Yes, I find places where I could be gassed on a whim, or summarily executed to be delightfully cozy and homey. Home sweet abbatoir, that's what I always say.
I don't doubt that the "people of North Korea" feel a connection to their land, their community, their customs, and their cultural & religions history. It is their *government* and their *government's actions* under discussion, however.
Oh, don't forget the treason charges leveled against him.
What's the penalty for treason in Zimbabwe? I'm sure, being an enlightened democracy, they just laugh about what a good prank it was, right? Egg on his face, indeed!
"Ha-ho, old sport, you really pulled one over on your chums!"
Really, so is this how you run your business? Strictly focused on income, profit level, and expenses? Exploiting everybody and everything who can be exploited with no long-term plan or goal, just like a drug dealer or a pimp?
You correctly identify that the "primary concern of businesses is profit," but you seem stymied by the fact that what creates profits is *filling peoples' needs* in a substantial way. If your business plan doesn't align with something that people need, want, can afford, and will spend money on, then you make no profits, and your business fails (unless you can manage to get a government bailout to tide you over for a few more years.)
If you honestly think that something better than messy capitalism is going to come along, I'd like to know whether you prefer warlords (anarchic breakdown leading to the most violent & well-armed seizing control of whatever they can hold) or bread lines (yay, communist utopia)?
Either way, the alternatives don't look so hot, so I'll stick with capitalism, thanks.
I'm pretty certain that "law enforcement" is a subset of "the government," specifically, part of the Executive branch.
You might also want to consider that 'undercover cops' are often FBI agents, because... wait for it... they're part of the executive branch, and they people they're gathering evidence against would likely be prosecuted under Federal RICO statutes.
So, would you please outline for us the difference in your mind between "law enforcement" and "the government," then?
And to underscore: The military is commanded by the executive branch of the federal government; The diplomats report to the State Department, which is also part of the executive branch of the federal government; The FBI, and other domestic law enforcement agencies, are part of the executive branches of their respective government bodies (federal, state, or local). I'm keen to hear what you see as the difference between "law enforcement agency secrets" and "government secrets," as the only difference I can see is that one is simply a broader category that includes the other.
In other words: all law-enforcement agency secrets are government secrets, but not all government secrets are law-enforcement agency secrets. And you have still not demonstrated that there is no compelling need for government, in general, and law-enforcement, in specific, to keep secrets, other than your trite bit of naive hand-waving above.
You're confusing "violence" with "force". And a rape doesn't have to be "violent" in the sense of someone being beaten into submission, and then forced to have intercourse.
"Sex without consent" = "Sex against the will of your partner" = "sex under duress" (def. 1) = "sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person." (def. 2).
"Force" doesn't have to take the form of a black eye or a split lip or a broken arm. It can be the threat of harm, or it can simply be "I'm bigger and stronger and weigh more than you, and I'm already halfway there, so I'm going to finish, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, even if you did change your mind."
The GP's point stands: "Rape" =/= "violence". They often *do* go hand in hand, and they're close cousins, but they are not equivalent. In fact, you'll often see rape charges filed with assault & battery charges as well - rape covers the sexual aspect, the assault & battery charges handle the "...and I slapped her around a bit" aspect.
First: The request was specifically for the data that was collected "accidentally" by Google. Not "all Google's records."
Second: It's not a demand, it's a request. And it's the type of request that is commonly made during a preliminary investigation, as it sets the stage for the person under investigation to be shown to be cooperating with the investigation. This amounts to investigators saying, "Hey, we'd like to actually see the data that you collected," and Google saying, "Nope, sorry, can't do that." The investigators won't have a problem getting a court order (Google's already turned this data over to other agencies), but why go through the trouble if Google is willing to cooperate?
If you know you've done something illegal, and you know that the people investigating you will find out you've done something illegal, it's actually a good way to mitigate an eventual sentence, and plays very well with the "all the collection we did was completely inadvertent, and we've taken steps to make sure it never happens again, and we're really sorry about it. Now who do we make this check out to to settle up our fine and legal fees?"
When such cooperation might mean the difference between getting sentenced to prison and getting sentenced to the corporate-penalty equivalent of a small fine plus community service, I think it's rather swell of them to make the offer before they make Google waste a ton of time and money on mounting a legal defense.
