If suspected evidence is locked in safe, the suspect can be forced to divulge the combination of the safe. This is not violation of the 5th amendment because it is the contents of the safe that is incriminatory; there is nothing discriminating about the combination of the safe itself. Whether you divulge the combination of not, the contents of the safe and whether it is incriminating evidence or not, does not change.
Actually, the reverse is true. My understanding is that, in the US, you cannot be forced to divulge the combination to a safe, because that would prove that you knew the combination, and presumably had knowledge of and/or controlled the contents of the safe.
That is fine and good in the realm of safes, because the authorities can always crack open the safe and see what's inside. They don't need the combination to do that. The whole point is that the US generally doesn't permit the authorities to compel you to reveal the contents of your brain, for obvious reasons (torture).
Strong encryption changes the dynamic a bit. It was easy to say that suspects need not reveal a safe's combination, because there was never a question on whether or not authorities could gain access to the safe by simply forcing it open. With strong encryption, it can be too costly for authorities to decrypt encrypted evidence.
I seem to recall a judge ruling that revealing the password to encrypted evidence was analogous to revealing the combination for a safe, i.e. you can't compel someone to do it. Too lazy to google it, though.
I don't have a problem with a wife installing one on her husband's car while it's on their private property. I don't even have a problem with an investigator installing it there as long as the wife is present at the time.
What difference does it make if the wife is there or not?
I have people work on my car when I'm not there. What difference does it make if it's replacing an engine mount or installing a GPS tracking device?
Ownership does not (or should not) trump privacy. It's like installing bugs or cameras in your house to monitor your family without their knowledge.
No, it isn't.
There are certain situations where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. For instance, if you were to set up a "shower cam" in a shower that you own, the ownership defense won't work if you record someone without permission.
On the other hand, courts have held that an automobile traveling in public view on a public road does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
It depends on the state. Most states only care about a spouse's bad behavior when determining child custody. If there are no kids, it probably doesn't matter if one spouse was having an affair.
If you are contemplating divorce, obtain competent legal counsel in your jurisdiction.
But outsourcing doesn't really save any money when you consider the management overhead, erosion of reputation of company, loss of goodwill from employees and so forth.
In a lot of industries, this is true. My wife works for a major credit card issuer and they onshored all of their call centers a while back. I think the numbers were a little different for them, however. Being a financial institution, their security requirements made offshored call centers more expensive.
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
The reason I don't like dealing with Indians is most likely cultural. For whatever reason, they assure and assure that they understand my request and will sear up and down that they can take care of it. Subsequent verification, however, reveals that they did not actually understand my request, and they did not handle it properly.
I'm sick of being yessed off the phone, only to have to call back later. So yes, when I become knowing that you are Indian, I get very less happy.
up here (Canada) they (the Blue monopoly) throttle all encrypted traffic... cuz afterall, it might be a pirate... So when I connect to my company VPN, my speeds drop.
Uhh, that could also be your shitty corporate firewall or inadequately spec'ed VPN server.
I mean, really. Which is more likely? An ISP throttling all encrypted traffic, including ordinary SSL, or an incompetent corporate IT dept?
I don't recall the fine print of my TOS, but I would really wonder whether or not the contracts signed allowed for this bullshit, and whether or not such things would hold up in court.
Every internet service TOS I've ever read contained a clause prohibiting using the service to violate copyrights. In addition, most TOS contain a clause that allows them to drop you as a customer for any reason.
Check your TOS. I'm certain it will specifically call out copyright violations as unacceptable use.
Do these people know any pet owners? They tend to treat their pets very well, sometimes even better than people. Isn't that exactly what they want animals to be treated like?
Did you read the article? They want animals to be slaughtered and eaten. They want animal purchase to be legal only if it is for the purposes of killing the animal and eating it.
Just because some big company wrote some paper doesn't mean they are right and in line with your interest.
I think you misunderstood me. You should definitely get employment contracts reviewed, along with other important contracts.
My point (my banker's point, actually) about the residential real estate settlements is that the language of the note and mortgage are not set by the bank, and the bank is not at liberty to negotiate the terms if they want to sell the loan on the secondary market (hint: they do). If you won't sign the documents as-is, the bank will simply tell you to go pound sand.
