Strangely, it seems pretty likely.
There have been quite a number of cases in the past few years where people showed uncanny loyalty, which is all the more surprising when you see how Trump "rewards" loyalty. :\ A single step out of bounds, even by accident, and you get fired and flamed both online and in the media. I'm surprised anyone is still willing to work for him at this point, let alone take the fall for any of his antics.
So I wouldn't be surprised either way:
Trump making the decision while ordering to keep him out,
Modly deciding to anticipate what Trump would decide (an easy one, "fire him" being Trump's first answer to any individual problem, "drop taxes" being the solution for more global issues),
or even a third possibility of Modly making his own decision while using Trump as an excuse (which people could easily believe, see comment on second option above).
(tldr version: if you deny criminals their rights, you don't have any either.)
This is a common problem: people, like you, saying in one form or another that criminals shouldn't have rights. That catching them is the end that justifies the means.
What they don't see is that, if criminals don't have rights, neither do innocents. How does a cop know that some guy is a criminal before abusing his rights? Answer is: he doesn't. The only reason you don't hear daily about innocent people getting the same kind of treatment is that most innocent people don't care about suing a cop that let them go (eventually). They have other things to do with their lives, time and money than suing cops.
But there are cases of cops acting this way with harmful - up to downright lethal - consequences for innocent people. Read about people getting shot for having a gun they never really had, or getting abusive physical examinations (up to repeated cavity searches) looking for drugs they never had... and more. Lots more.
Once again, do not deny criminals their rights or do not expect to have any right either. Your legal system cannot select who gets to enjoy their rights. If it does, you're in a police state with all the negative meanings behind it.
Re: 'Now I shall generously give you what I took from you before
This reflects directly Biden's answer to health care: "now that it's a crisis, we should give people free cure." For those so-called "leaders", the problem is not so much the health crisis, but the media crisis that derives from it.
Health care, Internet usage caps and more, from generic issues to specific ones, there are tons of things that suddenly get in the spotlight in times of crisis, that shouldn't have needed crisis management to begin with.
Those are problems that happen all the time. They just affect more people in tough times, so the media suddenly get interested enough. Sadly, I bet the media will just as quickly forget about it as soon as the pandemic situation is resolved. It's up to the people to remember and continue bringing it up after the crisis is out of the front-page.
To vote against EARN IT, supporters will misleadingly claim, is to vote for the spread of child porn, so it's going to be tough to find lawmakers willing to push back.
This tool has been widely used and abused for so long, it's a wonder it still works. This proves that people don't learn, which means this form of democracy doesn't either.
That's the weakness of democracy: it relies on people being educated enough to choose well when they are asked. (Elections, polls and surveys.) If the people are kept ignorant and under-educated, they won't be able to make good choices, be it for their own good or the general good.
Just let people understand that this bill does nothing to actually fight child exploitation and only uses this as a prop to advance the agenda of an always power-hungry government and there would be no support for it. All these companies and individuals come out as supporters for the easy PR win it gets them, which wouldn't be one if the bill was properly known for the power grab it is rather than the child exploitation fix it isn't.
Re: This is a BS article, and Techdirt should know it
I agree that he was probably just short-listed for the next round of data collection. The cops weren't considering him suspect enough to arrest him (yet?), but they were definitely at the stage of getting the full private data set from Google, so they did consider him suspect him to move that step forward.
This is shown when they mention that "the Gainesville PD withdrew [the request], saying statements made in the McCoy's lawyer's filings made it clear they were targeting the wrong person." Problem is that they were moving forward with nothing else than his name being on the list of people "in the neighborhood" when the crime occurred. And they probably have tons of other names in their list, people who probably didn't consider contesting the request worth the expense for a lawyer. These ones will be investigated to a degree that should be (and probably is) unconstitutional. They're just not going to make the news.
So, the problem is not that this specific individual was a formal suspect, which he wasn't (since he was not indicted), but that he was "suspicious enough" by the cop (loose) standards that they could request tons of personal information on him. Without any reasonable evidence that he's worthy of investigating.
That's the base definition of a fishing expedition, which is supposed to be illegal.
Phone companies don't either.
They need to know connection times for billing purposes, but they don't need to keep location data any more than Google does.
This is a common problem: people, like you, saying in one form or another that criminals shouldn't have rights. That catching them is the end that justifies the means.
What they don't see is that, if criminals don't have rights, neither do innocents. How does a cop know that some guy is a criminal before abusing his rights? Answer is: he doesn't. The only reason you don't hear daily about innocent people getting the same kind of treatment is that most innocent people don't care about suing a cop that let them go (eventually). They have other things to do with their lives, time and money than suing cops.
But there are cases of cops acting this way with harmful - up to downright lethal - consequences for innocent people. Read about people getting shot for having a gun they never really had, or getting abusive physical examinations (up to repeated cavity searches) looking for drugs they never had... and more. Lots more.