You spend frustrating hours as they try to convince you that you have the engineering plan wrong and you spend that same frustrating number of hours explaining how what they want to do won't work the way they want it to work.
If you are trying to explain why something won't work for hours and hours and hours, and it's not sinking in, the problem is more likely with your communications skills than it is with your audience's listening skills and understanding.
They don't understand the connections between systems. How a change in one layer affects components above and below.
Because they don't need to understand those things. Your job as the expert is to understand those interactions - if they understood it, they wouldn't need you, would they? Instead of trying to explain the systems to them, you should be explaining the *problems* that their objections are causing. Again, you are trying to impart 20 years of expertise in a 20 minute meeting, and that's why they are getting frustrated and tuning you out.
That's why greater than 90% of all software companies go out of business.
Ah, I see - so it's not that people writing software don't understand their users, don't understand their audience, and so get it wrong. It's because sales and marketing and management meddle with a perfect product and won't just shut up and behave like the engineers tell them to? You're simply demonstrating your inability to communicate with non-technical people here.
I don't think there's anything else to be said, you've demonstrated the point amply, and it doesn't seem like any of what I've said is sinking in, I guess I should go learn Klingon before I try any further, so we can have a real *technical* discussion.
This analogy is so fundamentally different from your initial point that you might as well be speaking in Klingon right now.
Your initial point was: We should invent a new language for "technical people" to talk in so that they don't have to bother with trying to explain stuff to non-technical losers.
I responded that that was a bad idea, and introducing new - artificial - barriers to communication does nothing to solve the fundamental problem, which is that many engineers are terrible at explaining things to non-technical peers, and assume that the other person's lack of a MS in physics and PhD in math means they're an illiterate moron who just can't "get" sophisticated technical topics.
You've somehow managed to shift that from "explaining technical things to non-technical people," to "diagnosing and repairing intimate technical problems in a complex mechanical system," or perhaps "designing and building complex mechanical systems." And to that, my original point stands: You do not need advanced technical knowledge to understand what something very technical does, or the broad stroke outlines of how it works.
To center your analogy a little more closely with your original commentary, and not to this new exception you've brought up, it would be like me calling you up and saying, "So a mechanic said I need new spark plugs. What are those?"
That's a pretty simple explanation: "As the name implies, they deliver a spark to gasoline inside your engine, which ignites the gasoline, which in turn powers your engine."
Did I gloss over a whole lot about how a spark plug works, what the proper timings are, how much air needs to be mixed with the fuel for optimal performance and a thousand other important things that mechanics and motor designers need to be aware of and understand? Yes. Is the answer accurate, and does it answer the question of "what's a spark plug?" Again, yes.
The tl;dr point is this: If you are having problems explaining something technical to a non-technical person who is genuinely interested in understanding the answer and not simply seeking a way to support a predetermined conclusion, it is not the fault of the language being used to explain it, it is the fault of the person doing the explaining. There is very little that is SO IMMENSELY complex that an expert cannot explain the rough outline of it to a non-technical "layman" over the course of 20 minutes.
The problem is, many experts try to cram their 20 years of domain experience into that 20 minutes, with the result being a confused audience and glazed-over eyes indicating that you've communicated absolutely nothing of value to them.
Obviously you've never been in the position of having to explain something very complicated and very technical to someone who will never ever understand it. There are some things that take years to learn and understand.
Actually I have been in that position. And I behaved accordingly: When explaining something complicated to someone, you start small, and with broad strokes, give them enough to answer the immediate question, and let them dig deeper if they need it. When somebody asks you, "What's a wi-fi?" You don't need to provide them with a college course in radio waves, chip design, and computer science theory.
You seem stuck on the notion that "explaining heart surgery to someone" requires that they have gone through 8 years of medical school & residencies & internships before you can even begin. It doesn't. Teaching someone to perform heart surgery isn't required for them to understand what it is, and what function it serves.
It doesn't sound elitist - it sounds sadly typical of many engineers I work with, who have an inordinate amount of difficulty communicating with non-technical peers because they feel that they have to explain every minute detail of the physics behind a topic before anybody could possibly have an understanding for it. I believe it's mostly a combination of poor social skills with a desire to show off how knowledgeable they are that drives this, but maybe you feel differently.
The notion that anyone can easily understand an esoteric and complex detail implies that there is no such thing expertise or wisdom.
