Better question: what the fuck is up with everyone else besides Americans assuming that one or two school officials in isolated incidents means ALL americans are paranoid?
Well, it might have something to do with all the people here on slashdot supporting the officials. If so many free-speech luving slashdotters think what happened was the right thing you can bet even more of the general public is cowering in fear of the girl.
I am so happy that I don't know the level of raw hatred and paranoia to continue to blame someone for a crime AFTER someone else has confessed (Armitage), that confession has been confirmed (by Novak) and the case has been closed.
You have no curiosity as to why Libby did what he did and was subsequently convicted of?
Anyone find it interesting that we routinely run massive trade deficits with China but stand mute while their Government tacitly condones piracy on an industrialized scale?
It doesn't matter since in this case, the people this guy works for asked for the passwords.
Key difference between your version and reality - the people this guy WORKED for. They fired his ass and then came back demanding the passwords.
He is completely free of guilt should they screw things up and no court would hold him responsible for doing exactly what his duties required him to do.
Irrelevant. If it has to go to court, he's already screwed.
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times? That nonsense has made me jump out of my damn seat a couple times, now.
100% with you on that. Fuck the Seven Forbidden Words - false sirens while driving are 100x more dangerous to society at large. I've given up on listening to any radio other than NPR precisely because of those shenanigans - its either NPR or my mp3s. And if NPR ever does it, even once, that'll be the end of them too.
In defense of the advertisers, how are they supposed to know how loud the commercials should be? The producers aren't given copies of the shows beforehand; it's not like they know ahead of time.
There are broadcast standards that define that sort of thing, part of the same standards that define the color gamut, the number of effective pixels, etc.
Personally I LOVE loud commercials - it makes auto-detecting them easy which makes thing like mythtv's automatic commercial remover work better.
No, the blame still belongs 100% to the thief. All because you make something trivially easy to steal doesn't make you at all guilty if it is stolen.
No, the blame still belongs 100% to the company giving away the bandwidth. The user is asking for something, it is up to the person they are asking it of to decide if it should be given away. It is entirely within the ability of the cell carrier to limit access on their end, if they choose not to do so and instead blindly hand out packets to any and all requests, then that is their fault.
Or do you not believe in taking responsibility for one's own direct actions? That it is the citizen's duty not to ask for anything that you personally believe they are not entitled to, rather than the owner of that thing making the effort to do due diligence on how it responds to such requests?
However, that was not the point of the paragraph where that sentence appeared, nor is it related to my argument as a whole. The fact that you see this tidbit three paragraphs in should be testament to that.
Oh please, the rest of your post is devoted to hyperbole about it being impossible to avoid the generic crawl. I didn't bother to address that exaggeration because it is silly on the face of it.
However, no one has yet to explain how this data is actually detrimental to you, beyond the stuff I already mentioned.
You haven't been thinking about the issue enough else you could come up with plenty of examples all on your own. For example -- Do some searches about condoms and the linkage causes you to get free samples in the mail. Except you are snipped and married... Accidental disclosure of private information to friends and family is an entire class of detriment.
But even more importantly - privacy is like Pandora's box - people with your attitude open the box wide because they aren't able to conceive of how loosing (and that's spelled correctly) their personal information out into the world could ever hurt them. Then, down the line, something they never thought of, but someone else has be it an id thief, a political opponent, or even someone wishing to do them physical harm, becomes a means to hurt you and the only thing you've got left to protect yourself with is hope.
It boils down to one very simple fact - giving away that information does nothing to benefit you. At the very best it can never be better than neutral. So taking reasonable steps to protect yourself is the obvious course of action.
However, let's be frank. If the government wanted to learn something about you, they would just go to your friendly neighborhood telecom oligopoly. The ISPs, after all, have long proven themselves more than ready to give out whatever data they have, for pennies per request.
There is a big difference between being actively targeted for investigation versus being caught up in the generic trawling net of google and other tracking services that seek to build profiles on everyone.
Avoiding an active investigation is far beyond the scope of the original question here, but your entire argument rests entirely on that red herring.
Ever consider that many of those comments contain bogus personal information?
It isn't hard to casually drop bogus information in the middle of a discussion such that its valildity does not matter to the discussion at hand, but anyone combing through everything you've written will get a fat red herring if they try to put together a composite picture of you.
It works even better if you have an actual person in mind when dropping these hints, because then the picture will appear to lead to a real person. Sucks for them, but the blame for any hassle they get sits squarely on the shoulders of the people doing the hassling based on poor assumptions.
(of course you'll have to regularly close the browser for it to be effective).
FYI, the Better Privacy plugin can delete flash cookies based on age so you do not have to restart the browser to get the benefit - I have mine set to delete any that are over 1 hour old.
