The same sort of people who accept join/friend requests from all sorts of people they don't actually know on their social media sites.

I accept "friend" requests from anyone -- as a teacher/lecturer/author/poet/musician, I figure people I don't know are people who have been to one of my classes or performances.

But when I choose what I share on Twitter or FB, I keep in mind that many "friends" there are strangers. I share only what I want to publish publicly.

Of course this asshole and most others in the Fed have lost sight of this.

SMH. RTFA. Hell, RTFS: "Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation deputy director...not a federal official.

Anti-federalists who think that state governments would guarantee and secure our freedom and rights if we just got the feds out of the way, would be amusing if they were not dangerously ignorant of history, law, and fact.

you are entering the store's property,

So what? An act is right or wrong independent of whether the state has issued a piece of paper making the part of the planet on which it occurs someone's so-called 'property". And many surveillance cameras, privately and publicly owned, record public spaces.

and their cameras are for identification purposes should the store be robbed

Their cameras are for whatever the store management decides they are for. If a woman has a nip slip that gets caught on the store's cameras, you can bet it will be viewed...

Therefore, this is no longer random recording, but targeted recording

Oh, I'm sure the bike guy would have been mollified by SCM saying "It's not random, I deliberately targeted you."

This is rather different than some asshole standing on public property

Amazing the anger and hostility SCM brings up, especially among people who are apparently ok with being filmed by hidden cameras controlled by corporate and government agents.

I'd rather be filmed by a obvious person than a hidden camera -- if there's a person where I am, I know I'm being observed. The problem with surveillance is when it separates "being observed" from "being in the company of others".

This guy is brilliant. The idiots are the people sitting around outside yakking on their cellphones who want to label it a "private conversation". Not when you're inflicting it on everyone at the next table.

And this guy:

Passer-by: "I don't really care for other people to just be taking a random video of me."

Surveillance Camera Man: "Didn't you just come out the drugstore?"

Passer-by: "Yeah."

Surveillance Camera Man: "They have cameras in there."

Passer-by: "So?" (pushes Surveillance Camera Man).

If you're ready to assault this guy, why are you not out wrecking the surveillance state, spraypainting cameras and calling for better privacy laws? The cognitive dissonance is amazing.

On what planet is men wrongfully being accused of rape an issue even *visible* next to women being raped?

On what planet is it ok to excuse a crime by saying that another crime happens more often?

or bend over backwards to pretend there isn't enough information to have an opinion either way

Unless you're looking at police reports or other data I haven't seen in this thread, there is no reliable information about what happened. That's not pretense, that's fact. In any disputed event, testimony from one of the disputants is not reliable without some sort of physical evidence or corroborating neutral testimony. You talk about items found in Gont's room -- but so far as I've seen we have only Weidman's say-so that those items were found there. Still nothing but she said, he said.

If police or conference organizers confirm the items' presence in Gont's room, then yes, that would be corroborating evidence. Until then, with no knowledge of the character of either party and no reliable evidence, the only rational course is respect skepticism of both account, withholding judgement and remaining open to evidence as it comes in.

I'm having difficulty coming up with a rational explanation that doesn't include the stronger person being a predator who engineered a situation where they expected to face no consequences for their actions

There is no "rational" explanation here. Either the man is a rapist -- irrational behavior -- or the woman is a liar and an abuser -- irrational behavior. If we go looking for rationality in a situation where we know one or both persons involved behaved irrationally, we're going to have trouble.

It does happen that smaller women physically attack larger men. (Though I have no knowledge of the size or strength of the people involved here -- I'm assuming your characterization of Weidman as "physically weaker" is based on some knowledge.) And it does happen that women make false allegations of rape. Did these things happen here? I don't know. But either way it does point up an important real-world security rule: don't be alone and unobserved with someone you don't trust.

This will simply not work - it's a technical solution to a social problem

When the social problem (spying on people in order to improve the mind control that is advertising) is an abuse of technology (cookies, Javascript), a technical solution can be appropriate.

Simple solution: do not use Target's website.

Or use it, then delete the cookies. You are allowing only session cookies except for a handful of sites, right? Restart your browser, cookies go away.

Now that we know about the lube, pray tell us, where you can get an inflatable sex goat...

I wouldn't type a query like that into Google, but privacy-respecting search engine DuckDuckGo reveals several sources for inflatable sex goats.

The person who initiates the process by first making the item available does not have the right to give it away in the first place

Sharing information is a basic human right, and no one has any right to use force to prevent a person from sharing information that they have.

you think it is perfectly acceptable to not pay for something that someone else produced because somehow, magically, people don't need to get paid for what they produce.

I failed to pay for access to things other people produced for a long time before the net came around. We called it a "library".

One can believe that it's good for authors and musicians and the like to get paid, without believing that a state-backed artificial monopoly on the making of copies is a useful or even acceptable means to that end.

No, we should be promoting a having healthy BMI as a body image.

BMI is actually a poor measure of health on an individual basis, as it doesn't distinguish fat from muscle. Body fat percentage is what we really need to be aware of. It's hard to measure accurately, though; skinfold or electrical impedance tests can help you track whether your own is going up or down but are hard to accurately translate into absolute numbers.

Congress and the Supreme Court are a huge part of the Constitution. If they don't work...

Sorry, but did you just wake up from a long nap? Congress has been badly broken for decades, and the SCOTUS is a wretched hive of scum and villainy featuring at least one justice who apparently doesn't believe women are people and one who is a known liar, not to mention Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

No, what is right for society is what is granted through consensus.

Consensus doesn't get to take away human rights. I don't care if 90% of the American population says it's ok, my right to be secure in my person, house, papers, and effects still applies.

You know how Bradley Manning is in some hot shit, for close to 100,000 "secret" documents? This is basically as bad as that

So...like, negatively bad, since Manning's actions were good? Or do you mean "bad" as in "it's bad for the government to go after legitimate whistle blowers?"

He stands no chance at avoiding a life sentence

Sure he does: stay out of the U.S. (At least until such time as it is not longer an authoritarian "security" state.)

even the UN and damn near every country "thought" they had WMDs at the time it happened.

Uh, no. Everyone with a lick of sense knew that the evidence that Iraq had WMD was tissue-paper thin, and the UN and damn near every country recognized the invasion of Iraq as a crime.