Well that pretty much describes puritanism, taking the fun out of everything. Aren't these the people that made the church benches/pews intentionally uncomfortable to sit on? :-)

Are you sure its a match? Check the iCloud Status of files. Its either Purchased, Matched or Uploaded.

If Matched is this in the same iTunes session?

You sure its your edits and not that Apple is also using the original language?

That's my point, with the caveat that its not really censorship since the goal is not to silence anyone but to investigate a crime.

Again, all I'm saying is that its premature to claim censorship. As I said in the beginning all we can say for sure at this point is that it was rude to seize the equipment without asking for cooperation. Facts and opinions may change as more info unfolds.

Might be standard procedure to seize evidence without warning to prevent tampering.

A researcher might want to not disclose contact with a black hat, a source of information. Removing evidence of any contact. The black hat might be the actual target of the police investigation.

No, Apple doesn't restore some user data. You don't get Apple's version of the file unless you delete your copy or never had it on a particular device in the first place.

Apple looks for matches in your library with Apple's library. If it finds a match it makes note of it. If it does not find a match it uploads your copy of the file to Apple's servers. When you restore files you get Apple's copy for matches and your copy for non-matches.

The issue is that Apple only analyzes the music to determine a match. It does not consider the meta data. So the same music with different metadata is a match according to Apple so your edited copy is not saved on Apple's servers. This makes sense given that there is no standard metadata for ripped songs. When ripping a CD one often finds multiple incarnations of metadata to apply.

Sure. "Ballast" need not be rock too. However the valuable stuff was the focus of the journey in the first place and why the investment in the journey was made. The valuable stuff had to pay for any dead-head leg too. They'd pack in as much of the valuable stuff they could find and fit in. The remaining space and any necessary ballast could be anything, including nearly all the cargo space on a dead-head leg where the only other option is empty.

Because that was what the moderate muslims who put down these movements called these fundamentalist extremists. That is the language arabs used to explain things to Lawrence. It is neither Lawrence's nor my phrasing, it was the mainstream arab phrasing of the day.

You see the same thing today when modern moderate muslims say that Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc are preaching a false interpretation of Islam. This false, heretical, etc interpretation is not a modern invention, it is one that popped up once or twice a century for many centuries according the arabs explaining things to Lawrence.

Back then they were not referring to, nor are we referring to today, conservatives muslims who preach simple/strict personal practices for one's self but also conform to the tolerant practices of traditional Islam with respect to others who have different beliefs. Tolerance of moderate muslims as well as Jews and Christians.

Its pretty clear the many digital errors are OCR based. One can often see how the original likely letters were erroneously joined, split, etc. OCR sometimes uses "dictionaries" to detect and repair such errors, dictionaries developed from a training/learning phase of development. I think no training or Arabic name friendly dictionaries were used.

There was no censorship. The researcher who published the exploits was not arrested. His computers were impounded as part of an investigation. He may not be the target, they may be searching for a 3rd party he was in contact with, perhaps a black hat. Seizing evidence in such a case removes the opportunity for the evidence's destruction. Its a pretty standard thing in North America and Europe too.

The existence of an exploit is not evidence that anyone, government or not, is actually rigging an election. Its evidence of risk. There are most likely exploits in every electronic balloting device and in every web voting system ever made.

Yes, but that remains what these heretical fundamentalists believe.

Do you realize we agree? Yes, traditional Islam considers Jews and Christians "people of the book", people at different levels of God's revelations depending on what prophet they are following. A string of prophets, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and finally Mohammed. All prophets of the same monotheistic God. However the non-Muslims were not on a par with Muslims, they were merely "protected people". They had to pay a special tax, were not allowed to bear arms, however they were allowed to practice their religion in private, establish their own courts among their people for certain levels of crimes and the Muslim government was completely obligated to protect them as they would a muslim citizen. This changed over time as European power grew, moderates not requiring the tax and recognizing more equality for civil matters.

The "people of the book" concept and certainly the "protected people" status was also extended to Hindus by some rulers/scholars and to Buddhists as well. Although the arguments for the later were a little more complicated.

However Jews and Christians are not necessarily considered "people of the book" by some of the more conservative believers. They require a certain amount of faith and adherence to a person's respective religious laws to be so qualified. And for even more conservative minds a Jew or Christian in Islamic lands not paying the special tax and otherwise behaving under a "protected people" contract were also not considered "people of the book". So yes Jews and Christians can become fair game with respect to be treated as unbelievers. In short, believers must act as believers to some degree, expectations varying.

And of course, the heretical fundamentalist level of expectation is something that has always existed to some degree. Again, Lawrence was specifically warned to travel in native clothing with guards because there were heretics who would kill him for no other reason than being a Christian in Islamic lands, even with the blessing of the Saudi king.

No. Internal slavery predated and coexisted with the North American slave trade. Various African kingdoms had a long tradition of slavery and would participate in the North American trade. This included several Islamic governments. I believe that Lawrence also witnessed some slaves among the Arabian nobles. Admittedly their situation seemed closer to what in North America would have been temporary indentured servitude, so perhaps something was lost in translation. However it remains a fact that slavery in its most brutal and dehumanizing fashion was practiced by some Islamic african governments and that being classified as a "non-believer" made one fair game, a "non-believer" in the eyes of that government to be specific.

It remains to be seen if there is censorship. Impounding material evidence is not necessarily suppression. Its not clear that the researcher is the target, he may merely possess evidence that would make some black hat less anonymous. It premature to claim "kill the messenger" using any definition of that phrase.

As for the "definition". In a region where a generation or two ago "kill the messenger" was literal not figurative, the figurative definition doesn't work.

The desired "evidence" may be unreported information. For example things that make otherwise anonymous people less anonymous. Again, the researcher is not necessarily the target.

Well we did have many centuries of land and sea transportation before oil. Admittedly the long range transportation usually involved more important stuff. The less important and simpler stuff coming from more local sources, unlike today where even this comes from the other side of the world. Our society has alternative, historical and modern. The imperial society of Herbert's Dune had no alternative, they were interstellar not terrestrial. The absence of melange meant planetary isolation with the loss of instantaneous travel (folding space, even better than light/warp speed). By comparison our strategic resource is a convenience.

In the US seizing material evidence of a crime and arresting a person are also two different things. The evidence may be of some third person's criminal activities, something the person who possesses the evidence was not involved in.

In Lawrence's day the Arab leaders referred to such fundamentalism as a heresy for many of the reasons your co-worker states. A heretical intolerant only our beliefs is permissible fundamentalist islam. ISIS accurately represents some of these fundamentalist heretics, Lawrence was explicitly warned by Arab leaders of fanatics who would murder him for nothing more than being a christian in arab lands even with the permission of the Saudi king. And yes, to such fanatics slavery and murder are absolutely within their "religious beliefs" because those things are permissible when the victim is a non-believer and has been given the opportunity to convert; and these people consider non-believers to include moderate muslims. Anything short of their beliefs is a heresy and un-islamic to these fundamentalists and if you decline conversion you are fair game. Centuries of central and north african slave trade was founded upon this idea that a non-believer was fair game.

In a region with a history of actual political assassinations (body found) and dissapearances (body not found), no that does not qualify. Such things happened as recently as the 1980s. About 10 years ago the Argentine Congress established a "Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice" for such victims. Having to buy a new computer and restore from backups is not in the same league.