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  • Oct 22nd, 2021 @ 7:30am

    Interesting history of FLASH, PHP phrase

    I did a little googling with date ranges. this is a very common clause in modern TOS! ... Though I couldn't find anything from the 90s, I found this from september 2000

    https://www.echo-social-services.com/terms

    Which says at the top:

    Last updated September 01, 2000

    Have I found a root document of TOS prohibited activities clauses?

    Anybody spot an EARLIER occurrence of this phraseology?

  • Aug 29th, 2021 @ 10:04am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, you can't ask people in an area?

    That's a pretty weak argument - yes, most people wouldn't be able to go interview everybody who was on the square - but there exists people who actually are able to observe everybody there and interview them.

    So are we limiting this to 'a typical ability of a police observer' or are we limiting it to 'the best observer memory that could be used as a police observer'? If we only want a typical, then we'd logically have to restrict the particularly capable from the role, which we don't even measure much less restrict.

    The difference here is entirely technical on presumptive grounds. To presume that an observing policeman is not a record keeper is unjustified - he entirely CAN be a record keeper - and there is nothing that states or specifies that he isn't or can't be.

    To reiterate - this only comes down to a matter of means rather than justification of observation - I assert that the means (using records stored by google which are only stored because the people allow them to be stored at all) is a technical beside-the-point to the legality of 'valid to review any records of the square' - whether or not they're recorded by the police.

    After all, we can (if we want) make google's recording of this data contingent on supplying it to the public/law enforcement record keeping systems - then making it data that's recorded by the police just like the policeman on the steps had a body cam or just is really really good at remembering who and what.

    the police can ask questions of whoever was on the square, which is a public place, and as such has no expectation (apparently) that they right to free movement through the space without being observed by others including law enforcement.

    I still think they shouldn't have the ability to officially observe, its illegal search.

  • Aug 28th, 2021 @ 8:21pm

    Re: Re: Wait, you can't ask people in an area?

    The important part of what I'm saying they actually don't have the constitutional right to look around at all. BUT - this is just 'how things are done and always have been and there's no viable alternative' so the idea is dismissed as useless.

    So lets say that we decide they DO have the affirmative constitutional right (not just expectation of operative viability) to look around. They have the constitutional right to search any public space. They have the right to treat anybody there as suspects and scrutinize their activities. This is in complete accordance with the idea of "I can ask everybody who was on the square about this crime".

    There's the implication in this discussion 'the police weren't in the square'. I strenuously disagree. Its public, and they can declare that they were, indeed, digitally in the square. Thus, they completely WERE in the square. Its just that a private company happens to be holding the records of WHO was in the square presently. Their right to interrogate them comes from THE FACT THEY WERE IN THE SQUARE - and in no way must that be interrupted by thee matter of being in possession of some entity like google - hence, the warrant that tells google to give up the information about who was in the square.

    Now you could address this by simply requiring that if you want to collect information about who is in the square, you have to relay what you know about who is in the square continually to the virtual policeman who is standing watching - which is PRECISELY what the policeman standing on the courthouse steps is doing - apparently with nobody saying boo about it.

    What I'm getting at here is that this kind of case is when you look at it a particular way, drilling into one of the fundamental assumptions that we've made about whether or not its appropriate for a policeman to search other people's activities based merely on their presence physically.

    I assert that public observation has been illegal since the establishment of the fourth amendment but has not been seen that way.

    But if public observation is not illegal then there is absolutely no reason for it to be illegitimate to have a virtual policeman watching the virtual square.

    I assert we can't reasonably have it both ways. Choose a direction - either we're subject to search by the LEO, or we're not. Currently, we're totally subject to search, and the fact that they let the records reside on google's servers and later get retrieved by warrant is only a technical arrangement of convenience for the moment - any of the other ways to accomplish the same outcome are just as legal.

  • Aug 28th, 2021 @ 8:27am

    Wait, you can't ask people in an area?

