Revived Lawsuit Says Twitter DMs Are Like Handing ISIS a Satellite Phone (theverge.com) 197
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A long-standing lawsuit holding Twitter responsible for the rise of ISIS got new life today, as plaintiffs filed a revised version of the complaint (PDF) that was struck down earlier this month. In the new complaint, the plaintiffs argue Twitter's Direct Message service is akin to providing ISIS with physical communications equipment like a radio or a satellite phone. The latest complaint is largely the same as the one filed in January, but a few crucial differences will be at the center of the court's response. The plaintiffs also offer new arguments for why Twitter might be held responsible for the attack. In the dismissal earlier this month (PDF), District Judge William Orrick faulted the plaintiffs for not articulating a case for why providing access to Twitter's services constituted material aid to ISIS. "Apart from the private nature of Direct Messaging, plaintiffs identify no other way in which their Direct Messaging theory seeks to treat Twitter as anything other than a publisher of information provided by another information content provider," the ruling reads. At the same time, the judge found that the privacy of those direct messages "does not remove the transmission of such messages from the scope of publishing activity." The new complaint includes some language that might address that concern, explicitly comparing Twitter to other material communication tools. "Giving ISIS the capability to send and receive Direct Messages in this manner is no different than handing it a satellite phone, walkie-talkies or the use of a mail drop," the new complaint reads, "all of which terrorists use for private communications in order to further their extremist agendas." The Safe Harbor clause has been used in the past to protect service providers from liability for hosting data on their network. However, "Brookings Institute scholar Benjamin Witters argued against protecting Twitter under the Safe Harbor clause, claiming that the current reasoning would also protect companies that actively offer services in support of terrorists."
well then, hand them a sat phone (Score:2)
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Is that analogy supposed to rest on the idea they don't already have satellite phones?
Re: well then, hand them a sat phone (Score:3)
Turning on a sat phone in Syria is probably the fastest way to get a predator drone dropping in for a party
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Worse. It rests on the idea that Twitter knows who the terrorists are.
Providing something to someone in good faith isn't a crime even if they later turn out to be a terrorist, as a rule. I mean sure, if you provide a firearm, you'd probably better have done due diligence, and if you send money to a charity in the Middle East, it is probably a good idea to do so, though not legally required. However, AT&T isn't commi
Better (Score:2)
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We need to stop being hypocrites about our values.
Private communication risks our security (As the bad guys cannot be monitored).
Security risks our privacy (As the good guys will be monitored).
I would also like to make a point it doesn't take a team of super geniuses to code an encrypted and unrecorded communication protocol. Just one guy, and less than one day of work. It may not be clean and polished, but it would do the job.
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Isn't the problem with Twitter that it's essentially a broadcast medium? These aren't private conversations - that's a different issue. The problem is allowing ISIS to use Twitter and/or Facebook or whatever as recruiting tools. As such, there's nothing anonymous about it - they're broadcasting that they're ISIS, and these tools make them easy to find for non-affiliated, potential recruits. The content itself, is anything but secret - it's propaganda, which by definition has to be as widely available as
Consistency (Score:5, Insightful)
If Twitter consistently took up a principled position to protect free speech (instead of cracking down on political thoughtcrime at the drop of a hat), they'd be in a much better position to resist this.
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I wonder how they're making these transactions, because surely it's not just one little truck delivering a small amount of.... oh wait, I see what you
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If you look at the numbers, the NRA spend almost nothing with Democrats, but nearly $600,000 with Republicans.
If they want support from Democrats, they need to pay for it like everyone else. Don't go pretending it has anything to do with ethics or beliefs.
Re:Democrats (Score:4, Insightful)
So because Democrats aren't getting the sort of money Republicans are from the NRA... that justifies their rather anti-second amendment views?
In that case... if we look at this link [opensecrets.org]... does that mean that Republicans are perfectly justified in seeking to de-fund Planned parenthood (who unlike the NRA, receives federal dollars) as they didn't get most of the 600k+ which was spent in the current cycle?
