Not saying it's right, but if you/something is in a publicly-visible portion of your private property, you have no legal expectation of privacy there.

There's nothing *illegal* about a solenoid fired weapon. It just requires a particular set of licensing which (I doubt) the college drone operator did.

Neither the NFA or GCA has any regulations to deal with flamethrowers. "Destructive devices" must be explosive in nature, which a flamethrower is not.

True story.

A flamethrower would be outside the purview of the ATF. :-)

The regulation is clear on this point (so I'm told, anyway, I haven't read it myself), because the *device* at that point has nothing mechanically preventing multiple bullets from firing per "manual action" (the button push in this case), it becomes a NFA weapon.

Essentially, you've got a "manual" operation, a "trigger" operation, and a firing of a round. In a conventional firearm use the manual operation and the trigger operation are the same. Mechanically at that point (in the normal firearm), the firearm prevents multiple rounds from being fired per manual action (by requiring a trigger release, and re-pulling it).

When you're using a solenoid for the trigger-pull, you lose the "connection" between the manual operation and the firing of rounds that is necessary to remain NFA-compliant.

The gun is legal but his use of the solenoid to depress the trigger may not have been. It may have transformed the "legal handgun" to simply being one component of an NFA automatic-weapon.

Solenoid driven trigger pulls (such as used here) do, in fact, require an NFA tax stamp as an automatic weapon. It's a regulation designed around the scenario you describe (push button once, solenoid opens and closes repeatedly).

Almost certainly, that's what the Feds are investigating now, determining the exact details on how the gun was fired (that it did in fact use a solenoid-trigger-pull, etc.).

In other words, it may not be an FAA violation, but it's almost certainly a (probably-accidental) ATF violation.

Aha,... it's part of a UN Treaty.

Article 12, section 4 of the ICCPR (a treaty ratified by and binding on the US) provides that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”

It's a common topic in other forums. There's some very edge cases where it's permissible (dual-citizen, intoxication if you can believe that) but otherwise, your passport entitles you to entry.

Your *stuff* on the other hand is a whole different thing (importing of goods, etc., etc.), but you, yourself, have a near-absolute right to entry.

It's simple: She's an American citizen. Don't answer a goddamned question. They can't deny her entry into the country, since she's a US citizen.

If she's saying so much as "hello" to these chuckleheads at this point, she's an idiot.

... if you visit the first article linked in the story, while using AdBlock, you get a giant pop-up complaining about your doing so. :-)

Really? I haven't had any problems with it. I mean I did when it was like "month 1" of the service going live, but it settled down fairly nicely over time.

How the fuck is this "Offtopic"?

Screw you, whoever moderated that...

If you get rid of the mobile requirement, http://mega.co.nz/ might be the solution for you.

Specifically designed by Kim Dotcom's folks so that they CANNOT access your data (so they don't tell if you've got financial paperwork or pirated movies). Has a method for sync'ing a local unencrypted filesystem into their cloud architecture.

Why would I need anything more?

You connect to a bunch of remote systems, you browse, you read e-mail....