    Treating everyone in the area of a suspected crime as a criminal suspect until things can be sorted out inverts this concept.

    so if I was to carry that all the way back to 'traditional policing', that would be saying that the police can't 'treat as a criminal suspect' - i.e. interrogating/asking questions of people - any who are in the area of a crime until after they sort things out.

    Which they have always done to get clues about who and what and drive other evidence gathering techniques.

    "Did you see anything?" STOP TREATING ME A CRIMINAL WITH ALL THIS ASKING OF QUESTIONS

    I see this as absolutely no different than interrogating everybody in the club for their take/observations on what happened. The only reason there's a warrant involved at all is that they can't get the information by just looking around.

    Hell, I'd like to say that constitutionally privacy wise, it really looks as if agents of the state wandering around looking at what people are doing is illegal. They have NO justification to be "investigating" my activities whatsoever. Any observation of my activity without a driven cause to be acquiring information about me is an illegal search of my activities.

    I literally have the constitutional right to free movement in my community and the states - second guessing that by observing/hassling/interrupting me is illegal. :P

  • Jul 21st, 2021 @ 10:27am

    Definition of Fuck

    Its contextual, padowan. In this case, it is an imperative verb that means "Invalidate and dismiss with anger".

    Now, is that really SO HARD to explain?

  • Nov 30th, 2019 @ 12:31pm

    Re: Re: Re: A Legislative Solution

    Sorry, you don't have any privacy while you're on the public's clock. Its difficult to express how dismissive I am of THAT claim.

    Endangered THEM? orly. because who gets injured maimed and killed more often in police/citizen interactions... police... or citizens. Its not difficult to show with data who is more endangered.

    Its almost like policing isn't how you handle the actual problems...

  • Nov 30th, 2019 @ 12:28pm

    Re: 'when turned off'

    It is illegal in almost every jurisdiction to have a vehicle on the public road - not 'operating' - merely present - without a VALID registration displayed on it.

    This is what gives them the ability to tow any unregistered/expired vehicle immediately to impound.

    I wouldn't install such a device for fear that my vehicle would be impounded as illegally present. Hell, even store and company parking lots and such have policies that 'vehicles must display valid registration'.

  • Nov 4th, 2019 @ 6:13pm

    If there is no list, they're all on the list

    It seems a logical flow that results in the pressure to maintain the list. If the list is not credible, all the officers are on the list. So none of them can testify. At all.

    Maybe you ought to have a list. :3

    Skylos

  • Oct 8th, 2019 @ 5:58am

    This is what regulation is for

    Require routing information brokerage with a well known routing api whose characteristics are set by the locality. If you are routing traffic in the public space, you need to use it by penalty of law. Provided its online. Nobody is going to agree on the data sharing privately - you have to provide a capable api to do it from the collective/governance direction, and the requirement to use it.

    And of course, if a locality screws their traffic up with bad rules, they lose the ability to set their own rules.

  • Oct 8th, 2019 @ 5:51am

    Fireman's key box for Rosen

    Since only firemen have the key and would only use it lawfully, Rosen should show his respect for the law by having the key to his house in a fireman's key box right next to the door of his personal house. WCGW?

  • Sep 25th, 2019 @ 3:46pm

    Re: Re: Re: transponders?

    Yeah, you don't need an encryption key, you can just go real anonymous.

    If you fall back to the true anonymity (non-obfuscation based) of a polypseudonym strategy - that is transmitting one of many identities (a decade worth!) that have never been seen in the wild before but are unique to the transponder. So you'd do it this way:

    Victor(verifier)'s query is signed by Leo(officer)'s crypto agent and is forwarded to Peggy(prover) which is encryptosigned by the key-of-the-moment, whose ID and data are returned to Victor which forwards to Trent(Trusted authority) which decrypts using psuedonomous identity pubkey from its private stores, validates Leo's credentials, and returns to Victor relevant permitted information per its rules regarding the validity, identity, and provenance of Peggy.

