How about instead of paying them to turn the exploits over to the CIA, we pay them to publish them publicly? Then the developers can see them and patch the vulnerability.

Just like 2013,...,1995 (when I first installed RedHat 2 from a CD)

As good as any other theory, I guess.

what Panama is to the US, then fine, go for it.

But he had every right to attach his computer to that network. MIT has (or had?) a free and open network. It was open to everyone, not just students, faculty and guests. So there was no problem with him connecting to their network, or stashing his computer there.

JSTOR's contract with MIT allowed access to their papers to anyone on MIT's network. Not limited to students and faculty. Just anyone coming from their network. So there was nothing illegal about him downloading papers from JSTOR.

However, JSTOR's terms of service limited the number of papers one could download in a given period of time. I think it was something like 25 a day. Aaron, however, wrote a script that would download all 4 million in rapid succession.

The only thing "wrong" that he did was violate JSTOR's terms of service. Yes, if everyone did that the system would collapse. What he did amounts to bad manners. For that he deserves to be threatened with up to 50 years in jail? That's the kind of abuse Aaron's Law is intended to stop.

So when cops shoot dogs for barking they're violating the canine's right to free speech?

1) Cool, he answered my question! And in a way that's vaguely disturbing.

2) In response another question he said:

I also find that people are far more forgiving of humans than computers. We expect machines to be perfect. When you're on the phone with a human operator and he misunderstands a word in your street address, he reads it back and you say "oh, no I said Canal Street, not Camel Street." When a computer answering system gets it wrong, we get angry at the stupid machine and press 0 for an operator.

I think one of the things that makes the human race "intelligent" is our ability to fill in gaps in incomplete information, take shortcuts, and accept close-enough answers. That means we will most certainly be wrong, and often. This tolerance for inexactness I think is something computers are not good at. People expect a computer AI to be both intelligent and never wrong, and I don't think that's possible. To be intelligent you have to guess at things, and that necessitates being wrong.

I agree that the lack of oversight, accountability, or common sense is disturbing. Since they track and record everything you look at on the internet, who you call, what you buy, where you go, my guess would be you get on the watchlist by doing vaguely terroristy things, like looking up bomb-making instructions on the internet, or posting on websites of known subversives, like slashdot. Enjoy the cavity search. You've earned it.

I'm pretty sure they watch slashdot. I posted about how 2nd amendments nutters are full of shit because they act like it's their wet dream to stop government tyranny with their guns, but haven't done a damn thing once it was revealed the government completely ignores the 4th amendment. Three days later some AC posts this stupid fishing attempt looking for other people to attack the NSA with him. Right. That's a completely legitimate inquiry AC. Did they teach you that one in narc school?

Anyway, welcome to the list.

I don't think it's necessarily an error rate. What they're saying is these people may be lone actors (Unibomber, Boston bombers) who are not linked to any actual terrorist organization. Or, they're people who they think may become radicalized but have not actually phoned up Al Qaeda yet.

It's still a ridiculous number, but one can be a terrorist without being linked to a terrorist group. Yet.

And there's no incentive to remove anyone from any list ever. All it costs in hard drive space, and that's cheap. If it wastes time because of extra scrutiny for people at the airport or traffic stops that just means we need more TSA agents and more police, which just means the police state apparatus needs to be bigger, so it fuels itself.

According to Greenwald, there are bigger stories to come from the Snowden leaks.

Since the beginning, my big question has been who are they actually targeting to spy on? I know they're recording everybody's calls, but whose calls are they stopping to listen to? Names.

Last month they revealed the five muslim Americans (mostly lawyers) who they were spying on. It's easy to say, "yeah, but brown people." And I think that's exactly the goal. Let people say "well, it was just muslims and they're kinda all terreristy anyway!" And then they're going to release the next round of names, and yeah it's going to be Occupy leaders or Tea Parties or Greenpeace or whatever. That's my guess, anyway.

There is a many to many mapping of those. (Should be many to one, but nothing is perfect.)

That is, my slashdot user name is one "name", so is my "real" name that people call me, which is not the full name on my birth certificate. So that's three names for one person.

Also, not all terrorist groups are in the middle east, or Muslim. Several are right here in the US, and Christian. (Or Jewish, not sure if any atheist groups are in the US).

Which is why you should keep your mouth shut about nullification and serve on the jury. While now more than ever I hate the phrase "now more than ever," now more than ever smart, concerned citizens should not be dodging jury duty. One way we can hold the government accountable is by demanding they obey due process of law when prosecuting someone. Stand up for your fellow man. Make sure his rights are observed. Serve jury duty.

In which mathematical system is 40>60?