So the more effectively someone has learned to deal with physical threats, the less potential for harm there is for both the victim and the assailant.
This seems to indicate that someone training the public in self-defense methods is clearly in the public's interest.
Indeed. Self-defense, as in having learned how to stop attackers with the least amount of harm, not as in learned how to most efficiently kill someone.
If I were to begin removing your knowledge of each of the 26 letters of the alphabet one by one, your ability to form the most appropriate word to complete a sentence would drop, not increase.
What "reasonable force" is depends on a lot of circumstances. An old or infirm person might be justified on calling his dogs to attack unarmed assailants, or grab a kitchen knife, despite either being disproportionate force. A weapons expert might be justified in firing a warning shot, but if stronger than the assailant might be expected to follow up a continued attack with wresting the person to the ground, not shooting him.
So the more effectively someone has learned to deal with physical threats, the less potential for harm there is for both the victim and the assailant.
This seems to indicate that someone training the public in self-defense methods is clearly in the public's interest.
PS. It is a sad fact that I am posting (for the first time on/.) anonymously, because I'm afraid that even writing this could cause problems for me on future trips to the US.
I agree.
Do you not understand that a government cannot stop all of its people all of the time, or even most of it? However, it can cause them to be so concerned individually, that most will quasi-voluntarily opt to restrict their behavior. The result is that those who do not, encounter the brunt of the government retaliation. I understand that sheepdog employ the same tactic when they herd.
This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to kill people IN SELF-DEFENSE. (Really, read the article.)
... [T]he UK has a concept of minimum force. If you see a black guy in your neighbourhood and think he may be causing trouble you are not just allowed to kill him.
Absolutely. If you do, there are consequences that happen as a result of your choice.
As distinct from what seems to be happening here: if you think he may be causing trouble, you are not allowed to know how to stop him with fatal force should it become necessary. And to make sure you will be unable to, a government will pre-emptively stop a man from entering the country for attempting to provide you with that knowledge.
As similar approach would be terminating a life in the second trimester, on the grounds that it may grow up to commit a violent crime several decades later. That is a lack of minimum force of law, also termed "overreaching" or just plain "usurpation" [of political authorities by the agents of government]. Then again I'm not sure from where the political authority is considered to derive within the UK; perhaps whatever the PM or monarch says, goes.
No kidding. This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to KILL PEOPLE. (Really, read the article.)
Are you sure you're not Kent Brockman?
"Just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the Army, but a more alarmist name would be... The Killbot Factory."
According to non-mainstream news sources including Benjamin Fulford (a former correspondent for Forbes Magazine) and a U.S. military official known as The Drake, both the U.S. and the U.K. are encountering a co-ordinated effort to remove, forcibly if necessary, corrupt political officials from power in compliance with the law. This effort has a lot of backing from significant numbers of U.S. military personnel, Interpol, the Pentagon, the Agencies, U.S. Marshals... and underground Asian societies.
Interesting that this piece is coming out at this juncture.
In addition to TeleHuman, the Queen’s researchers have also developed BodiPod, an interactive 3D anatomy model of the human body. The model can be explored 360 degrees around the model through gestures and speech interactions.
When people approach the Pod, they can wave in thin air to peel off layers of tissue. In X-ray mode, as users get closer to the Pod they can see deeper into the anatomy, revealing the model’s muscles, organs and bone structure. Voice commands such as “show brain” or “show heart” will automatically zoom into a 3D model of a brain or heart.
Oh, now they have to combine the two. Nothing like idly flicking away layers of tissue from the person at the other end of the teleconference while they're nattering on. And, you'll finally be able to verify that some people actually do have a heart.
The distinction is pretty important, and so long as it's not used as an argument to diminish rights it makes quite a bit of sense.
I agree that in a case of accidental nonsentient monitoring that isn't accessed, it's pretty inconsequential.
The natural concern is of course intentional, systematic monitoring, sentient or otherwise, that is or can be accessed effectively. And carefully evaluating who collected that data in the first place, and whether their motives for so doing were even valid and fair, is just a sensible part of data security approached from a societal, rather than a technological, means. Limiting the cases in which collecting the data in the first place is considered socially acceptable is a good place to begin in terms of limiting data loss.
This is because the difficulty occurs when personal data becomes retained by outside parties, because at that point it's pretty difficult for the original owner to establish with any certainty whether that data is accessible or not.
Case in point, when several of the CIA's laptops went missing a few years ago. They were concerned about the data when the laptops went missing, despite the fact that the information was almost certainly encrypted. It's a natural concern, when confidential data is retained by outside parties beyond the control and oversight of the initiating party. The CIA didn't stop to assess whether or not they supposed it could or would be successfully accessed before finding the incident a cause for concern; the mere possibility that it now could be, and they would have no way of knowing either way, was the problem.
There is very often a double-standard in evaluation that people make now, depending on whether the potentially damaged party is (a) a private citizen, or (2) a government agency or corporation. Somehow, there is typically a strong implied bias in the private citizen's disfavor there, and that should probably be noticed and assessed. The standard mentality seems to be that Joe Sixpack was negligent or mentally lacking for not better encrypting his data, and we're cautious to ask ourselves who it's really hurting anyway, but that if it happens to government agencies or corporations it's automatically considered a cause for concern because it represents a threat to state or trade secrets. And there is a disconcerting and counterintuitive propensity for that kind of thinking.
Organism Closest To Original "Tree of Life" Discovered
Eating of its fruit doesn't confer immortality per se, but many congenital defects abate, the skin regains elastin and the libido is enhanced significantly.
No, it's a form of encoding. If you're going to claim that as encryption, I can as reasonably claim that this is a private conversation between me and you, and that anyone else reading it has violated my rights because I encrypted it in ASCII or Unicode, or whatever prior to uploading it. It's not MY fault everyone else's computer is capable of decrypting it.
I think the distinction there would probably have to be intent, and basis.
By intent, I mean that there's a difference between engaging in a forum discussion, and deliberately attempting to intercept someone's comm traffic via their wifi signals. That's a close enough approximation to the guaranteed Fourth Amendment right of citizens to be secure in their papers (whether those papers are in the home, out outside of it) for me to equate them. Others may interpret that differently.
