The defendant lived in Minnesota at the time the investigation took place. If the result of the investigation was to furnish evidence of an alleged activity which took place in the state of Minnesota, to be tried in a Minnesota court, then shouldn't there be a requirement for state oversight of the investigator? Or is the next Nigerian cottage industry going to involve a swarm of C&D letters? Whatever the answer, I sure as hell won't ever move to Minnesota if that's how individual rights are treated.

So is the judge saying that any old schmuck can skip being licensed as a P.I., then go out and collect evidence (possibly in bad faith) on private citizens, and have it be admissible in court?

Whoa. I smell a business opportunity writ large.

There are entire floors of NYC skyscrapers full of racks modeling the financial markets in real time, conducting transactions, and crunching numbers for human analysts.

Using flawed algorithms and crap assumptions as input. See where that got us.

Please. "Impact" is not a transitive verb unless the subject happens to be a tooth.

Ain't that the truth. What's even more disturbing is that Key's center-right National Party made a deal with the devil in allowing the wacko-radical right ACT to be a confidence and supply partner. Now many of the policies emanating from the Beehive of late appear to have been written or vetted by Rodney Hide and the country's most thoroughly discredited economic "thinker," Roger Douglas.

It seems the Kiwis got fed up with a somewhat arrogant and out-of-touch, but relatively able, Labour government. They voted themselves three years of reverse progress as a result. There's hope though: The Maori Party may wake up to the rogering they're getting as a coalition partner when the Foreshore and Seabed legislation is revisited, and trigger a vote of no confidence. I'm not betting the farm on it.

If you cared about it at all, it's backed up somewhere. Securely, of course. Tell your attorney to deposit the artifacts for safekeeping. Of course, this point dovetails nicely with their advice on retention and secure deletion.

EFF! That's who.

Nice site, has thorough and accessible explanations of things that the non-geek-yet-somewhat-paranoid digital populace really need to get clued up. The section on FISA, particularly the Beyond FISA page, is a must read. That Fourth Amendment sure was nice while it lasted....

Why?

Wait for it...

So when someone asks where the newly discovered moon is, you can answer: "Bach's there, in the G-Ring."

Thanks! I'll be here all week! Tip your servers and avoid the crab Louie like black death!"

This book also has hallowed status in our house...it was a gift to our son (now 21 months) when he was a few months old. Our daughter took a liking to it right away and when she was going on five she liked to "read" it (actually reciting, but very accurately). She took a break from it for a few months, and then decided to read it to me for a homework assignment, and since her memory was no longer a crutch she actually nailed it. Made me real proud.

Oh Download boy, the pipes, the pipes are crawling
Eircom's gone and blocked the pirate sites
No mp3s, and torrents are appalling
'Tis all because of nutty IP rights.
But come ye back armed with your faithful proxy
Or simply find new URLs to parse.
'Tis not the science of the flying rocket
Oh Download boy, the law it is an arse.

His name is Robert Paulson.

Well, it's empathy from across the ditch. We're getting some pretty shocking ineptness from our governing idiots here in NZ, too.

But at least we're not getting the fires of hell burning entire towns. Chins up, Aussies. I sincerely hope you beat this.

Once a jolly swagman plugged into the internets,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".

"Deploying your filters, deploying your filters
Don't go deploying your filters on me"
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented,
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".

Down came the content speeding through the internets,
Up jumped the swagman and viewed it with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"You'll be a-wasting your filters on me".

"Wasting your filters, wasting your filters
Don't go a-wasting your filters on me"
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"Don't go a-wasting your filters on me".

Up rode the Conroy, mounted on his ISP,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."

"Evading the filters, evading the filters
You've been evading the filters from me."
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."

Up jumped the swagman and handed them his backup disk,
"You'll never crack my encryption", said he,
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".

"Your bloody filters, your bloody filters
You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".

That's a nifty analogy, even if it mentions motor vehicles a total of 0x0000 times.

If I may extend it, let us place a vial in the box containing a deadly virus, and rig a thingy to break the vial at the moment some random script kiddie hits both shift keys simultaneously. In the closed-box model one has no way of knowing if the kitten is intact without opening the box. Just as the computer user has no knowledge of the integrity of the OS, applications and data without full visibility -- the box represents the vendor's level of disclosure. An open box very neatly circumvents the problem.

Man, it's getting late.

Gigantumous.