mortov

Even though most proceeds of crime legislation uses balance of probablity as opposed to beyond reasonable doubt, the practice is generally for you to be able to show some explanation where it come from which is non-criminal in order to keep the cash. Immoral (such as selling crap to people paying stupid prices for something which is worthless) is not enough to have the cash taken off you. There are lots of stories of people being duped but no actual law being broken; you pay me $50,000 for my burned out chevvy, that's your problem. I have a way to explain $50,000 out of thin air. Any junk yard will sell me a wrecked car for $100 and it's just a profitable business transaction for me to sell it on. Plus, you don't care because I gave you $55,000 15 minutes before the "transaction" so you made a profit when you handed me back $50,000!

In practice to get to a confiscation hearing, there is an investigation which means following the transaction trail and the more complex and convoluted that is made with dead ends and people who disappear (but leave a small trail of evidence they were around at some point to prove they are real), the more time and money authorities expend and the longer it goes on with me hanging onto the money (even if you seized some of it already). The fact I'm selling crap and the transactions make it look like I'm mining gold in a moron mine is enough for a good lawyer to talk me out a seizure or have some bargain made with the prosecutor (which I can always delay paying anyway if I'm in Scotland it seems : http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/crime/revealed-75m-dirty-m.... I'm sure other places have similar stories.)

How legislation is supposed to work (as portrayed in TV/Film Justice) and how it actually works in real life is very different. If it worked TV Style, every 419 scamming prince would be in cuffs when he went to the Western Union office to collect his processing fees. Instead they drive around Lagos in BMWs laughing at all the mugus they scammed with lame-ass stories.

I think the issue here is this part :

"One explanation for this could be money laundering"

Selling some useless crap for stupid prices is one of the easiest laundering techniques beloved of many people trying to account for a sudden influx of wealth. Oh ? The suitcase of cash, well it's like this, I sold some old jeans, my wrecked chevvy and a busted tennis raquet to some nameless guy down the [pub|bowling alley|policemans annual ball] and he gave me like $250,000 in this suitcase for them.

I'm sure some of these apps are people having a laugh and then getting an even bigger laugh when someone actually pays the stupid price tag they put on. However, at least some of this has a distinct whiff of laundry detergent and it's always useful to have some schmucks innocently purchasing thrown in for good measure to delay investigators as they follow dead ends to people with more money than sense.

I never understood why people take it up either but I had a friend a long time ago that tried a couple of cigarettes on a night out (the usual, out for a drink, people were smoking so he tried it - it was a long time ago when smoking was 'normal'). Anyway, months later he started lighting up and I asked him what he was doing ? He said he just couldn't stop; I was incredulous and said but you just had a few draws on a night out how does that work? He was adamant that the addiction was immediate and there was nothing he could do to stop.

Some people just seem to be wired differently and even a small exposure is all it takes. I think other addictions to [illegal] drugs are the same - smoking has a little less stigma since it is legal (but's it's certainly not socially acceptable like it used to be 'in the old-en days' when I was younger).

You sound like a 1950's Doctor paid by the tobacco industry.

Are you serious or did I miss a <satire> tag ?

Where did they go ? Perhaps if retailers had been less keen to install The Mosquito (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito) to shoo them away, they may have had more customers.

Sounds like retailers have discovered the downside to the constant anti-teenager policies of malls and shops treating them as hostile aliens to be driven off and sometimes even criminalized for being so "anti-social" as to try and go out shopping by themselves whilst under 21.

No wonder they buy online or just decide to play online games instead of going out. At least there they are not going to be harassed by mall cops or arrested by real cops and criminalized.

I think we know what happened - the attacks on the WTC.

However, the response has been staggeringly perverse; we have had hundreds of thousands of people die (you don't even hear about the daily bombings in food markets in Iraq or Afghanistan now and that's without counting Syria, Lybia, Egypt etc.), we have Orwellian surveillance which only a few years ago would have been dismissed as crazy tin-foil hat nonsense but for the fact Edward Snowden revealed all the theories were true and things were much worse than even the tin foil hat people yelling at secret-spy-trees said. And that does not start to cover the censorship (see elsewhere on HN today for that).

The response has grown a whole industry of fear-mongering and schemes to stop crazy make-believe terrorist plots which simply defy the laws of physics (and common sense) yet no-one will tell The Emperor that he has no clothes on. Well, not anyone he is prepared to listen to. The clothes makers have become insanely rich in the process of making their wares too. What's a few dead people in far off places if you're getting rich, right ?

