If someone wants to extend credit someone with little or no documantation, isn't it their perogative to do so?
In the case of banks, no. When opening an account, banks must, by law be provided with certain documentation which proves who you are. For a quick and dirty list, see this from Rice University (pdf). Note that a matricular consular card IS NOT a valid form of identification yet Bank of America, and others, are being allowed to use it anyway.
So what if BofA has decided to take that risk?
By violating federal law, the government, if it so chose to do so, could suspend or revoke Bank of America's charter or even take it over. If you had accounts with them, would you want them to be risking your money?
And god forbid people trying to make a better life be able to save a few bucks so there children can get a better schooling and become productive tax paying members of the US.
Strawman argument. No one is saying that non-citizens shouldn't be allowed to open accounts. What is being said is that people who shouldn't be here in the first place are being allowed to circumvent the law with the aid and assistance of banks.
no no, lets just spend billions upon billions of dollars throughing out people who will do jobs no locals will.
False argument. While certainly some jobs like maid service in hotels or grunt work on construction sites are jobs that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't do, the issue is that these people have not followed very basic rules to get a green card to work here legally.
Further, the vast majority of their money isn't even spent in this country. It is sent to their home country to support their families which means the money they make is propping up other, corrupt, governments who can't see the way to take care of their own people.
I would also argue that if BofA wants to hold money for people with lttle or no documentation that's their business.
See my above comments. Further, Bank of America is a publicly traded company. They are responsible to the shareholders. By endangering their status they are risking the money of the owners of the company.
Think about how many mutual funds or pension accounts have money invested in Bank of America stock. Imagine what would happen if Bank of America stock gets suspended pending investigations of its activities. Can you say panic?
Are these kinds of organized 'advocate mobs' going to be the future of internet activism?
Yes, yes they will. See the current bruhaha over Bank of America and their giving credit cards to illegal aliens as well as allowing unapproved documents to be used to open accounts.
Even, gasp!, Michelle Malkin is getting into scrum and accusing the Bush administration of ignoring and condoning the actions of Bank of America.
One need only do searches for things like "lawsuit Match.com" to see that (maybe) consumers will be getting the upper hand. Until businesses bribe, er, lobby, Congress to protect them that is.
If it was the editors, we could chalk it up to laziness. But this is coming from a supposedly reputable source with paid editors and other bells and whistles.
it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started to putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.'
1) it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started to put paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
2) it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
3) it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have stooped to putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
The only way to eliminate this is to end the discussion, once and for all, by saying that ID is *not* scientific and doesn't belong anywhere but theology and philosophy courses.
It's already been done in the Dover case. See the judges ruling (pdf document) starting with Section D. on page 10. Or, if you prefer a non-pdf format, see this link at TalkOrigins which is the conclusion of the judge regarding ID.
Granted, the American Taliban won't stop their efforts at imposing their religious views on everyone else despite this and other rulings, but at least they can't claim that their ideas have already been ruled as religious, and not scientific, in nature.
If you're going that route, the manufacturer had better explain that in the documentation so the user knows what's going on. Otherwise, they'll be getting hundreds of calls from irate users screaming, "Why can't I use this piece of junk to connect to the internet tubes! Dammit, I paid for this and now I can't use it! What kind of piece of crap are you people selling?!!!"
I know, I know. The people who write the manuals don't actually use the products they talk about* so the manufacturer will have to make a concerted effort to put this notice on the three pieces of paper that come with products nowadays.
*In helping my parents configure their new tv a few years back, the manufacturer left an important part in how to save your settings when blocking out unused channels. If you followed the directions, blocking channels would not have worked. The crucial step of selecting the channel in question was left out of the instructions. It was only because of having used similar menu arrangements on other devices that I knew to not follow the directions as written.
You're not the only one who has issues with HD format and adult movies. The folks who star in these movies are nervous about all the imperfections that are showing up now that resolution is so high.