You are confusing "understanding" with "expertise". I can "understand" what heart surgery is without ever having the expertise to perform it myself. I can "understand" how an internal combustion engine works without being remotely qualified to take my Toyota apart and rebuild the engine. Understanding something does not require detailed knowledge of every fundamental component and underpinning science that goes into making the component. And this, once again, is very typical of many engineers I've worked with: they simply don't get that you don't have to have a PhD in electrical engineering to understand what a hard drive is, or a PhD in the area of radio communications to understand what a wireless network is. If we required a fundamental knowledge of everything we used day in and day out to use it properly, nobody would ever be able to leave the house, and we'd still be living in caves "discovering" fire on a daily basis. We generalize, and we analogize, and we do a terrific job of keeping things from spinning out of control in a very grayscale world - all without the deep understanding you're claiming is absolutely required for anybody to function.
Well, your assertion is not supported by history. "Revolutionary" products are not made by sales, marketing, or management. They are made by "geeks." I'm pretty sure that the facts are self evident, but should you need an example, lets look at the personal computer. In the 70s it was geeks like me building micro-computers.
Right, because I'm sure the PC would have caught on like wildfire as a device for the home without sales, marketing, and management. If it hadn't been for sales, marketing, or management, the microcomputers you're referring to would still be a garage industry made by geeks, for geeks. And if you wonder why you still haven't seen the year of the Linux Desktop, look no further than the distinct lack of "sales, marketing and management" in the desktop linux area.
It's also been said that a stitch in time saves nine, and that curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. Neither of those are any more universally true than your aphorism.
"If you build it they will come," worked great as a tagline for a Kevin Costner movie. As a product strategy, it's a recipe for shitty sales and a slow death from customer apathy.
Right, because imposing artificial barriers to communication, and making it even harder for the engineers to express themselves clearly, is something we should really encourage.
You'll be able to "make stuff" again, but you won't be able to "sell stuff," which means you'll be out of a job pretty quick, unless you happen to work for one of a handful of companies that makes geek toys.
Given that Google is the group that first collected it, I'm not sure that "trust Google to secure this (possibly) private data" is a rational conclusion that may be drawn from this scenario.
You have to actually *try* to join someone's network, and capture data - wi-fi networks aren't self-assembling naturally-occurring phenomena. You have to actually write the code to say "record any data that's being sent over the network."
The request is not for Google to publish the data on Wikileaks, the request is for Google to turn over the data they collected to the investigating authority who is looking at whether Google broke laws in collecting that data. AOL publicly released the data you're referring to, that wasn't an "accidental" leak. The situation is not even remotely the same.
Investigations *are* usually conducted before charges for specific violations of specific laws are leveled against a defendant.
Google has publicly stated that they collected & retained data from people's wireless networks. If unauthorized use of someone else's networks, and intercepting network traffic on that network, is against the law, why wouldn't they have reason to investigate what google collected and how they collected it?
If I kill someone, I will be investigated long before I am formally charged with murder, or manslaughter, or reckless endangerment, or a host of other charges that could come along with someone's death. "It was an accident!" doesn't absolve me of liability for the death, though it may change the *charges* I eventually face in court - if it wasn't premeditated murder, and instead I was driving too fast and struck a pedestrian, perhaps I'll be charged with vehicular manslaughter rather than first-degree murder.
I'm not sure how you think the legal system works, but investigations pretty much always precede formal charges, where the specific laws you are suspected of having broken are stated.
He has no probable cause to suspect that any law was broken? Are you that certain about Connecticut's state laws?
Presuming that some of this data was collected in Connecticut, it's entirely likely that the Connecticut AG would have every reason to suspect that the data collected may put Google on the wrong side of Connecticut law.
Intercepting and warehousing network data can be illegal, even if the *data* that you've happened to intercept is public information, or at least not protected by special privacy regulations.
There IS a legal distinction between "the stuff you collected" and "the way you collected it."
Nothing stops me from having the biggest Beanie Baby collection east of the Mississippi - they're perfectly legal to own and collect. If I collect them by shoplifting them from stores, well... the law is going to have an interest in my collection.
In this particular case, the FTC was considering whether the data was "private" data that deserved special regulatory protection, and their finding was that it was not worth pursuing because Google convinced them that they had taken appropriate steps to prevent privacy breaches. That still leaves the FCC's inquiry, into whether Google ran afoul of the law by collecting the data from wireless networks in the first place.
