the question is: did YOU achieve something, or did your modification achieve something?
what happens is we develop a poverty of self-perception. you begin to think: without various crutches, i cannot achieve what i achieved. such that you have no confidence, and you have no real self-regard. you begin to think of yourself as just a piece of meat channeling some sort of technology or drug. that you yourself are not the key to your own performance
Would it really matter? Take your self-confidence boosting treatment, and go about your day feeling just fine.
in other words, the issue is not what other people think of you, or what shrill narrow minds think of you. the issue is the damage you do to what you think of yourself with these deep modifications
Right, so each person should pick the limit to which they are willing to go. In that statement alone, you've removed the over arching need for some giant moral decision to pick where that line is, and set it squarely at the feet of the individual that is being 'enhanced'. Frankly, that's where I feel it should be.
in this way, a lot of you really need to pause and reconsider cognition enhancers, technological tweaks on mental abilities, and the like. no: it is not no big deal. it is a deeply serious deal, and it has absolutel ynothing to do with judgmental busy bodies, but simply because of subtle philosophical alterations on the idea of "self" that can lead to terrible consequences for your own happiness
Or they can lead to great gains for a person's happiness. Take a person who is depressed, but well into genius level IQ. Autistic savants. Agoraphobics. It is the busy bodies who are so worried that a treatment will become abused that they do not allow it to be used on those who would benefit.
Should it be talked about? Of course! But not to the point that it gets put on the 'Never to be used, even in labs and medical emergencies' list like some very useful drugs. Society needs to have these conversations about 'What is self' and 'What separates my self from my brain/body' but never to the detriment of other members of society. It crosses the line when it changes from "This treatment might be bad for me because . . . " into "So you should never use it either."
I think there are several general misconceptions about psychotropic drugs that make describing them as changing personality a very poor choice of words, whether you believe it to be technically accurate or not. First and foremost is that almost every person I talk to about psychotropic drugs completely misunderstands how they work. They believe that anti-depressants make you happy, resulting in such misinformed beliefs in things like "fake happiness". And not just with anti-depressants. These beliefs follow for every psychotropic drug that has ever come up in conversation with me including such straightforward things like amphetamines. Many people have expressed concern to me that psychotropic drugs change your personality, and thereby change who you are as a person. And that's just rubbish. As someone else mentioned in here, our current understanding of personality can only account for about 10% of the variation, which basically means that we don't know anything about personality, and can't at all be defined by some form of look-up table.
That's the trouble with describing psychoactive drugs. I've found that the answer to anyone who claims 'SSRI make you fake-happy' is that 'No, SSRI take away the fake-sad'. When you get depressed because you can't do anything, and you can't do anything because you are too depressed, that's not a 'real-sad' by their definition. Some people can't grok that loop that depressed people get caught in. Before I started taking them, I thought the same thing. I had reasons to be depressed; not dog died and girlfriend left like ShadesOfBlue said above; and figured that I didn't want to be happy about that situation and that being pissed off and depressed was a valid state of mind. When you can't get out of it, though, having something to temporarily alter the personality to let you escape that can be a good thing.
Having been on them, I would even call the current batches of anti-depressants personality-altering drugs. For me, they got rid of the fear of crowds, but took along most other self preservation instinct as well. I was a completely different person for the time I was on them, as attested to by the few people I knew before, and during, who still talk to me.
Sorry, I came into this a little heated. I have just had way too many friends ostracized and admonished for using drugs to treat conditions like depression, chronic anxiety, and ADD. In addition, I have lost friends who refused to consider treatment for problems based on the idea that drugs would change who they are, rather than on a preference for more traditional treatment (which they still refused).
That's a good reason to be more than a little heated and hostile. If anyone ever mentions 'fake happiness' to you, feel free to hit them with the fake-sad, or ask them how they think caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, or even chocolate works on the brain. Mmm, chocolate, now there is a 'fake happy' drug.
If I open I diary during a border crossing, or car search, or whatever, and the cop sees my shopping list - confiscates the diary, looks through it, and sees a block of cryptographic text.
Are you required to give the officer the 'key' to the cipher when he asks for it?
No, you wouldn't be. If, how ever, they saw the cryptographic text, asked you to decipher it, you waved your Miranda rights and did so, and it turned out to be a hit list with a few people who were already dead, then they arrested you, you would probably be forced to decrypt the rest of the cyphered text as well. Which is a bit closer to how this case played out.
If that were the case, you would be right. The police have a responsibility to preserve the evidence, and chain of evidence. However, they are not compelling the defense to produce the evidence, just the key to it. And not even the key to it, just the physical evidence that he showed them before. This judge says that, by precedent, they have the legal authority to do that. I tend to agree. If, otherwise, they were forcing him to re-download evidence because they had formatted the drive, or open files that he had not already waived all protection on, I'd agree with you.
