An oversimplification. The US, UK, and allies variously broke many cipher systems throughout WWII. Still the US benefitted from this.

What if the Germans were using, say, Windows, Android phones, SSL, Gmail, Yahoo, and Skype, instead of Enigma machines?

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

The US Constitution was an open declaration of treason against the Crown, which at the time controlled the most powerful military the world had ever seen. It was signed by farmers, lawyers, and doctors who had little in the way of protection against that army and little chance of surviving the fight. To say it was anything less than a suicide pact is absurd. The fact that few alive in this country today have their intestinal fortitude speaks volumes to why we're in decline. They had balls. Somewhere along the way, we lost them.

And if you don't think voting leads to people dying, you aren't paying attention.

As opposed to voting rights absolutists? Fifth Amendment absolutists? Rights aren't rights when you're only allowed to exercise them in a place and manner dictated by the government.

According to the CDC, defensive gun uses number about 1 - 2 million per year.

So several times more crimes prevented with guns than committed with them.

Your argument is identical to that about poor young crack dealers, or mafia soldiers, or . . .

I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, and try to get it on the internet, you need a shrink far more than a lawyer . . .

anyway, the clean hands doctrine is a rule from "equity," not "law". It only applies to equitable relief, such as injunctions, not to suits for money

hawk, esq.

toggling the speaker by poking a memory address was good enough for the Apple ][, and it should be good enough for, uhh, . . . :)

hawk

They probably missed the parts about "only" and "tasks" because they're not there.

Marbury v. Madison found that the power is there, but it's not in the text. (And as a practical matter, a judge that takes an oath to defend a constitution must necessarily have the ability to determine if a law he's asked to apply complies with that constitution; issuing an order applying an unconstitutional law would both violate the oath and be beyond his authority derived from the constitution . . .)

Furthermore, in US practice, all courts, state and federal, make such reviews. The USC is simply the final, not sole, arbiter for the federal constitution.

And this is all irrelevant anyway: federal income taxation is authorized by the US Constitution itself, not a statute (it's implemented by statute under that authority), while the federal constitution has nothing to do with state income taxation . . .

hawk, esq.

"code red worm ..."

Those words gave me a twinge of nostalgia.
Yes, I just got a bit sentimental about an old buffer overflow.
Sysadmin Things (tm)... :-)

What galls me the most is the panty-wetting over a government-granted monopoly trying to maintain its government granted monopoly when that very same government tries to compete using taxpayer dollars as a subsidy.

The outrage should be against government involvement period. If governments didn't grant local monopolies, there would be real competition among the real companies, and no perceived need for the government competition which is only competitive because it has the taxpayer subsidy.

The problem with being obvious about it is that there's a very large overlap between the populations of people who would spike someone's drink and people who turn psycho when they see drinks being tested. Without the ability to be discreet, merely performing the test puts a person in danger.

It's more discreet than using a special straw, which seems to have been the predecessor (at least in spirit) of this new method.

What you see at that link is only the last panel. The story was revealed frame-by-frame over a much longer period of time.

I do think it would be nice if xkcd made the whole thing available, but others have managed. The Wikipedia link above can point you at some of them.

Does this mean it's time to give up what you kids call "First Edition"?

Nah. I'm still not convinced there's a reason to use those new-fangled books instead of the three books, supplements, and a touch (but not too much!) of Arduin & Spellcaster's Bible.

damn newbies

hawk, off to nuke his dandelions