I have a story from the NY Times (reg now required) in my journal which talks about this very issue. One of the solutions? Use software packages to 'soften' the images. In other words, film the movie in HD format then turn down the resolution so it is similar to that of what is on video tape or film.
Judas Priest Yello Boston Mozart Blue Man Group Green Day (the original stuff)
Yeah, go ahead. Just TRY to put me in a category.
Someone's musical tastes can only give you so much information about someone. The only way to know what a person is really like is to spend time with them.
True, and I should have been more specific in my comments.
To use a very broad generalization, think of Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons. While I'm sure there are many people who find her characterization of a minister's wife to be offensive, these are probably the same people who do the very thing that Helen's character does.
I once told someone that those who are the most likely to put their nose in someone else's business are more likely than not to have a strong religious upbringing.
but it's completely acceptable for religions to interfere with everyone elses lifes.
Because that's the purpose of religion. Religion(s) were designed to instruct people in a certain set of ways or rules which must be followed to appease whatever god(s) or goddess(es) that religion worships. In other words, we (the religion in question) will tell you how to live your life.
Think about it, christianity says you must to X, Y and Z to get into heaven. If you don't, you're condemned to an eternity of damnation. Islam has its own rules that one must follow to be rewarded.
Other than making people feel better about themselves, the only purpose of religion is to interfere in people's lives.
So now it's Windows fault because people are too stupid or lazy to out figure the difference?
Yes, it is Windows fault because people are too stupid or lazy to figure out the difference just as it's my fault when I replaced a users keyboard with a new one which had a half inch difference between two keys which was too difficult for the user to figure out and wanted his old keyboard back. People ripped me because it was my fault for not getting the user a keyboard with the exact same layout as the old one even though the difference between two keys, as already stated, was a half inch.
You can read my comments and the discussion at this link.
So which is it folks? Either it's Windows fault that people can't adapt or people should be able to adapt to new situations.
Their gov't seems to think that you have to pay your US income tax no matter where you are...
The overriding rule of the IRS is:
You must pay taxes on income received from any source. (emphasis mine)
Thus, the guy who won a trip into space but had to decline because he would have owed $25K in taxes since he had won something of value and thus received income.
Yeah, it sucks, but when you're dealing with corruption, the money has to come from somewhere.
Hate to be the one to tell you this, but a lot of people dont really like living in a capitalistic society.
There's always Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Eritrea, to name just a few, non-capitalistic nations one could move to.
And no, this is not one of those, "If you don't like this country, get out" redneck things. Just pointing out a few options one has if one doesn't like living in a capitalistic society.
In other words, committing a crime by destroying someone else's property, which the owner will have to pay for out of their own pocket to get fixed, because someone was using drugs.
Geez, Occam's razor goes right out the window with you folks sometimes.
Naw, it's because drugs are cool man. Didn't you know, it's ok for people to be stoned while using heavy equipment or taking care of your bank accounts. Nothing wrong with that. It's like, the thing to do to escape and relax.
Besides, what do you care if the guy next to you is doing coke? Just because he gets a bad batch and flips out on your ass doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's like, you know, just one of those things.
This case, while a plain view case, is completely different than police relying on a warrant but being in the wrong place and seeing evidence of a crime. To use your previous example, if the wrong address was put on a warrant, and the police relied on that information, then any evidence of a crime at that wrong address could be used. That would (or should) fall under the good faith exception.
In the case you sited, the cop admitted he only entered the apartment to confirm what he saw through the window, not to accompany the person to get identification or for any other reason. Therefore, he had no reason to be where he was to more cloesly verify what he saw through the window.
The general (very general) rule is that so long as police rely on what they perceive to be a valid warrant, even if the warrant is found to be defective after the fact, evidence found at the location will be held as valid.
If the police make a mistake on a warrant application in "good faith" then evidence will likely be held admissible
That is what I was getting at, not that they could go into the house next door, deliberately, and use any evidence found therein.
