I think J.D. Tuccille has the right idea here. It is a back-door attempt to make encryption taboo and to get private companies to do the snooping the governmant cannot legally do itself.
This is what the changes to Section 230 would accomplish.
Yes, while MADD might be good at certain things, as many zealots are, their focus is extremely narrow. And they are, indeed, prohibitionist / abolitionist / zero - tolerance zealots. They have been known to oppose quite sensible measures that would have significantly reduced dangerously impaired driving because the measures were not "zero - tolerance" enough.
MADD is also apparently more interested in raising money, paying it's people, and promoting itself than actually increasing driving safety.
I would say they are clearly quite mad, but definitely not in the sense that they might think or appreciate.
It is clear there is some bureaucratic belly bucking going on here, but we need to look at the priorities involved:
What is the relative importance of airliners landing safely at the intended destinations in inclement weather? What would the cost be (and who would pay that cost) to replace the radio altimeters on all the commercial planes that use them (assuming there is another available frequency that will work properly)? What is the relative importance of having this particular band of 5G service in these particular locations? Are there really that many people who need the particular feature set of that band of 5G that close to the approaches to the airports? What is the relative importance of the telecoms holding onto every bit of regulatory capture of the FCC that they have obtained so far, and asserting their power to make the government do as they wish?
Most of those questions could well be the subjects of legitimate debate about needs / costs / benefits / engineering concerns / safety, etc.
Again, the altimeters and landing guidance systems the FAA is concerned about don't actually operate in this band, and the existing buffer and exclusion zones means transmissions shouldn't get anywhere close to causing a problem.
pipelines are a big part of the wrong-think problems that we see in all branches of government.
Sometimes I think that maybe some hard legal restrictions on this sort of thing might be beneficial, ie if you have been a prosecutor you are ineligible to be a judge or to run for elected office (ineligible for appointed / hired political offices, as well). In the same vein, maybe ex-military should be ineligible for civilian law enforcement positions. I think there exists at least one semi-example of this in the seven year waiting period for ex-military to be Secretary of Defense. While there are valid objections to this idea (basic liberty being one of them), there are also strong many arguments in it's favor, as well as a wealth of empirical and historical data supporting this idea. There is a discussion of this idea here.
In any case, I think it would be worth a try, if for no other reason than to highlight just who would object, and the (probably BS) reasons they would give for their objections. I think it would be quite revealing.
It has been clear for quite some time now that the US courts generally think their job is finding ways to avoid seeing things "as so obviously wrong that there's no question that it's unacceptable in any situation," at least when those things are done by government officials, particularly police.
It is a serious indictment of a corrupt system that cases like this one are unexpected outliers.
(though he's too chickenshit to note that it's just Judge Albright who's the problem)
This failure to "name names" is a widespread and long-standing problem in the legal system, to the point that it is a standard practice and rarely deviated from. It serves no legitimate purpose and is used almost exclusively to provide a cloak of anonymity for misbehaving judges and prosecutors. It is one of many clear signs of a thoroughly corrupt legal system.
It is a significant impediment for those who attempt to research and document the corruption in the legal system. While the names can (usually) eventually be put with the corrupt and sometimes criminal actors, it is very tedious and time-consuming.
parents of the current generation of HK citizens who saw fit to stay in HK while it was still possible to leave, knowing their children would end up at the business end of the PRC's knife.
This ^. With a lot less denial (I think there was sufficient foresight) China could have "taken over" a mostly empty shell.
As for sabroni's comment about leaving the USA: I think there is sufficient foresight and much less denial about the dismal future of the USA, but where would we go, exactly?
There are too many "should" statements for my taste. There is also a complete, and completely expected, absence of specified penalties for those who violate the rules. Being required to provide an after-the-fact "statement" does not count.
Rules are meaningless without penalties for violating the rules, and without effective enforcement. Unless and until we see violators of the rules hit with meaningful sanctions, it is all just PR fluff.
So while Tim Cushing's sub-headline is on target, as usual, I would preface it with the word "barely."
Given what you said about WW3 being the only way China would change it's stance (and I think you are essentially correct in that view), I am not sure that "brave" and "courageous" are appropriate terms to describe people who remain in Hong Kong and openly protest the Chinese policies. Your other word, "irrelevant," is much more appropriate, and hints at some other more correctly descriptive adjectives.
did not see the warrants as "general," noting that not all warrants need to be particularized to a person.
4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, 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."
I realize the wording in the first quote is the author's (Tim cushing) but he seems to be very directly referring to the reasonong of some of the Justices.
Throw in what TAC mentioned, which implies a complete lack of "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause," and I think these cell tower dumps are a serious violation of the poeple's rights, both as specified by the text of the 4th Amendment, and as implied by it.
