...this is not an illegal abuse of power, or an illegal request...
I beg to differ. IANAL, so maybe I'm just being naive, but I always understood that a subpoena or warrant required specific information on who and what were to be searched:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [emphasis mine]
There's some latitude for discussion and interpretation on whether or not this particular subpoena is an "unreasonable search", and while the subpoena certainly describes what is to be searched and what information is to be retrieved, it is incredibly broad. Furthermore, there is an update in TFA that states that the subpoena wasn't even correctly issued by D.o.J.:
Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general's office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that's correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the "express authorization of the attorney general" for media subpoenas...
In other words, there certainly appears to be sufficient grounds to doubt that this was actually "within bounds of laws and within the duties of [Morrison's] office."
There is a long history of people being called to account for their personal actions when acting in a public capacity. This is a Good Thing. If there is no personal responsibility for an individual's actions, there is no incentive -- other than sleeping well at night -- for public officials to act ethically in their daily duties.
At risk of invoking...ummm...I forget who's law, the classic example of the principle I described above was thoroughly tested in Nuremberg, and it is no less valid now.
From my experience, it seems the problem stems from the fact that we are already too safe (or perhaps, we simply believe we are already too safe) when we drive. This, I believe, is directly correlated to the size of vehicle you drive. When your transportation feels more like an extension of your living room -- where you feel safe, and therefore don't pay attention to what is happening around you -- it is easy to become complacent and stop driving defensively. The more insulated you are from the outside world, the less you are going to pay attention to traffic around you. Furthermore, drivers of large vehicles seem to think that the size of their vehicle will keep them safe in an accident...whereas I, having spent all but the last two years on the road in small sport-compact cars, would rather avoid the accident in the first place, so I drive like everyone else on the road is actively trying to kill me:) Even so, when I started riding motorcycles -- where you really feel exposed* -- I was amazed at how much more I began paying attention to traffic around me. Technology won't fix this; complacent drivers will only become more complacent if they feel like "big brother" is watching over them.
*the first time I stopped at a red light in traffic on my bike, I had a difficult time squelching the little voice in my head that was asking what possible reason I could have to be just standing in the middle of the road like an idiot, lol.
The difference between my point and your counter example is that while the Stone Age is countless generations behind us, the pre-Internet era was experienced by most of people still living today... Thus there is nothing particularly cruel about depriving a person of this aspect of modern life...
I disagree. Whether or not you lived through a certain period of time is irrelevant. What is relevant is that, during the stone age, stone age technology is all that was required to survive. Once the bronze age arrived, stone age civilizations that were in competition with bronze age civilizations either adapted or were replaced. Likewise, at this point in time, it would be difficult -- maybe not impossible, but certainly very, very hard -- to maintain a 21st century lifestyle without Internet access. Somehow, I suspect this will only become more true with time.
assuming, of course, that what they've done should, indeed, be punished at all...
Ultimately, that is the crux of the matter, after all. I'm not entirely certain that this should be a criminal matter. It is, however, certainly a civil matter. The fact that it may be difficult for a copyright holder to pursue infringement, IMHO, is a symptom of deeper problems in our judicial system. Treating such civil matters as criminal cases only masks the underlying problems.
And if you don't share that assumption, well, then it is rather insincere of you (and of Doctorow, BTW), to pretend, that it is just the punishment you find disagreeable...
Nak.
Simply because that is the only objection I raised does not necessarily mean that it is the only objection I hold. It was, however, the objection that was most relevant to your original post...which, incidentally, did not explore the topic of whether or not copyright infringement should be a crime either. Do I take that to mean you don't share that assumption either? (No, I don't really believe that is what you mean, but I am just pointing out that you were, perhaps, reading too much into what I didn't say earlier).
You totally missed the point in what was posted. Schon did not *say* you were a wife beater, nor was (s)he calling you names to defend a position (s)he did not agree with. (S)He posted a question that is a classical example of a type of question that is essentially impossible to answer correctly. A yes/no question, by definition, only has two possible answers: "yes" and "no". A yes answer implies that you were a wife beater and now have stopped. A no answer implies that you are still beating your wife. Therefore, whether you answer yes or no to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?", the answer implies that you were, in fact, already beating your wife.
