Except that if you read the majority opinion they actually open up any provision of the law to challenge on the same grounds. They warn that the ruling should not be taken as covering anything covered by insurance, but presumably any such thing could in principle be challenged on the same basis, and depending on the circumstances might likewise be exempted. The majority has opened the door to challenging the application of any provision of this law to a closely held corporation -- indeed any provision of any law. They just don't know how the challenge will turn out.

It's interesting to note that the court broke down almost exactly on religious lines when dealing with contraception. Five of the six Roman Catholic justices voted with the majority, and all three Jews joined by one dissenting Catholic. I think this is significant because the majority opinion, written exclusively by Catholics, seems to treat concerns over contraception as sui generis; and the possibility of objections to the law based on issues important to other religious groups to be remote.

Another big deal in the majority opinion is that it takes another step towards raising for-profit corporations to the same status as natural persons. The quibbling involved is astonishing:

Which may be true, but it's irrelevant. The question is whether compelling a for-profit corporation to do something impacts the religious liberties of natural persons in exactly the same way as compelling a church to do that same thing. If there is any difference whatsoever, then then the regulations imposed on the church *must* be less restrictive than the regulations imposed on a business. Logically, this is equivalent to saying the regulations imposed on a business *may* be more restrictive than the regulations imposed on a church.

Thank you for the first reasonable reply I've received throughout this thread. You've caught the gist of part of what I'm hoping to illuminate here (which is probably far more important in the larger scheme of things), but you haven't seen the full picture yet. I have a challenge for you. Using your own line of reasoning as a premise to be challenged, can you analyze it from an adversarial perspective and develop a proposal for how additional inferences might be made regarding unique identification of medallions in the event that each medallion has been replaced with an arbitrary token? In your deliberations, please consider every facet of the reported data. It's quite apparent that those who have replied to my comments in this thread either (1) haven't directly considered the data themselves, or (2) lack the insight required to observe relationships between apparently unrelated constructs.

In short, under this challenge, I can deliver ~90% of the medallion identifiers using no external information other than full knowledge of the means by which the original medallions are assigned. Given a tiny parcel of additional correlation, I can hit 100%.

I look forward to your reply. By the way, what do you do for a living at the moment?

The sort of services being offered are easily worth USD $1M/month when you consider who the clients are, the scale of their operations, the degree to which their systems are interconnected with those of other institutions (large and small), and the complexities involved with regulatory/legal/reputation compliance and management. Risk management and threat analysis are not simple subjects.

To put it simply, these aren't your sort of client engagements.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Vietnam war, which in turn brought us in contact with the long running civil war in Laos. Anti-communist Hmong from Laos fought alongside Americans and after both Vietnam and Laos fell to the Communists many Hmong refugees were resettled here in the US along with their families.

I remember this story about S. nigrum from a newspaper account back in the 80s about foraging by local Hmong refugees. There were lots of stories about Hmong settling in, and because this was pre WWW you read them because you read pretty much everything in the paper that was even vaguely interesting.

In my experience you tend to crave what you habitually eat. The Hmong forage for Solanum nigrum -- black nightshade -- a plant that is not only inedibly bitter for most people, it's actually poisonous if you haven't spent years working up a tolerance to its toxic alkaloids. And here's the kicker: black nightshade grows wild here in the US and the old folks here go looking for it in the woods, even though they can buy meat and non-toxic vegetables in the supermarket. They grew up with the stuff, so they crave it.

The single most powerful feature our species has is behavioral flexibility. The same plant that is a side dish providing auxiliary nutrients today could be famine food tomorrow if the hunt doesn't go well. If a plant is nutritious and abundant in the environment, I'd expect local humans to eat it with enjoyment.

Maybe I'm looking for a woman who is better looking than me and who'll accept the IQ differential in exchange.

</sarcasm>

True story. I took a long bike ride last summer and ended up in a very affluent seaside community. I cross over the causeway to an island that's the most desirable neighborhood. I pass an attractive blonde woman jogging, but I think nothing of it. Then I pass another one. Then another. And another. I notice the women getting in and out of the Land Rovers in front of the Islands quaint shops. They're obviously blonde joggers too. It's like all the women came from the same Jogging Blonde Lady factory then were rigged out with different accessories. None of them look over 30.

So I start looking for men. They're obviously wealthy, but they appear on average 20 years older than the women. In fact, they're just regular, dumpy old shlumps with expensive cars and watches.

It was weird, like having a young, blonde, athletic wife was part of the homeowners' covenant or something. Sorry honey, but we just got a citation from the association and you'll have to move of the island. Heather here will be taking over your duties; be a dear and show her around the old place.

Throughout this conversation, I've been patiently waiting for someone to realize there's a lot more correlating data available in plain sight than anyone is owning up to. Provided that realization is made in the first place, the ensuing thought experiment should rapidly progress through probability, curve fitting, and rote process of elimination in a key space drastically reduced from even the space represented by the raw medallion search space.