Meantime, US judges complain about the crazy Catch-22 goalpost moving unfairness and still people languish innocently in Guantanimo and die in what can best be described as "unclear circumstances".

A nation founded on rebellion against unfair and unjust oppression, seeking life and liberty. Indeed, the question is "America, what has happened to you ?"

But also, what has happened to all the other countries who joined in this madness and keep it going ? They have responsibility too.

Let's be clear, the intention is for the UK Government to make money off your medical data.

If Seagate wanted to make money off your RMA'd hard drive and they thought the data on it would do the trick, you can bet it would be for sale on the open market.

If the law says that is illegal, Seagate does not have the option to change it. However, the Government can simply change the law to make whatever they want to do 'legal' and their problem is solved. That's essentially what they've done here.

Large 'healthcare' companies interested in this data are more than just health providers, they have multiple divisions with multiple competing and tangential aims and targets. Just because a piece of paper says it can only be used in one way, that is not going to stop the re-use (and leaking) of the data.

Remember the UK had bankers totally screwing the country and got rewarded with massive bail-outs - I don't recall any jail time for their bad behaviour [in the UK]; quite the reverse. Any social science student will be able to cite many examples of companies shielding individuals from the consequences of their bad behaviour - it's a whole subject area.

The UK government sets up QUANGOs specifically to shift liability and risk to prevent consequences; a Scottish care home where elderly people were burned to death escaped prosecution as the legal entity was simply shut down and dissolved prior to the court case starting [this did bring about legislation changes to close that avenue in Scotland http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17740645]. There are dozens of ways to get away with abusing the data and walk away free - if you're going to make a lot of money, you can afford good lawyers to help you prepare well ahead.

Why would it be different for your health data ?

Did you look at the price list ?

Standard extract – no personal confidential data £9,565

Alternatively for just under £1,000 more :

Standard extract – containing personal confidential data £10,453

They're specifically enticing people to purchase the confidental data version since it is only 10% extra to get all the juicy information.

Trouble connecting people to their parents, siblings, children, (ex)partners ? Simple, they'll even do that for you - look at Patient Tracking, Cohort Event Notification (!) etc.

The value of this data to marketers (e.g. health insurance, private hospitals - which do exist in the UK, etc. makes the price list charges trivial and insignificant to just slurp up everything they can and start targeting people). Want someone to try and sell you cancer insurance 2 weeks after your mother dies of breast cancer ? Cohort event notification report makes this simple.

Remember the toothpaste does not go back into the tube - once the data is sold, it's basically wild and free for all sorts of use and abuse. You have absolutely no guarantee it will only be used by benign 'good actors'.

edit:spelling

The irony. It's illegal in the US where EU countries cannot send data because of the weak data protection laws and the UK with 'strong' laws is the one selling off all your private medical records (including identification details) for a paltry sum.

The price list looks so cheap that Russian or Nigerian scammers can afford these extracts and it would save them a hell of a lot of time setting up ID scams and instantly make them much more profitable.

No longer any need to mass mail in the hope of finding someone likely to buy V!agr4, the NHS will give you a list of likely marks to direct market to and save all the useless pitches to women !

Using Oxygen only slows the progression of altitude problems and if you have 100% O2, the partial pressure at around 0.3ATM is into the toxic zone - I suspect, just like in SCUBA diving, these 'oxygen' tanks are an oxygen enriched mix.

However, even if you deal with the breathing mix issue, you're trying to carry frozen bodies off a mountain while you've just encumbered yourself with a heavy cylinder and it's already difficult to move with all the clothing you need to wear to keep warm.

If you ever have to move a dead body around, you will find it is quite difficult even with 2 people to help manoeuvre the body. I seriously doubt you would do anything more than end up as another statistic - just like the Nepalese police inspector and Sherpa the article described who tried to retrieve Hannelore Schmatz.

In extreme environments, you do not always have the option for the civilized society niceties - they will kill you and, on Everest, leave you frozen to the spot.

Corroboration is a safeguard against flawed accusations being given more credence than they deserve. There needs to be something to support an allegation other than simply 'me' accusing 'you' of a criminal act.

