But because of that the privacy concerns raised are pointless. Casual use is exactly where biometrics are useful, they are very convenient but don't provide any real security.
Yeah, because having your fingerprint physically on something is exactly the same as having it digitally stored where it can be transmitted in seconds to any anywhere in the world. It's just as easy follow someone around until you can physically steal their phone and pull the fingerprints off as it is to plant some malware on it and have it transmit the info.
Now then, do you have an alternate proposal I should consider, or are you just gonna keep saying,
No. I don't have all the answers. I do have some ideas I'm working on. But I'm more of a technically oriented person rather than a PoliSci type. Whether they'll pan out or not is anybody's guess. How about you? You don't believe in direct democracy. I'm not so quick to write it off. But it has to be accompanied by something that allows people to easily and effortlessly keep themselves informed with unbiased or possible equally biased information. How about if it takes a 2/3rds vote to pass but it only takes a 1/3 vote to repeal a law.
One thought is we have to make getting involved in the political process as easy as updating Facebook. We're trying to use an 18th century system in a modern world where technology has made it obsolete. There has to be a much better way. What we need is a lot of smart people figuring out how to implement a better system. Kinda like what happened in a little backwater country in the late 18th century.
The biggest initial hurdle is getting people to recognize the current system is broke. The propaganda machine is strong and is being driven by a lot of existing powers that stand to lose a lot with change.
I think that argument can work both ways. If they don't know the laws, they can't enforce them.
They're certainly going to know the law better than any normal person and they'll have people that know them much better than your average Joe. If they want someone they just have to dig around and twist meanings. Prosecution overreach happens all the time.
The NSA is certainly not piping data to local police departments
Besides, I really think they just don't care about J. Random Citizen complaining on the street or on the Internet. That's not a threat to them. They're more likely to feel threatened by journalists, as we have seen.
Your right. They don't care about people talking. Let them rant and complain all they want. But try to do something that might actually have an impact and they'll get interested real fast.
More generalizing.
The fact that everything didn't happen to everyone doesn't mean I'm generalizing.
Those that were were not harassed by federal agents but by the NYPD.
Some were harassed by federal agents. So you're claiming that local police departments don't work with Federal law enforcement? That's crap. The link above puts the lie to that. Just because they're not all part of one monolithic control structure doesn't mean they can't and aren't working together towards the same goals. Local police departments are militarizing way beyond what's required for a police force. They send fully armed combat teams for mundane arrest that could be accomplished by 2 guys knocking on a door or even a phone call. Guess who's supply all those toys? If they want to keep playing they have to cooperate.
And you're generalizing the OWS thing as well. Most of the people who participated were not oppressed or arrested.
And most of the people who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests weren't either. Enough were to quell the protest. In both cases. Yes, I know the oppression used to quell the OWS protests didn't rise to anywhere near the level of that used for the Tiananmen Square protests but they didn't need that level crush the OWS protest. And I have little doubt the level of violence and other forms of coercion would have risen to what ever was required to crush the protests.. Peaceful protests like that are supposed to be a Constitutional right in this country.
The system, the gangsterism that thrives through weak and corrupt politicians that we vote for, who cannot otherwise occupy the office, all of it, it's all ours.
What "people like you" can't seem to get through your head is that the whole friggin system is broke. It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's the fundimental system as it is currently implemented. Maybe you'll get a car analogy. You can't fix a broke car by continuing to push it around where ever you want to go. No matter who you vote into office they still have to function in the same broken system. As long as that is the case nothing is going to change.
"People like you" live in this dream world built by the BS propaganda we've all been fed our whole lives. Try peeking behind the curtain some day.
Stay with the herd then. Your compliance is noted and appreciated.
Ummm...you really need to look in a mirror. So you're breaking out of the herd by going out and voting with everyone else even though it won't and can't change anything? Non-compliance is plodding along doing exactly what the government tells you all good citizens are supposed to do? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Funny part is, even the people within the political machines with near certain victories tend to feel like they can't radically fix things because the system won't allow it. I'm not kidding, I've had politicians basically tell me so while intoxicated.
Ramen to that. This is what people need to wake up to. Voting within the current system isn't going to change anything. Problem is everyone is so tied up in "America bastion of democracy and land of the free" they can't see past the propaganda they've been bombarded with their entire lives.
That brings up the question. How does one change the system short of violent revolution? Given the technology available today and the open source paradigm I truly believe direct democracy is practical in a society like America's. But how do we get there?
There are more than two possible choices on your ballot. Use them wisely, or quit your bellyaching.
None of the choices on any ballot in the current system are going to make a lick of difference. The system as it stands is completely broken. Continuing to vote in the current system does nothing but perpetuate it. And it's not bellyaching. It's leaving the "America land of the free" fantasy world and facing up to the facts. A lot more people need to do it before anything is going to change.
But even cynical as I am, the despairing belief that the United States of America is currently little more than a well-disguised police-state is so blatantly false to anyone who lives here as to be laughable.
