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Comment Re:Lawyers (Score 1) 124

Remember, the fundamental purpose of the American legal system to keep lawyers wealthy, and judges are nothing but lawyers in robes. Just as dishonest.

My personal experience with lawyers is almost universally bad*, and with judges it's been universally good.

Usually when I talk to lawyers I have to speak slowly, because I can see them crunching the numbers trying to calculate how much money they can make off either me or the case. Amusingly, on a particularly sensitive issue, I received the exact opposite legal advice from two lawyers who happened to be husband and wife (one referred me to the other.) I thought "of course they can't agree on anything, they're married" and went with someone else.

Judges on the other hand have gotten things right, at least in the few instances I've dealt with them. Lawyers, I find, lie for a living, and judges are used to being lied to for a living so they're pretty good at dismissing bullshit.

* The lone exception is the real estate lawyer that helped me buy my home. He was over 80 years old, a friend of the family, and charged ridiculously low fees for the service he performed. Sadly, he passed a few years ago. May he rest in peace.

Comment Re:call me skeptical (Score 3, Informative) 190

...it's not about safety, it's about making people feel like they are safe.

I'd feel safer if security professionals vetted the system, and verified that it was safe from hacking. Precisely what the FBI is actively working to prevent.

I do like the phrase "other-worldly outlandish" to describe the situation. It beats "hogwash", which was my first reaction. This is just a search warrant application, though, and I wonder what the FBI agent's culpability is for making, let's say, "less than truthful" statements in order to obtain a search warrant.

Comment Re:not surprised (Score 1) 649

To just kill him and dump his carcass in a hole the ground seems like a waste of viable organs. Consider how many people are in desperate need of organ transplants. Why not keep him alive long enough to match his parts to people that could make good use of them? Eyes, kidneys, lungs, liver, heart, whatever. Blood banks can always use more plasma, he's sure to have plenty of that.

To see true justice he should be forced to contribute back to the society he harmed, in my view.

Comment Re:News for nerds (Score 1) 866

It matters plenty. While it's good news that more people are applying critical thinking skills and choosing to discard that which is incredible, it is very bad news that the vast majority of people lack this capacity.

That says something astonishing about our species and the way the brain works. It's also great news for charlatans. Want to get rich? Make friends and influence people? Tell them what they want to hear. Most of them will buy it hook, line, and sinker.

Comment Re:Tiversa breached systems? (Score 1) 65

Because if the corporation will pay a fine, but a person would get jail time ... that's pretty much what a double standard means.

Where it gets interesting is that for about $80 and a a little paperwork you can incorporate yourself. Whether you are contemplating a life of crime or just concerned about the possibility of someone suing you, it seems like money well spent considering all the legal protections you gain.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 164

It's more like the FBI's investigations into various criminal and subversive groups.

The FBi is a law enforcement organization. It's their job to investigate US citizens when there is reason to believe they are involved in breaking US law.

The NSA is a military organization. Their charter (and the constitution) explicitly precludes them from targeting US citizens, yet they do it anyway. What does it mean when a country's military deems every citizen such a threat to national security that they are considered valid intelligence targets? It says to me we are considered the enemy - each and every one of us. This cannot possibly end well.

Comment Re:Assumptions (Score 3, Interesting) 78

I'll allow that I may be wrong. I don't know; it's never happened before so I don't know what it feels like :P

I note in the excellent link you provided under the section of data mining it says

Data miners buy prescription information from pharmacies and PBMs.

Apparently, data identifying a specific person is removed "sufficient to remove the data from the protection of the CMIA and HIPAA", and the records are assigned a number.

Further,

Prescription data miners have the ability to re-identify individual data based on the number assigned to it, and they operate separately from the entities - health care providers, health plans, health care clearinghouses, and their contractors or business associates - that do have legal obligations.

I don't think it too far-fetched to think this happening, particularly since I started seeing a lot of targeted ads for asthma medications not long after coming down with respiratory difficulties last year. Somebody's doing something shady, I'll bet.

Comment Re:It's not really about the code... (Score 5, Interesting) 84

I think this verdict sends a great message: do not steal from the leaches of society that have enough money to get other leaches elected.

From the comments on this article I get the feeling I'm the only one would read Flash boys. He was developing code, part of it proprietary and part of it open source, which he modified. His intent was to someday separate and release the modified open source code; he didn't have any plans to do anything with the proprietary code. He checked the code into a subversion repository based in Germany, apparently the first free code repository his search engine ranked.

So when the police got hold of this, they heard subversion" repository and concluded obviously this guy is a "subversive". Oh, it's hosted in Germany? Even worse.

When they investigated further, they made a big deal out of the fact that he deleted his bash history. What's he trying to hide? Sounds like a cover up.

That's the level of stupidity and ignorance and we've come to expect of police regarding technical matters. And for what it's worth, I use subversion, (or cvs, git, whatever the project uses) and my .bash_history links to /dev/null. I don't use the feature, so I don't waste the disk space. I guess that makes me a criminal.

Comment Assumptions (Score 4, Informative) 78

From TFA, regarding a persons prescription history, it says

It is assumed that this information comes from the various backend systems that interlink the pharmacies as described above.

I doubt it. I think it is far more likely that the pharmacy sells this information to insurance, pharmaceutical, and marketing companies. Big data is big business these days. So long patient confidentiality.

That being said, it is unconscionable how lax PillPack.com security procedures were.

Comment Re:Excellent. (Score 1) 324

Because [a] I had to shell out my own money to by a certificate to vouch for my domain name, and [b] It seemed wrong to me to have somebody else to voucth for me.

It seems fundamentally wrong to me too. That's why I created my own CA certificate. I'm reasonably sure I am who I claim to be. Some company half way across the country can not make that assertion with the same degree of confidence as I can. It's easy, and free, to create your own certificates.

The downside is that my visitors must agree to accept the certificate. It's not a big concern in my case, but it may be for some people.

Comment Re:Well.. (Score 1) 174

Is it stupid? Yes no doubt about that...They want this and they will get it one way or another.

No, they won't. When you have have Congress telling you how stupid you are, that's a clue that you aren't going to get what you want. The FBI knows it's a moronic idea too, they are doing this to plant the idea that the reason they appear incompetent and ineffectual is that their hands are being tied. Without a ready excuse, the next time a bad event happens they might have to admit that they made mistakes or that they are incapable of doing the job they are tasked with.

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