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"bad guys" who distribute illegal material Honestly, I fail to see how or why this should be a problem, considering that no actual injuries are inflicted in th

"bad guys" who distribute illegal material Honestly, I fail to see how or why this should be a problem, considering that no actual injuries are inflicted in the storage or possession of ones and zeroes. Sure, that's an obtuse abstraction, but honestly, the buck stops there. At the end of the day, they have a circuit encoded in a given state. Magnetic media that can be arbitrarily degaussed. It's not real. Stop prosecuting it. So, okay, you wanna argue. Let's get more specific. Bad things people can "have" encoded on their digital storage media: 1. stolen economic identifiers, such as credit card numbers, and other mechanisms of fraud 2. raster graphics and audio depicting nudity, or evidence of events that have since transpired, and prove culpability, via direct participation rather than simply the hoarding of collectible media files of whatever persuasion 3. preferences and settings that can correlate identity in other crimes, subscriber information such IMEI numbers and MAC addresses, and more 4. classified information restricted from being leaked among state actors or the general public 5. intellectual property that translates directly to business opportunities, insider trading, corporate espionage and other white collar crimes 6. copyrighted music and movies, oh noes! Listen. If it can fit onto a credit card sized device, it's already too late. So nothing is being stopped by this sort of search. The demand for relinquishing data, in any such situation is not unlike demanding all the things that people write on napkins and envelopes. Every scrap of paper in someone's pocket. Movie tickets, dry cleaning stubs, match books, and so on. Evidence of a crime? Possibly. Is everyone guilty until proven innocent? Gee, I don't know. Maybe we should just make everyone empty their pockets, and take pictures, just in case. The fact of that matter is that these are essentially fishing expeditions for item #3. It's not about "illegal data" at all, nothing is ever going to divert ones and zeroes as contraband. That simply doesn't happen, and doesn't work. It's about coming up with reasons to harass people, as vectors into prosecuting other crimes. Smoking out the paranoid, so that they crack under the pressure of getting sweated down in the hot seat.

Paul-ish 10y ago
If it is all 1s and 0s, I am curious how you feel about the NSA having a good deal of your personal information stored on their drives?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Do we get to choose to live in a world where that isn't the case? No? Hey that sounds like a good reason to have fewer laws we can be parallel-constructed into violating.
  - Paul-ish 10y ago
    >Do we get to choose to live in a world where that isn't the case? No? Why not? Or, maybe a better question is, why do you think you could legalize child porn easier than we could outlaw or end programs like PRISM?
    - followmoney 10y ago
      Few powerful forces oppose legal child porn. Very little money is on the line with CP and very few powerful people would be diminished if CP was legal. To outlaw or end programs like PRISM you'd have to take on the entire political establishment, the military industrial complex and all branches of the judiciary and law enforcement. It'd be far easier to legalize CP than do away with PRISM and the like.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        This is the right way to analyze the situation, except we must remember that CP is of instrumental value to the legal racket, which is closely allied to MIC. CP gets them in all sorts of dubious positions, and spending lots of sweet taxpayer money, that they otherwise couldn't justify. "Legalizing CP" wouldn't have the effects we seek on the legal system as a whole, because they'd substitute some other issue (if one had to guess, "intellectual property" probably has the interest of various power players...) so they could continue business as usual.
  - herbst 10y ago
    > Do we get to choose to live in a world where that isn't the case? Kind of. I do my best to avoid any relation with the U.S. including avoiding visiting it, taking up a job or incoorperate there. So even thought i am monitored by some shitty govs, there is no legal way that it means anything.

Paul-ish 10y ago

If it is all 1s and 0s, I am curious how you feel about the NSA having a good deal of your personal information stored on their drives?

jessaustin 10y ago
Do we get to choose to live in a world where that isn't the case? No? Hey that sounds like a good reason to have fewer laws we can be parallel-constructed into violating.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  >Do we get to choose to live in a world where that isn't the case? No? Why not? Or, maybe a better question is, why do you think you could legalize child porn easier than we could outlaw or end programs like PRISM?
  - followmoney 10y ago
    Few powerful forces oppose legal child porn. Very little money is on the line with CP and very few powerful people would be diminished if CP was legal. To outlaw or end programs like PRISM you'd have to take on the entire political establishment, the military industrial complex and all branches of the judiciary and law enforcement. It'd be far easier to legalize CP than do away with PRISM and the like.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      This is the right way to analyze the situation, except we must remember that CP is of instrumental value to the legal racket, which is closely allied to MIC. CP gets them in all sorts of dubious positions, and spending lots of sweet taxpayer money, that they otherwise couldn't justify. "Legalizing CP" wouldn't have the effects we seek on the legal system as a whole, because they'd substitute some other issue (if one had to guess, "intellectual property" probably has the interest of various power players...) so they could continue business as usual.
- herbst 10y ago
  > Do we get to choose to live in a world where that isn't the case? Kind of. I do my best to avoid any relation with the U.S. including avoiding visiting it, taking up a job or incoorperate there. So even thought i am monitored by some shitty govs, there is no legal way that it means anything.