Think of it this way, he showed the cop, the cop made a photocopy or notes in his notebook. That notebook or copy is destroyed, but they know the defense still has the original. Could the get access to that? I think they could, and I don't think it would be a stretch under any current law.
And you are right, he's probably being told to forget the password. If the prosecution is any good, though, he'll get the contempt charge on top of the kiddy porn charge. The way I read some other information, there was plenty of evidence to convict him, and the contempt charge and forgetting the password could be used to further incriminate him, since the court just ruled that his 5A right to not incriminate himself doesn't apply here.
The real scary thing, here, is that cartoons might be considered kiddy porn. The cop's description of the images and file names might be real, could be hentai. Who knows how a jury would react to that, but I doubt they would follow the letter of the law, that drawings and paintings don't count.
Have you played Mario Kart Wii? Rainbow Road is back, with a guard rail in just a few places that don't really matter. 150cc is only the beginning of the challenge, as racing ghost drivers is required to unlock more karts and characters. There is still the casual element, with a very smooth, but steep, transition up the difficulty scale.
The problem was he had presented the evidence once before. The boarder officer saw the files, pictures or videos, and said 'damn, that looks like CP.' They seized the computer right then, and asked 'hey, why do you have CP on your computer?' Boucher said he didn't, the usenet program downloaded it sometimes because of the newsgroups he was on. Boucher waives his Miranda rights, and helps the officer navigate back into the encrypted part of the drive. Cop finds more CP, arrests Boucher. Cop turns off computer, and turns it over to forensics.
Now, Boucher didn't give the cop the password, just showed him around the computer. But, he showed him enough to incriminate himself and was stupid enough to waive his Miranda rights. The cops know what the files are, know where they are, and he showed them to him after waiving his rights. The guy is screwed. He waived his right to silence, and the police have the ability to use anything he said or showed them as evidence. They can't get that evidence because it is now encrypted. He's not being asked to turn over the key, to decrypt anything else, just to reopen the file that he opened when he waived his rights. It's reasonable, and doesn't seem all that scary of a judgement.
Does that help calm you a bit from the thought-crime worries? It's not great that this is the case-law as it stands, but it's not really a travesty of justice either. And it's no further down the slippery slope.
I don't like the ruling either. I just never expected anything different, and with the precedents set as far back at the 1920s I didn't see it changing just because of computers. TFA says the judge isn't required to know exactly what is in the articles they are looking for, or to know that they are incriminatory, just know that they exist and know roughly where the files are. As for whether he was forced to show the computer by customs or not. . . well, that's a different case. Someone has to fight it eventually, to find out if complying with the overly broad boarder laws are a violation of 5th Amendment rights. Maybe he'll take this back to court to get the search thrown out, instead of the appeal on complying with the subpoena. That one I would be hoping he wins.
But, probably wouldn't. Would be a more interesting test case to go through customs, deny all searches on 5th Amendment grounds, get caught with something, and then appeal the search. No chance of cooperation being implied, and a much better case to see how SCOTUS would rule. Not sure I'd want to test it with the current court, though.
Case law please? I posted, in another post, the cases that say the defendant can not invoke the 5th after they testify on the stand. Raffel v U.S. says that once the defendant takes the stand in his own case he gives up that right. I'd love to see something that reduces the impact of that case, but I can't find much. Lots of 'Raffel doesn't apply in this case.' but nothing that says 'Raffel was too broad.'
You can invoke the right at will if it's not your own trial*. As a subpoenaed witness, or just talking to cops on the street. Once waved, to the statement or object in question, you can't turn the right back on again. That's what I meant.
*With lots of caveats. Way too many to list, as everyone keeps pointing out.
couldn't be why I said that I am not a lawyer. But Slashdot readers shouldn't think that all laws they hear about on TV are real, or that the way a normal person would read the law is the way it's interpreted in the real world. Google is easy to use, find the case law and read how it's been used before, it isn't that hard.
I wouldn't use it in front of a judge, but for an argument on Slashdot, it seems to work just fine.
But when they call the defendant to the stand, he *explicitly* gives up his 5th Amendment rights. And he doesn't give them up. He agrees to not follow them before taking the stand.
Um, no. When you take the stand, you are not giving up your 5th Amendment rights just because you take the oath to tell the truth. Otherwise any witness forced onto the stand would have given up their right to not incriminate them-self. Even if they volunteer and are not subpoenaed, they keep the right to not answer a question. Brown v US, as I quoted earlier, held the defense in contempt of court for not answering a question when asked, after they took the stand of their own free will. The line is pretty clear in this case, if you read the other cases used as reference. If you are trying to point out how itshould be, let's make that more clear.
And yes, he showed the evidence, or so the cop claimed when getting the subpoena, at least that's how I read the case summary. Clean cut case, and no where near the level of panic-inducing techno-ignorance that/. seems to project onto the ruling.
It's not against his 5th Amendment right because he already incriminated himself. The evidence is not new, because it's been shown to the police already. The data does exist unencrypted, in the computer, and that is what the boarder cop saw.
