you dont seem very busy this am, rayne.

i’ll repeat here a question i asked yesterday (at your tuesday post) in response to a criticism of me you made:

– what is “spamming a thread

– give me an example.

i’d appreciate an answer to my question.

“Thousands of laserings happen every year; it’s illegal in the U.S. and the U.K. both, but the U.S. issues much stiffer penalties including fines of $10,000 and prison time. If Mexico doesn’t already treat lasering firmly, it should after this embarrassing and threatening incident.”

So is this the Emptywheel response to laser crime, tougher fines and sentences??? Really, it has worked so well on terrorism and drugs lets use it all over the place. Really?? I mean really…

On the Apple story, some good summaries of the intended and unintended consequences of compliance:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/dwallach/apple-the-fbi-and-the-san-bernadino-iphone/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/eff-support-apple-encryption-battle

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/why-tim-cook-is-right-to-call-court-ordered-iphone-hack-a-backdoor/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/02/judge_demands_t.html

Also worth reading Apple’s letter:

http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Short version:

“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.”

To change the topic just a bit, and provide a bit more information that I didn’t know about Justice Scalia. The other day, bmaz wrote about some good things that Scalia had done for criminal defendants. On reflection, I believe that those things may be more a happy accident than the product of a caring jurist. As an example, one either is or is not entitled to examine the witnesses against one; there’s no in-between. For, when it came to issues where discretion and judgment were involved, matters of degree, Scalia was a cold-hearted, hateful man. I quote from a Slate article on point.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/02/antonio_scalia_made_america_s_incarceration_problem_worse.html
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“In McCleskey v. Kemp, one of the first cases he heard, anti-death penalty advocates brought compelling evidence of pervasive racial discrimination in Georgia’s administration of capital punishment. A sophisticated statistical study demonstrated that sentencing was tied to the race of the victim and offender. All other factors being equal, blacks who killed whites were the likeliest to receive a death sentence. Justice Scalia was unfazed.
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“Scalia would also play a significant role as the Supreme Court licensed ruthless sentences leading America to world record incarceration levels. He wrote the operative part of the influential Harmelin decision, a 1991 plurality opinion holding that the Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” does not require that a prison sentence be “proportional” to the crime. The court thus upheld a life-sentence for cocaine possession.
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“Scalia again was in the majority in Lockyer v. Andrade, a 2003 case upholding a 50-year-to-life sentence under California’s three-strikes-law for a man who shoplifted videotapes worth $153 because he had prior convictions for petty theft, burglary, and transporting marijuana. Erwin Chemerinsky, who zealously represented the prisoner, was in tears as the media asked him about his reaction to the court’s inhumane decision.
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In Brown v. Plata, the court ordered California to reduce its dramatically overcrowded prison population because “depriv[ing] prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity.” In a vehement dissent, Scalia charged that this was “a judicial travesty” and that the majority was “wildly” overstepping its authority.
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“Similarly, he fiercely dissented in other rare cases where the court decided to check ruthless punishments. If it had been up to Scalia, it would still be constitutional to execute mentally retarded people or teenagers, not to mention sentence teenagers to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for homicide or any other crime. Scalia further suggested that executing an innocent person would not be unconstitutional per se.

This quote is from an Interesting post by Orin Kerr. Explains why Apple is focusing on the “backdoors are bad” issue rather than the “privacy is good” issue. In sum, the government already has a search warrant, and the owner of the phone has consented to the search.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/02/18/preliminary-thoughts-on-the-apple-iphone-order-in-the-san-bernardino-case-part-1/
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There are no Fourth Amendment issues in the case. Some have speculated that it might violate the Fourth Amendment to require Apple to assist the government’s efforts to break into the phone. That’s not correct. The search here would comply with the Fourth Amendment for at least two independent reasons. Most obviously, the government has a search warrant. The assistance order is based on that; it seeks Apple’s help in carrying out the warrant that the government already has.
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Second, even if the government didn’t have a warrant, the government has the consent of the phone owner. The phone in this case was owned by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, Farook’s employer. Farook used it, but the county owned it. The county has already consented to a search of the phone. Some have speculated that the people who communicated with Farook may have Fourth Amendment rights in their communications on the phone. Not so. When you send a communication to someone, you lose Fourth Amendment rights in the communication when the message arrives at its intended recipient. As a result, you have no Fourth Amendment rights in someone else’s phone just because you sent them messages. And even if you did have such rights, either the warrant or the phone owner’s valid consent — or here, both — would ordinarily trump them.
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For these reasons, the legal issues in this case are not about the Fourth Amendment. Instead, they’re about the use of the All Writs Act to compel Apple to help the FBI so the FBI can try to guess the passcode to the phone. I’ll discuss the application of the All Writs Act, and the broader policy issues it raises, in my next post.