The great difference in having someone else to see the agreement or at least have a quiet time to study it yourself is that you know the risks and can evaluate them. Even if it might mean that you loose the deal. Sometimes it is better than bad deal.
When you get a loan from a bank, the bank is taking on the lion's share of the risk. Anyway, the documents are standardized and every homeowner with a mortgage in your jurisdiction has signed them. You can certainly see them at any time, if you like.
Your attorney is crap. He just failed on small threat from bank employee. He should list the pros and cons of the agreement and let the client to decide whether to sign or not. Or, eventually negotiate what changes are possible.
Your reading comprehension is crap.
It wasn't my attorney. It was just a story my banker told me about a different transaction. Anyway, it wasn't a threat. It was simply some education for an inexperienced attorney on how his shenanigans were going to play out. Fortunately for his client, the attorney was receptive to the education and was a quick learner. I'm not so sure about you, however.
At a whole lot of schools, these classes have become little more than perfunctory checks on writing and attendance. They seem wholly designed to make sure a certain amount of money is extracted from each student. The liberal arts ideals which mandate these classes are simply dead.
Really, you need to pass out of the intro classes while you're still in high school. There's really no excuse for someone smart enough to handle an engineering/hard science major to be in an English 101 seminar. Take an AP class, FFS.
Maybe I'm unique, but I really enjoyed my GE requirements in college.
Before I set foot in elementary school, I pretty much knew I'd be a CS major in college. But it can get a little maddening sitting in comp sci courses all day. I took a ton of Economics courses (wound up double-majoring in Econ without even trying) and Philosophy and Music and History and Politics and others. This was all tremendously interesting and valuable, and I'd advise any undergrad to take as many GE classes as possible. If anything, take it for the automatic A (sorry, but anyone who can pass an upper-level CS course can ace any undergrad liberal arts course in any subject. It's just a fact of life.)
Some of the most important things I learned in college were in a Food Science course. Beats getting food poisoning! And I think philosophy is tremendously underrated, especially for CS-types. Seriously, you have to take 'em. Might as well get something out of 'em.
The OP wants a technical degree, not an undergrad degree. Nothing wrong with that. Sounds like he's pretty much where he wants to be right now career-wise. Not sure why he's even talking about going back to school now.
Actually, if you're buying a house like most people, which is via your local association of Realtor's contract and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage paperwork, there is probably no point in having an attorney review it. Those documents have been reviewed by more attorneys than you could ever count, and none of the terms are negotiable (with your lender, anyhow).
Now, it may still be worth a few hundred bucks to have an attorney attend closing with you, especially if you are an inexperienced buyer, to make sure nobody pulls anything shady with you. But you can be sure that the attorney is not going to read your off-the-shelf documents line by line.
Come to think of it, a banker that I've used for a few transactions tells a funny story about a buyer who brought an inexperienced attorney to closing. The attorney started going through the standard mortgage docs with a fine-toothed comb and started crossing stuff out, rewriting clauses, etc. After 20 minutes of this nonsense, the banker asked the attorney if she could speak with him privately.
They left the room and she said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "These terms are set by Fannie Mae and are not negotiable. If you don't cut this shit out, the bank will simply decline to fund the loan, and your client will lose his interest rate lock and potentially lose the house. I suggest that you advise your client to sign the agreements without modification, or you are going to become an extremely unpopular attorney with our client." Yeah, so the attorney changed his mind right quick about trying to negotiate the time-tested, court-tested docs.
No, I think if you hand someone a huge stack of legalese and say, "sign it", you pretty much have to assume that the other party is going to say, "let me have my attorney review this, first."
Any company that expects you to sign a contract that they wrote, especially if it would be difficult for a layperson to understand, without your own legal counsel, is not a company that you want to work for. This is especially true if the contract potentially involves a lot of money, and you hope that a stock grant *does* involve a lot of money.
Actually, this sounds like users leaving their AWS API keys on public AMIs. This could be a very expensive mistake for the AMI creators!
Amazon provides ways to mitigate this risk. For instance:
You are allowed to revoke keys. If you think you might have put your keys on a public AMI, even if you deleted those keys, you should revoke the keys immediately. Remember, deleting is different from wiping.