Yes, the cops probably did lie to him. They are allowed to do that. Sucks, but oh well. He went along with it and showed them the data. He can't duck out on 5th Amendment grounds. He can appeal the lack of a waiver, that they lied about his rights, and so on. If his lawyer is good, they probably will. But he didn't have a chance on straight 'Right not to incriminate myself' grounds
I'm bored, so I looked it up. Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 (1926). Further upheld in Johnson v. United States and later Stefena BROWN, v. UNITED STATES. The witnesses can invoke the 5th on any question they feel may incriminate them. The defendant can not. The defense's choice is 'Take the stand or not." Once they take the stand, the questions just have to be valid and not cause a violation " . . . of policy in the law of evidence which requires their exclusion."
Either way, this guy waived his 5th, with regard to this evidence, when he showed the police the incriminating evidence.
IANAL, this is not legal advice. Raffel v US could have been overturned for all I know. I can't find anything suggesting that just yet.
It's nothing like your "similar case". If they found a bag full of what looked like pot on the drawer, and compelled the suspect via subpoena to turn it over, then you would have a similar case. An empty bag is only rarely accepted as proof of owning drugs.
What will likely happen is that the SCOTUS will say "You can't retract self-incriminating evidence you provided on your own, but you can refrain from providing any more at any time. If the police are careless with evidence, you don't have to give them more of it."
I doubt it. The best this guy can hope for is a charge of destruction of evidence if he can not turn it over to the police, or contempt if he does not. I suspect SCOTUS will, with the current Justices, force him to turn it over.
If I hadn't posted already, I'd be throwing mod points at both of these posts. You hit the points exactly right, except:
In this case, the defendant was sunk because of his prior, freely-given revelation that 1) there was an encrypted drive on his PC and 2) he knew how to access it. By giving that information up, he gave up the farm. It's too late to plead the 5th.
Need to add a third reason, i.e. He already showed the contents to the police.
Now, what if hypothetically he had a TrueCrypt hidden container on the drive? And what if the authorities were pretty sure that such a container existed, but couldn't be sure? Could they compel him to testify whether or not there IS a hidden container in the drive? I don't believe so - that would probably tilt the balance into "testimony", which would be protected by the 5th amendment. Ditto in the case of a file called "MYSTUFF.DAT" that the authorities think is probably a TrueCrypt encrypted volume, but can't be sure about. They can't force the defendant to confirm that suspicion.
IANAL either, but probably not. If the police saw a safe in your house, they couldn't just tell you to open it. That you have a safe or encrypted drive, that alone is not proof you are hiding anything illegal. That you are suspected of having something illegal, and have a safe/encrypted drive does not mean it is in it. The 5th should protect a person in that case. "Yes, there is a safe, no, I won't open it." Cop:"Your Honor, I want a subpoena to get into that safe, even though I have no idea what is inside it." Judge:"No."
Where it would get interesting would be if the defendant claims that he doesn't know the password. ("My friend created and opened the Z: drive on my laptop, but I don't know how to access it once it's closed again"). Or whether he claims he forgot it.
That would be interesting, but probably no where near the noise of this case. They would just compel the friend to open the file.
For once, I don't have to jump up and down screaming "This would not set a precedent!"
It won't set any, though. The precedent was set with safe keys and combinations. The judge even seemed to go along with that. He didn't ask for the key to the safe/drive, as that would have possibly violated the 5th, because there could be more incriminating evidence. The defendant only has to turn over the documents he already showed police, and since he showed them to the cop he can't claim his 5th to protect himself.
No, it doesn't. If they found something the first time, went and testified to a judge, under oath, that you had something illegal and they got a subpoena to search your house then you would have to let them. He showed the cop something that looked like CP, the cop got a subpoena to search the computer. The guy doesn't have the right to say 'screw the subpoena'. Due Process clause, the law went through the proper channels to get access to the computer, now he had to comply.
The guy gave the police his laptop, and cooperated with them. If I open a diary, during a border crossing or car search or what ever, and the cop sees evidence that I killed someone, they can get a subpoena for the book and I can't invoke the 5th. I already showed it to them. If this guy had kept his mouth shut to start with, not shown the police any part of the encrypted drive, he would be fine.
The 5th is not an on-and-off right. You can't get on the stand at your own trial to testify in your own defense, and then start invoking the 5th when the prosecutor asks questions you don't like. The same here, he gave them the computer, they saw the data. He can't say, after that, "Sorry, I'll take the 5th, you can't see the computer again."
Reasonable doubt requires a jury. The cops and prosecutors can have all the doubt in the world. Are you going to trust a jury to understand "I was using TOR to help political dissidents" or just believe the prosecutors "He had CP on his computer"?
The article suggested that the use of the drug for a single session of exposure therapy helped reduce the effects of anxiety on the next exposure when the drug was not in their system. It was a news article, not an academic paper, so probably not that accurate.
