As if! All WonkaVision broadcasts are protected by Tastes4Sure WonkaDRM - try recording that and you'll get a visit from some particularly nasty oompa-loompa lawyers.
I see nothing that suggests freedom is that every computer system must be open to having free software ported to it - yet these TiVo clauses attempt to create such a right.
Wrong, this has nothing to do with porting code to new platforms. The intention of the GPLv3 clause is to ensure that a hardware device that's already running GPL software will also run modified versions of the software.
The issue is intent. If I make a hardware device that runs Linux and it crashes when you upload some weird-ass, corrupted kernel, I'm not breaking the GPLv3, you're just a crappy hacker. If, however, I want to deliberately create hardware mechanisms to ensure that no binaries other than the one I made will run, then I'm not allowed to use GPLv3 code on that hardware.
it isn't racist for me to say "fuck you aboriginal, no more handouts get a fucking job."
I'm not saying that your argument is racist, but it's undeniable that society at large is quite racist towards aboriginals, whether you and I like it or not. So although we personally may not have done anything to harm or wrong any natives, we're part of a society that on the whole makes life very difficult for natives who try to integrate. Personally, when I see natives leading negative or destructive lifestyles, I blame two parties. The individuals themselves (obviously), but also the vast swaths of ignorant assholes who actually encourage such behavior by treating natives so unfairly when they try to "come up".
If someone wants to become self-sufficient and improve their own situation, I want my society to embrace and accept them. Instead, most people seem to respond with prejudiced attitudes, which helps cause (but does not singularly cause) most natives to be alienated from the mainstream.
So yes, it's bad when people deliberately live off "handouts" with no intention of pulling their own weight. But it's also bad when society makes it very disproportionately difficult for aboriginals to enjoy the same treatment everyone else does. And because we can't seem to collectively kick the racism habit, the only solution available to us is to throw money at the situation to try to balance things out.
So even though you personally may not be responsible, as a society we are responsible for the actions of our society, and that means I end up having to pay taxes to compensate for some asshole landlord who wouldn't rent to "injuns", or some bank that charges ridiculously high loan rates to natives (or won't give them at all).
we conquered, displaced, and finally made peace with them. Deal with it. Where else in the world do people get conquered, then subsidized for their troubles?
This is a confusing position to me, because it seems so completely incompatible with the ideas of private property and the rule of law that our society is built on. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world where a powerful army can steal my shit, kill my family, and then everyone tells me to "deal with it" because they conquered me. Might does not make right, and claiming that a particular group is morally or legally entitled to something simply because they were strong enough to steal it strikes me as complete nihilism.
So maybe aboriginals should aim to become self-sufficient in their own right.
Agreed.
Every other culture in Canada mingles in, does their thing and lives life. Why can't they?
It's called "racism", and while this loaded term may have been abused in other situations, and you may tune out the moment you hear it, it's very, very applicable in this situation.
Whether or not you personally do, a lot of people hold strong stereotypes about aboriginals. You can even see these stereotypes echoed in Slashdot posts. Natives are lazy, addicted to handouts, they have no concept of private property, let alone hard work. They are uneducated, drunks, and prone to petty crime. Most of all, they irrationally hate all white people.
Would you hire someone like that? Would you want anything to do with them? Of course not, and while perhaps you and I know that all aboriginals aren't like that, a LOT of people in both the US and Canada act with these stereotypes in mind when hiring, renting houses, giving loans, accepting college applicants, and even ruling on court cases.
It's very difficult to get by in "civilization" when these sorts of cards are stacked against you, not to mention the generalized psychological alienation that comes from being consistently pre-judged. Yes, it's absolutely possible with enough hard work, but it's a lot of work. A lot more than you or I have done for the same result. And so it's not at all surprising when, faced with both the practical and psychological difficulties of living in a "world" where most people think they know all about you because you're aboriginal, the vast majority opt to stay on the reservation. It may suck on the reservation, but at least the people in your community respect you.
Racism isn't an excuse, it's not a get-out-of-responsibility-free card, but it is a very, very important factor in the difficulties that natives have, and it's absurd to start talking about how they should basically "shut up and join the rest of society" when the rest of society is still so hostile to them.
I steal your car and drive it around for a couple years.
Then I bequeath it to my son, and kill myself.
My son inherits the car, and drives it to work everyday.
You notice the car one day and try to recover it, plus damages, claiming it was stolen from you.
