That's not that far of a stretch, actually.

Jafo

reply 75

Who is the bigger idiot....the one in power or the one who put him there?...

Ugh, don't get me started. BOTH major U.S. parties are unresponsive to the needs of the people (unless you count corporations as a person). Why, because in any given election, they have a 50% chance of being elected. Those are great odds. Too good.

BOTH parties just push the people's buttons, and distract them with issues that really don't matter to keep them loyal and compliant.

The only way to change this (short of a revolution) is to have at least two more VIABLE political parties. But that's unlikely to happen.

On a sort of 'related' issue re 'privacy' ... we in Oz have 'Tap and Go' credit cards which don't require Pins or signatures up to a value of $100 per transaction.

This means they can be skimmed without your knowledge and your bank details can be stolen and the first you know is when your account gets 'spent' without you even aware until it's mostly too late.

An Oz company came up with a solution ...an RFID jammer that you can put in your wallet [it's credit card sized] and it quietly sits there inert until a skim is attempted - and blocks it.

I just got mine today, a better solution than punching holes in the card to attempt to kill the antenna coil.

Of course the Kiwis simply got the option to NOT have tap-and-go on their cards, but here Visa [and others] claim the feature is what people want.  [I didn't].

If you're in the same boat....take a squiz at 'armourcard' [with a 'u' - I said it was Australian] ...

www.armourcard.com.au 

Indeed. The British taught us well. Here's a novel concept: The government serves the people, not vice versa. Here's another: The government should fear the people, not vice versa.

Jefferson thought a revolution every 20 yrs. was a good idea.

But then, we all know Australia's paradise...from the hordes washing up on the California beaches.

How very, very sad, that you feel the need to arm yourself to the teeth.  Worse still, that you have no compunction about shooting somebody dead.  Oh how I thank my lucky stars that I do't live in duch a society... a country with so much gun violence.... multiple gun deaths every day.  Where I live, there wouldn't be a gun death a month. In fact, I can't remember when there was a gun death in my town, it was that many years ago.

Simply put, I highly value our gun controls here in Oz.... the fact that our lunatics can't easily get their hands on firearms and go on the crazed shootings sprees of the US that populate [even our] news programs most nights.   Yup, I know which country I'm so much safer in... with the absence of too easily obtained firearms that all too often end up in the hands of some nut job who's simply having a bad hair day.

Okay, this rant went off topic and isn't about privacy, but when the law of the land [the Constitution] supposedly protects one's privacy and safey, yet in the same breath it says it's a citizens inalienable 'right' to bear arms, then there is something seriously fucking wrong. Yeah, fight for the right to privacy and free speech, etc, but for fuck sake, how is anyone safer in a society where ther's more than a dozen guns per person. While the majority of peope are good, there's a percentage who are inherrently bad, evil, or who are plain nut jobs with an axe to grind... er, gun to fire, so somebody's bound to get shot, maimed or killed when a trip to the 7 Eleven gets one a gun and all the ammo he/she needs.

Okay, rant off, but seriously, things are pretty fucked up when a nation fights harder for the means to kill and maim than it does for the right to universal medical care.

Anyhow, I'm out of here, it [the Constitution and its so -called rights] is too volatile a discussion for me to remain tight lipped on emotive issues that surely affect our humanity, humility and harmony. 

Fear of government - yes (not all government, just what the current US government is slowly morphing into)

Fear of authority - not as much, I don't believe we are as a whole, anarchists

The ability to do just that is one of the biggest reasons for the 2nd amendment. Not that I am advocating this, now. But I believe we should reserve the right and ability to do just that, if required.

The political system in this country is its own self-feeding beast at this time. The left and right, as much as they argue and bicker, LOVE the fact that currently it is only one or the other of them. In my opinion there is nothing they fear more than people running/winning without one of the their seals of approval.