You're drinking the coolaid. The US Library of Congress doesn't even know how many laws there are much less what they may be. The people who create the tax code have no idea how to follow it. You have to devote your career to the tax code to have even a reasonable understanding of it. Just given those 2 pretty much everyone in the US is a criminal. And the NSA is busy collecting all the evidence and then secretly giving it to the police to use against you when ever they want. Sure you can protest as long as you only do within the Government mandated restrictions. Step out of those bounds and you're off to jail.
That we can have this conversation without fear of retribution at all is testament to that fact.
I can't find it at the moment but just yesterday I was reading an article that the Chinese government allows people to talk and complain about the government as much as they want. As long as it's just talk. Once actions start any dissent is oppressed. This bares a striking resemblance to what happened with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was all good and fine until people actually started doing something. Then the peaceful protest were forcible oppressed. You have just enough freedom to keep you in line. If you get out of line those freedoms all go away.
Actually, yes I can point out some laws.... something you could Google if you cared:
None of those require back doors in SSL, DES or other related technologies. You didn't answer the question I asked. As to those laws first foremost they have nothing whatsoever to do with the NSA. They're applicable to US law enforcement. On top of that they are only supposed to allow snooping within tightly restricted court approved parameters directly related to an investigation. The NSA conveniently redefined the word 'related' to be anything that could be related to any possible past or future investigation thus justifying collecting all information.
If you had any kind of a clue hammering on your head, you would realize that 95%+ of the stuff that Snowden "revealed" was already public knowledge.
You really need to read about what's happening cause you apparently haven't been paying much attention. A large part of Congress didn't know what the NSA was doing. I don't know where you got this all seeing knowledge. 3 months ago if someone had claimed the NSA was collecting and storing information about every phone call made they would have been dismissed as a crackpot with a tin foil hat. But now all that was common knowledge. Sure thing there.
How in the hell do you think those judges and agents are able to tell these telecom companies to shut up in the first place?
It's not the laws that are the primary problem. The problem is the secret interpretations of the laws where commonly used English words have their meaning change to completely different things. It's secret courts that rule based on misinformation. It's Government officials who blatantly lie to Congress, have those lies proved and confessed yet suffer no retribution. Again. Go do some actual reading about what is happening.
BTW, that huge woosh was going right back at you. I guess you didn't read a damn thing I wrote about that Enigma machine. I got your comment about the "patriots". Many people are loyal to the country, and surprisingly even the government under which they live even if they may be oppressed.
So you reply to a quoted part of my statement with something completely unrelated to the statement you quoted. Forgive for not following along there.
These back doors that you are complaining about where something that was openly discussed as a matter of public policy when it happened. It became legislation where the United States Congress (not the NSA) required these backdoors through legislation and made it criminal for telecommunications companies to even object. Furthermore, that these companies had to go out of their way and hire programmers and electrical engineers to explicitly put these back doors into their equipment.
Ummm...Can you please point out which law required back doors in things like SSL, DES and the like? There are no such laws. Strange how you seem to think this was all done above board by the Congress yet it took Snowden's revelations before any else in the world knew about it.
Why not? It may take a genius to figure that out, but you as a private individual can certainly figure this out if you cared. Most people don't want to bother as there are more important things to do with their life.
It takes a genius to figure it out but I should be able to do it if I cared. How could you tell I was a genius from one/. post? These 2 sentences seem to be slightly contradictory.
Besides.... as I said, find somebody you can trust if you don't want to take that kind of time to figure things of that nature out. There are enough people in this world that I'm sure you can find somebody with your same world view, political opinions
There probably aren't 10,000 people in the friggin world with the math skills required for advance cryptography and all of those have devoted there careers to it. But I'm sure I'll run into one at the local pub any day now. I'll buy them a beer and it'll be pure trust from that point. Your own example of the Enigma shows what happens when you trust the wrong person on cryptography.
Every university has mathematicians who are certainly capable of doing the kind of analysis needed to at least know if the NSA guys are full of crap or not.
And how would you know which ones had received secret orders from the Government? There was a time when I just assumed thinking like that was paranoid delusion. Now I'm beginning to wonder if it's paranoid enough. You realize, the US Government, land of the free, has issued secret orders to people and companies that they can't reveal under penalty of law, and likely secret trial, ordering them to allow the US Government to spy on it's own people. It has secret courts and trials. Your property can be seized without any form of charges being levied. People can be detained indefinitely without any do process by simple invoking the magic word "terrorist". Tell me. In a place like that who can you trust?
That doesn't make them sinister, just patriots... patriots that know there are people just like them in other countries around the world.
You know those WWII Germans you mentioned above? They were just patriots too. It was all for the Fatherland...and the children.
I and not disputing that either. Indeed.... if you actually studied a bit about the enigma machine... that it needed some real hard analysis by mathematicians to verify the quality of the encryption being used with that machine.
