The police are that neutral third party. Clearly they are not you, and they are also not the people who accuse you (or the prosecutor representing the people).

A large part of our justice system is focused on keeping them neutral. The fact that the investigators did not erase their copy, but rather retained it, is why the appeals court in that case reversed the judgement.

No. The point of the fourth amendment is to prevent investigators from harassing people looking for reasons to prosecute and persecute.

What seems to be happening here is that there is already evidence enough to justify a search, but the details are not specific enough to be able to ask someone else to execute it. As a physical analogue, there's enough evidence to search a house for a murder weapon, but the investigators don't know it's taped to the bottom of the third dresser drawer. In the case of email, I'd expect the investigators don't know all aliases that might have been used, or in what timeframe the relevant emails might have been sent.

According to a more informative article, this won't be nearly as bad, then.

Ah, yes, I remember those days well. Those were the days when DoubleClick had tracking cookies on most of the major media sites, and the major sites that hadn't partnered with DoubleClick usually had their own advertising departments, so often their banners were placeholders advertising their advertising ability.

Of course, with decentralized management, all of those major players thought it was a new and innovative idea when X10 started their pop-under ad campaign using the new-fangled Flash thing, so it could be animated, too! Surely that would catch the eye, and they could finally make some steady income from those ads, right?

Then Google came along with its ad program. Simple text ads, tailored to the viewer, and all managed by an upstart company who seemed to be pretty good at managing such things. They didn't do pop-ups (or -unders), and they didn't do sound or video. They did volume. Sure, there are now ads everywhere, but they're not as bad as what we had before. I call it a net improvement.

Ah, yes, there was the content of the adolescent World Wide Web, hosted in large part by ad-supported GeoCities (and the like) and grant-supported universities, and consisting of low-bandwidth servers run as an afterthought to a business whose primary business wasn't dependent on having five-nines availability through DDoS attacks and peering disputes. I guess most of those "service unavailable" messages counted as some form of content.

...Like Slashdot, which offers a subscription that you don't appear to have?

Not quite. Ignorant people like me know that different companies are free to pick whatever business model they like, and I am free to use their service if and only if I agree with it. I find that Hulu Plus still offers me more value than they charge (including my time watching ads), so I'm inclined to subscribe to their service.

If only we were all as enlightened as you are, knowing that advertising is all Google's fault, and that all business must be conducted in the BitZtream-approved way.

Who? A court issuing a judgement, or the IRS seeking unpaid taxes? There is no Department of Government that simply decides anything. It's always the result of some bureaucracy, with a defined process for dispute resolution.

No explanations, or none that you understood? I've had the IRS come looking for money a few times, and each time it included an enumerated list of what parts of my paperwork they disagreed with. In typical government form, there was no colloquial interpretation, but to an accountant and tax preparer, though, all of the necessary information was there.

How did you get notice that you owed the money, then? Have you checked that the suitable department has your address correct?

That's a mistake. Keep records of every time you talk to someone about the matter, and take notes on what they say.

Which guy? Record names, ID numbers, or any other identifier. Those are important to track down exactly who has said what, and on what authority. I've had some matters resolved just by pointing different bureaucrats at each other, and letting them work out the disagreement internally.

"Froze" and "stole" are not the same things. Either way, get a good lawyer.

...as can any lawsuit.

...I said to get a good lawyer.

The bottom line is that either your story doesn't add up, or you're rather incompetent with governmental matters. Find a suitable advocate for this matter (either a different lawyer for a judgement, or a tax specialist for an IRS dispute, etc.) and give them absolutely every piece of information you have. Record absolutely everything that transpires. Yes, it will cost you a significant amount of money now, because you've sat on this for three years, but I'd be surprised if it totaled more than $37,000.

The most important thing is to make sure that someone fighting on your side is an expert in the relevant process. If you work within the established process, the various governmental entities are actually very forgiving and understanding. You must realize that the actual humans involved don't really care about taking your money, finding guilt, or screwing you over in any other way. They're interested in following the process and closing disputes, so if you show that you're interested in doing things the right way, they'll often be happy to explain exactly what that is. You don't need to waste their time professing your innocence, or telling them how horribly wrong the Big Bad Government is for attacking you. Just find out what you need to do to resolve the dispute, have an expert on hand to verify the information and ask questions, then do whatever's appropriate.