Once again, do not deny criminals their rights or do not expect to have any right either. Your legal system cannot select who gets to enjoy their rights. If it does, you're in a police state with all the negative meanings behind it.
As for myself, I would still trust them if they made one mistake, issued a correction then learned from it. Instead, they make a mistake, issue a correction, then repeat it. Over and over again.
This shows that we can't trust them on anything. At least not without cross-referencing.
It might be bad form to reply to oneself, but I just had a second thought about their proposal here. Is it simply a "door in the face" technique? If so, we'll have to be on guard for their next idea.
In their proposals, it's not even "back-door censorship". It's "straight-up censorship". No sugar-coating or ambiguity. The government decides what acceptable speech is, and expects you to meet their goals, regardless of the means to get there. No "best effort", the ends is all that counts:
Such an approach would hold companies accountable for the ends they have achieved rather than ensuring the validity of how they got there.
Governments could also approach accountability by requiring that companies meet specific targets regarding their content moderation systems. Such an approach would hold companies accountable for the ends they have achieved rather than ensuring the validity of how they got there.
Great approach to free speech: let the government establish standards of what good speech is. (sarcasm inside, in case you miss it.)
For example, regulators could say that internet platforms must publish annual data on the “prevalence” of content that violates their policies, and that companies must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the prevalence of violating content remains below some standard threshold. If prevalence rises above this threshold, then the company might be subject to greater oversight, specific improvement plans, or—in the case of repeated systematic failures—fines.
Next, you assume it's easy to assign value to the speech, even according to some arbitrary government-mandated standard.
The government deciding what speech is acceptable and gets legal leverage against platforms that don't meet the standard. Read this again and you realize that Facebook is here advocating for actual government censorship. The most direct violation of the First Amendment you can conceive. How can they be that direct and still have credibility?
It might be a different type of sale, but it's still a legal one, where the retailer sold a car with a list of features, some of which got deactivated after the sale. You might expect defects in such a sale, but this is a case where a feature was willfully deactivated after the purchase, not a defect that existed before.
This could have been relevant if one of these features not working was the cause of the buyback. This would then be documented somewhere (though maybe not actively disclaimed), and would predate the second sale. This might void the customer's standing to sue, but that case above doesn't seem to match these conditions.
This is not quite new.
Sony did the exact same thing with the PS3 quite a few times.
There was a joke running around that portrayed the PS3 as the only console in the market to lose features on each "upgrade".
That it now affects cars makes it more serious, but not new.
Now, for this one case that made the headlines, how many victims of copyright bullying did not get an "apology" only aimed at cutting a PR nightmare short?
No, this is not significant enough to condemn all dogs as "walking targets".
Going by your insane logic, why do we not simply kill all humans as a danger to humanity and nature? There are far more than 16 child deaths by the hands of humans each year than there are by the "hands" of dogs.
The answer is obvious, and unless you provide significant statistics that a vast majority of dogs are killing children, we should go by the same logic for dogs as we go for humans: only kill an individual when he is a danger, preferably after making sure there is no other way to neutralize the threat.
Also many dogs save lives and help people, both emotionally and functionally. They are not a simple relic of "domesticated wolves used for hunting". If that's all you think dogs are, you are more of a relic of the past than they are.
Re: 'Now now, you said it was okay when your guy was in charge..
Politics became nothing more than a team sports to them. Nothing matters as long as your team is winning. No amount of hypocrisy will stop them: what was good when they had the ball is bad when the opposite team gets it. For what it's worth, these arguments are nothing more than tackles and interceptions they use in order to steal the ball back.
Truth is irrelevant, principles don't exist, facts are only as good as you can convince people of them. It's all a game to them - or some of them - even though it can start a third world war or starve disaster victims.
On the post: Navy Deploys USS Barbra Streisand After Firing A Captain For Expressing His Coronavirus Concerns
Re: Re: Re:
Strangely, it seems pretty likely.
There have been quite a number of cases in the past few years where people showed uncanny loyalty, which is all the more surprising when you see how Trump "rewards" loyalty. :\ A single step out of bounds, even by accident, and you get fired and flamed both online and in the media. I'm surprised anyone is still willing to work for him at this point, let alone take the fall for any of his antics.
So I wouldn't be surprised either way:
On the post: Court Tells Lying Cops That Someone Asserting Their Rights Isn't 'Reasonably Suspicious'
Re:
I'll repeat what I stated in another post:
(tldr version: if you deny criminals their rights, you don't have any either.)
This is a common problem: people, like you, saying in one form or another that criminals shouldn't have rights. That catching them is the end that justifies the means.
