...before we hear of Ms. St. Amour being held for 9 hours as she enters some Murrica-patsy country or other. Anyone with any sense knows the Great American Bully is not going to take this lying down.

It could be as simple as America selling ASS-droids to foreign countries, ASS-droids go on a rampage (via a handy NSA back door, say), and then America the Brave comes in and neutralizes them, gaining political capital and goodwill for the first time since Dumbya Bush decided to play in the sand, in addition to the money already gained for selling the robots in the first place. If they blame the Chinese or the Russians for hacking the droids, they get to shame their political enemies, too. Win-win-win all around. It's not like America cares what the rest of the world thinks as long as they can put a spin on it that they can pitch to their "voters."

That was my exact same thought.

Man walks past some security station or other holding a bottle of water. American Security Services (ASS) droid confronts person:

ASS-droid: "Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."
Man wonders what the fuck the thing is talking about.
ASS-droid: "You now have 15 seconds to comply. You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9. You have 5 seconds to comply."
Man turns and starts to run.
ASS-droid: "Four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force."

Incompetence. If America wants something done right, it has to do it itself!

If this was an attempt to rewrite history and kill Snowden before he was born, then they sent the time cops back over 22 years too early.

Don't be ridiculous! That would only make it difficult for the mathematically-challenged! It should be rounded up to 3.2, as has been proposed before by logical Americans who understand that natural law cannot be allowed to supersede the legal sensibilities of wrong-headed yammerheads!

"NYET! We will no longer allow science to tell us what the laws that govern the universe are! Starting today, it is the law that will govern science!!"

Some liar (read: "lawyer") went full-retard and tried to sue the internet, and now he's butthurt that the entire 'net knows he's an idiot? And he feels like someone just ran over his dog because people are running away from him, just in case the stupid is catching?

Ha.

Haha.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

*gasp*

Oh teh irony is killing me!

It's yogurt made from the secretions of the evil tofudebeest.

I think... I feel good about it.

I still miss WordPerfect every time I open MS Word.

The first image that popped in my head was some lawyer or pretend-human working for the Fuck-You-AA jumping up and down in joy shouting, "Two thousand two hundred fifty per song? That's chickenshit compared to this! If we can get each case bumped up to 50 years in jail and four million dollars, minimum, just like this, we can get whole slews of these filthy downloaders offing themselves! Problem solved!"

The sad thing is that greed, whether for fame, notoriety, or recognition, or even just for money -- and who's to say that any or all of those might have figured in the case of the prosecutor here -- has gone unchecked and allowed to run rampant for a long long time. Lawrence Lessig cites that "...we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House..." Increasingly, it's become more and more commonplace, and perhaps even acceptable, for supposed infringers -- more often than not people who have no access to expensive legal support -- to be punished so harshly that it makes no sense, without regard to any actual form of "justice." If not acceptance, then this behavior has so far generated only apathy.

In this case, I think "bureaucrazy" is entirely appropriate.

...does one lug around a ton and a half of bacon? And without stopping somewhere and just gorging on the stuff?

So has anyone else noticed that "Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities" and "Pain In The Ass" have the same starting letters if you turn them into acronyms?

Aww, I feel for you, I really do. It just doesn't change the fact that you're an idiot. A superannuated idiot, for sure, but then idiocy like yours knows no boundaries of sex, age, or race.