I'm intrigued to know if it was even in visual range, but I guess we need the launch location and a determination of exactly where it was hit for that.

Presumably it's even possible that it was simply cloudy and there wasn't even a visual indicator so they just guessed and went for it.

Worse, apparently the type of buk in question can be set into autonomous firing mode such that it fires at any aircraft approaching from it's frontal position.

The rebels could well have not realised civilian flights were still heading over Ukraine and could've set it into this mode and no human intervention would've even been necessary.

It's possible that by the time this aircraft was visible and they could see it didn't look like another AN-24 that the missile had already left it's rails and it was too late.

Nope, read the link I posted in the post you were replying to, specifically:

"Although it has its own identification friend or foe system, this is only able to establish whether the target being tracked is a friendly aircraft. It is the electronic equivalent of a sentry calling out: "Who goes there?". If there is no reply, all you know is that it is not one of your own combat aircraft. It would not give you a warning that you were tracking an airliner."

I was actually rather astounded at how happy Obama seemed when he gave the announcement, I saw it live on TV and it was completely the wrong way to address people about such an incident.

What an absolute amateur plonker he is. Where's the great orator we were promised?

Janes suggests that whilst training is needed, the launcher can operate in stand alone mode and even be set to fire autonomously at anything approaching it:

http://www.janes.com/article/4...

I suspect setting it in this mode could be done by a Ukrainian military defector, a Russian operative, or possibly even just by a smart operative being told over the phone or whatever how to set it into this mode. I doubt there's something mystical about it that stops someone being able to be talked through it, people have been talked through how to land aircraft before over comms with zero experience so it seems reasonable.

Besides, it was only the other day the rebels were gloating about having shot down an actual Ukrainian transport at that sort of altitude, so they've already admitted they have the capability to launch this sort of missile anyway so that's not even in doubt at this point either way.

It's not as if they haven't been able to launch massively succesful MLRS attacks in the last week either. There's clearly some extremely skilled military players working for the "rebels". I say rebels in quotes because the entire lineup of the rebels top team are actual Russians, or Ukrainians who have served with the Russian military I believe without exception. They're more actual Russian than they are Ukrainian rebel or separatist.

But people have landed Boeing 747s with no training.

Anyhow, your comments are irrelevant now, as we have evidence from a professional organisation that actually knows their stuff and has explained why you are wrong. They make it clear that whilst you need training to run this thing, you don't necessarily need to know what your firing it, specifically:

"However, a Buk launcher can also operate in stand-alone mode. Its built-in radar is normally used to track the target being engaged, but can be operated in a target-detection mode, allowing it to autonomously engage targets that were present in the radar's forward field of view."

http://www.janes.com/article/4...

Looks like all that nonsense about you couldn't fire one of these things without knowing what your tiring at really is bollocks propaganda, if it can be set to fire autonomously then someone may not have even known it was about to fire, let alone what it was firing at if they set it in that mode not realising civilian airliners were still flying overhead.

All it would take is one defector, or potentially one trained captured soldier along with the launcher to set it in this mode, possibly not even that, possibly just a phone call to Moscow to ask "How do we use this thing?" is all it took.

Either way, doing this with or without knowing what was being launched at is clearly well within the capability of the Russian operatives fighting in Ukraine.

Right, and I was told I couldn't configure a Nortel Meridian PABX without special training or the manual, but with a bit of careful trial and error and scraping together scraps of knowledge from here and there I slowly figured out how.

What makes you think there isn't a separatist army defector who was half way through his training and hadn't done the identification aspect yet?

Your talking complete nonsense to pretend the Buk is a magical all or nothing system - you can either perfectly identify an aircraft and fire or you can't use it at all. No such system exists, any system can have an operator with only partial knowledge. Even if the system is smart enough (I don't think it is, it's a 70s - 80s era system) to automatically tell you based on the radar signature what it is that still doesn't preclude the possibility of misidentification - the launcher is older than the aircraft it shot down for starters.

Let's be honest, you're speculating, you're basing the idea that you can either not use one of these at all, or perfectly identify a target on nothing more than your will to for whatever reason preclude the possibility that rebels shot this plane down even though all the evidence (including comments from rebels themselves) point to exactly that.

"Who are you to determine what the public has a right to focus their attention on?"

Who are you to do the same? It doesn't matter what my viewpoint is, but these laws were created in democracies where majority rule wins, so regardless of what you or I think the fact is that your opinion rubs against democratic will of the majority, and you don't get to dictate in the face of democracy.

"I'm not arguing that Google should be given a free pass to violate this law. I'm arguing that the law is foolish and shouldn't even be in place. If you have a problem with the data being broadcasted about you, take it up with the people doing the broadcasting, not a third-party that simply indexes whatever information is publicly available."

Right but you're arguing from a position of ignorance, you're arguing against something you just clearly demonstrated you do not understand, and that's the problem.

You miss the point, when Google takes a copy of the data and also broadcasts it then it becomes one of the entities doing the broadcasting and so becomes fair game. It is not right that people should be able to silence the original source because sometimes the original source is public record, but just because it's public record doesn't mean Google has an inherent right to also broadcast then also profit off of it - Google sells ads against it's results, whilst public record is a specifically defined not for profit thing.