What they don't see is that, if criminals don't have rights, neither do innocents. How does a cop know that some guy is a criminal before abusing his rights? Answer is: he doesn't. The only reason you don't hear daily about innocent people getting the same kind of treatment is that most innocent people don't care about suing a cop that let them go (eventually). They have other things to do with their lives, time and money than suing cops.
But there are cases of cops acting this way with harmful - up to downright lethal - consequences for innocent people. Read about people getting shot for having a gun they never really had, or getting abusive physical examinations (up to repeated cavity searches) looking for drugs they never had... and more. Lots more.
Once again, do not deny criminals their rights or do not expect to have any right either. Your legal system cannot select who gets to enjoy their rights. If it does, you're in a police state with all the negative meanings behind it.
On the post: US ISPs Drop Usage Caps, Pledge To Avoid Kicking Users Offline During Coronavirus
Re: You know what they say…
"There are no capitalists in foxholes"?
:D
On the post: US ISPs Drop Usage Caps, Pledge To Avoid Kicking Users Offline During Coronavirus
Re: 'Now I shall generously give you what I took from you before
This reflects directly Biden's answer to health care: "now that it's a crisis, we should give people free cure." For those so-called "leaders", the problem is not so much the health crisis, but the media crisis that derives from it.
Health care, Internet usage caps and more, from generic issues to specific ones, there are tons of things that suddenly get in the spotlight in times of crisis, that shouldn't have needed crisis management to begin with.
Those are problems that happen all the time. They just affect more people in tough times, so the media suddenly get interested enough. Sadly, I bet the media will just as quickly forget about it as soon as the pandemic situation is resolved. It's up to the people to remember and continue bringing it up after the crisis is out of the front-page.
On the post: EPIC Offers Its Support Of The EARN IT Act; Thinks It Can Separate Undermining Section 230 From Undermining Encryption
This tool has been widely used and abused for so long, it's a wonder it still works. This proves that people don't learn, which means this form of democracy doesn't either.
That's the weakness of democracy: it relies on people being educated enough to choose well when they are asked. (Elections, polls and surveys.) If the people are kept ignorant and under-educated, they won't be able to make good choices, be it for their own good or the general good.
Just let people understand that this bill does nothing to actually fight child exploitation and only uses this as a prop to advance the agenda of an always power-hungry government and there would be no support for it. All these companies and individuals come out as supporters for the easy PR win it gets them, which wouldn't be one if the bill was properly known for the power grab it is rather than the child exploitation fix it isn't.
On the post: Florida PD's Reverse Warrant Leads To Innocent Man Being Targeted In A Robbery Investigation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You do need an identifier. You don't need a location history attached to it.
On the post: Arrests R Us: Six-Year-Old Cuffed And Tossed Into A Cop Car For 'Throwing A Tantrum' At School
For once, the following is appropriate:
Next time you want to call the cops on children, pause and think of the children.
On the post: Florida PD's Reverse Warrant Leads To Innocent Man Being Targeted In A Robbery Investigation
Re: This is a BS article, and Techdirt should know it
I agree that he was probably just short-listed for the next round of data collection. The cops weren't considering him suspect enough to arrest him (yet?), but they were definitely at the stage of getting the full private data set from Google, so they did consider him suspect him to move that step forward.
This is shown when they mention that "the Gainesville PD withdrew [the request], saying statements made in the McCoy's lawyer's filings made it clear they were targeting the wrong person." Problem is that they were moving forward with nothing else than his name being on the list of people "in the neighborhood" when the crime occurred. And they probably have tons of other names in their list, people who probably didn't consider contesting the request worth the expense for a lawyer. These ones will be investigated to a degree that should be (and probably is) unconstitutional. They're just not going to make the news.
So, the problem is not that this specific individual was a formal suspect, which he wasn't (since he was not indicted), but that he was "suspicious enough" by the cop (loose) standards that they could request tons of personal information on him. Without any reasonable evidence that he's worthy of investigating.
That's the base definition of a fishing expedition, which is supposed to be illegal.
On the post: Florida PD's Reverse Warrant Leads To Innocent Man Being Targeted In A Robbery Investigation
Re: Re:
Phone companies don't either.
They need to know connection times for billing purposes, but they don't need to keep location data any more than Google does.
On the post: Court Tells Cop That A Person Invoking Their Rights Isn't Suspicious Behavior
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
This is a common problem: people, like you, saying in one form or another that criminals shouldn't have rights. That catching them is the end that justifies the means.
What they don't see is that, if criminals don't have rights, neither do innocents. How does a cop know that some guy is a criminal before abusing his rights? Answer is: he doesn't. The only reason you don't hear daily about innocent people getting the same kind of treatment is that most innocent people don't care about suing a cop that let them go (eventually). They have other things to do with their lives, time and money than suing cops.
But there are cases of cops acting this way with harmful - up to downright lethal - consequences for innocent people. Read about people getting shot for having a gun they never really had, or getting abusive physical examinations (up to repeated cavity searches) looking for drugs they never had... and more. Lots more.