When I say basis, I mean that Google for example is a corporation with a stated basis of operation. While it's true that a lot of what I post could be searched for around the internet and compiled in a central database (Facebook does it), nothing authorizes Facebook to monitor citizens by doing this. They work for the Information Awareness Office, which compiles that information on citizens for the federal government's uses. Again, nothing authorizes the federal government to do that to its citizens, so there's a problem of it not being within its stated basis. Here, Google appeared to do it unintentionally and that would be a little different.
To intentionally violate someone's rights, there obviously must be intent and it must be acted upon. This is a distinction made in law, and it's a different way to distill the situation than the technological basis that most of the rest of Slashdot is using for this discussion. Still, I think it has the ability to get to the nitty-gritty about what expectations we have or don't have with other parties better than the technological perspective, without getting into direct morality which can rapidly get pretty nebulous indeed.
Under American Common Law, your likeness - as well as your signature - is your private property. People can no more snap you without your consent without being liable for violating your property rights than they can take an image of your signature and print it onto whatever they like.
Cite, please. It's my understanding that if you're in public, people absolutely can take your picture and do not need your consent. If you're correct, I'd like an explanation how paparazzi aren't all in jail.
Common practice within the Union about a century ago; I came across it years ago in research and no longer have the historical reference, unfortunately. I did find cites just now, though.
As to the paparazzi, part of it would most likely be that the country's forgotten that by now, or that as public figures celebrities are presumed to be accessible in that regard. I'm honestly not sure how much of which. It would be kind of interesting for celebs to copyright their likeness in this day and age though, and then sue tabloids for distributing without permission.
American Common Law remains in effect, but has been forgotten amid a heap of baseless legislation that lacks the authority to actually be law.
Perhaps we're getting to the core of the issue. You're arguing from a base where law isn't actually law. I can't follow you there.
Yes and no. It's the venue of law the Constitution was written in, and the American variant of Common Law remains the law of the land. However, it is prevalently ignored today by the majority of citizens, who have not heard of it. Yet.
And they now have lasers that can be pointed at windows and pick up conversations based on how the glass vibrates,
Yes, and infrared cameras that see through your walls. I suppose that's what muddies the waters. It comes down to the "reasonable person" test. IIRC, it's been decided (in court) that reasonable people do get protection from being spied on via IR cameras. I think it's reasonable to assume there's not a laser microphone pointed at your windows, too. I just don't feel that unencrypted wifi streaming out of your house deserves the same protection when it's trivial to encrypt it. I don't think we should have to IR shield our houses. I don't think we should have noise generators on our windows. I do think we should encrypt our wifi.
And there we disagree. Or rather, I don't think we should be considered to be obliged to encrypt our wifi in order to secure our right to privacy on it. But I do like how well you've summarized the matter.
I understand your point. And if the data on those papers requires certain software to read and decode, that is a form of encryption
No, it's a form of encoding. If you're going to claim that as encryption, I can as reasonably claim that this is a private conversation between me and you, and that anyone else reading it has violated my rights because I encrypted it in ASCII or Unicode, or whatever prior to uploading it. It's not MY fault everyone else's computer is capable of decrypting it.
Impressive! I honestly don't have a response to that one right now. I'll have to think about that one for a while. Thanks for the new (to me at least) point. Very refreshing to encounter.
No, it was half-in, half-out. By that I mean it was being used in their homes, and "leaked" out because that's what airwaves do. Which isn't typically a big deal, since one hardly expects people to be sitting outside trying to pick it up.
Yes. In other words, you need to consider more than just the most common case. You also need to consider edge cases, and the potential damage versus the likelihood versus the difficulty to mitigate. In this case, the edge case is likely - anyone with a laptop could do it, and have been known to (see wardriving), the damage is potentially severe - especially if you do stupid stuff like sending sensitive data in the clear over email, and the difficulty to mitigate is trivial.
No. You're discussing technological feasibility - and how complex it would be to implement, as well as risk-reward ratios. Which completely fails to address the matter in terms of rights in law. You do this several times throughout your response.
There's nothing technologically complicated about using a handgun either, and using one could certainly save you from a violent mugging.
No. However, securing your router doesn't inflict bodily harm on a human being, require special licensing, or open you to the possibility of charges arising from its use (yet). Are you sure you're not BadAnalogyGuy in drag? Having a gun is a complex piece of mitigation, involving training and licensing, and may not even be effective, as presence of a firearm might prevent, or it might provoke escalation. Better mitigation would simply be not to go to dangerous areas at night. Not foolproof, but it reduces the chances of occurrence down to the point where I've never been mugged in my life.
...such as here...
Whenever you leave your home, there is also a slight chance that it will rain no matter what the weather report says.
Which is why I keep an umbrella in the car.
You might get slammed by a car as you cross the street, therefore you should never leave the house without a pair of clean underwear on, in case you have an unanticipated ambulance ride to the hospital to worry about
And that's at a level of severity I really don't worry about. For various values of "clean" anyway.
And you might run into some tourists from Spain who don't speak English while you're out.
Again, level of severity is negligible. Why do I care if I can speak to the tourists or not?
Therefore, you should never leave the house without a loaded handgun, a large umbrella, a pair of clean underwear on, and a Spanish-to-English translation dictionary. Otherwise, it's your own damn fault.
Well, if you get caught in the rain without an umbrella, yes, it is your own damn fault. What do you want, the government to outlaw rain?
No. I'm demonstrating the impracticality of having a government refuse to acknowledge your rights, and leave you to fend for yourself in every eventuality.
My point, however, remains. Kismet does not come standard, you have to purposely install it - usually to sniff another person's otherwise-private network traffic.
Your threshold for "modification" seems to be unrealistically low - considering that would mean my grandma's computer with Open Office on it would be considered "specially modified technology".
If your grandmother can pick up my wifi data with Open Office, please do arrange a meeting with her for me.