This is why Schon asked the question. Assuming that you would recognize the question and the faulty logic that accompanies it, (s)he was trying to show that this law PRESUPPOSES that you are guilty. There is no presumption of innocence: if the **AA claims you are a copyright infringer, then by this law, you ARE a copyright infringer, exactly as either a yes or no answer to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" presupposes you are (or at least "were"), in fact, a wife beater.
We have something like that, here in the U.S. It's called the Constitution. The only problem is, those who have the ability to remove someone from power for abusing their position are, in fact, controlled (i.e., given their literal marching orders) by those in power.
The problem is that, by definition, it is impossible to give some group the power to depose those who hold power without given them power as well.
Off-topic: why do I only have mod points when I have no use for them, and why have they expired every single time I see a comment I really, really want to mod up?
With veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from PTSD, it doesn't exactly take a genius to know that rilister was correct. It becomes even more obvious when you can turn on the news and watch the devastation that war brings to the families of people who died in combat, to the civilians who were unlucky enough to have their homes in the middle of a combat zone, etc. If that's not enough to convince you, then spend some time at Invisible Children's web site and learn what a 30+ year war in Uganda has cost people.
You'd have to be a complete, blithering idiot to believe that you can't learn from the experiences of others.
I always hang up as soon as I recognize them for what they are.
Not me. I set the phone on my desk, press the "mute" button and tie up the telemarketers' phone lines for as long as possible while I get back to reading/.^w^w^wwork. Kind of a low-tech La Brea tar pit.
But as natehoy pointed out in his original post, is it really necessary to coin a new term -- or even a new combination of existing terms -- for every possible permutation of communication media that scammers seek to exploit? How about just saying a scammer is a scammer is a scammer, whether (s)he is using e-mail, snail mail, voice mail, fax, or smoke signal?
IMHO, "FBI warns of scam exploiting Asterisk PBX software" is far more meaningful to more people than "FBI warns of vishing attack exploiting Asterisk PBX software". But, hey -- for a/. reader, I'm a bit of Luddite, so maybe it's just me.
I ran into a great example of the kinds of things that digital simulations don't model in an entry-level digital electronics class I took many moons ago. I used a program called "Digital Works" to design my digital circuits before I would build them, since modeling electronic circuitry is far faster and far easier than actually building them (even on a breadboard). Eventually, I built a circuit that was complicated enough that the outputs of one stage no longer could provide enough current to trigger the next stage in the circuit. This was about 7-8 years ago, so I don't recall the details exactly, but IIRC, I was trying to drive too many LEDs from the output of a single gate. The circuit worked in Digital Works (because the logic was correct) but didn't work IRL because I didn't take into consideration how much current that many LEDs would pull.
In another problem I discovered in that class, you can have several milliseconds before a digital circuit "stabilizes" unless you have taken the trouble to normalize the circuit during design. For example, say you have one stage of a circuit that takes input from two other circuits. One of these input circuits consists of just a single gate; the other input consists of, say, twenty gates. As fast as digital circuits are, they are not instantaneous. So the last stage might see inputs of zero and one, then after a few milliseconds, zero and zero. To the human eye, it might appear as if both input circuits provide the correct output at exactly the same time. However, as my prof used to say, "nothing in the digital realm is ever simultaneous." This may or may not cause a problem. If the last stage is a trigger-and-hold type of circuit, it might latch onto the zero and the one rather than the correct output of zero and zero, giving incorrect output.
These are two very simple examples; powerful modeling software would almost certainly account for these types of errors. However, they illustrate the problem with simulations: a simulation is only as good as the foresight of the software designer...
Let's assume that the error rate for any given lawyer is 1:100. Now let's assume that a big-league legal firm working on a high-profile case for a rich/powerful/famous/etc. person dedicates a staff of 10 lawyers to the case. If any given lawyer will make an error for every 100 details, then the odds of all ten lawyers making the same mistake are pretty slim. Therefore, the odds of having an error in the sentencing for such a defendant are also pretty slim, right?
