The NSA will catch them before anything goes seriously wrong, and that's why we allow the gov't to spy on us. It's a service we're paying for. Remember guys, if the gov't spies on its own innocent people then they will be able to stop terror attacks and stuff against the people. So, there's nothing to worry about, the government has already got our backs and they won't let anything happen to us.

If I could mod that up, I would. Very interesting & insightful.

But you can't study "how X has changed over time" if you don't even have the original data that you'd be comparing it to?

Still, that's not really my point. I'm saying that without the original data (and remember this is data that cannot be gotten again even with effort), one cannot re-do the study and see if the results are reproducible. Therefore, the entire scientific process is impossible with studies that have lost & irretrievable data.

The very fact that "Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other data sets are expensive to regenerate.", makes me wonder if this could even be considered "scientific data" anymore. Since the data is unique to a time & place and irreplaceable, it would completely destroy the reproducibility aspect of the scientific process. Given that, should the lack of reproducibility mean that lost scientific data should be redefined as experimental data or hypothesis data? It also brings up the idea in my mind that scientific data has a half life since it can degrade back to hypothesis or experimental data if not properly stored.

Fantastic PR here, but I'll wait and see if anything really comes of it. Sorry to say, I'm very skeptical that this is anything more than good press for these companies. At best, I think it's got very little to do with the 'freedom of the people' and a whole lot to do with the companies fear that the people aren't trusting them anymore. That hits the wallet. I'm sure that group of tech companies has enough cash to throw at Washington to get something done if they want to, but I'm not sure they want to. So like I said, I'll wait and see if anything really comes of this before I get my hopes up.

Are you serious? This is entirely enforceable without unreasonable difficulty. It's easy to find out who owns an IP address and there's always contact info attached to that record. If the fine isn't paid or isn't paid on time, it's only a simple matter of shutting the company's site down 'til the fine is paid. We're not talkin' about individuals here, but companies, especially hosting services, etc. Notification would come through an official gov't somebody, not something like a spamish-lookin-email. Anybody who's setting up servers that falls for a spamish-looking-email about this, deserves whatever problems they get as a result of believing such an email. They really should know better.

And while they're at it, they should fine everyone who's DB is stolen due to stupid insecure setups... SQL injections, plaintext passwords, etc. This stuff isn't excusable, and it's pretty shocking that it's still common in late 2013. Can you imagine how much money the gov't would've made off Adobe and SONY over the past few years? That'd probably help lower our taxes (in theory).

Jellyfish is a delicacy in China. Maybe if the seafood restaurants around the world can start promoting jellyfish as a Chinese delicacy, we balance the seas out again.

Wasn't it just last year that SONY kept gettin' hacked for stupid security? And they weren't the only ones. Just a couple years ago, PC Pro had an article called "Is This The Golden Age of Hacking?". Last year, Ars Technica had an article "Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger". The state of security on the internet is appalling & that was well known before Snowden woke people up with more facts about the appalling nature of internet security.

It can't go any further 'cause the government shutdown.

Back in '82-'83, I was in 3rd grade (US). We were taught a little programming, I think it was BASIC. Nothing spectacular, but it was enough to make us feel like we could do something AND give us a foundation for learning it hardcore in the future. So it makes sense to me, that kids could be taught the basics when they're 8 years old, and then progressively teach them a bit more as they progress through their school years.

Sounds like the Justice Dept. needs a better CMS.

Doubt they could prevent it, but I'm sure they would respond very heavy iron fist.

I find this funny, since polygraph test results aren't even admissible in court in many states In fact, the U.S. supreme court itself has discouraged the admission of polygraph "evidence" in court cases. I would think that fact by itself would put a big hole in the feds ability to prosecute this guy.

Someone please explain to me how the location of a call isn't considered one of the "call details"? After all, the IP address of a visitor to a website is considered part of the connection details or metadata. I don't see how location could be separated from 'call details', but I'm sure the government has a special twist about that, so what is it?