Google Releases Software To Iran 286
eldavojohn writes "After working closely with US officials following the lifting of export restrictions, Google has announced that their Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome are now available for download in Iran. US sanctions once prevented this but now Google has created versions of its popular software that block all Iranian government IP addresses from utilizing them — thus satisfying the new restrictions."
Re:Home of the Free (Score:5, Informative)
apparently you are either woefully uninformed or have a very selective memory regarding US government behavior.
our government has tortured people to death very recently. some of them we knew to be innocent. we have partnered with governments every bit as hateful as iran to outsource even more torture (Egypt as an example.) take your strawmen elsewhere
Re:Home of the Free (Score:4, Informative)
I was in some pretty heated arguments over it (my wife is now a retired PO of 14 years) when the laws started going in at the state level. 9/11 opened the doors to "anyone can be suspicious".
One local example (I'm near Houston) was a guy being considered suspicious because he was walking down a long road that people rarely walk along, never mind there was a sidewalk there. There was not other probable cause than that.
Also, if a PO pulled a car over and asked the passengers for their ID they didn't have to cough it up. That changed at the same time. And quite a few states enacted the same law.
Re:Home of the Free (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you haven't heard of the NYPD's "stop-and-frisk" policy? It is clearly unconstitutional, but goes on anyway.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-powell/stopping-stop-and-frisk-i_b_647298.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices [nyclu.org]
-molo
Re:Home of the Free (Score:4, Informative)
"A cop needs an "articulable reason" to search you"
Yes, and that's why they all say "OK I'm gonna pat you down for your safety and mine, sir. Do you have anything on you I should know about?"
Their "articulable reason" is "Well you might have a knife and I don't want you to stab me with it. Yeah, that's the ticket." Since anyone wearing any sort of clothing could conceivably conceal a weapon, they never have to think hard to come up with a reason to frisk you.
As for having a reason to stop you in the first place, "I judged him to be acting suspiciously as he glanced at me and then quickly looked away while putting his hand in his pocket."
Did you actually do that? Probably not. and even if you did, it probably wasn't because you're doing something criminal. But it's your word against the cop's. Who do you think the judge is going to side with?
Plus you have to remember that there is such a thing as a "contempt of cop" arrest, where they put you in handcuffs simply because you pissed them off, whether you were breaking the law or not. It's illegal as hell, but they get to lock you up for a few hours (and of course once they arrest you they can paw through all your stuff either on trumped up probable cause or to "inventory it for later return." And most people, once released, won't sue because it takes time and money for a lawsuit that you stand a very good chance of not winning.
Re:Home of the Free (Score:4, Informative)
given that the US is directly responsible for the deaths of well over 100,000 people in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 10 years alone, i think that you are the one employing moral relativism.