GeorgiaDon

Reminds me of the 9 inch eel joke in Bonfire. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Your Babel fish is malfunctioning. Maybe time to feed it. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Are you advocating that people be allowed to immigrate without photos, fingerprints, or background checks? Seriously? I went through the process. It was a PITA, but not so onerous that it would have discouraged me. Immigrating here is a privilege, not a right, and the country has an obligation (IMHO) to verify that people are who they claim to be. As an aside, none of this is likely to be very relevant to the Boston situation. These people have been in the US for years, brought here as children when their parents immigrated legally. The younger suspect apparently went all the way through high school here. Linking this to immigration reform is a red herring, it seems to me. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

When I immigrated here from Canada more than 20 years ago, I was photographed and fingerprinted on multiple occasions, as are all immigrants. I was fingerprinted when I first entered the country, photographed and fingerprinted when I applied for a green card, photographed and fingerprinted to get work authorization, and photographed and fingerprinted again for the background check prior to naturalization. Absolutely nothing new here. So what bill are you referring to? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I agree. Whatever the target may or may not have been manufactured for, he offered them as targets to shoot at in the training session he was leading, and the other participants refused. It doesn't make sense to now be alleging that the participants refused to NOT shoot at the targets. I actually don't have any problem with the DHS "unusual targets", they are a bit shocking but that's exactly the point. The situation in the OP is completely different, for a few reasons. First, the Zimmerman trial has yet to take place. It is completely inappropriate for a law enforcement officer to use a depiction of an alleged victim in this or any other manner, but it is especially inappropriate to do so before the trial. At worst, this could be seen as an attempt to influence public opinion, including potential jurors (who have yet to be chosen, so they could be anybody). At best, this behavior reflects extreme indifference or even outright hostility to victims of gun violence and crime. If it was just "Joe the Plumber" who did this, he would just be a crass idiot. For a law enforcement officer to do it suggests that the law doesn't give a shit about victims, it is biased against black males, and it suggests that the judicial system has already exonerated Zimmerman. Since law enforcement depends on the goodwill and support of the communities they are policing, to send such a message is entirely detrimental to the mission of the police. The guy is an idiot, he has behaved in a manner destructive to the interests of the police, and he should not be working in law enforcement. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Maybe the cop was a veteran. Or a veterinarian. Some sort of a vet. Anyway, this is just political correctness BS. America was greater when we could mock dead kids and nobody complained. The cop should get his job back, with an apology for his rights being violated. Otherwise, we should all just boycott that police department. [/sarcasm] Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Why do you care what he thought? I certainly don't. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thread high jack You dont like the fact the SC didnt help out a nutty professor it seems Why should they have helped him out? He was fired for plagiarism (a common offense here in Speaker's Corner, but a well known firing offense in academia) and for fabricating research (also a big no-no). He was not fired after the infamous "Eichman" essay. Free speech has never included the right to make shit up and pass it off as legitimate research, nor does it include the right to appropriate the work of others and claim it as your own. Now, he may have invited scrutiny by publishing controversial views, but the scrutiny only revealed "firing offense" things he did of his own free will. He wasn't fired for being a douche, he was fired for being a liar. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Why is this in Speaker's Corner? Perhaps we should now ban off-roading? Or maybe this is Obama's fault somehow? Sad story anyway. Just goes to show you never know where the reaper is lurking. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Well, let's hope it doesn't turn out like the Brian Nichols case in Georgia. While on trial for kidnapping and rape, Nichols beat a sheriff's deputy who was guarding him unconscious, stole her gun, then entered the courtroom and shot and killed the judge and court reporter, all recorded on video. As he was escaping the building, he was confronted by another deputy, who apparently hesitated to shoot because of all the people around. Nichols wasn't so concerned, he shot and killed the deputy. He then proceeded to carjack at least five vehicles and escaped from the area. Later that night he entered a house that was being renovated by the owner, who happened to be a federal agent (ICE). He shot and killed the agent. After all that he carjacked another woman and took her hostage, but eventually she convinced Nichols that he would never be able to escape and he surrendered to authorities. So, four murders and numerous assaults and carjackings, two of the murders (the judge and the court reporter) on camera and another (the deputy) in front of dozens of witnesses. Seems cut and dried, doesn't it? The prosecution pushed for the death penalty, although