The thing is there are so many better ways to do things right now. For starters, you could force any retailer that wants to accept credit cards to upgrade to a chip and pin setup or lose their ability to accept credit cards. Chip and pin isn't perfect, but it's better than a magnetic stripe and a signature. For card not present transactions allow Visa card holders to create a one time credit card number (with a maximum limit) via the internet or over the phone. Want to buy something on line? Generate your own credit card number to the exact value of what you're buying. That CC # number expires at the end of the day - meaning that even if you gave it a ridiculous limit and then sent it to a shady site they'd have 24 hours to use it.

Of course implementing these fixes would cost more than just paying the scammers, so we'll never see it happen.

(a) That's a single river (well, many rivers really, but certainly not all of the water in Ethiopia). Why hold back on the development of other rivers? For that matter why kowtow to a distant nation? Why not try to secure international backing for your claims (as International Law clearly states that riparian nations are required to share waters in a fair and equitable manner)? There are lots of other options,
(b) If it is Egypt (admittedly working through a dated treaty put in place by a European nation) that is forcing Ethiopia's hand, it is hardly the Empire building of European nations that is holding Ethiopia back.

While Western Imperialism did not help Mozambique in any way, to say that the poverty of African nations is a result of Imperialism is misguided. Ethiopia is a good example of this. It was only recently (the mid-20th century) and very briefly (1936-1944) brought under the control of a proper empire. For most of the rest of its history is has been a monarchy and has always had the potential to be fairly affluent - the soils there are quite fertile compared to neighbouring nations and the nation sits high above much of the rest of Africa making it the source for a dozen or so major rivers. However the nation is a poorly organized communist society - so very little of its fertile land is irrigated by its vast water reserves and it is usually one drought away from disaster.

Are there things we could do to make things easier for Ethiopia? Sure. Because of her robust economies anything the west does has significant effects on the rest of the world. However there are many contributing factors to the poor economies of Africa, many of which have more to do with the people and the governments of these nations than anything the western world has done. Compare Ethiopia and Mozambique to Botswana, which gained independence in 1966 and was, at the time, the poorest country in Africa. Now it has a robust economy and the 2nd highest GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa (after Seychelles).

Harper is just copying what Martin tried many, many moons ago when the Liberals were still relevant. The current bill is not that different from C-60 which was introduced in 2005 by the Liberals. That failed when government fell, as did C-61 and C-32 (which were introduced by the Conservatives). Harper's not any more evil - he's just better at it because he can lead his party to a majority...

And that worked out so well for Nixon didn't it.

I meant that the police could do it (record the decrypted stream or record the encrypted stream and decrypt it later upon request). As I said there has to be a certain amount of trust in the police which some people might lack, but if it's legislated - if they are allowed to use decryption only with this provisio for the commonweal - then it become an issue of enforcement.

(a) If you think any country in the so-called west is a police state, then you need an introduction to a real police state. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure there are rights violations and the police are heavy handed at times. However, that's what happens when you give people authority over others - some become heroes, some do a good job and some are corrupted. However calling the USA or any western country a police state is an insult to those actually living in a police state.

(b) I didn't say anything about anyone not having a right to listen to police radio. Under my proposed system you could acquire yesterday's police chatter and listen to it to your little heart's content. You can't listen to the live feed, but that's because there are often operational considerations where the safety of law enforcement officers and the general public. Unless you expect the police to stage some kind of coup overnight I don't know if knowing what they are up to right this instant is that important from the viewpoint of protecting one's rights.

Actually 'encrypt everything' is a perfectly fine solution. Even under the "protect our rights" flag (and I'm not sure how being able to follow police radio chatter is a rights issue) it would be trivial to either set up a station which can decrypt the radio traffic and record the traffic to a device somewhere. Hell - just record the encrypted stream and make it possible for people and the media to request access to radio traffic after forty-eight hours have passed.

The issue then becomes forcing the police to record all traffic and respond to requests, but that's a job for the judiciary (and is frankly no different than the situation now - lots of stuff can convienently go missing when it concerns police).

I guess, by your logic, we should bother to try and take down Global Botnets either because there are rapists and murderers out there who have yet to be caught. Obviously we have our priorities mixed up.

