Yes, you have your common-law rights even before clearing the border checks.:)
So if they kill you, your children can sue the government to pay for their education, citing the early form of Right-to-Life enshrined in the Magna Carta.
You're allowed to be detained at the border for any "reasonable" length of time, without any probable cause needed. It is against the law not to cooperate with border security staff. Your advice works fine here IN the US, when dealing with a police officer or federal agent. It does NOT work with border security. Generally, your rights don't re-start until you've cleared the border; not when you approach it. Regardless of where you are standing or who owns the dirt under your feet.
David Boies is still a well known, respected, high-priced lawyer, regardless of his case record. They just say, well, he had the courage to take more difficult cases.
You should look up the Patriot Act. It turns out, most of it is shocking, but legal. There are certainly details that appear to be illegal, but the vast majority of the classified information he leaked does NOT imply any crime or legal misdeed, simply awful and scary government actions.
Just saying "no law trumps the Constitution" isn't enough. We have a Supreme Court for a reason. The Bill of Rights is not well-written so as to remove ambiguity or define the edge cases. There is solid SCOTUS precedent for the Patriot Act not violating the 4th amendment. I happen to agree that those are flawed decisions, but you can't both be a nation of laws with a strong Constitution, and also deny the role of the Court in applying those (unfortunately abstract) rules to modern situations. There is real and true disagreement about what exactly makes up a "search." Both sides can equally well say, "Constitution" over and over.
As for interpretation, if you can't interpret it, then you'd have to simply throw out and not apply any parts where there is any disagreement over the meaning. If we don't agree what it means, only through interpretation can we apply the historical language to a specific modern case.
He clearly stole* documents he had taken a solemn oath to protect. He clearly violated the security of his work-place in a whole bunch of different and illegal ways. And he was primarily not releasing evidence of crimes or misdeeds, which is the normal standard for a "whistle-blower." Clearly, he committed crimes to educate the world about the unpopular ways the Patriot Act and other laws were being used by the government.
Many people consider him a hero for this. That does not in any way change the legality of his actions. The only reason Daniel Ellsberg escaped prison was prosecutorial misconduct, and he is widely regarded as a national hero for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Everybody agrees that his actions were illegal, and most people also agree that they were good, moral actions because the government was lying.
Lots of people do and say things that embarrass the government. They generally only get charged with crimes when those things are also illegal; and the embarrassment of the government doesn't come up in their trials.
* unlike movies and such things, removing unauthorized copies of government documents is considered theft of those documents, especially where they are acquired at work and are the government's property even when coming out of a copy machine.
The difference is that a legal advisor hasn't agreed to represent you in a (potentially theoretical) case. It is an idiotic distinction, because if a lawyer agrees to take the case if it arises, then they are in fact your lawyer regarding that issue. This is obvious and necessary when you consider that in civil cases, you're required to attempt to resolve the case before going to court.
They would have to be claiming that Snowden doesn't have an actual potential legal case that she would represent him in, and that she was advising him about matters entirely outside the scope of any potential case. That seems fairly flimsy in an obvious way.
If you have to wait until you're on trial to have access to lawyers... wow. That would be an exceptionally low bar for Freedom. You have a basic common-law right to legal representation (under English Common Law, and under US Common Law originating from the adoption of English Common Law that existed at the Founding of our Nation) and that doesn't start when you get accused of a crime. In the US we construe the right to mean that if the government is charging you for a crime and you can't afford a lawyer, one will be provided; but if you can afford one, you have a right to retain them at any time.
Nor is there any reason to expect that they ARE in cahoots. You have to prove the positive, not the negative. It could be simply have a "special relationship" based on shared values, and that our security drones naturally react in the same way. They may very well look the same on people they see as being "against" either of our countries as being equally dangerous, and respond accordingly. No "cahoots" are needed to explain this behavior.
If only that WAS the problem... then we could wait for somebody to leak the documents, and try to dismantle the part of the connection that was abused. If they just naturally react in the same obnoxious way, it is a lot harder to stop.
