If a surgeon is tired, they shouldn't be cutting anyone open. What possible "right" could there be to perform a surgery on someone? If the surgery is elective, it shouldn't be performed that day. If it's not elective, they need to find another surgeon to do the surgery. And screw the consent form. If a hospital puts doctors under such a burden that they have to do their surgeries fatigued, then they shouldn't get to be protected by a piece of paper. Let them suffer the consequences of their decisions. I don't see what the controversy is.
Okay. Thanks. I always thought that "placebo" meant that you were specifically checking for the effect that would happen on someone who thought they were taking a medicinally active pill.
But if they know it's a sugar pill, there is no "placebo effect". The point of calling something a placebo is that there's some deception involved. If there's no deception, and they know it's inert, then it's not a placebo. It's a snack. A placebo (to my knowledge) means they don't know there's no medicinal effect. There might be some other effect involved (and if the results are statistically significant, I assume there is one), but it's not a placebo effect, because there's no placebo.
I was under the impression that the whole point of something being a "placebo" was that the patient didn't know it was inert. If they have this knowledge, in what sense is it a "placebo"?
I agree that with the scenario you pose above, they'd need to, at least, socially engineer (and that's being kind) the information out of credit card companies. However, as I said, the most likely scenario is they already have an idea of what they're looking for, and are just looking to find someone who bought the items.
Example: They find a victim who was dumped in the woods in a certain kind of trash bag. They examine the bag for a lot number, and contact the company who sells the bag to find out where those bags are sold. Then they contact the store and get the date and time when the bags with that particular number were sold. That's the kind of use that I can envision being both fruitful (i.e., not a complete waste of time) and no requiring a warrant for a specific person's records.
Technically, "I'm watching you", while it certainly sounds menacing to me, probably doesn't qualify as a threat, per se. It sounds creepy, certainly, but it doesn't threaten violence.
I just conceded that technology is an enabler. It enables you to distribute recordings easier and save them longer. What I'm asking is, what's changed that makes it necessary to redefine what people can record and what they can't? The only thing I can see changing is the level of embarrassment someone experiences when they do something stupid in public.
What is the law supposed to catch up to? What's changed, other than how far and how long recordings can be kept? And if that's all that's changed, why does that necessitate changing the law?
The practical difference is that, unless the government is already tracking you, they can't get access to those records a few seconds after you make the purchase.
Well, to say that the government can get companies to do things that the government can't do is not really accurate. If the government asked your ISP (without a warrant, certainly) to put a keylogger on your machine and send the government real-time outputs from it, that would be a serious problem. (That's why many people are upset that the government gave hone companies a pass for the warrentless wire-tapping.) But if the government requests company documents that the company generated in the process of doing business, after the fact, that's a different situation. That's no the company acting as a government agent. That's just companies doing what companies do, and the government seeking the records later.
I understand that "public" is a lot more public than it used to be. But that's not a new legal reality. The fact that your actions can be recorded for posterity and distributed worldwide easily means people have to be more careful, obviously, but not that the law needs to change. Again, you're butting up against the laws of physics. If you do something out in the open, people can see you and record you. At this point, that recording can be (at least theoretically) preserved longer and distributed more widely. But it doesn't mean that people should be restricted from recording what happens out in the open. It just means the consequences for allowing yourself to be recorded are different.
Consider Facebook. Do you think everyone captured in every image on Facebook gave their permission to be photographed and put on the Internet? Do you think everyone who is photographed incidentally (e.g., because they walked into someone else's shot) should be allowed to require a release before their image is loaded on to the Internet? That seems impractical and oppressive to me.
What I've been trying to ask is, what circumstances have changed that would redefine what private or public mean? Katz broke new ground in that it acknowledged that the listening device didn't have to be in the same space as the person being surveilled to infringe on someone's privacy. You're expanding "private" space to such a degree that it would be illegal to record someone walking naked down a public street in broad daylight, so long as they weren't the only ones being recorded.
So let me ask the question another way: What would be public space, in this new paradigm?
