Wasn't a detriment to the Country, only its' image of itself.
Snowden did a great favor to the citizens of the U.S.
He showed us where the corruption was. He showed us where the real terrorists were (inside the government). He showed us who the greatest threats to our way of life were (again, inside the government).
Snowden for President, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028 (yes, I'd repeal term limits exclusively for Snowden).
don't make it statutory, but make it something that benefits the voters.
For each local, state and national election that you cast your vote, if you are not one of the 1%ers, you can reduce your state and federal income tax rate by 1%.
If you're on welfare, well, sorry, you get no benefit for voting, but if you go and get a job, you will.
Re: Re: U.S. Government fielding WCD - Weapons of Constitutional Destruction
That's how I voted.
3rd party available, picked one, no 3rd party available, I selected the one running against the incumbent.
For those that were just votes to keep judges on the bench, I voted no.
Get rid of all incumbents.
Make it prohibitively expensive for the Corporations to buy them, and devilishly difficult for the alphabet boys to find the new skeletons in the new closets.
U.S. Government fielding WCD - Weapons of Constitutional Destruction
Why is Congress cow-towing to the executive branch in matters like this, where it's been repeatedly shown that they have no interest in helping the public, and in fact are harming the public more than ever.
Why is Congress allowing the judicial branch to castrate the Constitutional Amendments that made our Country what it was after so much blood was shed to grant us the right to govern ourselves?
Why do we, as Americans, allow such a small subset of people (less than 550) to wield Weapons of Constitutional Destruction to harm our Country, our people, our selves?
The first person to be arrested for "inciting a riot" would be the DA that released the decision before the security was in place to try and handle things without resorting to brute force tactics.
The second group to be arrested for inciting a riot would be the grand jury that failed to do the right thing and indict the officer that murdered an unarmed man. That would have sent it to trial where all the evidence would be public. The way they did it leaves people with doubts. It was a mistake, a grave mistake to do it that way and people have suffered because of that Grand Jury's actions.
Now finally, we have the pen-ultimate cause of the rioting, that cause is the officer who made the choice, for whatever reason, to end the life of an unarmed man.
The rioting got worse when the local PD stepped out to squash the rioters like bugs instead of treating them like people, inflaming the riot to higher levels.
So, arrest the officer who caused it all, then arrest the police officers that escalated the violence, arrest the grand jury for inciting a 2nd riot by not following the letter of the law, arrest the judge for not forcing the grand jury to follow the law, then arrest the DA for releasing the information when the security was unprepared.
That's if you want to point fingers and play the blame game.
Re: Mike, stick to stories at least related to tech
@Monarch
It doesn't matter what your opinion of the situation is, it doesn't matter what the Police Department's opinion is or even individual police officers.
When they took that job, they swore to protect everyone, period.
That includes people they disagree with. They don't get to choose who to protect for any reason whatsoever. If they don't understand that, then they should not have that job.
This is one case that is pure black and white - no in betweens, no shades of grey and you don't get a say in the matter.
As to the players being suspended for practicing their first amendment rights, well, that's just it, they can do that, it doesn't hurt anyone physically or emotionally to do so. It would only hurt the Rams and the NFL to suspend players showing their support for the people of Ferguson involved with this horrific situation.
Finding out which phone numbers you called is not even close to finding out what private and confidential information is stored on your phone.
Courts are already finding that a persons private data stored on the phone is the same as files stored in a safe in their home or office and require a warrant to get to.
This is their only way to get the data is with a warrant and the court attempting to coerce the owner into decrypting the records.
Any other method is illegal and violates the constitution. I would say forcing the owner to hand over the decryption code could also be said to be self-incrimination which would also violate the constitution, but apparently some judges just don't care about the law anymore.
They are continuously showing their ignorance to the nth degree by repeatedly making public claims, that Google dominates the search industry.
This claim is patently false as Google doesn't force anyone to use their search engine.
The truth of the matter is that the World's population dominates and controls who gets to do searches for them, and the world's population has predominantly chosen Google to do their searches.
We the majority of the people on Terra have repeatedly and consistently decided that we prefer the results given by Google over other search engines.