Given how they guess that it works, I would say that therapy while taking the drug would be more effective. This appears to interfere with the emotional part of memories, but only those remembered when on the drug. Really, it sounds like what a few therapists had tried with LSD. If it works, it will probably get restricted or banned.
Did you write the bootstrap compiler you are using for LFS? Did you replace the BIOS? Chances are, you did not. So you are trusting someone else. That's fine, but you have to recognize that you do not control the entire machine, and that it almost a requirement for having computers that are so useful.
If we went back to the halcyon having everyone assemble their own circuit boards, write their own BIOS and multitasking OS, there would be little chance of having the programs we do today. How would something like Photoshop run on a computer where each one had a different OS and different function calls?
Because once people started giving away software, everyone stopped paying for the licensed versions. Didn't you hear? because of all the piracy and linux...linuxi, linuxes... out there, Microsoft had to fire everyone. IBM closed shop, took their ball and went home. Everyone just started using that old Pre-1989 software they could get for free and all the people expecting to be paid went to doing something else.
I mean, where have you been the past 20 years? Nobody pays for anything when they can get the same stuff for free!
You've never driven an Echo, have you? It was not a third row of seats, be any measure, but they broke some laws of physics and reality to put that much trunk space in those cars.
Right, but how many people go around saying "Oh, I never drive a BrandA cars, I've always driven BrandB cars. I wouldn't even know how to drive a BrandA. The buttons might be in the wrong place, or the shift lever might be at the rear passenger door. I just wouldn't know where anything was?" I've heard the strangest reasons for not switching to Linux. One was simply "The Start button looks too different." Yes, the start button was enough to scare them. Heaven forbid that they ever get in a car that had the gear shift on the wheel column instead of the floor.
No, the reason tech people say non-computer people are clueless about computers is because the ones that stick out in our memory are so willfully clueless. They are the ones who would get in any car and find the buttons they need, but change the color of an icon on the computer and they are lost. The blender breaks and they buy what ever one is on sale, but when they need to check their email they "Only know how to use OutLook Express. What is this 'webmail thing' you are talking about?" And stereos, geez, Talk about moving the buttons around, every one I've ever owned had the volume dial in a different place. But the volume icon in KDE is right next to the clock, same as windows normally, and most of these 'clueless' users wouldn't want to find it. They would rather just complain that 'it doesn't look the way I remember it.' I don't know what it is about computers that induces this autistic-like behavior, but that's exactly what it looks like.
I settled the issue with my parents. I told them that unless they could name an application they wanted to use that I could not get them under Linux, then the next time they wanted their computer fixed it was getting Linux installed. A nice windows-like theme and KDE, sure, I'd go ahead and do that for them, but I was not supporting windows. My mother actually asked me to pirate her a windows CD, just because she didn't want to 'learn a whole new computer'. I handed her my laptop and asked her what she thought, and she thought it was a "nice windows theme, but that wasn't linux. I've seen linux, that's where you type away in that little text box with no pictures." Now they run Kubuntu, and the only problem they've had is that the LTS version hasn't updated firefox in ages. Next time they ask about it, they get moved from LTS to stable, which frightens them. I can't wait till they ask again and get moved to bleeding edge nightly builds.
If they have an ATSC receiver already, they can just watch in digital now. Nothing was stopping the stations from broadcasting in digital right now, and many of the local stations here (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and PBS) already are. There was nothing in the cutoff plan that said 'okay, people, today everything switches. Nothing in digital before, nothing in analog after.'
Hahaa!! This is the most eloquent and ridiculous argument to copying i.e. stealing software.
So let us expand your argument a bit. Say Company-A, starts with $1M in capital to build software X. After spending $1M, it sells software X and makes $1.5M in revenue over several years. Now it comes time to upgrade the software for which the price-tag is another $1M. Where do they get that extra $500K they need to invest in the upgrade? Shareholders? Bonds? Personal Funds? Either way, if you and your ilk had not been copying that software, the company would have had more money to upgrade OR to distribute profits to its shareholders/owners.
Nope, they wouldn't have the money at all, cause I wouldn't have bought the software. This is where the analogy between theft and software piracy falls apart. All because there are two kinds of pirated software.