Except for the fact that most Tor nodes are trojaned DoD machines, with all sorts of data->disk logging features. Or not. But how could you tell?
Not a problem. The exit-nodes don't know your IP address - that's the beauty of tor. And if you only use it for searches and are smart enough to block cookies/java/javascript/referrers/etc then it is going to be ridiculously hard to correlate those searches with your actual web browsing through a completely different channel.
1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.
If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).
I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.
Each profile has a couple of add-ons: Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness) Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT
Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile: 1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies 2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies 3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently 4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key 5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa
All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use
Now, if only Google would sign the same confidentiality agreement that Jeeves did. Oh and it would be nice if Google's fiscal priorities were aligned with maintaining my privacy like Jeeves's are rather than exploiting it.
If the dissenters are morons who don't understand it, what does that make the believers? Blind-faith followers? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Ultimately it comes down to reputation - nobody can be an expert in everything. So you - as a regular guy whose vote doesn't really count anyway - have to rely on the reputations of the people making claims and the reputations of those refuting the claims. Even the people who do have a vote - politicians, the men with man-sacks full of gold, etc - have to ultimately rely on reputations too, just they have an obligation to do a much better job of evaluating those reputations before making up their minds.
one of its distinguishing traits is that it does not publish bylines. Ever.
A benefit of that policy is that it discourages showboating ala Geraldo. Within the biz, everybody knows who wrote what so the authors get their credit within their professional circles. But the general audience, for whom the articles are meant to be written, has no name to hang any hype on.
Re:like trying to offer proof to a Birther
on
The Limits To Skepticism
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Denialist ostriches aren't disagreeing because they have a qualitative or quantitative argument to the contrary, because their objections are based on ideology, not science.
The hard part is differentiating between the ideologues and the merely vociferous. Refusing to consider anything that has not been peer-reviewed is an ideology all of its own. Ultimately it comes down to a judgment call for anyone who is less than a perfect expert in the field. Although I am a big fan of applying the little boy who cried wolf criteria - the more unsupported claims someone makes, the less weight their opinion should carry. Of course that requires investigating prior claims which is generally more work than most press-release reporters are willing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Better question: what the fuck is up with everyone else besides Americans assuming that one or two school officials in isolated incidents means ALL americans are paranoid?
Well, it might have something to do with all the people here on slashdot supporting the officials. If so many free-speech luving slashdotters think what happened was the right thing you can bet even more of the general public is cowering in fear of the girl.
Freedom isn't free. Just because the general public doesn't want freedom doesn't mean we should toss it out.
If it so simple, why don't you answer it?
He was convicted of a lot more charges than perjury.
I am so happy that I don't know the level of raw hatred and paranoia to continue to blame someone for a crime AFTER someone else has confessed (Armitage), that confession has been confirmed (by Novak) and the case has been closed.
You have no curiosity as to why Libby did what he did and was subsequently convicted of?
As a literacy supporter:
Woooosh!
Lolz, pbuh!
Anyone find it interesting that we routinely run massive trade deficits with China but stand mute while their Government tacitly condones piracy on an industrialized scale?
I would, if it were true. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE50P5XZ20090126
He compared the data contained within an address book that would be searchable.
How is an address book not "papers" as in the 4th ammendment's person, papers and effects?
It doesn't matter since in this case, the people this guy works for asked for the passwords.
Key difference between your version and reality - the people this guy WORKED for. They fired his ass and then came back demanding the passwords.
He is completely free of guilt should they screw things up and no court would hold him responsible for doing exactly what his duties required him to do.
Irrelevant. If it has to go to court, he's already screwed.
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times? That nonsense has made me jump out of my damn seat a couple times, now.
100% with you on that. Fuck the Seven Forbidden Words - false sirens while driving are 100x more dangerous to society at large. I've given up on listening to any radio other than NPR precisely because of those shenanigans - its either NPR or my mp3s. And if NPR ever does it, even once, that'll be the end of them too.
In defense of the advertisers, how are they supposed to know how loud the commercials should be? The producers aren't given copies of the shows beforehand; it's not like they know ahead of time.
There are broadcast standards that define that sort of thing, part of the same standards that define the color gamut, the number of effective pixels, etc.
Personally I LOVE loud commercials - it makes auto-detecting them easy which makes thing like mythtv's automatic commercial remover work better.
Irrelevant to my point. Please do your own research. That is far from the only article on the topic.
No, the blame still belongs 100% to the thief. All because you make something trivially easy to steal doesn't make you at all guilty if it is stolen.
No, the blame still belongs 100% to the company giving away the bandwidth. The user is asking for something, it is up to the person they are asking it of to decide if it should be given away. It is entirely within the ability of the cell carrier to limit access on their end, if they choose not to do so and instead blindly hand out packets to any and all requests, then that is their fault.