How is that Google dominating an industry?
If a competitor doesn't like that we like Google's search better than theirs, all they have to do is make a better search engine than Google's and people will switch.
The problem is that that hasn't happened yet, and probably won't for the foreseeable future, since no other corporation in the world invests as heavily into research and development to keep improving the search results as Google does.
Is it Google's fault that no other company is willing to do their homework to get better? No.
It it Google's fault that people choose them to provide answers and search results? No.
Does Google dominate the search industry? No. Let me repeat that, Hell No.
The people choose Google because they trust the results.
So, EU, if you want to continue to show that you have a collective IQ of a snail, please continue with your pedantic lies and threats. The rest of the world knows and understands that you are being childish idiots.
It's an attempt to scare a consumer who has legally purchased an item and should be treated as such.
How many millions of DVDs / Blu-Rays have been sold with these threats in them, threatening citizens with all kinds of badness that haven't done anything illegal.
If nothing else, it would come under slander / libel as it's a bald faced accusation of infringement by the MPAA Rico Gang members.
This is an off-topic post, so I apologize up front about that.
Do you get upset when you insert a newly bought DVD or Blu-Ray disc and cannot skip those damned advertisements or legal threats forced upon us by the MPAA Rico Gang?
How much of your life is wasted sitting through things you don't want to, shouldn't have to, doesn't apply to you?
Why threaten people who legally purchased content? To make them angry? To make them not want to buy your product?
Why are they allowed to make false assertions and threats in the first place? Making a personal backup of a DVD for your personal use has been declared fair use in the courts, so all of their legalsleeze is a lie, a mis-representation of the law to intimidate people.
Why does the MPAA think they have the right to hijack our personal DVD/Blu-Ray players?
I want my time back, I want to be able to "skip" over their threats and allegations that I am a criminal for buying their product.
I feel that if I bought it, I shouldn't have to sit through their legalsleeze and ficticious warnings about consequences that will never apply to me since I bought the damned product to begin with.
I think that a minimum fine of $100.00 per DVD / Blu-Ray disc that has those "lockouts" that prevent skipping or fast forwarding during advertisements and fake legal threats would be a good start.
I would suggest that the MPAA Rico Gang should be made to pay for all replacement devices that remove those content controls entirely since they've been used for illegal (threatening consumers with fictitious penalties causing anxiety, worry, etc) in customers who have done absolutely nothing wrong.
So $100.00 per DVD/Blu-Ray with the threats and control lockouts, replacement device (consumers choice as to what to buy, 100% paid for by the MPAA) that removes the ability for content to prevent skipping or fast-forwarding, 1000.00 for pain and suffering of each device owner and a new law that prohibits the MPAA from ever implementing anything that takes any kind of controls out of the hands of the consumer.
The courts are refusing to allow this kind of garbage collection, so the RIAA Rico gang have altered direction and are trying to get the ISPs to do their jobs for them.
Since IP addresses can never decisively be tied to an individual (ip spoofing, mac address spoofing, open wifi, hacked wifi, etc) - there is no way that an ISP can prove that the ip address in question goes to any specific person.
Without this discernible link between individuals and services used, there is no legal way to acuse someone solely on ip address used, which is why the courts refuse to action the requests by the RIAA/MPAA Rico Gangs.
The really funny (not really to us, but funny on them) is that all of the infringement (their words, not ours) that they are attacking, improves their bottom line.
They would have better profits if they stopped wasting money on encryption and monitoring to attack their customer base.
I've been pondering this for a while, and wondered what the community thought.
All the corporations out there appear to revel in their "personhood" status under the courts definition of the term.
One of the things that being a person / citizen of the United States entails is their responsibility to the Country and people at large.
During a war, if the draft were enabled, how would the corporation be drafted?
How does a corporation get called in for jury duty?
Best of all, how does a corporation get thrown in jail for killing someone?
That last one's a real kicker, the reason is that corporations today play it as a two way street.
For benefits, of personhood, they claim personhood. For protection from personhood, like criminal charges or taxation, they claim corporate status.
They cannot be both.