Never mind that the Third Party Doctrine is itself a vile abomination and flies in the face of the most basic concepts of an individual's right to privacy, which, while never specifically addressed in the Constitution, underlies significant portions of it.
People may be trying to avoid the government knowing their business, even though their business may be perfectly legal. In the US, any large banking transaction (I think it is currently >$10K, but there are proposals to lower it) must be reported to the Feds. If you accumulate cash slowly, in small amounts, over time, you can avoid the scrutiny, at least to some degree.
Keeping a business transaction private can be desireable, not only because of the basic principles of an individual's right to privacy, but also because you may not want potential competitors to have advanced knowledge of a pending business deal. There is a general truth about secrets: the more people that know the secret, the less it is really a secret, and the greater the chance it will get out and more and more people will know the now non-secret.
Here is a simple example of why this might be important in business: If only I know that I want to buy a certain car, then that is 1 person who knows. If the seller knows that I want to buy that particular car, that is now 2 people who know. If my bank knows I want to buy a car, that is 2 + however many have access to the bank data. If the Feds know that I want to buy a car, that is 2 + the bank people + who knows how many people that have access to the Federal data. The more people that know, the more potential there is for leaks. And in addition to the "secret" that I want to but a particular car, there is the "secret" of just how much I am willing to pay for said car. If I withdrew $57K from the bank, that is a very good indication that I would be willing to pay up to $57K for the car. If Joe Blow knows that I want to buy the car, he may get to the seller first and buy the car out from under me. If Joe Blow knows I withdrew $57K to buy the car, he may offer the seller $60K to outbid me.
It is just a simple example to illustrate the point that there are completely legitimate, legal reasons for wanting to keep business transactions private. Cash, accumulated in small amounts over time, is one of the few ways to do that.
There's plenty of prior art out there, but Clearview does indeed have a unique product. It's not that it created facial recognition AI that performs in a novel way. It's that it decided it was OK to use the entire web as a source for images and personal information, bundled this all up, and sold it to whoever wanted it.
So does this mean I can patent fishing in the whole ocean and selling my fish to whoever will buy them?
I just used the 737 Max as an example of something where a flaw did not create a disaster immediately, since we were talking about aviation stuff. And, as you correctly pointed out, it's flaws were so obvious that most any first-year engineering major should have seen them and waved big red flags.
The potential for problems arising from 5G interfering with radar altimeters involves many factors that are much more subtle and insidious. In theory, if a 5G deployment did interfere with a radar altimeter the result would be a go-around, and possibly having to divert the flight to an alternate airport. But we all know how often "in theory" translates very poorly to "in reality."
I think this is another case of $$ carrying more weight than safety concerns, resulting in a very flawed cost / risk / benefit analysis (which is another way the Boeing 737 Max was an apt comparison).
But the FCC has shown that more than 40 countries have deployed 5G in this band with no evidence of harm.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 planes did a lot of flying with no evidence of harm, either. For a while.
So simply restricting placement of 5G transmitters to within 5000 feet of airport's approach and departure routes eliminates any chance of interference.
[I am ignoring the absurd meaning caused by grammatical / syntax / sentence structure errors.]
Radio frequency waves (RF waves aka TEM waves) are weird and wonderful things. Their propagation is affected by many factors, and distance is only one of them. For instance, an atmospheric phenomenon known as "tropospheric ducting" can cause VHF, UHF, and microwave frequencies, which usually only have line-of-sight range, to travel hundreds of miles. All of the 5G frequencies are within the range of frequencies that can experience tropospheric ducting.
Spurious emissions are also a very real thing. This is when RF transmitters emit power somewhat outside their intended frequency band. There is a phenomenon in RF transmitter antennas and their towers known as the "Rusty Bolt" effect. This is where, over time, the metal in an antenna tower experiences degradation and can create spurious emissions where none were present when the equipment was originally installed.
You could use directional antennas that do not point at airports But what if in the future someone erects a building that reflects those emissions back towards the airport?
Tropospheric ducting, "rusty bolt"-induced spurious emissions and unanticipated reflections are but three of many factors affecting RF signal propagation. There are many more. So simply limiting transmitter location, or saying "there haven't been any problems yet" do not in any way provide assurance that there will not be any catastrophic problems in the future.
Name one congresscritter who supports all the Amendments, or even just the idea of individual civil liberties over authoritarian government supremacy in general.
And I mean actually supports, not just pays lip service to.
Many data fire hoses are still in operation. But this move slows one form of data to a drip . . .
Good for Ron Wyden! We should all be glad for any movement we get in the right (privacy) direction. But we must not lose sight of just how small a step this is, and how long and how steep uphill the road ahead is, too.