it’s thursday evening. reviewing a group of recent posts as a hole, i realized something interesting and gratifying:

the anti-clinton viciousness has subsided. it has been replaced by various thoughtful pieces directly or indirectly criticizing the candidate’s positions, but nothing about personal incompetence or indecency.

that’s a nice step up.

congratulations to the emptywheel weblog.

1. In regard to the FBI demand for a backdoor to Farouk’s Apple iphone, note that there is NO “public safety” issue involved: The deeds are done, the activity is in the past, the FBI actions are investigative, not preventative. The FBI wants a ‘knee-up’ to help it find clues, which clues it wants, or needs, to help it determine how it can spin the case law-enforcement has already made and carried through execution (by shooting suspects to pieces — ‘suspects’ means people not proved perpetrators), instead of attempting to capture, encustody and try in due process. If the case was a false-flag, which is not unlikely at all, unless law-enforcement can spin it to appear justified, law-enforcement is in trouble, not only for mis-handling, but for being duped and patsy’d, used by the false-flaggers. This would make American law-enforcement not only overzealous shoot-first murderers, but also ninnies and stooges.

For “public safety” law-enforcement would have needed to be investigating a priori, before the shooting event, when they seem to have not had a clue, even though they seem to have been attempting to “hollywood” Farouk.

2. In regard to lasering aircraft (from the ground): The lasering is done for fun. It is done for targeting ‘practice’ Even the most powerful of the lasers used are incapable of damaging the aircraft. The high powers used for the laserings, where used, are to make ‘hit’ reflections visible to the person pointing the laser.

Cockpits are up on aircraft, toward and at the tops. Ground laserers are targeting from the ground, under the aircraft. There is, in fact, virtually no way a ground beamed laser can directly strike a pilot’s eye. Laser ‘shooters’ can figure this out for themselves, very quickly. For this they call “bullshit!” on authorities’ assertions of lasering aircraft being dangerous, somewhat as marijuana smokers used to call the same in regard to marijuana-danger claims. For some reason, probably mostly because they are authoritarian and so stupid, authorities do not explain how ground-beamed lasers pose danger to aircraft operators (pilots). So here you have it:

The aircraft involved, that are endangered, are aircraft that use ‘heads-up display’, a means by which instrument images, and readings, are displayed on the aircraft windscreen, so the pilot is able to see surrounding visual and instrument display simultaneously, by shifting focus. Laser pointer beams reflecting off of overhead surfaces send streaks of laser-light shooting through the heads-up reflection display, interrupting and disrupting the display. Pilots have to re-orient to the display lines after the ‘transient beam’ has gone by. In some instances momentary disorientation can occur. Almost all ground-source lasering of aircraft occurs when the aircraft are near the ground, most often on approaches to landing. Approaches, especially at night, are the most critical of aircraft maneuverings. They are when the most different factors and systems must be monitored simultaneously, and when pilot attention is required to adjust between inside and outside their aircraft, with the pilot maintaining aircraft orientation, relative to flying airspeeds and approaching ground, and perspectival orientation (avoiding vertigo). The load and critical nature of the load are reasons heads-up displays were developed. Approach, at night, is not a good time to have dancing light-beams darting around through one’s heads-up display, which includes such items as artificial horizons, the angularities of whose lines are depended on.

It is for recreational laser-targeters’ beams disrupting heads-up displays and potentially disorienting a pilot in a critical moment that lasering aircraft is an irresponsile and endangering activity that should be refrained from. It will be peer education that stops and prevents instances of the practice, not law-enforcement threatening and posturing. So spread the word why, so that it can spread on.