"Sorry," says my son. "I've never even met you, let alone committed any offenses against you. I need this car to get to work, why should I have to give up anything because of what my ancestors did?"
I don't think there's any danger of the Canadian government creating any new reserves, or for that matter doing anything they don't absolutely have to for the First Nations in Canada:)
and put a toll gate on my front sidewalk.
Your property isn't a sovereign nation. In the US and Canada, you "own" land at the pleasure of the government, but the government still has certain rights over it - for example, they can make you mow your lawn, allow water or gas pipes under your ground, keep your buildings below a certain height, and yes, broadcast radio waves through your property.
Native American reservations (at least supposedly) are sovereign entities with their own governments, and therefore own their land in a much more real sense. It's why they can set up casinos even when the state government bans them. Imagine if we wanted to pipe gas between Montana and Alaska. Do you think we could just start burying pipe in Canadian land without asking them or giving them compensation? The same principle applies to the First Nations.
Now, whether that should apply to radio communications is another matter. But they probably have a case, since they might legitimately want to use the cell phone frequency for something else on their own land which would interfere with cellphone calls that traveled through their airspace. If we expect another sovereign entity to cooperate with the FCC and refrain from broadcasting on cellphone frequencies (which is their right), surely they're entitled to some compensation.
"feel free to disregard all reasoned arguments I present:)"
I did, even before you admitted you were ignorant.
Ok, ok, I get it - IHBT IHL HAND. But it is an interesting discussion, so on the off chance that I'm not the only one legitimately participating in it:
The point which you dodged is that there are several perfectly good reasons that the cop did what he did
I'm really trying here, but I can't think of too many reasons a cop would say "You don't have to tell me what's in the bag, unless I ask": Either he accidentally misrepresented the law, or he deliberately misrepresented the law. If there are more possibilities than that, please tell me specifically what they are.
rights trouncing, citizen abusing asshole[s]... are BY FAR the exception. Most cops are regular guys
Most cops are regular guys. And I'm not so aloof as to claim that I or most people I know wouldn't act the way cops do if we were put in uniforms, given guns and authority, and given a simultaneously boring, frustrating and fairly scary job. Because there is a large, very well respected body of study that shows that when you take ordinary people from all walks of life and put them in those kind of cop-like roles, we very frequently begin exhibiting aggressive, abusive behavior.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is the most dramatic demonstration of this, and it and the Milgram Experiment form the basis of a lot of modern study of the psychological effects of authority.
So yes, I have a certain amount of sympathy for the situation "ordinary guy" cops find themselves in, but there's no doubt that these ordinary guys do end up violating people's rights and abusing their authority fairly consistently, and it doesn't make it "OK" just because they're ordinary guys. To demonstrate that it's not just a few "bad apples" abusing their authority, here's an experiment you can try at home (or in your hometown):
- Find a cop who's arresting, ticketing, searching, or otherwise hassling a stranger.
- Approach the scene and openly observe the interaction. Allow yourself to be obviously seen recording information like the officer's license plate number, badge number, and description. Take pictures openly if you have a camera. IMPORTANT: Keep a generous distance so as not to interfere in any way.
- Don't speak to or interact with anyone on the scene, except (optional) when the officer has a moment, announce yourself so you don't arouse suspicion. Say something along the lines of "Officer, my name is [your name] and I'll just be acting as an observer of this encounter."
- Wait for the officer to ask you to move along. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- Wait for the officer to order you to move along. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- Wait for the officer to attempt to interrogate you or get you to present ID. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- Wait for the officer to threaten you with arrest and/or intimidate you further. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- (optional) Wait for the officer to either give up, conclude their original encounter, and move on, or actually follow through and arrest you.
Not all police will react according to these instructions, but easily over half of them will. Much of the rest of the time (usually when it's just a stop-and-search, or random questioning, not an actual arrest) the cops will stop unusually quickly and move on, to avoid further observation. I and people I know have performed this test many times with cops in many different cities and towns, and the response is strikingly uniform (no pun intended
In other words, if a cop asks, and you choose to answer, don't lie.
This is true, and a good point. No matter how much of a right we have to "remain silent", actively telling the cops lies is a very bad idea. If a cop notices that you're lying (even if it's a harmless lie unrelated to a crime), that's usually all the evidence they need to search or detain you.
All that other stupid shit you assumed...
The only thing I assumed was that the story the OP related, and specifically what the cop told him/her was accurate. The cop (supposedly) said "You don't have to tell me what is in the bag unless I ask." That's incorrect. There are two possibilities: either the cop is deliberately lying, or he is honestly mistaken about the law, both of which I acknowledged.