And they will get a subpoena when they ask for one. Don't be dense.
Investigations proceed like this because it gives Google a chance to cooperate with the investigation without being clubbed into compliance with subpoenas. Tends to make the accused look a bit better in the eyes of the court that they both cooperated with the investigation, and understood their culpability and were interested in showing that they were interested in "making things right."
Apple was recently under preliminary investigation for antitrust violations, I'm sure you read about it here. The Justice Department and the FTC requested (and received) information from Apple's legal department during their "preliminary inquiry."
It's quite common for companies to cooperate with investigators because, even if they have run afoul of the law, cooperation can put you in a position to mitigate damages: "It was inadvertent, and we're very sorry, we want to make this right, and we're an open book!" Versus, "You'll never get us to admit we did something wrong, we'll fight you every step of the way, and we'll do everything in our power to make it look like we're trying to cover up the fact that this was done deliberately, and with intent, rather than by accident!"
Please explain how it's a fishing expedition when Google has admitted publicly that they intercepted wireless network traffic, and retained the data they intercepted?
What data would they be collecting that is illegal? If they aren't allowed to keep user names AND addresses of actual houses associated, then they can ask google "are you keeping user names and addresses of the house in your logs?" and Google can go "no" or "yes" as necessary.
Yes, let's imagine a world where that is the standard of evidence required:
"Mr. Simpson, did you murder your wife?" "No Your Honor, I did not." "Okay then, I think we're done here! Have a great day everybody."
Or maybe,
"Mr. Gates, did you use your company's monopoly position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and unfairly stifle competition?" "No Your Honor, I certainly did not." "Well then, since you're wearing glasses and look smart, I have to conclude you're telling the truth. Case dismissed!"
If collecting the data involves intercepting network traffic and recording it, then the collection and warehousing of that data is certainly a legal issue.
To further refine your example, this case is rather like somebody publicly admitting, "I have blood on my shirt, and I recently killed someone," and then sitting back and expecting the police NOT to investigate that public admission of wrongdoing.
Two different federal groups were investigating: the Federal Trade Commission, on consumer privacy grounds (they concluded their investigation, and basically said that 'since Google has improved their collection and promised not to do it again, no action is necessary.'), and the Federal Communications Commission, which is actively (at least, active as of the latest I've heard) looking at whether or not Google's intercepting these transmissions is a violation of FCC regulations and relevant Communications Act provisions.
This has been fairly clearly reported. I'm not sure why people here insist on pretending it's just a fishing expedition by the feds hoping to catch Google doing something they can be spanked for. Google publicly admitted that they had captured this data, regulatory and law enforcement agencies want to look at the data that was captured to see if a crime was committed in the capture of that data. It's really pretty straightforward.
As a thought exercise, s/Google/Facebook/g in the coverage around this story, and think about whether or not you'd have a problem with Facebook doing the things Google has admitted they've done, and whether or not you'd want to see law enforcement get involved if they had? Google's "halo" doesn't make it impossible for them to do bad things, even illegal things. When they have publicly admitted to doing something that is of questionable legality, shouldn't an investigation be done? Or should we just shrug and say, "It's google, of course they're good folks. They'd never do anything wrong."
So the best you can come up with is a 4-4.5 year old case as an example? Out of how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of cases that are tried each year?
Yeah, I can see where you might conclude that this happens so frequently that it's likely to be the case here.
Oh, and let's also not forget that Google has more money & lawyers than god, and the chance that they're going to be railroaded into some foregone conviction is so ridiculously fanciful that it might as well not even exist, and you're just... I don't even know what - trolling for good karma because you defended Google? Good on ya.
Yes, because nobody's ever been exonerated by evidence in a court of law. Ever. In the entire the history of western jurisprudence.
It's just been one railroading after another of poor innocent guys who never hurt a fly in their whole life, because the corrupt government prosecutors habitually and willfully ignored ironclad evidence that would exonerate the suspect.
They want it as part of an investigation into the "accidental" collection of the data. This is standard procedure for a regulatory investigation - the data Google collected is evidence relevant to the investigation.
I'm not sure why you'd be interested in pretending that you don't get this... When's the last time you heard of an investigation in which the law enforcement and legal officials involved DID NOT want to see evidence relevant to their investigation?
