The 10000 attempted attacks per month is the CIO's way of justifying their core firewall. Every SYN packet that hits port 22 is an attempted attack.

You see, they need big scary numbers to justify to the CFO why they need a maintenance contract on their overpriced Cisco what-cha-ma-call-it doothingy that separates their network from the wild and caa-razy internet. "10000 attempts?!? Wow! Good job, Biff. Here's your budget."

Sad. But true.

You're not distinguishing between data in transit and data at rest. And it's an important distinction. Using Google's mail service as an example, my gmail is encrypted in transit via SSL. Always. I use HTTPS-Everywhere plugin to ensure that.

That said, I don't know how Google stores it while it rests on their servers, but it is in that state that the government claims they have a right to inspect it without a warrant. I hope it's encrypted, but it's not under my direct control. And it sounds like government is insisting Google not only give them access but share any keys they use to encrypt the data at rest. That means, if it is encrypted on their servers, that only helps protect it from hackers and accidental disclosure, not from authorized (by Google) agents.

The solution, as you hinted at, would be to encrypt your messages with something like PGP or GnuPG before sending them (in transit) or storing them (at rest) in either your or the recipient's mailbox. That puts the encryption keys squarely under your control, and makes the stored ciphertext inaccessible to the government, but comes with its own usability and key management issues. It's not something your everyday user is going to be comfortable with.

I don't believe that should mean that the less technically adept experience less privacy, but that's just my humble opinion...

I'd like to clarify something in your assertion above, maverick. Wherever you say innocent, I add the phrase "in the eyes of the court" following it.

It is the court and only the court that must maintain a clear lack of prejudice on defendants brought before them. Jurors picked for the trial become members of the court for the trial's duration, and must also be free from prejudice.

We the public like to see an unbiased media as well, but there's no requirement for them to be. Its just that they risk alienating a percentage of the population that feels like they're watching propaganda rather than news when they tune in. (Chase Carey: I'm looking at you here...)

Me? Not so much.

I can rely on circumstantial evidence, hearsay, and gut feelings all I want. Stereotypes are often based on solid observations. The prejudices they produce can save a person's life. That tingle you feel on the back of your neck while walking through Harlem in the middle of the night? That's not spidey-sense.

So when I see surveillance photos of someone looking suspicious and watch news reports of them in an armed confrontation with the police, I'm free to judge them all I want. Because I'm not in a position to deny them of their freedom or life; that's the court's job.

I say they're guilty, but that's just my opinion.

Your statement as I would fix it:

You're talking about Community Antenna Television, or CATV, which is what gave birth to the whole cable TV industry. Somewhere along the historical timeline, they made a poor concession to the broadcasters (or the broadcasters paid the right officials off), and instead of viewing CATV as a service to extend their viewership, broadcasters treated CATV as a leech to their profits and demanded fees to allow them to carry their signal. Make no bones about it. Fox is getting paid by the advertisers as well as the service that carries those ads to the eyeballs.

Now, tell me. If you were getting a deal this sweet, wouldn't you raise a huge fit to try to keep it from ending? I'm just sayin'...

FWIW, the same double-dipping game is my biggest objection to Hulu. I'm paying for specific content streams, and you're STILL going to bombard me with ads? And worse yet prevent me from fast-forwarding through them?!? No. Thank. You.

They might want to, but the latest reports I've seen (search google for citations) indicate they have enough fissile material for a mere handful of weapons, and their longest range missile won't yet reach the US coast.

Except for maybe Alaska, but last I knew, nobody was calling Anchorage a "major city."

j/k, Alaska.. We still love you, you gorgeous, scenic, oil-rich babe!

This.

Thanks for that link. I learned something useless today...

To me, it's all about your "expectation of privacy." At least in the USA, that's the legal standard they use to determine whether a warrantless search is permissible. If my cellphone is locked, that is a very strong indication that I expect the contents to be private. I'm glad that at least the Canadian courts agree. I just wish the US courts did as well, but they seem to be eroding individual privacy as much as they can get by with.

What filesystem would you suggest? YAFFS?

It would seem to me that there are parallels between the write limitations of flash memory and the need to avoid latency in distributed writes to cloud providers. I'm envisioning a YAFFS filesystem built on same sized blocks that are individually encrypted (and compressed) and written to the various cloud providers. Each block could be replicated (raid1) or broken into stripes of blocks used to calculate parity (raid5).

I think the technology exists, and all the components are proven, they've just never been assembled in exactly that way before.

I wish the OP the best of luck. Even if it isn't practical in the end, it sure sounds fun..

The VPS provider notices the continuous high bandwidth you're using and cancels your account for violating their TOS long before the authorities get around to raiding them.

Well we do have some strange candidates. And they do seem to have charmed certain segments of the population.

Fix things from within what? There are some people who identify with neither conservative nor liberal speaking points. The moderate viewpoint is entirely ignored in the two-party system, except when an extremist candidate from one of the two parties is trying to court moderate votes.

Associating yourself with either party implicitly indicates to the rest of that party that you agree with at least most of their views. It's easy, then, to label a true moderate (or libertarian) vote as outside the party lines, leading those who believed the implicit ideological alignment based on party affiliation to label the voter a turncoat.

I'd love to see an alternative voting system in place that encourages votes for parties other than the big two. It will never happen, of course, while they're in control of congress...

While we're dreaming, let's get rid of gerrymandering too.

Or "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line."

A-ha! A-ha-ha-ha! A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.... *thud*

the hipster would already be a step ahead, smiling obliviously on his train of thought, incompetent and unaware of it.

Oh, where are my mod points when I need them...

Well played, sir. If snark was a way to measure midi-chlorians, I'd be sending you to Yoda to give him lessons.

Oops! s/reign in/rein in/

Thank you, Scripps Local News!

This single incident will do more than any other event in recent history in helping to reign in the DMCA. This will finally get the legislature's attention focused on this bad law and give them the incentive and public pressure to try to fix it.

My suggested solution would be a check-box when submitting media confirming that you hold copyright, and any infringement claims should be brought to you directly. If this affidavit is checked, and the user's contact information has been verified as valid, the carrier can maintain their safe harbor by forwarding the complaint instead of removing the media.

Yeah, I know that's similar to how things worked before DMCA (less the contact verification), but I also understand that congress-critters never admit they're wrong, and this looks more like a tweak to them than an outright repeal.