Did you hear the whosh? That was my point flying by. I wasn't referring to the Enigma machine fiasco. I was referring to the things "patriots" do. You called the NSA spys not sinister but patriots (bold above). The most sinister and evil people and organizations were and are patriotic at least in their eyes. The SS did all that evil for the betterment of the Fatherland. The KGB was just trying to support the Communist State. The Stasi did it all for the unification of the German people. All of those were VERY patriotic organizations full of patriots. The NSA recording every communication of every US citizen is purely for Homeland
There are secure encryption methods that are being used, and there is a good reason why the NSA wants to be assisting with the larger cryptographic community in developing secure forms of communication. Don't get into this kind of conspiracy theory bullshit and claim that they have some kind of mystical powers that simply don't exist.
Yeah, like putting back doors in most of the security used on the internet. They're not magical...wait...what was that article about again?
They want to be able to read what ever the enemy produces. You don't seem to recognize that the for the NSA we're the enemy. The real secure methods they won't let the public have. They keep those secret for internal use only. If they publicized them the enemy (you know, the public) would have access to them.
Learn a bit about mathematics first and understand not just that they have pontificated about some sort of algorithm but understand why they came to those conclusions. If not yourself, then at least find somebody who you can trust.
Do you know how many people in the world have the level of math required for advance cryptography? It ain't many. You certainly aren't going to pick up a book and figure it out in a few weeks of studying.
That doesn't make them sinister, just patriots... patriots that know there are people just like them in other countries around the world.
You know those WWII Germans you mentioned above? They were just patriots too. It was all for the Fatherland...and the children.
The NSA isn't going to be applying that kind of brute force decryption effort on love letters between you and your girlfriend.
If you become a person of interest they will. And these days it doesn't take much to become a person of interest. They really like making examples of people even in cases where there is no ill intent (see Aaron Swartz) but are saying and doing things they don't like. It helps keep the rest of the plebeians in line when they fear Government retribution. Given the number of and complexity of the laws in this country these days it's almost a certainty your breaking at least some of them. Once you've broken one they start throwing the magic word "terrorism" in front of everything and pretty soon you're looking at 40 years for something like spitting on the sidewalk. The land of the free*.
* Conditions apply. You must comply with the Government group think at all times for freedom to be applicable.
And you'll soon be out of business. Truth of the matter is, that a business simply cannot sustain by providing unlimited broadband internet for the prices that the average consumer is willing to pay.
Strange how other countries are able to provide unlimited AND much faster connections than what's available in the US. They must be using magic electrons/photons or something. And I'm guessing you're predicting the demise of Google soon also?
In other words, bullshit. It's not a mater of business. It's a mater of regulatory constraints and lack of competition allowing US ISPs to jack up their prices while reducing their service. That's what happens when there is limited competition.
And... Enforcement is the job of the Executive Branch, not Congress. Lots O' luck.
Congress has the ultimate tool of enforcement in the form of impeachment.
Yeah. I said it. What Obama's administration has done (and his predecessors) far surpasses anything Nixon did in the realms of violating the law and covering it up. This includes a fair number of congress critters also.
Note the "and his predecessors": This is NOT a partisan issue. The whole lot should be thrown in jail.
If you use terms like "crotch fruit" that's usually a sign that you felt your argument can't stand on its own and needed emotional appeal for the "har har look how tough my callousness makes me" -crowd. The interesting question, then, is why make said argument in the first place? Vested interests? Psychological problems? Trolling?
That's pretty funny and quite ironic. You don't even try to refute my weak (as you claim) arguments but instead attack my choice of words.
Also, drain cleaner usually comes in bottles with safety caps, presumably because manufacturers of dangerous chemicals think they might be held responsible for not taking reasonable precautions.
Unless this was an attempt. I chose one example. Come on stretch your mind a little bit. Look around the room you're sitting in. You will see dozens of things in that room that could potentially cause harm to kids if left unattended. Far more kids are hurt and even killed by TVs than by buckyballs. Tacks are made in pretty candy colors and left laying all over the place. And don't get me started on the number of people (including kids) killed and maimed in cars. How come no one is trying to ban any of those?
And yes I used strong words. Using strong words only lessens an argument for the weak minded. That is, unless of course the strong words are the only argument...*looks at first paragraph above*...Hmmm. I used strong words to emphasize the idiocy of claiming anything that hurts you kid is someone else's responsibility. Giving a product clearly labeled as not for kids to your kid and then blaming whoever made the product when the kid gets hurt is asinine (Uh oh. There's those strong words again).
Look, on the one hand it's incredibly rare that this will happen, and I get that, and it's a reasonable argument, but that's not what you're saying. What do you do when it's statistically likely that a product will cause harm to someone not involved in the negligence?
I forgot to refute this one. Did you actually do a statistical analysis of the probability of a kid coming across 2 randomly dropped buckyballs and swallowing them (you have to swallow at least 2 for them to harm you) against the probability of a coming across say a randomly dropped pretty colored tack? Didn't think so. I would take a big wager on which presents the greater probability of causing harm. And to completely obviate this argument compare it against the odds of a kid getting hurt in a car accident. Yet no parent thinks twice about throwing their kid in the back of the death machine and driving off like a maniac while putting on makeup/shaving and texting. Much less do they argue for banning them. So much for statistical argument.
