We can only hope that, as has largely happened with DRM, technology will help to address the problems it's being used to create. I can imagine a whole industry, (much of it underground), devoted to taking back the privacy that is being stolen. Of course, for that to happen, an awful lot of sheeple out there are going to have to stop bleating and start shouting. I'm not holding my breath though....

This would still allow for 'fruits of the poison tree' attacks in court, assumin the Brit system has this concept.

I have absolutely NO trust in a governent and judiciary that would allow such eavesdropping in the first place, to use "additional authority" wisely and fairly, nor to put in plae and maintain "checks and balances" with any integrity. Once exceptions like this are allowed, it's a steep slippery slope towards totalitarianism.

Totally off topic for a moment, is it just me, or is Dice finally starting to slip Beta crap into the interface in an attempted 'stealth attack'? All of a sudden commenting seems a lot more awkward than it used to.

FTA

Last time I checked, landlords charge tenants money. Since Facebook users don't pay for the service in any recognized currency, (and somehow I doubt privacy is recognized as a barterable thing), how can Facebook be a landlord?

The attempt to treat Facebook servers as the equivalent of physical premises is disturbing. Judicial over-reach, much?

I agree fully. Things such as social media and cell phones are priceless boons to those governments which aggressively meddle in the affairs of other nations while persistently spying on their own citizens. It's good to see Mr. Hannigan admitting on behalf of his country how "transformational" the latest technology has been for him and his masters.

People and countries that complain about the sword cutting both ways, should just stop living by the sword.

As per the Wikipedia article you linked to, ensuring the metals that are in contact with or close proximity to each other have the same or similar anodic indices will largely address that problem. (That's why copper plumbing pipes are secured to joists by copper clamps; if they wer steel the pipes might eventually develop holes at the contact points).

I proposed either gold or platinum electrodes because they are the metals most resistant to corrosion. And I proposed Alternating Current because the periodic reversal negates any stripping / deposition effects of current flow. That's why electroplating, (and hydrolysis), use Direct Currrent - AC simply won't work for those purposes.

(In fact, some vaporizers available at the drug store don't have heating elements per se - just two strips of metal connected to the mains voltage and immersed in the water. They won't even work with distilled water, as it doesn't conduct electricity).

Cover every bit of metal with an insulating coating, then print, deposit, or laminate gold or platinum electrodes on the surfaces. Connect 'odd' electrodes in one branch of a circuit, 'even' electrodes in another, than apply an alternating voltage between them. The seawater completes the circuit. Unless a life form lands on the metal - then IT completes the circuit. I suspect most life forms will not like a continuous alternating current passing through them, and will 'move to greener pastures". Overall generating efficiency will be reduced, but probably not as much as it would be by barnacles, etc.

I'm not a marine biologist and I don't know if this would work - just tossing the idea out there.

True - but then, how to address the disparities that the very nature of lobbying introduces? As I mentioned in a reply above, people working two or three jobs or otherwise spending every waking hour just keeping their lives together have no practical means of hiring a lobbyist; although they might manage a letter or an email, which without the 'amplifying' effect of a lobbyist will simply be ignored. As far as I can see, "inappropriate use" is built into the very mechanism of lobbying. I don't have any ideas right now for an alternative; but for ideas to come forward I think it's first necessary to widely acknowledge that the existing mechanism is broken, probably at the design level.

The private sector can't be "an engine of economic creation" without the people it employs - and the best interests of those people are often diametrically opposed to what the directors and shareholders of corporations see as their own best interests. An uncritical and submissive position with respect to the private sector is a major contributor to the wealth concentration that is destroying the middle class. Corporatocracy != meritocracy.

You DO have a valid point. But what about all those people who don't have the time to even get together with like-minded individuals, much less the money to pay a representative to lobby on their behalf? Working single mothers, and people holding down two or three jobs spend a lot of their lives in survival mode. The institution of lobbying effectively makes political change either a rich man's sport or the province of revolutionaries.

Then there are all the sub-rosa deals made during lobbying - "My client will or won't build, (or close), a factory in your district, depending on how you vote", and the like.

How does this NOT subvert democracy?

I know - let's ship all the frackers and their equipment and their trade secrets to China! Then at least the havoc those bastards wreak won't be in this part of the world. Just in the tradition of shipping our problems to other countries, y'understand...

The practice of paid lobbying ought to be outlawed altogether, with long prison terms in store for those who break that law. After that law is in place, anyone who formerly worked in the lobbying "industry", (and how odious to use that word in connection with lobbyists), would be forbidden forever from seeking public office or working for the government as either an employee or as a contractor.

It's time to outlaw the purchase of favourable legislation altogether. In fact, it's long past time to aggressively outlaw ANY circumvention of democracy. Yeah, I know it isn't going to happen - but I can dream...

Um, ammonium nitrate is an oxidizer, and can't explode in its own - it needs something to oxidize. Like, say, home heating fuel, or diesel fuel - the latter of which McVeigh used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This Spring, move the clocks forward by one-half hour, then LEAVE THEM THERE ALL YEAR!!! I hate the time change - it messes me up for days, sometimes even a week or more.

If the powers that be feel the need to dick around with time, they could at least do something useful by making 24 hour time and ISO date-time format truly universal. No more "is that AM or PM?", and no more confusion over whether 11/06/14 refers to the eleventh day of June or the sixth day of November. (And in that same spirit of good sense maybe the folks responsible for the GTK file chooser could get rid of that fscking "Today" and "Yesterday" BS).