The problem is being harassed and having your privacy invaded simply because you have a program installed on your computer. If I'm going through customs and get harassed and annoyed because I have TrueCrypt installed, that is still a major problem
is the same scenario described by the editorial's opening paragraph here:
Police in Britain have announced that two people have successfully been prosecuted under a UK law that forces defendants to give up their encryption keys and penalizes those who don't comply. Another UK woman's case had attracted attention two years ago, when the government demanded she give up her encryption keys after the police found encryption software on her computer, but the police say she was not one of the two defendant's charged. Is there a software solution to this problem â" a way that people can encrypt files on their computers, without arousing the suspicion of law enforcement if the computers are seized?
I don't disagree that there are more general problems to consider when implementing any sort of encryption solution. The concern you raise about customs agents is quite valid, particularly since they increasingly seem to resemble thugs and have recently been known to copy data from laptops and other devices. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they viewed encryption not as a privacy protection, but as an obstacle to their surveillence. A thoughtful person who travels outside of his or her country would certainly take that into account when thinking of which encryption system to use. You are, however, the first person in this entire discussion to mention customs. For that reason, the solution I proposed was aimed at the scenario that was described in the summary/editorial.
The UK law mentioned dictates that you must surrender your encryption keys/passwords to the authorities whenever they lawfully ask you to do so. That's a notably different scenario from "customs might give you a hard time." The program I mentioned, Rubberhose, is specifically designed for cases where you might be coerced to give up encryption keys/passwords, like what the author of this editorial specifically mentioned. It was designed both for laws like this one, and also for less-than-legal scenarios where some thugs might try to beat it out of you (hence the name "rubberhose" since apparently that's a favored way to inflict pain during violent interrogations as it is rumored to leave minimal welts/marks on the body).
My point for you is that if you are going to say "uh, no" and proceed to correct me, please have a more solid basis for so doing. I think that's a reasonable thing to ask. I don't mind being wrong because if you really do find I've made an error then you're doing me a favor, it's just the jumping to that conclusion that I dislike. Otherwise, I appreciate that you gave me a real (and tactful) answer as to why you disagreed with my proposal. The author of the condescending response has so far not bothered to do so, though I guess i's not a surprise if actual discourse was not his goal.
Why the hell are you summarizing the essay (or whatever it is) for him? What makes you think he'll read your post if he didn't bother with TFA? Because your post is shorter? It's still longer than a tweet, so by definition Too Long To Read.
I suggest that in the future you not muddy up someone's confusion with a concise statement of fact.
As you seem most confident that I erred due to laziness or a lack of reading comprehension, perhaps you would be willing to answer this question for me?
Um, no. In his editorial (there's no other word for it really), he specifically mentions similar functionality available from TrueCrypt. That is, the ability to host two (or more) encrypted volumes, one with stuff that you might want to hide but that isn't illegal and one with stuff that is illegal that you really want to hide.
The true thrust of his article is that just having TrueCrypt (or any other advanced encryption tool) installed on your machine is enough to pique the interest of law enforcement. If just having encryption installed on the PC is enough to lose privacy and invite harassment, then TrueCrypt and the like create a different problem from the one they solve. Ideally, the author argues, it would be best if everyone had strong encryption on their machines, as part of the OS or as part of some other common piece of software. This way, the police would see nothing out of the ordinary when they see the encryption software, because everyone has it.
Having an encryption solution that everyone else uses is one strategy that would establish plausible deniability, or at least would avoid raising suspicion due to the presence of encryption. That's something the author mentioned, yes.
Having an encryption solution that allows you to say "okay, here's my password" when the cops ask for it, and prevents the cops from proving that you have not given them full access to all encrypted data, is another strategy that would establish plausible deniability or at least would avoid raising suspicion.
So, did I provide a solution that solves the author's problem? No, I didn't. I provided a solution that doesn't have that problem in the first place. Maybe some of you who are acting like I didn't read or understand the article/summary can tell me what's wrong with that. Really, I'd like to know.
It wouldn't be a story if he just Googled it. It's a bit outdated but Rubberhose was explicitly designed for this purpose. The idea is that it has multiple encryption keys to store different data in a given volume with no way to prove there is more than one key or more than one item being stored. You use one password or key to encrypt less-sensitive data and then there is no way to prove that you have another key or password encrypting much more sensitive data within the same volume. So the cops ask for your encryption keys, you give them the less-sensitive one, they see your financial records or something else to which they already had access, and cannot prove there is anything else on the volume.
It's their product, and if you input an invalid URL...their product directs you to their search engine to allow you to search for whatever it is you are looking for. How in the fuck is this wrong?
I already answered your question and described what I think is wrong with such practices. If you disagree with my answer, please tell me why you disagree and what part of my reasoning seems invalid to you. An emotive restatement of the question doesn't contribute much.
To me, this would be a legitimate practice PROVIDED that they first ask the user. Ideally, this feature would be off by default, the user would first enable the feature and would then get to choose the search engine that it uses. I'd have no problem with that.
What I think is unethical is if no such question is asked and Microsoft just decides for you that every little typo means you really wanted to do a Bing search. Do you really think that sort of "creative interpretation" of your actions sets a favorable precedent? Microsoft clearly gains from this because they are trying very hard to promote their search engine, while the user either has a dubious benefit or has to suffer a needless annoyance. I don't use use Microsoft software, but if I did, I most certainly would not be paying them for the "privilege" of being a bargaining chip in their struggle to compete with Google. Perhaps other people don't mind being used in such a demeaning fashion, but I certainly don't and have never consented to it.
If Bing is successful and gives Google a run for their money, it needs to be because of its merits. It should never be because Microsoft was able to leverage its marketshare in one market to dupe its users into going along with giving them undue success in another market. No one except for Microsoft benefits from that scenario. That is not the sort of competition that lets all of us enjoy better browsers and better search engines. I don't know how to make that more clear.
I'll emphasize that these reports are not terribly consistent. I don't know if this is what is going on and I'm not the sort of fool who automatically believes everything he reads. Having said that, I do know that this is the accusation being made in the summary. If it is a correct accusation, then everything I have said applies.
I'm saying what it is doing, and why. It isn't "hijacking" it is trying to be helpful to users that mistype a domain.
If I do something incorrectly, the most helpful thing at that point is to let me see that it caused an error. The idea that an error would confuse me or be too much for me to handle and so must be avoided at all costs is a good way to prevent me from learning why my original attempt didn't work and how it may be done correctly in the future. It's also somewhat insulting. It assumes that not only am I just a "point-and-drool" type of user, but that I wish to remain that way.
I wonder if this behavior would interfere with domains that are intended to route through a VPN. If I understand it correctly, domains that are specific to the VPN would fail to resolve with an NXDOMAIN error, at which point the secondary DNS (the one belonging to the VPN) would be used that would then point to the correct internal/VPN IP address. What impact, if any, does this behavior have on remote, Web-based intranet applications?
IE cannot "hijack" NXDOMAIN, because it's not an ISP.
Perhaps, but Microsoft can use its control of IE to artificially pad the number of hits to bing.com. That way users who had no intention of visiting the site will be taken there anyway. It's not so unreasonable to describe this as "hijacking" of traffic. Your computer is yours, is it not? Shouldn't it only go to a Web site when you decide that you want it to, and not when someone in marketing decides it'll drive traffic to a site? Sorry but you really seem to be quibbling about semantics, as though semantics had any power to make this an ethical or desirable feature.