Spilled drain cleaner is typically cleaned up quickly, and if touched does damage but usually not too much. A few stray magnet balls can sit there until some toddler chomps them. Are you really calling a two-year-old "stupid crotch fruit" for that? And it doesn't have to be the toddler's house, or his parents who were responsible for losing them.
This applies to a million other things. So lets just ban everything. It's a stupid argument to claim there is only one thing in the whole world that could cause a kid harm if left laying around.
And for the record I think pretty much all crotch fruit are stupid. I don't like children in general and certainly don't like ones being raised such that they think the whole world revolves around them which is the majority of crotch fruit these days.
I was out once, vaping my e-cig, when the unit failed (not my fault, the seal was defective) and spilled a significant amount of nicotine fluid. I got some napkins and cleaned it up well, mostly because if I didn't, it would have been fairly easy for some random toddler to overdose himself on nicotine.
Strange. I've always taken the attitude that cleaning up after myself when I make a mess in a public place is simple common courtesy. Makes me think of walking into a restaurant and seeing a table with food slung all over the place, smeared on the table and spread about the floor for several feet around the table. Who are these people that think it's ok to let their kids act like that in public?
Would you hurl insults at the toddler, or me, or the e-cig manufacturer? To be consistent with what you posted, it seems that you'd yell at the poisoned toddler.
Up to a certain age a child pretty much reflects the mentality of the parent. Prior to that point the child being stupid is pretty much solely reflective of and the responsibility of the parent. The child may be stupid but it's the parent's fault. Note that I called the crotch fruit stupid but blamed the parent. There is no inconsistency there. The hope is at some point the child recognizes this and starts taking responsibility for themselves. That's happening less and less.
The box had a warning label, but not the product, and unlike drain cleaner the product does not stay in the box, it's designed to be stuck to things.
Neither do tacks or dozens of other things that aren't for children. Isn't it pretty common knowledge that if it will fit in their mouth count on a kid eating it? I don't have kids and I know that. If the frigging box says not for children I'm going to take it out of the box and THEN assume it's safe for children. That's ridiculous. From what I've seen of buckyballs there isn't room to put the warning on the balls themselves where it would actually be readable.
In addition they then enhanced the buckyball line by introducing a range of candy colours, (oranges, pink, red, blue) from memory, the orange looked particularly delicious. The drugs industry goes to some effort to try to differentiate their pills from candy, buckyball were going in the opposite direction, it was asking for trouble.
Yeah, he made colors so more kids would eat them. I don't understand the logic here. The colors mean you can do more interesting things with them. Heaven forbid they add value to there product. They do the same thing with tacks.
Also having watched adults play with buckyballs, they often try and make an earring, so I can imagine the following , kid A places a ball either side of their ear "look lets scare mom that I got a peircing" kid B goes one better and places one either side of their tongue"
THE BOX SAID THEY ARE NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN. So who's fault is it when the parent gives them to the kids?
Given this I understand why they product was banned, they were potentially dangerous
Damn near everything is potentially dangerous. These are no more dangerous than thousands of other things out there. Know how many kids are killed in cars every year? Yet no one does a damn thing to address that problem. It's always just an accident, someone else's fault.
The label on the box would probably not have stopped me from buying them by itself, just as the T labels on PS3 video games has not stopped me. The safety labels on consumer items is as often just a CYA action on the part of the manufacturers, not a serious effort to protect or warn people of the dangers involved.
So you ignore the warning label and of course it's someone else's fault. *shakes head* Unbelievable.
Parents see a box of funny little magnets. How can they be dangerous?
And who's fault is that? It's certainly not the fault of the person who started the company that makes the product. If anything the parent should be prosecuted for child abuse.
And how many of that 88% drop would have been false claims to begin with? Is it truly excessive use of force? Or rather that the arrested/detained/ticketed/etc party realizes that, being recorded they can't any violation.
My point is, does it matter? Seems to me everybody wins. Cops can't be happy dealing with the stress of complaints against them. And I stated the camera makes everyone involved act more civil. The one big concern is protecting civil liberties where no crime was committed.
That being said, a cops first priority in any interaction with people should be to de-escalate. It seems more and more that isn't happening. The opposite is happen. In any situation where there is a huge power imbalance given as a public trust, as with police, if the party with the power is instigating confrontations they shouldn't have that power.
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But because of that the privacy concerns raised are pointless. Casual use is exactly where biometrics are useful, they are very convenient but don't provide any real security.
Yeah, because having your fingerprint physically on something is exactly the same as having it digitally stored where it can be transmitted in seconds to any anywhere in the world. It's just as easy follow someone around until you can physically steal their phone and pull the fingerprints off as it is to plant some malware on it and have it transmit the info.
