The FBI says: we won't comply with the order no matter what. We realize there will be consequences. We will have to drop the case. But we don't care.
My interpretation: The FBI only cares about the number of successful convictions. Not about who they convict. And certainly not how they convict. Having to keep the method a secret should make us all very afraid.
Empires rise. And fall. But we think it won't happen to us. I'm sure others also once believed it was unthinkable.
By the time the sane parts of the government (if there actually are any) realize how far things have gotten out of control, and wake up from their self indulgent pleasuring and self enrichment, it will be too late for them to act.
Also amusing: When Apple challenges a court order, whether the order should even be allowed, we get a chorus of people saying Apple is not above the law! (torches and pitchforks!)
Then we get congress critters wanting to introduce bills with deliberately misleading and deceptive titles about how no company should be above the law; rather than a correct title that the bill is about making encryption illegal. I'm sure major Banks would object to that. Or maybe the bill should be titled making encryption illegal for anyone who is not part of the rich and powerful.
But the FBI is allowed to be Above The Law. Where are the torches and pitchforks? Will these same congress critters have equal outrage at the FBI's behavior? About how the FBI has lied before congress as to the true purpose of it's conflict with Apple over encryption? About the true scope of what the FBI really wanted from Apple?
The FBI can ignore court orders to reveal how they do their hacking.
But the FBI says that Apple must obey court orders to do unpaid hacking for the FBI.
Once again, I'll say it . . . secret laws, secret interpretations of laws, secret courts, secret warrants, secret arrests, secret trials, secret evidence inaccessible to the defense, secret convictions and secret prisons where secret torture is practiced.
We have become what we spent the last century fighting.
Some say the downfall began right about when we took prayer out of schools. Others say it began when the Mars company introduced the blue M&M.
What follows from what you say is that while they are not interested in actually stopping crimes, they are interested in successful prosecutions.
That's not a problem. There is a whole country full of people that can be prosecuted for something. Just pick someone. Or entrap someone. Just keep the investigative techniques a secret.
Re: Re: A retired prosecutor...like Popehat's Ken White maybe?
Why do we even bother with providing a public defenders office?
Why should the guilty be allowed to defend their guilt in court? It's a huge waste of time, money and effort that could have been used for investigating pr0n or really good drugs.
Add Secret Investigative Techniques to the list of what America has become.
Secret Evidence, which the defendant cannot see. Secret Courts. Secret Trials in secret courts. Secret Arrests. (in the middle of the night) Secret Laws. Secret Interpretations of laws. Secret Convictions. Secret Prisons. (are they all on foreign soil?) Secret Torture.
It sounds like a list of what we were fighting against in the previous century.
Judge James Shadid points out the Supreme Court only allowed warrantless examination of cell phones if there were exigent circumstances or to ensure the phone did not pose a threat to officers
But your honor! We had reason to believe that an explosive device might be concealed in the cell phone, so we had to search it.
Honest!
We're cops. We're the good guys. You can trust us.
So wait, we should take lessons on the constitutional purpose of copyright from a copyright defending lawyer? They have perhaps the least respect for the constitution or due process for the citizens.
I don't know why you should single out Google?
NOBODY should have respect for copyright.
Google licensed an old song for, IIRC, $70,000, acquiring all the necessary rights to use it in a commercial for Android Marshmallow. Then the singer of that song comes along and thinks she should get a giant payday because of some kind of 'moral right' or some such. But we should have respect for such things.
Or a major copyright owner insisting and doubling down on their ownership of someone's nature recordings of birds chirping.
This is a non starter without also fixing DMCA abuse.
There needs to be a serious statutory penalty for DMCA abuse. Where one of: 1. fair use was not even considered, a human did not review the legal under oath of perjury part 2. the one filing the DMCA is not a copyright owner or the owner's registered agent 3. the DMCA is for an improper purpose, the most common example of which is censorship
And item 3 probably ought to have triple statutory damages. That is not what the DMCA is for and is using copyright to suppress free speech.
I was talking about how long copyrighted works are imprisoned by a monopoly before becoming public domain.
I was joking that this imprisonment was due to bad behavior by the copyright industry -- which, in fact, it actually is. They ask for longer and longer copyright lengths -- which is the bad behavior.
Re: Re: How effective was Microsoft's FUD campaign, really?
I only touched on some of the highlights. There are many more items I could have brought up. And many of them go much deeper than the surface treatment I touched on.
Microsoft's Java trying to lock developers into Windows. But using techniques expressly forbidden by its contract. Which Sun sued for and won, IIRC, $1.2 Billion, and an injunction.