The author of this article is worried about one kind of copyright infringement: someone who could afford said software and just copies it out of habit or culture. That does deprive the company of some money, in the long run, because if they didn't pirate it they would probably have bought some of the software. The other kind of pirate is the 13 year old in their parent's basement, the college student, and others, who wouldn't have bought the software in the first place. Can anyone provide an economical argument that a 13 year old using AutoCAD/Maya/CS4 at home is a bad thing? I would argue that this would increase the producer's monetary value, as the kid would be more likely to find the software interesting and purchase it when they get to or out of college. In the long run, it increases the number of products sold, and in the short run it doesn't cost them a sale, because the person copying the software would not have bought it in the first place
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the question is: did YOU achieve something, or did your modification achieve something?
what happens is we develop a poverty of self-perception. you begin to think: without various crutches, i cannot achieve what i achieved. such that you have no confidence, and you have no real self-regard. you begin to think of yourself as just a piece of meat channeling some sort of technology or drug. that you yourself are not the key to your own performance
Would it really matter? Take your self-confidence boosting treatment, and go about your day feeling just fine.
in other words, the issue is not what other people think of you, or what shrill narrow minds think of you. the issue is the damage you do to what you think of yourself with these deep modifications
Right, so each person should pick the limit to which they are willing to go. In that statement alone, you've removed the over arching need for some giant moral decision to pick where that line is, and set it squarely at the feet of the individual that is being 'enhanced'. Frankly, that's where I feel it should be.
in this way, a lot of you really need to pause and reconsider cognition enhancers, technological tweaks on mental abilities, and the like. no: it is not no big deal. it is a deeply serious deal, and it has absolutel ynothing to do with judgmental busy bodies, but simply because of subtle philosophical alterations on the idea of "self" that can lead to terrible consequences for your own happiness
Or they can lead to great gains for a person's happiness. Take a person who is depressed, but well into genius level IQ. Autistic savants. Agoraphobics. It is the busy bodies who are so worried that a treatment will become abused that they do not allow it to be used on those who would benefit.
Should it be talked about? Of course! But not to the point that it gets put on the 'Never to be used, even in labs and medical emergencies' list like some very useful drugs. Society needs to have these conversations about 'What is self' and 'What separates my self from my brain/body' but never to the detriment of other members of society. It crosses the line when it changes from "This treatment might be bad for me because . . . " into "So you should never use it either."
I think there are several general misconceptions about psychotropic drugs that make describing them as changing personality a very poor choice of words, whether you believe it to be technically accurate or not. First and foremost is that almost every person I talk to about psychotropic drugs completely misunderstands how they work. They believe that anti-depressants make you happy, resulting in such misinformed beliefs in things like "fake happiness". And not just with anti-depressants. These beliefs follow for every psychotropic drug that has ever come up in conversation with me including such straightforward things like amphetamines. Many people have expressed concern to me that psychotropic drugs change your personality, and thereby change who you are as a person. And that's just rubbish. As someone else mentioned in here, our current understanding of personality can only account for about 10% of the variation, which basically means that we don't know anything about personality, and can't at all be defined by some form of look-up table.
That's the trouble with describing psychoactive drugs. I've found that the answer to anyone who claims 'SSRI make you fake-happy' is that 'No, SSRI take away the fake-sad'. When you get depressed because you can't do anything, and you can't do anything because you are too depressed, that's not a 'real-sad' by their definition. Some people can't grok that loop that depressed people get caught in. Before I started taking them, I thought the same thing. I had reasons to be depressed; not dog died and girlfriend left like ShadesOfBlue said above; and figured that I didn't want to be happy about that situation and that being pissed off and depressed was a valid state of mind. When you can't get out of it, though, having something to temporarily alter the personality to let you escape that can be a good thing.
Having been on them, I would even call the current batches of anti-depressants personality-altering drugs. For me, they got rid of the fear of crowds, but took along most other self preservation instinct as well. I was a completely different person for the time I was on them, as attested to by the few people I knew before, and during, who still talk to me.
Sorry, I came into this a little heated. I have just had way too many friends ostracized and admonished for using drugs to treat conditions like depression, chronic anxiety, and ADD. In addition, I have lost friends who refused to consider treatment for problems based on the idea that drugs would change who they are, rather than on a preference for more traditional treatment (which they still refused).
That's a good reason to be more than a little heated and hostile. If anyone ever mentions 'fake happiness' to you, feel free to hit them with the fake-sad, or ask them how they think caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, or even chocolate works on the brain.
Mmm, chocolate, now there is a 'fake happy' drug.
If I open I diary during a border crossing, or car search, or whatever, and the cop sees my shopping list - confiscates the diary, looks through it, and sees a block of cryptographic text.
Are you required to give the officer the 'key' to the cipher when he asks for it?
No, you wouldn't be.
If, how ever, they saw the cryptographic text, asked you to decipher it, you waved your Miranda rights and did so, and it turned out to be a hit list with a few people who were already dead, then they arrested you, you would probably be forced to decrypt the rest of the cyphered text as well. Which is a bit closer to how this case played out.
If that were the case, you would be right. The police have a responsibility to preserve the evidence, and chain of evidence. However, they are not compelling the defense to produce the evidence, just the key to it. And not even the key to it, just the physical evidence that he showed them before. This judge says that, by precedent, they have the legal authority to do that. I tend to agree. If, otherwise, they were forcing him to re-download evidence because they had formatted the drive, or open files that he had not already waived all protection on, I'd agree with you.
