France is also charging forward with attempts to expand government powers to monitor threats -- and to punish those who praise or do not readily condemn terrorism.

WTF? R'ing TFA... not a whole lot, but here's a bit more from the article:

France is also charging forward with attempts to expand government powers to monitor threats -- and to punish those who praise or do not readily condemn terrorism. Leaders this week called for new legislation to significantly bolster domestic intelligence agencies.

Another law, a fast-track judicial process for accusations related to terrorism, was on the books as of November but had not been widely used before the Paris attacks. In recent days, however, prosecutors have filled the dockets with more than 100 cases that are speeding through courtrooms. People who have expressed support for the attacks have been sentenced to as much as 15 months in prison.

A top French opposition politician, Eric Ciotti, said this week that the government should withhold social benefits from the parents of children who failed to observe moments of silence in schools.

it might invite over-managing minor policy violations.

Have you heard of the broken windows theory? It may not be appropriate when applied to citizens, who are supposed to be presumed to be the masters of government, not its servants. However, when a person is acting in a public service position that has extraordinary authority and hence extraordinary responsibility, broken windows is far more appropriate.

LEOs are supposed to get in trouble for minor policy violations, and major policy violations should be virtually unheard of. Were we not on the wrong side of that balance, we would not have to implement solutions like this. The few bad cops did this to you. They are the worst enemy of good cops. Go put those mutts in jail, make that the new normal; then we'll talk about easing up on the surveillance.

Yeah -- totally agreed that the "how" of it is very hard. I'd consider it a giant leap forward to just get society to agree that it's a worthwhile objective, and move on to discussing whether and how to practically implement a solution.

A related article suggests one side effect of the internet becoming a public utility will be higher costs for internet access.

OK, first, I'm dubious. But suppose it does go up. How much is it worth to have access to all the Internet offers? At $50/mo, we're hardly pushing the limits of what this stuff is worth. If we just have to pay a little more to get broader access, no content restriction by privateers, and competition for higher speed networks, I'll do the dance of joy.

Note: I am not defending her any more than I'd defend the gangster used as a classical scapegoat. Neither of their hands are clean. Does she deserve to be fired? I don't know, maybe, but it wouldn't actually do anything.

So you do what you do with gangsters. You take her down, and let her off easy if she implicates her superiors. You don't just shrug and say, "Oh well."

The key will be creating demand for security with consumers. Once they realize it is important they will look for it, and companies that fail to deliver will suffer as a result.

I like the idea, but I'm skeptical. I feel like security is too similar to, say, sturdiness of furniture -- like a hardwood wardrobe; it is not reasonable to expect the silent hand of the free market to understand why mortise and tenon joinery is worth the price compared to pocket screws, even on high end furniture. So my Dad's incredibly nice hardwood bedroom set that I just moved is already falling apart. Security, like quality construction of durable consumer goods, has an actual market price below the theoretical free market price if there were ideal consumers.

Even if it didn't, I think security has characteristics of an externality. Poor security leads to a fertile breeding ground for burglars, much as lack of immunization creates a breeding ground for disease. If that is true, good security should be socially rewarded and poor security should be socially punished -- even if each transaction were long-term rationally self-interested and well-informed.

Data provided by 'smart homes' will end up with the feds, in due time; but it'll be picked clean by every scumbag marketing weasel in the business first. Best of both worlds!

Don't forget the Internet savvy burglar class that is coming. These smart device companies aren't spending their angel funding on security. Casing houses is quickly going to become a service available on the darknet; for a fraction of a bitcoin, crackers with giant databases of IoT surveillance data will tell the burglar which houses in the target area are unoccupied during the hours they specify. Tapping the camera signals will let the burglars pre-plan which stuff to grab. For a premium price, they'll disable the alarms, unlock the doors, and open the garage.

And my freaking homeowners insurance will go up, while Harry Hairstyle the scumbag CEO's stock will continue to soar into the stratosphere, because he won't be found negligent, and the homeowner who trusted him won't be found stupid.

If the goal is to kill a drive, there's a much faster way. Pull it out of the case, but keep the wires connected. Shut down the machine. Turn the machine back on. When the drive is just starting to spin up, slam it flat on the desktop.

Before the platters are up to speed, there is very little Bernoulli force holding the heads up. The above operation will crash the head and leave a nice big scratch.

I like your IoT angle, so I'm going to hang my comment here (I'll tie it in to your comment at the end).