It seems that the reports of this behavior are not terribly consistent. So as to whether or not I know for sure that this is going on, I have to say "I don't know." What I will say is that this kind of disrespectful treatment of users, the blatant disregard of their free choices, is par for the course for Microsoft and is a major reason why I refuse to use their software. It's certainly believable that they would do this. It means they view users as objects, as means to an end, and feel free to direct users' equipment and 'Net connections in any way that suits their marketing purposes. That is how you treat furniture, not human beings. In the face of that, I consider IE's "non-ISP" status to be not just a moot point, but a distraction.
Really, not one good reason? Like the ability to create login sessions that allow both a logout function and the use of the back button? Or login sessions that do not re-submit your password with each new request? Or the ability to remember you search terms if you browse away from the search engine and then back?
Certainly there's the potential for more nefarious use, and it's worthwhile to offer protections against that, but there are 1001 legitimate uses for sessions tracking, most of which are widely in use on almost every non-government website in the world; the no cookies rule is a result of the original cookies scare from 15 years ago, when you could create global cookies to track every website a user visited, and the rule is just as outdated as the scare.
True but session cookies can arrange all of that. The case for persistent/permanently stored cookies is much harder to make.
The problem is, we're failing society as professionals in the IT field -- part of our work (which most likely isn't earning you money) is teaching our friends, family, and interested parties about these problems and how to protect themselves from it because nobody else can or will. That's what has allowed this kind of crap to permeate into the mainstream... It wouldn't be tolerated if people knew better.
I am all for spreading the word and teaching anyone who is willing to learn about these things. It's an important subject and it should be obvious that the current status quo where tracking is commonplace depends entirely on the widespread ignorance that is present. However, this is more like advocacy than prevention and only addresses part of the problem.
The real problem is that so many users are passive and rather uninvolved in their own experience. It's never good strategy to wait around for somebody else with an altruistic motive to assist you when the needed information is out there and basic literacy is the only requirement for using it. I am not arguing that every average user should become an expert, only that some personal responsibility is in order. Balking at the rather modest reading/research effort that would be necessary to have a solid understanding of the basics is a luxury that you can't afford in the face of active attempts to compromise your privacy. I would compare it to saying that you don't feel like getting up to bar the door when there is an enemy at your gates, and it makes about as much sense (i.e. none) in terms of decision-making.
Part of the reason why people "don't know better" is that they assume it's someone else's job. At a corporation where you are not a member of the IT staff, indeed it IS someone else's job. At home where you have full control over your LAN and your equipment, it's your job and you can either take care of it or fail to do so. The price for failing to do so is that you get taken advantage of for the sake of some marketer, or worse. If people could understand it that way, in terms of someone trying to screw them over without their consent, they would delight in the knowledge that there is something they can do about it. Suddenly it wouldn't be "boring computer stuff" but would be about personal empowerment. I think clearly showing that it has a price is the best chance to get rid of this willful helplessness. If you really want to see gigantic improvements not just in unethical tracking, but also in malware and botnets and online fraud, what you need are not informed users, but users who are willing to inform themselves. Then the information they need is not some black box bestowed upon them by members of an esoteric priesthood, but would instead become a useful tool that they take into their own hands.
Perhaps one day we'll have computing appliances that are essentially maintainence-free, so that safely using them requires no more understanding of computing than using your washer/dryer requires an understanding of plumbing and electrical engineering. Right now we don't have that, and I question just how desirable it would be anyway. Computers are not toys or curiosities anymore and haven't been for a long time now. They are increasingly essential to everyday life. Every time you make a financial transaction or surrender personal information, it behooves you to make some effort to have some understanding of what you are doing and how it can be used. Otherwise you are being irresponsible and are failing to protect your interests and there's nothing wrong with saying so. We live now in an age where any literate adult with access to Google can achieve knowledge and understanding that was once the exclusive domain of experts. What we really need is to restore the wonder and sense of empowerment that goes along with this so that people no longer view the most basic research as an unreasonable chore. If that doesn't happen, then this passive victim mentality will cause the average person to be little more than an electronic serf, only it will be a serfdom that they choose because something else was always more important to them.
But the GM exec's aren't counting that electricity he's using, only his actual gasoline used on occasional longer trips, towards the "Miles Per Gallon" rating. I guess GM thinks that people don't pay for their electricity, and that electricity doesn't come from power plants that burn fossil fuels too.
I honestly don't know, but the summary would suggest otherwise. Specifically:
Of course, the devil's in the details, because the conversion of grid-based electricity to gasoline-mileage is imprecise.
That strongly suggests they ARE accounting for the electricity. The question is, how? Just how "imprecise" is the conversion? I don't doubt that you are right to call BS but unraveling the BS won't be quite as simple as the objection you raised.
There are ways of combining electronic and paper systems so that they are more reliable and more difficult to defraud then either paper or electronic alone. The problem is that no one seems to be willing to sell such a machine.
I'm perfectly happy with elections being as low-tech and simple as reasonably possible, i.e. paper. I'll gladly pay the few more cents in taxes every few years that ultra-efficient electronic elections would have saved me. All of this desire to have marginal gain at the expense of substantial risk is one of the worst examples of decision-making.
"In a lot of ways Canada, like the US under President Obama, has done alright on Net Neutrality issues."
Yeah, like when the FCC told Comcast to knock it off with messing with people's Bittorrent.
Oh, wait - that happened under the Bush administration. Well, I'm sure Obama has done plenty since his inauguration...[searches Google]...Hmmm, I see a whole page of hits on his campaign promises.
Well, that's fine - everyone knows that he will fulfill all of his campaign promises.
For some reason people think that the identity of the President is more important than who finances him so he can get into office. If you take a moment to make even a cursory study of it, you'll find one "odd" thing: many of the interests, particularly bankers, who financially supported Obama also supported his Republican opponent. Why, it's almost as though they don't care who wins as long as it's a major-party candidate...
The modern two-party duopoly serves the same purpose as the trade guilds of old. It raises barriers to entry in order to lock out potential competition. Any member of either party promising "change" really means "things will become more so" or "things will go farther down the path they are already on." If Obama wanted to enact truly meaningful change, such as reducing the size and power of the federal government, much of his opposition would come from within his own party. The same would be true for any Republican President.
Not to mention that people need to rely on the media to inform them of what is going on (this is just a reasonable expectation that most people don't have the time to research everything that is going on in the government). This is one thing that the media is definitely going to either keep quiet about or be openly on the side of the recording and movie industry
The media's job is so important that if they fail to carry it out, it's up to us. Maybe that means a couple fewer TV shows that you watch or a ball game you don't attend so you can do a little research. The Internet makes this possible, but it won't do the job for you; you have to actually engage yourself. That's such a tiny price to pay to have such an important job taken care of. If the will were there, it would get taken care of one way or another. When it comes down to it, most of us don't think it's as important as our beer or our entertainment. That makes us easy prey for such attempts to control. If this continues down the path that it has been on for a long time now, then at some point the average person is going to wish like hell that they had a different set of priorities a few years ago. I would like to see more people wake up before we get to the point where we wonder how the hell this happened.
In this case, it's a very new technology, and debates like this aren't of much interest outside geek circles.
When most modern means of control are at least related to technology, perhaps the average person needs to question whether it is in their interests to leave such matters to "geek circles." The amount of effort needed to have at least a familiarity with these issues is nearly trivial; there is no need to become an expert in anything in order to understand that this is a bid for power that should rightly be resisted. It doesn't take much technical sophistication to comprehend a message like "the freedoms you currently enjoy for music and movies and such, well, they are trying to criminalize more of those for the sake of control."
It's their fault in the sense that it wouldn't take very much to understand these issues. It's also their fault for holding a certain naivete: do they believe that the bought-and-paid-for media is going to help them? No, not when some of its ownership and much of its advertising revenue comes from these very media companies who are pushing for more copyright laws.