As far as the dumpster analogy, while we're not throwing away our pieces of electronic information, we are using a communal source.
Maybe a better analogy would be if police had a tip that a silver Honda Civic was going to be on a certain road and it would be carrying drugs. They also know that it would be driven by a white male.
They don't have a license plate so they have to stop every silver Honda Civic driven by a white guy that comes by until they, hopefully, find the right one.
In the current case, they are looking for one specific computer but can't narrow it down enough so they have to check everyone within a certain IP range until they find the right person.
This seems more akin to having the police executing a warrant on the wrong house and finding a stash of cocaine. Which would be thrown out of court.
No it wouldn't. This would fall under the plain view exception. Even though the police were in the wrong place, they were excecuting a legal warrant and recognized the object of a crime in plain view. There are numerous cases out there where police enter the wrong house or apartment, find evidence of a crime in that wrong location and all the evidence seized is held valid.
As far as the second part of your question, this is where the courts are going to have to determine how far the FBI can go. I agree with your premise, is it lawful to look through innocent people's information to find the guilty party, but the same could be said of a cop looking through a dumpster.
Let's say that an officer believes that a particular store is dealing in drugs or stolen goods. Rather than get a search warrant, the officer goes to the communal dumpster and roots through, looking for evidence of wrongdoing from the store in question. Obviously, since it is a communal dumpster, the officer would be rooting through debris from people who are in no way involved in illegal activity to try and find evidence that one store is doing something illegal. However, courts have ruled that evidence found this way is legal as items in a dumpster or garbage can are considered abandoned by their owners with no expectation of privacy. After all, if you wanted to keep it private, you wouldn't have thrown it away, would you?
If a cop suspects that someone in your neighborhood is dealing cocaine, is it legal for them to search through every house, busting all unintended targets for any illegalities along the way?
Of course not. That is why they either try to find an informant or do their own undercover buying to narrow their search. Once they are sure they have things narrowed down, they apply for a warrant to search the one house.
Slashdot Mirror
In the case of banks, no. When opening an account, banks must, by law be provided with certain documentation which proves who you are. For a quick and dirty list, see this from Rice University (pdf). Note that a matricular consular card IS NOT a valid form of identification yet Bank of America, and others, are being allowed to use it anyway.
So what if BofA has decided to take that risk?
By violating federal law, the government, if it so chose to do so, could suspend or revoke Bank of America's charter or even take it over. If you had accounts with them, would you want them to be risking your money?
And god forbid people trying to make a better life be able to save a few bucks so there children can get a better schooling and become productive tax paying members of the US.
Strawman argument. No one is saying that non-citizens shouldn't be allowed to open accounts. What is being said is that people who shouldn't be here in the first place are being allowed to circumvent the law with the aid and assistance of banks.
no no, lets just spend billions upon billions of dollars throughing out people who will do jobs no locals will.
False argument. While certainly some jobs like maid service in hotels or grunt work on construction sites are jobs that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't do, the issue is that these people have not followed very basic rules to get a green card to work here legally.
Further, the vast majority of their money isn't even spent in this country. It is sent to their home country to support their families which means the money they make is propping up other, corrupt, governments who can't see the way to take care of their own people.
I would also argue that if BofA wants to hold money for people with lttle or no documentation that's their business.
See my above comments. Further, Bank of America is a publicly traded company. They are responsible to the shareholders. By endangering their status they are risking the money of the owners of the company.
Think about how many mutual funds or pension accounts have money invested in Bank of America stock. Imagine what would happen if Bank of America stock gets suspended pending investigations of its activities. Can you say panic?
Yes, yes they will. See the current bruhaha over Bank of America and their giving credit cards to illegal aliens as well as allowing unapproved documents to be used to open accounts.
Even, gasp!, Michelle Malkin is getting into scrum and accusing the Bush administration of ignoring and condoning the actions of Bank of America.