Or... some people/groups have beliefs which are not so easily swayed by campaign contributions... so the $$$ spenders notice this and end up giving money both to those who can be swayed, but also in support of those who already share their view.
Re:Democrats (Score:4, Insightful)
"If they want support from Democrats, they need to pay for it like everyone else. Don't go pretending it has anything to do with ethics or beliefs."
Sure. Where do I send my check? The DNC isn't interested, they claim to oppose gun ownership for a variety of reasons, and pay-to-play isn't at the top of the list, by their own reckoning.
And despite all this discussion, they intend to subvert the Second Amendment, and are talking like they would also subvert the First Amendment. Which make sense if you're a dedicated statist and socialist (not entirely redundant).
You may be guessing I'm opposed to such dimishment of these constitutional rights. Yup. When these are gone, all the others are easily denied. More to the point, however, claims that Twitter is enabling terrorists with tools and functions that permit communication could be lodged against any pre-paid cell phone carrier, payphone carrier, newspaper (classifieds), the list goes on. This is unfortunate, but unavoidable unless you grant the State the permission to intercept all your communications.
I'm not yet ready to do that. The State has shown itself untrustworthy, and my private communications will only be saved for future use if gathered ever. They will not surrender them, never delete them, and share as they wish, with any state or agency. At best. More likely they will lose them to the inevitable hax0r who finally digs in and gets it. Or the whistleblower whose outrage gets the better of them and carries it out the door.
Twitter is not the problem.
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they would also subvert the First Amendment
To be fair, a lot of republicans would like to subvert the first amendment as well. Freedom of speech is somewhat anathema to politicians (which is why its important!) Maybe not in the same ways or for the same reasons but nonetheless.
When these are gone, all the others are easily denied
First amendment I'd agree with, if only because that would allow the government to silence anyone who raises protest against future rights revocations.
Revoking the second amendment on the other hand would have little consequence for anyone other than gun owners. The US is w
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The Second was gutted by the end of the Reagan administration, in that it was illegal to go out and purchase a new infantry rifle. For all the whining by idiot gun owners, the Democrats have done damn little to take away people's guns.
Everybody wants to subvert the First. A large number of Republicans want to establish a state religion, for example. Both parties are leery of peaceable assembly. Both generally want to put undue limits on speech.
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Sure. Where do I send my check?
Neither party is interested in your money. You're not a huge corporation.
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I don't think trucks' or shoes' producers are not aware that bad guys are buying their products, it's just that in most cases they can't differentiate them from other customers.
Defence attorneys are knowingly aiding and abetting criminals. Should we throw a book at them whenever we find out they were aware that their clients really did it? Aren't they wilfully obstructing justice?
Unless they are providing legal counsel services during the sentencing phase, then they are only still aiding alleged criminals. Just being accused or being on trial does not automatically mean guilty. That is what trials are for, to determine whether or not the accused is in fact a criminal.
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Hence why Milo is again seeking data related to his account, which when provided will almost certainly demonstrate that his account was suspended for political reasons and not for actual 'harassment'
Sure a good thing for ISIS they didn't call Leslie Jones a 'black dude' or write a negative review of Ghostbusters (current year), otherwise they too would be on the receiving end of wrath of @Jack.
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First time they refused that as well, trying to claim he's an immigrant to the US(tip to people who go lulz he is!). He's a born citizen of the UK and maintains a permanent residence there. The second time, they refused to respond and he's sent a second letter stating that he'll take it up with the commissioners office if they refuse. Which could get interesting, since they can slap fines against twitter in the million range.
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The DMCA is only valid for those sites physically located in the US. If a person decides to setup a server in another sovereign nation he is not required to comply with the DMCA. That is also Cloudflare's main and best defense against it.
If that person suddenly decides to host and distribute copyrighted content on that site, he is again not required to comply with the DMCA. However, he might have to contend with the requirements of the local legislation of the country he is hosting his server in.