Nichols offered to plead guilty in exchange for life without parole. So what happened? He was convicted, but one juror resisted the death penalty, so he was sentenced to several consecutive terms of life without parole. The same sentence he offered to accept, if the prosecution would take the death penalty off the table. What did this cost the taxpayer? Nichol's defense cost the taxpayers of Georgia $3.2 million dollars. So much, that it drained the state's fund for indigent defense. As a result, the state couldn't provide a defense for dozens of other indigent defendants, and their cases were dismissed as they could not be afforded a trial in a reasonable time frame. I hope the good taxpayers of Colorado are not in for a similar soaking. It seems to me to be a reasonable risk that the Aurora shooter will be found to have "diminished capacity", if he isn't found to be outright insane, making him ineligible for the death penalty. I suspect pushing for the death penalty is just a ploy for publicity by the prosecutor's office. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I didn't see your comments as a rant, I think you bring up some good points. Part of the problem, I think, is a disconnect in thinking where people are on the one hand so cynical/jaded that they have given up on their government, yet at exactly the same time they believe that it is the government that should provide them with a good job, housing, beer money, etc. I suspect this type of thinking is more prevalent in Europe than it is here. So, young people will riot because they think the government isn't taking care of them. Things are a bit more complicated in the States, some people think the government should feed/house/employ them, but an equal or greater number think the government should just get out of the way. Certainly, I suppose modern technology could well make more inclusive/democratic political processes possible. Let's say we develop a system where every citizen gets to vote on every bill, and even gets to propose legislation, say by petitioning the government. You've already raised the problem that politicians don't educate themselves on every bill they vote on. How would you ensure that citizens voting directly on legislation have bothered to inform themselves? We now live in a culture where money = speech, so the vested interest with the most money has the biggest megaphone. Is there any way to ensure the public hears (much less understands) an objective discussion of the pros and cons of legislation before voting on it? If not, isn't there a risk that such a democracy would just become bread and circuses for the most vocal agitators, without even a middleman to possibly put some brakes on the process (not that they have been doing that). Anyway the whole thing is above my pay grade for sure. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I can agree with that. Or, maybe have a longer term for the sunset. I can see how it could be very disruptive to get to two days before expiry without knowing if a program like social security will be renewed or not. That wouldn't happen if Congress could get their act together and behave like responsible adults, but we all know the chances of that happening. I was thinking in terms of the extra stuff that gets put in at the last second, between the end of the debate and the vote, so no-one knows it's in there until the bill has been passed. The idea is that amendments (and riders) should be brought up far enough in advance that they can be discussed and, if needed, modified through compromise, or rejected. Also true that there is a certain amount of grey area there. However, what I'm thinking of is the totally unrelated matter that could never pass on it's own, but instead is stuck onto a crucial bill that everybody knows has to pass. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

If I can be forgiving for suggesting an alternative strategy, how about this: All legislation should have a built-in sunset clause. Unless re-ratified by Congress and signed by the President, laws would automatically expire after some reasonable period of time (say, for example, 16 years/4 presidential terms). This could have the following consequences: 1. All legislation would be periodically re-examined. Ineffective laws could just be allowed to expire with no legislation needed to take them off the books. 2. Laws deemed to be useful could be tweaked to improve them in light of past experience. 3. Legislators would be kept busy enough reviewing expiring laws that they would have much less time to come up with new ones. Issues would have to be pressing to be able to make it onto the calendar. Of course, transparency is also critical, so no more anonymous amendments or holds. If you want to add something to a bill, you have to be willing to "own it" and show your face. Amendments would have to be openly declared in advance, proposed far enough ahead of time that they could be discussed, and must be directly related in topic to the bill they are attached to. Every bill should also have a preamble that clearly explains the constitutional justification for the legislation. The idea is to avoid having to later parse "intent" from letters/emails/tweets that hapen to get preserved for posterity. Also laws that are so unconstitutional that no justification could be proposed wouldn't get any further than the trial baloon stage. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thanks, it's good to hear he's doing all right. He could always be counted on to liven up a "discussion". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