Part of my point was that someone would have to modify the technology or use the software in order to pick up someone else's personal wifi data, thus legally establishing intent. If you demonstrate intent to nab someone's papers, or in this case wifi data, you've demonstrated an intent to violate t
...packet sniffing, as deliberate as it usually has to be, is just as easy to do and probably as someone glancing in your window. And that is wrong.
How easy it is to do depends very much on who you are. My problem with things like this is it actually encourages bad security. If we go around telling people that it's ok to just demand the world turn around when they do the digital equivalent of walking down the street naked, are they really better off than if we tell them "Hey, there's this check box you can set on your router that makes it all but impossible for people to snoop on you. If you don't check it, ANYBODY who bothers to try will see everything you do."?
I can appreciate that. It's a very noble sentiment, and I feel it myself.
What I have to keep in check, though, is that a desire to shape public policy - even in this case for something like technological education - does not enable myself or anyone else to remake the law in ways that violates someone's rights. The desire to reshape society for what often started out as noble goals as you've described, is now often misused when politicians play on emotions to gain public support for further erosion and inroads into the legal structure and the political assessment about what rights we have. Two hundred years of this stuff has caused the the average person to misremember the basis of the political and legal structure that prior generations of citizens had designed. And this is all to the temporary benefit of politicians in power. So I'm careful to keep my ideas of "what's right for people" from coloring my determinations about their rights, and must refer to what had originally been put in place. Common sense dictates that, legally, personal data is private and since you can't get at it without trying you have every reason to expect privacy.
We both know that's not true technologically, but from a legal standpoint it could work. There are any number of things which could be done technologically, that are against the law. Since the laws were designed to uphold rights, this should probably be one of them - and my understanding of American Common Law is that it probably already is. Common Law doesn't rely on a lot of legislation being passed, but on the operation of basic rights in a common sense manner.
It's all well and good to have laws about this stuff. We COULD enact a law making sniffing unencrypted WiFi illegal. IMO, it's far far better to just encrypt the damn thing and be done with it than hope when someone does capture your traffic, that you'll find out. Realistically, unless it's a high profile case like this, you'll never know.
You're talking about passing legislation specifically forbidding it. I think it probably makes sense, to deter people from packet sniffing personal data. Yes, from a technological standpoint people should probably be encrypting anyway. And if the cost-to-benefit ratio prompts them to do that, they will. The law, however, isn't supposed to tamper with the cost-to-benefit ratios of people who aren't violating the rights of others, just to prompt them into one choice or another. That would violate freedom as well, and today it happens frequently when politicians attempt to set public policies. They're not supposed to. The law is there to preserve rights, and by making a determination about whether rights to personal data privacy are guaranteed or not, the law would be doing its job.
I think it's already done this, but clarifying it would be good if there's public disagreement about that point.
Consider what you're saying. It's like condoning someone who breaks and enters into peoples' houses and goes reading through their papers and personal effects, and saying the problem is that they didn't have a secure enough vault in their home.
No, that's not remotely what I'm saying, and your Matthew Shepard comparison is wildly off base.
You're saying that the onus on people if they don't want others to take advantage of them is to hide all their vulnerable points. And I'm saying that's the sign of a lawless anarchy where people aren't presumed to have rights.
If you have unencrypted WiFi, you are broadcasting, quite literally, whatever you're doing. All I'm saying is if you're out in public, people can take your picture. You might not like it, but they can.
A very apt parallel. Under American Common Law, your likeness - as well as your signature - is your private property. People can no more snap you without your consent without being liable for violating your property rights than they can take an image of your signature and print it onto whatever they like. American Common Law remains in effect, but has been forgotten amid a heap of baseless legislation that lacks the authority to actually be law. People in the U.S. have forgotten their system, in favor of a johnny-come-lately. As one result, basic concepts and premises of law ("maxims") have been lost to them, and we get news stories in which some new situation brought about by new technology makes it all seem like an open question again. It's not.
If you yell at your wife on the front porch or in the house if you're loud enough, the neighbors can hear you.
And they now have lasers that can be pointed at windows and pick up conversations based on how the glass vibrates. The laser and the person using them are both located outside the house, so according to your reasoning it's perfectly fine as well. So, be sure to pick up some air pumps made for aquariums at the pet store and tape them to your windows, or it's your fault for being lax on the data security.
If my neighbors are installing surveillance equipment in order to overhear me shouting at my wife, and they couldn't overhear it any other way, they're not going to last as my neighbors for long.
I'm not saying you need to encrypt everything, or that you need a vault. I'm saying don't broadcast to the world if you don't want the world to hear you.
I'm very much pro-privacy, but if you want your privacy (as I do), you can't put the burden on the entire rest of the world to preserve it for you.
I'm typing this reply from my laptop, in a public location. As I type, there is cash in my wallet as we speak. Just sitting there. For anybody to pick up and take! Mind you, they'd need to have developed certain skills in order to do so. But they could do it! And it sounds like according to your reasoning, if they did it would be my fault because I expected the rest of the world not to deliberately attempt to pick my pocket. Whereas I'm more in favor of the traditional Middle Eastern response to people who are caught pickpocketing, in order to discourage it.
We railed against the DMCA because it criminalized circumventing even useless protection measures, but somehow when they're OUR useless protection measures, it's different? No, it's not.
Of course it's no different, if you're arguing the issue in the context they've handed you.
The actual difference is that before things like the DMCA, before a lot of this corrupt baseless legislation got passed, there were no victimless crimes in this country! You weren't hauled in before a magistrate and tried in a chancery court for offenses "against the state". You were brought to court when there was an injured party: you had either detrimented their right to life, liberty or propert
The wifi data was half-in, half-out of their private homes
No, it was out. The Google car never entered their property, and yet was able to capture that information in its entirety. It was wholly out of their home.
No, it was half-in, half-out. By that I mean it was being used in their homes, and "leaked" out because that's what airwaves do. Which isn't typically a big deal, since one hardly expects people to be sitting outside trying to pick it up. That's why this story is such a big deal; this time, someone was. I realize that it [purportedly] was unintentional, which is the only exonerating factor.