As it turns out, the cop may not have said "unless I ask", so the point may be moot. Either way, it seems like when you wrote What I suspect he meant was... you were being at least as if not more presumptuous than me.
typical slashtroll anti-government garbage
Oh noes! Guilty! You got me, I am in fact, an anarchist. Now that you know this, feel free to disregard all reasoned arguments I present:)
"You don't have to tell me what is in the bag unless I ask."
Though this cop was nicer than most, he was still lying. Even if he asks, you don't have to tell him what's in the bag at all, unless he has reason to believe that you're committing a crime that involves that bag. We have a basic constitutional protection against unreasonable search, and that includes having to give a verbal inventory of everything we're carrying.
And if he has reason to believe that you're carrying contraband in the bag (which he didn't in this case), you still don't have to tell him, because the 5th amendment says we can't be compelled to incriminate ourselves.
But to be fair, the cop may not have been lying - he may have genuinely believed that you were required to submit to an arbitrary search/interrogation simply because he asked - which is even scarier in my opinion!
You are required to show them your ID if they ask.
In the US, if you're driving a motor vehicle, you can be compelled to show your driver's license. In any other situation, however, you do not even have to carry ID, let alone show it. You can be compelled to identify yourself (for example, giving your name, DOB, and address) if you are being arrested or ticketed, but other than that you don't even have to give the cops any information.
make it a private software product licensable to a firm. Don't put it up for anyone with other, more evil motives (than lawyers?) to see.
Ever heard of going pro se? Did you know that you have the right to represent yourself in court? Did you know that some lawyers aren't part of firms, and some of them may be volunteering their labor (meaning they couldn't afford special software)? I know everyone would like a way to make sure that Good Guys get all the information they need while Bad Guys just see a big black screen where the internet would be, but things very rarely work that way.
Plus, there's a more basic principle in play here: Public information should be available to the public, not highly specialized, expensive lawyers or librarians. There's no possibility of this information becoming actually secret, since it's part of legal proceedings. What you seem to want is to obfuscate the information. All that will accomplish is making it even more burdensome for ordinary citizens to gain public access to public information, while dedicated criminals (such as hit men) simply have to spend a little extra time/effort to accomplish their goals.
Now, I'm all for government transparency and accountability, but then again, we have such things as the freaking witness protection program.
Yes, the witness protection program is great, and would be very appropriate for the people on this list. But the witness protection program does not allow people to testify anonymously, and never has - that's one of the reasons we need it. Gangs, mobsters, and the like have always been able to find out the names of people who testified against them, which is why we need a program to keep those people safe.
Unfortunately, what people seem to want is for a police officer to be able have his testimony heard and accepted by a court without the defense (or anyone else) ever knowing who he is. This is the kind of shit Bush has been trying to do for years - know why? Because it's a lot easier to give false testimony about someone if you know your name will never be associated with the lie.
You might be thinking in terms of drugs, but what about the pawn shop owner who reports stolen goods to the police?
Yes, the fact that the police are responsible for enforcing good laws as well as bad ones does present a problem. Taking steps to prevent them from enforcing bad laws often makes it more difficult for them to enforce good ones, so the question become one of compromise: Should we just sit back and accept the abuses of the police because they also help us in other situations?
Most oppressive institutions are like this. Dictatorships kill and imprison people to maintain power, but they use that power to provide social stability and safety. To undermine dictatorship is to threaten the stability and safety that it provides as well, and yet to tell someone not to "rock the boat" in that situation would be absurd.
More practically speaking though, I think if more people took an active role in making law enforcement's job extremely difficult as a response to unjust laws, those laws would get changed very quickly. Instead, we sit quietly and accept whatever injustice the police commit, because we love the safety offered by corrupt authorities more than we love freedom.
I see no reason why the names of under cover agents need to be public record in court cases.
Of course their identity needs to be public record. They're individuals testifying in a court case. What are you going to do, have a cop take the stand as "Mr. Anonymous"? Cops already are known to lie on the stand occasionally, but can you imagine if they were allowed to testify and never have their name revealed? There would be no accountability whatsoever! They could say anything they wanted, and even if proven false later, nobody could come after them because nobody knows who they are!
Secrecy and fair trials generally don't mix. This does cause some problems and may be inconvenient, but it is, as they say, the price we pay for freedom.
I expect to get paid, I am not surprised when others do too...
