Does any individual have the right to demand your money on the threat of physical harm or confinement? No of course not.
No, but people do have the right to agree to contribute their money towards the accomplishment of shared goals.
On an individual level, that's done by talking it out among one another and making individual offers and acceptances.
On a larger scale, that's no longer practical. What we do instead is designate people to do the meeting, talking, offering, and accepting on our collective behalf. The act of designating those people is called an "election".
By electing people who decide to do things, and failing to recall those people or otherwise kick them out after they so decide, we as society have agreed to contribute our resources - in the form of money - to doing those things.
All the IRS does, in theory, is handle the collection of those resources for that purpose.
If individual members of society don't want to accede to that collective agreement, the only option society leaves them is to leave, and go live elsewhere. (Unfortunately, there is no longer much of anywhere left to go where no such agreement is in force - and the few possible candidates tend to be places where other factors make life relatively horrible anyway.)
The trouble with this is that the existing practices have been established under court rulings made in light of the Constitution and laws as they stand.
In other words, the courts involved have concluded that the Constitution does not prohibit the activities being undertaken which this bill would seek to prohibit.
You would need to somehow clarify to the courts that the language in the Constitution which they have thought does not prohibit this does, in the mind of Congress, prohibit this.
6) The Congress of the US can make no law abridging any clause in this act, whether preceding, including or following this clause.
That would be useless. Legislation passed by the current Congress cannot limit what legislation can be passed by future Congresses; only Constitutional amendment can do that, and even such amendments cannot limit future amendments. (ISTR that this has been held in court, quite possibly by the Supreme Court.)
If the U.S. has signed on to that Declaration, then it is indirectly binding on the U.S. government, although it will not govern in cases where it conflicts with higher authority (such as the Constitution).
In the absence of such a conflict, however, why wouldn't it be relevant?
No - what they're claiming here is that people like relevant ads better than they like irrelevant ones. The alleged benefit is that the ads people see will be more frequently useful than they otherwise would, and therefore will waste less of the people's time and bandwidth than would otherwise be the case.
This is still a dubious proposition, but it's not quite as obviously ludicrous.
Such a new law says that the courts' interpretation of a place where the old law was not explicit is incorrect.
In theory, this will be enough to get the courts (judicial branch) to rule differently; also in theory, that will be enough to restrain the border agents (executive branch) from taking these actions.
Re: Must be from the Bill of Rights: Special Edition
The key word which lets them do this is here:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Nothing in that says that a warrant, or probable cause, is required for a search to be reasonable.
The arguments here which seem intuitively obvious to me are something like:
It is clearly reasonable to search luggage, etc., of people who are attempting to cross the border at a checkpoint.
Because such a search is reasonable, it does not require a warrant.
It is also clearly reasonable to search in areas within a short travel time of the border, to locate people or items which may have come across the border without passing through a checkpoint.
In the modern day, with modern vehicle technology, it is possible travel a hundred miles in two hours or less, without great difficulty.
Two hours is a short travel time, as cross-border journeys go.
Therefore a search within a hundred miles of the border is reasonable, and as such, does not require a warrant.
The resulting situation seems to me to be in clear conflict with the intent of the amendment, but it does seem compatible with the text, and the courts would seem to either disagree about that conflict or to hold the intent as less important than the text.
In fact, that points back to one of the key things people keep saying (and other people seem to miss) about this: biometrics make excellent replacements for usernames, but very poor replacements for passwords.
Require face- or fingerprint-recognition before the device asks for the passcode, then require the passcode before the device actually becomes unlocked. Slightly less convenient than either alone, but aside from that, more or less the best of both worlds.
Most of that sounds as if it fits quite well within the concept of hacking, in its original and proper sense. Computer gaming is a bit afield, but likely to have overlap with the interests of those whose hobbies include the other things, so it makes sense that it would also be accounted for.
I suspect both that you're using the term "hacking" in its popular-culture sense, which is more properly called "cracking", and that the site itself may not have been named with that sense of the term in mind. (The proper sense is, I believe, considered a superset of the other sense.)
I keep seeing this mentioned, and I don't know where people get it from.
Maybe I was missing things during the campaign, but the first I saw of an anti-Russia attitude from the Clinton camp came in the form of pointing out how strongly pro-Russia Trump seemed to be, and then in the form of expressing opposition to Russia's actions in Syria - which, as reported in the news, were such that it would seem reasonable to be opposed to them regardless.