    And do you think that a bureaucracy the size of the US DOT and each municipal entity beneath it could implement a protocol of that complexity at the scale required and have it work, without serious security compromises due to operational just downright fouling it up?

    The real problem is between the keyboard and the chair. From Leo all the way up to Trent operations.

  • Sep 25th, 2019 @ 8:17am

    Re: transponders?

    do you really think that an encryption key that can be interacted with by every police cruiser on a minute by minute basis throughout their shift is going to be 'secure'? You're talking the same level of obfuscation as the digital-trunking-encrypted radio systems municipalities use - that is - it only stops those who don't really care to know, those who do care steal the key from some of the equipment that uses it.

  • Sep 24th, 2019 @ 12:24pm

    Re: Re: Strange..

    They can certainly ask you to exhibit registration or leave - being private property.

  • Sep 24th, 2019 @ 8:04am

    I think we should do it open source

    There are interesting things we want to know - where are the fire trucks? Where are the police cars? The garbage trucks? The commercially operated vehicles? The vehicle who knocked over my mailbox? The car that bumped yours and ran off in the parking lot? The latest 'amber alert'? You have the right to move among the several states - you do not have the right to do so in a way that allows you to evade responsibility for what you do while you move around the several states. And you certainly don't have a right to engage in commerce on our publically subsidized roads anonymously - tons of regulation already applies to that.

    We should have an open source crowd sourced data system that reads and tags all the license plates seen by all the cameras and stores them for anybody to view at any time. It needs to be entirely unremarkable and free to get this information.

    Lets put these guys out of business - by undercutting them in the extreme. With more information than they could ever have. That information shouldn't be behind a paywall.

  • Aug 18th, 2016 @ 9:43am

    Why not approve? (as David Ihnen)

    They make this statement that they can't allow it without approval. That's all well and good, but why is it in that status?

    The question to ask is, why didn't Nintendo already view the content when they saw it existed, and approve it proactively?

    Surely there is no legal status that stops them from doing that.
  • Jan 24th, 2014 @ 6:39am

    For-profit infrastructure (as David Ihnen)

    Internet has become a utility, one of the several situations where we have natural monopolies due to the high infrastructure requirements. Having for-profit utilities is about as advisable as for-profit fire service - that is - not very. Like it or not the best and most efficient to the customer hydro, water, sewer, and gas utilities are public owned. As Internet changes from being a luxury to an effective necessity for our quality of life, it also becomes a utility subject to the same logic - this is going to be more fairly and effectively and cheaply delivered by a public owned system with no purpose in life beyond ensuring its customers have internet. The profit motive has no legitimate place within natural monopolies.
  • May 13th, 2013 @ 10:35am

    re: fear mongering

    construction zone? YES - and more safely than drivers do.

    special paint/signs? NO - existing tech is sufficient, though positioning tolerances may be tightened.

    A procession, HOW? Three paths occur to me off the cuff.

    The first is, there is no need to have a special case operation here. autonomous cars will drive amongst and through the procession without impeding either.

    Another option is that the procession has a permit, a permitted event has its data in the road information system, whose operation is basic infrastructure required for autonomous operation of vehicles. The road system will tell the car of the procession allowing it to reroute around the temporary closure.

    The last is that procession cars link up wirelessly to each other in a procession, which also informs the other cars around them that they are together and should not be interrupted.

    Human obstruction recognition? - EASILY - this tech actually ALREADY exists in a form in cars on the market today - further refinement and augmentation will make it all the more reliable.

    Work in Fog? - YES - better than humans with their narrower spectrum vision and lack of wireless digital communications with other operating vehicles and lack of global positioning indicators.

    Work in Ice? - YES - better than humans, with selective braking and continual awareness of the road surface from road information systems updated by the passage of previous vehicles with their sensors.

    With autonomously driven vehicles, thousands of people won't die in automobile accidents every year.

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