Once again, do not deny criminals their rights or do not expect to have any right either. Your legal system cannot select who gets to enjoy their rights. If it does, you're in a police state with all the negative meanings behind it.
On the post: Why Does The NY Times Seem Literally Incapable Of Reporting Accurately On Section 230?
Re:
As for myself, I would still trust them if they made one mistake, issued a correction then learned from it. Instead, they make a mistake, issue a correction, then repeat it. Over and over again.
This shows that we can't trust them on anything. At least not without cross-referencing.
On the post: Mark Zuckerberg Suggests Getting Rid Of Section 230; Maybe People Should Stop Pretending It's A Gift To Facebook
Re:
It might be bad form to reply to oneself, but I just had a second thought about their proposal here. Is it simply a "door in the face" technique? If so, we'll have to be on guard for their next idea.
On the post: Mark Zuckerberg Suggests Getting Rid Of Section 230; Maybe People Should Stop Pretending It's A Gift To Facebook
Re: Government back-door censorship
In their proposals, it's not even "back-door censorship". It's "straight-up censorship". No sugar-coating or ambiguity. The government decides what acceptable speech is, and expects you to meet their goals, regardless of the means to get there. No "best effort", the ends is all that counts:
On the post: Mark Zuckerberg Suggests Getting Rid Of Section 230; Maybe People Should Stop Pretending It's A Gift To Facebook
Great approach to free speech: let the government establish standards of what good speech is. (sarcasm inside, in case you miss it.)
Next, you assume it's easy to assign value to the speech, even according to some arbitrary government-mandated standard.
The government deciding what speech is acceptable and gets legal leverage against platforms that don't meet the standard. Read this again and you realize that Facebook is here advocating for actual government censorship. The most direct violation of the First Amendment you can conceive. How can they be that direct and still have credibility?
On the post: Court To Prosecutors Who Sent Crime Victims Fake Subpoenas Threatening Them With Arrest: Pretty Sure Immunity Doesn't Cover That
Re: There's an even bigger problem..
... which is exactly illustrated by the last example in the article itself.
On the post: The End Of Ownership: Tesla Software Updates Giveth... And Tesla Software Updates Taketh Away...
Re: Lemon law buy-back and subsequent sale
It might be a different type of sale, but it's still a legal one, where the retailer sold a car with a list of features, some of which got deactivated after the sale. You might expect defects in such a sale, but this is a case where a feature was willfully deactivated after the purchase, not a defect that existed before.
This could have been relevant if one of these features not working was the cause of the buyback. This would then be documented somewhere (though maybe not actively disclaimed), and would predate the second sale. This might void the customer's standing to sue, but that case above doesn't seem to match these conditions.
On the post: The End Of Ownership: Tesla Software Updates Giveth... And Tesla Software Updates Taketh Away...
This is not quite new.
Sony did the exact same thing with the PS3 quite a few times.
There was a joke running around that portrayed the PS3 as the only console in the market to lose features on each "upgrade".
That it now affects cars makes it more serious, but not new.
On the post: Disney's Licensing Dogs Charge Underserved School District A Third Of Fundraiser Money For Playing 'Lion King' DVD
Re:
Nice. That's kind of a happy ending.
Now, for this one case that made the headlines, how many victims of copyright bullying did not get an "apology" only aimed at cutting a PR nightmare short?
On the post: Court To Cop: We Don't Need On-Point Precedent To Deny You Immunity For Killing A Dog That Couldn't Hurt You
Re: Re: Re:
No, this is not significant enough to condemn all dogs as "walking targets".
Going by your insane logic, why do we not simply kill all humans as a danger to humanity and nature? There are far more than 16 child deaths by the hands of humans each year than there are by the "hands" of dogs.
The answer is obvious, and unless you provide significant statistics that a vast majority of dogs are killing children, we should go by the same logic for dogs as we go for humans: only kill an individual when he is a danger, preferably after making sure there is no other way to neutralize the threat.
Also many dogs save lives and help people, both emotionally and functionally. They are not a simple relic of "domesticated wolves used for hunting". If that's all you think dogs are, you are more of a relic of the past than they are.
On the post: Defense Department Watchdog Says Retaliation Against Whistleblowers Is The Rule, Not The Exception
Re: 'Now now, you said it was okay when your guy was in charge..
Politics became nothing more than a team sports to them. Nothing matters as long as your team is winning. No amount of hypocrisy will stop them: what was good when they had the ball is bad when the opposite team gets it. For what it's worth, these arguments are nothing more than tackles and interceptions they use in order to steal the ball back.
Truth is irrelevant, principles don't exist, facts are only as good as you can convince people of them. It's all a game to them - or some of them - even though it can start a third world war or starve disaster victims.
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