The thousands of volunteers who do much of the actual work on Firefox don't expect to get paid in dollars, but they do expect to be "rewarded" with some kind of involvement and input in their own project.
This isn't so much about Google giving money to Mozilla as it is about Mozilla obfuscating its processes from its own volunteers. Google is giving giant amounts of money to Mozilla because of the hard work of the Firefox volunteers. I don't think the volunteers expect a dime of that money, or even a vote on how it's spent, but they'd probably at least like to be able to offer suggestions on how to spend it. As it stands, they aren't even allowed to know what's happening to the money, or what kind of agreements were attached to it.
The obvious response to this complaint is "Well, it's open source; If you don't like it, go fork your own browser!", and I suspect exactly that may happen if Mozilla continues to show this kind of disrespect to the people who are, to a large degree, responsible for the foundation's success.
I agree. Actually, I think if you really want to make your point you should apply, demonstrate how qualified you are and what a good employee you'd be, and then refuse to submit to invasive practices once they've offered you the job. This demonstrates very clearly to the employer what they're missing out on by using invasive practices.
But I'm not just talking about me, I'm making the case that everyone should refuse to work for these employers, because it's the right thing to do. Even if you personally don't have a problem with subjecting yourself to practices like fingerprinting and invasive employee monitoring, other people do, and that seems quite reasonable to me. Whenever people submit to invasive practices, they're encouraging and enabling the business to continue those practices on other people who may not be as "OK" with it as you.
If you don't stand up for the privacy rights of others when it's something you see as unimportant, don't expect them to defend yours when the roles are reversed.
Giving your fingerprints to a government/large business gives that institution power over you. It effectively gives them the power to retroactively monitor everywhere you've been and everything you've touched. This much is inarguable.
I think the main reason we're nervous about giving this power out is that we don't trust the institutions who are demanding it. And why should we? Do you believe that no government institution will ever use fingerprint databases to violate the privacy of law-abiding people? Do you believe that the owners of your company will always, unfailingly respect your rights to privacy, even if it's advantageous for them to do otherwise? How about employees in your company who have access to your information?
The bottom line is that there are many, many examples of both government and corporate institutions using data that was collected in the name of security (credit card databases, surveillance cameras, phone taps, RFIDs, etc) to harass and seriously disrupt the lives of people who broke no laws. It's not that much of stretch to think that if I give my fingerprints to such an institution, there's a chance they might use that information inappropriately in the future.
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother-fucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way this is liberating. Hiro no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken."
It's true that American corporations don't have all the rights of American citizens, but they have a lot of the most important ones, and they have a hell of a lot more money and influence to assert those rights through the courts.
They'll be happy to sell you oil to burn in engines. They'll be happy to sell you photovoltaic modules.
I disagree. I see what you're getting at, namely the fact that oil companies have no emotional attachment to oil, and will be happy to adopt whatever business model is most profitable.
However, selling solar panels is a good example of the last thing they want to do. Why? Solar panels allow people to be energy self-sufficient. Once you have enough solar panels to provide electricity for your personal needs, they're not going to see another dime from you. Oil companies thrive off the fact that we can never get "enough" of their product, so they're willing to do pretty outrageous things to make sure it stays that way.
The most effective business models are designed around ensuring that the customers always have need of the business, and the more dependent they are on the business's goods and services, the better. Distributed solar technology is the opposite of that.
Now my default reaction to the claims of _any_ environmental group will be suspicion.
Good. That's how you should react to the claims of anyone who has an agenda (and almost all institutions with a large amount of money have an agenda). However. As they say "Even a broken clock is right twice a day". Simply because a group has been known to be wrong or even deliberately misleading in the past doesn't mean that everything they say, and every aspect of their agenda is wrong.
There needs to be a middle ground between blind acceptance of groups like Greenpeace's every word, and reflexive opposition to everything they say and stand for because they're "liars". It's not acceptable to simply ignore information because the group presenting it has been dishonest before, or because certain methods of presenting the information were manipulative. In fact, if we really did that across the board, we would end up rejecting pretty much all information available about everything - everybody lies and manipulates, usually without considering it manipulation.
I think the reality is that people use the "they're liars, don't listen to a word they say!" argument as a satisfying way of avoiding having to reconcile their own opinions with information that may contradict them.
Slashdot Mirror
As if! All WonkaVision broadcasts are protected by Tastes4Sure WonkaDRM - try recording that and you'll get a visit from some particularly nasty oompa-loompa lawyers.
