NSA isn't supposed to be collecting most domestic signals in the first fucking place. I'd rather not legitimize or excuse that behavior, I don't care who it might help track down.

I don't see that as a likely scenario. For one, most people who sign up for cable modem service are going to do whatever the nice people at Comcast say to do, which is why these "xfinitywifi" spectrum-blasting hotspots are showing up in the first place. And the users who are a bit tech savvy are damned sure going to want their own cable modem and router (whether it belongs to them or they rent it from Comcast) in their own home, to ensure they get the best speed possible.

Technical support forums all over the web are full of people bitching, whining, and moaning that they don't get satisfactory speeds from the CPE installed in their own home. Do you think everyone is going to order service but decline the equipment, with some master plan to use the neighbor's signal that's even weaker than what a router in their own home could provide?

Apps in the Play Store have always been subject to DMCA takedowns, along with the shenanigans DMCA makes possible. The "legitimate apps being held hostage" scenario already happens. For example, someone ripped off the Camfrog app, then filed a false DMCA complaint alleging that the real Camfrog app was infringing. Camfrog appealed the DMCA notice, and Google responded by taking down the real app for a day or two.

In fact it might have. Reporting the issue immediately would have given the affected emergency services a chance to get the message out via television, radio, Facebook/Twitter/etc. and use the opportunity to remind the public of the non-emergency numbers. A few days ago my local PD's domestic violence hotline had some kind of outage, and a temporary backup number was all over the news right away. A 911 outage would affect a lot more people, and the sooner they know to put out the info, the better.

Radar and laser don't apply to me if I'm speeding. Right? Oh.

FCC rules don't apply to me using interesting hardware to intercept cellphone traffic. Right? Oh.

Regulations don't apply to me if I want to sell firearms to people in Mexico. Right? Oh.

Yep, this seems par for the course. We peasants can go fuck ourselves while the ruling class does what they please. I mean we can't expect them to reveal the horrific things that are going on to protect corporate trade secrets. Sheesh.

Of course it isn't newsworthy. Give it a decade. Once the entirety of the story has long since blown over, then they'll issue their official response.

That's how the government operates now. Just when you've completely forgotten about your FOIA request, they'll finally respond with hundreds of pages of fully redacted content, because they can't endanger old corporate trade secrets. What an excuse. They don't even bother playing the National Security card anymore, they straight up admit that business trumps all.

Sorry, can't give you any insight into how the government operates, it might jeopardize corporate profits!

I think it's worth mentioning that Google didn't necessarily want to go public, they were forced to do so in 2004 because they had a certain valuation and a certain number of shareholders. 10 or 11 years ago, I really believe that "don't be evil" was part of Google's culture. Once they were wedged into becoming a publicly traded company, all bets were off. Shareholder profits uber alles.

Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but my understanding is you feel that a domain owner's personal information should be clearly available in WHOIS. I disagree.

If you as the owner of a domain are party to a court case involving that domain, whether due to your operation of a business using that domain or for any other cause of action, your ownership will become public record during the legal proceedings, regardless of your domain registration preferences. It's not as if WHOIS privacy protection somehow makes the registered owner truly anonymous.

Do you drive a car? If so, I presume it displays a license plate. The license plate doesn't contain your name, your address, your phone number, or any other personally identifying information (unless perhaps you've volunteered the info by registering a vanity tag). Suppose one day you do something in traffic which another driver perceives as an asshole move, and they become enraged. Like, "I want to kill that person" enraged. They can't just go home and type `whois [your tag]` and get all of your personal information. That's a good thing, right?

If you've committed a crime, the police have access to that data and are able to unmask you in order to enforce the law. But Joe Random, who has become upset at you for some reason and wishes to do you harm, isn't readily able to derive your personal information from your car's license plate. Why should your domain name be any different? If you make a post on your blog that offends someone, should that person be able to look up your full name and address and do who-knows-what?

Maybe that applies to the Japanese conglomerates you speak of. For publicly traded American companies, what really matters in business is: are you extracting every last possible penny of revenue, actively slashing your salaries and expenses each successive quarter, and maximizing profit as much as possible?

Yes, it's sadly common. Ask anyone who owns a strip club or an adult bookstore or a pawn shop, or even a bar in some places. The government doesn't usually make them illegal outright*; instead, they make them regulated. Then they draft regulations stating that those businesses can only operate in a certain zone of town. Oh, and you need a license, but it's going to run you half a million dollars, and they'll only grant one license every 10 years, or one license per 250,000 citizens (in a town of 30,000), or some other hurdle that's insurmountable enough so as to make your business effectively illegal.

Your second point reminds me of the marijuana tax stamps that are still law in 20 or so states. You incriminate yourself just by asking to buy the stamp in the first place.

*Because then the mayor couldn't accept an enormous campaign contribution in exchange for issuing a special license now and then.

They'd better start blocking gov.co.uk (PDF warning). That PDF file contains a hyperlink to proxybay.info.

This isn't about money, this isn't about closing down one specific named program. It's about raising awareness, for one, and about fighting for our rights in general. I'm behind that.

What I wish they'd do is make the situation more sorely obvious. They have the eyeballs and the screen real estate, and they used it once, back when the 2nd (I think) SOPA attempt was coming around. For all the times I've seen those slide-in banners talking about "Buy one programmer a cup of coffee," I wonder about the impact if those banners instead said "Your government is watching you read this article right now!"

I'm a middle-aged guy and I wind up on Wikipedia at least once a day, I know the younger generation is probably hitting it more frequently doing research for papers and assignments. Put it right in their face. That big yellow donation banner, but with substituted text for visitors from the US,

"Your government watches everything you do on the internet. Even your religious and church communications! Even your private Snapchats! This is unconstitutional. Complain loudly to your representatives today."

::shrug:: That's what I'd do.

GOTO is well-known as a beneficial logical statement. I suppose in this day and age, we're going to need something like this:

10 PRINT "GIRLS KAN CODE 2"
20 GOTO 10

I'll look into that.