Do you dare to search for pressure cooker now?

Again, from the example in the OP:

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The story later took on a different complexion when police finally explained that the investigation was prompted by searches a family member had made for pressure cooker bombs and backpacks made at his former workplace. The former employer, believing the searches to be suspicious, alerted police. Catalano said the family member was her husband.

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The key points is that the report came from the employer related to searches on the company computers and it was not just back packs and pressure cookers but rather pressure cooker bombs and back packs.

Its a situation that happens everyday. Sure, for one. People ignorant of their rights, a lot of people, are. Hell, even sometimes people who are fully aware of their rights get intimidated by the police. They do fuck people over, you know.Here, this happened in my home town:http://youtu.be/rJqq6KCOkdMABE: notice just after 1:40, its not an order to get out of the car but a "can I get you?" to step out of the car. That's the shit I talked about in Message 66ABE2: At 5:08, you can see the "running No's" that I mentioned in that post as well.ABE3: At about 5:38 you get to see what happens when you say no to a search: the cop just lies and does it anyways.ABE4: At 7:19 you get a man who's been told he's free to go figure out that, really, not so much. What about six guys in plain clothes with guns that some of start walking around the side of your house?Not the slightest bit of intimidation? Really?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

But you are disputing it by questioning if the citizen should ever resist when they feel that their rights have been abused. Normally if a contract is broken then you are no longer bound by it's terms. If the state's rep feels that the citizen has broken the contract then they come in heavy and with lethal force if necessary. Suspending your civil rights if they suspect that you have broken the contract. What acceptable recourse does the abused citizen have?What constitutes abuse is the question. As with all other judgements it comes down to a personal frame of reference. Take the fact that the state can collect your garbage and inspect it. What would you think if your neighbour came over and inspected your garbage? If you were looking through your neighbours garbage wouldn't you feel like you were invading their privacy?What if a letter was inadvertently delivered to your mailbox. Would it be ok for you to read it?Say you are dining out with a significant other. You are in a public place so would it be ok for me to come and join you and listen in to your conversation? Is it ok for me to listen in to your conversation from across the room with my sound amplifying spy glasses?You had said earlier that you consider all of your internet activity to be public. Would that include your banking or shopping info. What about your credit card # or spending history or power use? All of your travel history. That is all online even if you didn't put it there. Is it ok for me to go and seek out that info?Now that you have searched for how to build your own hydrogen bomb should all of your personal information that has been stored electronically be open for scrutiny by the state? Do you forfeit any right to privacy if you have made someone nervous with your reading choices?So the line should be where you would draw it yourself. In this case the state has far exceeded the behaviour that any reasonable person would approve were it directed at them. I believe that you are correct. There are apparently some restrictions regarding the smoking of joints in police stations. There are no such restrictions regarding which books you are allowed to keep on your bookshelves. Sure and that is why we need the law but it doesn't change the fact that it is true. There is no problem in that case. The problem comes when the laws that are being enforced are not the laws that you willingly subjected yourself to.

I'm not ignorant of my rights. Nor am I intimidated by the people whose primary function is to protect my rights. I'm sure they do - and I'm sure they're accused of fucking people over ten times more often than they actually do it. Not the slightest bit. Are all Americans that timid?I'd be curious. My first thought would be that they were looking for somebody lurking in my yard. If I asked them what they were doing I'd expect them to politely ask me to stay inside. If, as in the OP, they asked to look inside I'd gladly let them. I would expect them to tell me eventually what they were looking for.I don't see where timidity would cross my mind.

He has the court system - or are you going to throw that out along with the police? The courts will often disregard any evidence which was obtained improperly. Even if you gave permission to search without a warrant you could deny it in court, claiming intimidation. Without the proper documentation the case for the prosecution would be considerably weakened.Search warrants protect the state as much as they protect you. Until recently we had collective dumpsters. There was no distinction between "my" garbage and anybody else's. Even now that we have individual bins, it would never occur to me that garbage is private.When you throw garbage in a public bin, do you have an expectation of privacy? It would be illegal. However, if I threw it in the garbage after reading it, it would be okay for my neighbour to read it. It would be rude but "okay" in every other way. Certainly. Feel free. I'll email you my itinerary. You can try to. I wouldn't do anything onine that required security if I didn't feel secure.You can try to walk into my house and sit down on my couch and watch my DVDs and eat my chips too - but I lock my doors. I knowingly and willingly forfeited any right to privacy (beyond the security measures that I take myself) the moment I flipped the WiFi switch on my laptop. Anybody else's nervousness doesn't enter into it. And my position is that there shouldn't be restrictions on either (with the possible exception of second-hand smoke considerations). But we're not talking about the right to possess something; we're talking about letting the police look to see if we possess something. Then in the case we're talking about there's no problem.

I wasn't talking about you. But you're good, so fuck everyone else, eh? And I'm sure that the fuck people over ten times more often than their caught. So now what?I mean, they're even trained on how to lie

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Police lie. It's part of their job. They lie to suspects and others in hopes of obtaining evidence.