I see nothing that suggests freedom is that every computer system must be open to having free software ported to it - yet these TiVo clauses attempt to create such a right.
Wrong, this has nothing to do with porting code to new platforms. The intention of the GPLv3 clause is to ensure that a hardware device that's already running GPL software will also run modified versions of the software.
The issue is intent. If I make a hardware device that runs Linux and it crashes when you upload some weird-ass, corrupted kernel, I'm not breaking the GPLv3, you're just a crappy hacker. If, however, I want to deliberately create hardware mechanisms to ensure that no binaries other than the one I made will run, then I'm not allowed to use GPLv3 code on that hardware.
it isn't racist for me to say "fuck you aboriginal, no more handouts get a fucking job."
I'm not saying that your argument is racist, but it's undeniable that society at large is quite racist towards aboriginals, whether you and I like it or not. So although we personally may not have done anything to harm or wrong any natives, we're part of a society that on the whole makes life very difficult for natives who try to integrate. Personally, when I see natives leading negative or destructive lifestyles, I blame two parties. The individuals themselves (obviously), but also the vast swaths of ignorant assholes who actually encourage such behavior by treating natives so unfairly when they try to "come up".
If someone wants to become self-sufficient and improve their own situation, I want my society to embrace and accept them. Instead, most people seem to respond with prejudiced attitudes, which helps cause (but does not singularly cause) most natives to be alienated from the mainstream.
So yes, it's bad when people deliberately live off "handouts" with no intention of pulling their own weight. But it's also bad when society makes it very disproportionately difficult for aboriginals to enjoy the same treatment everyone else does. And because we can't seem to collectively kick the racism habit, the only solution available to us is to throw money at the situation to try to balance things out.
So even though you personally may not be responsible, as a society we are responsible for the actions of our society, and that means I end up having to pay taxes to compensate for some asshole landlord who wouldn't rent to "injuns", or some bank that charges ridiculously high loan rates to natives (or won't give them at all).
we conquered, displaced, and finally made peace with them. Deal with it. Where else in the world do people get conquered, then subsidized for their troubles?
This is a confusing position to me, because it seems so completely incompatible with the ideas of private property and the rule of law that our society is built on. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world where a powerful army can steal my shit, kill my family, and then everyone tells me to "deal with it" because they conquered me. Might does not make right, and claiming that a particular group is morally or legally entitled to something simply because they were strong enough to steal it strikes me as complete nihilism.
So maybe aboriginals should aim to become self-sufficient in their own right.
Agreed.
Every other culture in Canada mingles in, does their thing and lives life. Why can't they?
It's called "racism", and while this loaded term may have been abused in other situations, and you may tune out the moment you hear it, it's very, very applicable in this situation.
Whether or not you personally do, a lot of people hold strong stereotypes about aboriginals. You can even see these stereotypes echoed in Slashdot posts. Natives are lazy, addicted to handouts, they have no concept of private property, let alone hard work. They are uneducated, drunks, and prone to petty crime. Most of all, they irrationally hate all white people.
Would you hire someone like that? Would you want anything to do with them? Of course not, and while perhaps you and I know that all aboriginals aren't like that, a LOT of people in both the US and Canada act with these stereotypes in mind when hiring, renting houses, giving loans, accepting college applicants, and even ruling on court cases.
It's very difficult to get by in "civilization" when these sorts of cards are stacked against you, not to mention the generalized psychological alienation that comes from being consistently pre-judged. Yes, it's absolutely possible with enough hard work, but it's a lot of work. A lot more than you or I have done for the same result. And so it's not at all surprising when, faced with both the practical and psychological difficulties of living in a "world" where most people think they know all about you because you're aboriginal, the vast majority opt to stay on the reservation. It may suck on the reservation, but at least the people in your community respect you.
Racism isn't an excuse, it's not a get-out-of-responsibility-free card, but it is a very, very important factor in the difficulties that natives have, and it's absurd to start talking about how they should basically "shut up and join the rest of society" when the rest of society is still so hostile to them.
Guess I'm mistaken, thanks for the info.
I steal your car and drive it around for a couple years.
Then I bequeath it to my son, and kill myself.
My son inherits the car, and drives it to work everyday.
You notice the car one day and try to recover it, plus damages, claiming it was stolen from you.
"Sorry," says my son. "I've never even met you, let alone committed any offenses against you. I need this car to get to work, why should I have to give up anything because of what my ancestors did?"