In the situation you outlined here, would they even be able to get the information? It seems very unlikely to me that they would have a starting point of "We don't know anything about his purchase history, so we'll just call all credit card companies and see if they've ever heard of a Zaphod Beeblebrox (outside of fiction;))." What would be a more likely scenario is that they find a certain item in Zaphod's house, so they go to different stores in the area to figure out where he bought it, and get the credit card information that way. Or perhaps they know what his ISP is, so they go to the ISP for his credit card information, based on his account. Just knowing his name isn't really a good way of going about a records search.
For what it's worth, in the situation you outline here, I would agree that a warrant would be necessary. But based on such slim information, I can't imagine it would ever be granted.
I'm not just talking about the Civil War. I'm talking about the Civil War onward. Is there any case law supporting your position that how many people are surveilled is somehow relevant? A very big part of U.S. law is the idea of precedent. How much precedent is there for this thinking? You can't just rewrite U.S. law based on some novel concept that how long the data is preserved, or how widely it can be distributed, matters. You're engaging in almost magical thinking.
Okay, that sounds somewhat different than the U.S., but not by much. It sounds (from what I understand) that the main difference is that the vendors can't turn your information over to the authorities, which is the one entity that might actually use it a socially beneficial use.
Yes, I am fully aware of Katz and frankly its not particularly relevant because it does not deal with mass surveillance, only targeted surveillance.
Katz deals with the question of privacy. Mass vs. targeted surveillance is an issue you're raising, but you have yet to demonstrate a) that it's a recognized distinction in law, or b) that it makes any difference at all how many people are surveilled at once.
The importance of Katz in the Internet age is that if you take steps to make a conversation private (e.g., using security on your Internet connection (wifi or wired) then you have an expectation of privacy. If you're just walking around in a public space, making no effort to conceal yourself, you don't. There's no need for more legislation on this. The guidelines in Katz are still relevant. How much surveillance is done is irrelevant (according to any case law I've seen or heard of, anyway). What's relevant is if the people involved (however many of them there are) had any expectation that they wouldn't be recorded. Now, as it happens, there are lots of situations that you do expect your communications to be secure. But certainly, when you're out in public in a shop, you have no right to expect that someone else won't see you buying an item.
I can understand where people would think an online purchase would be different, since you're doing the shopping in your own home, and (theoretically, at least) the only people who would see the transaction would be you, the vendor, and (if the transaction wasn't encrypted) your ISP. But (at least, under U.S. law) it's still the vendor's data, and he can cooperate with the authorities if he chooses to (especially if a subpoena is involved).
Incidentally, I'm not saying they should do it because they can. All I'm saying is that they can legally do it, and that it's not a violation of privacy rights (as I see it) if it's done in public. That doesn't mean I think every square inch of the country (in public view) should be covered by a CCTV. That would clearly be wasteful and counterproductive, in addition to leading to a very superficial society.
I have to reiterate that I'm not a lawyer. However, it's important to understand that companies are not, in any sense, government entities (provided, of course, that they're not government-owned). As such, companies can do things that governments cannot (e.g., abridge your freedom of speech in various ways).
Additionally, you can give rights away via contracts. In fact, people do it all the time. You may, for instance, sign away your right to sue someone. You agree to have your computer use tracked when you take a job utilizing a company's computer equipment. (It's been settled law that employers have a right to track employees' computer use.) And there are probably other examples I'm not remembering right now. Even on the government side, people can sign away some of their rights, under certain circumstances. Someone can be paroled, for example, on the condition that they agree to random drug testing or restrictions on where they live or work. Or they may have to wear an ankle tracking device. (I'm actually not a fan of any of those parole conditions. If someone is such a problem that you have to keep track of them like that, you're better off not letting them out in the first place. If they're okay to let out, they shouldn't be monitored.)
Taking things a step further: As a defendant, there are all kinds of rights you can sign away if you choose to plead guilty to a crime (not the least of which is your right to be tried by a jury of your peers).
These days, getting on a plane involves an agreement to forfeit some of your rights. You agree to a search, or you don't fly.