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That's because most harassment is disagreement without an off switch
Stopped reading there [before the bolded part, which is integral to the meaning of the sentence].
Figures. Thank you for a perfect illustration of selective blindness and intentional twisting of others' words as means of promoting your views.
So sue the makers of walkie-talkies then! (Score:5, Insightful)
If ISIS using Twitter is no different to ISIS using a satellite phone, walkie talkies etc, ""all of which terrorists use for private communications in order to further their extremist agendas." then why aren't the creators of those devices involved in this litigation?
Re: So sue the makers of walkie-talkies then! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: So sue the makers of walkie-talkies then! (Score:5, Funny)
Mobil phones
Sound like pretty crude devices to me. *ducks*
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These puns are getting so sickening I'm gonna need a TEXACOlogy test.
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I was pleasantly surprised at the way Mexico handled this. They started registering prepaid SIMs but stopped doing that after a few years, because studies showed that it had not helped prevent or prosecute any crime. Is
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I did indeed buy it. But then it was stolen, your honour.
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How is this different than the pm of vBulletin or any of the other many sites that allow their users to pm each other?
Re:So sue the makers of walkie-talkies then! (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter has demonstrated the ability and the will to censor or ban users they do not like for speech they find unacceptable. They have failed to ban ISIS members and have failed to censor them, therefore they find ISIS acceptable.
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Twitter has much more money that could be awarded to the plaintiff, that's the difference.
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Exactly this. I run a small computer help forum on the side. Two terrorists could easily create accounts and PM each other with plans to blow up something and I'd never ban their accounts because I'd never see the messages. Technically speaking, I can look in the database and read all of the messages, but I never do this unless there's some really out-of-the-ordinary event. I might have done this one time while looking into a troll account.
By the plantiff's argument, I'm providing aid to ISIS by running a f
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I suppose it's more difficult in the case of Twitter since they're a service instead of a product. Once someone comes into possession of a walkie talkie th
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Well I think there is a fairly critical difference between a device like a walkie where its hardware and once its left the manufacturer/sellers hands they real have no control over it.
A satellite or mobile phone is much more like twitter in that there is an associated server. The Phone companies though are designated common carriers because we all recognize they can't reasonably know a head of time if someone is going to use their services to do something illegal.
However even with that said if someone sold
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Except Colt, Toyota, and Sony have no control over the end products(Ignoring for the moment the PS4) once they leave their hands. Through continued curation, both Facebook and Twitter have not only demonstrated that capability, but the willingness to use it.
Other IM services (Score:5, Insightful)
So they hold Twitter responsible, but not Skype (Microsoft), Yahoo, AOL, or any of the other companies that offer IM-type or bulletin board type services where information can be passed? Hell - with a little planning, a Wikipedia article edit could be used as a communication channel, not to mention the talk portion where editing an article is discussed. Or even Slashdot - read at -1 and find your messages for the Kettle Run on the next anniversary.
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Deep pockets = Someone worth suing. Tying them to it is another issue, it doesn't matter how insignificantly connected the company is. This is about money. Daesh does use Twitter, it's an open free platform designed to be compatible with SMS. But I'm sure daesh also uses a ton of other recruiting methods using all kinds of technology. I suppose what this lawsuit wants is that Twitter either filter every single tweet or we turn the friggen internet off. It's why their suit will fail.
Twitter is a common carri
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As others have pointed out, Twitter does engage in censorship, which might make it ineligible for safe harbour provisions (which require that you do not actively take a role in the content of the communication that you host).
They are a company that doesn't have as much experience in litigation. Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL have all been involved in enough lawsuits that they keep a warehouse full of lawyers to airdrop on anyone with a stupid-looking lawsuit. T
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Re:Other IM services (Score:4, Informative)
WW91IGhhdmUgbm8gY2hhbmNlIHRvIHN1cnZpdmUgbWFrZSB5b3VyIHRpbWUu
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dGhlIGNyb3cgZmxpZXMgYXQgbWlkbmlnaHQ
Re: Other IM services (Score:4, Funny)
Oh I don't know.. why not.. its not like anyone hasn't done that with chicken before.