So, if they create large urban reserves
:)
I don't think there's any danger of the Canadian government creating any new reserves, or for that matter doing anything they don't absolutely have to for the First Nations in Canada
and put a toll gate on my front sidewalk.
Your property isn't a sovereign nation. In the US and Canada, you "own" land at the pleasure of the government, but the government still has certain rights over it - for example, they can make you mow your lawn, allow water or gas pipes under your ground, keep your buildings below a certain height, and yes, broadcast radio waves through your property.
Native American reservations (at least supposedly) are sovereign entities with their own governments, and therefore own their land in a much more real sense. It's why they can set up casinos even when the state government bans them. Imagine if we wanted to pipe gas between Montana and Alaska. Do you think we could just start burying pipe in Canadian land without asking them or giving them compensation? The same principle applies to the First Nations.
Now, whether that should apply to radio communications is another matter. But they probably have a case, since they might legitimately want to use the cell phone frequency for something else on their own land which would interfere with cellphone calls that traveled through their airspace. If we expect another sovereign entity to cooperate with the FCC and refrain from broadcasting on cellphone frequencies (which is their right), surely they're entitled to some compensation.
IDK, WTF is SDS?
"feel free to disregard all reasoned arguments I present :)"
I did, even before you admitted you were ignorant.
Ok, ok, I get it - IHBT IHL HAND. But it is an interesting discussion, so on the off chance that I'm not the only one legitimately participating in it:
The point which you dodged is that there are several perfectly good reasons that the cop did what he did
I'm really trying here, but I can't think of too many reasons a cop would say "You don't have to tell me what's in the bag, unless I ask": Either he accidentally misrepresented the law, or he deliberately misrepresented the law. If there are more possibilities than that, please tell me specifically what they are.
rights trouncing, citizen abusing asshole[s]... are BY FAR the exception. Most cops are regular guys
Most cops are regular guys. And I'm not so aloof as to claim that I or most people I know wouldn't act the way cops do if we were put in uniforms, given guns and authority, and given a simultaneously boring, frustrating and fairly scary job. Because there is a large, very well respected body of study that shows that when you take ordinary people from all walks of life and put them in those kind of cop-like roles, we very frequently begin exhibiting aggressive, abusive behavior.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is the most dramatic demonstration of this, and it and the Milgram Experiment form the basis of a lot of modern study of the psychological effects of authority.
So yes, I have a certain amount of sympathy for the situation "ordinary guy" cops find themselves in, but there's no doubt that these ordinary guys do end up violating people's rights and abusing their authority fairly consistently, and it doesn't make it "OK" just because they're ordinary guys. To demonstrate that it's not just a few "bad apples" abusing their authority, here's an experiment you can try at home (or in your hometown):
- Find a cop who's arresting, ticketing, searching, or otherwise hassling a stranger.
- Approach the scene and openly observe the interaction. Allow yourself to be obviously seen recording information like the officer's license plate number, badge number, and description. Take pictures openly if you have a camera. IMPORTANT: Keep a generous distance so as not to interfere in any way.
- Don't speak to or interact with anyone on the scene, except (optional) when the officer has a moment, announce yourself so you don't arouse suspicion. Say something along the lines of "Officer, my name is [your name] and I'll just be acting as an observer of this encounter."
- Wait for the officer to ask you to move along. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- Wait for the officer to order you to move along. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- Wait for the officer to attempt to interrogate you or get you to present ID. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- Wait for the officer to threaten you with arrest and/or intimidate you further. Politely reiterate that you're just observing, and have no desire to interfere.
- (optional) Wait for the officer to either give up, conclude their original encounter, and move on, or actually follow through and arrest you.
Not all police will react according to these instructions, but easily over half of them will. Much of the rest of the time (usually when it's just a stop-and-search, or random questioning, not an actual arrest) the cops will stop unusually quickly and move on, to avoid further observation. I and people I know have performed this test many times with cops in many different cities and towns, and the response is strikingly uniform (no pun intended
In other words, if a cop asks, and you choose to answer, don't lie.
:)
This is true, and a good point. No matter how much of a right we have to "remain silent", actively telling the cops lies is a very bad idea. If a cop notices that you're lying (even if it's a harmless lie unrelated to a crime), that's usually all the evidence they need to search or detain you.
All that other stupid shit you assumed...
The only thing I assumed was that the story the OP related, and specifically what the cop told him/her was accurate. The cop (supposedly) said "You don't have to tell me what is in the bag unless I ask." That's incorrect. There are two possibilities: either the cop is deliberately lying, or he is honestly mistaken about the law, both of which I acknowledged.