If I recall reading correctly somewhere a few years back, one of the founding fathers (Jefferson if I had to guess) stated something to the fact that political parties are an anathema to the productive process of a country/government. It's a damn shame we can't get someone elected to a real position of power in this country from the actual middle. Personally my politics have me decidedly in both camps on different issues, and the fact that I have to abandon nearly half every time I vote is both disheartening and revolting. If we all voted our heart I'm quite positive that someone from the middle would be elected, however the brainwashing from both the left and right about votes being wasted if you don't vote along one or the others party lines is very effective.

Well, that's not unique to just the US ... Australia suffers from the same problem too [As do the English].

When it's 'us or them' it's really an issue of choosing the lesser of 2 evils .... and it's therefore never 'we'....

The reason that is in the Constitution is...Britain. They tried to take the weapons away from us while we were "settling" an untamed country with French and Native Americans as well as hostile wildlife. Hunting for food was also a rather commonplace thing. In addition, there are those who having learned about "government" and its propensity to usurp kept their weapons to protect themselves from that "wildlife" as well.

Actually, because there were no "armories" (can't have them, eh Georgie III?), and there were no "bases" (like Ft. Hood, etc.) so people kept their weapons at home and were organized as local/state militia. Many of the "rights" enumerated in the Bill of Rights, in fact are due to the behavior of the British Crown and Army, along with their German mercenaries - the Hessians...and our determination never to be treated that way again.

And then, there's this: http://news.yahoo.com/common-software-let-fbi-unlock-160352000.html

Starkers, Jafo will ban me long before he bans you, don't worry so much.

It's not the difference in gun ownership that makes the murder rate in the US 4 times as high as it is in Australia.  Switzerland has a massive gun ownership rate, with army service being mandatory, and every member keeping their weapons at home, yet they have an even lower murder rate than Oz does.  When your gun ban was enacted in 1996, the only impact it had on the murder rate was a brief spike after it's implementation, no reduction seen.  Other countries all get the same results with their gun bans, and repealed gun bans, dick for crime prevention from reducing gun availability.

The reason the US has a high rate, is because the US is fucked, ethnically, socially, and legally.  We have a massive criminal gang element, that our judiciary refuses to prosecute on minor beefs, despite having the legal tools to do so, financially incentivised by our pointless prostitution, gun, and drug laws.  We have a very large transient population composed primarily of the mentally ill, who were expelled from institutionalization because the courts ruled it was wrong to do so unless they were proven to be a danger before hand.  We have an extremely ethnically diverse population, complete with the racial strife that comes with it.  We also have most of our murders in places where people have been disarmed by the government.  These areas also have the worst schools, particularly in those ethnically diverse areas, and our failing education system leads to poverty, which makes being a gang banger and killing your neighbors for money a lot more attractive than wasting time in school.

I am "armed to the teeth" because I have a loaded 45 for self defense, a loaded shotgun for that damned skunk that keeps crawling under the house, and a collection of rifles my grandfather made.  It's not fear of my government, the fact that I have them is why I have to worry in the first place, antique hunting rifles aren't particularly useful for taking on the government anyway.  That the tards would freak out at the idea of a guy with a few dozen guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition is simply their inability to grasp obvious things, like ammunition being radically cheaper in bulk, and responsibly carrying requiring a great deal of practice for those of us who aren't innately good shots that were simply born with perfect aim.  My father was, he can hit what he's aiming at without practicing, ever.  I have to put a hundred rounds in a target before I'm hitting it most of the time at 50 feet.  To responsibly conceal carry, I will have to go through a few hundred rounds a year to stay in practice, and that costs two to three times as much if you buy your ammo twenty at a time, instead of a thousand at a time.

It's also not my fault if someone makes me kill them.  It's theirs.  If you attack someone else, and they kill you in self defense, it would be a tragedy if it bothered them.  First they've been accosted by some animal, and now they're supposed to feel guilty about surviving the attack?  They should be pissed at the inconvenience you've caused them while they're being harassed by the authorities.  If anything, when someone without compunction or self control gets themselves removed from the living, it should be a joyous occasion, one less animal wearing human skin, preying upon the sheeple.

