Very uaseful for law enforcement to kill the smartphones of anyone they consider problematic, like leaders of streets protests or occupy movements.

Science fiction is as legitimate a artistic expression as anything else, if not more legitimate because it is generally written by people who have a better understanding of nature than your average artist.

That's the conceit of SF fandom. (Based on cherry-picking the SF writers they use as their examples.) In reality, SF writers come from all over the spectrum, though the most successful are generally those who do have a better understanding or at least can simulate it to the low fidelity required by SF fandom.

Not really seeing what I get out of paying them to do this when in theory I could just make my own from a used laptop off eBay.

Sure they have serial numbers but good luck on tracing a envelope full of random twenty dollar bills that picked up all over the place.

That is only because lifes re-spawn rate sucks. It took this Jesus cat three days to do it and he had to be in god mode.

What is more anonymous than bitcoins? Paying an assassin a wad of cash. That is how these things have been done for centuries.

Bitcoins are harder to trace than say a wire transfer or a bankdraft but they are not perfectly anonymous. A fist full of cash is far more anonymous.

The only reason that bogeyman was brought up was because The Silk Road moron tried to pay for one with bitcoins. As for the rest of it, traditional means of payment have bought more assassins and child porn than all the bitcoin transactions, period.

It's not. From skimming the same article about him I see no reason that his opinion on bitcoins should carry any more weight than mine, or anyone elses. An we all know how much my opinion on bitcoins mean, jack and shit. Which is what Charles Stross opinion means on the subject. An I think jack just left town.

I'm sure you think it's made slashdot, but as it hasn't happened, I doubt that. Get a grip. Reducing the population does not mean killing people - it means improving healthcare and quality of life for poor people.

The same Europeans who got great public transport and infrastructure links out of the higher taxation, while the US is full of terrible roads most European countries would laugh at... Your point? Taxes pay for civilization.

Aaah - the old "but they're worse!" line of defense. It doesn't matter what protections other countries have - the US screams loud about how awesome and free it is, yet it appears from the evidence it's far from either.

Why do so many people seem to have difficulty with the words "republic" and "democracy"? They're not mutually exclusive. The US is both - it is a republic with democracy. The fact you're banging on about the Bill of Rights and don't seem to even understand what sort of government you have speaks volumes about your education and arrogance.

Most estimates I see say it takes several years and between 3-10 million dollars to come into compliance with these regulations.

You need to get your estimates and information from somewhere other than wingnuts.

Aren't you forced to consent to breathalyzers at any stop while driving your car when you receive your license?

You are never "forced to consent" to anything. If you're forced, ipso facto it is not consent.

You can have your license yanked for declining a breath test. But that's strictly an administrative action, not criminal.

If you're not drunk, the cops have no probable cause to ask you to blow, so your lawyer can argue that, and you could blow a false positive. So if you're not drunk, blowing is not in your interest. If you are drunk, naughty naughty, but that aside you wouldn't want to give them evidence to use against you.

From what I have read and seen, you are best off declining to take either a "field sobriety" test or a breathalyzer test. Never consent.

That blue wall can't be sued...

Oh, it very definitely can. It takes a while but activist friends of mine sued successfully. Some sorts of suits have more chance of success than others, but suits over bad cops do win or get settled fairly often.

Is your assumption just because they could do it, that they are? Despite the fact that there's no benefit to getting DNA samples from random drivers but there is a huge time and monetary cost to do so?

If they are taking a cheek swab, they are already getting your DNA. That might not be what they are after at the moment, but they have your DNA, along with your license plate number, so they have a pretty good idea who you are.(And if they're checking your driver's licence, they know who you are.

The cost of storing that DNA, in case you should later become a person of interest or until the cost of DNA analysis becomes trivial, is minimal. Rather like the cost of storing data about your electronic communications. You're not interesting to them now, but you might be someday, and the surveillance state isn't about to let an opportunity go to waste.