Encryption keys aren't protected by the 5th amendment right to silence. If you are asked to provide it by a court and don't then you'll likely in as bad or worse situation than if you did.

His mistake was doing it in the first place. If he hadn't admitted it then they'd likely have been able to get a warrant. They'd take his computer and all other electronics and then he'd better be damn confident there was nothing on it that could in any way implicate him. Even if there wasn't then he's not safe because any investigation worth a damn is going to probe into what he claims he was doing on Tor and do you really think the network activity for browsing porn, surfing silroad or whatever looks like that of sending an email. If he says he sent an email to anyone identifiable then they'll get that person up, in court under oath, to swear they receive it (having already collected and analysed their electronics as well).

I'm a more than slightly cynical person and think I'd probably make a pretty poor jurist because to me 'reasonable doubt' is a hugely wide definition that almost anyone fits. However if I'm presented with evidence of network traffic that would be expected when sending an email via the claimed anonymous email and nothing at all like it would if the defendant was doing whatever else he claimed then I'm confident that he's lying and if he's lying then I'm deciding whether there is a plausible reason for that other than he committed the crime; and even if there was then he still lied under oath which is a crime in itself.

We over-react when sentencing for any number of crimes and to be fair we probably are in this case as well but that doesn't mean that the incident wasn't handled correctly, nor does it mean that it wasn't a serious crime and deserving of a strong punishment. What % chance of a bomb threat being a hoax should there be before we decide not to evacuate? Who measures it, is there a convenient bomb-threat-seriousness-omiter that they can use? Ultimately, unless we are overwhelmingly confident (pretty much the person who called it in has admitted it and we have evidence it was them) then we're going to have to respond.

The threat will have had a considerable impact from police and university resources investigating it, to wasted university resources for the cancelled exam, distress for some students, and potential affect on results across multiple exams for students. A punishment in line with that for a severe assault wouldn't be remotely unreasonable, in my opinion, though I'd probably think the typical punishment for that is also too severe.

Germany is part of the EU so it's no harder to delivery to a German 5 mins from the Dutch border from the Netherlands than it is to supply it from a hub in Germany but equally far away. That said, Germany is a pretty big country and servicing the majority of it from distribution centres in other countries would add costs. The Czechs might welcome the work that gets moved there but the Dutch, Danes, French and Austrians probably aren't that interested in getting hand me down jobs that the Germans rejected.

that is the whole idea of no double taxation. We fought a war of independence to rid ourselves of such nonsense.

No. You fought a war of independence because you didn't like taxes and you really didn't like taxes from a government you had no representation in. When you won independence the government couldn't bring in taxes, because it would be too like the British, so to pay its army etc it sold the land instead; much of it Indian land which it forcefully evicted them from leading to thousands of deaths.

But that's all good right because taxes are just plain wrong by comparison ;)

It always irked me when you install an Android app it often produces a big long list of the things the app can access, some of which you don't want it to, but you can't pick'n'choose the access permissions, it''s all or nothing.

You can choose not to install it. If you don't trust the app dev to correctly disclose what permissions they need then walk away. People will turn permissions off, break the app and then slate the app for not working. Better to build the app to test for permissions on launch, explain to users that haven't given all permissions that it can't run till they re-enable and close.

Wouldn't the logical thing here be for the Google to make the install menu advanced enough to allow devs to give users install options and permissions as required rather than letting users switch stuff off and see what breaks? If I was a dev I'd produce apps that check for all required permissions and explain and shutdown if some are restricted. Why? Because I don't want negative reviews because someone decided to turn off a permission and the app didn't work right.

We are in control, we're just negligent. In the UK we still have full access to everything our MPs have voted for, their statements and to elections where we choose them. We have everything we need to change the face of our democracy except sufficient desire to actually put the work in and do it.

The rules, in theory and when applied as originally intended, are to stop people from hiding large sums of money to avoid it being seized when convicted, lost in divorce or taken in inheritance tax. If I wanted to avoid IHT and withdrew £10,000,000 and bought bitcoin tokens to hide the money then the government wants records to be kept so it can in theory track my attempt at avoidance (actually in the UK they can simply point out the missing £10,000,000 which can't be explained and tax it without ever seeing it, so it's not as relevant here).

In theory it makes sense: I don't want middle class people stuck paying IHT while the super wealthy can just ship the money off to a no records foriegn bank account where it can't be found.

In the UK we have energy tariffs called econ 7 for homes as an option. Basically instead of having 1 rate you get charged less for using power for a window overnight and more the rest of the day. It's hard to move power use from daytime to early morning but I've always wondered whether, given the 50% odd discount, whether it could be cost effective to fit a battery that charged overnight and then discharged during the day...

Sounds like a wanker.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a more blatant example of it taking one to see one. Young and carrying something more advanced than a pen and paper you say, fuck me why didn't they shoot that hipster on the spot!!!

Well done rebel. You sure showed them by giving them what they wanted and then using an opportunity to inconvenience them for taking your stuff and refusing to return it. That's about as 'rebel' and sucking a bikers cock and calling yourself a 'bad ass'.

Seriously? Start a list of ones where you won't be and stop pretending like one or two places are somehow massively worse. Why is Snowden still in Russia? Because he couldn't get to South America without some country he would need to pass via screwing him over. Do you think Chinese rules give you more protection then US/UK/NZ rules?

We're fucked and it's basically our own fault. People will give up almost anything and put up with almost anything, that doesn't cause too much visible inconvenience to their daily life, if they think it'll make them safer or help catch 'bad guys'. You can argue that governments encourage that view or take advantage of it but ultimately it's the fact that the western peoples are such a bunch of ignorant cowards that is sleep walking us to tyranny,

I might be overly optimistic but outside of the UK, where when detained at an airport it can be a crime not to answer a question (what the fuck?), I don't think you'd be breaking the law for refusing to give the IP and password to a server located in another country?

Also, bet there would a law about how long they can hold the stuff for. A week or two I'm sure.

5 seconds research and you'd know enough about it to not posting misleading nonsense. Unless NZ has unusually tight controls on seized electronics then they can pretty much keep them as long as they want, which if they did want to inconvenience the guy would certainly be after he has left NZ and headed back to Europe.

I used to wonder why anyone would carry files etc to other countries when they could be stored on so many different services online. I have, in fact, as a matter of habit always reset my android phone before travel on the basis that I can re-install apps, accounts etc after leaving the airport. It now makes more sense. They are already capturing so much about information shared online that sneaker nets are probably one of the bigger threats to them. Who cares if I don't keep files on my laptop but instead on Dropbox if the government can just look in my dropbox at will.