Sometimes this is because an activist has staked out the article as his territory. These articles take a position for or against something but contain very little hard information about it. There will also be broken fragments of arguments against the article's position. When an innocent editor starts editing for clarity and style, removes material that does not seem to be relevant, and finds and introduces actually informative sources, the activist sees this as an attack from 'them'. This kind of activist doesn't like to see opposing views described in an evenhanded way (become someone "might mistakenly think they have validity") and doesn't want any marginally relevant and poorly integrated material removed because it represents talking points which he just has to get in.

It always applies, but it is sometimes ignored. The abstract construction used by cold fjord tells us that he is talking about how things are supposed to work.

No, the habraabr page is dated yesterday. It is about the same blog posting that we are discussing here.

Sure, war is bad and killing people is bad. But some acts of war are seen as more bad than others. This isn't entirely arbitrary. The more directed and targeted an attack is, the more society is likely to accept it as reasonable and justified. Shooting an advancing soldier immediately furthurs a clear military goal while causing the least damage to non-participants. Planting a land mine in his path may stop him, but it is more likely to kill a child or a farmer years from now. Finding his family and killing them in order to demoralize him is not only unnecessarily crual, it directly harms non-participants, and fails to achieve a military objective since it gives him a personal stake in the fight and inspires others to join up on his side.

Such laws don't "hamper the good guys", they express a consensus about what makes someone a bad guy. Bad guys, blinded by anger or a lust for power make war more painful and destructive than it already is.

It would get boring if the consequences were tacked on in predictable way like the disclaimers and warnings at the end of a prescriptional drug commercial on TV. But the idea of writing realistic consequences into the plot of a video game is interesting. And I don't mean simplistic stuff like "if you shoot civilians without justification, you may bet caught and thrown into the brig". How about a "reputation meter" which would indicate how others view your actions. As it got lower, your enemies would be able to justify the use of more agressive measures against you and parties which had been trying to stay out of it might join in and start fighting you.

This is a pattern which has played out in numerous real wars. Rushing in with advanced weaponry and shooting the place up is fun, but the neigbors really, really resent it. Break too much stuff, shoot to many of the 'wrong' people, disrupt their lives too much, utter too many threats, strut around too much, and they will get angry and try to put you in your place. Before you know it, you will be caught in a quagmire.

I don't the researchers claim that the words directly reflect the writers emotions. When people write persuasively they instead try to stir emotions in their readers. For example, if I write: "I am deaply concerned that our current strategy exposes us to unnecessary risk." I am fear words in the hope that my readers will take what I have to say more seriously.

It appears the key they handed over was their SSL key which is used to encrypt communications with their server as it passes over the Internet. The FBI wanted to wiretap their Internet line and decrypt the communications. They shut down so that there would be no communications.

This is true, corrupt officials have all sorts of underhanded ways to fight a ruling they don't like. I was addressing the narrow question of whether they can reverse it outright simply by passing a law.

The question is not whether if is physically possible for a determined third part to abtain this information. The question is does the sender have a "reasonable expection of privacy". The established legal principle is that when the expectation is high enough, a search warrant is required. Precautions which leave a wiretap on the Internet as the most practical way to obtain the information create a significantly higher expecation of privacy.

Congress can "overrule" court precedent under two circumstances: 1) the law was ruled unconstitutional due to a correctable technical fault such as being too vague or 2) the court ruled that the law did not apply to the specific case and that if congress wants it to apply to such cases in the future it should rewrite it. But congress cannot overrule a court finding that a law violates the constitution by its intent. That requires a constitutional amendment.

You are correct in that a contract in which one party promises not to comply with court orders is unenforcable. But if the law says that a pen register can be used under certain circumstances, the parties absolutely can enter into a contract which prohibits them from creating those circumstances. If the Lavabit contract offered guarantees that the e-mail header information would not or could not be read by employees, that may have created a "reasonable expectation of privacy". Since reasonable expectation of privacy is a very important factor in determining whether monitoring by government officials is legal or illegal, creating such an expecation will in fact increase your legal protection from government monitoring. For example, if you are doing something on your front law, the police may observe. If you go inside and pull down the blinds, they need a search warrant.

I think that is the key to why the judge ruled in favor of the prosecutor. From a technical perspective what was requested was analygous to a pen register and so he applied the pen register precedent. The problem with such a ruling is that Lavabit had offered guarantees of privacy which the telephone companies do not. This means that while the access requested may be the technical equivalent of a pen register, it may not be equivalent from a legal standpoint. But maybe this is something that has to be decided by an appeals court.

What if their appeal creates legal precedent which strengthens privacy protections? Presumably that is something the 400,000 users who lost service care about.

It is interesting that the prosecutor portrayed this as a pen trap. Courts have ruled that users do not have a reasonable expectation that the numbers they dial on their phone line will remain private (basicaly because they show up on the bill) but that they do have a reasonable expectation that nobody is listening in. That is why this information can be obtained without probable cause. But if Lavabit offered specific guarantees that this information would not be recorded except in the encryted e-mail boxes, then the users had a reasonable expectation of privacy. This might make the use of a pen trap without probable cause illegal.