It doesn't need to be accurate. All it needs to do is let them narrow down the list of videos, before they assess the actual content.

Most of the exfiltration was a bog-standard enumeration vulnerability. Items were sequentially addressed and vulnerable to insecure direct object reference, so the bulk of the "attack" boiled down to getting multiple users to coordinate their wget to retrieve as much as possible before AWS closed the door.

The attack on accounts/access was largely unrelated to the bulk exfiltration.

That's .. almost exactly *not* how this planned out at all.

The short version is that a character on the other side of the country - I'll call him Brian McDonagh, since the Irish Times saw fit to do the same, so it's not exactly doxxing anyone - bought a site he thought would be perfect for this. But he lost the bid, and responded by filing objection after objection to the Athenry site, until the process ground to a halt.

This isn't a win for the locals at all. And after costing Apple three years and untold legal costs, I can't imagine they'll be too open to another bid from Mr McDonagh either. This is just a complete abuse of the appeals process.

(oh, and that rural town of 3950 people, is minutes away from the 4th largest city in the country. Just to rearrange your own 'impact assessment' a little.)

So, this is literally 5 minutes down the road from me (when the traffic's good) ..

This isn't a popular decision here. I don't personally know anyone who had any objections at all - although we do note one of the people objecting resides on the other side of the country.

On the other hand, it's not the end of the world either. Once they're operational, datacenters don't employ anywhere near as many people as you'd think. Especially when they're single-tenant and managed off-site. And as small and rural as Athenry sounds (and looks), it's turning into a commuter town anyway. The city would be considered a very reasonable commute by American standards. (I have colleagues that can get in in 10-15 minutes - but sometimes take an hour to get home. Traffic is our major problem here, and this site would have little impact on it.)

Someone mentioned taxes. No-one's here is under any illusion that the topics are related. Denmark is not exactly a tax haven, and the two sites were announced at the same time. This is a stupid process that's been dragging out years longer than it should have, and ground to a halt enough times that the end was inevitable.

Someone else mentioned renewables. It's entirely wind here. We don't have a lot of scope for hydro; it's just too flat to support it. We do have a lot of scope for tidal, but little willingness to tamper with the picturesque coastlines when wind is so very plentiful here.

All in all, this is just a failure of process. Not the planning process itself, but the appeals process shouldn't be able to drag out so long as to destroy an opportunity. There should be a limit to how many appeals you can lose, otherwise the process stops being a battle of facts, and simply a battle of stubbornness.

I mean, imagine if you were trying to build a home - and someone a few hundred miles away objected to it. And objected, and objected. And lost every time, but was able to continue objecting until the build was no longer feasible. You'd be asking where the line is too. People should be able to object, and those objections should be able to hold some weight - I think it's fantastic that the common man can actually win against someone the size of Apple. But if the developer wins, that should mean something too.

Dear Australia,
Relax. Already a solved-problem. The more popular the site, the more mirrors they haven't managed to ban yet. This is the sole benefit to politicians having absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They actually believe they can beat us on our own home turf.
Love, UK&Ireland

I've only heard one report so far, and it wasn't good - no support for the keyboard or trackpad, let alone the touch strip. (Apparently because they're SPI devices rather than USB). I'd advise a cursory google.

This is exactly the problem. Basically three options.
1) We align everyone to London time, but day to day operations still occur according to daylight hours - people sleep during dark hours, work during light hours. So I still have to remember that it'd be impolite to call New York before (my) lunchtime, or Sydney after my breakfast. I'd still have to refer to a list of what hours are office-hours in various .. zones. We actually achieve absolutely nothing, other than the entertaining side-effect of the calendar day in Sydney changes at lunchtime.
2) We align everyone according to London, and day-to-day operations occur according to the clock. West-coast USA should probably get up at midnight if they want to get to work on time. Australians finish work at dawn, so can enjoy a few hours of daylight before heading to bed at noon. My code would depend on one library less, but we've severely reduced quality-of-life for three quarters of the planet.
3) We don't align everyone to London - we change nothing.

I can't help thinking miles-per-gallon is the wrong metric for this.

If we could compare the total "carbon footprint" for a similar itinerary sans-ship, then we'd have something to talk about. Flying 8880 people (~20 747s) from city to city. Bussing (~180 busses) them to their (~22) hotels. Powering those (~22) hotels. And restaurants & bars enough to feed/inebriate them.

A cruise ship isn't just a mode of transportation. It's an entire holiday resort, with almost all the associated amenities, and a population past most the towns I've lived in. If we can't compare the miles-per-gallon with that of a medium-sized town or a large holiday resort, we're ignoring a large part of the equation.

My concern (or my understanding of the concern, or whatever) is that keying the payload to a specific device is incredibly misleading. Even if the payload is keyed, signed, even if the FBI stick to the very letter and spirit of the Order and destroy the payload once used, they still make an irreversible powergrab.