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If a surgeon is tired, they shouldn't be cutting anyone open. What possible "right" could there be to perform a surgery on someone? If the surgery is elective, it shouldn't be performed that day. If it's not elective, they need to find another surgeon to do the surgery. And screw the consent form. If a hospital puts doctors under such a burden that they have to do their surgeries fatigued, then they shouldn't get to be protected by a piece of paper. Let them suffer the consequences of their decisions. I don't see what the controversy is.
Okay. Thanks. I always thought that "placebo" meant that you were specifically checking for the effect that would happen on someone who thought they were taking a medicinally active pill.
But if they know it's a sugar pill, there is no "placebo effect". The point of calling something a placebo is that there's some deception involved. If there's no deception, and they know it's inert, then it's not a placebo. It's a snack. A placebo (to my knowledge) means they don't know there's no medicinal effect. There might be some other effect involved (and if the results are statistically significant, I assume there is one), but it's not a placebo effect, because there's no placebo.
My question is, how is this even a placebo? If you tell the patient the pill is inert, it's not a placebo anymore, is it?
Sorry. This appeared under my initial post first, for some reason. Don't know why.
Um....what? I don't recall saying anything about Americans, lazy or otherwise...
I was under the impression that the whole point of something being a "placebo" was that the patient didn't know it was inert. If they have this knowledge, in what sense is it a "placebo"?
Can't they simply change what they make the hooks out of to something non-conductive, or put a coating on the hooks that won't wear off easily?
Nothing could possibly go wrong there, right?
...as if they created a Root Canal Island. :)
I agree that with the scenario you pose above, they'd need to, at least, socially engineer (and that's being kind) the information out of credit card companies. However, as I said, the most likely scenario is they already have an idea of what they're looking for, and are just looking to find someone who bought the items.
Example: They find a victim who was dumped in the woods in a certain kind of trash bag. They examine the bag for a lot number, and contact the company who sells the bag to find out where those bags are sold. Then they contact the store and get the date and time when the bags with that particular number were sold. That's the kind of use that I can envision being both fruitful (i.e., not a complete waste of time) and no requiring a warrant for a specific person's records.
Technically, "I'm watching you", while it certainly sounds menacing to me, probably doesn't qualify as a threat, per se. It sounds creepy, certainly, but it doesn't threaten violence.
You can already turn the instant preview off. It's under the search settings.
I just conceded that technology is an enabler. It enables you to distribute recordings easier and save them longer. What I'm asking is, what's changed that makes it necessary to redefine what people can record and what they can't? The only thing I can see changing is the level of embarrassment someone experiences when they do something stupid in public.
What is the law supposed to catch up to? What's changed, other than how far and how long recordings can be kept? And if that's all that's changed, why does that necessitate changing the law?
The practical difference is that, unless the government is already tracking you, they can't get access to those records a few seconds after you make the purchase.
Legal reality is whatever the law defines it to be. Now, granted, men define the law, but until men change the law, it is what it is.
Well, to say that the government can get companies to do things that the government can't do is not really accurate. If the government asked your ISP (without a warrant, certainly) to put a keylogger on your machine and send the government real-time outputs from it, that would be a serious problem. (That's why many people are upset that the government gave hone companies a pass for the warrentless wire-tapping.) But if the government requests company documents that the company generated in the process of doing business, after the fact, that's a different situation. That's no the company acting as a government agent. That's just companies doing what companies do, and the government seeking the records later.
Consider Facebook. Do you think everyone captured in every image on Facebook gave their permission to be photographed and put on the Internet? Do you think everyone who is photographed incidentally (e.g., because they walked into someone else's shot) should be allowed to require a release before their image is loaded on to the Internet? That seems impractical and oppressive to me.
What I've been trying to ask is, what circumstances have changed that would redefine what private or public mean? Katz broke new ground in that it acknowledged that the listening device didn't have to be in the same space as the person being surveilled to infringe on someone's privacy. You're expanding "private" space to such a degree that it would be illegal to record someone walking naked down a public street in broad daylight, so long as they weren't the only ones being recorded.
So let me ask the question another way: What would be public space, in this new paradigm?