While this is perhaps not called 'corroboration' in the way it is enshrined in current Scottish legislation, it is generally required - indeed, the Grand Jury in this case are, as I understand it, tasked with considering the allegation and any evidence the police have in order to consider if the allegation has merit before the case can proceed. To my mind, this sounds like a corroboration requirement by a different name.

While Scotland has it's share of miscarriages of justice, corroboration does act as a safeguard against some of the circumstances where a miscarriage can happen. The concentration on various 'straw men' - typically involving cases of uncorroborated claims of sexual assaults as these are highly emotive - in the debate is a disservice which is setting Scotland up to become little more than a series of kangaroo courts (in my opinion).

In the particular cases of [extremely rare] uncorroborated sexual assaults, convictions are often obtainable via the Moorov Doctrine where the same accused has often engaged in multiple independent acts which, as a whole, are considered corroboration. [In "American": the same MO points to the single suspect.]

[Sexual assaults often have forensic evidence as corroboration so unlike the emotive arguments put forward, they do not actually always end up as he-said, she-said credibility competitions.]

He thankfully had independent evidence to corroborate his assertion that the charge was false.

In Scotland, prosecutors only require to provide the evidence they intend to use against you; any other evidence, including exculpatory evidence can (and is) withheld - it's up to you to find that by yourself.

Your only safeguard is the requirement for corroboration - a second piece of evidence to confirm what is suggested by another; in this case the informant's pictures would be considered corroboration of his claim.

The Scottish Government is currently trying to remove the requirement for corroboration completely so a single allegation (without any supporting evidence) is sufficient for a conviction.

What could possibly go wrong ?

PPW in the UK ? Really ?

Post Dunblane, all handguns are illegal in mainland UK. The only exceptions are for law enforcement/armed forces. [We'll ignore diplomatic missions using immunity/convention exceptions.]

Northern Ireland does have PPW (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kin... and, handily for this topic, an FOI response on PSNI website http://www.psni.police.uk/firearms_applications_ppw.pdf).

Without getting into all the republican politics, Northern Ireland is distinct in terms of the legal system and status compared to the mainland (of Scotland, England and Wales). You cannot use an example from NI to extend to the rest of the UK.

I'll leave other commentors to discuss how sensible it is to talk about bringing guns into what seems to be a pretty hot debate on the street. One comment I read recently which has stuck with me goes along the lines of "there is no situation which resorting to violence will not make worse".

Which is indeed the point of the article I think.

Secret courts are an aberration to any civilised society.

England is at the forefront of such things in many areas - not just the dreaded terrorism. The Family Courts routinely operate in secret with it being a criminal offence to report on their activities or even any of the people involved. Recent examples are a woman who was sentenced to prison in absentia for taking her father out a care home to go on holiday - she was arrested on her return and taken straight to prison as she had already been sentenced to 5 months. It was a further offence for her to even tell people /why/ she was in prison !

Only after diplomatic intervention was an Italian woman able to reveal one of these secret courts had forced a cesarian on her and the removal of her baby after she had been treated for depression. Social workers used the secret courts to sieze the child and then to try and prevent her publicising the injustice. This became a serious diplomatic incident once the Italian authorities found out about it.[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/03/forced-caesar...]

There are hundreds of examples of secret courts making outrageous decisions but very few ever make it into the papers due to the knee-jerk imprisonment meted out for any discussion of the cases.

Some small hope has recently arisen as the new president of the court had indicated he does not agree with the total secrecy but it is too early to tell if there really will be any rolling back as it has become a comfortable area to operate for public bodies who know they not only get to operate without oversight but can vexatiously imprison anyone who tries to argue they have overstepped their authority (or common sense).

[edit: minor corrections and link to article on Italian woman]

I'm amazed at how many people on HN are diabetic !

Could be an interesting study on cause/effect - is all this sitting at screens contributing to an epidemic or are there other factors ? Perhaps respondents are just self-selecting because of the subject matter ?

It's also interesting how anyone who needs to track their blood sugars likes the idea of an easier and more convenient method - typical finger prick readings up to 4 times a day can leave your fingers in a real mess and pretty painful so even sticking something to your eyeballs sounds attractive !

Being diabetic, I would be quite happy to receive an image saying, hey your blood sugar is low, why not get some sugary snacks right across the road at Acme Candy Store - get 10% off during the next 10 minutes.

US uses mg/dl while most [but not all] other places use mmol/l.

Conversion is mg/dl -> mmol/l divide by 18 approx.

