It's especially absurd when you consider the twin facts that state officials -- even judges and legislators -- are not immune to prosecution under Title 18, Sections 241 & 242 of the US Code... and that those federal statutes criminalize violations of constitutional rights under color of law.
Yeah, the union that claims (with a straight face) that cops can smell marijuana across three lanes of traffic at highway speeds, when driving the opposite way well enough to pinpoint the car it's coming from.
There's supposed to be a legal penalty for it, but you almost never see it because the Department of Justice is vastly smaller than it would need to be to pursue every such case, even if we didn't have a President pressuring them not to go after bad cops.
Since federal court doctrine is that there is no difference between mere possession of a firearm during a crime and use of that firearm to commit the crime if the crime can become a felony with the use of a firearm, it's RARE for any cop to commit a mere misdemeanor violation of deprivation of rights under color of law.
The US government has over a hundred times greater access to people's communications, personal papers and everything else now than it did when the Fourth Amendment was written. The US government has surveillance capabilities beyond the worst nightmares of our founders.
Our law enforcement has never had a problem finding anyone from petty thieves to traitors, from illegal immigrants to foreign spies. But they're saying now that their incredible wealth of information is insufficient, that we are at risk of them being unable to catch all these bad people if we return to a level of government surveillance that persisted for most of our history, that they had zero problems with then.
The answer is as simple as it is obvious. The tech sector is not the group that needs to nerd harder. They people who need to nerd harder are the government agencies that are apparently slacking off, because with greater capacity to find bad guys they are claiming a reduced ability to actually pursue them.
Giving them more tools when they aren't fully utilizing the ones they already have is silly, they just won't fully utilize those either.
They just need to nerd harder at the NSA, DOJ and ICE.
Re: How to talk out of both sides of ones mouth at the same time
Pretty much. If the encryption keeps out a government Luddite in a hurry, it would be banned. But data thieves and spies (corporate or foreign government) are usually a LOT more tech savvy than Luddite-leaning regulators, and anything that would keep a thief or spy out for five minutes would be an impassable barrier to a Luddite.
It's not just Republicans. The Democrats have their equivalent as well -- for example, Obama ran to undo the perceived abuses of power committed by his predecessor in the office. Obama not only didn't reverse those policies, once he had the power he found them to be pretty neat and used them as a starting point, not a limit to his own authority.
Most of the people howling about how Bush was abusing power and should be impeached for it strangely had no problems with Obama doing worse things of the same nature. Some even went so far as to claim that Obama's skin color was the only possible reason for anyone to dislike his politics or abuses of power.
Both sides will scream for impeachment for behavior that they condone when their side does it. And it's getting more vicious and vitriolic with every year.
I've always wondered why a member of the public wouldn't have standing to sue a company for untrue assertions of ownership of public domain works. Granted, each individual citizen owns a very small share of the public domain, but they do own it.
The recent story about the "yes we have no bananas" song and Universal Music comes to mind -- UM monetized someone's recording of public domain music, with no recourse for the owner of the recording. That would seem to be a violation of copyright.
It also took them hours to gather the information that the government is required to have ready at hand by law.
If someone were to answer a government-issued subpoena using the same tactics the government uses when answering open records requests, the person answering the subpoena that way would be in jail.
Something even more ridiculous than alcohol breathalyzers
There's a new type of breathalyzer out there, that detects cannabis metabolites. Those metabolites can trigger a positive result on the thing, up to 28 days after the intoxication effect wears off.
They can't detect actual cannabis intoxication, mind you, just whether someone ingested some in the past month. But a positive result on them is treated by police as proof of DUI.
Yes, but they cannot compel the after-arrest test unless there has been an arrest, and they use the wildly inaccurate test to justify the arrest. That's an invasion of privacy, under US laws.
And who is to say the second test is any more accurate than the first?
Whereas in Canada, they can test you up to two hours after you last operated a vehicle, and if you have alcohol in your system -- for example, going home after work, eating dinner 30 minutes after getting home and having a few beers 30 minutes after dinner -- you get a DUI.
If she made those statements in court, that's 23 FELONY counts she committed. But she's a cop so it wouldn't further the cause of justice to punish her like one of the peasants would be for the same offense.
Yup. You or I commit 23 counts of filing a false police report, commit a federal felony (false arrest while in possession of a firearm) and aggravated assault while in possession of a firearm (you can't handcuff someone while making a false arrest without committing assault) and we'd be in prison for decades after being denied bail due to the heinous nature of our crimes.