You argue that no, the exonerating factor was that Google should have been allowed to do this intentionally if it so desired. That the onus is on the private citizens to encrypt everything just in case someone is out there actively trying to sniff their data. Which is a distinct difference in mentality.
It was meant to be used by them, in their homes
They might have intended for it to only be in use in their home, but they never took the simple necessary technological measure to make it so (encrypting it) which is not a difficult thing to do with a home-use wi-fi router, even for a novice. It just requires them to read the manual.
There's nothing technologically complicated about using a handgun either, and using one could certainly save you from a violent mugging. Whenever you leave your home, there is also a slight chance that it will rain no matter what the weather report says. You might get slammed by a car as you cross the street, therefore you should never leave the house without a pair of clean underwear on, in case you have an unanticipated ambulance ride to the hospital to worry about. And you might run into some tourists from Spain who don't speak English while you're out. Therefore, you should never leave the house without a loaded handgun, a large umbrella, a pair of clean underwear on, and a Spanish-to-English translation dictionary. Otherwise, it's your own damn fault.
and technology had to be specifically modified and sent out in order to intercept it
No, no it didn't. One of the details in this case is that Google basically just used an off-the-shelf piece of software to dump all publicly available information. They caught that data because they didn't customize it.
They were using Kismet, so you're technically correct.
My point, however, remains. Kismet does not come standard, you have to purposely install it - usually to sniff another person's otherwise-private network traffic. If Google's sniffing had been deliberate, my point is that they would have been in the wrong for so doing. You seem to be adopting the position that no, that's perfectly alright, the citizenry had no reasonable expectation of a right to privacy there. That packet sniffing, as deliberate as it usually has to be, is just as easy to do and probably as someone glancing in your window. And that is wrong.
If Google itself had condoned it, there would be little difference between that and seeking to obtain Zero-Day exploits to commercial systems - with the exception that these are private individuals, not mere corporations.
And the fact that there was no security to actually exploit.
I think you missed my point there. I know this is Slashdot, but when I mentioned Zero-Days I was getting at legal exploits, not literal technological ones. Stuff without a lot of case precedent about it yet, such as intercepted wifi data, which Google - if they had done it deliberately, and happily this appears not to be the case - would have been able to take advantage of. In other words, using the fact that technology innovates faster than case precedent is established, to take advantage of people.
Sending out vans en masse to peoples' neighborhoods with equipment and software that's specifically designed to pluck wifi traffic out of the airwaves is no different from strolling down the sidewalk and happening to glance into someone's window. Why, just the other day I was on my way home, glanced over, and idly picked up several packets of someone's e-mail and a bit of their usenet traffic before I could think to look away. How silly of me.
The wifi data was half-in, half-out of their private homes. It was meant to be used by them, in their homes, and technology had to be specifically modified and sent out in order to intercept it. There's the basis of a reasonable expectation of a right to privacy right there. For someone to obtain that data, they have to go out of their way to nab it. If Google itself had condoned it, there would be little difference between that and seeking to obtain Zero-Day exploits to commercial systems - with the exception that these are private individuals, not mere corporations.
With all the hullabaloo from the MPAA and RIAA about ownership rights to for-profit data, we have at least as much right to our data as private citizens. Otherwise there's no point to having a government, if it doesn't uphold our rights.
And if Matthew Shepard didn't want to get savagely beaten to death by a group of bigots, he should have kept his sexual orientation a secret as well.
Consider what you're saying. It's like condoning someone who breaks and enters into peoples' houses and goes reading through their papers and personal effects, and saying the problem is that they didn't have a secure enough vault in their home.
Perhaps we should encrypt everything, all the time, petrified that someone unintended will snoop on us and find out about it. Perhaps the problem is that we've been too transparent and open about how we live our lives, not that someone else shouldn't be prying into them. However, before adopting Pig Latin as the national language, let's gloss over the Fourth Amendment for a moment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Hmm. Seems like our right to privacy was pretty important when we founded the U.S.. We didn't want our government invading it, so I doubt we would've wanted anyone else to either. Debate resolved; there's already been a determination on the matter over two hundred years ago, so the matter seems rather dated and redundant now.
The problem is that the people in the political system want to force the rest of us to be always accountable, while they themselves keeping the luxury of unaccountability.
We appear to be using two different definitions of "accountability".
People used to be accountable to themselves and each other - and through them, the law. If you violated rights, you had to make amends or become an outlaw. Laws were made to uphold standards of rights and values that people had in common - they were a formalized system of basic human decency.
In time, the representatives we delegated to maintain that system turned the concept of "accountability" on its ear, pretending that they, as public officials, were entities in and of themselves - with an agenda all their own. So today, people often think of "accountability" only in their redefined, bastardized usage: accountability to the whimsical edicts of legislators. But this is the idea of accountability being made to stand on its' head. There is no accountability without self-accountability, just as there is no control without self-control. The idea of being held accountable to an arbitrary, whimsical system is the idea of being accountable to a non-system - in other words, arbitrary edicts and mandates from authority figures. Slavery. In this modern usage, "accountability" doesn't mean anything valid. It becomes a socially acceptable substitute for "slavery", and I'm not using it that way because it would be rather bizarre and unconscionable. I mean real, legitimate, true accountability.
Anonymous is about levelling the playing field: Allow everyone, not just those in the political system, to be unaccountable.
Chaos is just as much a threat to rights as tyranny. Is that not self-evident to you?
It's like they're people who are tired of freezing, and so they set themselves on fire. Spectacular, but utterly useless.
Groups like Anonymous seem to get quite a kick out of thumbing their noses at the authority figures in the room. If only they'd realize that as members of We, the People, we are the authority figures, and the politicians are required to be our representatives, they could start reasserting a legitimate, functional society. And they'd realize that doesn't happen by adopting the position of the incorrigible adolescent truant; it takes people actively being functional human beings. That's the only way you get a functional society.
Slashdot Mirror
Give her a year or two as the political situation deteriorates. She might reconsider.
So the more effectively someone has learned to deal with physical threats, the less potential for harm there is for both the victim and the assailant.