Now then, do you have an alternate proposal I should consider, or are you just gonna keep saying,
No. I don't have all the answers. I do have some ideas I'm working on. But I'm more of a technically oriented person rather than a PoliSci type. Whether they'll pan out or not is anybody's guess. How about you? You don't believe in direct democracy. I'm not so quick to write it off. But it has to be accompanied by something that allows people to easily and effortlessly keep themselves informed with unbiased or possible equally biased information. How about if it takes a 2/3rds vote to pass but it only takes a 1/3 vote to repeal a law.
One thought is we have to make getting involved in the political process as easy as updating Facebook. We're trying to use an 18th century system in a modern world where technology has made it obsolete. There has to be a much better way. What we need is a lot of smart people figuring out how to implement a better system. Kinda like what happened in a little backwater country in the late 18th century.
The biggest initial hurdle is getting people to recognize the current system is broke. The propaganda machine is strong and is being driven by a lot of existing powers that stand to lose a lot with change.
I think that argument can work both ways. If they don't know the laws, they can't enforce them.
They're certainly going to know the law better than any normal person and they'll have people that know them much better than your average Joe. If they want someone they just have to dig around and twist meanings. Prosecution overreach happens all the time.
The NSA is certainly not piping data to local police departments
Exaggerating? You sure about that?
Besides, I really think they just don't care about J. Random Citizen complaining on the street or on the Internet. That's not a threat to them. They're more likely to feel threatened by journalists, as we have seen.
Your right. They don't care about people talking. Let them rant and complain all they want. But try to do something that might actually have an impact and they'll get interested real fast.
More generalizing.
The fact that everything didn't happen to everyone doesn't mean I'm generalizing.
Those that were were not harassed by federal agents but by the NYPD.
Some were harassed by federal agents. So you're claiming that local police departments don't work with Federal law enforcement? That's crap. The link above puts the lie to that. Just because they're not all part of one monolithic control structure doesn't mean they can't and aren't working together towards the same goals. Local police departments are militarizing way beyond what's required for a police force. They send fully armed combat teams for mundane arrest that could be accomplished by 2 guys knocking on a door or even a phone call. Guess who's supply all those toys? If they want to keep playing they have to cooperate.
And you're generalizing the OWS thing as well. Most of the people who participated were not oppressed or arrested.
And most of the people who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests weren't either. Enough were to quell the protest. In both cases. Yes, I know the oppression used to quell the OWS protests didn't rise to anywhere near the level of that used for the Tiananmen Square protests but they didn't need that level crush the OWS protest. And I have little doubt the level of violence and other forms of coercion would have risen to what ever was required to crush the protests.. Peaceful protests like that are supposed to be a Constitutional right in this country.
The system, the gangsterism that thrives through weak and corrupt politicians that we vote for, who cannot otherwise occupy the office, all of it, it's all ours.
What "people like you" can't seem to get through your head is that the whole friggin system is broke. It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's the fundimental system as it is currently implemented. Maybe you'll get a car analogy. You can't fix a broke car by continuing to push it around where ever you want to go. No matter who you vote into office they still have to function in the same broken system. As long as that is the case nothing is going to change.
"People like you" live in this dream world built by the BS propaganda we've all been fed our whole lives. Try peeking behind the curtain some day.
Stay with the herd then. Your compliance is noted and appreciated.
Ummm...you really need to look in a mirror. So you're breaking out of the herd by going out and voting with everyone else even though it won't and can't change anything? Non-compliance is plodding along doing exactly what the government tells you all good citizens are supposed to do? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Funny part is, even the people within the political machines with near certain victories tend to feel like they can't radically fix things because the system won't allow it. I'm not kidding, I've had politicians basically tell me so while intoxicated.
Ramen to that. This is what people need to wake up to. Voting within the current system isn't going to change anything. Problem is everyone is so tied up in "America bastion of democracy and land of the free" they can't see past the propaganda they've been bombarded with their entire lives.
That brings up the question. How does one change the system short of violent revolution? Given the technology available today and the open source paradigm I truly believe direct democracy is practical in a society like America's. But how do we get there?
There are more than two possible choices on your ballot. Use them wisely, or quit your bellyaching.
None of the choices on any ballot in the current system are going to make a lick of difference. The system as it stands is completely broken. Continuing to vote in the current system does nothing but perpetuate it. And it's not bellyaching. It's leaving the "America land of the free" fantasy world and facing up to the facts. A lot more people need to do it before anything is going to change.
But even cynical as I am, the despairing belief that the United States of America is currently little more than a well-disguised police-state is so blatantly false to anyone who lives here as to be laughable.
You're drinking the coolaid. The US Library of Congress doesn't even know how many laws there are much less what they may be. The people who create the tax code have no idea how to follow it. You have to devote your career to the tax code to have even a reasonable understanding of it. Just given those 2 pretty much everyone in the US is a criminal. And the NSA is busy collecting all the evidence and then secretly giving it to the police to use against you when ever they want. Sure you can protest as long as you only do within the Government mandated restrictions. Step out of those bounds and you're off to jail.
That we can have this conversation without fear of retribution at all is testament to that fact.
