His lawyers were arguing against the admission of evidence that was gathered under the warrant, arguing the warrant wasn’t valid. The trial judge reviewed the warrant and judged it valid.

The warrant was secret, but the evidence wasn’t.

What I’m talking about are non-terror related cases that are based on evidence from the hoovering operation and don’t involve foreign communications.

That’s “Justice”. For a Soviet definition of such, that is.

That might fly in a ‘military tribunal’, but it is going nowhere in a regular Federal court. The trial judge is going to want to see a warrant with the defendant’s name on it, and the FISA courts don’t provide that. That’s why the DEA et al. are hiding the source of the information, because they know they can’t get a valid warrant based on something from this hoovering operation. I assume they are using the world famous ‘confidential informant’ dodge to supply the ‘probable cause’ for a legal warrant. They may find that harder to do now that everyone knows what has been going on for years.

People being put into prison based on secret evidence that they’ve never been allowed to see sounds un-American, but that’s how things work now here in the Soviet States of America…

– Badtux the Sovok Penguin

That is the real problem with what they are doing – nothing they find will stand up in court if the defense figures out that it came from this hoovering operation. I fully expect this to become a major mess in large cases as the high-priced defense attorneys start getting evidence thrown out as tainted.

trials? we don’t need no steenkin’ trials! 😈

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Kryten, you are acting like you want ‘curtain on your windows’ and don’t believe ‘we are from the government, and we’re here to help you’ 😉

It is more than extremely annoying that people have to spend money and get involved with technical issues in order to achieve what should be the default – your data is your data unless you choose to make it public. There are a lot of reasons well beyond criminal activity that makes people want to keep their e-mail and comments private, and there is nothing unreasonable in making the government show they have a valid reason for looking at it. Obtaining a warrant from a regular judge is not exactly rocket science, it is generally speaking a boiler-plate form. ‘Probable cause’ is not exactly a monumental barrier to be overcome, and a warrant certainly makes the trial a hell of a lot easier for the prosecutor.

“This giveaway will start at 2013-08-23 23:59:59 and finish at 2013-08-26 23:59:59” (I don’t know what TZ they are using, sorry).

To get it, you have to d/l their installer, install it, it will open a web page with the free offer and you just have to enter an eMail address. The s/w is a custom version of OpenVPN.

http://38.113.189.66/SecurityKISS/builds/00000000973f7dc1/SecurityKISSsetup.exe

Once you have your account, the email will give you details to d/l a version that is setup specifically for you (with all the cirt’s and logon details all ready to go). Makes it quite easy to use. 🙂

They have a lot of quite useful info on their site (even if you don’t want to use their services). 🙂

I’m still checking out VPN & security *stuff*. CyberGhost seems good so far, but it’s early day’s yet.

I just found this one (based in Dublin Ireland) and they have a very interesting setup. 🙂 I also discovered they have a 3 mth free trial of their Premium plan (called JADEITE), but you MUST sign up today! The other thing is that if you use Bitcoin, you will get a 50% discount off their plans.

They are called SecurityKISS

I’m actually interested in their ‘Ultimate plan’ because you get a dedicated IP and unlimited data transfer / mth (the Premium plan limits you to 50 GB / mth, which is enough for most people.) 🙂 Anyway, the dedicated IP would simplify things for me (since I have a dynamic IP with my ISP and they want way too much for a dedicated IP!)

Their Octopus & Exclusive Tunneling options look quite interesting. 🙂

Anyway, just thought I’d let you all know in case anyone is interested in the freebie. 🙂

It is all part of the narcissism that is normally referred to as being an asshole. Believing you are the best only works in the real world when you are. Being ‘good’ isn’t nearly good enough.

The Barney theme?!! Come on, there are international conventions against things like that, Badtux.

Linus makes decisions that can be really annoying, but they are generally because of a vision of the overall effect, and he does listen. He is difficult, but not impossible to work with, and he is very good. Linux was his creation, so he has inherent rights of control. He makes the final decision, but there are a lot of filters before it gets to him.

Yep, everyone wants to be MalWart and depend on volume while ignoring the huge number of people who are willing to pay for quality if they see it. Winning the war for the mass market requires a hell of a lot more money than producing high-end, quality products.