Now, look at the opposite case. Rather than having ten lawyers scrutinizing every detail for the rich, powerful, blah-blah-blah defendant, you have one public defender scrutinizing details for ten impoverished clients. The public defender's workload is one hundred times greater (ten defendants vs. one defendant X one lawyer looking over all the details vs. ten lawyers). Consequently, the odds of him (or her) making an error that doesn't get caught is significantly greater.
It's not that a public defender is incapable of detecting the errors; it's that in a high-workload environment, people tend not to notice discrepancies as easily. Of course, IANAL nor have I ever worked in a legal office, so the above hypothetical situation may be complete bunk...but I doubt it.
Once you made x decision, you had no further reason to question that, and you would base many more decisions on that "logical rule". When x is challanged, it would require you to re-think all past decisions that were based on x, which might include who you married, why you took this job, your religious beliefs and other important life decisions.
That's not entirely a bad thing, however (which I think is probably the point of your second paragraph). If you had to re-evaluate every decision you ever made throughout your entire life, you would find that never did anything else. For there to be any progress, you must assume that the decisions that lead to where you are currently were good.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but at some point, you've got to stop second guessing yourself and actually act on your decisions.
That was my point: if health insurance companies are able to sequence and/or access DNA information on individual applicants, the only people who would have access to health insurance would be those who are unlikely to need it. Perhaps I should not have omitted the "lt;sarc> tag at the end of my post;)
A slightly more pragmatic answer would be that people who were worried about acute problems -- accidents, the occasional cold, etc. -- might still buy insurance.
Awesome. I can see it now: those who actually need health insurance will be unable to get any. Those who will be making payments for the next n decades, but rarely -- if ever -- actually obtaining any benefit from the insurance will be the only ones who will qualify for coverage.
Slashdot Mirror
...the cynic in me wonders whether or not the researchers might be risking legal problems by doing this (at least in Illinois, Colorado, Delaware, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming and possibly Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Texas as well).
...this is not an illegal abuse of power, or an illegal request...
I beg to differ. IANAL, so maybe I'm just being naive, but I always understood that a subpoena or warrant required specific information on who and what were to be searched:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [emphasis mine]
There's some latitude for discussion and interpretation on whether or not this particular subpoena is an "unreasonable search", and while the subpoena certainly describes what is to be searched and what information is to be retrieved, it is incredibly broad. Furthermore, there is an update in TFA that states that the subpoena wasn't even correctly issued by D.o.J.:
Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general's office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that's correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the "express authorization of the attorney general" for media subpoenas...
In other words, there certainly appears to be sufficient grounds to doubt that this was actually "within bounds of laws and within the duties of [Morrison's] office."
Dang it..."Godwin's Law". I knew I would remember as soon as I clicked "submit".
There is a long history of people being called to account for their personal actions when acting in a public capacity. This is a Good Thing. If there is no personal responsibility for an individual's actions, there is no incentive -- other than sleeping well at night -- for public officials to act ethically in their daily duties.
At risk of invoking...ummm...I forget who's law, the classic example of the principle I described above was thoroughly tested in Nuremberg, and it is no less valid now.
OK. How about if Tim Morrison's bank account and credit card numbers are provided to everyone who's information he requested, then?
From my experience, it seems the problem stems from the fact that we are already too safe (or perhaps, we simply believe we are already too safe) when we drive. This, I believe, is directly correlated to the size of vehicle you drive. When your transportation feels more like an extension of your living room -- where you feel safe, and therefore don't pay attention to what is happening around you -- it is easy to become complacent and stop driving defensively. The more insulated you are from the outside world, the less you are going to pay attention to traffic around you. Furthermore, drivers of large vehicles seem to think that the size of their vehicle will keep them safe in an accident...whereas I, having spent all but the last two years on the road in small sport-compact cars, would rather avoid the accident in the first place, so I drive like everyone else on the road is actively trying to kill me :) Even so, when I started riding motorcycles -- where you really feel exposed* -- I was amazed at how much more I began paying attention to traffic around me. Technology won't fix this; complacent drivers will only become more complacent if they feel like "big brother" is watching over them.
*the first time I stopped at a red light in traffic on my bike, I had a difficult time squelching the little voice in my head that was asking what possible reason I could have to be just standing in the middle of the road like an idiot, lol.
