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Comment Re:What a surprise (not) (Score 1) 265

If 5 seconds ago, someone attacks you and tries to take your weapon

Unfortunately for your argument, even that circumstance is under dispute. By some accounts, the officer tried to quickly open his car door while he was too close to Brown, the door bounced off him and hit the officer, and then the officer shot Brown (the first time) in retaliation for his own stupidity.

I agree the facts are under dispute. I'm merely pointing out the scenario where lethal force is justified.

the only way to deescalate it back to a non-lethal level is complete and unconditional surrender.

(Continuing the same account) after getting shot the first time, Brown ran away (justly fearing for his life), got shot at again, and turned around attempting to surrender. Then the officer continued shooting until he fell over dead.

Again, more facts that are disputed. I don't know that he was fired at when his back was turned, and I don't know that he was actually trying to surrender.

The lesson black Americans are learning from this atrocity is:

  • If you attempt to assert yourself, you will be murdered.
  • If you attempt to flee, you will be murdered.
  • Even if you attempt to surrender, you will still be murdered!

If any lesson can be learned by black or white Americans, it should be this. Don't rob stores. If a cop tells you to get out of the road, do it without comment, and certainly don't take a swing at him though the window of his police vehicle. But, if you've done the first three, under no circumstances reach in and try to grab his gun.

Comment Re:What a surprise (not) (Score 0) 265

None of the shots hit him from behind. All three autopsies agree on this. The rest of that quote is just noise.

8+ shots fired rapidly in two bursts within 10 seconds doesn't not indicate much for either side. In defensive situations, you fire until the threat is stopped. I don't think at any point the cop ever thought "I'm going to kill this kid". I think he reacted to a situation that escalated quickly into a life or death situation much the same as any person would. Maybe he overreached, but maybe he used the exactly the amount of force needed to resolve the situation. I simply don't have enough information to know and I doubt anyone getting their information from media reports does either.

If 5 seconds ago, someone attacks you and tries to take your weapon, yes, the threshold for justification of lethal force is crossed. In fact, once the altercation escalates to the point of struggling for a cop's weapon, the only way to deescalate it back to a non-lethal level is complete and unconditional surrender. The cop has every right to attempt to stop a fleeing attacker even if lethal force is required.

Comment Re:What a surprise (not) (Score 0) 265

Actually, yeah, if you try to disarm a cop and get wounded doing it, then you try to flee, the cop has the right to use force (including lethal) to effect an arrest.

There are conflicting accounts as to if the guy was trying to surrender, or if he attempted to lunge for the cop a second time. I honestly don't know what was happening. But, I don't think the cop was planning on killing the guy. Possibly his judgment got clouded after the struggle during which his gun discharged twice. Against a much larger/younger/stronger assailant anything short of him falling to the ground spread eagle should be viewed suspiciously.

Comment Re:What right do they have anyway? (Score 4, Insightful) 144

The point is to determine if each request is covered by the law. The problem is that the requests they get are not individually approved by a court, that would make it too easy. Instead, they HAVE to be the judge of which requests are covered by the law.

Personally, I think this is a BS law. If something is legally present on web, ie. a ten year old news story, then it should be index-able. However, if there a a factual problem, or contains private information, then the site owners should be required to correct it or take it down. The idea of going after the index is ridiculous, not effective and lazy.

Comment Re:Imminent Threat (Score 1) 249

Off the top of my head, I can only imagine a situation where a phone is strongly suspected to contain information relating to a kidnapping, bombing, etc where the information may lead to the rescue of a victim or victims. In other cases they can collect the phone while they wait for a warrant from a judge.

Comment Re:Censorship (Score 2) 199

Then how do you justify the statement, "as soon as you take data from public record and make it searchable then it's not public record any more." ?

I don't follow your reasoning. How does anything that becomes a part of the public record stop being public? I can understand correcting the record if there are errors, corrections add to the record. But, I don't see how subtracting data is ever a good thing.

Comment Re:Censorship (Score 2) 199

Google takes data and makes it searchable - that's not public record, as soon as you take data from public record and make it searchable then it's not public record any more. That's why Google lost this case, and quite rightly so.

You don't "take" data from the public record, you "share" data from the public record. It doesn't stop being part of the public record just because it gets republished.

Submission + - Snowden joins Daniel Ellsberg on board of Freedom of the Press Foundation (pressfreedomfoundation.org)

sunbird writes: Edward Snowden is joining the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit committed to defending public-interest journalism which exposes law-breaking in government. The foundation is presently raising money and awareness for a variety of open-source encryption tools. Please consider donating to my favorite: the LEAP Encryption Access Project.

Submission + - Dropbox Does Not Validate Mail Addresses For Accounts

DarkSoul42 writes: I just stumbled upon a situation quite like the latest xkcd strip ( http://xkcd.com/1279/ ), in having an homonym create a Dropbox account on my own GMail address, mistaking it for his own.

I started receiving out of the blue several notifications of "my Dropbox account" being linked to several devices, none of which I could remember, prompting some doubt since I didn't remember having a Dropbox account in the first place. On reflex, I reinitialized the password and logged in to confirm the contents, realizing quickly that my homonym most likely messed up and would probably end up in a lot of trouble if they lost the data in their account.
I created a "Sorry for the trouble with your Dropbox, please read this" file, containing my whole explanation about what went on, and the matter was solved smoothly with a laugh from both parties ("Okay, so now what was MY GMail address?"), but it is sort of mind-boggling that Dropbox would allow setting an e-mail address, or even the creation of an active account, without requesting confirmation (sending an e-mail with an activation URL, or a code) !

This could even be used to plant Nasty Evidence on someone before tipping off the police and prompting an investigation, and most likely ruining their lives... At the time of writing I have sent a PR to Dropbox about this, hopefully this gets fixed quickly.

Submission + - CryptoLocker seizes files with remote cryptography (kingofgng.com) 1

KingofGnG writes: A new ransomware for Windows PCs is roaming on-line, it’s called CryptoLocker and brings a very dangerous destructive potential. Security researchers warn users and system admins about the new threat, its features and the fact that the “prevention is better than a cure” rule is true now more than ever. Curing the damages of a CryptoLocker infection, the reserchers warn, is impossible for the time being.

Comment Re:There are already lawsuits over this practice (Score 1) 1103

There are several key issues with this case.

One, she made minimum wage, any loss of pay due to unavoidable fees on top of taxes, etc. would reduce her pay below that legal rate.
Two, the state she worked in has a requirement that “The wages shall be paid in lawful money of the United States or check."
Three, there appears be have been no notice given that she would be paid in a non-standard way.

I hope she wins and this predatory practice ends before it gains too much momentum.

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