One need only do searches for things like "lawsuit Match.com" to see that (maybe) consumers will be getting the upper hand. Until businesses bribe, er, lobby, Congress to protect them that is.
I know. Which is why it's so disconcerting.
If it was the editors, we could chalk it up to laziness. But this is coming from a supposedly reputable source with paid editors and other bells and whistles.
1) it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started to put paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
2) it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have started putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
3) it seems therefore to be an oxymoron that they have stooped to putting paid changing banner advertisements for malware, on the popular MSN groups servers.
Lock down usb ports.
Besides, no matter what they do, they can't stop me from creating a knoppix cluster from my coworkers pc's after they all leave for the day.
They can fire you.
See, not so hard.
It's already been done in the Dover case. See the judges ruling (pdf document) starting with Section D. on page 10. Or, if you prefer a non-pdf format, see this link at TalkOrigins which is the conclusion of the judge regarding ID.
Granted, the American Taliban won't stop their efforts at imposing their religious views on everyone else despite this and other rulings, but at least they can't claim that their ideas have already been ruled as religious, and not scientific, in nature.
I like his comment about if we come from monkeys, does that gives us the right to act like them?
Considering the way Creationists jump up and down and fling poo every time the word Evolution is used, I'd say his question has already been answered.
If you're going that route, the manufacturer had better explain that in the documentation so the user knows what's going on. Otherwise, they'll be getting hundreds of calls from irate users screaming, "Why can't I use this piece of junk to connect to the internet tubes! Dammit, I paid for this and now I can't use it! What kind of piece of crap are you people selling?!!!"
I know, I know. The people who write the manuals don't actually use the products they talk about* so the manufacturer will have to make a concerted effort to put this notice on the three pieces of paper that come with products nowadays.
*In helping my parents configure their new tv a few years back, the manufacturer left an important part in how to save your settings when blocking out unused channels. If you followed the directions, blocking channels would not have worked. The crucial step of selecting the channel in question was left out of the instructions. It was only because of having used similar menu arrangements on other devices that I knew to not follow the directions as written.
Fools and their money are easily parted.
You mean compared to what it is now with only 100 people a day being killed, right?
I have a story from the NY Times (reg now required) in my journal which talks about this very issue. One of the solutions? Use software packages to 'soften' the images. In other words, film the movie in HD format then turn down the resolution so it is similar to that of what is on video tape or film.
I'm sure you meant ninja pirates riding wombats the size of rhinoceros are not far behind.
Judas Priest
Yello
Boston
Mozart
Blue Man Group
Green Day (the original stuff)
Yeah, go ahead. Just TRY to put me in a category.
Someone's musical tastes can only give you so much information about someone. The only way to know what a person is really like is to spend time with them.
True, and I should have been more specific in my comments.
To use a very broad generalization, think of Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons. While I'm sure there are many people who find her characterization of a minister's wife to be offensive, these are probably the same people who do the very thing that Helen's character does.
I once told someone that those who are the most likely to put their nose in someone else's business are more likely than not to have a strong religious upbringing.
Because that's the purpose of religion. Religion(s) were designed to instruct people in a certain set of ways or rules which must be followed to appease whatever god(s) or goddess(es) that religion worships. In other words, we (the religion in question) will tell you how to live your life.
Think about it, christianity says you must to X, Y and Z to get into heaven. If you don't, you're condemned to an eternity of damnation. Islam has its own rules that one must follow to be rewarded.
Other than making people feel better about themselves, the only purpose of religion is to interfere in people's lives.
Yes, it is Windows fault because people are too stupid or lazy to figure out the difference just as it's my fault when I replaced a users keyboard with a new one which had a half inch difference between two keys which was too difficult for the user to figure out and wanted his old keyboard back. People ripped me because it was my fault for not getting the user a keyboard with the exact same layout as the old one even though the difference between two keys, as already stated, was a half inch.
You can read my comments and the discussion at this link.