I can't find it at the moment but just yesterday I was reading an article that the Chinese government allows people to talk and complain about the government as much as they want. As long as it's just talk. Once actions start any dissent is oppressed. This bares a striking resemblance to what happened with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was all good and fine until people actually started doing something. Then the peaceful protest were forcible oppressed. You have just enough freedom to keep you in line. If you get out of line those freedoms all go away.
Wish I had time to write more but I'm on lunch.
The voting numbers don't reflect that. 98% vote to keep things as they are.
Please explain to me how to vote against it. There is no option for that on the ballot and the powers that be won't allow any.
Actually, yes I can point out some laws.... something you could Google if you cared:
None of those require back doors in SSL, DES or other related technologies. You didn't answer the question I asked. As to those laws first foremost they have nothing whatsoever to do with the NSA. They're applicable to US law enforcement. On top of that they are only supposed to allow snooping within tightly restricted court approved parameters directly related to an investigation. The NSA conveniently redefined the word 'related' to be anything that could be related to any possible past or future investigation thus justifying collecting all information.
If you had any kind of a clue hammering on your head, you would realize that 95%+ of the stuff that Snowden "revealed" was already public knowledge.
You really need to read about what's happening cause you apparently haven't been paying much attention. A large part of Congress didn't know what the NSA was doing. I don't know where you got this all seeing knowledge. 3 months ago if someone had claimed the NSA was collecting and storing information about every phone call made they would have been dismissed as a crackpot with a tin foil hat. But now all that was common knowledge. Sure thing there.
How in the hell do you think those judges and agents are able to tell these telecom companies to shut up in the first place?
It's not the laws that are the primary problem. The problem is the secret interpretations of the laws where commonly used English words have their meaning change to completely different things. It's secret courts that rule based on misinformation. It's Government officials who blatantly lie to Congress, have those lies proved and confessed yet suffer no retribution. Again. Go do some actual reading about what is happening.
BTW, that huge woosh was going right back at you. I guess you didn't read a damn thing I wrote about that Enigma machine. I got your comment about the "patriots". Many people are loyal to the country, and surprisingly even the government under which they live even if they may be oppressed.
So you reply to a quoted part of my statement with something completely unrelated to the statement you quoted. Forgive for not following along there.
These back doors that you are complaining about where something that was openly discussed as a matter of public policy when it happened. It became legislation where the United States Congress (not the NSA) required these backdoors through legislation and made it criminal for telecommunications companies to even object. Furthermore, that these companies had to go out of their way and hire programmers and electrical engineers to explicitly put these back doors into their equipment.
Ummm...Can you please point out which law required back doors in things like SSL, DES and the like? There are no such laws. Strange how you seem to think this was all done above board by the Congress yet it took Snowden's revelations before any else in the world knew about it.
Why not? It may take a genius to figure that out, but you as a private individual can certainly figure this out if you cared. Most people don't want to bother as there are more important things to do with their life.
It takes a genius to figure it out but I should be able to do it if I cared. How could you tell I was a genius from one /. post? These 2 sentences seem to be slightly contradictory.
Besides.... as I said, find somebody you can trust if you don't want to take that kind of time to figure things of that nature out. There are enough people in this world that I'm sure you can find somebody with your same world view, political opinions
There probably aren't 10,000 people in the friggin world with the math skills required for advance cryptography and all of those have devoted there careers to it. But I'm sure I'll run into one at the local pub any day now. I'll buy them a beer and it'll be pure trust from that point. Your own example of the Enigma shows what happens when you trust the wrong person on cryptography.
Every university has mathematicians who are certainly capable of doing the kind of analysis needed to at least know if the NSA guys are full of crap or not.
And how would you know which ones had received secret orders from the Government? There was a time when I just assumed thinking like that was paranoid delusion. Now I'm beginning to wonder if it's paranoid enough. You realize, the US Government, land of the free, has issued secret orders to people and companies that they can't reveal under penalty of law, and likely secret trial, ordering them to allow the US Government to spy on it's own people. It has secret courts and trials. Your property can be seized without any form of charges being levied. People can be detained indefinitely without any do process by simple invoking the magic word "terrorist". Tell me. In a place like that who can you trust?
That doesn't make them sinister, just patriots... patriots that know there are people just like them in other countries around the world.
You know those WWII Germans you mentioned above? They were just patriots too. It was all for the Fatherland...and the children.
I and not disputing that either. Indeed.... if you actually studied a bit about the enigma machine... that it needed some real hard analysis by mathematicians to verify the quality of the encryption being used with that machine.
Did you hear the whosh? That was my point flying by. I wasn't referring to the Enigma machine fiasco. I was referring to the things "patriots" do. You called the NSA spys not sinister but patriots (bold above). The most sinister and evil people and organizations were and are patriotic at least in their eyes. The SS did all that evil for the betterment of the Fatherland. The KGB was just trying to support the Communist State. The Stasi did it all for the unification of the German people. All of those were VERY patriotic organizations full of patriots. The NSA recording every communication of every US citizen is purely for Homeland
Again, bullshit. Even in the densely populated places in the US we have crap internet connectivity compared to most of the developed world.