"As swillden said, Microsoft did not have a monopoly in the browser space. They were convicted of using their monopoly of desktop operating systems to exert undue influence in the browser market. Google did not use an existing monopoly to gain marketshare in the search engine, so your analogy is bogus."

It wasn't an analogy and that's really all irrelevant. The point was simply that a monopoly is based entirely on marketshare, like it or not that's the very definition of it, so your original suggestion that Google does not have a monopoly still remains false because it has nothing to do with amount of competitors and everything to do with strength of competitors and subsequent marketshare. However you wish to spin it you still clearly have no idea what a monopoly actually is.

"They are following the law, just in an exaggerated form to protest the burden this is placing on them."

So you are saying it's okay to manipulate search results if you don't like the law then? If that's the case I'd rather not listen to you as you clearly fall into the same category as the likes of Fox News in believing that it's okay to bend the truth and lie if you don't like something - that means you're really not an honest person.

"If that was the case, then I would fully support the law, but it is nothing like that. Google is being forced to take information that is already publicly available out of their search results. "

Right, and you're taking a view of your naked self that would otherwise be publicly available out of the public by closing the curtains. You're absolutely right in that's what Google is being forced to do, but you've failed to explain why it's a bad thing - just because the cat is out the bag doesn't mean we need to put it back in the bag, simply making it harder to find the cat is sufficient for most people whether you like it or not.

"What I was saying is that there will always be services that fly under the radar that will provide that information. People will inevitably gravitate toward those sources which will eventually garner enough attention to have this law enforced on those new services. When that happens, another small company will take their place and the process repeats."

You're simply speculating here, you may well be right, but frankly I don't see what business model there is in breaching the privacy of people we neither know nor care about. If it's data of people we do care about then it shouldn't have been hidden in the first place.

So the fact is, if revenge porn of someone is the first result found when Googling their name on Google then sure it may still exist in a torrent or on someone's hard drive somewhere, but they probably don't care - all they know is that they want it to not be so blatantly available. All they want is to not immediately be associated with it on a search for their name, and that's really going to be enough for them. That's all most people trying to erase results of themselves in this manner really want.

It's interesting that you refer to P2P services because the same effect has been there - sure you can still find everything you always could but in countries where takedowns/site blocking have occurred there has actually been a decrease in the use of such sites - casual users can't be bothered with the extra effort of evading bans and that's all this law is designed to do - make it easier to prevent all but the most determined people to find embarassing/incorrect/out of date data on people.

You seem to be one of those people who can only see in black or white, and that's okay, that describes 90% of Slashdot, your belief is that if you can't achieve 100% erasure of data then you shouldn't bother at all. But that's incorrect, most people neither expect that nor even necessarily want that, for many just being able to lower the prominence of such data if they have legitimate excuse for doing so is good enough, in your desperate argument for black or white you're missing the many shades of grey in between on which the real world and politics operates.

"That's more than a bit disingenuous of you... the law has been around, but the court's rather bizarre interpretation of it, that it requires search engines to remove links but doesn't require the source sites to remove the content, is extremely new."

No it's not, that's exactly how it's been applied to credit reference agencies since it's incarnation. They can use public bankruptcy data for 7 years, but after that they must stop referencing it, even though it still exists in it's original source - public court records. It's really no different in that respect and the danger is that if you change data protection legislation to remove the rules on relevancy that it means credit reference agencies could potentially act to deny you access to lending such as a mortgage for your whole life just because of one stupid mistake in your teens.

There's no differentiation between public search engines and what are effectively private search engines for the financial sector in this respect. The only thing different about this ruling is that it's based on a public, rather than a private search engine. (Disclaimer: I've worked for a CRA so I know how credit searches work).

"A more reasonable interpretation is that if some information should be removed the target should get the source site to remove it, which will automatically cause it to disappear from search engines, given that they're mere indexes."

No, that's even worse, because then we have the ability to completely rewrite history by erasing public record.

I think maintaining public record, but removing easy access is the best balance between maintaining historic record and ease of access. It means if someone really needs to be scrutinised (because they suddenly want to become prime minister or something) then they still can be, but if they're going to just stay some average joe, then a friend or family member can't simply stumble across something embarrassing that is no longer relevant.

The law actually makes sense IMO. The new European Data Protection Directive update which hasn't been completed yet actually makes all this more explicit, it has explicit provisions to protect historical record and to protect freedom of expression regarding public figures and so forth.

Yeah I had a look at the site too, it's not really much of anything, and I don't think the first link is even correct (in fact, I don't think the search terms mean much either as it's links that are removed, not search terms). It's not even automated it seems, just a tiny handful of examples. In this case you're probably right, I doubt much could happen to him. I had a view of a site that was automatically harvesting removed links including descriptions which would be infringing but as it stands the site looks like it's just manually sticking up links to public interest records that Google shouldn't have and wouldn't have to remove in the first place but are doing so out of ignorance of the law, or out of malice through distaste of the law to make a point.