Whether or not Atty General Blumenthal has jurisdiction and the right to request that data is something that may need to be decided in a court, but SOME investigative body is certainly going to want to review the data that was collected, since it is (perhaps) evidence of wrongdoing on Google's part, and entirely relevant to an investigation into whether or not Google broke laws in collecting and retaining that data.
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Yes, I find places where I could be gassed on a whim, or summarily executed to be delightfully cozy and homey. Home sweet abbatoir, that's what I always say.
I don't doubt that the "people of North Korea" feel a connection to their land, their community, their customs, and their cultural & religions history. It is their *government* and their *government's actions* under discussion, however.
Oh, don't forget the treason charges leveled against him.
What's the penalty for treason in Zimbabwe? I'm sure, being an enlightened democracy, they just laugh about what a good prank it was, right? Egg on his face, indeed!
"Ha-ho, old sport, you really pulled one over on your chums!"
Really, so is this how you run your business? Strictly focused on income, profit level, and expenses? Exploiting everybody and everything who can be exploited with no long-term plan or goal, just like a drug dealer or a pimp?
You correctly identify that the "primary concern of businesses is profit," but you seem stymied by the fact that what creates profits is *filling peoples' needs* in a substantial way. If your business plan doesn't align with something that people need, want, can afford, and will spend money on, then you make no profits, and your business fails (unless you can manage to get a government bailout to tide you over for a few more years.)
If you honestly think that something better than messy capitalism is going to come along, I'd like to know whether you prefer warlords (anarchic breakdown leading to the most violent & well-armed seizing control of whatever they can hold) or bread lines (yay, communist utopia)?
Either way, the alternatives don't look so hot, so I'll stick with capitalism, thanks.
I'm pretty certain that "law enforcement" is a subset of "the government," specifically, part of the Executive branch.
You might also want to consider that 'undercover cops' are often FBI agents, because... wait for it... they're part of the executive branch, and they people they're gathering evidence against would likely be prosecuted under Federal RICO statutes.
So, would you please outline for us the difference in your mind between "law enforcement" and "the government," then?
And to underscore: The military is commanded by the executive branch of the federal government; The diplomats report to the State Department, which is also part of the executive branch of the federal government; The FBI, and other domestic law enforcement agencies, are part of the executive branches of their respective government bodies (federal, state, or local). I'm keen to hear what you see as the difference between "law enforcement agency secrets" and "government secrets," as the only difference I can see is that one is simply a broader category that includes the other.
In other words: all law-enforcement agency secrets are government secrets, but not all government secrets are law-enforcement agency secrets. And you have still not demonstrated that there is no compelling need for government, in general, and law-enforcement, in specific, to keep secrets, other than your trite bit of naive hand-waving above.
You're confusing "violence" with "force". And a rape doesn't have to be "violent" in the sense of someone being beaten into submission, and then forced to have intercourse.
"Sex without consent" = "Sex against the will of your partner" = "sex under duress" (def. 1) = "sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person." (def. 2).
"Force" doesn't have to take the form of a black eye or a split lip or a broken arm. It can be the threat of harm, or it can simply be "I'm bigger and stronger and weigh more than you, and I'm already halfway there, so I'm going to finish, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, even if you did change your mind."
The GP's point stands: "Rape" =/= "violence". They often *do* go hand in hand, and they're close cousins, but they are not equivalent. In fact, you'll often see rape charges filed with assault & battery charges as well - rape covers the sexual aspect, the assault & battery charges handle the "...and I slapped her around a bit" aspect.
OH, the irony. Given that you're spouting off this particular opinion, I take it you haven't talked to too many professional soldiers yourself?
First: The request was specifically for the data that was collected "accidentally" by Google. Not "all Google's records."
Second: It's not a demand, it's a request. And it's the type of request that is commonly made during a preliminary investigation, as it sets the stage for the person under investigation to be shown to be cooperating with the investigation. This amounts to investigators saying, "Hey, we'd like to actually see the data that you collected," and Google saying, "Nope, sorry, can't do that." The investigators won't have a problem getting a court order (Google's already turned this data over to other agencies), but why go through the trouble if Google is willing to cooperate?
If you know you've done something illegal, and you know that the people investigating you will find out you've done something illegal, it's actually a good way to mitigate an eventual sentence, and plays very well with the "all the collection we did was completely inadvertent, and we've taken steps to make sure it never happens again, and we're really sorry about it. Now who do we make this check out to to settle up our fine and legal fees?"
