It’s a subject of debate. CBP stated it was possession of CSAM. Defendant claims it’s a pretext and that CBP was really investigating his ties with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.
But it doesn’t really matter in this case. You cannot interfere with a lawful investigation, full stop. It’s not clear to me that even if the search was unlawful that the defendant will be held not guilty of the underlying tampering/destruction charge, since we already have a mechanism to suppress evidence obtained unlawfully.
You've answered your own question. The law is hackable for certain kinds of people. If you're not one of the protected categories, it's prudent to consider it unhackable.
As I said, it is fueled with ignorance and I’m sure that it is complete bullshit when examined closely but the reason I kind of find it possible is that currently the American companies have a reach that is order of magnitude bigger than the American population and their valuations as well as their profits are based on that. What America is currently doing is dismantling of the world order that made this possible, therefore the American companies will have drastically reduced reach, i.e. Apple for example, won’t be able to sell hundreds of millions of iPhones per quarter because there are not that many Americans to buy that. Instead of the Market crashing in nominal values, maybe the value of the dollar we will crash. So Apple will still be $4T but an new iPhone will be $10K.
Yes, I’m just throwing some bs numbers around but IMHO things will have to make sense eventually when US can’t just print infinite dollars without crashing its value and Apple can’t just sell iPhones to the entire planet due to wars and trade barriers that are becoming the new normal.
You're not wrong in theory. If you're a small country, your currency's day-to-day purchasing power is influenced strongly by your imports and exports. If you have few things other countries want to buy, there's less demand for your currency, and it will go down in value as expressed in your trade partner's currency. A sustained trade deficit (more imports than exports) might mean your currency goes down and down in value. Certainly if some politicians decide to close the borders, you will export even less, but will probably still need some necessities from abroad, and you have a financial crisis.
The US is a huge whopping exception to this strong correlation between the balance of trade and currency strength. US exceptionalism is usually wrong, but in this case, the US dollar being the 'reserve currency' of the world is an incredible boon. The US has been able to sustain a huge trade deficit for decades without sky high inflation (you think it's bad now, it's nothing). In fact, foreign goods keep getting cheaper and the US dollar and services keep getting more valuable. A lot of this is because foreigners are willing to keep their savings invested in dollars (stocks & bonds, including the magnificent 7) rather than selling off their dollars to buy e.g. Chinese goods.
Also note that the tech companies make up a small portion of imports/exports.
But.. If trade restrictions (or security concerns) make it harder for the magnificent 7 to make money abroad, their profits will go down and there could also be an outflow of capital that puts inflationary pressure on the dollar, just because US stocks and bonds are less attractive - the trade deficit increasing would also contribute a bit, but it would be a much smaller effect.
An economy being propped up by foreign capital is not just a US phenomenon, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, Turkey 2000, Mexico 1994 - these crashes all were cause by sudden capital outflows. The proximate cause was a short term arbitrage trade, rather than those currencies being in extensive (structural) demand.
This concern is also why China doesn't let foreigners invest directly in Chinese companies. You can only buy weird derivative certificates that trade on a Hong Kong exchange and are subject to tight capital controls if need be.
Things like a domestic tax on imported goods/services (also called tariffs) are unlikely to lower the trade deficit unless there is already an industry domestically to absorb the demand.
With all due respect I sense that you might be neglecting the big picture. Unjust laws, slopped out illegal orders and an extreme activist court are all in play.
Those are valid opinions. However, I also see a lot of bluster here about going to prison for their beliefs from people who wouldn't last a minute behind bars.
People used to have to die in masses for freedoms in this country. If the worst thing one could face for defending freedoms is some jail time until bail gets posted while the law determines their innocence then anyone who caves to pressure anyway is a complete coward.
And, since you seem to be making assumptions about what people you know nothing about could or could not hypothetically handle, maybe look a bit closer at my history. I have survived WAY harder shit than sitting in an air conditioned box with 3 squares a day for doing what I thought was right, so even if the threat of jail was credible, it would not deter me.
It is the bluster of people that think I even could be jailed for something like this that I am most amused by.