There are precisely two defences against All Writs. One is to challenge the legality of the request itself - which is incredibly difficult to do. The other is to plead that the request is undue burden. This is even contained in the court's request itself:

So within this context, my concern is that if their hand is forced this time, or if they agree that well gosh, fighting terrorists is the Right Thing to do here - and produce this keyed payload; then they've dramatically lowered the bar for further requests. It'll be near-impossible for them to argue Undue Burden in further requests, as obviously all they need to do is re-key & re-sign the same payload. It'd take longer to read the next Order than to fulfil it.

"Slippery slope" is so over-used, but that's exactly what we have here. It's not just a slope. It's a freaking cliff. It's a one-way street. If they concede this time, there is no going back.

Piecemeal, this request doesn't bother me in the slightest. In a vacuum, assisting as far as they can is probably the right thing to do. But Spherical Cows don't actually exist. This isn't going to happen in a vacuum. This is going to have genuine ramifications far beyond this particular case. Once they agree that this approach is actually possible, they open themselves up to many more requests, potentially less defendable requests, and potentially in any other jurisdiction where they have a legal presence. In the EU. In Israel. In Saudi Arabia, in China, in India ...

Your imagination isn't far off the mark. There's a few craft labels floating around, but precious few for a country that likes to think it's famous for its drink. It feels as sponsored as any 8pm TV program. Ireland - Brought to you by Guinness.

No more than any other major city. Anecdotally I'd say far less so than the south of the UK, but I don't have numbers to hand, so take that as opinion rather than fact.

Basically, this. It could be construed as "classist", as Glasgow's primary reputation is being something of a rough city (or a tough/hard city from a local's point of view). - however the irony isn't lost on me that Sunderland (where the 'tweeter' resides) isn't exactly god's kingdom either. An argument could also be made that Scots themselves are a minority, having only ~10% of England's population. (Easy to miss, the accident occurred in Scotland but the accused is in the north of England).

But mostly, he just seems to be a dick. And that's much less protected here than it is in the US.

This is one of the biggest differences between the US & UK legal cultures. While basically similar systems (they share the same "common law" roots), they're exercised entirely differently. The US deals very much with absolutes, and the letter of the law. Most of your primary rights are the right to dissent - and understandably so, since it's what your nation was built upon. To this end you have free speech, press, assembly, firearms, etc. That is, the right to have a dissenting opinion, to share/publish this opinion, to vote on it, to protest, etc. All the way up to having enough guns around that the govt should be wary of the people - although personally I'd argue this one's now a futile effort given the govt clearly won that arms race ...

But I digress; In the UK the law is very much more intent based. So we don't have free speech as an absolute - we judge each on its merits. So political speech, satire, etc are essentially protected speech - very much in line with the intent of your first amendment - but public disorder, breech of the peace, hate speech, etc, very much less so - which runs contrary to the letter of your first amendment.

This one falls into an odd gray area though. We have no obligation to provide a platform for free speech. So while this wouldn't have been seen has malicious if shared as a joke between friends, it falls foul of the Malicious Communications Act, which allows for something like;

( http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/c... )

So this is where we end up with situations which can appear absurd. Someone makes a complaint to the police. The police satisfy themselves that there's reasonable grounds that such a communication has been sent. But it's not up to the police to judge the intent ("provided there is an intention on the part of the sender ..."). This ends up in essentially a three-step process, where the police may find sufficient rounds to make an arrest, then the CPS ("Crown Prosecution Service", roughly a public prosecutor or attorney general) may find sufficient grounds to press charges, and then a judge/court may find an actual offence.

So far, only the first of these steps has happened.

'life sentence' has a very specific meaning in UK law. Up to 15 years if it's not murder, up to 30 years if it is murder. This is why we charge people with multiple murders - we can't imprison them "until you die", but we can imprison them for 3*life.

There does exist "whole life order" which is closer to the US definition of "life sentence", but it's an extraordinary response to, well, the extraordinary. (and comes with its own restrictions. You can be charged with murder under the age of 21. You can be sentenced to Life under the age of 21. You *cannot* receive a "whole life order" under the age of 21.)

$100k hardware firewall? what he's talking about is an easy task for reverse proxy / load balancing. Has been for years. It's a very common setup where you have multiple worker nodes answering. It's the typical setup for 'elastic' style amazon stuff. one load balancer, as many nodes as the current load requires behind it.

To pull out the most wildly stupid example I can think of, I put to you:

I've lost my key. But having lived here quite a while now, I have a fair idea I can jimmy the kitchen window. I proceed to do so, and happen to be caught in the act by the local bobby.
Now, just like every "freeman" on youtube tells me, I shut my mouth and tell the police nothing. I'm arrested, obviously, and events take due course. But I hold my "god-given right to silence" just like youtube tells me to.
When I stand before the judge and finally announce "your honour, that's my house", I'm basing my defence entirely on something I didn't admit during questioning. And I'd deserve to be treated like the idiot I was.

Obviously, I'd hope to never see this example play out in real life. But yes, withholding during questioning can very much work against you.

This is the stance under English law. Providing a password to encrypted data is allowing access to a search. Refusing such a (court-ordered) search is analogous to refusing entry to a search warrant. Opening the door is not self-encriminating & does not bear witness against self - what's on the other side of the door is your problem.

(for clarity; not disagreeing with you, but providing the analogue)