This isn't going to make any difference.

The EU "Right to Privacy" and indeed all the human rights encoded in the relevant document are so riddled with exceptions that you can drive a bus through them. The fact that any government lost at all is amazing and surely the result of incompetent lawyering. From the text:

There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The national security exception by itself seems enough to allow nearly anything, but then they add public safety and economic well being on top! In fact every reason a government might have for engaging in surveillance is covered, which cannot be an accident.

But anyway, GCHQ is not about to suddenly discover that it cares about these things. It's been obvious since the start that the 5 Eyes agencies perceive themselves as being entirely outside ordinary democratic constraints, unfortunately, that perception is largely true as senior ministers think real life is like an episode of 24 and gives them essentially blanket immunity to do whatever they like.

He was stripped of his law license in Arkansas as a result of perjury. Somebody besides me cared quite a bit - including a judge and the AR bar association.

It's always interesting that folks like yourself think sexual harassment is the absolute worst thing a guy can do - unless he's a Democrat.

I've yet to see anything from O'Keefe that would suggest he's a conspiracy nut. Unfortunately.

I see we're checking off the media matters list here. Say, since Lois Lerner did nothing wrong why do you suppose she pleaded the 5th? Note that it's not possible for an honest person to have need of the 5th amendment.

His "affair"? No, his multiple affairs, his predatory sexual assaults on subordinates, and his perjuring himself in a lawsuit (while also suborning perjury through witness coaching) were the issues that the liberals overlook and continue to try to obfuscate (as you've done above). Had a Republican done even half of that we would still be reading about it in the press.

Yes, I had the same experience the few times I've used Uber. The drivers always seem happy. They don't feel like they're being exploited and often feel it was an upgrade on what they were previously doing. The flexibility comes up a lot too.

Whilst it's just anecdotes, that would still seem to be a serious problem for the "Uber is exploiting the poor proles" camp.

I stopped reading the articles around 2002.

Uh, no. With a large established company like TW this is simply a drop in the bucket. My point stands.

LOL, here we go again. Of course you pass on the swipe fees, unless you have a special printing press in the back that prints money to be used to cover swipe fees.

What you're missing is that all customers pay the same amount, meaning if I pay with cash part of my cash is covering other people's swipe fees. I usually pay with cash so, yeah, bit of a bummer. However, you'll find at a lot of stores on large purchases they'll bargain way better when you wave a wad of cash under their nose.

I think you missed the point, so I'll bring it up again. TW - like most profitable companies - makes all of its money from sales to customers. Therefore, for any expense that TW has the statement "the customers are going to pay for it" is true. Therefore, it's meaningless.

Let me help you:

2 Shareholders pay (in the form of less profit)

<eyeroll> Yes, that'll happen either way. The money that the shareholders earn (in the form of dividends) still comes from customers. Again - they either have a printing press for money or it comes from customers.

3. Employees pay

Yeah, and where does employee pay come from? A magical printing press in the back room, of course, that prints the money that pays employees.

Oh, wait, no, this is reality, so the money COMES FROM CUSTOMERS. <facepalm>

4. The company spends less money on other things....

(Do I have to repeat this at this point?)

The *only* other options for "who pays for this?" would be if an outside investor approached them and, for whatever reason, says "Hey, you got screwed on that court case. Tell you what, for x% of your company I'll pay that judgement for you." Put another way, they could sell extra stock (and thus devalue all existing stock) to raise the money. For a company of their size it's probably not worth it.

Of course they will. It's either that or they own a money printing press, right? I see this all the time: "they'll just pass the cost on to consumers". I'm at a loss to determine what you think the alternative would be. Every business technically passes all their costs to their customers as the customers are how they make money. When you pay your TW bill (if you have TW) then part of that bill is covering legal expenses when they screw up. Same as when you buy a can of pop at Walmart, Kroger, etc.

It surprised me to find that they can deduct this. The IRS code doesn't allow deduction of penalties paid to governmental agencies, but apparently civil non-governmental judgements are deductable.

Yes, how did the BBC ever dare to compete with Commodore, Apple, etc back in the 1980's. What imperialists!

Signed /A guy who learned programming on a BBC Micro

Same way it works for banks. In other words, it doesn't, but it makes them into awfully convenient scapegoats who can be blamed for any social ill on the grounds that "they could have stopped it but didn't because they're all greedy capitalists".

It was inevitable that things would go this way the moment encryption started getting good. As NSA/GCHQ are now much more limited in what they can see, and privacy advocates are trying to stop them getting more power, the obvious 'solution' is to outsource the costs to the private sector. The advantage is the government can then never screw up, except by being insufficiently aggressive with them. It's a lose/lose situation for anyone who runs a communications system.

And the only solution to THAT is end to end crypto so not even the provider can read the messages. Hence the UK's sudden interest in banning such systems entirely.

The few air spaces inside the machines are filled with helium. It actually weighs 5lbs. otherwise.

I can say that smoking and possibly drugs are a factor in at least some of the folks who aged more quickly. That's a good point.