The difference between my point and your counter example is that while the Stone Age is countless generations behind us, the pre-Internet era was experienced by most of people still living today... Thus there is nothing particularly cruel about depriving a person of this aspect of modern life...
I disagree. Whether or not you lived through a certain period of time is irrelevant. What is relevant is that, during the stone age, stone age technology is all that was required to survive. Once the bronze age arrived, stone age civilizations that were in competition with bronze age civilizations either adapted or were replaced. Likewise, at this point in time, it would be difficult -- maybe not impossible, but certainly very, very hard -- to maintain a 21st century lifestyle without Internet access. Somehow, I suspect this will only become more true with time.
assuming, of course, that what they've done should, indeed, be punished at all...
Ultimately, that is the crux of the matter, after all. I'm not entirely certain that this should be a criminal matter. It is, however, certainly a civil matter. The fact that it may be difficult for a copyright holder to pursue infringement, IMHO, is a symptom of deeper problems in our judicial system. Treating such civil matters as criminal cases only masks the underlying problems.
And if you don't share that assumption, well, then it is rather insincere of you (and of Doctorow, BTW), to pretend, that it is just the punishment you find disagreeable...
Nak.
Simply because that is the only objection I raised does not necessarily mean that it is the only objection I hold. It was, however, the objection that was most relevant to your original post...which, incidentally, did not explore the topic of whether or not copyright infringement should be a crime either. Do I take that to mean you don't share that assumption either? (No, I don't really believe that is what you mean, but I am just pointing out that you were, perhaps, reading too much into what I didn't say earlier).
Civilization existed several thousand years ago, but I don't particularly want to return to the stone age...
Whoosh.
You totally missed the point in what was posted. Schon did not *say* you were a wife beater, nor was (s)he calling you names to defend a position (s)he did not agree with. (S)He posted a question that is a classical example of a type of question that is essentially impossible to answer correctly. A yes/no question, by definition, only has two possible answers: "yes" and "no". A yes answer implies that you were a wife beater and now have stopped. A no answer implies that you are still beating your wife. Therefore, whether you answer yes or no to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?", the answer implies that you were, in fact, already beating your wife.
This is why Schon asked the question. Assuming that you would recognize the question and the faulty logic that accompanies it, (s)he was trying to show that this law PRESUPPOSES that you are guilty. There is no presumption of innocence: if the **AA claims you are a copyright infringer, then by this law, you ARE a copyright infringer, exactly as either a yes or no answer to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" presupposes you are (or at least "were"), in fact, a wife beater.
We have something like that, here in the U.S. It's called the Constitution. The only problem is, those who have the ability to remove someone from power for abusing their position are, in fact, controlled (i.e., given their literal marching orders) by those in power.
The problem is that, by definition, it is impossible to give some group the power to depose those who hold power without given them power as well.
Well, at least TSA isn't letting you carry it through security anymore...
Nice.
Off-topic: why do I only have mod points when I have no use for them, and why have they expired every single time I see a comment I really, really want to mod up?
Irrelevant.
With veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from PTSD, it doesn't exactly take a genius to know that rilister was correct. It becomes even more obvious when you can turn on the news and watch the devastation that war brings to the families of people who died in combat, to the civilians who were unlucky enough to have their homes in the middle of a combat zone, etc. If that's not enough to convince you, then spend some time at Invisible Children's web site and learn what a 30+ year war in Uganda has cost people.
You'd have to be a complete, blithering idiot to believe that you can't learn from the experiences of others.
"There is no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary." --Brendan Behan
I always hang up as soon as I recognize them for what they are.
Not me. I set the phone on my desk, press the "mute" button and tie up the telemarketers' phone lines for as long as possible while I get back to reading /.^w^w^wwork. Kind of a low-tech La Brea tar pit.
I like it...because in some states, it's legal to hunt varmints >:]
"Stupid phackers..."
:D
But as natehoy pointed out in his original post, is it really necessary to coin a new term -- or even a new combination of existing terms -- for every possible permutation of communication media that scammers seek to exploit? How about just saying a scammer is a scammer is a scammer, whether (s)he is using e-mail, snail mail, voice mail, fax, or smoke signal?