I often feel this way, that the biggest part of the problem for ALL systems of control is that the average person is ignorant and passive and refuses to inform himself at all costs. Meanwhile he is up against people who will assert control at all costs, for whom no move is too underhanded or too immoral or too deceitful. They will lie to you and misrepresent the facts in a heartbeat if it gets their new law passed. They will fund front groups to back up their predetermined claims. They will give financial backing to politicians who support them. They will talk about the horrors of piracy in the media. Yeah, in the face of this the average person has not just the ability but also the duty to inform himself so that he's not so easy to push around, because the average person will be hardest hit by these bad laws when they arrive, both in terms of copyright and in terms of losing any say in their country and how it is run.
If people refuse to do that, or are too unsophisticated, or too lazy, or too stupid, or too apathetic, or whatever the problem is, then they will reap what they sow. Fair or not, they will have been found to be unfit to have a meaningful say in their government or to be ruled by laws that are just and respectable. That will be evidenced by the way a small well-financed minority can walk all over the voting majority. This really isn't about copyright. This is about control. Copyright just happens to be an object of control.
Most Canadians don't even know about the issue, let alone understand it. And that's hardly their fault.
So whose fault would that be, if not their own? Does it not occur to them that this kind of ignorance is exacty what enables draconian new laws like this? When you're up against a well-informed and well-financed opponent who wants more control over you, the last thing you can afford is to be uninformed yourself. Maybe this is a situation where word-of-mouth is not to be underestimated.
I'll be glad when Twitter is no longer trendy. On the plus side, the Slashdot troll named "twitter" is awfully quiet lately so maybe it's a GOOD thing that insignificant shit that's been done many times before makes headlines when it's done via their site.
Whether a prank like this is successful is definitely a matter of authentication. That is, it depends on whether the target believes that the caller is who he claims to be. That's true whether it's as sophisticated as rerouting telephone calls, or whether it's as unsophisticated as using a payphone and dialing *67 (or similar) to block the callerID. So, I don't see how the sophistication of the prankster changes this situation.
So let's say you run a pizza delivery business. You have a phone number for people to make orders.
They reroute that number to one of theirs.
A potential customer calls the number that's in the yellow pages to make an order. The pranksters pick up and spoil the whole business (you know, asking if they want feces as a topping). The customer hangs up and never orders from your business again.
So in what way could this possibly be your fault? Or the customer's fault?
It's a bit intellectually dishonest to try and relate this to the only specific example I discussed. The example I discussed were those scenarios where someone in a building (like a hotel) starts deliberately destroying the hotel's property because a voice on the telephone told him to do so. It is about this scenario that I commented. You in turn mention a completely different scenario and go on to suggest that because my point does not apply to it, it must be an invalid point. I suppose you can convince yourself that you really showed me a thing or two if that pleases you, but I remain unconvinced that there was anything wrong with my original point when considered in the context I provided.
My point was about the gulliability and general mindlessness (i.e. refusal to think critically) of the average person. Therefore, I used as an example a particular prank that showcased this tendency. That there are other pranks that showcase different issues is not news. That a principle which clearly applies in one situation does not necessarily apply in another, different situation is not news either. If pretending that either of these are news makes you feel that you have scored points then far be it from me to deprive you of that. I enjoy a debate but at the same time, I'm not one of these people who absolutely must "convert" the other guy.
Re:The rest of the world is making fun of America
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The Outing of Pranknet
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I notice the nanny lovers at/. modded me down. That is funnier than shit. Mod away baby,yeah!
That does NOT change the fact that if a total stranger calls me on the phone and says "I iz dah prezidentz of USA. Go strip nekkid and play in deh traffix!" and I do it? Then I am a stupid moron who doesn't deserve to live!
Do you REALLY want a nanny government, is that what the users here at/. really want? Just look at the stink over the suicide girl on Myspace. yes, that woman was a total douchebag. But hey, since being a douche isn't illegal, we'll just screw the law until we get her, yeah! Either you have freedom, or you don't. It is just that simple. News Flash: there have been douchebags for as long as there have been people. We don't make douchebaggery illegal for the SAME reason that the whole suicide girl thing was bullshit-because to do so we would have to make laws that could be abused so badly free speech would be thrown in a fire.
We are already seeing enough nanny government bullshit as it is, do you really want more? Just look at what they have done to the smokers, now they are planning to do the same to "teh fattys". Do you enjoy a cola? Or a donuts? Then pay up, because nanny government says you are duh stupidz and can't be trusted to feed yourself without their help. Freedom includes the freedom to do stupid things and the ONLY way to remove stupidity is to remove freedom. Hey, there are too many morons falling for 419 scams! We can fix it! We can just have mommy government approve all your large expenses! isn't that great?
See the problem? and what if I say "I hate stupid people. I wish they would play in traffic" am I to be charged if some moron does that tomorrow? Of course we'll have to keep logs of every post on every site, so we can catch these evil criminals like me who tell someone stupid to play with matches. See how that slippery slope works? You can NOT protect people from their own stupidity. Every attempt at making something idiot proof has just shown idiots can be even stupider than you imagined. Do you really want a mommy government to protect people that are SO stupid they follow any directions a stranger on a phone gives them? Is that really what we have become? I'm glad my grandfather that fought for freedom in WW2 is no longer with us. You could probably power the entire southern region with the revolutions he is turning in his grave.
When it's fairly obvious that the person is giving their sincere opinion or position on a subject, I agree that it's childish and pointless to mod them down by pretending like they are trolling. That kind of practice is a detriment to everything that is enjoyable about this Web site. If I wanted a sanitized, politically correct, never-offend-anyone, 'G'-rated sort of experience I would go to a mainstream news site. I am here instead because of how profoundly unsatisfying and unchallenging that would be. I don't think the more knee-jerk moderators realize the truth of this, or that they have even taken a moment to think about what they are doing and why.
Otherwise what you say is quite true. Many people are just a shadow of the kind of person that they could be, and should be, and so they want to be taken care of. They want to be saved from every last little bad thing that might possibly arise as the result of their poor decision-making. Those people think they want a nanny state because they have no idea how dangerous or how dehumanizing it really is. Others, particularly here on Slashdot, are not like this. Instead, they seem to think that you can have a large, powerful government that will use force to protect other people from themselves without losing the freedoms and civil liberties that they enjoy. It seems to come from some misguided idea of compassion, that treating people as livestock and micromanaging their lives is better than allowing those people to experience the results of their decisions. Of course that is false, and it only s
For reasons like this, I draw a gigantic distinction between these kinds of criminals and most others. This kind of criminal is completely ineffective without the willing participation of his target.
Did you read the whole article?
They were able to reroute calls to certain numbers. The victims were not willing participants. They had no way of knowing that the number had been routed - nor did those who owned the numbers.
Whether a prank like this is successful is definitely a matter of authentication. That is, it depends on whether the target believes that the caller is who he claims to be. That's true whether it's as sophisticated as rerouting telephone calls, or whether it's as unsophisticated as using a payphone and dialing *67 (or similar) to block the callerID. So, I don't see how the sophistication of the prankster changes this situation.
And at times they offered money to whoever orchestrated certain pranks (e.g. driving a car into the building). Once you start giving such incentives, the relationship becomes that of a hitman and the one paying to have someone killed.
True, but hypothetically, if someone pays you money to drive your car into a building, you can no longer claim that you were an unwilling participant. In fact that would make you a willing conspirator. Therefore, that scenario only seems to strengthen my point.