If the US were to change the dollar like that, most folks wouldn't care. The vast majority of American money is held in banks, which would make the change automatically on their electronic balance.

The only thing affected by such a change would be large stockpiles of cash. For legitimate businesses, replacing the cash in circulation would be an annoyance, but not impossible. For most individuals, who would have less than a few thousand dollars in cash on hand, the change would mean just a quick trip to the nearest bank.

The biggest disruption would be to those who have significant stockpiles of cash, larger than what banks would normally exchange. For that, the process could be pretty similar to what happens today if you need to make a large cash withdrawal or foreign-currency exchange: the bank can accommodate it with advance notice. You call the bank, give them a name and amount, and they'll make sure they have the cash on hand to serve your needs. The key detail, then, is that the bank knows your name and the amount you're exchanging, providing a paper trail indicating the presence of large amounts of cash. That paper trail is a problem for the criminal and the paranoid, but there aren't enough of those to make for a successful uprising.

...because you were driving on a riskier route, without a safe stopping distance in front of you. That seems reasonable to me.

Yes, as is every other Slashdotter, and our paranoid kind have been waiting for such things since Sputnik made us realize that surveillance didn't have to be up-close and personal. Each decade we pretend it's a new apocalypse, because this time it's different! Now it's the Internet of Things, and last year it was drones, and before that it was Big Data, GPS tracking, cell phones, and dental fillings.

No, it's just the doctor and the hospital trying to practice modern medicine. If they don't have every minute detail recorded, or if they don't order every test that might help, the predatory jackasses in this country will not hesitate to sue them for malpractice, claiming that they should instinctively know what tests will be meaningful for every single patient that enters their offices.

I sincerely hope you are never in charge of any secure system. Defense in depth is indeed a trivial concept, yet so vital to having any meaningful security.

Do you also leave your doors unlocked because a really persistent thief could have a set of lockpicks?

"Millions" isn't so much money that any cost becomes irrelevant. "Billions" is closer, but no amount of money will buy more time. Those 100 extra preparation hours could be the time when an informant reveals the plot to the CIA, or that could be the time another aspect of the plot to develop problems.

But there is a point at which you say "This plan is too risky, and has too many ways to fail. Let's try something else."

I think this is exactly right. The lenders are not doing credit reviews for the purpose of stopping crime. They're checking for the purpose of minimizing their own risk. Sure, there's a risk that a loan applicant is going to do something criminal that results in the lender losing their money, but there is a much greater risk that an otherwise-honest individual is simply unable to manage their own finances.

Then, of course, there's the cost/benefit analysis of the investigation itself. If criminal fraud is rare, it may not be worth the cost to investigate every applicant deeply enough to find the crime.

I'm not ambitious enough to do the calculations myself, but I would expect to find that the most profitable course of action is to do a cursory examination of individual applicants, and just to consider intentional fraud to be a part of the cost of doing business.

Yes, they do, and the agents know what an unmodified phone or laptop looks like. They're usually not just a small circuit with most of the case filled with some unidentified material.

Well, yes, but only the most idiotic of plots would be foiled by any single measure. All together, the detection measures simply raise the cost of planning a non-idiotic plot. Now, a successful terrorist must spend an extra $100 on parts and 100 hours on hardware modifications, while still spending the time and money to jump through every other hurdle in the way.

Sure, a sufficiently-competent entity can get through every security measure, but the point is to raise the difficulty high enough that the attack isn't worth the hassle. That sentiment applies to every aspect of security, not just airplanes.

Well, that depends... did you leave your front door open with a big sign saying "Twisty passages inside! Great for losing pursuers!" posted next to it?

If so, then it's pretty easy to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you were not just aware that your actions could assist criminals, but you actually made overt actions to help them.

Actually, yes, you can. That's pretty much the basis of contract law.