we shouldn't ban hand grenades or rocket propelled grenades because some asshole can always make some sarin or fly an airplane into a building using a box cutter.
No. The argument is that politicians are basically saying "Something must be done! This is something, therefore, it must be done!", while none of the offered "solutions" would actually do anything to prevent the problem they are claiming to try to.
Actually, the penalties do influence behavior.
In places where the penalty for DUI is higher than hit-and-run, drivers have been known to leave a bloody victim behind. After all, they may not get caught, and if they do, they will still be better off.
What do you mean by Pell Grant farming?