If they want to claim personhood and all of the benefits that that entails, then they must submit to all of the responsibilities. To that end, I submit the Corporate Personhood Responsibility Act.
In order for a corporation to be considered a person, they must do the following. Identify every member of their board and high level executives that are involved in the major decision making process. These individuals will stand in lieu of the corporation when a legal issue arises. If a product kills another person, those individuals will stand trial for murder, with all the legal ramifications associated with the charges up to and including death penalty.
If a corporation steals from another corporation or person, the same laws that apply to an individual will apply to those same individuals that were there when the crime was committed. (leaving the company cannot and will not protect someone from actions that occurred while they were in power)
Lastly, the corporation will pay income taxes using the same rate as a non-married individual, both state and federal, on all income, not just profit at the appropriately scaled rate, going back to original tax ratios defined to scale as the amount of income climbs.
If the corporations want to play at being a person, then they need to pay like a person would, be treated legally like a person would, and have the same responsibilities that a person would.
Without these to balance out the benefits granted by the courts, it's all been one sided since the benefit was granted them.
On the post: Expected Next Defense Department Boss Claims Snowden Leak A 'Huge Detriment' To US, Willing To Give Cybersecurity To FBI
Re: What detriment!?!? I'll tell you what detriment!
On the post: Expected Next Defense Department Boss Claims Snowden Leak A 'Huge Detriment' To US, Willing To Give Cybersecurity To FBI
Wasn't a detriment to the Country, only its' image of itself.
He showed us where the corruption was.
He showed us where the real terrorists were (inside the government).
He showed us who the greatest threats to our way of life were (again, inside the government).
Snowden for President, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028 (yes, I'd repeal term limits exclusively for Snowden).
On the post: Congress Quietly Decides To Delete Key NSA Reform In CRomnibus Agreement
Re: Types of resident in the US
For each local, state and national election that you cast your vote, if you are not one of the 1%ers, you can reduce your state and federal income tax rate by 1%.
If you're on welfare, well, sorry, you get no benefit for voting, but if you go and get a job, you will.
On the post: Congress Quietly Decides To Delete Key NSA Reform In CRomnibus Agreement
Re: Re: U.S. Government fielding WCD - Weapons of Constitutional Destruction
3rd party available, picked one, no 3rd party available, I selected the one running against the incumbent.
For those that were just votes to keep judges on the bench, I voted no.
Get rid of all incumbents.
Make it prohibitively expensive for the Corporations to buy them, and devilishly difficult for the alphabet boys to find the new skeletons in the new closets.
On the post: Congress Quietly Decides To Delete Key NSA Reform In CRomnibus Agreement
U.S. Government fielding WCD - Weapons of Constitutional Destruction
Why is Congress allowing the judicial branch to castrate the Constitutional Amendments that made our Country what it was after so much blood was shed to grant us the right to govern ourselves?
Why do we, as Americans, allow such a small subset of people (less than 550) to wield Weapons of Constitutional Destruction to harm our Country, our people, our selves?
On the post: St. Louis Police Claim It's Their 'First Amendment' Rights Not To Protect Football Players Who Supported Protestors
Re: [Related] Incitement to riot
The second group to be arrested for inciting a riot would be the grand jury that failed to do the right thing and indict the officer that murdered an unarmed man. That would have sent it to trial where all the evidence would be public. The way they did it leaves people with doubts. It was a mistake, a grave mistake to do it that way and people have suffered because of that Grand Jury's actions.
Now finally, we have the pen-ultimate cause of the rioting, that cause is the officer who made the choice, for whatever reason, to end the life of an unarmed man.
The rioting got worse when the local PD stepped out to squash the rioters like bugs instead of treating them like people, inflaming the riot to higher levels.
So, arrest the officer who caused it all, then arrest the police officers that escalated the violence, arrest the grand jury for inciting a 2nd riot by not following the letter of the law, arrest the judge for not forcing the grand jury to follow the law, then arrest the DA for releasing the information when the security was unprepared.
That's if you want to point fingers and play the blame game.