There are secure encryption methods that are being used, and there is a good reason why the NSA wants to be assisting with the larger cryptographic community in developing secure forms of communication. Don't get into this kind of conspiracy theory bullshit and claim that they have some kind of mystical powers that simply don't exist.
Yeah, like putting back doors in most of the security used on the internet. They're not magical...wait...what was that article about again?
They want to be able to read what ever the enemy produces. You don't seem to recognize that the for the NSA we're the enemy. The real secure methods they won't let the public have. They keep those secret for internal use only. If they publicized them the enemy (you know, the public) would have access to them.
Learn a bit about mathematics first and understand not just that they have pontificated about some sort of algorithm but understand why they came to those conclusions. If not yourself, then at least find somebody who you can trust.
Do you know how many people in the world have the level of math required for advance cryptography? It ain't many. You certainly aren't going to pick up a book and figure it out in a few weeks of studying.
That doesn't make them sinister, just patriots... patriots that know there are people just like them in other countries around the world.
You know those WWII Germans you mentioned above? They were just patriots too. It was all for the Fatherland...and the children.
The NSA isn't going to be applying that kind of brute force decryption effort on love letters between you and your girlfriend.
If you become a person of interest they will. And these days it doesn't take much to become a person of interest. They really like making examples of people even in cases where there is no ill intent (see Aaron Swartz) but are saying and doing things they don't like. It helps keep the rest of the plebeians in line when they fear Government retribution. Given the number of and complexity of the laws in this country these days it's almost a certainty your breaking at least some of them. Once you've broken one they start throwing the magic word "terrorism" in front of everything and pretty soon you're looking at 40 years for something like spitting on the sidewalk. The land of the free*.
* Conditions apply. You must comply with the Government group think at all times for freedom to be applicable.
And you'll soon be out of business. Truth of the matter is, that a business simply cannot sustain by providing unlimited broadband internet for the prices that the average consumer is willing to pay.
Strange how other countries are able to provide unlimited AND much faster connections than what's available in the US. They must be using magic electrons/photons or something. And I'm guessing you're predicting the demise of Google soon also?
In other words, bullshit. It's not a mater of business. It's a mater of regulatory constraints and lack of competition allowing US ISPs to jack up their prices while reducing their service. That's what happens when there is limited competition.
And... Enforcement is the job of the Executive Branch, not Congress. Lots O' luck.
Congress has the ultimate tool of enforcement in the form of impeachment.
Yeah. I said it. What Obama's administration has done (and his predecessors) far surpasses anything Nixon did in the realms of violating the law and covering it up. This includes a fair number of congress critters also.
Note the "and his predecessors": This is NOT a partisan issue. The whole lot should be thrown in jail.
So "warfighter" is redundant.
Yeah, cause no one needs gear like this more than the cook or the Chaplin. They both need strong protection from projectile vomiting.
It's jargon, and I'm not convinced there's any point in using it.
I'll tell you what. We'll just send you out with the grunts for a while. I'm betting you'll see the point and pretty damn quick.
If you use terms like "crotch fruit" that's usually a sign that you felt your argument can't stand on its own and needed emotional appeal for the "har har look how tough my callousness makes me" -crowd. The interesting question, then, is why make said argument in the first place? Vested interests? Psychological problems? Trolling?
That's pretty funny and quite ironic. You don't even try to refute my weak (as you claim) arguments but instead attack my choice of words.
Also, drain cleaner usually comes in bottles with safety caps, presumably because manufacturers of dangerous chemicals think they might be held responsible for not taking reasonable precautions.
Unless this was an attempt. I chose one example. Come on stretch your mind a little bit. Look around the room you're sitting in. You will see dozens of things in that room that could potentially cause harm to kids if left unattended. Far more kids are hurt and even killed by TVs than by buckyballs. Tacks are made in pretty candy colors and left laying all over the place. And don't get me started on the number of people (including kids) killed and maimed in cars. How come no one is trying to ban any of those?
And yes I used strong words. Using strong words only lessens an argument for the weak minded. That is, unless of course the strong words are the only argument...*looks at first paragraph above*...Hmmm. I used strong words to emphasize the idiocy of claiming anything that hurts you kid is someone else's responsibility. Giving a product clearly labeled as not for kids to your kid and then blaming whoever made the product when the kid gets hurt is asinine (Uh oh. There's those strong words again).
Look, on the one hand it's incredibly rare that this will happen, and I get that, and it's a reasonable argument, but that's not what you're saying. What do you do when it's statistically likely that a product will cause harm to someone not involved in the negligence?
I forgot to refute this one. Did you actually do a statistical analysis of the probability of a kid coming across 2 randomly dropped buckyballs and swallowing them (you have to swallow at least 2 for them to harm you) against the probability of a coming across say a randomly dropped pretty colored tack? Didn't think so. I would take a big wager on which presents the greater probability of causing harm. And to completely obviate this argument compare it against the odds of a kid getting hurt in a car accident. Yet no parent thinks twice about throwing their kid in the back of the death machine and driving off like a maniac while putting on makeup/shaving and texting. Much less do they argue for banning them. So much for statistical argument.