Think of it this way, he showed the cop, the cop made a photocopy or notes in his notebook. That notebook or copy is destroyed, but they know the defense still has the original. Could the get access to that? I think they could, and I don't think it would be a stretch under any current law.
And you are right, he's probably being told to forget the password. If the prosecution is any good, though, he'll get the contempt charge on top of the kiddy porn charge. The way I read some other information, there was plenty of evidence to convict him, and the contempt charge and forgetting the password could be used to further incriminate him, since the court just ruled that his 5A right to not incriminate himself doesn't apply here.
The real scary thing, here, is that cartoons might be considered kiddy porn. The cop's description of the images and file names might be real, could be hentai. Who knows how a jury would react to that, but I doubt they would follow the letter of the law, that drawings and paintings don't count.
Have you played Mario Kart Wii? Rainbow Road is back, with a guard rail in just a few places that don't really matter. 150cc is only the beginning of the challenge, as racing ghost drivers is required to unlock more karts and characters. There is still the casual element, with a very smooth, but steep, transition up the difficulty scale.
The problem was he had presented the evidence once before. The boarder officer saw the files, pictures or videos, and said 'damn, that looks like CP.' They seized the computer right then, and asked 'hey, why do you have CP on your computer?' Boucher said he didn't, the usenet program downloaded it sometimes because of the newsgroups he was on. Boucher waives his Miranda rights, and helps the officer navigate back into the encrypted part of the drive. Cop finds more CP, arrests Boucher. Cop turns off computer, and turns it over to forensics.
Now, Boucher didn't give the cop the password, just showed him around the computer. But, he showed him enough to incriminate himself and was stupid enough to waive his Miranda rights. The cops know what the files are, know where they are, and he showed them to him after waiving his rights. The guy is screwed. He waived his right to silence, and the police have the ability to use anything he said or showed them as evidence. They can't get that evidence because it is now encrypted. He's not being asked to turn over the key, to decrypt anything else, just to reopen the file that he opened when he waived his rights. It's reasonable, and doesn't seem all that scary of a judgement.
Does that help calm you a bit from the thought-crime worries? It's not great that this is the case-law as it stands, but it's not really a travesty of justice either. And it's no further down the slippery slope.
I don't like the ruling either. I just never expected anything different, and with the precedents set as far back at the 1920s I didn't see it changing just because of computers. TFA says the judge isn't required to know exactly what is in the articles they are looking for, or to know that they are incriminatory, just know that they exist and know roughly where the files are. As for whether he was forced to show the computer by customs or not. . . well, that's a different case. Someone has to fight it eventually, to find out if complying with the overly broad boarder laws are a violation of 5th Amendment rights. Maybe he'll take this back to court to get the search thrown out, instead of the appeal on complying with the subpoena. That one I would be hoping he wins.
But, probably wouldn't. Would be a more interesting test case to go through customs, deny all searches on 5th Amendment grounds, get caught with something, and then appeal the search. No chance of cooperation being implied, and a much better case to see how SCOTUS would rule. Not sure I'd want to test it with the current court, though.
Case law please? I posted, in another post, the cases that say the defendant can not invoke the 5th after they testify on the stand. Raffel v U.S. says that once the defendant takes the stand in his own case he gives up that right. I'd love to see something that reduces the impact of that case, but I can't find much. Lots of 'Raffel doesn't apply in this case.' but nothing that says 'Raffel was too broad.'
You can invoke the right at will if it's not your own trial*. As a subpoenaed witness, or just talking to cops on the street. Once waved, to the statement or object in question, you can't turn the right back on again. That's what I meant.
*With lots of caveats. Way too many to list, as everyone keeps pointing out.
couldn't be why I said that I am not a lawyer. But Slashdot readers shouldn't think that all laws they hear about on TV are real, or that the way a normal person would read the law is the way it's interpreted in the real world. Google is easy to use, find the case law and read how it's been used before, it isn't that hard.
I wouldn't use it in front of a judge, but for an argument on Slashdot, it seems to work just fine.
But when they call the defendant to the stand, he *explicitly* gives up his 5th Amendment rights. And he doesn't give them up. He agrees to not follow them before taking the stand.
Um, no. When you take the stand, you are not giving up your 5th Amendment rights just because you take the oath to tell the truth. Otherwise any witness forced onto the stand would have given up their right to not incriminate them-self. Even if they volunteer and are not subpoenaed, they keep the right to not answer a question. Brown v US, as I quoted earlier, held the defense in contempt of court for not answering a question when asked, after they took the stand of their own free will.
The line is pretty clear in this case, if you read the other cases used as reference. If you are trying to point out how itshould be, let's make that more clear.
And yes, he showed the evidence, or so the cop claimed when getting the subpoena, at least that's how I read the case summary. Clean cut case, and no where near the level of panic-inducing techno-ignorance that /. seems to project onto the ruling.