I think that makes all the difference in the world, really. It's difficult, if not impossible, to find any mitigation in the fact that someone's just being a greedy bastard. On the other hand, someone presented with an authority figure, telling them that there is some kind of immediate danger is a much more sympathetic figure. It's hard to look at such a person as a simple asshat, because it's something that the vast majority of people (many of them quite intelligent) are susceptible to.
That's the first good argument I've seen for why there should be some sympathy for the targets of these pranks. Thank you for that, because I've seen a lot of other posts that want to either dismiss the question or insist that there is no other way to regard the situation without ever giving a good reason for feeling this way. This actually did help me to see the case for it.
And it's a good thing, too. We need people to listen to authority figures at some basic level, or society in general would fall apart. In order to have a society, there have to be authority figures.
Perhaps what we need is not to remove the anonynimity of the telephone network (or other similar proposals that have been mentioned), but to increase the nonynimity of any message originating from official authority figures. Maybe ANI or some other system (not callerID because it can be faked) should cause a red light to illuminate on the hotel telephone when it really is the police, rescue squad, or the fire department, that way a prank caller who claims to be from such an agency will immediately be recognized as a fake. I like solutions like this which neatly address the problem without removing privileges that we all enjoy.
Re:The rest of the world is making fun of America
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The Outing of Pranknet
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I asked him. I don't need a third party telling me what he probably implied.
Why? Because it indicates that you could have answered your own question? I suppose that might be a bit embarassing.
However maybe instead of paraphrasing, you should just have said "Maybe he's implying yes". Which I also believe but wanted clarification. Since you seem to agree, I will answer you that the pranskter had the intent to cause a huge amount of damage and as such, a misdemeanor is a laughable punishment. The "idiot victim" had no such intent to cause damage and should not be punished as much (civil settlement should be enough).
So first you don't need a third party (me) to tell you what he implied. Now you want that third party to tell you that "maybe he implied yes." Are you always so inconsistent? Because that consistency thing is pretty important if you want me to do anything other than chuckle when you pontificate about what I should have said. Of course I don't mean to imply that I would ever take seriously anyone who tells me what I should say even if he didn't immediately contradict himself, only that it's more amusing when he does. When you find some pushover who wants you to tell him how he should express himself, I am sure he will appreciate your advice. Meanwhile, I'm not that guy. So how about we just stick to opinions and reasoning?
And the victims being stupid is no excuse. As for your "reverse" question, the answer is "no" which is why the pranksted should pay for the damage. However, the prankster should pay "punitive" damage to both the hotel and to the pranksted.
How do you reconcile that with the fact that the target is the crucial, active element for any and all property damage caused by such a prank? Does it concern you that by coddling and protecting this kind of stupidity you are only encouraging it and making life easier for it? Just to be clear, I have no desire to harm anyone or to treat them any differently merely because they are stupid. However, I don't wish to let them off the hook for damage that their stupidity causes either. That's especially true considering that many of these people aren't really all that stupid; they just refuse to think.
Re:The rest of the world is making fun of America
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The Outing of Pranknet
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· Score: 1
Hence their breaking the story, and it appearing on Slashdot.
The article also pointed out that one locale (forgot which - in Florida?) that had been the target of their pranks sent out a bulletin warning businesses.
But let's be realistic. Even with it being publicized, it's highly unlikely that most business owners will see it - running a business takes a lot of time. It's equally unlikely that their employees will see it as well.
You ignored the context I provided and misunderstood my post. I suppose it wouldn't be Slashdot if somebody didn't do that.
Critical to what I said was that the recipient of the prank call SHOULD PAY FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT THEY DID merely because a random stranger told them to do it. What I said should be well-publicised are cases where the incompetent target who did damage was also held liable for that damage. The implication was that this should describe all such cases. THAT would make people think twice before smashing property they do not own merely because an unverifiable voice told them they should. It naturally follows that people who think twice (or even once) would be harder to successfully target with this kind of prank. That's the deterrant I mentioned.
I see a parallel here with the victims of Nigerian scammers, so recently discussed here. To what extent are the victims (perpetrators, in this case, of felonious acts; the mechanism by which they lose their own money in the other case) responsible for their own actions? To what extent is someone else responsible for bringing those actions about? A key difference here is that the Pranknet guys often rely on danger/panic scenarios: those situations when time wasted can be dangerous, and the guys at Pranknet were portraying themselves as helpers, whereas the scammers usually appeal to their victims for "help." I guess it's a difference of degree...
The people who were pranked and the people whose greed for easy money caused them to fall for a scammer's promise of millions of dollars for little or no effort are responsible for their actions. The people who made the prank call or who sent the scam e-mail are responsible for their own actions as well. I believe the people who fall for the prank should have to pay any damages that they caused and the people who fell for the Nigerian scammers are probably already paying for their mistake because they have probably lost money.
Sometimes an outdoorsman decides to hike in a dangerous wilderness area and becomes a missing person. When that happens, great efforts from police with search teams, helicopters, et al are often needed to locate and rescue these people. Often, when the person is located they are required to pay the bill for the emergency services that were needed to rescue them. That's even though they are already paying taxes towards most or all of those services (such as police). Why? Because they should have known better and their incompetence caused others to incur significant expenses. The point is that we already have some precedent for the idea that people should pay the financial damage caused by their own stupidity or incompetence.
There has to be the willingness to admit that the success of both the Nigerian scammers and of these pranksters depends entirely on the incompetence of their targets. I refuse to call them victims because incompetence is a fault, while a true victim is a person who suffers through no fault of their own. In light of this, going after the perpetrators seems to be a feel-good exercise that doesn't really address the actual problem. The actual problem is that the average person is not tough-minded, does not think critically, does not question, and as a result is reactive and easily panicked. The actual problem is one that I don't believe this society wants to address because the authoritarian direction in which it is headed depends on these traits.
Consider that the lack of understanding and downright stupidity of others can harm your quality of life. You share a highway with those people, and a ballot box. If your job requires you to deal with the general public, you get to incur additional stress when dealing with their stupidity and are forced to accommodate it. Why is it okay for them to harm the quality of life of others, and then terribly wrong when that same stupidity causes harm to their own lives by making them vulnerable to pranks and scams like this? Have you ever seen the movie "Idiocracy?" We actually are headed towards something like that, only personally I think it will more closely resemble Brave New World. Being intelligent and wise is simply no longer a requirement for survival, so the incentives against stupidity won't come from Nature or any form of natural selection. Did it ever occur to you that if we don't end up with such a bleak future, it might just be because criminals like these provided the only remaining way that stupidity remains painful?
For reasons like this, I draw a gigantic distinction between these kinds of criminals and most others. This kind of criminal is completely ineffective withou
Re:The rest of the world is making fun of America
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The Outing of Pranknet
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Are you implying that because the victims displayed great naivety, it somehow excuses the criminals who engaged in these "pranks" ?
Maybe he's implying that if a random stranger calls up a naive person, and convinces that naive person to smash windows and destroy i.e. hotel property, perhaps it is the naive person who should be fully responsible for paying the damages. Just one or two well-publicised cases like that and suddenly the effectiveness of these pranks will strongly diminish. Knowing that it is unlikely to work anymore, the pranksters would then have a deterrant.
To put that another way, let's take your question and turn it around. "Are you implying that because the prankster had bad intentions, it somehow excuses the fact that a person willfully and knowingly decided to do a lot of property damage merely because an unaccountable stranger told him it was a good idea?"
