I'd say "citation needed" but we only have rumor, innuendo and your word that the NSA is actually serious about going after real threats.

In the arena of creating laws based upon possible worst-case scenarios -- this one has to rank somewhere.

I agree with this. For most of criminal law, we judge based upon the INTENT of the DEFENDANT. The state of mind of the aggrieved party should be irrelevant unless the attacker knows it and that goes along with intent and premeditation.

"If I'm terrorized -- you must be a terrorist" is no way to run a civilization. A cynical person might believe that was the intent of the "stand your ground laws" and other shenanigans when large corporate groups like ALEC lobbied for them. What's wrong with self defense laws? It's not perfect, but should err on the side of; "Don't shoot people unless you have to."

FaceBook may be the group that puts an end to this because it will KILL THEIR BRAND. Just as the police seem to target "urban" locations over suburban for drug raids -- targeting Facebook social party announcements will cause people to create their parties on other platforms.

And we have to ignore the fact that drug addiction has been proven to be more the result of having an empty life over properties of the drug.

While I don't want my kids getting involved in the drug scene, or have risky behaviors, I'd say it's clear that people have better lives and contribute more to society if they are NEVER CAUGHT by law enforcement. Experiment with drugs, move on, sell some to a friend and eventually grow out of it -- eventually become a well paid contributing member of society and a hypocrite while figuring your own kids will never do that kind of thing -- perfectly healthy compared to "ex con" status.

Having a bunch of domain names is no sign of "investment" or "savvy" -- it's having a few bucks at the right time.

Not sure if these people have to pay the wholesale renewal price of $15 or not, but it seems to me that you shouldn't be able to squat on names of websites not in use, or vaguely sounding like a website you have in use. I can understand "donaldtrumpbadhair" as a domain Donald Trump might reserve.

I predict we will soon have intelligent agents who take care of our internet connections, and the naming will be moot for all but the most visible web domains. Then the battle will be over the "processing of content" as the agents digest information and present it to the user. We can see this in the case of SIRI on the iOS platform -- it can get you right to your target without much of a glance at all the intervening marketing. The internet will become more and more of a service platform -- just as software is becoming.

Then someone is going to patent the patterns of connections. Maybe we'll have pattern squatters.

Apple pays out 67%. That's on Gross.

If they were to perhaps, talk about the expense of promotion, servers, and the fact that all the toys for Whack-A-Mole ended up in lawsuits, they could use Hollywood accounting. It would still be 67%, but of the net -- which means cab fair instead of money to buy the Limo.

I don't except that Programming is "Bigger than Hollywood" until we have people saying they are programmers while the bulk of their income comes from waiting tables, and I have to sleep with my Employer to get a job interview.

I WISH the process were that simple.

Yeah but can we all just agree that connecting some of these systems to the internet or a wireless network is a bad idea?

I want a person who sees one screen with internet access, makes a decision, and presses a physical button on the controls for the nuclear power plant.

So auto driving cars are great -- can be secured, but let's not be cavalier about "other things are computer controlled" -- there's going to be iPhone software that tweaks the car and that means 100X more access by script kiddies to mayhem.

Nobody said "the science is done" -- they said; "the alarm has been sounded."

A fire alarm goes off in your house -- do you wait for the research to be conclusive or do you look for smoke, get a fire extinguisher, call 911, leave the building or do something useful to deal with it? The research into; "what do we do, the alarms are going off?" Is underway.

Know, you are talking about an exploit that could be affecting 60% of Android phones vs. "a potential" of affecting iOS but no proof and you point out "but if there was a problem you'd have no options".

Sounds like someone in a campaign defending a corrupt and incompetent politician with the potential that the other candidate could start Armageddon based on them not doing anything to prevent Armageddon.

There are orders of magnitude better security on Bitcoins then there are on our electronic voting systems. They were designed in the first place by two hackers Rove got out of prison. They had three "Access databases" one for query, one that was used to submit the vote, and a third with no particular reason given. Any reason other than fraud to have three databases in a simple voting system and any REASON why a touch screen device is so expensive and flakes out so often? If Banks had these problems they'd lose billions at ATMS; they don't, so the only reason is fraud or incompetence.

I'd say that government agencies or very advanced hackers working for the mob took out some bitcoin companies with my first suspect being governments as it challenges the bankers they work for.

I already know I vote on a totally hackable system and it's just honest enough to be plausible. Pay no attention to Max Cleland's vote flipping in the last few minutes of the election.

Yeah, I notice how many foreign agents and bankers the FBI gets.

I'd like for once the FBI not to arrest someone from Green Peace, a protestor with Occupy Wall Street, a group of homeless men who had an FBI handler who put them up to it.

Eric Holder could take the Fed Chairman and the heads of Goldman Sachs and prosecute them for all sorts of crimes -- anyone paying attention will know about the abuse that one company has made. Why is this not happening?

There is nothing "legit" going on -- merely agencies preserving the status quo and a government owned by the people who they have to borrow from to get into office.

It's worse than "papers please" -- there are a lot of laws making it illegal to cover your face or disguise your appearance. Facial recognition software is not good enough yet to really track everyone -- but they've laid the groundwork.

Total Information Awareness means that all things are known about all people. Being that there are so many laws, I'm very sure we are all guilty of something. Prosecution therefore, is selective and can be used to target anyone getting in the way of people with power and three letter agencies.

Nice rhetorical argument with yourself -- however, the issue from my point of view is Wikileaks is being targeted for being one of the last few "journalist' organizations. Corporate Media investigates it's holding companies and advertisers in the USA and they never find anything wrong. However, on sweeps week you will find out from Action News that there is a repairman who charges you for a new muffler but puts in an old one, and there are some government workers they caught napping.

The real issue from my point of view is that Wikileaks is not being investigated for wrong-doing -- they are being investigated to find out who their sources are. It's supposed to be a Democratic Representative government here and that's impossible without an informed electorate -- so any group; CIA, NSA or Al Qaeda that wants to keep you from the truth and put out false information is against what America is supposed to be about.

Wikileaks is not untouchable and above criticism, but they are one of the most important and precious things to America and the world right now, and the NSA and CIA look like the fascist dirt bags we were warned about. At every turn they prove why they should be mothballed. Keeping us safe from worse bad guys? Right. And next year the bad guys will get worse because they can't fight back against a drone. They attack what they can attack where it gets the most attention because we live in a world of asymmetrical warfare. Going head to head doesn't work. Protesting murders for marketshare doesn't work.

We have Wikileaks because our news media dropped the ball, and we have terrorism because we don't listen to people who suffer.

After 30 years working in software development I've not seen a return to the bad old days as you suggest.

Well, I suppose if things are good for you then the problem is solved for all time.

Union negotiated rules are laws means you've got benefits on the backs of the efforts of others -- you're welcome. The fact that a lot of hourly employees at blue collar jobs work unpaid hours due to task quotas is also not your problem.

As soon as some Jim Crow Laws were repealed in red states because "we didn't need them any more" -- lawmakers went about abusing the election system before the ink was dry.

There is so much that is getting worse for workers and most people I know don't think their kids will have more opportunity than them. Have you heard some Republicans leaders talk about repealing certain labor laws because we don't need them any more? Probably not your problem.