When such cooperation might mean the difference between getting sentenced to prison and getting sentenced to the corporate-penalty equivalent of a small fine plus community service, I think it's rather swell of them to make the offer before they make Google waste a ton of time and money on mounting a legal defense.
If you are trying to explain why something won't work for hours and hours and hours, and it's not sinking in, the problem is more likely with your communications skills than it is with your audience's listening skills and understanding.
Because they don't need to understand those things. Your job as the expert is to understand those interactions - if they understood it, they wouldn't need you, would they? Instead of trying to explain the systems to them, you should be explaining the *problems* that their objections are causing. Again, you are trying to impart 20 years of expertise in a 20 minute meeting, and that's why they are getting frustrated and tuning you out.
Ah, I see - so it's not that people writing software don't understand their users, don't understand their audience, and so get it wrong. It's because sales and marketing and management meddle with a perfect product and won't just shut up and behave like the engineers tell them to? You're simply demonstrating your inability to communicate with non-technical people here.
I don't think there's anything else to be said, you've demonstrated the point amply, and it doesn't seem like any of what I've said is sinking in, I guess I should go learn Klingon before I try any further, so we can have a real *technical* discussion.
This analogy is so fundamentally different from your initial point that you might as well be speaking in Klingon right now.
Your initial point was: We should invent a new language for "technical people" to talk in so that they don't have to bother with trying to explain stuff to non-technical losers.
I responded that that was a bad idea, and introducing new - artificial - barriers to communication does nothing to solve the fundamental problem, which is that many engineers are terrible at explaining things to non-technical peers, and assume that the other person's lack of a MS in physics and PhD in math means they're an illiterate moron who just can't "get" sophisticated technical topics.
You've somehow managed to shift that from "explaining technical things to non-technical people," to "diagnosing and repairing intimate technical problems in a complex mechanical system," or perhaps "designing and building complex mechanical systems." And to that, my original point stands: You do not need advanced technical knowledge to understand what something very technical does, or the broad stroke outlines of how it works.
To center your analogy a little more closely with your original commentary, and not to this new exception you've brought up, it would be like me calling you up and saying, "So a mechanic said I need new spark plugs. What are those?"
That's a pretty simple explanation: "As the name implies, they deliver a spark to gasoline inside your engine, which ignites the gasoline, which in turn powers your engine."
Did I gloss over a whole lot about how a spark plug works, what the proper timings are, how much air needs to be mixed with the fuel for optimal performance and a thousand other important things that mechanics and motor designers need to be aware of and understand? Yes. Is the answer accurate, and does it answer the question of "what's a spark plug?" Again, yes.
The tl;dr point is this: If you are having problems explaining something technical to a non-technical person who is genuinely interested in understanding the answer and not simply seeking a way to support a predetermined conclusion, it is not the fault of the language being used to explain it, it is the fault of the person doing the explaining. There is very little that is SO IMMENSELY complex that an expert cannot explain the rough outline of it to a non-technical "layman" over the course of 20 minutes.
The problem is, many experts try to cram their 20 years of domain experience into that 20 minutes, with the result being a confused audience and glazed-over eyes indicating that you've communicated absolutely nothing of value to them.
Actually I have been in that position. And I behaved accordingly: When explaining something complicated to someone, you start small, and with broad strokes, give them enough to answer the immediate question, and let them dig deeper if they need it. When somebody asks you, "What's a wi-fi?" You don't need to provide them with a college course in radio waves, chip design, and computer science theory.
You seem stuck on the notion that "explaining heart surgery to someone" requires that they have gone through 8 years of medical school & residencies & internships before you can even begin. It doesn't. Teaching someone to perform heart surgery isn't required for them to understand what it is, and what function it serves.
It doesn't sound elitist - it sounds sadly typical of many engineers I work with, who have an inordinate amount of difficulty communicating with non-technical peers because they feel that they have to explain every minute detail of the physics behind a topic before anybody could possibly have an understanding for it. I believe it's mostly a combination of poor social skills with a desire to show off how knowledgeable they are that drives this, but maybe you feel differently.