It may effectively eliminate encryption and enhance surveillance
I think J.D. Tuccille has the right idea here. It is a back-door attempt to make encryption taboo and to get private companies to do the snooping the governmant cannot legally do itself.
This is what the changes to Section 230 would accomplish.
Re: Re: Crimes of omission
Yes, while MADD might be good at certain things, as many zealots are, their focus is extremely narrow. And they are, indeed, prohibitionist / abolitionist / zero - tolerance zealots. They have been known to oppose quite sensible measures that would have significantly reduced dangerously impaired driving because the measures were not "zero - tolerance" enough.
MADD is also apparently more interested in raising money, paying it's people, and promoting itself than actually increasing driving safety.
I would say they are clearly quite mad, but definitely not in the sense that they might think or appreciate.
Priorities and motives
It is clear there is some bureaucratic belly bucking going on here, but we need to look at the priorities involved:
What is the relative importance of airliners landing safely at the intended destinations in inclement weather? What would the cost be (and who would pay that cost) to replace the radio altimeters on all the commercial planes that use them (assuming there is another available frequency that will work properly)? What is the relative importance of having this particular band of 5G service in these particular locations? Are there really that many people who need the particular feature set of that band of 5G that close to the approaches to the airports? What is the relative importance of the telecoms holding onto every bit of regulatory capture of the FCC that they have obtained so far, and asserting their power to make the government do as they wish?
Most of those questions could well be the subjects of legitimate debate about needs / costs / benefits / engineering concerns / safety, etc.
The last question, not so much.
(untitled comment)
"shouldn't is a very big word in this context.
Re: Re: Re:
This^. The
"successful" prosecutor -> judge
and
"successful" prosecutor -> politician
pipelines are a big part of the wrong-think problems that we see in all branches of government.
Sometimes I think that maybe some hard legal restrictions on this sort of thing might be beneficial, ie if you have been a prosecutor you are ineligible to be a judge or to run for elected office (ineligible for appointed / hired political offices, as well). In the same vein, maybe ex-military should be ineligible for civilian law enforcement positions. I think there exists at least one semi-example of this in the seven year waiting period for ex-military to be Secretary of Defense. While there are valid objections to this idea (basic liberty being one of them), there are also strong many arguments in it's favor, as well as a wealth of empirical and historical data supporting this idea. There is a discussion of this idea here.
In any case, I think it would be worth a try, if for no other reason than to highlight just who would object, and the (probably BS) reasons they would give for their objections. I think it would be quite revealing.
Re:
It has been clear for quite some time now that the US courts generally think their job is finding ways to avoid seeing things "as so obviously wrong that there's no question that it's unacceptable in any situation," at least when those things are done by government officials, particularly police.
It is a serious indictment of a corrupt system that cases like this one are unexpected outliers.
Re: Re:
It looks like there are at least a couple of mechanisms:
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/how-to-remove-a-federal-judge
In the case of Albright, it is clear that one of the available mechanisms needs to be activated ASAP.
Crimes of omission
This failure to "name names" is a widespread and long-standing problem in the legal system, to the point that it is a standard practice and rarely deviated from. It serves no legitimate purpose and is used almost exclusively to provide a cloak of anonymity for misbehaving judges and prosecutors. It is one of many clear signs of a thoroughly corrupt legal system.
It is a significant impediment for those who attempt to research and document the corruption in the legal system. While the names can (usually) eventually be put with the corrupt and sometimes criminal actors, it is very tedious and time-consuming.
Re: Re: Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
This ^. With a lot less denial (I think there was sufficient foresight) China could have "taken over" a mostly empty shell.
As for sabroni's comment about leaving the USA: I think there is sufficient foresight and much less denial about the dismal future of the USA, but where would we go, exactly?
Better than nothing, but not by much.
There are too many "should" statements for my taste. There is also a complete, and completely expected, absence of specified penalties for those who violate the rules. Being required to provide an after-the-fact "statement" does not count.
Rules are meaningless without penalties for violating the rules, and without effective enforcement. Unless and until we see violators of the rules hit with meaningful sanctions, it is all just PR fluff.
So while Tim Cushing's sub-headline is on target, as usual, I would preface it with the word "barely."
The good old days. . .
. . . that never really existed.
That was back when 'Merica was better at covering up or ignoring all the things like those you listed in the preceding paragraphs.
Re: Well, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise.
Given what you said about WW3 being the only way China would change it's stance (and I think you are essentially correct in that view), I am not sure that "brave" and "courageous" are appropriate terms to describe people who remain in Hong Kong and openly protest the Chinese policies. Your other word, "irrelevant," is much more appropriate, and hints at some other more correctly descriptive adjectives.
Particularly?
4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, 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."
I realize the wording in the first quote is the author's (Tim cushing) but he seems to be very directly referring to the reasonong of some of the Justices.