This seems to indicate that someone training the public in self-defense methods is clearly in the public's interest.
Indeed. Self-defense, as in having learned how to stop attackers with the least amount of harm, not as in learned how to most efficiently kill someone.
If I were to begin removing your knowledge of each of the 26 letters of the alphabet one by one, your ability to form the most appropriate word to complete a sentence would drop, not increase.
What "reasonable force" is depends on a lot of circumstances. An old or infirm person might be justified on calling his dogs to attack unarmed assailants, or grab a kitchen knife, despite either being disproportionate force.
A weapons expert might be justified in firing a warning shot, but if stronger than the assailant might be expected to follow up a continued attack with wresting the person to the ground, not shooting him.
So the more effectively someone has learned to deal with physical threats, the less potential for harm there is for both the victim and the assailant.
This seems to indicate that someone training the public in self-defense methods is clearly in the public's interest.
PS. It is a sad fact that I am posting (for the first time on /.) anonymously, because I'm afraid that even writing this could cause problems for me on future trips to the US.
I agree.
Do you not understand that a government cannot stop all of its people all of the time, or even most of it? However, it can cause them to be so concerned individually, that most will quasi-voluntarily opt to restrict their behavior. The result is that those who do not, encounter the brunt of the government retaliation. I understand that sheepdog employ the same tactic when they herd.
This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to kill people IN SELF-DEFENSE. (Really, read the article.)
... [T]he UK has a concept of minimum force. If you see a black guy in your neighbourhood and think he may be causing trouble you are not just allowed to kill him.
Absolutely. If you do, there are consequences that happen as a result of your choice.
As distinct from what seems to be happening here: if you think he may be causing trouble, you are not allowed to know how to stop him with fatal force should it become necessary. And to make sure you will be unable to, a government will pre-emptively stop a man from entering the country for attempting to provide you with that knowledge.
As similar approach would be terminating a life in the second trimester, on the grounds that it may grow up to commit a violent crime several decades later. That is a lack of minimum force of law, also termed "overreaching" or just plain "usurpation" [of political authorities by the agents of government]. Then again I'm not sure from where the political authority is considered to derive within the UK; perhaps whatever the PM or monarch says, goes.
No kidding. This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to KILL PEOPLE. (Really, read the article.)
Are you sure you're not Kent Brockman?
"Just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the Army, but a more alarmist name would be... The Killbot Factory ."
According to non-mainstream news sources including Benjamin Fulford (a former correspondent for Forbes Magazine) and a U.S. military official known as The Drake, both the U.S. and the U.K. are encountering a co-ordinated effort to remove, forcibly if necessary, corrupt political officials from power in compliance with the law. This effort has a lot of backing from significant numbers of U.S. military personnel, Interpol, the Pentagon, the Agencies, U.S. Marshals... and underground Asian societies.
Interesting that this piece is coming out at this juncture.
From TFA:
In addition to TeleHuman, the Queen’s researchers have also developed BodiPod, an interactive 3D anatomy model of the human body. The model can be explored 360 degrees around the model through gestures and speech interactions.
When people approach the Pod, they can wave in thin air to peel off layers of tissue. In X-ray mode, as users get closer to the Pod they can see deeper into the anatomy, revealing the model’s muscles, organs and bone structure. Voice commands such as “show brain” or “show heart” will automatically zoom into a 3D model of a brain or heart.
Oh, now they have to combine the two. Nothing like idly flicking away layers of tissue from the person at the other end of the teleconference while they're nattering on. And, you'll finally be able to verify that some people actually do have a heart.
The distinction is pretty important, and so long as it's not used as an argument to diminish rights it makes quite a bit of sense.
I agree that in a case of accidental nonsentient monitoring that isn't accessed, it's pretty inconsequential.
The natural concern is of course intentional, systematic monitoring, sentient or otherwise, that is or can be accessed effectively. And carefully evaluating who collected that data in the first place, and whether their motives for so doing were even valid and fair, is just a sensible part of data security approached from a societal, rather than a technological, means. Limiting the cases in which collecting the data in the first place is considered socially acceptable is a good place to begin in terms of limiting data loss.
This is because the difficulty occurs when personal data becomes retained by outside parties, because at that point it's pretty difficult for the original owner to establish with any certainty whether that data is accessible or not.
Case in point, when several of the CIA's laptops went missing a few years ago. They were concerned about the data when the laptops went missing, despite the fact that the information was almost certainly encrypted. It's a natural concern, when confidential data is retained by outside parties beyond the control and oversight of the initiating party. The CIA didn't stop to assess whether or not they supposed it could or would be successfully accessed before finding the incident a cause for concern; the mere possibility that it now could be, and they would have no way of knowing either way, was the problem.
There is very often a double-standard in evaluation that people make now, depending on whether the potentially damaged party is (a) a private citizen, or (2) a government agency or corporation. Somehow, there is typically a strong implied bias in the private citizen's disfavor there, and that should probably be noticed and assessed. The standard mentality seems to be that Joe Sixpack was negligent or mentally lacking for not better encrypting his data, and we're cautious to ask ourselves who it's really hurting anyway, but that if it happens to government agencies or corporations it's automatically considered a cause for concern because it represents a threat to state or trade secrets. And there is a disconcerting and counterintuitive propensity for that kind of thinking.
Oh dear.
I'm not sure which was worse: the title, the reasoning, or the fact that I counted the number of single entendres in the low single digits.
Love the way he aims it, phaser-like, at the viewer as he completes his delivery of the opening line.
Nice nickname. Tell me you created it just for comments on this story.
Organism Closest To Original "Tree of Life" Discovered
Eating of its fruit doesn't confer immortality per se, but many congenital defects abate, the skin regains elastin and the libido is enhanced significantly.
At this point, you're visibly sabotaging the conversation.
No, I'm mocking you. I'm doing so in an attempt to dissuade you from making ridiculous and emotionality-laden comparisons to mass butchery any more.
You've done all three in this instance, and so you will only have dialogues with people who tolerate that. Ta.