In other news... (Score:3)
Lawsuits are pending for manufacturers of cell phones, walkie talkies, regular phones, paper, pencils, pens, and tin cans with string between them.
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Kill all birds.
They've been providing quills to terrorists since before the dawn of mankind.
So they're saying Twitter founded ISIS? (Score:2)
Stop with the hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
ISIS (and other terrorist groups) killed 19 Americans last year. Total. Cops killed 1,125 Americans last year (it's actually a higher number, since the US gov't doesn't keep track of Americans killed by cops).
Americans with guns killed over 35,000 Americans last year.
But ISIS is used as the excuse to take away people's rights.
Mod Parent Up!!! (Score:2)
This is really it.
In what way is ISIS an "existential threat" to the USA, if toddlers with guns kill roughly three times as many citizens?
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I don't know why they're the target but France has been hit by numerous attacks that ISIS have laid claim to. Its not that big of a stretch to think that they could hit the US if they wanted to. Not all attacks have to be the twin towers to get noticed.
That said, there's a reason we call them "terrorists" and not "murderers" (though sometimes both of course.) Their goal isn't to make us dead. Their goal is to make us fear. And on that tack, they've had enormous success in the US and elsewhere.
It only t
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Toddlers w/ guns aren't deliberately trying to cause mayhem. Toddlers w/ guns ain't trying to subvert the US constitution. Toddlers w/ guns ain't trying to get everybody to recognize their supremacy.
ISIS on the other hand has grand goals. They consider themselves a caliphate, and want to bring the entire world under Islamic law. Initially, the thought was that they were just Iraqi & Syrian Sunnis fighting for a fair shake, but that's been rapidly disproven. It's not like they'd be satisfied w/ th
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There's always people who have grand goals of conquering or subverting or destroying the US. If I worried about every group that had it in for me as a US citizen, I'd never get any sleep.
Find me some people who not only want world conquest but have some ability to get it started near Western civilization, and I might start to worry.
Also, have you known toddlers? Lots of them are in it for the mayhem and for the attention.
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I'm sure at least half of those 20 were Islam nations that were conquered by a different sect of Islam.
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ISIS (and other terrorist groups) killed 19 Americans last year. Total.
That figure sounds a bit low. Does it include all the service men killed in action fighting ISIS overseas?
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Yes, it includes them. There were four Americans killed in Afghanistan and two Americans killed in Iraq in 2015.
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Citation? Murders, murder/suicide, and accidental gun deaths only accounted for about 13K deaths in the USA in 2015.
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Sorry, as I said, my statistics were from 2013 (see citation above).
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OTOH, I agree the suit against Twitter holds no water, it smacks of desperation.
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I don't live in the suburbs, and the rabble has already overrun my house.
Plus, cops get paid well, have great benefits and get to retire at 45, so excuse me if I don't break out my tiny violin. Oh yeah, and being a cop is a safer job than driving a beer truck, being a garbage man or a school janitor. We canonize cops way too much in this coun
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Plus, cops get paid well, have great benefits and get to retire at 45, so excuse me if I don't break out my tiny violin. Oh yeah, and being a cop is a safer job than driving a beer truck, being a garbage man or a school janitor. We canonize cops way too much in this country.
Really? I guess it depends on where, because there's cops that only make $30k USD/year and have to buy everything from their uniforms and weapons to the fuel for their patrol cars. That still happens today. I knew cops back in the early 00's who made $18k/year(median wage $42k). Yep very well paying. Keep in mind that the median US wage is just under $50k these days. Never met a cop that retired at 45 who also didn't have 25 years of service in already either, they're also so rare that I can count the
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The average police salary in the US is $56,810. They can retire after 20 years at 50% of their salary
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The average police salary in the US is $56,810. They can retire after 20 years at 50% of their salary
Better look up your numbers again, reality is sometimes different. [payscale.com]
Re: Stop with the hysteria (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding? I think the US is a great country with great people. It never stopped being great. I don't see it as horrible at all. I revere the sacrifice made by those greater than myself, including my father, a first-generation Italian-American who fought with Merrill's Marauders in the China-Burma theater in WWII (and was awarded a Bronze Star), right down to the janitors and sanitation workers who have more dangerous jobs than cops. There's no place I'd rather live and raise my family. From Chicago (where I'm from) to Connecticut, California, right down to Houston, Texas where I'm writing this now, the people of the United States are just terrific.