You can use Identity and Access Management (IAM) to limit the functions that a giving API keypair is authorized to perform. This is extremely good practice, especially if you ever need to have keys on an instance (after all, what happens if your instance is hacked and the attacker is able to retrieve your keys?) As an example of this, all of my instances snapshot all of their EBS volumes at regular intervals. I created a keypair specifically for this function, and all those credentials are allowed to do is create snapshots. So if some attacker able to obtain my keypair, the worst he could do with them is create a bunch of snapshots (assuming he can guess some of my EBS volume IDs).
But I agree with the basic premise of the article: AWS has some pretty serious pitfalls for those who haven't yet fully ascended the learning curve!
Ah! Much of my misdirected email is firstnamelastname@gmail. I wonder if this is the root of the problem.
My gmail address is lastname@gmail.com, so the period thing is not the problem. Also, there is no way that is obvious to me that my last name could be the combination of any reasonable first and last name.
Most of the misdirected email that I receive is intended for people who share my (uncommon) last name. I've found that a polite canned response takes little of my time, and is effective in the vast majority of cases.
My first reaction was the typical, "Oh, great. Where's the privacy setting on this, because I'm killing this, ASAP." But on second thought, I'd much rather have this feature enabled.
With this feature, I'm more likely to notice if someone uploads a picture of me, and then I can take a look at it and make sure it's something I'm OK with being posted. Without the feature, if someone uploads a photo of me and doesn't tag it, I'll probably never know. But the photo will be out there, and there's nothing to stop someone else from using facial recognition to tie the photo to me.
I have the Canned Responses set up from Google Labs that has a short, sweet, "Hi, you got the wrong [John Doe]. Don't bother apologizing/replying, I know it was a typo. Just update your addressbook, please."
I just do a quick reply to all with that canned response, and then I assume I've done my due diligence regarding the error. If nobody gets the reply, that's not my problem. If I still get more misdirected mail from that source, I just trash it.
Slashdot Mirror
If suspected evidence is locked in safe, the suspect can be forced to divulge the combination of the safe. This is not violation of the 5th amendment because it is the contents of the safe that is incriminatory; there is nothing discriminating about the combination of the safe itself. Whether you divulge the combination of not, the contents of the safe and whether it is incriminating evidence or not, does not change.
Actually, the reverse is true. My understanding is that, in the US, you cannot be forced to divulge the combination to a safe, because that would prove that you knew the combination, and presumably had knowledge of and/or controlled the contents of the safe.
That is fine and good in the realm of safes, because the authorities can always crack open the safe and see what's inside. They don't need the combination to do that. The whole point is that the US generally doesn't permit the authorities to compel you to reveal the contents of your brain, for obvious reasons (torture).
Strong encryption changes the dynamic a bit. It was easy to say that suspects need not reveal a safe's combination, because there was never a question on whether or not authorities could gain access to the safe by simply forcing it open. With strong encryption, it can be too costly for authorities to decrypt encrypted evidence.
I seem to recall a judge ruling that revealing the password to encrypted evidence was analogous to revealing the combination for a safe, i.e. you can't compel someone to do it. Too lazy to google it, though.
I don't have a problem with a wife installing one on her husband's car while it's on their private property. I don't even have a problem with an investigator installing it there as long as the wife is present at the time.
What difference does it make if the wife is there or not?
I have people work on my car when I'm not there. What difference does it make if it's replacing an engine mount or installing a GPS tracking device?
Ownership does not (or should not) trump privacy. It's like installing bugs or cameras in your house to monitor your family without their knowledge.
No, it isn't.
There are certain situations where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. For instance, if you were to set up a "shower cam" in a shower that you own, the ownership defense won't work if you record someone without permission.
On the other hand, courts have held that an automobile traveling in public view on a public road does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
It depends on the state. Most states only care about a spouse's bad behavior when determining child custody. If there are no kids, it probably doesn't matter if one spouse was having an affair.
If you are contemplating divorce, obtain competent legal counsel in your jurisdiction.
But outsourcing doesn't really save any money when you consider the management overhead, erosion of reputation of company, loss of goodwill from employees and so forth.
In a lot of industries, this is true. My wife works for a major credit card issuer and they onshored all of their call centers a while back. I think the numbers were a little different for them, however. Being a financial institution, their security requirements made offshored call centers more expensive.