Then Microsoft copied Java and JVM to create C# and .NET. A close copy indeed. But with a few of Java's warts removed, and some genuine improvements. But the idea was the same. Take the best technology, add deliciously addictive sweeteners that lock developers in to the monopoly. The first hit is free, pay later. Yet Java and especially the JVM took off. One of the most sophisticated managed, GC enabled runtime engines on the planet. Used extensively for enterprise applications, major web applications, banking, and surprisingly: high speed trading where milliseconds count! JVM has had tons of third party research poured into it. Meanwhile .NET was a locked black box. Now many languages run on the JVM -- and all interoperate. You can pass data structures between languages. Once again, belatedly, Microsoft finally makes .NET open source, but mostly in a way that is a one way street leading back into the prison camp. Er, I should use a more positive spin like "walled garden".
Touching on IoT again, the world today is a bazaar abuzz with innovation unlike anything we have seen since the days when hobbyist magazines like Popular Electronics were popular before the IBM PC / Microsoft monopolies set in and locked everything up.
There is way, way more to Microsoft's history. Signing deals with cell phone manufacturers, and then setting about to put them out of business before the ink on the paper is even dry. And lest you think Nokia, I'm talking about back in the very early 2000's. And these kinds of deals had clauses that the company's IP went to Microsoft if they were to cease business.
The people running Atari do not understand intellectual property
These people seriously need to get some schooling about how intellectual property works.
The first and most obvious thing they did wrong makes their argument completely invalid. There are already other haunted house games. Atari needs to qualify their request by adding "... on a computer". The charm of that magical incantation would cure all defects in their patent application.
I think the FBI could avoid a lot of problems if they could get friendly, courteous, expedited drive through general purpose search warrants. Please pull around to the 2nd window.
On the post: NBC Smells Cord Cutting On The Wind, Will Reduce 'SNL' Ad Load By 30% Next Season
Re:
On the post: FBI Says It Will Ignore Court Order If Told To Reveal Its Tor Browser Exploit, Because It Feels It's Above The Law...
Re: Re: Ignoring Court Orders
My interpretation: The FBI only cares about the number of successful convictions. Not about who they convict. And certainly not how they convict. Having to keep the method a secret should make us all very afraid.
Empires rise. And fall. But we think it won't happen to us. I'm sure others also once believed it was unthinkable.
On the post: FBI Says It Will Ignore Court Order If Told To Reveal Its Tor Browser Exploit, Because It Feels It's Above The Law...
Re:
On the post: FBI Says It Will Ignore Court Order If Told To Reveal Its Tor Browser Exploit, Because It Feels It's Above The Law...
Re: Re: Re: Is the judiciary a joke or a JOKE?
Proof: a corporation cannot go to jail, or get the death penalty, therefore it must be unable to have done anything wrong.
On the post: FBI Says It Will Ignore Court Order If Told To Reveal Its Tor Browser Exploit, Because It Feels It's Above The Law...
Re: Re: Is the judiciary a joke or a JOKE?
Government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.
On the post: FBI Says It Will Ignore Court Order If Told To Reveal Its Tor Browser Exploit, Because It Feels It's Above The Law...
Re: Re: Above The Law
Then we get congress critters wanting to introduce bills with deliberately misleading and deceptive titles about how no company should be above the law; rather than a correct title that the bill is about making encryption illegal. I'm sure major Banks would object to that. Or maybe the bill should be titled making encryption illegal for anyone who is not part of the rich and powerful.
But the FBI is allowed to be Above The Law. Where are the torches and pitchforks? Will these same congress critters have equal outrage at the FBI's behavior? About how the FBI has lied before congress as to the true purpose of it's conflict with Apple over encryption? About the true scope of what the FBI really wanted from Apple?
On the post: FBI Says It Will Ignore Court Order If Told To Reveal Its Tor Browser Exploit, Because It Feels It's Above The Law...
Ignoring Court Orders
The FBI can ignore court orders to reveal how they do their hacking.
But the FBI says that Apple must obey court orders to do unpaid hacking for the FBI.
Once again, I'll say it . . . secret laws, secret interpretations of laws, secret courts, secret warrants, secret arrests, secret trials, secret evidence inaccessible to the defense, secret convictions and secret prisons where secret torture is practiced.
We have become what we spent the last century fighting.
Some say the downfall began right about when we took prayer out of schools. Others say it began when the Mars company introduced the blue M&M.
On the post: FCC To Ban Charter Communications From Imposing Usage Caps If It Wants Merger Approval
In addition to usage caps . . .
On the post: FBI Hides Its Surveillance Techniques From Federal Prosecutors Because It's Afraid They'll Become Defense Lawyers
Re: Re:
That's not a problem. There is a whole country full of people that can be prosecuted for something. Just pick someone. Or entrap someone. Just keep the investigative techniques a secret.
On the post: FBI Hides Its Surveillance Techniques From Federal Prosecutors Because It's Afraid They'll Become Defense Lawyers
Re:
. . . because the government cannot just look into the details of your personal life without a good reason that justifies a warrant.