You mean, like marrying their turtles? Well, maybe we can reconsider that issue when non-human animals can demonstrate competence to make adult decisions and enter into legally binding contracts. How would they be able to demonstrate such intelligence? Maybe if they started posting coherent well reasoned posts in Speaker's Corner? So far I haven't seen any evidence of that. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I remember a long time ago when PeacefulJeffrey was quite insistent that gay people had exactly the same right as everybody else to marry someone of the opposite sex, so by demanding the right to marry the person they actually love they were demanding special rights. I also seem to recall that some who still post here were in complete agreement with that position. "PeacefulJeffrey", what a deliciously ironic name that was. I wonder whatever happened to him. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Yes yes yes. . . If you disqualify the definition of marriage (On man and One Woman) then you would have to legalize bigamy. Its only fair. You mean, if they disqualify your definition of marriage. For that matter, though, the prohibition on bigamy is clearly based on Christian tradition. If we were to adopt the libertarian position that nobody should acquire access to benefits by virtue of being married to someone, then what non-religious (i.e. constitutional) arguments could be raised against bigamy? From an economic point of view, bigamy would be problematic if every spouse was entitled to full survivorship benefits, but if the benefits were to be divided equally between the spouses (so the total was no more than it would be for one spouse) is there any remaining constitutional reason for prohibiting the arrangement? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I can see that perspective. I'm still surprised that people would consider opening all the lockers and dumping out the contents to be appropriate behavior. I'm pretty sure that such behavior would earn someone an ass-kicking if they were to do that in the "real" world. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I know what you mean. Quite a few years ago there was a web site where you look up salary information on every State employee in my State, and the info on that site also included our SSNs. Potentially Identity Theft Central with state employees in the cross hairs. Eventually people kicked and screamed enough to get the SSN take down, though salary info is still publicly accessible. The problem is that the SSN gradually morphed from it's intended function, tied to social security benefits, into a sort of "universal identifier". We even used to use it as the student number for out inmates, err, students. It's also interesting how much we have been forced into this defensive mode of hyper security by the actions of online thieves. People complain about the TSA as a freedom-sucking response to potential terrorism, but we have no problem with having to memorize 20 different passwords and getting locked out of our own accounts because we can't remember if we used a $ or a ! in the password. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thanks (really!) for the interesting example. I guess I'm just applying old-fashioned "physical world" thinking to this issue. In your example, I could put in my SSN and get my info. My SSN is pretty directly analogous to the combination for my lock. To use the system to get your file, on the other hand, the simplest way would be if I know your SSN. If I know it because you want me to have it and you gave it to me, no legal problems arise. If I know it because I stole the information from somewhere, things are different. Lets say I don't know your SSN. To use the url to discover it, I would have to go through up to 1,000,000,000 combinations (9 digits with 10 possibilities per position) one by one, see if I got a hit, and match the name/age/address to what I know about you. Obviously this would take an eternity, so to speed things up I could write a script to automate the process. So, I have to create a tool in order to use a number I have no legal right to use (your SSN), in effect pretending to be you, in order to gain access to your file. Yet, this is "put right out there for everyone to see". And if I do find your information, it is quite OK for me to post that on a Google-accessible site for all and sundry to see. It's only copying what was left out in plain sight after all. I just hope "internet ethics" doesn't get out into the physical world. It's funny that so many of the same people who get all worked up about drones spying on them from the air and TSA checking out their "package" have no problem with some internet-savy pinata-whacking anarchist posting people's private data online. I do realize that unethical is not synonymous with illegal. I'm also (perhaps too slowly) realizing an interesting culture difference: To me, "publishing" means putting information where people can easily find it, because I want them to have it. In IT, it seems that "publishing" means "didn't hide it well enough". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Do you have to write a script to try millions of combinations to read a mailbox? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Thanks, your comments help me to understand the thinking involved here. I think. You say that AT&T was using "security through obscurity". That seems like a nice description to me. We certainly agree that this approach was not very responsible. What I find interesting is that it seems (to me) that the "arms race" between IT security types on the one hand and those who want to gain access to data for malicious reasons on the other, has resulted in a community frame of mind that considers weak security to mean openly published. How deep does this attitude go? Surely not to the point of saying that any security system that can possibly be breached, even if that requires very sophisticated tools, is "published"? If not, where is the boundary I should not cross? Apparently in the eyes of the community a simple script to generate a large number of urls and use them to probe is "open access", and anything that is retrieved is OK because it was "published". So where is the line? Would I have to get into de-encryption to be considered over that line? On my gym locker, I have one of those dial-type locks that you have to turn right to a certain number, then left to another number, then right again to a third number. Given enough time, someone could manually try every possible combination and eventually open the lock. Or, they could design a device that did this much faster than a human could, but still uses the same principle to arrive at a solution. How is this different in fundamental nature from what was done in the case we are discussing? If someone can use such a device to pick my simple lock, in IT-land does that mean they can use my sweaty gym clothes without fear of adverse consequences (other than having to shower for a really long time)? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here, about 2/3 down the page. I know, it's a department of justice document so it can't be believed, as they are in on the conspiracy to silence all the creative and innovative minds in America. Here is an article that nicely deconstructs the "open access" argument; I quite like the comparison of Auernheimer's script with whacking at a pinata. If ATT's client emails are "open access", and "published openly on the internet for anyone to see", then why can't I retrieve this list by searching with Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine you can name? Maybe because those search tools don't whack away at the internet by randomly generating millions of urls to see what they can uncover? If you have to pretend to be someone you aren't to get at the data, how does that make it "openly published on the internet"? The argument that information is not stolen if it is merely copied and posted where anyone can access it is interesting. It is true that it is not "stolen" in the sense of taking it away from from the owner, as the owner still has the information and can presumably continue to use it. But let's do a little thought experiment here. Let's suppose I obtain your social security number, the numbers for your bank accounts, your credit card numbers, your usernames and passwords, and so on, and I post that information online. Let's also say that I do not actually use that information to buy anything, or to personally access your accounts, but I just copy and paste it to a public site. Have I stolen anything from you? You can still use your credit cards, access your bank account, etc, so what's the problem? Maybe the fact that several hundred million other people can now also use your credit cards and access your bank account? Do you think that might be a wee bit of an issue? I doubt you would be inclined to say that I did nothing wrong by copying your private information and posting it to a public site, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I know Auernheimer only posted email addresses, but that still exposed people to potentially being inundated by spam, forcing them to change their email and notify everybody in their contact list. If the address that was published was connected to a business in any way (say, for example, they sell stuff on eBay), then there could be financial impacts due to people's inability to contact them. There is a good reason why it's considered very bad internet behavior to post people's email addresses in a form that is easily accessible to bots. I'm not arguing that ATT's system wasn't boneheadedly stupid. But two wrongs don't make a right. Uncovering the flaw and letting ATT know about it would have been a public service. But it's clear that that is far from the motivation involved in this case (and in others Goatse Security has been involved in). What was the motivation? In Auerheimer's own words: "I did this because I despised people I think are unjustly wealthy and wanted to embarass them. Odd that you argue so strongly in support of someone whose driving motivation is hatred of people because they are rich. I do have to admit, though, that the security endorsement "Goatse tight" is pretty funny. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here's a description of the function of the script Auernheimer wrote: "It worked by mimicking the behavior of an iPad 3G so that AT&T’s servers would be deceived into granting the Account Slurper access. Once deployed, the Account Slurper used a process known as a “brute force” against the servers, randomly guessing at ranges of ICC-IDs. An incorrect guess was met with no additional information, while a correct guess was rewarded with an ICC-ID/e-mail pairing for a specific, identifiable iPad 3G user. From June 5, 2010, through June 9, 2010, the Account Slurper stole for its hacker-authors approximately 120,000 ICC-ID/e-mail address pairings for iPad 3G customers." I guess we will just have to agree to disagree, but this process seems IDENTICAL to me to picking a lock by trying every possible combination. No doubt this reflects a difference of cultures. To you, having to fraudulently pretend to be millions of iPAD users, trying so many combinations that you have to run a program for days, is the exact same as if ATT had put the information on the front page of the New York Times. Tell me, in your world do identity thieves do anything wrong when they use a skimmer to help themselves to people's credit card numbers? After all, they are just collecting information, information that the victims provide (unknowingly) when they use their credit card. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)