So which is it folks? Either it's Windows fault that people can't adapt or people should be able to adapt to new situations.
The overriding rule of the IRS is:
You must pay taxes on income received from any source. (emphasis mine)
Thus, the guy who won a trip into space but had to decline because he would have owed $25K in taxes since he had won something of value and thus received income.
Yeah, it sucks, but when you're dealing with corruption, the money has to come from somewhere.
to be identified as a spammer:
If I didn't ask to receive your email, you're a spammer.
Period.
There's always Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Eritrea, to name just a few, non-capitalistic nations one could move to.
And no, this is not one of those, "If you don't like this country, get out" redneck things. Just pointing out a few options one has if one doesn't like living in a capitalistic society.
In other words, committing a crime by destroying someone else's property, which the owner will have to pay for out of their own pocket to get fixed, because someone was using drugs.
That's ok, right?
Naw, it's because drugs are cool man. Didn't you know, it's ok for people to be stoned while using heavy equipment or taking care of your bank accounts. Nothing wrong with that. It's like, the thing to do to escape and relax.
Besides, what do you care if the guy next to you is doing coke? Just because he gets a bad batch and flips out on your ass doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's like, you know, just one of those things.
This case, while a plain view case, is completely different than police relying on a warrant but being in the wrong place and seeing evidence of a crime. To use your previous example, if the wrong address was put on a warrant, and the police relied on that information, then any evidence of a crime at that wrong address could be used. That would (or should) fall under the good faith exception.
In the case you sited, the cop admitted he only entered the apartment to confirm what he saw through the window, not to accompany the person to get identification or for any other reason. Therefore, he had no reason to be where he was to more cloesly verify what he saw through the window.
The general (very general) rule is that so long as police rely on what they perceive to be a valid warrant, even if the warrant is found to be defective after the fact, evidence found at the location will be held as valid.
That is what I was getting at, not that they could go into the house next door, deliberately, and use any evidence found therein.
As far as the dumpster analogy, while we're not throwing away our pieces of electronic information, we are using a communal source.
Maybe a better analogy would be if police had a tip that a silver Honda Civic was going to be on a certain road and it would be carrying drugs. They also know that it would be driven by a white male.
They don't have a license plate so they have to stop every silver Honda Civic driven by a white guy that comes by until they, hopefully, find the right one.
In the current case, they are looking for one specific computer but can't narrow it down enough so they have to check everyone within a certain IP range until they find the right person.
In case anyone was interested about the garbage or communal dumpster issue, please see this link (federal) and this link (North Carolina).
No it wouldn't. This would fall under the plain view exception. Even though the police were in the wrong place, they were excecuting a legal warrant and recognized the object of a crime in plain view. There are numerous cases out there where police enter the wrong house or apartment, find evidence of a crime in that wrong location and all the evidence seized is held valid.
As far as the second part of your question, this is where the courts are going to have to determine how far the FBI can go. I agree with your premise, is it lawful to look through innocent people's information to find the guilty party, but the same could be said of a cop looking through a dumpster.
Let's say that an officer believes that a particular store is dealing in drugs or stolen goods. Rather than get a search warrant, the officer goes to the communal dumpster and roots through, looking for evidence of wrongdoing from the store in question. Obviously, since it is a communal dumpster, the officer would be rooting through debris from people who are in no way involved in illegal activity to try and find evidence that one store is doing something illegal. However, courts have ruled that evidence found this way is legal as items in a dumpster or garbage can are considered abandoned by their owners with no expectation of privacy. After all, if you wanted to keep it private, you wouldn't have thrown it away, would you?
If a cop suspects that someone in your neighborhood is dealing cocaine, is it legal for them to search through every house, busting all unintended targets for any illegalities along the way?
Of course not. That is why they either try to find an informant or do their own undercover buying to narrow their search. Once they are sure they have things narrowed down, they apply for a warrant to search the one house.
Here is a bit more on search and seizure using warrants.