Largely, I expect, because that was the principle in effect in the British Parliament. It's a common feature of most, if not all, bicameral legislative assemblies, and it dates back to that division of powers between the House of Commons and the House of Lords in Britain. The problem comes from the fact that the US Senate is elected, and thus it gains the democratic legitimacy to significantly tamper with bills. It's a debate being had in Canada right now, where we're trying to decide whether to reform or abolish our Senate. The fear up here is that an elected Senate (Canada's Senators are appointed by the Governor General in the name of the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister) would become like the US Senate, a competitor to the lower house, and that the supervisory role would be abandoned. Even in the UK the Lords' tendency to try to overrule the House of Commons reached the point where the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 were pushed through and give the Government an override power at second reading so the Lords cannot block a bill.

Yes. And that's why it is illegal to remove any facts associated with a warrant or subpoena. The subject of an investigation doesnt get to choose which facts he/she thinks are relevant and hide or destroy the rest. Law enforcement and the judge/court/CONGRESS that issues the warrant or subpoena do. And any act that appears to circumvent that process is in itself an act of deviance of the legal process.

And it's not supposed to matter if you're a former Secretary of State, or a Senator, or a janitor, or a former gang member with half a dozen felony convictions.

There's a phrase for this very process in government: Litigation Hold.
When Congress or a court litigating a lawsuit issues a warrant or a subpoena, the whole system in which the data exists is frozen. Period. Every document, email, memo, system eventlog down to when the machines were patched, and who last launched a web browser from them. And from that point forward any person who so much as logs in to the system to look has to be specifically and separately cataloged and the event recorded to ensure the highest levels of "chain of custody" which are then provided to the requesting body. This is to ensure that no evidence is being tampered with, and any data there is later determined to be relevant by the officials doing the data search. You often cant even add data to the machine after the fact, depending on the severity of the case. .

And we're supposed to take whose word on that exactly? That's like saying that if the police have a warrant to search your house for some incriminating documents, and you are burning some in your fireplace as they come through the door they should be perfectly satisfied when you say, "Well, yes, but I only burned things you wouldnt be interested in.".

Because I'm the guy flying over my neighbors' swimming pools to take pictures of people in bathing suits.

Science-deniers, particularly those seeking to deny science based on statistics, frequently cherry pick statistics. That's how you get the whole "18 year no warming" claim.

I don't care about your excuses. I think you should be banned from flying over a property if the property owner deems he doesn't want you flying over his property, and further, I think a property owner should have the right to shoot your toy out of the sky and send you a bill for the bullet. I'd actually make it a criminal charge with a minimum $50,000 fine. I'd make it so expensive and difficult for you to play with your little kiddy toys over my property that you'd finally just go fucking home.

Self entitled assholes like you have made it clear the only way to deal with drones is to make it so damaging for assholes like you to even fly one that you find some other toys to play with

In New Zealand, as in other Commonwealth Realms, public land is owned by the Crown, so the Queen in Right of New Zealand, can set any regulations it wants on who can fly over Crown land.

Oh, wait, you didn't need to pass a test for that.

I'm just trying to think how that would have been possible. I think back then there was a medical exception you could plead for. I didn't. I passed the 20 WPM test fair and square and got K6BP as a vanity call, long before there was any way to get that call without passing a 20 WPM test.

Unfortunately, ARRL did fight to keep those code speeds in place, and to keep code requirements, for the last several decades that I know of and probably continuously since 1936. Of course there was all of the regulation around incentive licensing, where code speeds were given a primary role. Just a few years ago, they sent Rod Stafford to the final IARU meeting on the code issue with one mission: preventing an international vote for removal of S25.5 . They lost.

I am not blaming this on ARRL staff and officers. Many of them have privately told me of their support, including some directors and their First VP, now SK. It's the membership that has been the problem.

I am having a lot of trouble believing the government agency and NGO thing, as well. I talked with some corporate emergency managers as part of my opposition to the encryption proceeding (we won that too, by the way, and I dragged an unwilling ARRL, who had said they would not comment, into the fight). Big hospitals, etc.

What I got from the corporate folks was that their management was resistant to using Radio Amateurs regardless of what the law was. Not that they were chomping at the bit waiting to be able to carry HIPAA-protected emergency information via encrypted Amateur radio. Indeed, if you read the encryption proceeding, public agencies and corporations hardly commented at all. That point was made very clearly in FCC's statement - the agencies that were theorized by Amateurs to want encryption didn't show any interest in the proceeding.

So, I am having trouble believing that the federal agency and NGO thing is real because of that.

Sooner or later it's going to happen elsewhere. The extraordinary lack of etiquette and basic decency among some drone owners is steadily going to make the public outcry to do something about the problem greater and greater.

Stop flying your fucking toys over my fucking property.

Just like the United Nations and the United States Department of Agriculture?

Here's that link from the article again...
http://www.agprofessional.com/...

So which is it? The USDA and UN are just as unreliable as Stats Canada and the Daily caller, and the NYT is the pinnacle of non-partisan reporting, or...

I'm pretty sure that destroying data that has been subpoenaed by Congress is not a misdemeanor.

You should probably understand the topic before you blabber on any more.

It's less a comment about effectiveness, and more about integrity.

Hell, even if the Obama administration were to prosecute or less likely convict Clinton, Obama would probably pardon her. I dont know if that's more or less sad that that the media would dismiss it, and that millions of intellectually lazy would still be happy to vote for her.

Except that also means other insects we like a lot less are also likely evolving resistance, which means we'll produce even nastier toxins and start wiping out bee populations again.

They have an interesting take on it.
The Globe and Mail's angle is quite a bit different: How Uber is ending the dirty dealings behind Toronto's cab business