On the post: St. Louis Police Claim It's Their 'First Amendment' Rights Not To Protect Football Players Who Supported Protestors
Re: Mike, stick to stories at least related to tech
It doesn't matter what your opinion of the situation is, it doesn't matter what the Police Department's opinion is or even individual police officers.
When they took that job, they swore to protect everyone, period.
That includes people they disagree with. They don't get to choose who to protect for any reason whatsoever. If they don't understand that, then they should not have that job.
This is one case that is pure black and white - no in betweens, no shades of grey and you don't get a say in the matter.
As to the players being suspended for practicing their first amendment rights, well, that's just it, they can do that, it doesn't hurt anyone physically or emotionally to do so. It would only hurt the Rams and the NFL to suspend players showing their support for the people of Ferguson involved with this horrific situation.
On the post: St. Louis Police Claim It's Their 'First Amendment' Rights Not To Protect Football Players Who Supported Protestors
St. Louis PD - Listen up...
You protect everyone to the same level as you would the President of the United States of America.
Doing anything less means you are not doing your job correctly and that you should not have that job.
Any questions?
On the post: DOJ Using Antiquated 1789 'All Writs Act' To Try To Force Phone Manufacturers To Help Unlock Encrypted Phones
Re: Re: Shredding services
The UK would have those open in no time, no warrant, no nothing, then they'd disappear you.
On the post: DOJ Using Antiquated 1789 'All Writs Act' To Try To Force Phone Manufacturers To Help Unlock Encrypted Phones
These 2 are not even close to one another...
Courts are already finding that a persons private data stored on the phone is the same as files stored in a safe in their home or office and require a warrant to get to.
This is their only way to get the data is with a warrant and the court attempting to coerce the owner into decrypting the records.
Any other method is illegal and violates the constitution.
I would say forcing the owner to hand over the decryption code could also be said to be self-incrimination which would also violate the constitution, but apparently some judges just don't care about the law anymore.
On the post: Forget EU's Toothless Vote To 'Break Up' Google; Be Worried About Nonsensical 'Unbiased Search' Proposal
Google doesn't dominate the search market...
They are continuously showing their ignorance to the nth degree by repeatedly making public claims, that Google dominates the search industry.
This claim is patently false as Google doesn't force anyone to use their search engine.
The truth of the matter is that the World's population dominates and controls who gets to do searches for them, and the world's population has predominantly chosen Google to do their searches.
We the majority of the people on Terra have repeatedly and consistently decided that we prefer the results given by Google over other search engines.
How is that Google dominating an industry?
If a competitor doesn't like that we like Google's search better than theirs, all they have to do is make a better search engine than Google's and people will switch.
The problem is that that hasn't happened yet, and probably won't for the foreseeable future, since no other corporation in the world invests as heavily into research and development to keep improving the search results as Google does.
Is it Google's fault that no other company is willing to do their homework to get better? No.
It it Google's fault that people choose them to provide answers and search results? No.
Does Google dominate the search industry? No. Let me repeat that, Hell No.
The people choose Google because they trust the results.
So, EU, if you want to continue to show that you have a collective IQ of a snail, please continue with your pedantic lies and threats. The rest of the world knows and understands that you are being childish idiots.
On the post: Music Publishers, With Help From Rightscorp, Test Legal Theory That DMCA Requires Kicking Repeat Infringers Off The Internet
Re:
I would phrase it as RIAA sucks Cox for money.
On the post: Music Publishers, With Help From Rightscorp, Test Legal Theory That DMCA Requires Kicking Repeat Infringers Off The Internet
Re: Re: Class Action Lawsuit against MPAA
It's an attempt to scare a consumer who has legally purchased an item and should be treated as such.
How many millions of DVDs / Blu-Rays have been sold with these threats in them, threatening citizens with all kinds of badness that haven't done anything illegal.
If nothing else, it would come under slander / libel as it's a bald faced accusation of infringement by the MPAA Rico Gang members.
On the post: Music Publishers, With Help From Rightscorp, Test Legal Theory That DMCA Requires Kicking Repeat Infringers Off The Internet
Class Action Lawsuit against MPAA
Do you get upset when you insert a newly bought DVD or Blu-Ray disc and cannot skip those damned advertisements or legal threats forced upon us by the MPAA Rico Gang?