You are confusing "understanding" with "expertise". I can "understand" what heart surgery is without ever having the expertise to perform it myself. I can "understand" how an internal combustion engine works without being remotely qualified to take my Toyota apart and rebuild the engine. Understanding something does not require detailed knowledge of every fundamental component and underpinning science that goes into making the component. And this, once again, is very typical of many engineers I've worked with: they simply don't get that you don't have to have a PhD in electrical engineering to understand what a hard drive is, or a PhD in the area of radio communications to understand what a wireless network is. If we required a fundamental knowledge of everything we used day in and day out to use it properly, nobody would ever be able to leave the house, and we'd still be living in caves "discovering" fire on a daily basis. We generalize, and we analogize, and we do a terrific job of keeping things from spinning out of control in a very grayscale world - all without the deep understanding you're claiming is absolutely required for anybody to function.
Right, because I'm sure the PC would have caught on like wildfire as a device for the home without sales, marketing, and management. If it hadn't been for sales, marketing, or management, the microcomputers you're referring to would still be a garage industry made by geeks, for geeks. And if you wonder why you still haven't seen the year of the Linux Desktop, look no further than the distinct lack of "sales, marketing and management" in the desktop linux area.
It's also been said that a stitch in time saves nine, and that curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. Neither of those are any more universally true than your aphorism.
"If you build it they will come," worked great as a tagline for a Kevin Costner movie. As a product strategy, it's a recipe for shitty sales and a slow death from customer apathy.
Right, because imposing artificial barriers to communication, and making it even harder for the engineers to express themselves clearly, is something we should really encourage.
You'll be able to "make stuff" again, but you won't be able to "sell stuff," which means you'll be out of a job pretty quick, unless you happen to work for one of a handful of companies that makes geek toys.
Given that Google is the group that first collected it, I'm not sure that "trust Google to secure this (possibly) private data" is a rational conclusion that may be drawn from this scenario.
You have to actually *try* to join someone's network, and capture data - wi-fi networks aren't self-assembling naturally-occurring phenomena. You have to actually write the code to say "record any data that's being sent over the network."
The request is not for Google to publish the data on Wikileaks, the request is for Google to turn over the data they collected to the investigating authority who is looking at whether Google broke laws in collecting that data. AOL publicly released the data you're referring to, that wasn't an "accidental" leak. The situation is not even remotely the same.
Investigations *are* usually conducted before charges for specific violations of specific laws are leveled against a defendant.
Google has publicly stated that they collected & retained data from people's wireless networks. If unauthorized use of someone else's networks, and intercepting network traffic on that network, is against the law, why wouldn't they have reason to investigate what google collected and how they collected it?
If I kill someone, I will be investigated long before I am formally charged with murder, or manslaughter, or reckless endangerment, or a host of other charges that could come along with someone's death. "It was an accident!" doesn't absolve me of liability for the death, though it may change the *charges* I eventually face in court - if it wasn't premeditated murder, and instead I was driving too fast and struck a pedestrian, perhaps I'll be charged with vehicular manslaughter rather than first-degree murder.
I'm not sure how you think the legal system works, but investigations pretty much always precede formal charges, where the specific laws you are suspected of having broken are stated.
He has no probable cause to suspect that any law was broken? Are you that certain about Connecticut's state laws?
Presuming that some of this data was collected in Connecticut, it's entirely likely that the Connecticut AG would have every reason to suspect that the data collected may put Google on the wrong side of Connecticut law.
Why rebut in a concise and rational manner when you can just downmod so nobody hears the opinion in the first place, right?
Intercepting and warehousing network data can be illegal, even if the *data* that you've happened to intercept is public information, or at least not protected by special privacy regulations.
There IS a legal distinction between "the stuff you collected" and "the way you collected it."
Nothing stops me from having the biggest Beanie Baby collection east of the Mississippi - they're perfectly legal to own and collect. If I collect them by shoplifting them from stores, well... the law is going to have an interest in my collection.
In this particular case, the FTC was considering whether the data was "private" data that deserved special regulatory protection, and their finding was that it was not worth pursuing because Google convinced them that they had taken appropriate steps to prevent privacy breaches. That still leaves the FCC's inquiry, into whether Google ran afoul of the law by collecting the data from wireless networks in the first place.
And they will get a subpoena when they ask for one. Don't be dense.