No, it's a form of encoding. If you're going to claim that as encryption, I can as reasonably claim that this is a private conversation between me and you, and that anyone else reading it has violated my rights because I encrypted it in ASCII or Unicode, or whatever prior to uploading it. It's not MY fault everyone else's computer is capable of decrypting it.
I think the distinction there would probably have to be intent, and basis.
By intent, I mean that there's a difference between engaging in a forum discussion, and deliberately attempting to intercept someone's comm traffic via their wifi signals. That's a close enough approximation to the guaranteed Fourth Amendment right of citizens to be secure in their papers (whether those papers are in the home, out outside of it) for me to equate them. Others may interpret that differently.
When I say basis, I mean that Google for example is a corporation with a stated basis of operation. While it's true that a lot of what I post could be searched for around the internet and compiled in a central database (Facebook does it), nothing authorizes Facebook to monitor citizens by doing this. They work for the Information Awareness Office, which compiles that information on citizens for the federal government's uses. Again, nothing authorizes the federal government to do that to its citizens, so there's a problem of it not being within its stated basis. Here, Google appeared to do it unintentionally and that would be a little different.
To intentionally violate someone's rights, there obviously must be intent and it must be acted upon. This is a distinction made in law, and it's a different way to distill the situation than the technological basis that most of the rest of Slashdot is using for this discussion. Still, I think it has the ability to get to the nitty-gritty about what expectations we have or don't have with other parties better than the technological perspective, without getting into direct morality which can rapidly get pretty nebulous indeed.
Cite, please. It's my understanding that if you're in public, people absolutely can take your picture and do not need your consent. If you're correct, I'd like an explanation how paparazzi aren't all in jail.
Common practice within the Union about a century ago; I came across it years ago in research and no longer have the historical reference, unfortunately. I did find cites just now, though.
As to the paparazzi, part of it would most likely be that the country's forgotten that by now, or that as public figures celebrities are presumed to be accessible in that regard. I'm honestly not sure how much of which. It would be kind of interesting for celebs to copyright their likeness in this day and age though, and then sue tabloids for distributing without permission.
Perhaps we're getting to the core of the issue. You're arguing from a base where law isn't actually law. I can't follow you there.
Yes and no. It's the venue of law the Constitution was written in, and the American variant of Common Law remains the law of the land. However, it is prevalently ignored today by the majority of citizens, who have not heard of it. Yet.
Yes, and infrared cameras that see through your walls. I suppose that's what muddies the waters. It comes down to the "reasonable person" test. IIRC, it's been decided (in court) that reasonable people do get protection from being spied on via IR cameras. I think it's reasonable to assume there's not a laser microphone pointed at your windows, too. I just don't feel that unencrypted wifi streaming out of your house deserves the same protection when it's trivial to encrypt it. I don't think we should have to IR shield our houses. I don't think we should have noise generators on our windows. I do think we should encrypt our wifi.
And there we disagree. Or rather, I don't think we should be considered to be obliged to encrypt our wifi in order to secure our right to privacy on it. But I do like how well you've summarized the matter.
No, it's a form of encoding. If you're going to claim that as encryption, I can as reasonably claim that this is a private conversation between me and you, and that anyone else reading it has violated my rights because I encrypted it in ASCII or Unicode, or whatever prior to uploading it. It's not MY fault everyone else's computer is capable of decrypting it.
Impressive! I honestly don't have a response to that one right now. I'll have to think about that one for a while. Thanks for the new (to me at least) point. Very refreshing to encounter.
No, it was half-in, half-out. By that I mean it was being used in their homes, and "leaked" out because that's what airwaves do. Which isn't typically a big deal, since one hardly expects people to be sitting outside trying to pick it up.
Yes. In other words, you need to consider more than just the most common case. You also need to consider edge cases, and the potential damage versus the likelihood versus the difficulty to mitigate. In this case, the edge case is likely - anyone with a laptop could do it, and have been known to (see wardriving), the damage is potentially severe - especially if you do stupid stuff like sending sensitive data in the clear over email, and the difficulty to mitigate is trivial.
No. You're discussing technological feasibility - and how complex it would be to implement, as well as risk-reward ratios. Which completely fails to address the matter in terms of rights in law. You do this several times throughout your response.
There's nothing technologically complicated about using a handgun either, and using one could certainly save you from a violent mugging.
No. However, securing your router doesn't inflict bodily harm on a human being, require special licensing, or open you to the possibility of charges arising from its use (yet). Are you sure you're not BadAnalogyGuy in drag? Having a gun is a complex piece of mitigation, involving training and licensing, and may not even be effective, as presence of a firearm might prevent, or it might provoke escalation. Better mitigation would simply be not to go to dangerous areas at night. Not foolproof, but it reduces the chances of occurrence down to the point where I've never been mugged in my life.
...such as here...
Whenever you leave your home, there is also a slight chance that it will rain no matter what the weather report says.
Which is why I keep an umbrella in the car.
You might get slammed by a car as you cross the street, therefore you should never leave the house without a pair of clean underwear on, in case you have an unanticipated ambulance ride to the hospital to worry about
And that's at a level of severity I really don't worry about. For various values of "clean" anyway.
And you might run into some tourists from Spain who don't speak English while you're out.
Again, level of severity is negligible. Why do I care if I can speak to the tourists or not?
Therefore, you should never leave the house without a loaded handgun, a large umbrella, a pair of clean underwear on, and a Spanish-to-English translation dictionary. Otherwise, it's your own damn fault.
Well, if you get caught in the rain without an umbrella, yes, it is your own damn fault. What do you want, the government to outlaw rain?
No. I'm demonstrating the impracticality of having a government refuse to acknowledge your rights, and leave you to fend for yourself in every eventuality.
My point, however, remains. Kismet does not come standard, you have to purposely install it - usually to sniff another person's otherwise-private network traffic.
Your threshold for "modification" seems to be unrealistically low - considering that would mean my grandma's computer with Open Office on it would be considered "specially modified technology".
If your grandmother can pick up my wifi data with Open Office, please do arrange a meeting with her for me.
