Every government considers itself supremely sovereign. Other governments disagree. If one or the other does so too strenuously, it creates a casus belli and that frequently leads to more...vigorous...debate.
What I've never been able to understand is how, given the incredibly repetitive nature of the above process throughout human history, why it is that government officials continually fail to recognize what they are setting into motion.
It's not different in Kansas, but there's a key distinction here.
The cop isn't being punished for not knowing the law. The cop's victim is being un-punished for not breaking the law in any way that would justify the stop that led to their conviction on other charges.
The problem is that written statutes are modified by case law every day, which can potentially alter them in ways that give the law in practice the reverse meaning of the statute in theory.
Unless the statute is rewritten every time a court publishes a decision, it is literally impossible for people without access to an up to the minute legal library and all the time in the world to read it, to keep up. Even with time and access, the law is so vast that no one person can read every update, there isn't enough time in a lifetime to read the entire body of law and there isn't enough time in a day to read all of the day's updates.
This leaves the average citizen fundamentally incapable of knowing what is the law and is not the law, yet we are expected to know it well enough that ignorance of it is not an excuse, based solely on a K-12 education.
But cops get that same education PLUS they get specialized training in what the law says and how to enforce it -- yet courts almost universally excuse their ignorance, even though they are less ignorant than the average citizen.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "And we should trust you THIS time why again?"
The proper term for what the UK did is 'casus belli'. The US Marine Corps still sings about a similar incident from a couple hundred years ago -- when they stormed the shores of Tripoli.
It's a little expensive, but if it will work to stop people from remote-wiping devices in law enforcement custody, it will keep a CPAP machine from phoning home wirelessly too.
The judges are products of the same school system and culture that produces people who genuinely believe that only criminals stand on their rights -- just like the villain of the week on Law & Order.
Plus, there is no easy way to determine whether a movie stream is authorized by the rights owner or not -- witness how many times movie and music companies have DMCA'd their own websites.
Suppose I draw a circle on a napkin. I snap a picture of the napkin with my phone and post it to social media. A random passer-by sees the napkin, snaps his own photo and posts it to social media as well.
One picture on social media is a properly licensed and authorized reproduction, the other is piracy. But there is no way for the social media platform or a search engine to know who owns the rights to the image of that napkin until someone registers the rights. And if the passer-by is the first to register, I as the rights owner won't be allowed to exercise those rights.
I can commit any number of felony crimes. Murder, assault, robbery, you name it -- I CAN do them, I have the means and ability. I don't have the motivation, but I have the physical capability to commit them.
But they're illegal, so I'd be punished for doing those things. That's what people mean when they say "X can't do that." They actually mean "can't do that lawfully."\
Just because you're mindlessly pedantic doesn't change that.
This almost happened to my mother. My grandmother had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure (with a lower chance to survive the operation than to survive the condition, due to her age). So she had been gradually getting worse, putting her affairs in order, and working with my mother and aunts to sort out her belongings.
Then one morning, my mother drove over to do more sorting, and found my grandmother collapsed across her bed, dead. From the way she was lying and the way she was dressed, it was obvious she had been putting her pajamas on, felt weak, and sat down to catch her breath. Then never moved again.
So, my mother called emergency services to report the dead body and to request transportation of my grandmother's body to the already-arranged funeral facilities. The first cop to arrive was a young buck who had visions of making a big murder bust dancing in his eyes, so occluding his vision that he never noticed any physical evidence.
So instead of calling it in as a death by natural causes, he called in a murder scene and demanded an investigator team to process the 'crime scene'. It took hours. He wouldn't let my mother leave the house, call anyone or even cover up her own mother's body. It wasn't until his supervisor wondered what was keeping him at a simple body pickup that the supervisor showed up and shut the idiot down, allowing sanity to prevail.
If cops will stop doing their jobs because they are actually required to do their jobs, then fire them and find someone who is willing to do their jobs. Even the most extreme collective bargaining laws allow an employer to specify the parameters of the job to be done. It doesn't matter what the union has negotiated if the boots on the ground flatly refuse to do the job they were hired to do.
Running out of cops isn't the issue here. Running out of corrupt cops would be a feature, not a bug.
This. And to expand on it, think of how delightedly surprised we are when a prosecutor and judge treats a cop who is accused of wrongdoing like every non-cop accused of the same thing is treated.
What's especially bad about that flavor of delight is that the way cops are usually treated -- that looks like systemic corruption to those of us on the outside -- is actually how everyone is supposed to be treated. It's what 'innocent until proven guilty' actually looks like in operation.
And we're delighted to see a cop treated as 'guilty until proven innocent' like the rest of us, even as that treatment ought to be horrifying. The corruption in those sorts of cases isn't that cops get treated as innocent until proven guilty, the corruption is that the courts don't treat EVERYONE that way!
