positive_future

> Back in the late 80s and early 90s climate change was far from settled thing.

I was under the assumption that the basic tennets of climate change were well understood by scientists more than 100 years ago. While the climate models have been developed only recently, enabling more accurate predictions, climate science is centuries old as it relates to understanding human impact on our climate.

Climate science was as "settled" in the 80s and 90s as it is today. Yes, the predictions are more accurate today, but the confidence that we are changing Earth's climate was just as strong then as now.

I remember in 1997-8 being taught in US public schools, in no uncertain terms, that we are changing the climate, warming the atmosphere into a runaway greenhouse effect. This was in the US South in a very red state that mostly denies climate science today. The only way to interpret the idea that climate science was "less settled" in the 80s 90s is political. It has been "settled" for 100+ years in rational scientific discourse.

Well for one, the article never specified anything about private text chats (unless I missed it?) so I think you're asking a misleading question. Most of the article was about the US government/FBI looking to read public data, which AFAIK has never been protected by wiretapping laws.

Additionally, something that is different is the scale. In the US, an activity may be legal if done once but if done millions of times it may be illegal. Here, there are many times more people plotting, discussing, and celebrating terrorist events online than there are on traditional phone calls. Having phone calls be traditionally 1-1 and private internet chats be 1-many, even 1-1000000 or 1 to 7000000000 if public, is a totally different beast. I'm not sure there is any analogous previous laws, I think we need new laws.

While activities like this may result in the author being less visible to a particular algorithm, I imagine that the instant dropoff from most networks and instant arrival in new networks would be a very strong signal of who they are.

The more bizarre tricks you try to stay hidden, the more identifiable you (probably) are.

How do you know the city is leaving money on the table? Increased economic activity due to people looking for free parking may well surpass losses from parking fees. If the possibility of free parking exists, people well may come out more, or spend more when they are out, and via taxes the city will certainly be earning something.

It's probably impossible to measure exactly, but I think it's far from a given that NYC is losing money by providing some free parking.