Spilled drain cleaner is typically cleaned up quickly, and if touched does damage but usually not too much. A few stray magnet balls can sit there until some toddler chomps them. Are you really calling a two-year-old "stupid crotch fruit" for that? And it doesn't have to be the toddler's house, or his parents who were responsible for losing them.
This applies to a million other things. So lets just ban everything. It's a stupid argument to claim there is only one thing in the whole world that could cause a kid harm if left laying around.
And for the record I think pretty much all crotch fruit are stupid. I don't like children in general and certainly don't like ones being raised such that they think the whole world revolves around them which is the majority of crotch fruit these days.
I was out once, vaping my e-cig, when the unit failed (not my fault, the seal was defective) and spilled a significant amount of nicotine fluid. I got some napkins and cleaned it up well, mostly because if I didn't, it would have been fairly easy for some random toddler to overdose himself on nicotine.
Strange. I've always taken the attitude that cleaning up after myself when I make a mess in a public place is simple common courtesy. Makes me think of walking into a restaurant and seeing a table with food slung all over the place, smeared on the table and spread about the floor for several feet around the table. Who are these people that think it's ok to let their kids act like that in public?
Would you hurl insults at the toddler, or me, or the e-cig manufacturer? To be consistent with what you posted, it seems that you'd yell at the poisoned toddler.
Up to a certain age a child pretty much reflects the mentality of the parent. Prior to that point the child being stupid is pretty much solely reflective of and the responsibility of the parent. The child may be stupid but it's the parent's fault. Note that I called the crotch fruit stupid but blamed the parent. There is no inconsistency there. The hope is at some point the child recognizes this and starts taking responsibility for themselves. That's happening less and less.
Is it my imagination or is the US doing that A LOT?
It's not your imagination. It's starting to get rather scary.
The box had a warning label, but not the product, and unlike drain cleaner the product does not stay in the box, it's designed to be stuck to things.
Neither do tacks or dozens of other things that aren't for children. Isn't it pretty common knowledge that if it will fit in their mouth count on a kid eating it? I don't have kids and I know that. If the frigging box says not for children I'm going to take it out of the box and THEN assume it's safe for children. That's ridiculous. From what I've seen of buckyballs there isn't room to put the warning on the balls themselves where it would actually be readable.
In addition they then enhanced the buckyball line by introducing a range of candy colours, (oranges, pink, red, blue) from memory, the orange looked particularly delicious. The drugs industry goes to some effort to try to differentiate their pills from candy, buckyball were going in the opposite direction, it was asking for trouble.
Yeah, he made colors so more kids would eat them. I don't understand the logic here. The colors mean you can do more interesting things with them. Heaven forbid they add value to there product. They do the same thing with tacks.
Also having watched adults play with buckyballs, they often try and make an earring, so I can imagine the following , kid A places a ball either side of their ear "look lets scare mom that I got a peircing" kid B goes one better and places one either side of their tongue"
THE BOX SAID THEY ARE NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN. So who's fault is it when the parent gives them to the kids?
Given this I understand why they product was banned, they were potentially dangerous
Damn near everything is potentially dangerous. These are no more dangerous than thousands of other things out there. Know how many kids are killed in cars every year? Yet no one does a damn thing to address that problem. It's always just an accident, someone else's fault.
The label on the box would probably not have stopped me from buying them by itself, just as the T labels on PS3 video games has not stopped me. The safety labels on consumer items is as often just a CYA action on the part of the manufacturers, not a serious effort to protect or warn people of the dangers involved.
So you ignore the warning label and of course it's someone else's fault. *shakes head* Unbelievable.
Parents see a box of funny little magnets. How can they be dangerous?
And who's fault is that? It's certainly not the fault of the person who started the company that makes the product. If anything the parent should be prosecuted for child abuse.
My kid ate one or your magnets and had to have his bowel removed is not necessarily a bogus claim.
So if your stupid crotch fruit eats some drain cleaner it's the drain cleaner manufacturers fault fault, right? No moron. It's your fault.
THEY'RE CLEARLY LABELED AS NOT FOR KIDS.
I am so tired of the lack of personal responsibility in society today. It's always someone else at fault.
And how many of that 88% drop would have been false claims to begin with? Is it truly excessive use of force? Or rather that the arrested/detained/ticketed/etc party realizes that, being recorded they can't any violation.
My point is, does it matter? Seems to me everybody wins. Cops can't be happy dealing with the stress of complaints against them. And I stated the camera makes everyone involved act more civil. The one big concern is protecting civil liberties where no crime was committed.
That being said, a cops first priority in any interaction with people should be to de-escalate. It seems more and more that isn't happening. The opposite is happen. In any situation where there is a huge power imbalance given as a public trust, as with police, if the party with the power is instigating confrontations they shouldn't have that power.