And you do not think the fact that relatively low numbers of people who smoke ever get cancer doesn't play a part in making that possible?

What you are describing is the same thing as a LPR (license plate recognition) setup which is the same thing as the cops use sans the ability to check warrants and crap. Repossession companies have been using this for years, there are even nation wide networks of hits like this that can be searched in case a repo has moved to another state.

Some states are at odds with civilians doing this and made it illegal. Some states make only sharing the information to anyone but employees and law enforcement illegal. Some states that made it illegal are fighting court battles over it right now. What you described would be covered depending on what state and the laws if any about it.

This is actually amazing, the 'Do No Evil' principle upheld by Microsoft! What an exciting and interesting development this is. Yes, you heard me right, USA courts and government are the agents of evil and Microsoft is now on the side of the individual rights.

Wrong. Supreme Court cannot make an Unconstitutional law into a Constitutional one. They render an opinion, which in many cases is wrong and in most of those cases is also politically motivated, but their opinion does not make a law Constitutional at all.

Smoking pot destroys quite a bit of the supposed good stuff in it. Its really a poor delivery system outside of getting high.

As far as causing cancer, it is a surprisingly low number of smokers who get cancer from smoking. I know it is presented as if you even look at a cigarette, you will get cancer and die, but less than 10% of life long smokers will get cancer. But of people who have cancer, something like 87% of the lung cancer deaths are from smoking and about 30% of all cancer deaths are from smoking. Further, smoking increases your risks of cancer about 23 times that of non smokers so there is a strong tie in with cancer. This is how the tobacco companies were able to refute connections to smoking and cancer for so long and probably why they weren't just shut down completely after losing court battle after court battle.

Now when comparing smoking pot with tobacco, you have to understand that the combustion process changes a lot of the chemicals within the substances, creates new ones by reactions, and it is thought that these changes may modify your risks of cancers and other diseases. Similarly, fire fighters seem to have higher risks of cancers and it is thought because of exposure to smoke and supposedly safe chemicals for fire retardants when burned.

I just wouldn't trust anyone who says it is safe to smoke pot. Maybe it might be less dangerous, but that would mean it would still be dangerous.

Some states have banned the use of LPR devices outside of law enforcement and others have banned the sale of information outside of within the company who collected it and established affiliates.

Repossession companies have used this tech going on almost a decade now. Some states don't bother with regulating it, some areas the repo companies self regulate and only sell to Law enforcement or other repo companies. Some states outright forbid it outside of law enforcement. It's a moving target and the laws on it change all the time. In some states, the laws are being challenged by the ACLU and other entities in court.

But beware. Even with their claims of legality being the exact ones you might use, remember how many other people were arrested, had their electronic devices taken and in some cases destroyed for little more than recording cops in public areas. Hell, one guy spent a weekend in jail and had to pay out the nose for a defense because his home security system records the cops.

The actual videos themselves may contain enough information to track vehicles over a period of time

You don't even need the videos. LPR tech is used by repo companies all the time (where it isn't outlawed now) and with a short history of hits on a specific license plate, you can specifically identify the habits of a person and realistically track them to a location in which the car can be repossessed while they are not in it.

But here is why the EFF and such want the information. They want to show how possible this is so the public knows it is more than a camera which notifies the cops when a license plate of a stolen car drives by them. That every single license plate the system recognizes goes into a storage computer along with the date, time, GPS location and likely other information.

Depending on how long this data is kept, they can reconstruct a lot of things about you, like when you were parked in that abortion clinic/AIDS treatment center parking lot for 4 hours that one Friday (when your car broke down and you pushed it off the road but it won't have that info with it). They look and reliably detect your work schedule, when you visit the grocery stores, and a lot of other things. All without you ever doing anything wrong.

Why do you keep arguing like this is a likely scenario when it simply is not, are you trying to troll or just live up to your /. handle?

First of all, people who have different opinions than you are not trolling or dumbasses. They, as in this case, could very well have more information than you or simply hold differing opinions concerning the information available. Contrary to what your mom may have told you, you are not the smartest person in the world, you likely are not even the smartest person in the room most of the time. The world does not materialize as you will it too so please stop with this bullshit of attacking the messenger when the message is not what you want. Had you pulled this crap in any high school debating course, you would have flunked out quickly. So even if you think I am wrong, present the case and leave the bullshit for third grade recess.

You just provided my point for me, probably without realization. In order for a terrorist to get into the US, they are going to have to pass through numerous countries which don't want infected populations and do screen passengers deemed a threat.

I did not make your point at all. Drugs of abuse which are illegal in the US, Canada, and Mexico all find their way from other countries and into those countries. What is so magical about a capsule sized container that could be shoved in various body holes before passing through those other countries and into one of the ones mentioned? And who says those other countries would even have to know about the end intentions or the infectious disease before they pass through them? Are you suggesting that they know all about those illegal drugs that pass through them on their way to the US?

