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Comment Re:I can't really blame this guy (Score 1) 327

a couple thoughts...
3) maybe this is a woosh on my part, but the GP refers to TSA nut grabbing. This was just in the news yesterday cuz there was a bust at denver where a gay tsa officer was using coded signals to other officers so he would ahve the chance to grope people's nuts.

The TSA in Denver were only groping attactive people....

Comment Re:For a smartphone a TOF camera could be more sui (Score 1) 62

For a smartphones, I'd rather expect so-called "time of flight" cameras to catch-up before LIDARs. Basically, you have an array of LEDs which illuminate the scene using sine or square wave intensity modulation. .

Unfortunately, emitted IR signals outside get too corrupted for ranges farther then 10m or so.
I'm not sure about indoors but I can't find any ToF system that can go farther then 10m.
Light Field cameras almost seem useful but they have their own limitations.
Lidar is the only reasonable way to obtain depth information over long distances. And it's accurate too.
ToF does work ok for short distances though, AFAIK

Comment Re: Not everyone (Score 1) 140

Forced their hand? Last time I checked, they are: 1) still operating the program, and 2) tenaciously defending it.

For shame!

As far as I know, they are still allowed to operate the program under the law. Hopefully, in June (or whenever the 215 provisions expire) they will no longer be legally allowed to operate. Then it'll probably cease to exist.

That being said, it seems weird that the top level administrators of the NSA have been bold face lying to congressional committees under oath and no-one in the Justice Department is interested in prosecuting them for perjury.... As far as I understand, that is a legitimate crime.

Comment Re:a few heuristics (Score 2) 298

I hate to burst your bubble, but every example of component based programming that I've seen uses managers to access and control the individual components. You cannot use components otherwise. (At least, not in a memory restricted environment like a video game)

If you have ever worked on a large video games, then you know exactly what I am talking about.

Comment Re:Two things: (Score 1) 51

You seem to forget that getting the warrant is only the first step in the legal process. Next the actual surveillance (aka hacking) needs to be done and then the evidence needs to be presented in court in public. All of that requires time and energy. This is a heck of a lot better then the warrantless mass surveillance done by the NSA and company

Comment Re:The Chomsky interpretation of mind control (Score 1) 220

Now I'm starting to think that the whole NSA spying thing, and government spying in general, is a direct result of the lack of physical control of the populace. In principal, people in the free countries can think what they want, but only if the government knows what people are thinking at all times. I guess monitoring everyone's thoughts like as if we were all prisoners on parole is a direct consequence of physical freedom. If people are granted the freedom to _do_ what they like, they must give up the right to _think_ what they like, or at least they give up the right to share their thoughts privately with others.

There's definitely a balance that needs to be maintained here. Privacy and freedom of speech are almost opposites of each other...

The right of Freedom of Speech demands that we publicly air our grivances and are protected when we do so. We have to exercise this right from time to time just to make sure that it isn't forgotten.

The right to Privacy means that we are allowed to keep certain parts of our lives private and that the law protects this.

We have mostly gone towards Freedom of Speech over Privacy.
Consider a court case: an examining lawyer is allowed to ask you ANYTHING and unless it is very unrelated to the case at hand, you have to answer truthfully or face a purgery charge. No privacy there...

So what I am trying to say is: Worrying about the government monitoring your thoughts is probably not such a big problem unless they are used to imprison you.
I'd worry more about requirements to keep my thoughts private....

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 2) 220

>> “The first time that an attack takes place in which it turns out that we had a lead and we couldn’t follow up on it, the public’s going to demand answers,” he said.

That quote seems to be pretty far-fetched because if a law enforcement agency (most likely the FBI) really needed to follow up on a lead,
they could always do it the hard way: get a warrent and hack into the suspect's computer and plant a bug. That includes breaking into his house and putting in a physical key logger. But that would actually require effort...

I think the whole debate about encryption and public monitoring is totally overblown.
The government should get used to the fact that encryption isn't going away and that total surveillance is overkill and
the American public should get used to the fact that law enforcement is going to be able to get warrants to break into their homes and computers to
do monitoring.

I think that both sides on this debate have been approaching the issue of security vs freedom of speech+privacy rights in far to lazy a manner.

Cheers
Ben

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