Leaving aside the whole "MegaUpload was a legitimate business" argument it's likely a matter of low hanging fruit. Shutting down a botnet is difficult. It's comand and control structures are usually obfuscated and redundant. It's operators are (usually) bright enough to cover their tracks. Innocent people/businesses are likely to get caught in the crossfire as their zombified PC's are often used to host significant portions of the systems. To say nothing of the fact that law enforcement agencies usually do not want to shine a light too directly at botnets - the cockroaches that run them tend to scatter to their hidey-holes rather quickly. Better rather to invest large amounts of time and effort to bring the thing down properly, so that there is a case against it's organizers. MegaUpload, on the other hand, was a business. Its location was known. Its infrastructure was known. Its CEO was known. No innovent bystanders. No way to hide.

Now I'm with you. I think it was wrong to bring down MegaUpload. But don't criticize law enforcement agencies for, upon deciding that MegaUpload was in violation of the law, taking it down swiftly.

...it should be something completely different

I would hazard that your nation would run out of submarines before the US ran out of carriers. If you could afford to buy submarines after the USA shut their borders to trade with you. And even if you managed to prevent all these things and wage unrestricted submarine warfare against the US, they would simply pick a nearby friendly country, give them special trading priviliges (because everyone wants to trade with the USA) and start making attacks from land bases against your industrial base and AA installations until you had nothing resembling an economy or defenses. At which point they'd continue bombing for two more weeks, then maybe offer you some kind of peace settlement.

Warfare is economic and there is no economy in the world that is stronger and more resistant to damage than the American economy.

It has little to do with just the nukes. In fact the nukes would be over kill. It starts with geography (there are two nations that have ports on the North Atlantic and in the Pacific and only one of the them has the population and industrial base to take advantage of it) and continues with the economy (there is not a company on earth that would not sell it's corporate soul to gain a solid foothold in the USA - even given the dismal economic climate there's still no place better to be selling stuff). If the military get involved it probably won't be nukes - it'll be the navy enforcing an embargo. There is very little on the seas big enough to be called a ship that escape the eyes of the US Navy when they decide to shut down shipping and there's no navy in the world capable of tangling with the US Navy and coming out on top (no matter what Iran might think). Nukes - it doesn't ever get to nukes. Under a naval embarago the nation's economy withers and dies and the people start starving.

It's an unfortunate reality of this world that we live in. The US is ascendent - as the UK was a century ago and countless other nations before. And because of that all other nations are forced to pay homage to the king of the nations, lest they be utterly devestated.

Becuase there's zero chance of them ever forming the government? Man, where's a drum kit when you need it?

Seriously though, the NDP aren't dumb enough to not play ball on this. And I think the NDP rank and file are pretty dumb to begin with (no offense intended, but I can not get on board with a party that at both the federal and provincial level insists on running joke candidates in my riding). There's obviously immense pressure on the Canadian government (doesn't matter who's in charge or how many times it dies as the government falls) to get a DMCA like system in place. What are the costs to the country if the NDP flat out refuse? Tough to fund social programs when there's no money coming into the economy for exports (which are almost entirely to the US).

Sadly you've got to pick your battles and I don't think the Liberals, the Conservatives or the NDP are willing to die on the hill of digital rights. Sad bu true fact about politics in Canada.

Historically? Historically the Liberal tried to introduce a DMCA-lite bill C-60 before Harper got into power. It died when the government fell. Harper has tried twice since then - bill C-61 (died when the government fell) and bill C-32 (died when the government fell). But don't lionize the Liberals for having had the balls to stand up to the American media cartel. They didn't. And while I can't be certain, I'm fairly sure that the NDP would just tip the same way.

What's more, I would expect a tax refund on media that's already been purchased. After all, I paid for the right to use it in a manner which I'd no longer be permitted to by law (and the law change would've come at the behest of the group collecting the taxes) I really doubt that's going to happen, but it'd be interesting to make a stand on it and take it through the court systems. If you landed in the right court in front of the right judge and had the right backing (enough $$$ to counter the army of media lawyers you'd be facing) it could be very interesting.