Investigations proceed like this because it gives Google a chance to cooperate with the investigation without being clubbed into compliance with subpoenas. Tends to make the accused look a bit better in the eyes of the court that they both cooperated with the investigation, and understood their culpability and were interested in showing that they were interested in "making things right."
Apple was recently under preliminary investigation for antitrust violations, I'm sure you read about it here. The Justice Department and the FTC requested (and received) information from Apple's legal department during their "preliminary inquiry."
It's quite common for companies to cooperate with investigators because, even if they have run afoul of the law, cooperation can put you in a position to mitigate damages: "It was inadvertent, and we're very sorry, we want to make this right, and we're an open book!" Versus, "You'll never get us to admit we did something wrong, we'll fight you every step of the way, and we'll do everything in our power to make it look like we're trying to cover up the fact that this was done deliberately, and with intent, rather than by accident!"
Please explain how it's a fishing expedition when Google has admitted publicly that they intercepted wireless network traffic, and retained the data they intercepted?
Yes, let's imagine a world where that is the standard of evidence required:
"Mr. Simpson, did you murder your wife?"
"No Your Honor, I did not."
"Okay then, I think we're done here! Have a great day everybody."
Or maybe,
"Mr. Gates, did you use your company's monopoly position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and unfairly stifle competition?"
"No Your Honor, I certainly did not."
"Well then, since you're wearing glasses and look smart, I have to conclude you're telling the truth. Case dismissed!"
If collecting the data involves intercepting network traffic and recording it, then the collection and warehousing of that data is certainly a legal issue.
To further refine your example, this case is rather like somebody publicly admitting, "I have blood on my shirt, and I recently killed someone," and then sitting back and expecting the police NOT to investigate that public admission of wrongdoing.
Two different federal groups were investigating: the Federal Trade Commission, on consumer privacy grounds (they concluded their investigation, and basically said that 'since Google has improved their collection and promised not to do it again, no action is necessary.'), and the Federal Communications Commission, which is actively (at least, active as of the latest I've heard) looking at whether or not Google's intercepting these transmissions is a violation of FCC regulations and relevant Communications Act provisions.
This has been fairly clearly reported. I'm not sure why people here insist on pretending it's just a fishing expedition by the feds hoping to catch Google doing something they can be spanked for. Google publicly admitted that they had captured this data, regulatory and law enforcement agencies want to look at the data that was captured to see if a crime was committed in the capture of that data. It's really pretty straightforward.
As a thought exercise, s/Google/Facebook/g in the coverage around this story, and think about whether or not you'd have a problem with Facebook doing the things Google has admitted they've done, and whether or not you'd want to see law enforcement get involved if they had? Google's "halo" doesn't make it impossible for them to do bad things, even illegal things. When they have publicly admitted to doing something that is of questionable legality, shouldn't an investigation be done? Or should we just shrug and say, "It's google, of course they're good folks. They'd never do anything wrong."
So the best you can come up with is a 4-4.5 year old case as an example? Out of how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of cases that are tried each year?
Yeah, I can see where you might conclude that this happens so frequently that it's likely to be the case here.
Oh, and let's also not forget that Google has more money & lawyers than god, and the chance that they're going to be railroaded into some foregone conviction is so ridiculously fanciful that it might as well not even exist, and you're just... I don't even know what - trolling for good karma because you defended Google? Good on ya.
Yes, because nobody's ever been exonerated by evidence in a court of law. Ever. In the entire the history of western jurisprudence.
It's just been one railroading after another of poor innocent guys who never hurt a fly in their whole life, because the corrupt government prosecutors habitually and willfully ignored ironclad evidence that would exonerate the suspect.
They want it as part of an investigation into the "accidental" collection of the data. This is standard procedure for a regulatory investigation - the data Google collected is evidence relevant to the investigation.
I'm not sure why you'd be interested in pretending that you don't get this... When's the last time you heard of an investigation in which the law enforcement and legal officials involved DID NOT want to see evidence relevant to their investigation?
Whether or not Atty General Blumenthal has jurisdiction and the right to request that data is something that may need to be decided in a court, but SOME investigative body is certainly going to want to review the data that was collected, since it is (perhaps) evidence of wrongdoing on Google's part, and entirely relevant to an investigation into whether or not Google broke laws in collecting and retaining that data.
Here's a good place to start.
I'll look forward to your lengthy, scholarly rebuttal that does not include an ad hominem dismissal of his points.