It's not against his 5th Amendment right because he already incriminated himself. The evidence is not new, because it's been shown to the police already. The data does exist unencrypted, in the computer, and that is what the boarder cop saw.
Yes, the cops probably did lie to him. They are allowed to do that. Sucks, but oh well. He went along with it and showed them the data. He can't duck out on 5th Amendment grounds. He can appeal the lack of a waiver, that they lied about his rights, and so on. If his lawyer is good, they probably will. But he didn't have a chance on straight 'Right not to incriminate myself' grounds
I'm bored, so I looked it up. Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494 (1926). Further upheld in Johnson v. United States and later Stefena BROWN, v. UNITED STATES. The witnesses can invoke the 5th on any question they feel may incriminate them. The defendant can not. The defense's choice is 'Take the stand or not." Once they take the stand, the questions just have to be valid and not cause a violation " . . . of policy in the law of evidence which requires their exclusion."
Either way, this guy waived his 5th, with regard to this evidence, when he showed the police the incriminating evidence.
IANAL, this is not legal advice. Raffel v US could have been overturned for all I know. I can't find anything suggesting that just yet.
It's nothing like your "similar case". If they found a bag full of what looked like pot on the drawer, and compelled the suspect via subpoena to turn it over, then you would have a similar case. An empty bag is only rarely accepted as proof of owning drugs.
What will likely happen is that the SCOTUS will say "You can't retract self-incriminating evidence you provided on your own, but you can refrain from providing any more at any time. If the police are careless with evidence, you don't have to give them more of it."
I doubt it. The best this guy can hope for is a charge of destruction of evidence if he can not turn it over to the police, or contempt if he does not. I suspect SCOTUS will, with the current Justices, force him to turn it over.
In this case, the defendant was sunk because of his prior, freely-given revelation that 1) there was an encrypted drive on his PC and 2) he knew how to access it. By giving that information up, he gave up the farm. It's too late to plead the 5th.
Need to add a third reason, i.e. He already showed the contents to the police.
Now, what if hypothetically he had a TrueCrypt hidden container on the drive? And what if the authorities were pretty sure that such a container existed, but couldn't be sure? Could they compel him to testify whether or not there IS a hidden container in the drive? I don't believe so - that would probably tilt the balance into "testimony", which would be protected by the 5th amendment. Ditto in the case of a file called "MYSTUFF.DAT" that the authorities think is probably a TrueCrypt encrypted volume, but can't be sure about. They can't force the defendant to confirm that suspicion.
IANAL either, but probably not. If the police saw a safe in your house, they couldn't just tell you to open it. That you have a safe or encrypted drive, that alone is not proof you are hiding anything illegal. That you are suspected of having something illegal, and have a safe/encrypted drive does not mean it is in it. The 5th should protect a person in that case.
"Yes, there is a safe, no, I won't open it."
Cop:"Your Honor, I want a subpoena to get into that safe, even though I have no idea what is inside it."
Judge:"No."
Where it would get interesting would be if the defendant claims that he doesn't know the password. ("My friend created and opened the Z: drive on my laptop, but I don't know how to access it once it's closed again"). Or whether he claims he forgot it.
That would be interesting, but probably no where near the noise of this case. They would just compel the friend to open the file.
For once, I don't have to jump up and down screaming "This would not set a precedent!"
It won't set any, though. The precedent was set with safe keys and combinations. The judge even seemed to go along with that. He didn't ask for the key to the safe/drive, as that would have possibly violated the 5th, because there could be more incriminating evidence. The defendant only has to turn over the documents he already showed police, and since he showed them to the cop he can't claim his 5th to protect himself.
No, it doesn't. If they found something the first time, went and testified to a judge, under oath, that you had something illegal and they got a subpoena to search your house then you would have to let them.
He showed the cop something that looked like CP, the cop got a subpoena to search the computer. The guy doesn't have the right to say 'screw the subpoena'. Due Process clause, the law went through the proper channels to get access to the computer, now he had to comply.
The guy gave the police his laptop, and cooperated with them. If I open a diary, during a border crossing or car search or what ever, and the cop sees evidence that I killed someone, they can get a subpoena for the book and I can't invoke the 5th. I already showed it to them. If this guy had kept his mouth shut to start with, not shown the police any part of the encrypted drive, he would be fine.
The 5th is not an on-and-off right. You can't get on the stand at your own trial to testify in your own defense, and then start invoking the 5th when the prosecutor asks questions you don't like. The same here, he gave them the computer, they saw the data. He can't say, after that, "Sorry, I'll take the 5th, you can't see the computer again."
Reasonable doubt requires a jury. The cops and prosecutors can have all the doubt in the world. Are you going to trust a jury to understand "I was using TOR to help political dissidents" or just believe the prosecutors "He had CP on his computer"?
The article suggested that the use of the drug for a single session of exposure therapy helped reduce the effects of anxiety on the next exposure when the drug was not in their system. It was a news article, not an academic paper, so probably not that accurate.
