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Comment Censorship Useful, but Risky. (Score 2) 58

This would help cut down on the stupidity that "news" outlets in the US spread to the uneducated and or uninformed population

Yes. Freedom of Speech, as conceived in many nations, includes the freedom to speak irresponsibly. These nations may be destroyed by that freedom, which creates an ecosystem of mostly-stupid ideas that it is very, very hard for wiser minds to change. Or they may be saved by it, if nations such as China tighten their grip on information far enough that they overly limit the free flow of innovative ideas and legitimate idea-generating-and-analyzing debate.

There are people on both sides of the political spectrum who should never be allowed to publicly speak to the American public about politics again. Not because we may disagree with them, but because they are obviously wrong, and alarmist, and they are hurting America by their false contributions to the debate. So it is in many free nations.

Comment Re:Microsoft's child porn collection (Score 1) 353

Nope. Just the hashes.

Which is all well and good. From what I hear, people who actually have to look at the images to verify them end up having psych problems. When the agencies are doing it right, I think they rotate those agents through counseling on a regular basis. As soon as the image is recognized, hash it so nobody else has to look at it again, store the original bits and if the computer does a bit-for-bit match on the image that should be evidence enough without anybody having to look at it again.

This. The pictures I've heard described would give me psych problems, too: I would have the immediate urge to hunt down the person taking the photographs and beat them senseless.

Comment Re:40% of 680,000 is useless (Score 1) 256

If I had cells of 5 people in a few states.... I could cause wide spread chaos and fear.

If you owned TV networks, newspapers and such you could do it very efficiently. You don't need to directly hurt anyone or mess around with bombs to cause terror.

The biggest problem is the lack of effective propaganda. There are some good propaganda campaigns out there--Big Oil has some amazing people who do that, for example--but I have a sneaking suspicion that the largely unregulated market forces we have in place in determining news outlet content is actually incredibly destabilizing.

Comment Re:Lockdown (Score 1) 100

Besides handling the uploading of completed exam questions, ExamSoft locks down the computer on which it runs, so Wikipedia is not an option.

Yeah, that'll work, because nobody has internet capable cellphones, secondary machines or even Virtual Machines.

It doesn't need to be perfect, just decent enough to make it harder to cheat. Things like the consequences of getting caught also apply--law is a highly regulated profession, and getting caught would keep a person from ever becoming a lawyer. Failing the bar exam generally just means you retake it six months later and study more.

Cellphones are not permitted in the exam room; so are second computers; and I believe the software is designed not to run on at least some class of virtual machines.

Comment Security (Score 1) 110

This is like being accused of overeating by the world's biggest fat man.

Yes, it is. It is about security rather than monopoly. Both discouraging Chinese citizens from using Microsoft (this lets state media trash talk them for a little while) and trying to get their hands on source code or other references to flaws in the OS.

Comment Wrong - bad summary (Score 1) 100

Students weren't unable to complete exams; they were unable to upload the exams, which you need to do after you get home (or to a hotel) after the exam. It gets stores on your laptop (presumably with public key encryption) in the meantime. Examsoft's servers ran at least 50% slower than they had in the past; the company hasn't announced why.

The only trick is that some jurisdictions required you to upload the exam within a few hours, so Examsoft had to contact those jurisdictions and get them to extend the deadlines.

The only other issue is stress. If it takes law students a lot of time to deal with Examsoft's incompetence and they have to take day 2 of the exam the next day, people who needed just another hour of studying (Not many where an hour would make a difference, but there will be some who just barely fail)... the result, predictably, will be lawsuits.

Comment Constitutional (Score 1) 242

Sounds like security clearance language. That is an odd sieve to use.

Not at all. "Reasonable suspicion" is legal language, which is why they use it in both contexts. It is the minimum amount of information that a police officer (or other federal agent) can have to stop you on the street, even if they lack a warrant, without violating the Constitution. It basically means they have to point to specific facts that under the circumstances suggest you may be up to something criminal. (They don't have to identify those facts to you when they stop you, necessarily, but they can make a reasonable inquiry to dispel their suspicion.) Otherwise they have violated the Constitution, which doesn't help you a lot sometimes, but still sometimes results in either evidence they find being excluded or you being able to sue them.

Whether it should be the standard here is a different question, but the government wants it to be because it's a pretty low standard.

Comment Re:Discoverable (Score 1) 749

So Microsoft employees must choose between flying to Ireland, breaking the law and facing possible arrest or losing the case in the US. They could ask their Irish subsidiary for the data but I somehow doubt any of those people will be willing to go to jail to satisfy a US court that has no jurisdiction over them.

There is a question in "breaking the law and facing possible arrest[.]" First, there has been no indication that Irish laws will be broken. Second, there is no reason to believe there would be an arrest if they were broken by a corporation acting in good faith to comply with the laws of another country. Third, most laws around data storage privacy have an exception for disclosure pursuant to a valid court order or warrant. Fourth, it is a multibillion dollar company more likely to face a fine than to have its employees arrested. Fifth, nobody needs to *fly to ireland* unless Microsoft wants them too--MSFT has people there. And flying to Ireland is not a big deal for an employee of a multibillion dollar corporation.

The messed up thing here is *NOT* requiring MSFT to turn over their data where electrons are located in Dublin. It's the scope of material they can get without a showing of probable cause under the 1986 law that determines privacy for email.

Yes. 1986.

Comment No (Score 0) 261

does that mean I'm no longer an extremist for demanding my Constitutional rights be respected?

No.

The UN has stated that this probably violated Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, together with the ICCPR and ICESCR, serve as the "International Bill of Rights." While international law is part of the law of the United States, it is rarely looked to in the United States, and the Universal Declaration is more aspirational than really binding. It doesn't invalidate our laws on its own; we don't have a policy as striking things down because they violate it.

This has *nothing* to do with the United States Constitution. You can demand your Constitutional rights be respected as much as you want; most people demand that without having an understanding of what the Constitution guarantees, instead using it (without legal basis) to rationalize a position that the government shouldn't interfere in X, where X is what they want to do.

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