Or you can get a default judgment of $100K if you file suit and defendant does something inadvisable like completely ignore it.

There are many ways to get a default judgement one of them being the venue shopping these people do looking for a court that will not only be very favorable to them but that is likely out of the jurisdiction where the defendant lives. If the defendant wasn't served a subpoena, there is no possible way they could have answered it in a timely fashion. And like you say, the story doesn't say why he got the default judgement.

Political discourse is something that nerds need to pay attention to,

That would be true if it was a discourse... From what I am reading, it is merely people frothing at the mouth and not doing one bit of true discourse.

and it's something that matters.

That remains to be seen! From what I have seen of American politics, none of it matters! Everything from the broken 2 party system to the media that feeds on the hate. From the totally unnecessary electoral college meaning my vote doesn't count for shit to the failures we are producing as candidates. From the corporate puppets we have in Congress to the fools that keep electing them always blaming some other fools Congressional choice for the total collapse of this discourse you talk about even in the halls where discourse is supposed to happen! Again, it doesn't matter.

All of the issues you raise boil down to one line....

People are using hardware and software like an appliance no different from their toaster. As long as they get what they want, when they want it, they will give up any freedoms.

That is why every EULA out there is meant to strip consumers of their rights. Their right to sue is stripped in favor of "arbitration" which is weighted towards the company paying them, stripped of their right to copy even for backup via DRM, stripped of their right to be secure by all the tracking and "targeted" advertising. The list goes on and on...

with a 28.8 modem from a payphone

They were using acoustic couplers taped to the phones in the movie. 28.8 baud modems were too new for that. I know, I had a 300 baud acoustic modem way back when...

From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The practical upper limit for acoustic-coupled modems was 1200-baud, first made available in 1973 by Vadic and 1977 by AT&T. It became widespread in 1985 with advent of the Hayes Smartmodem 1200A. Such devices facilitated the creation of dial-up bulletin board systems, a forerunner of modern internet chat rooms, message boards, and e-mail.

If you read what I was replying to you will see it was the FTC and FCC fines I was talking about. Those do go through a court.

Would you prefer that they sued AT&T for $100 million and then pocketed it all instead of giving out refunds?

No, I would prefer a suspension of their corporate charter when they break the law. Why should the law protect them from personal suits when they break the law? I say if they want to be treated as "people" then let's treat them as people with something real to lose.

And if you think that AT&T hasn't already calculated fines into the price of their services, I have some prime land in Florida called the Everglades to sell you. That is why fining does no good with corporations. That is why they are always getting busted with no real effect. Again, suspend their corporate charter and see how fast they come into compliance with the law.

Which is monumentally STUPID! That leads to people writing it down just so they can remember it. I can see my idiot brother even writing it on the card so he doesn't have to remember it!

Just to play devil's advocate, how is unlocking a phone any different than our existing warrant-based searches? Warrant-based searches are explicitly supported in the fourth amendment you site. We've lived with court-ordered warrants since the country was founded, which strikes a reasonable balance between the needs of law enforcement to obtain evidence against the sanctity and privacy of our homes and personal property. At this moment, if a judge ordered it, law enforcement could come into your home and demand access to absolutely everything you own. What is it, in your opinion, that makes a phone different than anything else that we consider personal or private?

The police (FBI in this case) are not allowed to use the system for fishing expeditions. The 4th explicitly states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The FBI has established probable cause but they have not, to my satisfaction, demonstrated particularity. Exactly what do they expect to find on the phone? To put it simply, they are fishing for anything they can get out of it.

It can also be argued there is a 1st Amendment reason to protect the phone data since it is copyrighted material thanks to the Copyright nuts getting copyright the moment a document is created. This would kick in a higher standard for probable cause. See:

http://constitution.findlaw.co...

We should focus on idiot-proofing idiots rather idiot-proofing their houses. Let capitalism allow for people to make their own wise decisions.

I would agree with you IF the hospitals didn't have to see them when they set themselves on fire or break their neck.

And capitalism is a poor choice for determining what is safe and what is not. The chase for the all mighty dollar would ensure nothing was safe if left to capitalism. You wouldn't have any of the safety features in cars for example that you have today if left to the manufacturers. They cost money after all.

Doesn't mean the car is safe.

Considering the "safety" of the cars with Takata airbags, this is no worse and can be considered far better since the driver doesn't have the expectation of that particular "safety" feature...

http://blog.caranddriver.com/m...

Yes but "How to Serve Man" is still just a cookbook...

Something I intentionally left out of my last post, that I hoped you pounce on, is the freedom of speech though. Twitter is a platform for discussion, much like writing a letter or email is: if I advocated we moderate letters, you wouldn't be angry? Extremist speech still falls under free speech, much like neo nazi speech does in the US. I'm surprised by how quickly everybody here is to throw that out: after all the examples proven in humanity's history, after all the rhetoric about how horrible China's great firewall and censoring policy is, this is how the United States' citizens react? By simply censoring what they say?

I will address your questions first. You are comparing apples to oranges. The great firewall of China is an attempt to censor disagreement with the state and not with organizing the killing people. Isis sole use of the Twitter platform is for recruitment and organization of murderers.

Your right to free speech ends where another persons rights begin. And honestly, I put a higher priority rights wise to life than I do to speech.

Computers registered on a domain are not subject to the same update policies as standalone, personal PCs.

That's horseshit! I work in State government and our machines are nagging the shit out of us and we are on Enterprise version on a domain. Of course, that simply means that the Governor's Office of Technology are incompetent boobs and let this update through but still, it proves your statement false.

The US Census used to run the "Tiger Map Server"

And anyone who has ever done GIS like I have knows that the old Tiger line data was notoriously incomplete and highly inaccurate for the roads that are in it.

they retired that and now there is TIGERweb

That is just a reimplementation of the old data which is just as incomplete and inaccurate.

They may have gotten better about respecting consumer privacy or worse. Nobody knows at this point.,

There is an old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!"

Why should anyone trust any corporation that has zero incentive to "do the right thing" in respect to privacy? In fact, they have every incentive to monetize every bit of data they can get on you!