If they provided secure online storage, they shouldn't be guilty. If they were providing secure online storage to people whom they knew or should have known were hosting porn of underage people, they should suffer a significant legal penalty. If they were providing secure online storage to people whom they knew or should have known were hosting child porn of preteens then they should be burned at the stake.

There is such a thing as willful blindness. The sheer quantity of data involved is going to make it really tempting for someone to infer knowledge, but network management practices may or may not show it. Maybe the hosting company was just told it was a porn site, but it is entirely possible that they knew. In a good system a responsible prosecutor or cop should try to figure out whether they knew, and then a jury will decide the outcome.

(Plea bargaining is the problem with this scenario--there's a factual determination which should really determine the outcome of the case, but at least in the US the plea bargain system would make going to trial a very, very risky process for the innocent.)

Interestingly, this may be one of those few examples of a case where Snowden-esque monitoring did some good. Didn't news that Canada was trying to monitor all transmitted video on the web hit the news a little while ago? The timing of this suggests that this could stem from that.

"Capable of repetition, yet evading review" is the language. That applies when something is always over before an appellate court gets a chance to rule on it.

There is some role for that here, but the big thing first is how are you suing someone. It's one thing if you're arguing a constitutional violation (like in Roe v. Wade), but quite another if you're just arguing they broke federal law. The circumstances where a private citizen or even a public interest group can sue for a violation of federal law are very limited.

The FCC could go after them.

Use of a stingray then arguably becomes a violation of 47 U.S.C. Section 333, prohibiting the causing of interference with radio communications.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/U...

https://www.fcc.gov/encycloped...

More like they don't expect to win a real argument that the FCC's proposals are in any way bad, so they are trying to win by mocking the FCC.

It's a schoolyard bully's trick.

That was David Koepp (the writer). His was the fifth draft and the first to be approved by the producers.

*headdesk*

He is the "fifth most successful screenwriter of all time in terms of domestic box office receipts with totals at just over $2 billion" according to Wikipedia.

*simultaneous headdesk across America*

It would be more interesting to do it with a larger animal with a bigger brain. Could you raise an elephant that was smarter than people?

*Pauses, looks at Congress.*

Never mind. Already there.

One of the things that helps suicidal people is having community. Facebook isn't great for that but is usually better than nothing, especially if a person's community is far away. If Facebook is going to report people for participating in the community when they feel suicidal, suicidal people are going to be less likely to participate when they are feeling suicidal. So this may backfire in a pretty big way.

But there are a lot of variables, and it's really hard to say. I would kind of like to see A/B experiments, but Facebook gets in trouble for those.

No they're not--they just take more resources. If there's one thing the NSA has, it's resources.

I would say a couple of companies with amazingly good security would have a better chance to keep them out then a thousand companies with okay security.

North Korea hacked Sony in order to (1) punish economically and reputationally and possibly (2) create fear.

The USA and GCHC hacked Gemalto in order to (1) conduct signals intelligence operations, meaning eavesdrop. To Spy, in other words.

Spying isn't terrorism--it's deceit that every country in the world is expected to engage in to further its own policies and protect its interests.

North Korea's act probably wasn't technically terrorism either, because there is no evidence that they intended it to create fear in a target population rather than just economic and reputational harm. But it was closer to terrorism, because it was designed to cause harm to a large group of people.

Include videos for really bad life events. As unpleasant as it is to think about, she may one day be a victim of domestic violence, rape, or arrest--all very common, and all times when someone most needs support in their life.

Also, encourage her to understand money, so she won't be at the mercy of those who do.

And think about the ten hardest times in your life. What were they, what did you learn from them that you want to share with her.

And come up with a video for her wedding, maybe for her divorce, and for future weddings, and for if she never marries.

And one for her grandchildren, to tell them about these tapes that your daughter is passing on.

It kind of depends on the goal of the program. If you are aiming to turn out academics and truly excellent researchers and thought-leaders in industry, then yes, you should know how the computer works. If you are aiming to turn out decent programmers, you might not need to know, for example, how to do VLSI design.

(Although it's fun.)

There's plenty of evidence, but not a lot of rigorously analyzed data.

(1) Editing error. English requires an indefinite article between "at" and "much."

(2) Palatable to some. $700 isn't much to spend on a computer by the standards of the upper middle class, but it's still a pretty big chunk of change.

It is, although a lot of the vested interests and poor incentives problem is not arising at that level. Almost everyone working in the system is trying to do a good job with too few resources, but incentives shape behavior and cause problems even when people are trying to do that.

A basic problem with democracies is that they overcriminalize because elected people want to look like they are doing something about crime. We've known this for centuries, going back to Jeremy Bentham, but there is still very little effort done against it.

The Smarter Sentencing Act, which is something both democrats and republicans on the Judiciary Committee have agreed would be a good thing, and would save probably thousands or tens-of-thousands of man-years of prison time, has been approved by the committee for years and still languishes without getting a vote on the floor.

What can technology do? The first thing is that it can help people petition Congress, for one thing--email your Congressman and (Where your voice can do more good) your state legislatures. America leads the developed world in criminals--ask them to make it a real priority to change that, and provide concrete steps such as funding more alternatives to imprisonment, supporting the Smarter Sentencing Act and other reasonable sentencing reductions, and asking them to put together a plan to reduce recidivism and the collateral civil consequences of conviction such as lack of employability.

The second thing is technology--more accurately, science--can inform the jury. No jury should sit without learning about the reliability and lack of reliability of eyewitness testimony.

What happens to you once you get there, on the other hand...