A brief word regarding the actual topic of the OP, and the truth which gradually emerges:

"The most recent development in the case came over the weekend, when the FBI admitted that it had hastily reset the Apple ID password of terrorist Syed Farook’s iPhone 5c, removing the possibility that it could connect to Apple’s servers and perform a fresh iCloud backup. That backup would have provided the FBI with additional data that it is now attempting to get from the device itself by forcing Apple to crack its passcode. Though changing the password amounts to destruction of an avenue of investigation, the FBI argues that it needs more information than a backup could provide, a statement disputed by a senior Apple engineer." - Techcrunch

"The executives — speaking on background — also explicitly stated that what the FBI is asking for — for it to create a piece of software that allows a brute force password crack to be performed — would also work on newer iPhones with its Secure Enclave chip. This is a battle Apple is fighting for all iPhones, not just older models. Apple’s executives said that the methods the FBI are ordering it to use in bypassing the iPhone’s security could be used as a template or master key that could unlock more devices in the future. The FBI’s original order and the subsequent government filings have consistently stated that the kinds of access it is looking for would be limited to this single device." - Techcrunch

The FBI isn't just interested in iPhones and Apple. If it succeeds in this overkill which we are to believe was due to a "blunder" in changing the original pass code (namely not understanding what the hell they were doing), it will have a legal precedent (which Congress has not even voted on, yet) to use on other companies, never mind a lower Court actually creating as yet non-existent law...something else not provided for in the Constitution, as well as an armed Federal Agency being permitted to do an end run around Congress. 

Just recently it was quoted....40% of Australians were not born in Australia.......it's 12% for the US.

You might want to re-evaluate 'diversity'.

The ONLY stats stating gun crime reduction 'failing' here in Oz were authored by the NRA for obvious agenda.

Neither sidetrack is actually all that relevant to the OP.  Possibly my reference to the Aussie invented RFID jammer is more relevant...

In case one's interested here's the judge's order;

Sorry Jafo, but 90% European is nowhere near as diverse as the US, we're down around 60%.  Now 50 years from now, if your immigration continues to shift away from a European majority, you're going to look a lot more like the US.  We owe our abnormally high rate almost entirely to the high rate at which minorities kill each themselves, blacks in particular.  They're 13% of the population, but they commit nearly 40% of the murders.  Mentioning it makes me a racist, of course.

You're also conflating gun crimes with crimes.  According to your government statistics(you can't blame the NRA for them) 84% of your homicides aren't using a gun, pretending fewer people kill each other because you restricted gun access doesn't really get you anywhere.  The homicide rate, and the rate of gun usage in them, has been declining for decades, long before the gun law in 1996, and their trajectories remain unchanged, with the exception of spikes shortly after, yes, spikes.  I presume they were mostly as a result of the dot com bubble and other negative influences on economic prosperity, which have been shown to be the primary drivers in the rise and fall of crime statistics.  Violent crimes as a whole went up significantly for several years following the immensely successful gun buyback, far more than homicides did, and far longer.

It's not killing in self defense that's the problem, it the way stand your ground laws are written to exonerate whoever survives the conflict. (when you're not on personal property). Dead people can't talk, so the law believes the shooter. That opens the door for lots of potential abuse.

As is the Swiss Company J.G. Neher & Sons.

Incredibly, Aluminum foil and even duct tape (I swear) will turn the trick for jamming the RFID chip scanner/skimmers:

http://lifehacker.com/145519/how-to-make-an-rfid-blocking-duct-tape-wallet

http://lifehacker.com/5896785/foil-electronic-pickpockets-with-aluminum-foil-or-multiple-credit-cards

http://lifehacker.com/5842853/make-your-own-rfid-shielded-wallet-to-foil-id-thieves