Tell me about it. I hate calling tech support and getting people in Alabama.
I don't mind getting people in rural America. It's a little difficult to understand them, for sure, but they tend to be very nice and helpful.
When I stopped asking questions, Shail had one for me. "I have experienced some Americans—please don't mind—they don't like Indians. They act rude as soon as they come to know I am Indian. Why is this?" I stammered something about protectionism, but really I didn't know what to say.
The reason I don't like dealing with Indians is most likely cultural. For whatever reason, they assure and assure that they understand my request and will sear up and down that they can take care of it. Subsequent verification, however, reveals that they did not actually understand my request, and they did not handle it properly.
I'm sick of being yessed off the phone, only to have to call back later. So yes, when I become knowing that you are Indian, I get very less happy.
Why not covering Maven?
Probably because it would take an entire book to even think about covering Maven.
up here (Canada) they (the Blue monopoly) throttle all encrypted traffic... cuz afterall, it might be a pirate... So when I connect to my company VPN, my speeds drop.
Uhh, that could also be your shitty corporate firewall or inadequately spec'ed VPN server.
I mean, really. Which is more likely? An ISP throttling all encrypted traffic, including ordinary SSL, or an incompetent corporate IT dept?
I don't recall the fine print of my TOS, but I would really wonder whether or not the contracts signed allowed for this bullshit, and whether or not such things would hold up in court.
Every internet service TOS I've ever read contained a clause prohibiting using the service to violate copyrights. In addition, most TOS contain a clause that allows them to drop you as a customer for any reason.
Check your TOS. I'm certain it will specifically call out copyright violations as unacceptable use.
Do these people know any pet owners? They tend to treat their pets very well, sometimes even better than people. Isn't that exactly what they want animals to be treated like?
Did you read the article? They want animals to be slaughtered and eaten. They want animal purchase to be legal only if it is for the purposes of killing the animal and eating it.
Translation:
You wanted a specific breed rather than a good healthy mutt.
Could you please telegraph a memo to my mutt that she's supposed to be healthy? Sometimes I wonder if the vet loves my dog more than I do!
Just because some big company wrote some paper doesn't mean they are right and in line with your interest.
I think you misunderstood me. You should definitely get employment contracts reviewed, along with other important contracts.
My point (my banker's point, actually) about the residential real estate settlements is that the language of the note and mortgage are not set by the bank, and the bank is not at liberty to negotiate the terms if they want to sell the loan on the secondary market (hint: they do). If you won't sign the documents as-is, the bank will simply tell you to go pound sand.
The great difference in having someone else to see the agreement or at least have a quiet time to study it yourself is that you know the risks and can evaluate them. Even if it might mean that you loose the deal. Sometimes it is better than bad deal.
When you get a loan from a bank, the bank is taking on the lion's share of the risk. Anyway, the documents are standardized and every homeowner with a mortgage in your jurisdiction has signed them. You can certainly see them at any time, if you like.
Your attorney is crap. He just failed on small threat from bank employee. He should list the pros and cons of the agreement and let the client to decide whether to sign or not. Or, eventually negotiate what changes are possible.
Your reading comprehension is crap.
It wasn't my attorney. It was just a story my banker told me about a different transaction. Anyway, it wasn't a threat. It was simply some education for an inexperienced attorney on how his shenanigans were going to play out. Fortunately for his client, the attorney was receptive to the education and was a quick learner. I'm not so sure about you, however.
At a whole lot of schools, these classes have become little more than perfunctory checks on writing and attendance. They seem wholly designed to make sure a certain amount of money is extracted from each student. The liberal arts ideals which mandate these classes are simply dead.
Really, you need to pass out of the intro classes while you're still in high school. There's really no excuse for someone smart enough to handle an engineering/hard science major to be in an English 101 seminar. Take an AP class, FFS.
Maybe I'm unique, but I really enjoyed my GE requirements in college.
Before I set foot in elementary school, I pretty much knew I'd be a CS major in college. But it can get a little maddening sitting in comp sci courses all day. I took a ton of Economics courses (wound up double-majoring in Econ without even trying) and Philosophy and Music and History and Politics and others. This was all tremendously interesting and valuable, and I'd advise any undergrad to take as many GE classes as possible. If anything, take it for the automatic A (sorry, but anyone who can pass an upper-level CS course can ace any undergrad liberal arts course in any subject. It's just a fact of life.)