Actually, I agree that you should go to wikipedia and research it. He got that part right. And as a comedian, raising awareness is the goal there. So even though he is actually wrong in his claims and attacks, he succeeds in raising awareness. Comedians never raise awareness by just telling how things are. That wouldn't work, and it wouldn't be comedy.
The rights of Japanese-Americans interned during WWII were violated. That is an officially know and acknowledged fact. Having rights is not a promise that nobody will ever violate those rights. That is not even a possible standard. What actually happened is that their rights were clearly violated as a matter of expediency, and then we through a long process of inflection, analysis, discussion, education, and law, which ended up with a clear, broadly-taught understanding that those actions violated those people's rights.
So do like Carlin suggested. Read up about it. Think about what it means to have "rights," and if they are a magical force-field that never gets violated, or if they are something else entirely.
They rarely actually use the terrorism defense in specific cases. They use it to defend the laws that permit excessive discretion, and then in the individual cases, they claim they have to exercise this discretion and that they can't play favorites and citizens caught up in their policies just need to cooperate and defer to the discretion of the overworked security agents protecting[sic] them.
So you get a bait-and-switch at both ends of the problem.
Well, when you're as crazy as us Americans, you tend to draw everyone's attention.
Wawooowa woooowawawura wadwraraboowa!
Oh, wait, sorry, that was Tasmanian crazy.
Oooo get me a a mouth piece I wanna a hapus corpeas! Now drink yer juice before I blows the fur off’n yer hide. Now get that flea-bitten carcass off’n my real estate! Start walkin’ ya doggone long eared galoot!
Diving by zero is left "undefined" exactly because of contradictions; contradictions which don't come up at all in normal business-oriented use of numbers. And all of those contradictions can be overcome by defining additional special cases.
My point was that math is a human abstraction that actually isn't very precise at modeling natural "constants" like PI and c, and that it also has "warts" like the "undefined" nature of dividing by zero, even though dividing by zero is a situation that naturally comes up in dealing with numbers. And instead of having a good answer, math requires that you test your values to see if they hit a special case where math simply fails to provide an answer, and blames the user for having tried. It isn't undefined because it is impossible to define, it is undefined because that is the most convenient way for academic mathematicians to avoid the problem.
Nature doesn't have to build special mechanism to check for 0's and avoid the laws in those cases. Something like a lever where you might have positive or negative forces depending on the positions of the various parts work smoothly over the full range of motion, and nothing blows up at a balance point, and no special new law is needed for the balance point. Nature doesn't use math. Math is a flawed abstraction because we don't have a better way of understanding nature.
So as long as you use the word "extend" instead of "define," you're fine.
No. The word define works just fine.
They define another form of algebra where they have also defined divide by zero. There is no contradiction, you can define math as being different than it is. Math is 100% abstraction, the only point of attack that doesn't fall on its face is to point out that defining it as 42 is less useful. And it would be much less useful, to be sure. But there is not a magic math-in-the-sky that makes it impossible to define things differently.
An abstraction is not inherently "valid" or not. You can't possibly hope to prove that a different abstraction, or abstraction optimized for different people (accountants instead of academic mathematicians).
You should consider toning down the patronizing. My original statement was an entirely valid subjective viewpoint and you have no chance at all of making it "invalid." A better try would be to just have a different opinion. Assume I've had this discussion with academic mathematicians and that they actually all agreed with my position once they quit waving their hands and saying "your wrong." They end up instead at the position that my idea is just "bad and dangerous" and "useless except for programmers and accountants" and "math is never going to change in that way." And of course, everybody knows programmers are boring and uncool, especially compared to math teachers.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody "lives" in the transit zone that is outside of most law. Even people who spend years stuck there are just there on an extended layover.
Yes, you have your common-law rights even before clearing the border checks. :)
So if they kill you, your children can sue the government to pay for their education, citing the early form of Right-to-Life enshrined in the Magna Carta.
You're allowed to be detained at the border for any "reasonable" length of time, without any probable cause needed.
It is against the law not to cooperate with border security staff.
Your advice works fine here IN the US, when dealing with a police officer or federal agent. It does NOT work with border security. Generally, your rights don't re-start until you've cleared the border; not when you approach it. Regardless of where you are standing or who owns the dirt under your feet.