What were they thinking?
On the post: FBI Hides Its Surveillance Techniques From Federal Prosecutors Because It's Afraid They'll Become Defense Lawyers
Re: Re: A retired prosecutor...like Popehat's Ken White maybe?
Why should the guilty be allowed to defend their guilt in court? It's a huge waste of time, money and effort that could have been used for investigating pr0n or really good drugs.
On the post: FBI Hides Its Surveillance Techniques From Federal Prosecutors Because It's Afraid They'll Become Defense Lawyers
Secret Investigative Techniques
Secret Evidence, which the defendant cannot see.
Secret Courts.
Secret Trials in secret courts.
Secret Arrests. (in the middle of the night)
Secret Laws.
Secret Interpretations of laws.
Secret Convictions.
Secret Prisons. (are they all on foreign soil?)
Secret Torture.
It sounds like a list of what we were fighting against in the previous century.
On the post: Court Tells Cops They Can't Open A Flip Phone Without A Warrant
Exigent Circumstances
Honest!
We're cops. We're the good guys. You can trust us.
On the post: Expanding Unconstitutional Backdoor Searches Of Surveillance Data Is Easy: Just Change What Words Mean
Re:
On the post: Techdirt Reading List: Moral Panics And The Copyright Wars
Re:
I don't know why you should single out Google?
NOBODY should have respect for copyright.
Google licensed an old song for, IIRC, $70,000, acquiring all the necessary rights to use it in a commercial for Android Marshmallow. Then the singer of that song comes along and thinks she should get a giant payday because of some kind of 'moral right' or some such. But we should have respect for such things.
Or a major copyright owner insisting and doubling down on their ownership of someone's nature recordings of birds chirping.
I could go on and on, but what's the point.
On the post: Techdirt Reading List: Moral Panics And The Copyright Wars
Re: Three simple fixes
There needs to be a serious statutory penalty for DMCA abuse. Where one of:
1. fair use was not even considered, a human did not review the legal under oath of perjury part
2. the one filing the DMCA is not a copyright owner or the owner's registered agent
3. the DMCA is for an improper purpose, the most common example of which is censorship
And item 3 probably ought to have triple statutory damages. That is not what the DMCA is for and is using copyright to suppress free speech.
On the post: Techdirt Reading List: Moral Panics And The Copyright Wars
Re: Re: Will the sentence be increased?
I was joking that this imprisonment was due to bad behavior by the copyright industry -- which, in fact, it actually is. They ask for longer and longer copyright lengths -- which is the bad behavior.
On the post: DHS Claims Open Source Software Is Like Giving The Mafia A Copy Of FBI Code; Hastily Walks Back Statement
Re: Re: How effective was Microsoft's FUD campaign, really?
Microsoft's Java trying to lock developers into Windows. But using techniques expressly forbidden by its contract. Which Sun sued for and won, IIRC, $1.2 Billion, and an injunction.
Then Microsoft copied Java and JVM to create C# and .NET. A close copy indeed. But with a few of Java's warts removed, and some genuine improvements. But the idea was the same. Take the best technology, add deliciously addictive sweeteners that lock developers in to the monopoly. The first hit is free, pay later. Yet Java and especially the JVM took off. One of the most sophisticated managed, GC enabled runtime engines on the planet. Used extensively for enterprise applications, major web applications, banking, and surprisingly: high speed trading where milliseconds count! JVM has had tons of third party research poured into it. Meanwhile .NET was a locked black box. Now many languages run on the JVM -- and all interoperate. You can pass data structures between languages. Once again, belatedly, Microsoft finally makes .NET open source, but mostly in a way that is a one way street leading back into the prison camp. Er, I should use a more positive spin like "walled garden".
Touching on IoT again, the world today is a bazaar abuzz with innovation unlike anything we have seen since the days when hobbyist magazines like Popular Electronics were popular before the IBM PC / Microsoft monopolies set in and locked everything up.
There is way, way more to Microsoft's history. Signing deals with cell phone manufacturers, and then setting about to put them out of business before the ink on the paper is even dry. And lest you think Nokia, I'm talking about back in the very early 2000's. And these kinds of deals had clauses that the company's IP went to Microsoft if they were to cease business.
On the post: Ex-Game Maker Atari To Argue To The US PTO That Only It Can Make 'Haunted House' Games
The people running Atari do not understand intellectual property
The first and most obvious thing they did wrong makes their argument completely invalid. There are already other haunted house games. Atari needs to qualify their request by adding "... on a computer". The charm of that magical incantation would cure all defects in their patent application.
On the post: Judge Says FBI's Hacking Tool Deployed In Child Porn Investigation Is An Illegal Search
Re: Re:
Next >>