/. reader, I'm a bit of Luddite, so maybe it's just me.
IMHO, "FBI warns of scam exploiting Asterisk PBX software" is far more meaningful to more people than "FBI warns of vishing attack exploiting Asterisk PBX software". But, hey -- for a
I ran into a great example of the kinds of things that digital simulations don't model in an entry-level digital electronics class I took many moons ago. I used a program called "Digital Works" to design my digital circuits before I would build them, since modeling electronic circuitry is far faster and far easier than actually building them (even on a breadboard). Eventually, I built a circuit that was complicated enough that the outputs of one stage no longer could provide enough current to trigger the next stage in the circuit. This was about 7-8 years ago, so I don't recall the details exactly, but IIRC, I was trying to drive too many LEDs from the output of a single gate. The circuit worked in Digital Works (because the logic was correct) but didn't work IRL because I didn't take into consideration how much current that many LEDs would pull.
In another problem I discovered in that class, you can have several milliseconds before a digital circuit "stabilizes" unless you have taken the trouble to normalize the circuit during design. For example, say you have one stage of a circuit that takes input from two other circuits. One of these input circuits consists of just a single gate; the other input consists of, say, twenty gates. As fast as digital circuits are, they are not instantaneous. So the last stage might see inputs of zero and one, then after a few milliseconds, zero and zero. To the human eye, it might appear as if both input circuits provide the correct output at exactly the same time. However, as my prof used to say, "nothing in the digital realm is ever simultaneous." This may or may not cause a problem. If the last stage is a trigger-and-hold type of circuit, it might latch onto the zero and the one rather than the correct output of zero and zero, giving incorrect output.
These are two very simple examples; powerful modeling software would almost certainly account for these types of errors. However, they illustrate the problem with simulations: a simulation is only as good as the foresight of the software designer...
They are "deceiving" each other, not the researchers...
That's just what they want you to think...
Let's assume that the error rate for any given lawyer is 1:100. Now let's assume that a big-league legal firm working on a high-profile case for a rich/powerful/famous/etc. person dedicates a staff of 10 lawyers to the case. If any given lawyer will make an error for every 100 details, then the odds of all ten lawyers making the same mistake are pretty slim. Therefore, the odds of having an error in the sentencing for such a defendant are also pretty slim, right?
Now, look at the opposite case. Rather than having ten lawyers scrutinizing every detail for the rich, powerful, blah-blah-blah defendant, you have one public defender scrutinizing details for ten impoverished clients. The public defender's workload is one hundred times greater (ten defendants vs. one defendant X one lawyer looking over all the details vs. ten lawyers). Consequently, the odds of him (or her) making an error that doesn't get caught is significantly greater.
It's not that a public defender is incapable of detecting the errors; it's that in a high-workload environment, people tend not to notice discrepancies as easily. Of course, IANAL nor have I ever worked in a legal office, so the above hypothetical situation may be complete bunk...but I doubt it.
I suspect if that was what really happened, the error rate would quickly become significantly less than 1:10
Once you made x decision, you had no further reason to question that, and you would base many more decisions on that "logical rule". When x is challanged, it would require you to re-think all past decisions that were based on x, which might include who you married, why you took this job, your religious beliefs and other important life decisions.
That's not entirely a bad thing, however (which I think is probably the point of your second paragraph). If you had to re-evaluate every decision you ever made throughout your entire life, you would find that never did anything else. For there to be any progress, you must assume that the decisions that lead to where you are currently were good.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but at some point, you've got to stop second guessing yourself and actually act on your decisions.
That was my point: if health insurance companies are able to sequence and/or access DNA information on individual applicants, the only people who would have access to health insurance would be those who are unlikely to need it. Perhaps I should not have omitted the "lt;sarc> tag at the end of my post ;)
A slightly more pragmatic answer would be that people who were worried about acute problems -- accidents, the occasional cold, etc. -- might still buy insurance.
Awesome. I can see it now: those who actually need health insurance will be unable to get any. Those who will be making payments for the next n decades, but rarely -- if ever -- actually obtaining any benefit from the insurance will be the only ones who will qualify for coverage.