I don't think linking is legal in the UK given that it's the basis on which the BPI et. al. have been able to get court orders to block the likes of the pirate bay, but you may be right elsewhere, I've not kept up on the issue for a while so things could've changed.

"No one has a right to be forgotten. Doing so requires stifling the speech of those who remember you. Although I guess you could fix that by erasing their memories."

Well that's your own personal, somewhat odd opinion. Apart from the fact no one's asking for an absolute right to be forgotten, it doesn't mean that people shouldn't have a right to be forgotten in the public eye as far as possible. You may personally be otherwise, but thankfully you're not grand dictator of the world such that in progressive societies we still get to pursue a belief in rehabilitation, which has had some success. You may personally believe free speech is an absolute right (it's not, try committing libel, or professing in public repeatedly that you want to blow up the president or something) that overrides all other rights but it's just not that simple.

"Can you blame them? The "right to be forgotten" is ridiculous in the first place and it is creating hundreds of thousands of requests that Google is required to process at a significant expense."

The right to be forgotten isn't even law yet. What Google is receiving requests for is the fact that they're in breach of data protection law, and like every other company on earth, have an obligation to adhere to the law. The law in question dates back to 1995, so it's not like it's a new surprising thing, they just decided to flout it up until recently that's all. If however then you are arguing that data protection law shouldn't exist then you must also be in support of everything from identity fraud to worker black lists, to life-long credit histories because ultimately data protection law is what works against these sorts of things.

"Oh yeah, Google has such a monopoly! There aren't any other search engines for people to use."

I don't think you understand the word monopoly. By your logic Microsoft never had a monopoly with Internet Explorer because Netscape existed. Monopolies are not determined by amount of competition, but by amount of marketshare held, so unless you're going to argue like a fool that Google doesn't hold the vast majority of marketshare then you can't argue that Google doesn't hold a search monopoly.

"They're "manipulating results" because there is a ridiculous law on the books that requires significant effort and expense on their part to uphold."

So what you're saying then is that it's okay to manipulate results if you don't like the law? Interesting.

"Since Google is the primary target of this law"

Are you actually serious? Google, that hasn't adhered to the European Data Protection directive until it was forced to in a court case in 2014 is the target of a law dating back 3 years before Google even existed? What the fuck planet are you on?

"Whether you want to admit it or not, this law is pure censorship."

Oh, and here we are, the great censorship card. Just when I thought your argument couldn't get anymore retarded. It's censorship in the exact same way that pulling your curtains closed when you get undressed is censorship. If that's bad then you can keep your crackpot voyeuristic world to yourself.

"Not only is this law completely ridiculous, it is almost impossible to effectively enforce."

Tell that to every company that's been fined for breaches of data protection law. I'm sure despite being down thousands they'll be happy to here that what they did was impossible to enforce.

"But I'm sure that won't stop you from trying."

Why exactly would I enforce the law? I don't work for law enforcement, what's it got to do with me?

That's why as I said it depends on the case in question, if it's a case of a takedown of libelous material and he's re-posting even a snippet of that libelous material then he could be found to be wilfully posting something that was known to be incorrect (by the fact it was taken down in the first place).

You're absolutely right in reference to take downs over out of date information (though actually there's potential for a judge to see it as contempt of court if there's a more general ruling forcing the original take down), but libel is a different beast.

I don't think that matters, granted it's Wikipedia so may well be wrong, but the Wikipedia article makes it quite clear that if you knowingly without regard for whether something is true or false post it then you are liable to be found guilty of libel.

Google isn't seeing links removed because of what's behind the links, but because of the cached information it stores against the link - i.e. a snippet of the site. If he's storing and posting that same snippet and that snippet was removed because it was incorrect and hence libelous then he is equally posting information "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not" which is apparently the test used against public figures (apparently US law doesn't even require a test even that strenuous against people who aren't public figures).

If he's just blindly re-posting stuff that's taken down I don't see how he could possible argue that he's not posting "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not" because that's exactly what he's doing in effect.

If it's just the link he's providing he'll probably be okay (though has libel even been tested in the face of wilfully linking without regard for the truth? - the piracy argument was lost on this one, but what about libel?), but if he's including the descriptions he's fucked if it goes to court.

It's not even keyword based, it's just based on a URL.

For example, if you see a Google search result links to a URL that breaches the European Data Protection Directive relating to your personal data you can simply ask them to de-index that URL. You can't ask them to censor certain keyword combinations, that's not how it work.

The site owner is responsible, but some sites have exemptions for processing data - i.e. we don't want newspapers scrubbed clean to change history. In this case newspapers have defence as being guardians of public record. Google does not have that exemption.

Should it have that exemption? Maybe. Maybe that'll come about in the 2012 European Data Protection Directive refresh that is still being worked on, but Google needs to argue it's case there, not just flout the law as it stands.

Fundamentally the problem is that data protection applies to all organisation with only a handful of exemptions (law enforcement, public record) and currently Google does not fall under one of those exemptions. You can go after the source in Europe if it doesn't fall under some exemption, but if it does all you can do is go after those that don't have an exemption, and Google is one of those that don't because search isn't a protected business activity right now.