Throw in what TAC mentioned, which implies a complete lack of "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause," and I think these cell tower dumps are a serious violation of the poeple's rights, both as specified by the text of the 4th Amendment, and as implied by it.
Never mind that the Third Party Doctrine is itself a vile abomination and flies in the face of the most basic concepts of an individual's right to privacy, which, while never specifically addressed in the Constitution, underlies significant portions of it.
Re:
People may be trying to avoid the government knowing their business, even though their business may be perfectly legal. In the US, any large banking transaction (I think it is currently >$10K, but there are proposals to lower it) must be reported to the Feds. If you accumulate cash slowly, in small amounts, over time, you can avoid the scrutiny, at least to some degree.
Keeping a business transaction private can be desireable, not only because of the basic principles of an individual's right to privacy, but also because you may not want potential competitors to have advanced knowledge of a pending business deal. There is a general truth about secrets: the more people that know the secret, the less it is really a secret, and the greater the chance it will get out and more and more people will know the now non-secret.
Here is a simple example of why this might be important in business: If only I know that I want to buy a certain car, then that is 1 person who knows. If the seller knows that I want to buy that particular car, that is now 2 people who know. If my bank knows I want to buy a car, that is 2 + however many have access to the bank data. If the Feds know that I want to buy a car, that is 2 + the bank people + who knows how many people that have access to the Federal data. The more people that know, the more potential there is for leaks. And in addition to the "secret" that I want to but a particular car, there is the "secret" of just how much I am willing to pay for said car. If I withdrew $57K from the bank, that is a very good indication that I would be willing to pay up to $57K for the car. If Joe Blow knows that I want to buy the car, he may get to the seller first and buy the car out from under me. If Joe Blow knows I withdrew $57K to buy the car, he may offer the seller $60K to outbid me.
It is just a simple example to illustrate the point that there are completely legitimate, legal reasons for wanting to keep business transactions private. Cash, accumulated in small amounts over time, is one of the few ways to do that.
Re:
Yes, let's try to cut the cancer of corruption out of the legal system. And we might as well try to cut the salt out of the sea while we are at it.
I am at a loss to describe the PTO's new example of idiocy
So does this mean I can patent fishing in the whole ocean and selling my fish to whoever will buy them?
Re: Re:
All very true, Anonymouse.
I just used the 737 Max as an example of something where a flaw did not create a disaster immediately, since we were talking about aviation stuff. And, as you correctly pointed out, it's flaws were so obvious that most any first-year engineering major should have seen them and waved big red flags.
The potential for problems arising from 5G interfering with radar altimeters involves many factors that are much more subtle and insidious. In theory, if a 5G deployment did interfere with a radar altimeter the result would be a go-around, and possibly having to divert the flight to an alternate airport. But we all know how often "in theory" translates very poorly to "in reality."
I think this is another case of $$ carrying more weight than safety concerns, resulting in a very flawed cost / risk / benefit analysis (which is another way the Boeing 737 Max was an apt comparison).
(untitled comment)
The Boeing 737 Max 8 planes did a lot of flying with no evidence of harm, either. For a while.
[I am ignoring the absurd meaning caused by grammatical / syntax / sentence structure errors.]
Radio frequency waves (RF waves aka TEM waves) are weird and wonderful things. Their propagation is affected by many factors, and distance is only one of them. For instance, an atmospheric phenomenon known as "tropospheric ducting" can cause VHF, UHF, and microwave frequencies, which usually only have line-of-sight range, to travel hundreds of miles. All of the 5G frequencies are within the range of frequencies that can experience tropospheric ducting.
Spurious emissions are also a very real thing. This is when RF transmitters emit power somewhat outside their intended frequency band. There is a phenomenon in RF transmitter antennas and their towers known as the "Rusty Bolt" effect. This is where, over time, the metal in an antenna tower experiences degradation and can create spurious emissions where none were present when the equipment was originally installed.
You could use directional antennas that do not point at airports But what if in the future someone erects a building that reflects those emissions back towards the airport?
Tropospheric ducting, "rusty bolt"-induced spurious emissions and unanticipated reflections are but three of many factors affecting RF signal propagation. There are many more. So simply limiting transmitter location, or saying "there haven't been any problems yet" do not in any way provide assurance that there will not be any catastrophic problems in the future.
Re: Re: one person in Congress cares about 4th Amendment
Name one congresscritter who supports all the Amendments, or even just the idea of individual civil liberties over authoritarian government supremacy in general.
And I mean actually supports, not just pays lip service to.
. . . I thought not.
Key phrase:
Good for Ron Wyden! We should all be glad for any movement we get in the right (privacy) direction. But we must not lose sight of just how small a step this is, and how long and how steep uphill the road ahead is, too.
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