See http://www.soc-bdr.org/rds/authors/unit_tables_conversions_a...

Note, this is only for glucose; there are different factors depending on what is measured, e.g. cholesterol is different.

I would assume much longer. I have a recollection [i.e. I cannot build a google query to find a reference right now] of some poor schmuck working with a tribute band who asked him to send a text message of the lyrics to "Machine Gun" (a Jimi Hendrixs song). Something along the lines of 'please send us machine gun'. He promptly replied with the words and a few hours later was on the wrong end of an armed response team storming his house asking where the machine gun was.

At the time the only explanation he could think of was his messages were being intercepted but this was denied and the official explanation was he had supposedly sent the reply text to the wrong person who called the police. His phone logs showed he sent the reply text to the correct number but the police just dismissed this with no explanation.

Now we have a more plausable explanation. This has apparently been going on for a long time.

[Edit, for clarity, this was in the UK.]

Standard Operating Procedure is to say it was handed to the Metropolitan specialist computer crimes unit who cracked it. Someone turns up in court saying they are a Met officer from the unit and they worked really really hard. It's never been a problem.

Remember this was originally a terrorist case; there would have been plenty of resources made available - there always are for these.

A likely scenario is it was cracked and found to be irrelevant so the option of going for a political angle for more powers was much more preferable than letting some low-level frauster know his encryption had been cracked (and hence letting lots of people know the USB encryption was worthless and risking real terrorist cases where suspects used the same approach).

Given the password is relatively simple - remember this is supposed to be one of the premier encryption cracking organizations in the world, GCHQ, here - I think there is a distinct lack of skill (or absence) by GCHQ. He's perhaps being jailed for showing them up.

Alternatively (and more likely I suspect), these is some gamesmanship being played to get shiny new additional super-snooping laws passed because it's needed to cope with all this uncrackable terrorist encryption. See, here's the proof it exists ! [edit: sorry, this did not make it clear I'm suggesting it was cracked but found to be irrelevant to the terrorism case. I've expanded in a reply below.]

The UK already has laws making it an offence to have 'have information' 'which may be of use to anyone planning a terrorist offence'. This is so broadly defined that railway enthusiast pictures of trains could fall into it (and have been questioned under it - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transpo...)

The UK's unwritten constitution is not worth the paper it's written on. Unfortunately the US written one seems to be about as useful in protecting peoples rights these days as the UK one. (See previous HN stories of your choice)

His issue here is he clearly does not have big [enough] money lawyers representing him - it's not like he is on the college hacker team receiving a helping hand for his legal troubles from his alma mater.

The US seems to have some of the craziest over-reaction sentences and has been happily exporting the insanity to legal systems around the world for quite a while. They put the gas pedal to the floor both domestically and internationally post 9/11 as, you know, some of these people are helping terrorists and stuff. Why else would a SWAT team need to go so heavy-handed on a trivial arrest like this.

As an aside, I now know more of the background from the Good Wife episode; I've been suprised how often tech stories are woven in and in surprisingly balanced detail.

In Alberta I had to get plates for a vehicle and had to keep them when I sold the vehicle (and the purchaser put their plates on to drive off). There are even regulations about how long you can have different province plates if you move leaving you technically with 2 plates for 1 vehicle (I think you're supposed to return the other plate to the original province but is more complex if you are moving around for short term work contracts of a few months and them coming back before the plate expires).

I just figured this is how people end up with license plates on their wall from their first vehicle etc.

However this is another aspect of my point - there is no clear uniformity on the relationship and handling of vehicle registration, plates, ticketing and enforcement. When things are poorly defined, you get inconsistent implementation and Bad Things(tm) happen as a result.

Considering just the wasted postage alone, thousands of dollars of public funds were wasted sending out obviously stupid and invalid tickets - totally avoidable if someone had stopped and thought about what they were doing.

Enforcement systems like this are always in danger of running away as a result and some schmuck being bankrupted or jailed (if states allow that) despite being able to demonstrate conclusively that they have done nothing wrong and are not responsible for any of the tickets. Public bodies are not good at admitting they are operating a fundamentally flawed system and it is always easier to ignore the small numbers of victims of their failure and hope no-one else notices. It does not take a lot of research to find examples of flagrant miscarriages of justice in these sorts of situations.

The difference between a NULL entry and a sentinel value. And poorly designed systems.