Ever wondered what the constitutional protections for due process, freedom from cruel & unusual punishment and being innocent until proven guilty look like? Look no further than how a cop accused of wrongdoing is treated by other cops and the courts. It's only corruption because they reserve that treatment for their own, despite it being mandatory for EVERYONE.
Police departments and unions LOVE to claim that officers like this are just a few bad apples. But what they seem to have forgotten, is that the saying about bad apples refers to what happens if you don't throw out the few bad apples.
You end up with an entire load of nothing BUT bad apples.
Complain to the court and make it a class action. I'm sure the bad company has enough people affected by the outage yet being billed anyway to qualify.
Makes me wonder if any member of the general public -- the owners of the rights to the public domain -- now has standing to sue Universal Music for a copyright violation?
On the post: Pennsylvania Supreme Court Says Compelled Password Production Violates The Fifth Amendment
Re: A telling, and worrying, argument
It's especially absurd when you consider the twin facts that state officials -- even judges and legislators -- are not immune to prosecution under Title 18, Sections 241 & 242 of the US Code... and that those federal statutes criminalize violations of constitutional rights under color of law.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/statutes-enforced-criminal-section
On the post: Court Tosses 82 Pounds Of Marijuana After Deputy Fails To Even Pretend His Traffic Stop Was Anything But Pretextual
Re: Re: What I want to know:
Yeah, the union that claims (with a straight face) that cops can smell marijuana across three lanes of traffic at highway speeds, when driving the opposite way well enough to pinpoint the car it's coming from.
On the post: Court Tosses 82 Pounds Of Marijuana After Deputy Fails To Even Pretend His Traffic Stop Was Anything But Pretextual
Re: Great, now about that penalty...
There's supposed to be a legal penalty for it, but you almost never see it because the Department of Justice is vastly smaller than it would need to be to pursue every such case, even if we didn't have a President pressuring them not to go after bad cops.
Since federal court doctrine is that there is no difference between mere possession of a firearm during a crime and use of that firearm to commit the crime if the crime can become a felony with the use of a firearm, it's RARE for any cop to commit a mere misdemeanor violation of deprivation of rights under color of law.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-law
On the post: Court Tosses 82 Pounds Of Marijuana After Deputy Fails To Even Pretend His Traffic Stop Was Anything But Pretextual
Re: Re:
That hasn't stopped other cops in the past. It sometimes hasn't stopped courts from ruling against the defendant!
On the post: EU Tells US: Ban Strong Encryption, And Privacy Shield Data Sharing Agreement Could Be At Risk
Nerding Harder
The US government has over a hundred times greater access to people's communications, personal papers and everything else now than it did when the Fourth Amendment was written. The US government has surveillance capabilities beyond the worst nightmares of our founders.
Our law enforcement has never had a problem finding anyone from petty thieves to traitors, from illegal immigrants to foreign spies. But they're saying now that their incredible wealth of information is insufficient, that we are at risk of them being unable to catch all these bad people if we return to a level of government surveillance that persisted for most of our history, that they had zero problems with then.
The answer is as simple as it is obvious. The tech sector is not the group that needs to nerd harder. They people who need to nerd harder are the government agencies that are apparently slacking off, because with greater capacity to find bad guys they are claiming a reduced ability to actually pursue them.
Giving them more tools when they aren't fully utilizing the ones they already have is silly, they just won't fully utilize those either.
They just need to nerd harder at the NSA, DOJ and ICE.
On the post: EU Tells US: Ban Strong Encryption, And Privacy Shield Data Sharing Agreement Could Be At Risk
Re: How to talk out of both sides of ones mouth at the same time
Pretty much. If the encryption keeps out a government Luddite in a hurry, it would be banned. But data thieves and spies (corporate or foreign government) are usually a LOT more tech savvy than Luddite-leaning regulators, and anything that would keep a thief or spy out for five minutes would be an impassable barrier to a Luddite.
So it has to go.
On the post: Attorney General Calls FOIA Requests 'Harassment' During Long Rant About How Much It Sucks To Be Running The Nation
Re: The Worst Part is...
It's not just Republicans. The Democrats have their equivalent as well -- for example, Obama ran to undo the perceived abuses of power committed by his predecessor in the office. Obama not only didn't reverse those policies, once he had the power he found them to be pretty neat and used them as a starting point, not a limit to his own authority.
Most of the people howling about how Bush was abusing power and should be impeached for it strangely had no problems with Obama doing worse things of the same nature. Some even went so far as to claim that Obama's skin color was the only possible reason for anyone to dislike his politics or abuses of power.
Both sides will scream for impeachment for behavior that they condone when their side does it. And it's getting more vicious and vitriolic with every year.