And even then, I didn't see a push for war.
Where do people get this idea that the Clinton camp was pro-war, much less in support of "try[ing] to start shit with Russia"?
As long as we have only single-choice, first-past-the-post voting, we do have only two meaningful political parties, because of the vote-concentrating influence of the spoiler effect.
If we want to have more viable political parties (which I do!), we need to campaign to switch over to a ranked-preferences voting system, preferably one which satisfies the Condorcet criteria.
It is my understanding that Maine adopted just such a system, by ballot measure in this last election. It will be worth keeping a close eye on what happens in Maine's elections, in the next few cycles.
The more regulated the internet becomes, the more power that goes to the lobbyists and special interest.
In addition to all of the other counters to this already raised: none of this has been about regulating the Internet.
All of this has been about regulating access to the Internet, or as it used to be called, Internet service - which is very distinct from services on the Internet.
I suspect the argument is "if the people from whom these funds were seized were innocent, they would have contested the seizure" plus "by taking the proceeds of their crimes away from them, we prevent them from profiting from their crimes, which discourages them and others from committing such crimes".
That doesn't seem sufficient to me, but I can see how it could seem sufficient to someone in the DEA.
I'd tend to disagree that fakenews is an ineffectual label. As a journalist myself, I know that the media gets away quite a bit of conscious manipulation of information, but that manipulation is at least subject to regulations and public bodies which enforce them, so it's limited. Fakenews on the other hand, is straight up falsification.
The trouble with that approach is that large numbers of people - including the person who introduced the term "fake news" into mainstream discourse, Donald Trump himself - do not use the term that way.
Yes, you might be able to argue that if the term were properly and narrowly used, it would be a useful and appropriate and even helpful addition to the discussion.
But it is not used that way, and there is effectively zero chance of narrowing its use to that more limited scope - so there is no possibility of being able to safely assume that when someone uses the term they mean that narrow sense, and therefore the term is useless for actually conveying that meaning.
Re: Re: Missouri Legislators - The "Florida Man" of State Legislatures
I recently came to an interesting realization about how the words "conservative" and "liberal" came to be applied to the political factions.
If you look at historical usages of the word "liberal" outside of a political context, you run into usages like "he poured out the drinks with a liberal hand", where the intended meaning is clearly something like "generous" or "open-handed" or "unstinting" (or, for something less positive, the near-archaic "spendthrift").
It's not hard to see how that description could have been applied to a political faction which could then have developed into today's "liberal" faction.
And looking at it in that context, the label "conservative" for the opposing view makes perfect sense too; it reflects a perspective of "conserve your resources, don't spend them freely!". (I've had trouble finding single adjectives other than "conservative" to reflect this which don't sound derogatory; aside from things like "stingy" and "tight-fisted" and so forth, the only things I've come up with are "restrained" or "responsible".)
At a glance, I think the viewpoint to which that version of the "conservative" label would apply seems like a fairly good match for the conservatism you're describing yourself as subscribing to.
Unfortunately, much of that sense of the term - and the historical context which would make it seem appropriate and natural - has been lost in modern discourse...
The quoted definition doesn't seem to say anything about "three or more people committing damage"; it says "one or more persons part of an assemblage of three or more persons", but only the "one or more" needs to be committing or threatening "an act or acts of violence" in order for the resulting public disturbance to qualify as a riot.
However, it also doesn't seem to say anything about the other persons in the assemblage being subject to arrest. (Or, indeed, even about the persons committing the act(s) being so subject.) This seems to be purely a definition of an event, saying nothing about consequences of falling within that definition, or about participating in that event.
How is that both dangerous to human life and a violation of US criminal law?
Please understand, I'm not saying it's not wrong, or that it necessarily isn't appropriate to call it terrorism. (That latter would be another conversation entirely.)
The original comment appeared to be claiming that high-level US government officials are more-or-less all committing terrorism by the US government's own definition. All I'm saying is that the actions I see don't seem to qualify under the given definition.
On the post: New York Appeals Court Says Facebook Can't Challenge The 381 Broad Warrants Handed To It By New York Prosecutors
Re: But wait, it gets worse
On the post: Investigation Finds IRS Seized Millions Of Dollars From Innocent Individuals And Business Owners
Re:
No, but people do have the right to agree to contribute their money towards the accomplishment of shared goals.
On an individual level, that's done by talking it out among one another and making individual offers and acceptances.