Anyone with a correct understanding of the problem domain would know you have to cope with missing plates by indicating they are missing and not by using (many) different sentinel values. The fact each city/county/state uses a different value indicates the whole ticket processing system is a screwed up mess.

The North American system of plates essentially identifying a person and not a vehicle is weird. The UK still allows vanity plates but they are bound to the vehicle (and to a current keeper - when you sell it the plates go with the vehicle to the new keeper unless you make special arrangements). I still find it odd to take the plates off a vehicle being sold and to have to get them put on to the new one.

A vehicle without plates in violation of traffic/parking laws should be towed (or in some places it could be blown up as a security threat - Northern Ireland that used to be a regular event and a joy-riders post-drive fun to remove the plates and wait for the fireworks).

At least if it is towed, the fines can be sorted out before the return of the vehicle rather than wasting time (and money) on a no-hope chase of some unidentifiable owner unless some schmuck happens to have a vanity plate matching your chosen sentinel value [in which case you then have the extra expense of wasting time cancelling the ticket or even wasting court time before it gets dismissed].

"A fully referenced version of this article can be found at monbiot.com" suggests this is done already for those following the link.

If you do, he lists these :

References:

1. Anna Minton, ?2006. The privatisation of public space. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. http://www.annaminton.com/Privatepublicspace.pdf

2. http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/media/articles/pdfs/a...

3. http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy13/liberty...

4. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/apr/17/protester-rec...

5. http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy13/liberty...

6. http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy13/liberty...

7. http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/antisocialbehavi...

8. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2013-20...

9. See also: http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/11/11/the-birth-of-a-po...

10. http://reformclause1.org.uk/files/opinion.pdf

11. http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/dec/18/right-to-protest-...

12. By phone, 6th January 2013.

Various independent sources cited including Liberty - a well respected organization covering human rights issues in the UK. And of course, Parliament's own official publications of the bill.

The condition it lists in your example is "Rape trauma syndrome" - that would be an acceptable medical diagnosis as it is the trauma associated with being raped (and medical support and intervention could be necessary to deal with this). The rape itself is not a medical condition, and I think that definition listed makes that clear.

I still would not like the idea of a list of rape trauma victims being sold as that almost by definition would add to the trauma they have suffered if they knew this happened.

Are you saying you know this for a fact or are you speculating a benign explanation without any genuine knowledge of this particular case (by referring to the keep calm t-shirts which are unrelated and irrelevant to this situation) ?

edit: Plus I've never heard of "rape" being a diagnosed medical condition - why would that be in a list of conditions ? I find your 'explanation' quite troubling.

The Register tends to use a distinctly UK style of criticism - much like Private Eye at times. It tends not to translate particularly well to no-UK readers who think it is just being frivilous or outrageously sensationalist.

However, there is a serious point here. This 'filter' is being sold as protecting everyone (expecially the children) by most reporting sources. The Register has done some more in-depth analysis and found that far from simply blocking porn (which some people do want) it blocks additional legitimately use-able systems like proxies and anonimizers which were not mentioned in the original debate and show a distinct 'creep' in the implementation.

It is not clear you can actually use proxies to access blocked IPs as the whole point of the filtering is to stop access to proxies (as well as porn). This is the creep and the point I submitted the article.

I'm not sure what an 'infowar' is (I've not google'd that yet) so I'm not sure if that is a real thing or not. But feature creep and ever increasing control of internet (and hence information) access is real and something which should be discussed and debated much more intelligently and maturely than it is currently being.

Am I the only one that read the article article as having a distinct Astroturfing feel about it ?

By not reading the label when they take multiple cold and flu remedies all containing paracetamol to speed up their recovery.

Or reading articles which say you need 500 for there to be any risk.

Indeed, paracetamol (as most of the world calls it) is highly toxic to many species - while people have a small tolerance to it, there are many documented cases of people suffering fatal liver damage through doses only just above the maximum daily dose of, typically, 4g. Domestic cats can die from simply licking tablets due to their extreme sensitivity - which sounds more sensitive than snakes, making them not 'unique' either.

I'm extremely sceptical of a claim of '500' published in that context - to the point of thinking that sounds positively reckless and liable to make people take extremely dangerous doses in the belief that huge numbers are needed to present any risk.

In the UK, packages can only be purchased in maximum quantities of 16 tablets and maximum 2 boxes per purchase to reduce the risk of both accidental and deliberate overdosage (with a significant decrease in overdose incidents as a result).