Court to Wikimedia: Your NSA spying evidence is inadmissable, so you can't prove NSA spying The Wikimedia Foundation's attempt to stop the National Security Agency (NSA) from spying on its users has foundered because it's impossible to offer court-acceptable evidence of the NSA's activities. Wikimedia and its co-plaintiffs, a who's-who of human rights organisations, announced their lawsuit back in March. However, …
Anyone asking Ben Franklin probably would consider him a libertarian lunatic based on the responses that Mr. Franklin would provide.
Of course, I suppose that's to be expected of a traitor to King and Country. It's the subversive among us that are so villified, now more than ever but back in the 18th century too.
Or his good friend, Thomas Jefferson...
“We need a revolution every 200 years, because all governments become stale and corrupt after 200 years.” – Ben Franklin
“What country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” – Thomas Jefferson
In an American courtroom, you need to allege some clearly definable injury which you can prove to the satisfaction of a judge and jury was caused by the defendant --- a vague statistical argument that someone, somewhere, was out there watching you will never be good enough.
That people aren't reading or editing certain pages because of a fear that the visit will be monitored and you will go on some government list ?
If the secret police were photographing everyone entering a store and making a list of what they bought - would the store have to prove that some people had stayed away ?
(American is a tad egotistical)
but UK ones to. Any claim through a court *has* to be rendered into financial terms. Although this seems unfair (how much is a dead child worth ?) it has the civilising effect of ensuring courts don't go around mandating blindness as restitution for rape (or whatever that barbaric court ruling was recently).
The problem here is your "privacy" is actually worth fuck all. As is your time.
“For example, one trillion dollars are of enormous value, whereas one trillion grains of sand are but a small patch of beach.”
Someone doesn't comprehend big numbers without a dollar sign attached.
size of grain of sand, "Particles of sand range in size from 2 to 0.05 mm in diameter", so say 1mm on average. times a trillion, one billion meters in diameter, one grain deep... I'm getting math anxiety here, so I'll let someone else do all the "one meter deep, 25% air volume" calculations, but even this shows that's a fucking big patch of sand this judge is trying to sweep under the carpet!
(If you'll pardon me segueing into a metaphor)
I did the same maths as you when I read that, and translated it into real-world terms: it comes out to about 15 20' shipping containers' worth of sand, so a fair sized convoy of semi-trailers and a bloody big hole in the beach that a great many beachgoers, not to mention the shire council responsible for its upkeep, would definitely notice!
For the maths geeks:
20' shipping container = 12.051 m x 2.34 m x 2.38 m = 67.11 m3
Assuming 1 mm3 per sand grain, 1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1000 mm = 1 m3 = 1 billion grains of sand, so 1 trillion grains of sand = 1000 m3.
1000 m3 / 67.11 m3 = 14.9 shipping containers.
Assuming a density of about 1600 kgm-3 for dry packed sand, that's about 1600 metric tonnes of sand (for our American friends, 1764 short tons.)
Sources:
Whenever one considers all of the many major growing problems which are increasingly quickly destroying the notion of the land of the free and the brave and the United States dollar, does it not make you wonder and ponder on the distinct evident lack of intelligence in its exclusive executive administrative and SCADA and military industrial operating systems, even with all of the supposed ubiquitous intrusive snooping firmware delivering Upstream Base MetaData.
ITs virtual effect in realisation is akin to a contagious infection for allies of virile viral plague and certain lingering death without ...... well, I suppose and presume, the Advent of a Quite Magical Novel Technology with Advanced IntelAIgent Antidote in the Rabid Rapacious XSSXXXXual Phorm of a Red, Green and Blue Virtual Machine Pill.
Do you know any of ITs Pushers, Man :-) ........ The Pusher .... Steppenwolf
Excellent counter-point there, MM. However this presupposes that the prosecuting country in question (the fine U.S. of A.) has any such things as M'luds. These creatures would presumably be above the petty connections to money and power (although not sex, it appears.) The M'luds would understand your cogent argument.
The PTB in this fine country have no such restrictions on corruption by money and power. So I wish Mr. Snowden well!
We'll mark this down in Jimmy Wales' little book of failures. Bomis.com -- went out of business. Three Apes search engine -- went out of business. Openserving.com -- went out of business. Wikimedia Foundation -- yay, a success! Wikia.com -- still running on venture capital, never went public, haven't heard any of the investors ever mark it as a financially successful venture. Wikia Search -- closed down without warning. CiviliNation.org -- on life support, its director takes 80% of its funding as a personal salary. Impossible.com -- launched to great fanfare in May 2013, got as high as 230,000th in site popularity, but since The Register discovered that it had been funded with taxpayer money, has fallen to 460,000th most popular site. Jimmy Wales Foundation -- seeded with $500,000 in Arab capital, hired one manager, who posts tweets on Twitter, no other visible accomplishments. And, The People's Operator, which was on an upward trajectory when Jimmy Wales was hired by his Labour Party crony, who then suddenly died, and now the company loses 7x more than it draws in revenue. Hard to imagine how this case against the NSA ever failed, what with the Great Jimbo on track.
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So,logically,if Wiki has NSA data aquired from Edward Snowden,it (Wiki)must be free to publish without fear of prosecution,because any such published 'evidence' is 'inadmissable' in a court of law.
Being 'inadmissable' means that no 'evidence' of 'substance' can be used against Wiki.
It's funny how 'immunity' from prosecution can come about 'accidentally' by the very law's that the state uses against those that are a threat to the state's impunity'.
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