You're a Trump supporter, aren't you?
Re:Stop with the hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
So our police force has a serious problem with being an enforcement division rather than a peace-keeping division, when it's supposed to be a peace-keeping division. Police have stopped using discretion and working to maintain peace and order, and have become authoritarian in nature; this has changed them from a pillar of stability in the community to a perceived threat, and leads to an increase in violent reaction to police presence, and a general increase in crime due to a perception that the police force and thus the law in general is an antagonizing agent and thus the enemy.
Yours and many others's response is, apparently, "Well we need police, so nothing is wrong."
This stance is similar to telling people water is necessary for life when they complain somebody took a shit in their drinking supply.
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I cited the number as "Americans killing Americans with guns". Why wouldn't you include suicides in that?
The point is, ISIS is one of the least dangerous things in the United States. More people die from toenail fungus than by ISIS. You're TEN TIMES more likely to die while on a luxury cruise than you are from ISIS.
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Thanks for reminding me. I didn't mean to limit "Americans killing Americans with guns" to just crime. I should have added accidental shootings.
Fact is, Americans with guns put a lot of holes in Americans. Way more than any other developed nation. There is a bigger danger of accidentally getting killed with a gun than getting killed by ISIS.
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The takeaway message for you here should be that including your anti-gun political message in with your "ISIS is not a real threat" message led to a distraction from, and dilution of, your intended message. Introducing politics into discussions does that, every single time.
Your argument would have gone over better if you had stuck with the hyperbolic toenail fungus example from the beginning. Doubling down on the politics only cemented the derailing of the discussion, which you overly-political goofballs ca
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You worry about your message and let me worry about mine.
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That's exactly the response I expected. Thanks for illustrating the reasoning behind the shoddy level of contemporary discourse.
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Suicide is a victimless crime
Considering how much antidepressant medication messes with your brain and severely increases suicide rates, I doubt that. A suicide under the influence of drugs is not victimless.
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You have a seriously skewed view of antidepressants, and probably don't know anything about depression. This means you haven't suffered from it, which is good, but it also means you shouldn't be taken seriously.
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I cited the number as "Americans killing Americans with guns". Why wouldn't you include suicides in that?
I mean you're not wrong but it paints a picture that they were all related to homicide/violent crime when in reality two-thirds of them are suicides. Seems pretty dishonest to me. In moving to reduce the number of gun deaths in the country, would you propose the same solutions to preventing suicides as homicides/violent crimes?
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What percentage of homicides and violent crime are related to gang activity? Take Chicago for example as it continuously pops up in the news. I would contend that better mental health care does nothing for them. Obviously reduced gun access would but politically that won't go anywhere here anytime soon. And even if it did, no one seems interested in seriously addressing handguns.
Suicide is certainly a complicated issue. The reasons are many and whether people should be allowed to is a complex debate (it is
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I take a broader view of mental health besides just treating pathology. I see it in more holistic terms, that involves poverty, debt, external stress, family life, even nutrition and physical health. People without purpose in life can find purpose.
There's a reason you don't find violent street gan
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As a gun owner for 35 years, I can tell you that if it's loaded and you pull the trigger, a gun will do something.
Those 25k+ people who commit suicide every year while pointing a gun at themselves and pulling the trigger could not have committed suicide by putting a finger to their temple and shouting BANG!
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It's time we outlaw cancer. Maybe if we stop reporting about it it will go away.