Or do you not believe in taking responsibility for one's own direct actions? That it is the citizen's duty not to ask for anything that you personally believe they are not entitled to, rather than the owner of that thing making the effort to do due diligence on how it responds to such requests?
However, that was not the point of the paragraph where that sentence appeared, nor is it related to my argument as a whole. The fact that you see this tidbit three paragraphs in should be testament to that.
Oh please, the rest of your post is devoted to hyperbole about it being impossible to avoid the generic crawl. I didn't bother to address that exaggeration because it is silly on the face of it.
However, no one has yet to explain how this data is actually detrimental to you, beyond the stuff I already mentioned.
You haven't been thinking about the issue enough else you could come up with plenty of examples all on your own. For example -- Do some searches about condoms and the linkage causes you to get free samples in the mail. Except you are snipped and married... Accidental disclosure of private information to friends and family is an entire class of detriment.
But even more importantly - privacy is like Pandora's box - people with your attitude open the box wide because they aren't able to conceive of how loosing (and that's spelled correctly) their personal information out into the world could ever hurt them. Then, down the line, something they never thought of, but someone else has be it an id thief, a political opponent, or even someone wishing to do them physical harm, becomes a means to hurt you and the only thing you've got left to protect yourself with is hope.
It boils down to one very simple fact - giving away that information does nothing to benefit you. At the very best it can never be better than neutral. So taking reasonable steps to protect yourself is the obvious course of action.
However, let's be frank. If the government wanted to learn something about you, they would just go to your friendly neighborhood telecom oligopoly. The ISPs, after all, have long proven themselves more than ready to give out whatever data they have, for pennies per request.
There is a big difference between being actively targeted for investigation versus being caught up in the generic trawling net of google and other tracking services that seek to build profiles on everyone.
Avoiding an active investigation is far beyond the scope of the original question here, but your entire argument rests entirely on that red herring.
Ever consider that many of those comments contain bogus personal information?
It isn't hard to casually drop bogus information in the middle of a discussion such that its valildity does not matter to the discussion at hand, but anyone combing through everything you've written will get a fat red herring if they try to put together a composite picture of you.
It works even better if you have an actual person in mind when dropping these hints, because then the picture will appear to lead to a real person. Sucks for them, but the blame for any hassle they get sits squarely on the shoulders of the people doing the hassling based on poor assumptions.
(of course you'll have to regularly close the browser for it to be effective).
FYI, the Better Privacy plugin can delete flash cookies based on age so you do not have to restart the browser to get the benefit - I have mine set to delete any that are over 1 hour old.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/02/woman-uses-tape-to-trick-biometric-airport-fingerprint-scan/
and the other one was just posted here on slashdot a few days ago - the woman switched prints from left to right hand
Except for the fact that most Tor nodes are trojaned DoD machines, with all sorts of data->disk logging features. Or not. But how could you tell?
Not a problem.
The exit-nodes don't know your IP address - that's the beauty of tor.
And if you only use it for searches and are smart enough to block cookies/java/javascript/referrers/etc then it is going to be ridiculously hard to correlate those searches with your actual web browsing through a completely different channel.
1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.
If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).
I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.
Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT
Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa
All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use
I use my butler Jeeves for everything.
Now, if only Google would sign the same confidentiality agreement that Jeeves did. Oh and it would be nice if Google's fiscal priorities were aligned with maintaining my privacy like Jeeves's are rather than exploiting it.
If the dissenters are morons who don't understand it, what does that make the believers? Blind-faith followers? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Ultimately it comes down to reputation - nobody can be an expert in everything. So you - as a regular guy whose vote doesn't really count anyway - have to rely on the reputations of the people making claims and the reputations of those refuting the claims. Even the people who do have a vote - politicians, the men with man-sacks full of gold, etc - have to ultimately rely on reputations too, just they have an obligation to do a much better job of evaluating those reputations before making up their minds.
one of its distinguishing traits is that it does not publish bylines. Ever.
A benefit of that policy is that it discourages showboating ala Geraldo. Within the biz, everybody knows who wrote what so the authors get their credit within their professional circles. But the general audience, for whom the articles are meant to be written, has no name to hang any hype on.
Denialist ostriches aren't disagreeing because they have a qualitative or quantitative argument to the contrary, because their objections are based on ideology, not science.
The hard part is differentiating between the ideologues and the merely vociferous. Refusing to consider anything that has not been peer-reviewed is an ideology all of its own. Ultimately it comes down to a judgment call for anyone who is less than a perfect expert in the field. Although I am a big fan of applying the little boy who cried wolf criteria - the more unsupported claims someone makes, the less weight their opinion should carry. Of course that requires investigating prior claims which is generally more work than most press-release reporters are willing to do.