On a larger scale, that's no longer practical. What we do instead is designate people to do the meeting, talking, offering, and accepting on our collective behalf. The act of designating those people is called an "election".
By electing people who decide to do things, and failing to recall those people or otherwise kick them out after they so decide, we as society have agreed to contribute our resources - in the form of money - to doing those things.
All the IRS does, in theory, is handle the collection of those resources for that purpose.
If individual members of society don't want to accede to that collective agreement, the only option society leaves them is to leave, and go live elsewhere. (Unfortunately, there is no longer much of anywhere left to go where no such agreement is in force - and the few possible candidates tend to be places where other factors make life relatively horrible anyway.)
Or so the reasoning runs.
On the post: Bipartisan Bill Would Require A Warrant To Search Americans' Devices At The Border
Re: This bill is on the wrong track
The trouble with this is that the existing practices have been established under court rulings made in light of the Constitution and laws as they stand.
In other words, the courts involved have concluded that the Constitution does not prohibit the activities being undertaken which this bill would seek to prohibit.
You would need to somehow clarify to the courts that the language in the Constitution which they have thought does not prohibit this does, in the mind of Congress, prohibit this.
That would be useless. Legislation passed by the current Congress cannot limit what legislation can be passed by future Congresses; only Constitutional amendment can do that, and even such amendments cannot limit future amendments. (ISTR that this has been held in court, quite possibly by the Supreme Court.)
On the post: Bipartisan Bill Would Require A Warrant To Search Americans' Devices At The Border
Re: Re:
If the U.S. has signed on to that Declaration, then it is indirectly binding on the U.S. government, although it will not govern in cases where it conflicts with higher authority (such as the Constitution).
In the absence of such a conflict, however, why wouldn't it be relevant?
On the post: Comcast Paid Civil Rights Groups To Support Killing Broadband Privacy Rules
Re:
No - what they're claiming here is that people like relevant ads better than they like irrelevant ones. The alleged benefit is that the ads people see will be more frequently useful than they otherwise would, and therefore will waste less of the people's time and bandwidth than would otherwise be the case.
This is still a dubious proposition, but it's not quite as obviously ludicrous.
On the post: Bipartisan Bill Would Require A Warrant To Search Americans' Devices At The Border
Re: I am so confused.
Such a new law says that the courts' interpretation of a place where the old law was not explicit is incorrect.
In theory, this will be enough to get the courts (judicial branch) to rule differently; also in theory, that will be enough to restrain the border agents (executive branch) from taking these actions.
Theory and practice may differ.
On the post: Bipartisan Bill Would Require A Warrant To Search Americans' Devices At The Border
Re: Must be from the Bill of Rights: Special Edition
The key word which lets them do this is here:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Nothing in that says that a warrant, or probable cause, is required for a search to be reasonable.
The arguments here which seem intuitively obvious to me are something like:
The resulting situation seems to me to be in clear conflict with the intent of the amendment, but it does seem compatible with the text, and the courts would seem to either disagree about that conflict or to hold the intent as less important than the text.
On the post: If A Phone's Facial Recognition Security Can Be Defeated By A Picture Of A Face, What Good Is It?
Re: Re: convenience vs security
That's why the correct solution is to use both.
In fact, that points back to one of the key things people keep saying (and other people seem to miss) about this: biometrics make excellent replacements for usernames, but very poor replacements for passwords.
Require face- or fingerprint-recognition before the device asks for the passcode, then require the passcode before the device actually becomes unlocked. Slightly less convenient than either alone, but aside from that, more or less the best of both worlds.
On the post: Newly Leaked Documents Expose Stunning Waste And Incompetence At The Copyright Office
Re: Re:
On the post: FBI Arrests Creator Of Remote Access Tool, Rather Than Those Abusing It To Commit Crime
Re: Re: Operative Sentence from the Story...
I suspect both that you're using the term "hacking" in its popular-culture sense, which is more properly called "cracking", and that the site itself may not have been named with that sense of the term in mind. (The proper sense is, I believe, considered a superset of the other sense.)
On the post: Privacy And National Security Concerns Play Second Fiddle To Administration's Attempts To Control The Narrative
Re: "If so, it's" and "If this is" -- your usual accusation by innuendo.
Perhaps that should be taken as a hint that this is not, in fact, intended as propaganda?