Because Bulgaria has warmer summers, warmer women, cheap land, and fast internet. And higher literacy.
So British voters don't hate Americans, they just hate Europeans, and birds. Got it.
Careful now, we've already fought that war... twice.
Skipping bail waives many rights, but the right to a lawyer is not one of them.
... moderation report at 11!
Except how are you supposed to know the difference between a normal citizen and a "suspect" before they make a mistake?
No. In airports, not being a suspect doesn't help much.
But they certainly are supposed to know the difference between a regular person and/or suspect and a lawyer .
David Boies is still a well known, respected, high-priced lawyer, regardless of his case record. They just say, well, he had the courage to take more difficult cases.
You should look up the Patriot Act. It turns out, most of it is shocking, but legal. There are certainly details that appear to be illegal, but the vast majority of the classified information he leaked does NOT imply any crime or legal misdeed, simply awful and scary government actions.
Just saying "no law trumps the Constitution" isn't enough. We have a Supreme Court for a reason. The Bill of Rights is not well-written so as to remove ambiguity or define the edge cases. There is solid SCOTUS precedent for the Patriot Act not violating the 4th amendment. I happen to agree that those are flawed decisions, but you can't both be a nation of laws with a strong Constitution, and also deny the role of the Court in applying those (unfortunately abstract) rules to modern situations. There is real and true disagreement about what exactly makes up a "search." Both sides can equally well say, "Constitution" over and over.
As for interpretation, if you can't interpret it, then you'd have to simply throw out and not apply any parts where there is any disagreement over the meaning. If we don't agree what it means, only through interpretation can we apply the historical language to a specific modern case.
He clearly stole* documents he had taken a solemn oath to protect. He clearly violated the security of his work-place in a whole bunch of different and illegal ways. And he was primarily not releasing evidence of crimes or misdeeds, which is the normal standard for a "whistle-blower." Clearly, he committed crimes to educate the world about the unpopular ways the Patriot Act and other laws were being used by the government.
Many people consider him a hero for this. That does not in any way change the legality of his actions. The only reason Daniel Ellsberg escaped prison was prosecutorial misconduct, and he is widely regarded as a national hero for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Everybody agrees that his actions were illegal, and most people also agree that they were good, moral actions because the government was lying.
Lots of people do and say things that embarrass the government. They generally only get charged with crimes when those things are also illegal; and the embarrassment of the government doesn't come up in their trials.
* unlike movies and such things, removing unauthorized copies of government documents is considered theft of those documents, especially where they are acquired at work and are the government's property even when coming out of a copy machine.
Book deals are absolutely serious legal business involving contracts and would be 100% covered under normal rules of privilege.
The difference is that a legal advisor hasn't agreed to represent you in a (potentially theoretical) case. It is an idiotic distinction, because if a lawyer agrees to take the case if it arises, then they are in fact your lawyer regarding that issue. This is obvious and necessary when you consider that in civil cases, you're required to attempt to resolve the case before going to court.
They would have to be claiming that Snowden doesn't have an actual potential legal case that she would represent him in, and that she was advising him about matters entirely outside the scope of any potential case. That seems fairly flimsy in an obvious way.
So why does he need any lawyers at this stage?
If you have to wait until you're on trial to have access to lawyers... wow. That would be an exceptionally low bar for Freedom. You have a basic common-law right to legal representation (under English Common Law, and under US Common Law originating from the adoption of English Common Law that existed at the Founding of our Nation) and that doesn't start when you get accused of a crime. In the US we construe the right to mean that if the government is charging you for a crime and you can't afford a lawyer, one will be provided; but if you can afford one, you have a right to retain them at any time.
Nor is there any reason to expect that they ARE in cahoots. You have to prove the positive, not the negative. It could be simply have a "special relationship" based on shared values, and that our security drones naturally react in the same way. They may very well look the same on people they see as being "against" either of our countries as being equally dangerous, and respond accordingly. No "cahoots" are needed to explain this behavior.
If only that WAS the problem... then we could wait for somebody to leak the documents, and try to dismantle the part of the connection that was abused. If they just naturally react in the same obnoxious way, it is a lot harder to stop.