Part of my point was that someone would have to modify the technology or use the software in order to pick up someone else's personal wifi data, thus legally establishing intent. If you demonstrate intent to nab someone's papers, or in this case wifi data, you've demonstrated an intent to violate t
How easy it is to do depends very much on who you are. My problem with things like this is it actually encourages bad security. If we go around telling people that it's ok to just demand the world turn around when they do the digital equivalent of walking down the street naked, are they really better off than if we tell them "Hey, there's this check box you can set on your router that makes it all but impossible for people to snoop on you. If you don't check it, ANYBODY who bothers to try will see everything you do."?
I can appreciate that. It's a very noble sentiment, and I feel it myself.
What I have to keep in check, though, is that a desire to shape public policy - even in this case for something like technological education - does not enable myself or anyone else to remake the law in ways that violates someone's rights. The desire to reshape society for what often started out as noble goals as you've described, is now often misused when politicians play on emotions to gain public support for further erosion and inroads into the legal structure and the political assessment about what rights we have. Two hundred years of this stuff has caused the the average person to misremember the basis of the political and legal structure that prior generations of citizens had designed. And this is all to the temporary benefit of politicians in power. So I'm careful to keep my ideas of "what's right for people" from coloring my determinations about their rights, and must refer to what had originally been put in place. Common sense dictates that, legally, personal data is private and since you can't get at it without trying you have every reason to expect privacy.
We both know that's not true technologically, but from a legal standpoint it could work. There are any number of things which could be done technologically, that are against the law. Since the laws were designed to uphold rights, this should probably be one of them - and my understanding of American Common Law is that it probably already is. Common Law doesn't rely on a lot of legislation being passed, but on the operation of basic rights in a common sense manner.
It's all well and good to have laws about this stuff. We COULD enact a law making sniffing unencrypted WiFi illegal. IMO, it's far far better to just encrypt the damn thing and be done with it than hope when someone does capture your traffic, that you'll find out. Realistically, unless it's a high profile case like this, you'll never know.
You're talking about passing legislation specifically forbidding it. I think it probably makes sense, to deter people from packet sniffing personal data. Yes, from a technological standpoint people should probably be encrypting anyway. And if the cost-to-benefit ratio prompts them to do that, they will. The law, however, isn't supposed to tamper with the cost-to-benefit ratios of people who aren't violating the rights of others, just to prompt them into one choice or another. That would violate freedom as well, and today it happens frequently when politicians attempt to set public policies. They're not supposed to. The law is there to preserve rights, and by making a determination about whether rights to personal data privacy are guaranteed or not, the law would be doing its job.
I think it's already done this, but clarifying it would be good if there's public disagreement about that point.
No, that's not remotely what I'm saying, and your Matthew Shepard comparison is wildly off base.
You're saying that the onus on people if they don't want others to take advantage of them is to hide all their vulnerable points. And I'm saying that's the sign of a lawless anarchy where people aren't presumed to have rights.
If you have unencrypted WiFi, you are broadcasting, quite literally, whatever you're doing. All I'm saying is if you're out in public, people can take your picture. You might not like it, but they can.
A very apt parallel. Under American Common Law, your likeness - as well as your signature - is your private property. People can no more snap you without your consent without being liable for violating your property rights than they can take an image of your signature and print it onto whatever they like. American Common Law remains in effect, but has been forgotten amid a heap of baseless legislation that lacks the authority to actually be law. People in the U.S. have forgotten their system, in favor of a johnny-come-lately. As one result, basic concepts and premises of law ("maxims") have been lost to them, and we get news stories in which some new situation brought about by new technology makes it all seem like an open question again. It's not.
If you yell at your wife on the front porch or in the house if you're loud enough, the neighbors can hear you.
And they now have lasers that can be pointed at windows and pick up conversations based on how the glass vibrates. The laser and the person using them are both located outside the house, so according to your reasoning it's perfectly fine as well. So, be sure to pick up some air pumps made for aquariums at the pet store and tape them to your windows, or it's your fault for being lax on the data security.
If my neighbors are installing surveillance equipment in order to overhear me shouting at my wife, and they couldn't overhear it any other way, they're not going to last as my neighbors for long.
I'm not saying you need to encrypt everything, or that you need a vault. I'm saying don't broadcast to the world if you don't want the world to hear you.
I'm very much pro-privacy, but if you want your privacy (as I do), you can't put the burden on the entire rest of the world to preserve it for you.
I'm typing this reply from my laptop, in a public location. As I type, there is cash in my wallet as we speak. Just sitting there. For anybody to pick up and take! Mind you, they'd need to have developed certain skills in order to do so. But they could do it! And it sounds like according to your reasoning, if they did it would be my fault because I expected the rest of the world not to deliberately attempt to pick my pocket. Whereas I'm more in favor of the traditional Middle Eastern response to people who are caught pickpocketing, in order to discourage it.
We railed against the DMCA because it criminalized circumventing even useless protection measures, but somehow when they're OUR useless protection measures, it's different? No, it's not.
Of course it's no different, if you're arguing the issue in the context they've handed you.
The actual difference is that before things like the DMCA, before a lot of this corrupt baseless legislation got passed, there were no victimless crimes in this country! You weren't hauled in before a magistrate and tried in a chancery court for offenses "against the state". You were brought to court when there was an injured party: you had either detrimented their right to life, liberty or propert
The wifi data was half-in, half-out of their private homes
No, it was out. The Google car never entered their property, and yet was able to capture that information in its entirety. It was wholly out of their home.
No, it was half-in, half-out. By that I mean it was being used in their homes, and "leaked" out because that's what airwaves do. Which isn't typically a big deal, since one hardly expects people to be sitting outside trying to pick it up. That's why this story is such a big deal; this time, someone was. I realize that it [purportedly] was unintentional, which is the only exonerating factor.
You argue that no, the exonerating factor was that Google should have been allowed to do this intentionally if it so desired. That the onus is on the private citizens to encrypt everything just in case someone is out there actively trying to sniff their data. Which is a distinct difference in mentality.