If the officer looked through the window and didn't see any other people, for example, we could intuitively factor that into the reasonable suspicion inquiry without having to think about burdens of proof.

I think it is easy to make the call with looking in the window because everyone knows how to pull their curtains. Pulling your curtains carries force of law telling government representatives, "I don't want you to look at me right now, unless you have a warrant." That is the essence of the right to be secure in ones home; that you have the authority to say that the government is not permitted to observe your home without a warrant, regardless of technological capability.

Does the same apply to Doppler radar, or IoT records? Do people have an easy and commonly known way to say, "I do not want the government to look at electromagnetic radiation or business records that indicate what is happening in my home"? If people do not have a commonly known way to indicate consent or lack thereof to be observed, which carries the same force of law as curtains, then a warrant is required to uphold the intent of the 4th.

And to address a following point that may get raised; electric meters are sometimes used as evidence of what is happening inside a house. I think that also violates the intent of the 4th.

But what we really need is not to understand the intent of the 4th. What we need is for the public to consider that the marginal cost of law enforcement may have exceeded the marginal cost of crime. That is to say; we may have too little crime relative to the cost (including the cost to liberty and dignity) of law enforcement.

she's taken an extremely antagonistic attitude which has ironically been fueling a lot of hate speech of late. Her cause definitely has merit, but her arguments are often weak and her methods questionable.

That's about where I come out too. My ideals have been well aligned with feminism for a couple decades and there are many feminist leaders I have a lot of respect for, but she comes off a bit too much like Al Sharpton. Fighting for an important and just cause, but the self promotion and manipulative rhetoric make it ring a little hollow. Fine for rallying the troops, perhaps, but not so good for communicating with the other side. The latter is the worthier part.

If this was true, why are the airlines constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy with razor-thin margins? They should be rolling in cash, and they're not.

It's a great question; from an economic standpoint, what does it mean when the price is distorted but the competitors are not highly profitable?

In a perfectly competitive and perfectly informed system, price approaches cost. If they can fly you through a hub for X dollars, they could fly you to that hub for something less than or equal to X. If that's not how the pricing comes out, the actual market is not closely approximating the theoretical free market. Therefore, the price is distorted, not natural.

So what is happening? Delve, don't say it is not happening because one of the red flags has not been raised.

Why? Because air travel is hugely competitive

The fact that there are multiple companies alone does not tell you whether there is sufficient competition. Only efficient pricing can indicate that, and we have already established that the pricing does not follow one of the most basic ideal free market laws.

and a great deal for the flying public.

On what are you basing this? The fact that lots of people consume a good alone does not indicate that it is efficiently priced. Lots of people consume lottery tickets, and they are wildly inefficiently priced as a direct result of a government monopoly (see Atlantic City for the effect of reduction of fiat monopolies in gambling). Back in the day in NYC and Boston, fire houses were for-profit operations. They would pull up in front of your house while it was burning down, and offer to put it out -- for a price. In context, it's a great deal that nearly every potential customer happily transacted, but it was not efficiently priced.

The price of airline travel not efficient. Given the laws of free market economics, that necessarily implies that we are not maximizing the productivity of this massive industry. It violates efficient pricing, but also does not seem to generate monopoly profits. What is the cause? Delve, or raise questions that further the exploration. Don't just try to shut down conversation because it doesn't match your preconceptions.

Being a fan of the free market means wanting to optimize our approximation of it, wanting to find every bug and tweak it, not dogmatic belief that we are already at the pinnacle.

I suspected as much from the synopsis. Came to the discussion hoping to get the straight dope before rising to the clickbait. You delivered. Thanks!

Simple question: Are you talking visas, or greeen cards?

If you're talking H1B visas, you're looking for indentured servants, and you are being disingenuous.

If you mean green cards, permanent residency, sponsored by the corporation that brings them in so we know they really are the elite, then I'm with you 100%.

It isn't so much that people are upset that police have the ability to listen in to phone calls or track us. Rather, they are upset that increasingly these powers are being used on everyone all the time, usually without needing a warrant or having any oversight. These powers have been, are and will continued to be abused by the authorities.

Came here to say this, and you said it better than I could. Thanks!

It is unfortunate that the millions of Fox News viewers on Dish were used as pawns by their provider. Hopefully they will vote with their hard earned money and seek another one of our other valued distributors immediately.

Stop being their pawns, do our bidding! Choke their cannon with your dead! And peel us some grapes!