And the version of OS sold in Russia might differ, so the back doors might be different.

If the police put license plate scanners at every intersection in the city instead of just outside the HQ of every street gang then people might ask why they are wasting taxpayer money on that. It's not the specific data, it's the volume that they are trying to hide.

Life expectancy in Canada(82.5) is longer than in the USA(79.8), so apparently those health care queue's aren't that lethal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

The NSA would love to have access to this, they could run facial recognition and search for people of interest nation wide. It would still be worth it though, just eliminating all the bogus lawsuits against the police would pay for this.

It's not unreasonable opposition, the current fission reactors were built to make nuclear weapons. If they wanted civilian power they would have gone with thorium as it's much cheaper, much safer, and we have much more fuel.

The value of the US dollar is dependent on being the reserve currency of the world. If they lose that the dollar will devalue to peso levels. Oil is just one part of that, not the whole thing.

Modern society is based on trust. You trust the bridge you drive over to get to work won't fall down and kill you. You trust the brakes on your car will work. You trust the phone company to connect you to the police when someone breaks into your house. You can't live without trust. The issue isn't trust, it's how to enforce trust on fallible humans.

If you have control of the network (ISP) between the user and the web site you can man-in-the-middle the crypto and do this with https.

The Executive branch of the US government doesn't have the legal authority to violate the Constitution of the USA. They can't get that authority by passing a law, only by changing the Constitution of the USA. Snowden is a patriot, who committed treason to protect the people of the USA.

I hear (rumour) that the (known to work) cure for diabetes won't be available ever because it would cost too much money from lost drug sales.

You might prevent a future treatment that actually works. I believe that horribly injured/dying with no cure possible should be allowed to "experiment" with anything that has the slightest chance of working, with informed consent.

You patent something, everyone can make it but they have to pay you royalties (FRAND?). Put it into patent law so that automatically happens and everyone benefits.

These are the ingredients Microsoft needs: Full windows compatibility (not RT), free internet, bluetooth/wifi/cellmodem built in, decent remote admin functionality. This would make the tablet good enough for business and sufficiently ok for home users.

If they hand out everyone's public key then they can give you the wrong key and man-in-the-middle your email to people of interest. If the decryption is done using code you download from them, then it's a software update away from handing over your key. It gets people thinking about crypto (a major step), but this just a stepping stone to real privacy, not the endpoint.

If you assume that China owns the ships, the cargo, and the canal then your math changes. They can then undercut all competition and lock them out of the world trade market. Over the long term the profit margins of running the world are huge.