Mohamar is not going to be entering Sweden (for one example) with a bottle of bioweapons. He's probably not going to try and carry it through Felluja air port for that matter, because he has a high chance of getting caught there also. So he chugs his juice before leaving the shed and heads out. 2 days later when he arrives in Mexico city, he's sick as a dog and quarantined

Actually, for something like the plague, you can find it in the wild in some countries. In the US Midwest, it thrives quite well. One of the articles supposedly on the laptop was how to weaponize the plague. It could be that Hohamar doesn't need to travel with the plague at all until he is ready to fuck shit up. So Mohamar's brother gets a hold of this wild plague, creates a bio-weapon from it in Mexico or Canada or even in Iraq/Afghanistan and ships it with a load of heroine destined for the US and Canada (which seems to have less of a problem getting here than the illegal aliens currently strolling across the borders), Mohamer and 40 of his buds make their way to the Canada or Mexico either with their American or UK passports or even by being smuggled in with another batch of heroine, infect themselves and its on.

I'm really not sure why you seem to think they would be traveling under their real identities, through real airports and declaring their bio weapons at the customs counter when there are so many avenues for alternatives already in place and available via the drug and human trafficking trades.

Even in the unlikely event that they make it into the US within 2 days, where are they going to be able to travel and infect? Houston? Dallas? They are not making it out of either of those airports.

With a car and perhaps an accomplice in the states, from the Texas border, you can be in any city inside the continental US within 2 days. They can hit Atlanta, Cincinnati, Columbus Ohio, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston Seattle, LA, San Fransisco, Vegas, ANY CITY IN THE 48 STATES.

But that is just where they could go before symptoms show. If they are in a car being driven by an accomplice, they can hide their symptoms and operate until the disease consumes them or they can no longer function. But their dead and decaying bodies, if hidden well in a sufficiently populated area, will continue to infest for weeks to come because it will pass the plague off to rodents and their fleas which will infect others.

It is not a huge threat, and does not rely on just US agencies (which I fully agree can be, and are, often useless against real threats). The only way this scenario plays out is if the CIA imports the "terrorist" that ate the plague, and at that point it really does not matter because it was not a foreign terrorist plot that cause the damage.

It doesn't need the CIA at all. Just coordination and effort and a willing government who refuses to secure the borders. Children for Christ's sake- are able to enter the southern border of Mexico, navigate the almost 1500 miles to the US border, and cross without a problem at all. To think a grown adult with a plan, funding, and people helping couldn't do the same is preposterous if you ask me.

I'm Mormon, and I'll have you know that I have very strong opinions about which local microbrew has the best root beer, you insensitive clod!

Those mean absolutely nothing. Nixon was never impeached, those article were never voted on by congress iutside of commity and the entire reason anyone knew about it was specifically because the IRS said no to him when he tried to do it. That was only brough in to pile on after the defying congress part with watergate.

What happened was that nixon tried to use the IRS and they said no then told congress. You are wrong on both accounts- no political audits happenned and Nixon was never impeached. There is a difference between trying or wanting to do something and actually doing it.

Its pretty sad when Nixon had more integrity

Why would they need to get infected first? The TSA and so on are US agencies and only impose their will on flights entering the US.

I imagine they would infect themselves and then travel to places making sure to come into contact with as many other people as possible. Sort of like slow suicide bombers.

With the plague, someone can rub the crap on themselves, then contact as many doors, people, subways, and so on as possible and hit quite a few of these before symptoms even start showing after 2 to 5 days. Then they can cover the symptoms and go somewhere dirty but hidden to die so rodents and fleas get infected thereby transferring it to even more people.

They can likely do this without ever coming into contact with the TSA/DHS/ATF at all. Our borders are not secure and that fact has been all over the news recently and no one in government seems to be able to do anything about it. So they perfect some plague well enough to kill humans, travel to Canada and Mexico, divide it between 40 or 50 people spread across the border areas (north and south), infect themselves right before coming over legally, and from there, no place in the US cannot be reached within those first two symptom free days.

Wrong. Executive orders are supposed to be used when there is ambiguity in a law, when congress defers power to the administration, or where the constitution already gives the administration powers.

Executive orders are not I am King orders and without a basis of authorization like mentioned above, they will not survive a challenge in court. Unfortunately, administrations use them somewhat like a proclamation by the king but someone has to have standing in order to get the courts involved.

You can hide folders and files in most operating systems, It's generally a file attribute you set either through a command line argument or the properties dialog in the US.

There have been a couple root-kits that used special characters enveloping the file or folder name which would hide it from the OS and anyone using the OS to look for it. I'm betting it is just the attribute in this case.

Yes it would. Congress wouldn't have the power to make such a broad law over the administration of presidential powers and if a president did so by executive order, the next could simply undo it.

What is needed is judicial review or something to ensure the lawfulness and constitutionality of them if half of congress requests or something. The courts do have original jurisdiction over these issues as they often determine the lawfulness and constitutionality of government.

One of the problems is that a lot of executive orders made seem to be contrary to law and the constitution which is strange seeing how the entire power for them is derived by law and the constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law.. but who has standing to challenge them.