> I don't really understand why other manufacturers can't make a MBA...
Lenovo's Carbon X1 is that machine for me. I carried an Air (running Debian) for a couple of years. I've since replaced it with a Carbon X1, and there's nothing I miss about the Air. The Carbon is simply fantastic.
Exactly. I work for defense attorneys, and they deal with a huge amount of private, protected, highly-confidential data. I honestly don't know how we can keep implementing Microsoft solutions... have been debating switching everything over to Mac.
You might be surprised. I'd say that child pornography is often punished more harshly than child rape.
The justice system weights the crime of consuming child pornography by the number of images the defendent is in "possession" of. I guess laws vary, but at least in my jurisdiciton, you can be sentenced to years in prison per image. It would be easy for a single wank session to result in -- potentially -- life in prison.
The issue is confounded by widespread lack of techical acumen among judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and even the forensic "experts" who investigate and testify (on both sides). For example, would you consider it reasonable to charge someone with a separate crime for every copy of the exact same digial file present on a hard disk? For both an image file and an automatically-generated thumbnail image of that same file? Do you meaningfully posess a file in your browsers temporary cache? How about a file deleted from the filesystem, but still present in residual form on the disk? Some of the issues are nuanced, and it's difficult to even have an intelligent conversation about the evidence.
You're right; there is tremendous pressure from both district attorneys and judges to cop a plea. Trials piss everyone off because they are "such a waste of time." Criminal defense attorneys have to contend not just with the facts of the case and legal precedents, but also the extent to which demanding a jury trial turns the court against your client -- and your other clients, by association.
The other issue is police overcharging crimes. For example, suppose you, in a fit of pique, cut your roommate's arm with a knife. Not cool; that's aggravated assault. But the police then charges you with attempted second degree murder -- or even first degree (eg, premeditated). Now your defense attorney has to work hard just to get your charges down to a reasonable level; the agg assault you should have been charged with in the first place. This is what a huge majority of plea bargaining is about; not getting away with it, but getting the charge down to something that describes your actual offense.
But.. what about parallel construction? We know that the NSA is feeding tips to, among others, the DEA and ATFE -- they're just pretending to find out about criminal activity in other-than-blanket-surveilance ways. The practice is so commonplace that the NSA has a special division for seeding the evidence to other agencies, and there are indications that even state and local law enforcement agencies are in on the fun.
Exactly. Right now the NSA can escape all legal oversight because it has historically operated physically outside the US and under military governance. Since 9-11 and the Patriot Acts, BSA operations have moved inside the US. And in concert with the sharing of intel across military and civilian, the NSA now operates freely across all spaces. This was never intended by statute, and virtually no oversight is in place to ensure 1) intel is gathered lawfully or 2) info is shared lawfully. Unlike the NSA, the FBI must operate wholly within the US and state civilian court system, so its gathering and disbursing of info is much more closely overseen and regulated.
It's also become very clear from their response to Snowden's revelations that NSA is not going to get any closer oversight any time soon. The FBI and its partners cannot hope to maintain a comparable cloak of invulnerability. To Bruce's suggestion, I vote yea.
Giving NSA powers (or archives) to the NSA is a really, really, really bad idea.
The court system and legal system in the US these days is a joke and a farce--just look at the number of cases that make it to trial. We can't afford to give this sort of power over to any law enforcement agency.
The argument being made by the parent, is that it would be far worse than the abuse that is already occurring, were the FBI to have direct control of the equivalent spying systems and data trove that the NSA already has on US citizens.
Yes, but I disagree. It's a matter of avoidance of oversight. NSA is designed to avoid it and FBI is not, they simply cannot. FBI is tightly constrained by the process of law in ways that Guantanamo and NSA were created and operate in order to escape.
What's more, FBI is also a MUCH leakier boat when it comes to intel gathering, storage, analysis, and sharing. Law enforcement personnel and practice could not possibly hide the decade+ worth of mass surveillance practices from US senators, congress, and the office of the President as NSA has.
As it happens I know something about the mindset within both orgs. With FBI, eventually the truth will come out. Not so with NSA - unless another Snowden is willing to commit suicide, professionally and personally.
The role of the defense is much as you describe; to advance every conceivable argument, etc. The role of the prosecutor is intended to be a seeker of truth, however, which doesn't always mean aggressively seeking conviction.
In practice, however, your description is accurate; it's a rare prosecutor that doesn't pull out all the stops in an effort to convict, regardless of the evidence.
Lenovo's Carbon X1 is that machine for me. I carried an Air (running Debian) for a couple of years. I've since replaced it with a Carbon X1, and there's nothing I miss about the Air. The Carbon is simply fantastic.