As it turns out, the cop may not have said "unless I ask", so the point may be moot. Either way, it seems like when you wrote What I suspect he meant was... you were being at least as if not more presumptuous than me.
typical slashtroll anti-government garbage
Oh noes! Guilty! You got me, I am in fact, an anarchist. Now that you know this, feel free to disregard all reasoned arguments I present
"You don't have to tell me what is in the bag unless I ask."
Though this cop was nicer than most, he was still lying. Even if he asks, you don't have to tell him what's in the bag at all, unless he has reason to believe that you're committing a crime that involves that bag. We have a basic constitutional protection against unreasonable search, and that includes having to give a verbal inventory of everything we're carrying.
And if he has reason to believe that you're carrying contraband in the bag (which he didn't in this case), you still don't have to tell him, because the 5th amendment says we can't be compelled to incriminate ourselves.
But to be fair, the cop may not have been lying - he may have genuinely believed that you were required to submit to an arbitrary search/interrogation simply because he asked - which is even scarier in my opinion!
You are required to show them your ID if they ask.
In the US, if you're driving a motor vehicle, you can be compelled to show your driver's license. In any other situation, however, you do not even have to carry ID, let alone show it. You can be compelled to identify yourself (for example, giving your name, DOB, and address) if you are being arrested or ticketed, but other than that you don't even have to give the cops any information.
make it a private software product licensable to a firm. Don't put it up for anyone with other, more evil motives (than lawyers?) to see.
Ever heard of going pro se? Did you know that you have the right to represent yourself in court? Did you know that some lawyers aren't part of firms, and some of them may be volunteering their labor (meaning they couldn't afford special software)? I know everyone would like a way to make sure that Good Guys get all the information they need while Bad Guys just see a big black screen where the internet would be, but things very rarely work that way.
Plus, there's a more basic principle in play here: Public information should be available to the public, not highly specialized, expensive lawyers or librarians. There's no possibility of this information becoming actually secret, since it's part of legal proceedings. What you seem to want is to obfuscate the information. All that will accomplish is making it even more burdensome for ordinary citizens to gain public access to public information, while dedicated criminals (such as hit men) simply have to spend a little extra time/effort to accomplish their goals.
Now, I'm all for government transparency and accountability, but then again, we have such things as the freaking witness protection program.
Yes, the witness protection program is great, and would be very appropriate for the people on this list. But the witness protection program does not allow people to testify anonymously, and never has - that's one of the reasons we need it. Gangs, mobsters, and the like have always been able to find out the names of people who testified against them, which is why we need a program to keep those people safe.
Unfortunately, what people seem to want is for a police officer to be able have his testimony heard and accepted by a court without the defense (or anyone else) ever knowing who he is. This is the kind of shit Bush has been trying to do for years - know why? Because it's a lot easier to give false testimony about someone if you know your name will never be associated with the lie.
You might be thinking in terms of drugs, but what about the pawn shop owner who reports stolen goods to the police?
Yes, the fact that the police are responsible for enforcing good laws as well as bad ones does present a problem. Taking steps to prevent them from enforcing bad laws often makes it more difficult for them to enforce good ones, so the question become one of compromise: Should we just sit back and accept the abuses of the police because they also help us in other situations?
Most oppressive institutions are like this. Dictatorships kill and imprison people to maintain power, but they use that power to provide social stability and safety. To undermine dictatorship is to threaten the stability and safety that it provides as well, and yet to tell someone not to "rock the boat" in that situation would be absurd.
More practically speaking though, I think if more people took an active role in making law enforcement's job extremely difficult as a response to unjust laws, those laws would get changed very quickly. Instead, we sit quietly and accept whatever injustice the police commit, because we love the safety offered by corrupt authorities more than we love freedom.
I see no reason why the names of under cover agents need to be public record in court cases.
Of course their identity needs to be public record. They're individuals testifying in a court case. What are you going to do, have a cop take the stand as "Mr. Anonymous"? Cops already are known to lie on the stand occasionally, but can you imagine if they were allowed to testify and never have their name revealed? There would be no accountability whatsoever! They could say anything they wanted, and even if proven false later, nobody could come after them because nobody knows who they are!
Secrecy and fair trials generally don't mix. This does cause some problems and may be inconvenient, but it is, as they say, the price we pay for freedom.
conflict of interest and incompotence still exist, and the corporate structure helps to mitigate it.
lol.