Shooting yourself in the foot, with an anti-tank weapon
"quite correctly highlighting that ISPs are simply conduits to information, not acting as editors of available speech through their blocking or filtering of available information."
If ISPs actually did engage in the sort of content creation or editorial control necessary to validate their first amendment claims, that would cause CDA 230 to not apply to them, since Section 230 only applies to hosting the content of others.
But if they really want to make that argument, it will be expensive for them -- remember, statutory damages for copyright violations can be up to $150,000 per violation!
No, it didn't originate in either organized crime or socialism. It originated in a coffee shop.
One wealthy young man made a wager with another wealthy young man, about a ship making port on time, intact, and with a good cargo. This became a popular thing to wager on, and eventually word of it got back to a ship owner, who placed his own wager. He bet that his ship would suffer misfortune. He lost the bet, but that was the basis of the insurance business.
Lloyds Coffee Shop eventually became Lloyds of London, the most prestigious insurance company in the world. Insurance companies are legal casinos, even in places where gambling is otherwise illegal. You make a bet with the House, that you will suffer misfortune. The House analyzes the odds, and makes an asymmetric bet that you will be fine, the amount based on the odds.
The House almost always wins, but that's okay to most people because the payoff if the House loses is so large, and will monetarily replace what they're wagering about.
We call those wagers insurance premiums and insurance payouts today.
You seem to have missed that it is a criminal act for a public official to strip someone of a privilege because that official dislikes that someone's political beliefs.
It doesn't matter if it's a right or a privilege, what matters is that someone was harmed because they did something that was perfectly okay under the law, and were retaliated against for it.
I'm asking you here and now -- even though I have no authority whatsoever to do so (just like Trump and that intern) to sit down and stop posting.
Are you obligated to obey me, even though I have the same authority (none) to tell you to shut up that Trump had to tell that reporter to shut up?
If I can't do it despite the fact that it is LESS illegal for me to silence you than it is for an elected official to do so, then how can Trump do it when it's a felony every time he says it?
On the post: Pompous 'International Grand Committee' Signs Useless But Equally Pompous 'Declaration On Principles Of Law Governing The Internet'
Re: Re: 1-4
What I've never been able to understand is how, given the incredibly repetitive nature of the above process throughout human history, why it is that government officials continually fail to recognize what they are setting into motion.
On the post: Ignorance Of The Law Is No Excuse, Court Tells Cop
Re: Re:
The cop isn't being punished for not knowing the law. The cop's victim is being un-punished for not breaking the law in any way that would justify the stop that led to their conviction on other charges.
On the post: Ignorance Of The Law Is No Excuse, Court Tells Cop
Re: Re: Re: Re: how many laws?
Unless the statute is rewritten every time a court publishes a decision, it is literally impossible for people without access to an up to the minute legal library and all the time in the world to read it, to keep up. Even with time and access, the law is so vast that no one person can read every update, there isn't enough time in a lifetime to read the entire body of law and there isn't enough time in a day to read all of the day's updates.
This leaves the average citizen fundamentally incapable of knowing what is the law and is not the law, yet we are expected to know it well enough that ignorance of it is not an excuse, based solely on a K-12 education.
But cops get that same education PLUS they get specialized training in what the law says and how to enforce it -- yet courts almost universally excuse their ignorance, even though they are less ignorant than the average citizen.
On the post: To Obtain Documents About Facebook Data-Sharing, UK Gov't Seizes And Detains A US Executive Working For A Different Company
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "And we should trust you THIS time why again?"
On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients
Re:
https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Darkness-Enforcement-Military-Protection/dp/B077NS2MMJ
On the post: To Prosecute A Single Bombing Suspect, FBI Demands Identifying Info On Thousands Of YouTube Viewers
Re: Trying to set another precedent
Innocent people don't need rights, you see.
On the post: Google, Village Roadshow Weigh In On New Search Blocking Amendments To Australian Copyright Law
Re:
Suppose I draw a circle on a napkin. I snap a picture of the napkin with my phone and post it to social media. A random passer-by sees the napkin, snaps his own photo and posts it to social media as well.
One picture on social media is a properly licensed and authorized reproduction, the other is piracy. But there is no way for the social media platform or a search engine to know who owns the rights to the image of that napkin until someone registers the rights. And if the passer-by is the first to register, I as the rights owner won't be allowed to exercise those rights.
On the post: Court To Law Enforcement: You Can't Seize A House For 15 Hours Before Obtaining A Warrant
Re:
But they're illegal, so I'd be punished for doing those things. That's what people mean when they say "X can't do that." They actually mean "can't do that lawfully."\
Just because you're mindlessly pedantic doesn't change that.