How much of your life is wasted sitting through things you don't want to, shouldn't have to, doesn't apply to you?
Why threaten people who legally purchased content? To make them angry? To make them not want to buy your product?
Why are they allowed to make false assertions and threats in the first place? Making a personal backup of a DVD for your personal use has been declared fair use in the courts, so all of their legalsleeze is a lie, a mis-representation of the law to intimidate people.
Why does the MPAA think they have the right to hijack our personal DVD/Blu-Ray players?
I want my time back, I want to be able to "skip" over their threats and allegations that I am a criminal for buying their product.
I feel that if I bought it, I shouldn't have to sit through their legalsleeze and ficticious warnings about consequences that will never apply to me since I bought the damned product to begin with.
I think that a minimum fine of $100.00 per DVD / Blu-Ray disc that has those "lockouts" that prevent skipping or fast forwarding during advertisements and fake legal threats would be a good start.
I would suggest that the MPAA Rico Gang should be made to pay for all replacement devices that remove those content controls entirely since they've been used for illegal (threatening consumers with fictitious penalties causing anxiety, worry, etc) in customers who have done absolutely nothing wrong.
So $100.00 per DVD/Blu-Ray with the threats and control lockouts, replacement device (consumers choice as to what to buy, 100% paid for by the MPAA) that removes the ability for content to prevent skipping or fast-forwarding, 1000.00 for pain and suffering of each device owner and a new law that prohibits the MPAA from ever implementing anything that takes any kind of controls out of the hands of the consumer.
On the post: Music Publishers, With Help From Rightscorp, Test Legal Theory That DMCA Requires Kicking Repeat Infringers Off The Internet
Re:
Since IP addresses can never decisively be tied to an individual (ip spoofing, mac address spoofing, open wifi, hacked wifi, etc) - there is no way that an ISP can prove that the ip address in question goes to any specific person.
Without this discernible link between individuals and services used, there is no legal way to acuse someone solely on ip address used, which is why the courts refuse to action the requests by the RIAA/MPAA Rico Gangs.
The really funny (not really to us, but funny on them) is that all of the infringement (their words, not ours) that they are attacking, improves their bottom line.
They would have better profits if they stopped wasting money on encryption and monitoring to attack their customer base.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: To go along with the Title II idea...
No corporation will want to pay taxes at a personal tax rate applied to billions of dollars of income.
That alone will find them giving up "personhood" :)
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
To go along with the Title II idea...
All the corporations out there appear to revel in their "personhood" status under the courts definition of the term.
One of the things that being a person / citizen of the United States entails is their responsibility to the Country and people at large.
During a war, if the draft were enabled, how would the corporation be drafted?
How does a corporation get called in for jury duty?
Best of all, how does a corporation get thrown in jail for killing someone?
That last one's a real kicker, the reason is that corporations today play it as a two way street.
For benefits, of personhood, they claim personhood.
For protection from personhood, like criminal charges or taxation, they claim corporate status.
They cannot be both.
If they want to claim personhood and all of the benefits that that entails, then they must submit to all of the responsibilities.
To that end, I submit the Corporate Personhood Responsibility Act.
In order for a corporation to be considered a person, they must do the following.
Identify every member of their board and high level executives that are involved in the major decision making process. These individuals will stand in lieu of the corporation when a legal issue arises. If a product kills another person, those individuals will stand trial for murder, with all the legal ramifications associated with the charges up to and including death penalty.
If a corporation steals from another corporation or person, the same laws that apply to an individual will apply to those same individuals that were there when the crime was committed. (leaving the company cannot and will not protect someone from actions that occurred while they were in power)
Lastly, the corporation will pay income taxes using the same rate as a non-married individual, both state and federal, on all income, not just profit at the appropriately scaled rate, going back to original tax ratios defined to scale as the amount of income climbs.
If the corporations want to play at being a person, then they need to pay like a person would, be treated legally like a person would, and have the same responsibilities that a person would.
Without these to balance out the benefits granted by the courts, it's all been one sided since the benefit was granted them.
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