They're both valid questions. Perhaps the best way to handle it would be to charge the prankster with "harassment" or "malicious use of the telephone network" or whatever they call the misdemeanor offense of prank calling, and then to hold the target of the prank legally liable for any damage done. Though personally, I see the target's stupidity and particularly the desire to excuse and protect it as much more dangerous to society than the prankster's nonviolent maliciousness. Besides, nonviolent malice is much easier to cure than stupidity.
It's fanboyism. They are defending what is in the interest of the company they are fans of, not what is in *their* interest. That, I'm pretty sure, is what is at the essence of what a fanboy is.
Yes. I consider fanboyism to be a subset of conformity. That whole question of whether you are alone in the universe must have some kind of answer. Those who cannot find the higher answer in the form of an unconditional overwhelming love and compassion for all beings that provides the joy of oneness, must instead find it by belonging to and serving what they perceive as greater than themselves. So they adopt the same mannerisms, or they dress alike, or they listen to the same music, or they subscribe to the same ideology, and this sameness is confused for oneness and solidarity.
That question of life and your place in it absolutely must have an answer and it will create one if none is found. This conformity is the only answer of which these people are aware, so they will endure and embrace all sorts of neurotic things that are not in their interests in order to maintain their access to it. Indeed, the degree to which they serve what is not in their interests is taken by others like them as sincere proof of their dedication. That's because all of this is weakness and as such, cannot stand on its own but requires propping up. This causes the need for the reassurance of belonging to a herd and seeing others doing as you are doing. That goes to the extreme of seeing contradictory messages or alternate viewpoints as not merely someone else's opinion but as overt threats that need to be suppressed, discredited, or marginalized.
The real disease is that this is often encouraged and promoted as normal and healthy, which it certainly is not.
Slashdot Mirror
is the same scenario described by the editorial's opening paragraph here:
I don't disagree that there are more general problems to consider when implementing any sort of encryption solution. The concern you raise about customs agents is quite valid, particularly since they increasingly seem to resemble thugs and have recently been known to copy data from laptops and other devices. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they viewed encryption not as a privacy protection, but as an obstacle to their surveillence. A thoughtful person who travels outside of his or her country would certainly take that into account when thinking of which encryption system to use. You are, however, the first person in this entire discussion to mention customs. For that reason, the solution I proposed was aimed at the scenario that was described in the summary/editorial.
The UK law mentioned dictates that you must surrender your encryption keys/passwords to the authorities whenever they lawfully ask you to do so. That's a notably different scenario from "customs might give you a hard time." The program I mentioned, Rubberhose, is specifically designed for cases where you might be coerced to give up encryption keys/passwords, like what the author of this editorial specifically mentioned. It was designed both for laws like this one, and also for less-than-legal scenarios where some thugs might try to beat it out of you (hence the name "rubberhose" since apparently that's a favored way to inflict pain during violent interrogations as it is rumored to leave minimal welts/marks on the body).
My point for you is that if you are going to say "uh, no" and proceed to correct me, please have a more solid basis for so doing. I think that's a reasonable thing to ask. I don't mind being wrong because if you really do find I've made an error then you're doing me a favor, it's just the jumping to that conclusion that I dislike. Otherwise, I appreciate that you gave me a real (and tactful) answer as to why you disagreed with my proposal. The author of the condescending response has so far not bothered to do so, though I guess i's not a surprise if actual discourse was not his goal.
Why the hell are you summarizing the essay (or whatever it is) for him? What makes you think he'll read your post if he didn't bother with TFA? Because your post is shorter? It's still longer than a tweet, so by definition Too Long To Read.
I suggest that in the future you not muddy up someone's confusion with a concise statement of fact.
As you seem most confident that I erred due to laziness or a lack of reading comprehension, perhaps you would be willing to answer this question for me?
Um, no. In his editorial (there's no other word for it really), he specifically mentions similar functionality available from TrueCrypt. That is, the ability to host two (or more) encrypted volumes, one with stuff that you might want to hide but that isn't illegal and one with stuff that is illegal that you really want to hide.
The true thrust of his article is that just having TrueCrypt (or any other advanced encryption tool) installed on your machine is enough to pique the interest of law enforcement. If just having encryption installed on the PC is enough to lose privacy and invite harassment, then TrueCrypt and the like create a different problem from the one they solve. Ideally, the author argues, it would be best if everyone had strong encryption on their machines, as part of the OS or as part of some other common piece of software. This way, the police would see nothing out of the ordinary when they see the encryption software, because everyone has it.
Having an encryption solution that everyone else uses is one strategy that would establish plausible deniability, or at least would avoid raising suspicion due to the presence of encryption. That's something the author mentioned, yes.
Having an encryption solution that allows you to say "okay, here's my password" when the cops ask for it, and prevents the cops from proving that you have not given them full access to all encrypted data, is another strategy that would establish plausible deniability or at least would avoid raising suspicion.
So, did I provide a solution that solves the author's problem? No, I didn't. I provided a solution that doesn't have that problem in the first place. Maybe some of you who are acting like I didn't read or understand the article/summary can tell me what's wrong with that. Really, I'd like to know.
Story? What story?
It wouldn't be a story if he just Googled it. It's a bit outdated but Rubberhose was explicitly designed for this purpose. The idea is that it has multiple encryption keys to store different data in a given volume with no way to prove there is more than one key or more than one item being stored. You use one password or key to encrypt less-sensitive data and then there is no way to prove that you have another key or password encrypting much more sensitive data within the same volume. So the cops ask for your encryption keys, you give them the less-sensitive one, they see your financial records or something else to which they already had access, and cannot prove there is anything else on the volume.
It's their product, and if you input an invalid URL...their product directs you to their search engine to allow you to search for whatever it is you are looking for. How in the fuck is this wrong?
I already answered your question and described what I think is wrong with such practices. If you disagree with my answer, please tell me why you disagree and what part of my reasoning seems invalid to you. An emotive restatement of the question doesn't contribute much.
To me, this would be a legitimate practice PROVIDED that they first ask the user. Ideally, this feature would be off by default, the user would first enable the feature and would then get to choose the search engine that it uses. I'd have no problem with that.
What I think is unethical is if no such question is asked and Microsoft just decides for you that every little typo means you really wanted to do a Bing search. Do you really think that sort of "creative interpretation" of your actions sets a favorable precedent? Microsoft clearly gains from this because they are trying very hard to promote their search engine, while the user either has a dubious benefit or has to suffer a needless annoyance. I don't use use Microsoft software, but if I did, I most certainly would not be paying them for the "privilege" of being a bargaining chip in their struggle to compete with Google. Perhaps other people don't mind being used in such a demeaning fashion, but I certainly don't and have never consented to it.
If Bing is successful and gives Google a run for their money, it needs to be because of its merits. It should never be because Microsoft was able to leverage its marketshare in one market to dupe its users into going along with giving them undue success in another market. No one except for Microsoft benefits from that scenario. That is not the sort of competition that lets all of us enjoy better browsers and better search engines. I don't know how to make that more clear.
I'll emphasize that these reports are not terribly consistent. I don't know if this is what is going on and I'm not the sort of fool who automatically believes everything he reads. Having said that, I do know that this is the accusation being made in the summary. If it is a correct accusation, then everything I have said applies.
I'm saying what it is doing, and why. It isn't "hijacking" it is trying to be helpful to users that mistype a domain.
If I do something incorrectly, the most helpful thing at that point is to let me see that it caused an error. The idea that an error would confuse me or be too much for me to handle and so must be avoided at all costs is a good way to prevent me from learning why my original attempt didn't work and how it may be done correctly in the future. It's also somewhat insulting. It assumes that not only am I just a "point-and-drool" type of user, but that I wish to remain that way.