On the post: The Curious Case Of The Bogus CC License On A 3D Scan Of A 3000-Year-Old Bust Of Nefertiti
Re: Definition of "public domain"
I've always wondered why a member of the public wouldn't have standing to sue a company for untrue assertions of ownership of public domain works. Granted, each individual citizen owns a very small share of the public domain, but they do own it.
The recent story about the "yes we have no bananas" song and Universal Music comes to mind -- UM monetized someone's recording of public domain music, with no recourse for the owner of the recording. That would seem to be a violation of copyright.
On the post: Court Says Portland, Oregon City Government Can No Longer Screw Public Records Requesters With Excessive Fees
Re: Why in hell..
It also took them hours to gather the information that the government is required to have ready at hand by law.
If someone were to answer a government-issued subpoena using the same tactics the government uses when answering open records requests, the person answering the subpoena that way would be in jail.
On the post: Roadside Breath Tests Are Just As Unreliable As Field Drug Tests
Something even more ridiculous than alcohol breathalyzers
There's a new type of breathalyzer out there, that detects cannabis metabolites. Those metabolites can trigger a positive result on the thing, up to 28 days after the intoxication effect wears off.
They can't detect actual cannabis intoxication, mind you, just whether someone ingested some in the past month. But a positive result on them is treated by police as proof of DUI.
On the post: Roadside Breath Tests Are Just As Unreliable As Field Drug Tests
Re: Re:
Yes, but they cannot compel the after-arrest test unless there has been an arrest, and they use the wildly inaccurate test to justify the arrest. That's an invasion of privacy, under US laws.
And who is to say the second test is any more accurate than the first?
On the post: Roadside Breath Tests Are Just As Unreliable As Field Drug Tests
Re: Re:
Whereas in Canada, they can test you up to two hours after you last operated a vehicle, and if you have alcohol in your system -- for example, going home after work, eating dinner 30 minutes after getting home and having a few beers 30 minutes after dinner -- you get a DUI.
On the post: Court Says It's Not Tortious Interference To Report Your Account Or Ask Twitter To Ban You
Re: Re:
Generally it isn’t. But that also means that if a Black Lives Matter member can be badgered out of their home just as legally.
On the post: Photographer's Bullshit Arrest By A Dallas Transit Cop Nets Him A $345,000 Settlement
Re: Re: Punishment for the officer?
If she made those statements in court, that's 23 FELONY counts she committed. But she's a cop so it wouldn't further the cause of justice to punish her like one of the peasants would be for the same offense.
On the post: Photographer's Bullshit Arrest By A Dallas Transit Cop Nets Him A $345,000 Settlement
Re: Punishment for the officer?
Yup. You or I commit 23 counts of filing a false police report, commit a federal felony (false arrest while in possession of a firearm) and aggravated assault while in possession of a firearm (you can't handcuff someone while making a false arrest without committing assault) and we'd be in prison for decades after being denied bail due to the heinous nature of our crimes.
Ever wondered what the constitutional protections for due process, freedom from cruel & unusual punishment and being innocent until proven guilty look like? Look no further than how a cop accused of wrongdoing is treated by other cops and the courts. It's only corruption because they reserve that treatment for their own, despite it being mandatory for EVERYONE.
On the post: Photographer's Bullshit Arrest By A Dallas Transit Cop Nets Him A $345,000 Settlement
One bad apple spoils the bunch
Police departments and unions LOVE to claim that officers like this are just a few bad apples. But what they seem to have forgotten, is that the saying about bad apples refers to what happens if you don't throw out the few bad apples.
You end up with an entire load of nothing BUT bad apples.
On the post: Attorney General Calls FOIA Requests 'Harassment' During Long Rant About How Much It Sucks To Be Running The Nation
Oh, the poor widdle baby...
Seriously, if obeying and enforcing the law is just too much work for you, WHY are you working in a law enforcement field?!?
On the post: Federal Judge Asks DEA To Explain Why All 179 Of Its Stash House Sting Targets Are Minorities
Re: Re:
No, they don't exist. Which makes actus rea impossible.
On the post: Apathy Isn't A Business Model: Major US Telcos Teeter Toward Bankruptcy
Re: Re: Out of service... again...
Complain to the court and make it a class action. I'm sure the bad company has enough people affected by the outage yet being billed anyway to qualify.
On the post: Universal Music Claims Copyright Over Newly Public Domain 'Yes! We Have No Bananas'
Re:
Makes me wonder if any member of the general public -- the owners of the rights to the public domain -- now has standing to sue Universal Music for a copyright violation?
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