I expect to get paid, I am not surprised when others do too...
The thousands of volunteers who do much of the actual work on Firefox don't expect to get paid in dollars, but they do expect to be "rewarded" with some kind of involvement and input in their own project.
This isn't so much about Google giving money to Mozilla as it is about Mozilla obfuscating its processes from its own volunteers. Google is giving giant amounts of money to Mozilla because of the hard work of the Firefox volunteers. I don't think the volunteers expect a dime of that money, or even a vote on how it's spent, but they'd probably at least like to be able to offer suggestions on how to spend it. As it stands, they aren't even allowed to know what's happening to the money, or what kind of agreements were attached to it.
The obvious response to this complaint is "Well, it's open source; If you don't like it, go fork your own browser!", and I suspect exactly that may happen if Mozilla continues to show this kind of disrespect to the people who are, to a large degree, responsible for the foundation's success.
Then maybe you shouldn't apply to work for them ;)
I agree. Actually, I think if you really want to make your point you should apply, demonstrate how qualified you are and what a good employee you'd be, and then refuse to submit to invasive practices once they've offered you the job. This demonstrates very clearly to the employer what they're missing out on by using invasive practices.
But I'm not just talking about me, I'm making the case that everyone should refuse to work for these employers, because it's the right thing to do. Even if you personally don't have a problem with subjecting yourself to practices like fingerprinting and invasive employee monitoring, other people do, and that seems quite reasonable to me. Whenever people submit to invasive practices, they're encouraging and enabling the business to continue those practices on other people who may not be as "OK" with it as you.
If you don't stand up for the privacy rights of others when it's something you see as unimportant, don't expect them to defend yours when the roles are reversed.
Giving your fingerprints to a government/large business gives that institution power over you. It effectively gives them the power to retroactively monitor everywhere you've been and everything you've touched. This much is inarguable.
I think the main reason we're nervous about giving this power out is that we don't trust the institutions who are demanding it. And why should we? Do you believe that no government institution will ever use fingerprint databases to violate the privacy of law-abiding people? Do you believe that the owners of your company will always, unfailingly respect your rights to privacy, even if it's advantageous for them to do otherwise? How about employees in your company who have access to your information?
The bottom line is that there are many, many examples of both government and corporate institutions using data that was collected in the name of security (credit card databases, surveillance cameras, phone taps, RFIDs, etc) to harass and seriously disrupt the lives of people who broke no laws. It's not that much of stretch to think that if I give my fingerprints to such an institution, there's a chance they might use that information inappropriately in the future.
Ohhh! So...how is that not stealing?
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother-fucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way this is liberating. Hiro no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken."
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
It's true that American corporations don't have all the rights of American citizens, but they have a lot of the most important ones, and they have a hell of a lot more money and influence to assert those rights through the courts.
Check this as a starting point for more info: Corporate Personhood
They'll be happy to sell you oil to burn in engines. They'll be happy to sell you photovoltaic modules.
I disagree. I see what you're getting at, namely the fact that oil companies have no emotional attachment to oil, and will be happy to adopt whatever business model is most profitable.
However, selling solar panels is a good example of the last thing they want to do. Why? Solar panels allow people to be energy self-sufficient. Once you have enough solar panels to provide electricity for your personal needs, they're not going to see another dime from you. Oil companies thrive off the fact that we can never get "enough" of their product, so they're willing to do pretty outrageous things to make sure it stays that way.
The most effective business models are designed around ensuring that the customers always have need of the business, and the more dependent they are on the business's goods and services, the better. Distributed solar technology is the opposite of that.
Now my default reaction to the claims of _any_ environmental group will be suspicion.
Good. That's how you should react to the claims of anyone who has an agenda (and almost all institutions with a large amount of money have an agenda). However. As they say "Even a broken clock is right twice a day". Simply because a group has been known to be wrong or even deliberately misleading in the past doesn't mean that everything they say, and every aspect of their agenda is wrong.
There needs to be a middle ground between blind acceptance of groups like Greenpeace's every word, and reflexive opposition to everything they say and stand for because they're "liars". It's not acceptable to simply ignore information because the group presenting it has been dishonest before, or because certain methods of presenting the information were manipulative. In fact, if we really did that across the board, we would end up rejecting pretty much all information available about everything - everybody lies and manipulates, usually without considering it manipulation.
I think the reality is that people use the "they're liars, don't listen to a word they say!" argument as a satisfying way of avoiding having to reconcile their own opinions with information that may contradict them.