I wonder if this behavior would interfere with domains that are intended to route through a VPN. If I understand it correctly, domains that are specific to the VPN would fail to resolve with an NXDOMAIN error, at which point the secondary DNS (the one belonging to the VPN) would be used that would then point to the correct internal/VPN IP address. What impact, if any, does this behavior have on remote, Web-based intranet applications?
IE cannot "hijack" NXDOMAIN, because it's not an ISP.
Perhaps, but Microsoft can use its control of IE to artificially pad the number of hits to bing.com. That way users who had no intention of visiting the site will be taken there anyway. It's not so unreasonable to describe this as "hijacking" of traffic. Your computer is yours, is it not? Shouldn't it only go to a Web site when you decide that you want it to, and not when someone in marketing decides it'll drive traffic to a site? Sorry but you really seem to be quibbling about semantics, as though semantics had any power to make this an ethical or desirable feature.
It seems that the reports of this behavior are not terribly consistent. So as to whether or not I know for sure that this is going on, I have to say "I don't know." What I will say is that this kind of disrespectful treatment of users, the blatant disregard of their free choices, is par for the course for Microsoft and is a major reason why I refuse to use their software. It's certainly believable that they would do this. It means they view users as objects, as means to an end, and feel free to direct users' equipment and 'Net connections in any way that suits their marketing purposes. That is how you treat furniture, not human beings. In the face of that, I consider IE's "non-ISP" status to be not just a moot point, but a distraction.
Really, not one good reason? Like the ability to create login sessions that allow both a logout function and the use of the back button? Or login sessions that do not re-submit your password with each new request? Or the ability to remember you search terms if you browse away from the search engine and then back?
Certainly there's the potential for more nefarious use, and it's worthwhile to offer protections against that, but there are 1001 legitimate uses for sessions tracking, most of which are widely in use on almost every non-government website in the world; the no cookies rule is a result of the original cookies scare from 15 years ago, when you could create global cookies to track every website a user visited, and the rule is just as outdated as the scare.
True but session cookies can arrange all of that. The case for persistent/permanently stored cookies is much harder to make.
I am all for spreading the word and teaching anyone who is willing to learn about these things. It's an important subject and it should be obvious that the current status quo where tracking is commonplace depends entirely on the widespread ignorance that is present. However, this is more like advocacy than prevention and only addresses part of the problem.
The real problem is that so many users are passive and rather uninvolved in their own experience. It's never good strategy to wait around for somebody else with an altruistic motive to assist you when the needed information is out there and basic literacy is the only requirement for using it. I am not arguing that every average user should become an expert, only that some personal responsibility is in order. Balking at the rather modest reading/research effort that would be necessary to have a solid understanding of the basics is a luxury that you can't afford in the face of active attempts to compromise your privacy. I would compare it to saying that you don't feel like getting up to bar the door when there is an enemy at your gates, and it makes about as much sense (i.e. none) in terms of decision-making.
Part of the reason why people "don't know better" is that they assume it's someone else's job. At a corporation where you are not a member of the IT staff, indeed it IS someone else's job. At home where you have full control over your LAN and your equipment, it's your job and you can either take care of it or fail to do so. The price for failing to do so is that you get taken advantage of for the sake of some marketer, or worse. If people could understand it that way, in terms of someone trying to screw them over without their consent, they would delight in the knowledge that there is something they can do about it. Suddenly it wouldn't be "boring computer stuff" but would be about personal empowerment. I think clearly showing that it has a price is the best chance to get rid of this willful helplessness. If you really want to see gigantic improvements not just in unethical tracking, but also in malware and botnets and online fraud, what you need are not informed users, but users who are willing to inform themselves. Then the information they need is not some black box bestowed upon them by members of an esoteric priesthood, but would instead become a useful tool that they take into their own hands.
Perhaps one day we'll have computing appliances that are essentially maintainence-free, so that safely using them requires no more understanding of computing than using your washer/dryer requires an understanding of plumbing and electrical engineering. Right now we don't have that, and I question just how desirable it would be anyway. Computers are not toys or curiosities anymore and haven't been for a long time now. They are increasingly essential to everyday life. Every time you make a financial transaction or surrender personal information, it behooves you to make some effort to have some understanding of what you are doing and how it can be used. Otherwise you are being irresponsible and are failing to protect your interests and there's nothing wrong with saying so. We live now in an age where any literate adult with access to Google can achieve knowledge and understanding that was once the exclusive domain of experts. What we really need is to restore the wonder and sense of empowerment that goes along with this so that people no longer view the most basic research as an unreasonable chore. If that doesn't happen, then this passive victim mentality will cause the average person to be little more than an electronic serf, only it will be a serfdom that they choose because something else was always more important to them.
I honestly don't know, but the summary would suggest otherwise. Specifically:
That strongly suggests they ARE accounting for the electricity. The question is, how? Just how "imprecise" is the conversion? I don't doubt that you are right to call BS but unraveling the BS won't be quite as simple as the objection you raised.
There are ways of combining electronic and paper systems so that they are more reliable and more difficult to defraud then either paper or electronic alone. The problem is that no one seems to be willing to sell such a machine.
I'm perfectly happy with elections being as low-tech and simple as reasonably possible, i.e. paper. I'll gladly pay the few more cents in taxes every few years that ultra-efficient electronic elections would have saved me. All of this desire to have marginal gain at the expense of substantial risk is one of the worst examples of decision-making.
"In a lot of ways Canada, like the US under President Obama, has done alright on Net Neutrality issues."
Yeah, like when the FCC told Comcast to knock it off with messing with people's Bittorrent.
Oh, wait - that happened under the Bush administration. Well, I'm sure Obama has done plenty since his inauguration...[searches Google]...Hmmm, I see a whole page of hits on his campaign promises.
Well, that's fine - everyone knows that he will fulfill all of his campaign promises.
For some reason people think that the identity of the President is more important than who finances him so he can get into office. If you take a moment to make even a cursory study of it, you'll find one "odd" thing: many of the interests, particularly bankers, who financially supported Obama also supported his Republican opponent. Why, it's almost as though they don't care who wins as long as it's a major-party candidate...
The modern two-party duopoly serves the same purpose as the trade guilds of old. It raises barriers to entry in order to lock out potential competition. Any member of either party promising "change" really means "things will become more so" or "things will go farther down the path they are already on." If Obama wanted to enact truly meaningful change, such as reducing the size and power of the federal government, much of his opposition would come from within his own party. The same would be true for any Republican President.
Not to mention that people need to rely on the media to inform them of what is going on (this is just a reasonable expectation that most people don't have the time to research everything that is going on in the government). This is one thing that the media is definitely going to either keep quiet about or be openly on the side of the recording and movie industry
The media's job is so important that if they fail to carry it out, it's up to us. Maybe that means a couple fewer TV shows that you watch or a ball game you don't attend so you can do a little research. The Internet makes this possible, but it won't do the job for you; you have to actually engage yourself. That's such a tiny price to pay to have such an important job taken care of. If the will were there, it would get taken care of one way or another. When it comes down to it, most of us don't think it's as important as our beer or our entertainment. That makes us easy prey for such attempts to control. If this continues down the path that it has been on for a long time now, then at some point the average person is going to wish like hell that they had a different set of priorities a few years ago. I would like to see more people wake up before we get to the point where we wonder how the hell this happened.
When most modern means of control are at least related to technology, perhaps the average person needs to question whether it is in their interests to leave such matters to "geek circles." The amount of effort needed to have at least a familiarity with these issues is nearly trivial; there is no need to become an expert in anything in order to understand that this is a bid for power that should rightly be resisted. It doesn't take much technical sophistication to comprehend a message like "the freedoms you currently enjoy for music and movies and such, well, they are trying to criminalize more of those for the sake of control."