On the post: Trump's Internet Brigades Shocked To Realize The Government Just Sold Them Out On Privacy
Re:
Maybe I was missing things during the campaign, but the first I saw of an anti-Russia attitude from the Clinton camp came in the form of pointing out how strongly pro-Russia Trump seemed to be, and then in the form of expressing opposition to Russia's actions in Syria - which, as reported in the news, were such that it would seem reasonable to be opposed to them regardless.
And even then, I didn't see a push for war.
Where do people get this idea that the Clinton camp was pro-war, much less in support of "try[ing] to start shit with Russia"?
On the post: Trump's Internet Brigades Shocked To Realize The Government Just Sold Them Out On Privacy
Re: Re:
As long as we have only single-choice, first-past-the-post voting, we do have only two meaningful political parties, because of the vote-concentrating influence of the spoiler effect.
If we want to have more viable political parties (which I do!), we need to campaign to switch over to a ranked-preferences voting system, preferably one which satisfies the Condorcet criteria.
It is my understanding that Maine adopted just such a system, by ballot measure in this last election. It will be worth keeping a close eye on what happens in Maine's elections, in the next few cycles.
On the post: Trump's Internet Brigades Shocked To Realize The Government Just Sold Them Out On Privacy
Re: The idiot Trump Supporter
In addition to all of the other counters to this already raised: none of this has been about regulating the Internet.
All of this has been about regulating access to the Internet, or as it used to be called, Internet service - which is very distinct from services on the Internet.
On the post: Report Says DEA Doesn't Even Know If The Billions In Cash It Seizes Is Having Any Impact On Criminal Activity
Re:
That doesn't seem sufficient to me, but I can see how it could seem sufficient to someone in the DEA.
On the post: Real Talk About Fake News
Re:
The trouble with that approach is that large numbers of people - including the person who introduced the term "fake news" into mainstream discourse, Donald Trump himself - do not use the term that way.
Yes, you might be able to argue that if the term were properly and narrowly used, it would be a useful and appropriate and even helpful addition to the discussion.
But it is not used that way, and there is effectively zero chance of narrowing its use to that more limited scope - so there is no possibility of being able to safely assume that when someone uses the term they mean that narrow sense, and therefore the term is useless for actually conveying that meaning.
On the post: Congressperson's Sex Trafficking Bill Looks To Carve Holes In Section 230 Immunity
Re: Re: Missouri Legislators - The "Florida Man" of State Legislatures
If you look at historical usages of the word "liberal" outside of a political context, you run into usages like "he poured out the drinks with a liberal hand", where the intended meaning is clearly something like "generous" or "open-handed" or "unstinting" (or, for something less positive, the near-archaic "spendthrift").
It's not hard to see how that description could have been applied to a political faction which could then have developed into today's "liberal" faction.
And looking at it in that context, the label "conservative" for the opposing view makes perfect sense too; it reflects a perspective of "conserve your resources, don't spend them freely!". (I've had trouble finding single adjectives other than "conservative" to reflect this which don't sound derogatory; aside from things like "stingy" and "tight-fisted" and so forth, the only things I've come up with are "restrained" or "responsible".)
At a glance, I think the viewpoint to which that version of the "conservative" label would apply seems like a fairly good match for the conservatism you're describing yourself as subscribing to.
Unfortunately, much of that sense of the term - and the historical context which would make it seem appropriate and natural - has been lost in modern discourse...
On the post: UK Home Secretary: I Need People Who Understand The Necessary Hashtags To Censor Bad People Online
Re: Re: Appologies...
Then again, I don't think I've ever heard anyone refer to one singular "mathematic", either...
On the post: Prosecutors Have Pulled Data From More Than 100 Phones Seized From Inauguration Day Protesters
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: LOTR Warrant
However, it also doesn't seem to say anything about the other persons in the assemblage being subject to arrest. (Or, indeed, even about the persons committing the act(s) being so subject.) This seems to be purely a definition of an event, saying nothing about consequences of falling within that definition, or about participating in that event.
On the post: Twitter Reports On Government Agencies Using 'Report Tweet' Function To Block Terrorism-Related Content
Re: Re: Re: They're All Terrorists
How is that both dangerous to human life and a violation of US criminal law?
Please understand, I'm not saying it's not wrong, or that it necessarily isn't appropriate to call it terrorism. (That latter would be another conversation entirely.)
The original comment appeared to be claiming that high-level US government officials are more-or-less all committing terrorism by the US government's own definition. All I'm saying is that the actions I see don't seem to qualify under the given definition.
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