Truly it is fascinating and a bit sad how much fear there is in this thread over upsetting some state level officials.
Given your comment history, I suspect that you are sympathetic to these laws and you’re trying to prevent people from opposing them, using your “friendly advice” as cover.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people in the US willing to go to jail (or worse) for their beliefs. It’s kind of the founding mythology of the nation.
US history is full of people who successfully challenged violations of their rights and government overreach. Success isn’t guaranteed, sure. It never is. But cowering in fear because the tyrants might put you behind bars is downright un-American.
Not at all! I think these laws are dumb and I don't want my state to pass one.
But when I play, I play to win. Openly thumbing one's nose at the courts and the state is rarely a winning strategy. The way to win is through the democratic process: persuading elected officials to take your side. That, in turn, requires persuading the public to take your side.
Ok, fine, but what you fail to recognize that taking a loud public stance against tyranny provides cover for people who are too scared to stand up for their beliefs.
Successful civil rights activism took place in an environment where people were being arrested, beaten, and even killed for standing up for what is right. You could even argue that this created fertile ground for the success of the movement. Failures of justice create hardened activists and support networks, and eventually public support.
Comparing the "oppression" of a programmer who is forbidden from distributing an OS that fails to ask the user's age to the actual suffering of Black people in the U.S., who were regularly discriminated against and even lynched, is ridiculous. You'll never persuade ordinary people of this, that way.
Average people will come around when they start passing laws requiring deanonymization and arresting journalists and critics. (The latter is already happening, but I expect this to accelerate in the future.) Need to lay the groundwork for opposition now, and that means rallying dedicated people to the cause.
On the contrary, civil disobedience involves openly thumbing your nose at the state, and it has a long history of successes.
Going to the courts instead of the legislature is another strategy that often wins. This is how Bernstein ended export restrictions on cryptography, by suing the government on constitutional grounds rather than trying to persuade legislators.
1. Civil disobedience has worked when the timing and circumstances are right, and there is a just cause and clear pattern of oppression that engages the sympathies of a broad swath of people. That is rare. Most of the time, civil disobedience has been ineffective. Remember Occupy Wall Street? Black Lives Matter? The violence that coincided with them was a major turn-off for most Americans. About the only one in recent memory that was successful was gay rights, and even that was a result of evolving social mores and media portrayal, not disobedience. It required a tremendous amount of patience: the Stonewall uprising was in 1969; All in the Family had TV's first portray of an openly gay character in 1971; and the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage was in 2015--46 years after Stonewall--and even that was a 5-4 decision.
2. Openly thumbing your nose at the law is not going to serve you well in court. What did Prof. Bernstein do when he was threatened with legal sanctions? He lawyered up and took his counsel's advice. His communications throughout the process remained factual and respectful even though his disagreement was clear. He did not go onto Hacker News and prejudice himself by saying things like "Illinois legislators can eat shit" and "I dare someone to try to take me to court over this." He was patient, let his lawyers do the talking, and did not get the judge pissed off at him.
Civil disobedience, as with the legislative and judicial processes, works through the power of persuasion. If you fail to persuade, your mission fails.
These processes involve emotional and imperfect people, not deterministic logical machines, and success ultimately requires making them happy (or at least not making enemies out of them). The system might not work, but you have to work the system.
Totally reasonable take for a pragmatic career lawyer. But I am not a lawyer or a politician and I could not care less if I lose political points with people trying to exert control over the function of software on peoples private devices under some obviously bullshit "save the children" narrative.
I am an active FOSS maintainer who wishes to protect the privacy, security, and sovereignty of users of community owned operating systems. My goal is to signal to them that we find these types of laws so completely ridiculous and unenforceable, that they should worry less about maintainers injecting state malware into their operating systems. Also it is to signal to other maintainers they will not be alone in resisting this.
With those goals in mind I am happy to tell any legislators pushing this sort of thing, to eat shit.
Neither is Prof. Bernstein. The observation is not oriented to lawyers or politicians; it is oriented towards how to succeed when judges and politicians make the rules.
When a rule is made that has any mechanism for compliance, I will think on this advice, but the law we are talking about is a joke, so I will just laugh at it.
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