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In-Flight Wi-Fi Provider Going Above and Beyond To Help Feds Spy 78

An anonymous reader sends in a report from Wired that GoGo, a company the provides in-flight Wi-Fi access to airline passengers, seems to be making every effort to assist law enforcement agencies with wiretaps. From the article: "Gogo and others that provide Wi-Fi aboard aircraft must follow the same wiretap provisions that require telecoms and terrestrial ISPs to assist U.S. law enforcement and the NSA in tracking users when so ordered. But they may be doing more than the law requires. According to a letter (PDF) Gogo submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, the company voluntarily exceeded the requirements of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, by adding capabilities to its service at the request of law enforcement. The revelation alarms civil liberties groups, which say companies should not be cutting deals with the government that may enhance the ability to monitor or track users."

Comment Re:The chain of trust is broken. (Score 3, Insightful) 110

The chain of trust is broken because cryptographers, a class of developers with a long track record of being utterly incapable of building software that's usable for regular humans, has been left in charge of building iit.

When the problem is taken up by other, more UX knowledgable, developers we'll get a solution to the problem.

Comment Re:Good luck with that (Score 1) 107

You, sir, are a buffoon. A buffoon who allows families like mine - private school educated, holidays around the world, continuing to live off investments like my parents for the last 2-3 decades - to exploit dullards like yourself. You want something better, you do need to organise your labour. And I am quite okay if you do, because I could have way less and still enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle. As it is, though, you are too easy to fool into giving me even more.

Thanks for the laugh. I needed that.

Comment Good luck with that (Score 3, Insightful) 107

"Last Friday may turn out to have marked the beginning of Silicon Valley's organized labor movement" should read "Last Friday may turn out to have marked the end of Silicon Valley." Once "organized labor" successfully infects an industry, it turns in to a dead industry walking.

Since tech startups are particularly location-independent, expect to see more of them started elsewhere (and outside the United States entirely) and fewer of them to start in Silicon Valley.

Comment Re:it **is** outrageous (Score 1) 299

stop voting for Republicans

You almost had something useful to say here until you ruined it with the third word.

The correct answer is to just stop voting.

The people whose religion involves dancing around carve tree stumps to makes the rains start at least get some exercise out of the deal. Voting just wastes your time and attention.

Comment Re:Could someone answer this? (Score 1) 520

What's really tragic is that you call me an asshole for telling you that Santa Claus isn't real, Jesus isn't watching you masturbate from heaven, and the Constitution is just a moldy old piece of paper instead of being mad at all the liars and charlatans in the world who infect children with dangerous mythology in the first place.

Comment Re:Could someone answer this? (Score 1) 520

It is a Token or symbol that the power to govern was given by the will of the people.

People create Governments, not the other way around.

I admit that your religion has a pretty creation myth, but it's got as much to do with reality as a tree stump carving depicting that the sun rises because a giant space coyote eats the sun at night and vomits it up in the morning.

If it was truly the case that governments are formed by "the people", instead of being violently and deceptively imposed by a ruling class onto their subjects, don't you think it's a bit odd that George Washington had to raise an army signifigantly larger than the one used to expell the British in order to neutralize popular resistance to that government's actions?

Comment Re:Could someone answer this? (Score 1) 520

It's not the paper itself that grants them their power, but the agreement behind it. If the physical paper the constitution is written on were destroyed, the constitution itself would still be in effect.

Now we're getting somewhere.

If the Supreme Court gets their power from an agreement, who are the parties involved in that agreement?

Spoiler alert: your answer is invalid if it posits that dead people are the source of the power (dead people can't do anything because they are dead), or if it includes people who, if they were all hit by a bus tomorrow, would not reduce the Supreme Court's capacity to enforce their rulings.

Comment Re:Could someone answer this? (Score 1) 520

That old piece of paper circumscribes the governing law of the land. The Supreme Court absolutely is bound by it. In fact their authority comes from it and it is their solemn duty to interpret it and use it to throw out improper legislation.

You understand that words mean things, right?

When you say that Supreme Court is "absolutely bound" by something, that's a testible hypothesis, no less so than if I said a brick is absolutely bound by gravity. If a brick could just decide to hover in midair then that would falsify my claim that it was bound by gravity.

Likewise, if you claim that a piece of paper binds people, and those people can be observed to do whatever they want regardless of what is written on said paper, and the paper responds to this violation by doing absolutely nothing at all since it is, in fact, just a piece of paper, then by what possible universe could you say that piece of paper is binding them?

To all those who would cavalierly tear up the Constitution, beware the wrath of patriots.

That would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetically sad.

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