In the situation you outlined here, would they even be able to get the information? It seems very unlikely to me that they would have a starting point of "We don't know anything about his purchase history, so we'll just call all credit card companies and see if they've ever heard of a Zaphod Beeblebrox (outside of fiction ;))." What would be a more likely scenario is that they find a certain item in Zaphod's house, so they go to different stores in the area to figure out where he bought it, and get the credit card information that way. Or perhaps they know what his ISP is, so they go to the ISP for his credit card information, based on his account. Just knowing his name isn't really a good way of going about a records search.
For what it's worth, in the situation you outline here, I would agree that a warrant would be necessary. But based on such slim information, I can't imagine it would ever be granted.
I'm not just talking about the Civil War. I'm talking about the Civil War onward. Is there any case law supporting your position that how many people are surveilled is somehow relevant? A very big part of U.S. law is the idea of precedent. How much precedent is there for this thinking? You can't just rewrite U.S. law based on some novel concept that how long the data is preserved, or how widely it can be distributed, matters. You're engaging in almost magical thinking.
Okay, that sounds somewhat different than the U.S., but not by much. It sounds (from what I understand) that the main difference is that the vendors can't turn your information over to the authorities, which is the one entity that might actually use it a socially beneficial use.
Yes, I am fully aware of Katz and frankly its not particularly relevant because it does not deal with mass surveillance, only targeted surveillance.
Katz deals with the question of privacy. Mass vs. targeted surveillance is an issue you're raising, but you have yet to demonstrate a) that it's a recognized distinction in law, or b) that it makes any difference at all how many people are surveilled at once.
The importance of Katz in the Internet age is that if you take steps to make a conversation private (e.g., using security on your Internet connection (wifi or wired) then you have an expectation of privacy. If you're just walking around in a public space, making no effort to conceal yourself, you don't. There's no need for more legislation on this. The guidelines in Katz are still relevant. How much surveillance is done is irrelevant (according to any case law I've seen or heard of, anyway). What's relevant is if the people involved (however many of them there are) had any expectation that they wouldn't be recorded. Now, as it happens, there are lots of situations that you do expect your communications to be secure. But certainly, when you're out in public in a shop, you have no right to expect that someone else won't see you buying an item.
I can understand where people would think an online purchase would be different, since you're doing the shopping in your own home, and (theoretically, at least) the only people who would see the transaction would be you, the vendor, and (if the transaction wasn't encrypted) your ISP. But (at least, under U.S. law) it's still the vendor's data, and he can cooperate with the authorities if he chooses to (especially if a subpoena is involved).
Incidentally, I'm not saying they should do it because they can. All I'm saying is that they can legally do it, and that it's not a violation of privacy rights (as I see it) if it's done in public. That doesn't mean I think every square inch of the country (in public view) should be covered by a CCTV. That would clearly be wasteful and counterproductive, in addition to leading to a very superficial society.
I have to reiterate that I'm not a lawyer. However, it's important to understand that companies are not, in any sense, government entities (provided, of course, that they're not government-owned). As such, companies can do things that governments cannot (e.g., abridge your freedom of speech in various ways).
Additionally, you can give rights away via contracts. In fact, people do it all the time. You may, for instance, sign away your right to sue someone. You agree to have your computer use tracked when you take a job utilizing a company's computer equipment. (It's been settled law that employers have a right to track employees' computer use.) And there are probably other examples I'm not remembering right now. Even on the government side, people can sign away some of their rights, under certain circumstances. Someone can be paroled, for example, on the condition that they agree to random drug testing or restrictions on where they live or work. Or they may have to wear an ankle tracking device. (I'm actually not a fan of any of those parole conditions. If someone is such a problem that you have to keep track of them like that, you're better off not letting them out in the first place. If they're okay to let out, they shouldn't be monitored.)
Taking things a step further: As a defendant, there are all kinds of rights you can sign away if you choose to plead guilty to a crime (not the least of which is your right to be tried by a jury of your peers).
These days, getting on a plane involves an agreement to forfeit some of your rights. You agree to a search, or you don't fly.