Some of the most important things I learned in college were in a Food Science course. Beats getting food poisoning! And I think philosophy is tremendously underrated, especially for CS-types. Seriously, you have to take 'em. Might as well get something out of 'em.
The OP wants a technical degree, not an undergrad degree. Nothing wrong with that. Sounds like he's pretty much where he wants to be right now career-wise. Not sure why he's even talking about going back to school now.
When I bought my house, I read through everything, and there were three places where I requested changes to the contracts.
What were those three places?
Actually, if you're buying a house like most people, which is via your local association of Realtor's contract and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage paperwork, there is probably no point in having an attorney review it. Those documents have been reviewed by more attorneys than you could ever count, and none of the terms are negotiable (with your lender, anyhow).
Now, it may still be worth a few hundred bucks to have an attorney attend closing with you, especially if you are an inexperienced buyer, to make sure nobody pulls anything shady with you. But you can be sure that the attorney is not going to read your off-the-shelf documents line by line.
Come to think of it, a banker that I've used for a few transactions tells a funny story about a buyer who brought an inexperienced attorney to closing. The attorney started going through the standard mortgage docs with a fine-toothed comb and started crossing stuff out, rewriting clauses, etc. After 20 minutes of this nonsense, the banker asked the attorney if she could speak with him privately.
They left the room and she said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "These terms are set by Fannie Mae and are not negotiable. If you don't cut this shit out, the bank will simply decline to fund the loan, and your client will lose his interest rate lock and potentially lose the house. I suggest that you advise your client to sign the agreements without modification, or you are going to become an extremely unpopular attorney with our client." Yeah, so the attorney changed his mind right quick about trying to negotiate the time-tested, court-tested docs.
No, I think if you hand someone a huge stack of legalese and say, "sign it", you pretty much have to assume that the other party is going to say, "let me have my attorney review this, first."
Any company that expects you to sign a contract that they wrote, especially if it would be difficult for a layperson to understand, without your own legal counsel, is not a company that you want to work for. This is especially true if the contract potentially involves a lot of money, and you hope that a stock grant *does* involve a lot of money.
Simple. Perform This Way is a parody of Born This Way, which in turn *is* Madonna's Express Yourself.
I'm just sayin'.
Actually, this sounds like users leaving their AWS API keys on public AMIs. This could be a very expensive mistake for the AMI creators!
Amazon provides ways to mitigate this risk. For instance:
But I agree with the basic premise of the article: AWS has some pretty serious pitfalls for those who haven't yet fully ascended the learning curve!
Maybe he had a fetish for women/men caught on hidden camera? There must be a fetish for that.
Now that is creative. Had to be some mighty dumb women who fell for that.
Dumber than the average Mac user?
Ah!
Much of my misdirected email is firstnamelastname@gmail. I wonder if this is the root of the problem.
My gmail address is lastname@gmail.com, so the period thing is not the problem. Also, there is no way that is obvious to me that my last name could be the combination of any reasonable first and last name.
Most of the misdirected email that I receive is intended for people who share my (uncommon) last name. I've found that a polite canned response takes little of my time, and is effective in the vast majority of cases.
My first reaction was the typical, "Oh, great. Where's the privacy setting on this, because I'm killing this, ASAP." But on second thought, I'd much rather have this feature enabled.
With this feature, I'm more likely to notice if someone uploads a picture of me, and then I can take a look at it and make sure it's something I'm OK with being posted. Without the feature, if someone uploads a photo of me and doesn't tag it, I'll probably never know. But the photo will be out there, and there's nothing to stop someone else from using facial recognition to tie the photo to me.
So I'm leaving this enabled.
I have the Canned Responses set up from Google Labs that has a short, sweet, "Hi, you got the wrong [John Doe]. Don't bother apologizing/replying, I know it was a typo. Just update your addressbook, please."
I just do a quick reply to all with that canned response, and then I assume I've done my due diligence regarding the error. If nobody gets the reply, that's not my problem. If I still get more misdirected mail from that source, I just trash it.