It's their fault in the sense that it wouldn't take very much to understand these issues. It's also their fault for holding a certain naivete: do they believe that the bought-and-paid-for media is going to help them? No, not when some of its ownership and much of its advertising revenue comes from these very media companies who are pushing for more copyright laws.
I often feel this way, that the biggest part of the problem for ALL systems of control is that the average person is ignorant and passive and refuses to inform himself at all costs. Meanwhile he is up against people who will assert control at all costs, for whom no move is too underhanded or too immoral or too deceitful. They will lie to you and misrepresent the facts in a heartbeat if it gets their new law passed. They will fund front groups to back up their predetermined claims. They will give financial backing to politicians who support them. They will talk about the horrors of piracy in the media. Yeah, in the face of this the average person has not just the ability but also the duty to inform himself so that he's not so easy to push around, because the average person will be hardest hit by these bad laws when they arrive, both in terms of copyright and in terms of losing any say in their country and how it is run.
If people refuse to do that, or are too unsophisticated, or too lazy, or too stupid, or too apathetic, or whatever the problem is, then they will reap what they sow. Fair or not, they will have been found to be unfit to have a meaningful say in their government or to be ruled by laws that are just and respectable. That will be evidenced by the way a small well-financed minority can walk all over the voting majority. This really isn't about copyright. This is about control. Copyright just happens to be an object of control.
Most Canadians don't even know about the issue, let alone understand it. And that's hardly their fault.
So whose fault would that be, if not their own? Does it not occur to them that this kind of ignorance is exacty what enables draconian new laws like this? When you're up against a well-informed and well-financed opponent who wants more control over you, the last thing you can afford is to be uninformed yourself. Maybe this is a situation where word-of-mouth is not to be underestimated.
This is stupid.
I'll be glad when Twitter is no longer trendy. On the plus side, the Slashdot troll named "twitter" is awfully quiet lately so maybe it's a GOOD thing that insignificant shit that's been done many times before makes headlines when it's done via their site.
Whether a prank like this is successful is definitely a matter of authentication. That is, it depends on whether the target believes that the caller is who he claims to be. That's true whether it's as sophisticated as rerouting telephone calls, or whether it's as unsophisticated as using a payphone and dialing *67 (or similar) to block the callerID. So, I don't see how the sophistication of the prankster changes this situation.
So let's say you run a pizza delivery business. You have a phone number for people to make orders.
They reroute that number to one of theirs.
A potential customer calls the number that's in the yellow pages to make an order. The pranksters pick up and spoil the whole business (you know, asking if they want feces as a topping). The customer hangs up and never orders from your business again.
So in what way could this possibly be your fault? Or the customer's fault?
It's a bit intellectually dishonest to try and relate this to the only specific example I discussed. The example I discussed were those scenarios where someone in a building (like a hotel) starts deliberately destroying the hotel's property because a voice on the telephone told him to do so. It is about this scenario that I commented. You in turn mention a completely different scenario and go on to suggest that because my point does not apply to it, it must be an invalid point. I suppose you can convince yourself that you really showed me a thing or two if that pleases you, but I remain unconvinced that there was anything wrong with my original point when considered in the context I provided.
My point was about the gulliability and general mindlessness (i.e. refusal to think critically) of the average person. Therefore, I used as an example a particular prank that showcased this tendency. That there are other pranks that showcase different issues is not news. That a principle which clearly applies in one situation does not necessarily apply in another, different situation is not news either. If pretending that either of these are news makes you feel that you have scored points then far be it from me to deprive you of that. I enjoy a debate but at the same time, I'm not one of these people who absolutely must "convert" the other guy.
I notice the nanny lovers at /. modded me down. That is funnier than shit. Mod away baby,yeah!
That does NOT change the fact that if a total stranger calls me on the phone and says "I iz dah prezidentz of USA. Go strip nekkid and play in deh traffix!" and I do it? Then I am a stupid moron who doesn't deserve to live!
Do you REALLY want a nanny government, is that what the users here at /. really want? Just look at the stink over the suicide girl on Myspace. yes, that woman was a total douchebag. But hey, since being a douche isn't illegal, we'll just screw the law until we get her, yeah! Either you have freedom, or you don't. It is just that simple. News Flash: there have been douchebags for as long as there have been people. We don't make douchebaggery illegal for the SAME reason that the whole suicide girl thing was bullshit-because to do so we would have to make laws that could be abused so badly free speech would be thrown in a fire.
We are already seeing enough nanny government bullshit as it is, do you really want more? Just look at what they have done to the smokers, now they are planning to do the same to "teh fattys". Do you enjoy a cola? Or a donuts? Then pay up, because nanny government says you are duh stupidz and can't be trusted to feed yourself without their help. Freedom includes the freedom to do stupid things and the ONLY way to remove stupidity is to remove freedom. Hey, there are too many morons falling for 419 scams! We can fix it! We can just have mommy government approve all your large expenses! isn't that great?
See the problem? and what if I say "I hate stupid people. I wish they would play in traffic" am I to be charged if some moron does that tomorrow? Of course we'll have to keep logs of every post on every site, so we can catch these evil criminals like me who tell someone stupid to play with matches. See how that slippery slope works? You can NOT protect people from their own stupidity. Every attempt at making something idiot proof has just shown idiots can be even stupider than you imagined. Do you really want a mommy government to protect people that are SO stupid they follow any directions a stranger on a phone gives them? Is that really what we have become? I'm glad my grandfather that fought for freedom in WW2 is no longer with us. You could probably power the entire southern region with the revolutions he is turning in his grave.
When it's fairly obvious that the person is giving their sincere opinion or position on a subject, I agree that it's childish and pointless to mod them down by pretending like they are trolling. That kind of practice is a detriment to everything that is enjoyable about this Web site. If I wanted a sanitized, politically correct, never-offend-anyone, 'G'-rated sort of experience I would go to a mainstream news site. I am here instead because of how profoundly unsatisfying and unchallenging that would be. I don't think the more knee-jerk moderators realize the truth of this, or that they have even taken a moment to think about what they are doing and why.
Otherwise what you say is quite true. Many people are just a shadow of the kind of person that they could be, and should be, and so they want to be taken care of. They want to be saved from every last little bad thing that might possibly arise as the result of their poor decision-making. Those people think they want a nanny state because they have no idea how dangerous or how dehumanizing it really is. Others, particularly here on Slashdot, are not like this. Instead, they seem to think that you can have a large, powerful government that will use force to protect other people from themselves without losing the freedoms and civil liberties that they enjoy. It seems to come from some misguided idea of compassion, that treating people as livestock and micromanaging their lives is better than allowing those people to experience the results of their decisions. Of course that is false, and it only s
For reasons like this, I draw a gigantic distinction between these kinds of criminals and most others. This kind of criminal is completely ineffective without the willing participation of his target.
Did you read the whole article?
They were able to reroute calls to certain numbers. The victims were not willing participants. They had no way of knowing that the number had been routed - nor did those who owned the numbers.
Whether a prank like this is successful is definitely a matter of authentication. That is, it depends on whether the target believes that the caller is who he claims to be. That's true whether it's as sophisticated as rerouting telephone calls, or whether it's as unsophisticated as using a payphone and dialing *67 (or similar) to block the callerID. So, I don't see how the sophistication of the prankster changes this situation.
True, but hypothetically, if someone pays you money to drive your car into a building, you can no longer claim that you were an unwilling participant. In fact that would make you a willing conspirator. Therefore, that scenario only seems to strengthen my point.