Actually, I agree that you should go to wikipedia and research it. He got that part right. And as a comedian, raising awareness is the goal there. So even though he is actually wrong in his claims and attacks, he succeeds in raising awareness. Comedians never raise awareness by just telling how things are. That wouldn't work, and it wouldn't be comedy.
The rights of Japanese-Americans interned during WWII were violated. That is an officially know and acknowledged fact. Having rights is not a promise that nobody will ever violate those rights. That is not even a possible standard. What actually happened is that their rights were clearly violated as a matter of expediency, and then we through a long process of inflection, analysis, discussion, education, and law, which ended up with a clear, broadly-taught understanding that those actions violated those people's rights.
So do like Carlin suggested. Read up about it. Think about what it means to have "rights," and if they are a magical force-field that never gets violated, or if they are something else entirely.
They rarely actually use the terrorism defense in specific cases. They use it to defend the laws that permit excessive discretion, and then in the individual cases, they claim they have to exercise this discretion and that they can't play favorites and citizens caught up in their policies just need to cooperate and defer to the discretion of the overworked security agents protecting[sic] them.
So you get a bait-and-switch at both ends of the problem.
But what's a goon to a goblin?
Lunch.
Even kitten jar pics?
"Americans" are no longer in control of their country.
"Derp derp derp," I'll give you hint, bucko. When you type on the internet... my ballot still arrives in time for election day.
Very few people voted for the exact sausage that Congress produces. But that doesn't mean we aren't in control of what gets made.
Well, when you're as crazy as us Americans, you tend to draw everyone's attention.
Wawooowa woooowawawura wadwraraboowa!
Oh, wait, sorry, that was Tasmanian crazy.
Oooo get me a a mouth piece I wanna a hapus corpeas! Now drink yer juice before I blows the fur off’n yer hide.
Now get that flea-bitten carcass off’n my real estate! Start walkin’ ya doggone long eared galoot!
Diving by zero is left "undefined" exactly because of contradictions; contradictions which don't come up at all in normal business-oriented use of numbers. And all of those contradictions can be overcome by defining additional special cases.
My point was that math is a human abstraction that actually isn't very precise at modeling natural "constants" like PI and c, and that it also has "warts" like the "undefined" nature of dividing by zero, even though dividing by zero is a situation that naturally comes up in dealing with numbers. And instead of having a good answer, math requires that you test your values to see if they hit a special case where math simply fails to provide an answer, and blames the user for having tried. It isn't undefined because it is impossible to define, it is undefined because that is the most convenient way for academic mathematicians to avoid the problem.
Nature doesn't have to build special mechanism to check for 0's and avoid the laws in those cases. Something like a lever where you might have positive or negative forces depending on the positions of the various parts work smoothly over the full range of motion, and nothing blows up at a balance point, and no special new law is needed for the balance point. Nature doesn't use math. Math is a flawed abstraction because we don't have a better way of understanding nature.
So as long as you use the word "extend" instead of "define," you're fine.
No. The word define works just fine.
They define another form of algebra where they have also defined divide by zero. There is no contradiction, you can define math as being different than it is. Math is 100% abstraction, the only point of attack that doesn't fall on its face is to point out that defining it as 42 is less useful. And it would be much less useful, to be sure. But there is not a magic math-in-the-sky that makes it impossible to define things differently.
An abstraction is not inherently "valid" or not. You can't possibly hope to prove that a different abstraction, or abstraction optimized for different people (accountants instead of academic mathematicians).
You should consider toning down the patronizing. My original statement was an entirely valid subjective viewpoint and you have no chance at all of making it "invalid." A better try would be to just have a different opinion. Assume I've had this discussion with academic mathematicians and that they actually all agreed with my position once they quit waving their hands and saying "your wrong." They end up instead at the position that my idea is just "bad and dangerous" and "useless except for programmers and accountants" and "math is never going to change in that way." And of course, everybody knows programmers are boring and uncool, especially compared to math teachers.
But you can't, for instance, have both PI and e as 'whole numbers' in our generic number systems.
That failing of our system of math to model nature was exactly my point. I can't tell, are you agreeing, or disagreeing?