Given how they guess that it works, I would say that therapy while taking the drug would be more effective. This appears to interfere with the emotional part of memories, but only those remembered when on the drug. Really, it sounds like what a few therapists had tried with LSD. If it works, it will probably get restricted or banned.
Did you write the bootstrap compiler you are using for LFS? Did you replace the BIOS? Chances are, you did not. So you are trusting someone else. That's fine, but you have to recognize that you do not control the entire machine, and that it almost a requirement for having computers that are so useful.
If we went back to the halcyon having everyone assemble their own circuit boards, write their own BIOS and multitasking OS, there would be little chance of having the programs we do today. How would something like Photoshop run on a computer where each one had a different OS and different function calls?
Because once people started giving away software, everyone stopped paying for the licensed versions. Didn't you hear? because of all the piracy and linux...linuxi, linuxes... out there, Microsoft had to fire everyone. IBM closed shop, took their ball and went home. Everyone just started using that old Pre-1989 software they could get for free and all the people expecting to be paid went to doing something else.
I mean, where have you been the past 20 years? Nobody pays for anything when they can get the same stuff for free!
You've never driven an Echo, have you? It was not a third row of seats, be any measure, but they broke some laws of physics and reality to put that much trunk space in those cars.
Right, but how many people go around saying "Oh, I never drive a BrandA cars, I've always driven BrandB cars. I wouldn't even know how to drive a BrandA. The buttons might be in the wrong place, or the shift lever might be at the rear passenger door. I just wouldn't know where anything was?" I've heard the strangest reasons for not switching to Linux. One was simply "The Start button looks too different." Yes, the start button was enough to scare them. Heaven forbid that they ever get in a car that had the gear shift on the wheel column instead of the floor.
No, the reason tech people say non-computer people are clueless about computers is because the ones that stick out in our memory are so willfully clueless. They are the ones who would get in any car and find the buttons they need, but change the color of an icon on the computer and they are lost. The blender breaks and they buy what ever one is on sale, but when they need to check their email they "Only know how to use OutLook Express. What is this 'webmail thing' you are talking about?" And stereos, geez, Talk about moving the buttons around, every one I've ever owned had the volume dial in a different place. But the volume icon in KDE is right next to the clock, same as windows normally, and most of these 'clueless' users wouldn't want to find it. They would rather just complain that 'it doesn't look the way I remember it.' I don't know what it is about computers that induces this autistic-like behavior, but that's exactly what it looks like.
I settled the issue with my parents. I told them that unless they could name an application they wanted to use that I could not get them under Linux, then the next time they wanted their computer fixed it was getting Linux installed. A nice windows-like theme and KDE, sure, I'd go ahead and do that for them, but I was not supporting windows. My mother actually asked me to pirate her a windows CD, just because she didn't want to 'learn a whole new computer'. I handed her my laptop and asked her what she thought, and she thought it was a "nice windows theme, but that wasn't linux. I've seen linux, that's where you type away in that little text box with no pictures."
Now they run Kubuntu, and the only problem they've had is that the LTS version hasn't updated firefox in ages. Next time they ask about it, they get moved from LTS to stable, which frightens them. I can't wait till they ask again and get moved to bleeding edge nightly builds.
If they have an ATSC receiver already, they can just watch in digital now. Nothing was stopping the stations from broadcasting in digital right now, and many of the local stations here (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and PBS) already are. There was nothing in the cutoff plan that said 'okay, people, today everything switches. Nothing in digital before, nothing in analog after.'
Hahaa!! This is the most eloquent and ridiculous argument to copying i.e. stealing software.
So let us expand your argument a bit. Say Company-A, starts with $1M in capital to build software X. After spending $1M, it sells software X and makes $1.5M in revenue over several years. Now it comes time to upgrade the software for which the price-tag is another $1M. Where do they get that extra $500K they need to invest in the upgrade? Shareholders? Bonds? Personal Funds? Either way, if you and your ilk had not been copying that software, the company would have had more money to upgrade OR to distribute profits to its shareholders/owners.
Nope, they wouldn't have the money at all, cause I wouldn't have bought the software. This is where the analogy between theft and software piracy falls apart. All because there are two kinds of pirated software.
The author of this article is worried about one kind of copyright infringement: someone who could afford said software and just copies it out of habit or culture. That does deprive the company of some money, in the long run, because if they didn't pirate it they would probably have bought some of the software. The other kind of pirate is the 13 year old in their parent's basement, the college student, and others, who wouldn't have bought the software in the first place. Can anyone provide an economical argument that a 13 year old using AutoCAD/Maya/CS4 at home is a bad thing? I would argue that this would increase the producer's monetary value, as the kid would be more likely to find the software interesting and purchase it when they get to or out of college. In the long run, it increases the number of products sold, and in the short run it doesn't cost them a sale, because the person copying the software would not have bought it in the first place