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No, this is more about not being naive.Granted, I'm sure things are different out in the middle of nowhere up there in Stubblejump.

The police and the court are essentially the same thing and we are not talking about throwing either of them out. We are talking about influencing their behaviour. Absolutely, the system protects everyone and that is why nobody should be trying to work around it. It isn't really the garbage that is private but the information that it contains. Like you might want your empty viagra or vagisil bottles to remain unseen. I don't think of my garbage as private either but if someone were looking through it searching for information about me I would take that as an invasion of my privacy. Why is it that a folded piece of paper can exceed the privacy offered by the best encryption in the world? Right so it would be something that you would not do to somebody else. Bullshit. The point is that you expect privacy. The question is not whether or not someone can thwart your security. The question is if they should even try. Especially regarding the state. Why should the police be looking to see if we possess something that it is legal to possess? If that is true then probable cause aint what she used to be.

Dividing society into "us" and "them" is exactly what I'm preaching against. "We" are the ones demanding more police action to protect us from "them". If "we", the "law-abiding" majority, treat the police as oppressors we're the ones who are instigating the oppression of "them".

We're not talking about "working around" the system. As I've said, that would not stand up in court.On the contrary, if you force the police to "work to rule" you're putting an unnecessary strain on the rules - and probably an unwise confidence in the perfection of the rules.I'm suggesting that when the police work according to the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law they'll be less oppressive, not more. Precedent. Letters have always been private; billboards have not. Profound. No, the point is that I protect my own privacy. I don't expect the state to do it for me. The operative word in my sentence isn't "looking"; it's "letting". If we let them look at things that don't matter, they're less lkely to think we're hiding things that do matter.

Huh? When I talked about people being ignorant of their rights and being intimidated by the police, your response was "well I'm not ignorant and I'm not intimidated". That was you immediately separating yourself from "them". How can you say you're preaching against it? No, not in the U.S. We have corporations lobbying the government to pass laws that the citizens do not want. Take SOPA, for example. And if we don't call out their oppression, then they're gonna keep walking all over us. Your attitude makes it worse.

You mean "passing laws SOME people don't want". I for one am in favor of SOPA.But what does any of that have to do with this topic? I went back and reread the example in the OP and could not find a single reference to SOPA or government passing laws people don't want.

No, that was me separating myself from your description of "them". I don't believe "they" are as timid or ignorant as you portray them. Or take MADD or SADD. They are not "walking all over us". You do not live in a police state.Yes, there are some bad cops. The solution to that is to improve our screening procedures and our training procedures. We do have systems in place to weed out the ones who fall through the cracks.If you marginalize the police, treat them like enemies, dehumanize them, you're only giving them an excuse to entrench the bad behaviour.

Yeah I sure agree with that and both the letter and the spirit of the law say that people have rights that should not be suspended without probable cause.The spirit of the law in every case is to prevent harm and to protect the rights of the individual. By protecting the individual's rights we protect society. An email is hardly comparable to a billboard. This is a good example of the authorities abusing the spirit of the law because the letter of the law allows them to read your email as it is not wrapped in paper even though the contents are exactly comparable to an old fashioned letter. The spirit of the law demands that the protection be extended to all private communications. The letter of the law is dated and fails to do that. I guess that I cannot say how you value your privacy but everyone I know would object to having a conversation that they thought was private being listened to by some uninvited third party. I would at least expect the state to lend a hand in safeguarding my privacy and it should certainly not be the state that I have to guard against.(Edit; The fact that you expect privacy is enough to make any attempt to intercept that communication an invasion of your privacy.)Did you know that it is illegal, in the US at least, to have an encryption method that the gov't cannot break?

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Until 1996, the U.S. government considered anything stronger than a 40-bit encryption to be a �munition� � hence, the export of any piece of information with that level of encryption was illegal. [14]� Since then, the government has relaxed its standards and allows the export of 56-bit encryption, with some restrictions. [15]� 128-bit encryption has now emerged as the standard of illegality.

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SourcePerhaps I am under the illusion that I have anything more than the right to the illusion of privacy. I suppose that is true but all you are doing is pandering to their fears. If we took away everyone's civil rights I am sure that we could catch a few more criminals but I doubt that we would prevent more harm than we caused.Edited by ProtoTypical, : No reason given.

That's false. It has never been illegal in the US to have government proof encryption. The law you quoted put limits on what could be exported without government approval.

Ah yes that is true. So you may not use it to talk to someone in another country. I wonder if they would charge you if your email from Alaska to Hawaii was routed through foreign servers?I am not sure about the letter of the law but the intent is definitely to ensure that the gov't can read your mail. Essentially they are taking the position that anyone possessing a very high level method of encryption is worthy of suspicion.Apparently it is ok to feel like you are having a private conversation but it is not ok to actually have one.