It was meant to be used by them, in their homes
They might have intended for it to only be in use in their home, but they never took the simple necessary technological measure to make it so (encrypting it) which is not a difficult thing to do with a home-use wi-fi router, even for a novice. It just requires them to read the manual.
There's nothing technologically complicated about using a handgun either, and using one could certainly save you from a violent mugging. Whenever you leave your home, there is also a slight chance that it will rain no matter what the weather report says. You might get slammed by a car as you cross the street, therefore you should never leave the house without a pair of clean underwear on, in case you have an unanticipated ambulance ride to the hospital to worry about. And you might run into some tourists from Spain who don't speak English while you're out. Therefore, you should never leave the house without a loaded handgun, a large umbrella, a pair of clean underwear on, and a Spanish-to-English translation dictionary. Otherwise, it's your own damn fault.
and technology had to be specifically modified and sent out in order to intercept it
No, no it didn't. One of the details in this case is that Google basically just used an off-the-shelf piece of software to dump all publicly available information. They caught that data because they didn't customize it.
They were using Kismet, so you're technically correct.
My point, however, remains. Kismet does not come standard, you have to purposely install it - usually to sniff another person's otherwise-private network traffic. If Google's sniffing had been deliberate, my point is that they would have been in the wrong for so doing. You seem to be adopting the position that no, that's perfectly alright, the citizenry had no reasonable expectation of a right to privacy there. That packet sniffing, as deliberate as it usually has to be, is just as easy to do and probably as someone glancing in your window. And that is wrong.
If Google itself had condoned it, there would be little difference between that and seeking to obtain Zero-Day exploits to commercial systems - with the exception that these are private individuals, not mere corporations.
And the fact that there was no security to actually exploit.
I think you missed my point there. I know this is Slashdot, but when I mentioned Zero-Days I was getting at legal exploits, not literal technological ones. Stuff without a lot of case precedent about it yet, such as intercepted wifi data, which Google - if they had done it deliberately, and happily this appears not to be the case - would have been able to take advantage of. In other words, using the fact that technology innovates faster than case precedent is established, to take advantage of people.
Yes, when do we go after Microsoft for leaving that packet sniffing option on as a default installation option?
You're right of course.
Sending out vans en masse to peoples' neighborhoods with equipment and software that's specifically designed to pluck wifi traffic out of the airwaves is no different from strolling down the sidewalk and happening to glance into someone's window. Why, just the other day I was on my way home, glanced over, and idly picked up several packets of someone's e-mail and a bit of their usenet traffic before I could think to look away. How silly of me.
Want to try again with another analogy?
Thank you, no.
The wifi data was half-in, half-out of their private homes. It was meant to be used by them, in their homes, and technology had to be specifically modified and sent out in order to intercept it. There's the basis of a reasonable expectation of a right to privacy right there. For someone to obtain that data, they have to go out of their way to nab it. If Google itself had condoned it, there would be little difference between that and seeking to obtain Zero-Day exploits to commercial systems - with the exception that these are private individuals, not mere corporations.
With all the hullabaloo from the MPAA and RIAA about ownership rights to for-profit data, we have at least as much right to our data as private citizens. Otherwise there's no point to having a government, if it doesn't uphold our rights.
And if Matthew Shepard didn't want to get savagely beaten to death by a group of bigots, he should have kept his sexual orientation a secret as well.
Consider what you're saying. It's like condoning someone who breaks and enters into peoples' houses and goes reading through their papers and personal effects, and saying the problem is that they didn't have a secure enough vault in their home.
Perhaps we should encrypt everything, all the time, petrified that someone unintended will snoop on us and find out about it. Perhaps the problem is that we've been too transparent and open about how we live our lives, not that someone else shouldn't be prying into them. However, before adopting Pig Latin as the national language, let's gloss over the Fourth Amendment for a moment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Hmm. Seems like our right to privacy was pretty important when we founded the U.S.. We didn't want our government invading it, so I doubt we would've wanted anyone else to either. Debate resolved; there's already been a determination on the matter over two hundred years ago, so the matter seems rather dated and redundant now.
Don't you have a facebook wall to go post on?
Touché, sir. You cut me to the quick.
Can someone please tell me what's supposed to be so politically edgy about creating yet another disordered, unregulated system?
Explain your sig then:
The Wolfpack Project [bit.ly]: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Certainly. Which word gave you difficulty?
The problem is that the people in the political system want to force the rest of us to be always accountable, while they themselves keeping the luxury of unaccountability.
We appear to be using two different definitions of "accountability".
People used to be accountable to themselves and each other - and through them, the law. If you violated rights, you had to make amends or become an outlaw. Laws were made to uphold standards of rights and values that people had in common - they were a formalized system of basic human decency.
In time, the representatives we delegated to maintain that system turned the concept of "accountability" on its ear, pretending that they, as public officials, were entities in and of themselves - with an agenda all their own. So today, people often think of "accountability" only in their redefined, bastardized usage: accountability to the whimsical edicts of legislators. But this is the idea of accountability being made to stand on its' head. There is no accountability without self-accountability, just as there is no control without self-control. The idea of being held accountable to an arbitrary, whimsical system is the idea of being accountable to a non-system - in other words, arbitrary edicts and mandates from authority figures. Slavery. In this modern usage, "accountability" doesn't mean anything valid. It becomes a socially acceptable substitute for "slavery", and I'm not using it that way because it would be rather bizarre and unconscionable. I mean real, legitimate, true accountability.
Anonymous is about levelling the playing field: Allow everyone, not just those in the political system, to be unaccountable.
Chaos is just as much a threat to rights as tyranny. Is that not self-evident to you?
It's like they're people who are tired of freezing, and so they set themselves on fire. Spectacular, but utterly useless.
Groups like Anonymous seem to get quite a kick out of thumbing their noses at the authority figures in the room. If only they'd realize that as members of We, the People, we are the authority figures, and the politicians are required to be our representatives, they could start reasserting a legitimate, functional society. And they'd realize that doesn't happen by adopting the position of the incorrigible adolescent truant; it takes people actively being functional human beings. That's the only way you get a functional society.