On the post: Court To Law Enforcement: You Can't Seize A House For 15 Hours Before Obtaining A Warrant
Re: why the show of force in the beginning?
Then one morning, my mother drove over to do more sorting, and found my grandmother collapsed across her bed, dead. From the way she was lying and the way she was dressed, it was obvious she had been putting her pajamas on, felt weak, and sat down to catch her breath. Then never moved again.
So, my mother called emergency services to report the dead body and to request transportation of my grandmother's body to the already-arranged funeral facilities. The first cop to arrive was a young buck who had visions of making a big murder bust dancing in his eyes, so occluding his vision that he never noticed any physical evidence.
So instead of calling it in as a death by natural causes, he called in a murder scene and demanded an investigator team to process the 'crime scene'. It took hours. He wouldn't let my mother leave the house, call anyone or even cover up her own mother's body. It wasn't until his supervisor wondered what was keeping him at a simple body pickup that the supervisor showed up and shut the idiot down, allowing sanity to prevail.
On the post: Court To Law Enforcement: You Can't Seize A House For 15 Hours Before Obtaining A Warrant
Re: Re: Re: Cops do what they please
Running out of cops isn't the issue here. Running out of corrupt cops would be a feature, not a bug.
On the post: Court To Law Enforcement: You Can't Seize A House For 15 Hours Before Obtaining A Warrant
Re: It makes my head hurt...
What's especially bad about that flavor of delight is that the way cops are usually treated -- that looks like systemic corruption to those of us on the outside -- is actually how everyone is supposed to be treated. It's what 'innocent until proven guilty' actually looks like in operation.
And we're delighted to see a cop treated as 'guilty until proven innocent' like the rest of us, even as that treatment ought to be horrifying. The corruption in those sorts of cases isn't that cops get treated as innocent until proven guilty, the corruption is that the courts don't treat EVERYONE that way!
On the post: Why Europe Will Never Build Its Own Digital Giants
Re: We need your presentation at the EP.
On the post: Why Europe Will Never Build Its Own Digital Giants
Re: Re: What makes Silicone Valley Silicone Valley?
.
.
.
.
.
Your head.
Whoosh.
On the post: Court Again Rules That Cable Giants Can't Weaponize The First Amendment
Shooting yourself in the foot, with an anti-tank weapon
If ISPs actually did engage in the sort of content creation or editorial control necessary to validate their first amendment claims, that would cause CDA 230 to not apply to them, since Section 230 only applies to hosting the content of others.
But if they really want to make that argument, it will be expensive for them -- remember, statutory damages for copyright violations can be up to $150,000 per violation!
On the post: Red Bull Fails To Block Trademark Registration In EU Over Logos That Aren't All That Similar
Re: This suit....
On the post: Police Misconduct, Data Breaches, And The Ongoing Lack Of Accountability That Allows These To Continue
Re: Re: Another profit center.
One wealthy young man made a wager with another wealthy young man, about a ship making port on time, intact, and with a good cargo. This became a popular thing to wager on, and eventually word of it got back to a ship owner, who placed his own wager. He bet that his ship would suffer misfortune. He lost the bet, but that was the basis of the insurance business.
Lloyds Coffee Shop eventually became Lloyds of London, the most prestigious insurance company in the world. Insurance companies are legal casinos, even in places where gambling is otherwise illegal. You make a bet with the House, that you will suffer misfortune. The House analyzes the odds, and makes an asymmetric bet that you will be fine, the amount based on the odds.
The House almost always wins, but that's okay to most people because the payoff if the House loses is so large, and will monetarily replace what they're wagering about.
We call those wagers insurance premiums and insurance payouts today.
On the post: Police Misconduct, Data Breaches, And The Ongoing Lack Of Accountability That Allows These To Continue
Re: Or Just Not Treat Law Enforcement As Gods
On the post: Judge Blocks White House From Pulling Jim Acosta's Press Pass, But The Battle Continues
Re: Blah... blah... TechDirt Leftist drivel...
It doesn't matter if it's a right or a privilege, what matters is that someone was harmed because they did something that was perfectly okay under the law, and were retaliated against for it.
On the post: Judge Blocks White House From Pulling Jim Acosta's Press Pass, But The Battle Continues
Re: Re:
Are you obligated to obey me, even though I have the same authority (none) to tell you to shut up that Trump had to tell that reporter to shut up?
If I can't do it despite the fact that it is LESS illegal for me to silence you than it is for an elected official to do so, then how can Trump do it when it's a felony every time he says it?
On the post: Appeals Court: No Immunity For Shooting A Man Who Had His Hands Up And Twice Said He Surrendered
Re: Choose your poison...
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