That's the first good argument I've seen for why there should be some sympathy for the targets of these pranks. Thank you for that, because I've seen a lot of other posts that want to either dismiss the question or insist that there is no other way to regard the situation without ever giving a good reason for feeling this way. This actually did help me to see the case for it.
Perhaps what we need is not to remove the anonynimity of the telephone network (or other similar proposals that have been mentioned), but to increase the nonynimity of any message originating from official authority figures. Maybe ANI or some other system (not callerID because it can be faked) should cause a red light to illuminate on the hotel telephone when it really is the police, rescue squad, or the fire department, that way a prank caller who claims to be from such an agency will immediately be recognized as a fake. I like solutions like this which neatly address the problem without removing privileges that we all enjoy.
Why? Because it indicates that you could have answered your own question? I suppose that might be a bit embarassing.
So first you don't need a third party (me) to tell you what he implied. Now you want that third party to tell you that "maybe he implied yes." Are you always so inconsistent? Because that consistency thing is pretty important if you want me to do anything other than chuckle when you pontificate about what I should have said. Of course I don't mean to imply that I would ever take seriously anyone who tells me what I should say even if he didn't immediately contradict himself, only that it's more amusing when he does. When you find some pushover who wants you to tell him how he should express himself, I am sure he will appreciate your advice. Meanwhile, I'm not that guy. So how about we just stick to opinions and reasoning?
How do you reconcile that with the fact that the target is the crucial, active element for any and all property damage caused by such a prank? Does it concern you that by coddling and protecting this kind of stupidity you are only encouraging it and making life easier for it? Just to be clear, I have no desire to harm anyone or to treat them any differently merely because they are stupid. However, I don't wish to let them off the hook for damage that their stupidity causes either. That's especially true considering that many of these people aren't really all that stupid; they just refuse to think.
You ignored the context I provided and misunderstood my post. I suppose it wouldn't be Slashdot if somebody didn't do that.
Critical to what I said was that the recipient of the prank call SHOULD PAY FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT THEY DID merely because a random stranger told them to do it. What I said should be well-publicised are cases where the incompetent target who did damage was also held liable for that damage. The implication was that this should describe all such cases. THAT would make people think twice before smashing property they do not own merely because an unverifiable voice told them they should. It naturally follows that people who think twice (or even once) would be harder to successfully target with this kind of prank. That's the deterrant I mentioned.
I see a parallel here with the victims of Nigerian scammers, so recently discussed here. To what extent are the victims (perpetrators, in this case, of felonious acts; the mechanism by which they lose their own money in the other case) responsible for their own actions? To what extent is someone else responsible for bringing those actions about? A key difference here is that the Pranknet guys often rely on danger/panic scenarios: those situations when time wasted can be dangerous, and the guys at Pranknet were portraying themselves as helpers, whereas the scammers usually appeal to their victims for "help." I guess it's a difference of degree...
The people who were pranked and the people whose greed for easy money caused them to fall for a scammer's promise of millions of dollars for little or no effort are responsible for their actions. The people who made the prank call or who sent the scam e-mail are responsible for their own actions as well. I believe the people who fall for the prank should have to pay any damages that they caused and the people who fell for the Nigerian scammers are probably already paying for their mistake because they have probably lost money.
Sometimes an outdoorsman decides to hike in a dangerous wilderness area and becomes a missing person. When that happens, great efforts from police with search teams, helicopters, et al are often needed to locate and rescue these people. Often, when the person is located they are required to pay the bill for the emergency services that were needed to rescue them. That's even though they are already paying taxes towards most or all of those services (such as police). Why? Because they should have known better and their incompetence caused others to incur significant expenses. The point is that we already have some precedent for the idea that people should pay the financial damage caused by their own stupidity or incompetence.
There has to be the willingness to admit that the success of both the Nigerian scammers and of these pranksters depends entirely on the incompetence of their targets. I refuse to call them victims because incompetence is a fault, while a true victim is a person who suffers through no fault of their own. In light of this, going after the perpetrators seems to be a feel-good exercise that doesn't really address the actual problem. The actual problem is that the average person is not tough-minded, does not think critically, does not question, and as a result is reactive and easily panicked. The actual problem is one that I don't believe this society wants to address because the authoritarian direction in which it is headed depends on these traits.
Consider that the lack of understanding and downright stupidity of others can harm your quality of life. You share a highway with those people, and a ballot box. If your job requires you to deal with the general public, you get to incur additional stress when dealing with their stupidity and are forced to accommodate it. Why is it okay for them to harm the quality of life of others, and then terribly wrong when that same stupidity causes harm to their own lives by making them vulnerable to pranks and scams like this? Have you ever seen the movie "Idiocracy?" We actually are headed towards something like that, only personally I think it will more closely resemble Brave New World. Being intelligent and wise is simply no longer a requirement for survival, so the incentives against stupidity won't come from Nature or any form of natural selection. Did it ever occur to you that if we don't end up with such a bleak future, it might just be because criminals like these provided the only remaining way that stupidity remains painful?
For reasons like this, I draw a gigantic distinction between these kinds of criminals and most others. This kind of criminal is completely ineffective withou
Are you implying that because the victims displayed great naivety, it somehow excuses the criminals who engaged in these "pranks" ?
Maybe he's implying that if a random stranger calls up a naive person, and convinces that naive person to smash windows and destroy i.e. hotel property, perhaps it is the naive person who should be fully responsible for paying the damages. Just one or two well-publicised cases like that and suddenly the effectiveness of these pranks will strongly diminish. Knowing that it is unlikely to work anymore, the pranksters would then have a deterrant.
To put that another way, let's take your question and turn it around. "Are you implying that because the prankster had bad intentions, it somehow excuses the fact that a person willfully and knowingly decided to do a lot of property damage merely because an unaccountable stranger told him it was a good idea?"
They're both valid questions. Perhaps the best way to handle it would be to charge the prankster with "harassment" or "malicious use of the telephone network" or whatever they call the misdemeanor offense of prank calling, and then to hold the target of the prank legally liable for any damage done. Though personally, I see the target's stupidity and particularly the desire to excuse and protect it as much more dangerous to society than the prankster's nonviolent maliciousness. Besides, nonviolent malice is much easier to cure than stupidity.
It's fanboyism. They are defending what is in the interest of the company they are fans of, not what is in *their* interest. That, I'm pretty sure, is what is at the essence of what a fanboy is.
Yes. I consider fanboyism to be a subset of conformity. That whole question of whether you are alone in the universe must have some kind of answer. Those who cannot find the higher answer in the form of an unconditional overwhelming love and compassion for all beings that provides the joy of oneness, must instead find it by belonging to and serving what they perceive as greater than themselves. So they adopt the same mannerisms, or they dress alike, or they listen to the same music, or they subscribe to the same ideology, and this sameness is confused for oneness and solidarity.
That question of life and your place in it absolutely must have an answer and it will create one if none is found. This conformity is the only answer of which these people are aware, so they will endure and embrace all sorts of neurotic things that are not in their interests in order to maintain their access to it. Indeed, the degree to which they serve what is not in their interests is taken by others like them as sincere proof of their dedication. That's because all of this is weakness and as such, cannot stand on its own but requires propping up. This causes the need for the reassurance of belonging to a herd and seeing others doing as you are doing. That goes to the extreme of seeing contradictory messages or alternate viewpoints as not merely someone else's opinion but as overt threats that need to be suppressed, discredited, or marginalized.
The real disease is that this is often encouraged and promoted as normal and healthy, which it certainly is not.