If someone else, anyone else, would bother to think about this for a few moments, they might just arrive at a deeply uncomfortable conclusion: some data sets cannot be properly anonymised at all. Put another way, engineering a cryptographic solution in a vacuum is a lot like gasping for breath in outer space: you can perform actions you are utterly convinced are perfectly valid, but owing to context the end result is going to be highly unpleasant.

This is why we can't have nice things, specifically things involving sane public policy regarding privacy. Regardless of how the voting populace and their elected representatives might desire to craft policy in one direction or another, fundamental lack of understanding of the underlying environment and its rules of operation implies a necessary disconnect between intent and outcome.

This is why people need to study formal reference materials and think about things before they make recommendations, and it is why large scale intelligence outfits will continue to trump those under observation. Tunnel vision is a motherfucker.

Minor correction to the above post: "non-uniform" was intended to be "non-entropic." It's late here.

You still don't seem to understand. Maybe it will help you to recall that the input data is thoroughly non-uniform and deterministic in nature. This point was conveyed in the summary, ffs. The anonymization method asserted by msauve and errantly supported by others (yourself included) spectacularly fails to account for this fact, and bears no resemblance whatsoever to a sound OTP implementation. "You're going the wrong direction, shipmate."

I'm rather glad we didn't have folks like you leading the charge at Bletchley Park from 1939 onward, as things might have consequently turned out more poorly for the Allied powers. On the other hand, you would have fit right in keying Enigma machines.

Wow, I got modded "flamebait" for posting factual information. PayPal employees must be scrambling to man their sockpuppet accounts tonight. That's a shame; perhaps treating their customer base with respect and decency might be a better use of their time. I somehow doubt the downmod has anything to do with VPS Tree (the shit VPS provider) though, since they can't even be bothered to maintain a page for their About Us link these days.

You're either a fool or a liar. I've had funds frozen for months by PayPal with no explanation (eventually released with no apology from them), and I've also disputed recurring PayPal charges stemming from a shit VPS provider who had completely ignored several of my attempts to cancel services. In the latter case, PayPal decided to rule in the shit provider's favor anyhow. I walked away from PayPal permanently after finally getting the last of my money out of that account (again, several months later, and I still never got any of the fraudulent VPS fees refunded), and I will never transact business with them again. In fact, since January of 2012 I've continued to receive an email entitled "First Invoice Overdue Notice" from the shit VPS provider every month. Those emails serve as a nice reminder to encourage folks to avoid PayPal at all costs; people continue to use them out of sheer stupidity.

Paypal Policy - A License To Steal Your Money
Funds Stolen By PayPal
PayPal - Beware of PayPal, 6000 USD seized by Paypal
180-Day Hold Sparks PayPal Suit
Paypal Can and Will seize funds...Atwood Knives
Another PayPal victim $4000.00 seized from my business account.
PayPal Horror Stories

If you get bored, try these as well:

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

So, which is it? Are you a liar, or are you a fool?

Calendar reminders. That's it. I don't always keep my phone in my pocket and sometimes I have the thing on silent. It's worked out well for me. I tried the email and facebook notifications, but I really don't care about missing those things. For me the whole point of email over phone calls is that you don't have to drop what you're doing because somebody has something to tell you.

Now I've always worn watches; I like them. I like being able to glance to see the time. I also like the quick, crude analog timing function of a rotating bezel, although I can live with a digital stopwatch. And I like a good looking watch; for me this means simple, functional elegance. I think the best looking watch ever made was the Rolex Submariner, although I'd never spend that kind of money. Generally cheap watches are too cluttered for my taste, but you can find a reasonable Submariner knock-off around $80 (e.g., an Invicta 8926OB).

It's not a matter of impressing people with how much I spend. One of my favorite watches costs only $35 (Timex Expedition T45181). I like it because it is simple, functional, and aesthetically pleasing in a subdued way.

But with the Pebble any question of aesthetic elegance goes right out the window. It's an ugly hunk of plastic. It will not impress anyone. But then, missing an appointment because your phone is in your coat pocket on silent isn't going to impress anyone either. The Pebble does one critical thing (other than tell time) and does it really well. Most of the time that makes it my go-to watch. On weekends I go for my Submariner knock-off, or if I'm doing something that will beat up the watch I'll go for the Timex.

By the way, thanks for the added laughs per your attempt to reframe this discussion as "anonymising" versus "encrypting." You'd get a few charity points for sophomoric debate tactics if the subject matter were a bit less serious in nature, but that particular bit of commentary is indeed nothing more than a juvenile attempt at diverting attention from the matters at hand. Try again.

Are you confirming shipment of the book (along with a couple of other volumes) to Delft University of Technology in your care? I found it odd that even an undergraduate at such an institution would not already have access to such material, but perhaps all university copies are already on loan to other students. As an aside, you appear to be lacking the capacity to distinguish emphasis borne of extreme frustration from certain pathological afflictions. You should work on that.

You're clearly a fan of "get one key, get 'em all." Who signs your paychecks these days?