Re:Stop with the hysteria (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny, heart disease is trivial. Human metabolism produces Vitamin C through a four-step process, and a misconfigured gene causes the fourth step to fail. Because of this, food scarcity several tens of thousands of years ago caused death by leaking arteries due to a lack of Vitamin C intake; a mutation which causes the deposit of cholesterol on the arterial walls enabled survival by patching the holes in rotting arteries. We can fix this permanently using modern gene therapy to edit each embryo so as to correct the single Vitamin C gene, and then following up three generations later with an edit to remove cholesterol build-up entirely.
The Vitamin C edit is relatively-cheap now (gene therapy on embryos is new in the market, and not dirt-cheap), and in less than ten years will be feasible as an international humanitarian program offered to any who want to ensure a healthy, permanent Vitamin C supplementation in their children and grandchildren. By the time it's reasonable to remove heart disease, gene therapy technology will have developed such that the edit is trivial. That means this is the last century in which anyone needs to be born with the threat of heart disease.
Of course, that kind of tinkering with human DNA is unethical. It would be wrong to minimize suffering and death.
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Of course, that kind of tinkering with human DNA is unethical.
I think the bigger problem is that its unpredictable since genetics has continually proven itself to be more complex than we currently understand. At some point we might get ahead of it but we're not anywhere close to it yet. The biggest and best arguments against GMO crops and other genetic engineering is that we just don't know what the long-term results will be.
And testing on humans in order to learn more is considered unethical. If you could somehow prove that your genetic manipulation prevented hear
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The biggest and best arguments against GMO crops and other genetic engineering is that we just don't know what the long-term results will be.
That's a dogmatic argument: it's made by people who don't understand. I could give a long rebuttal about how GMO is more-predictable than all other methods in use, but the Soylent people have done it right [soylent.com], so I'll just put that here.
We could potentially significantly improve the lives of future generations, but at the cost of treating some number of our current generations' babies essentially the same way we treat lab mice. And that's just not a trade-off we're willing to make in our current society.
I tend to call out ethics as bullshit in a world where we define morals, ethics, and values separately. The word "ethics" comes from the greek word "Ethos", which means "Habit"; and I present, on occasion, the argument that ethics gives you a habit in the form of a bureauc
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You're right. I was looking at the statistics from 2013, not 2015.
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or any other internet communications (Score:2)
In support of terrorists? (Score:2)
By The Same Argument... (Score:2)
Are the plaintiffs against Twitter in this case arguing that since it is possibly for even *one* gun that is sold to a civilian in the US to be used for crime and/or terrorist activities, then all gun sales should be banned?
Please note - I'm not a US citizen and don't generally support the idea behind
But satellite phone are easy to target (Score:2)
Hello
The funny thing is that equipping a target with a satellite phone improves the ability to identify them. In the case of a journalist and photographer [eff.org] team operating in Syria a few years ago, it was their satellite phone that allowed their location to be triangulated and subsequently attacked.
I would think it would not be too difficult to come up with some interesting usage patterns of DMs (sending messages in languages commonly used by ISIS, using certain phrases common to ISIS, geoIP location, access
Well, Twitter does side with ISIS. (Score:2)
Given some of Twitter's investors and their lack of removal of ISIS/pro-Islamist material - while eagerly purging sources of inconvenient truths (e.g. Milo Y.) - should be enough proof of their loyalties.
let's sue the air (Score:2)
NONSENSE SUIT (Score:2)
Anyway, sue Walmart for selling walkie-talkies? (Score:3)
I'll let them say that providing online communication is just like selling walkie-talkies. So they plan to sue Walmart for selling walkie-talkies? No, that would be ridiculous? Yep, same as this.
Re: Anyway, sue Walmart for selling walkie-talkies (Score:2)
So does that outrage mean that the left will agree that holding firearm manufacturers liable for shootings is fucking ridiculous?
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That's already in place. Look how well it works.
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So willful, active support for terrorism is a lesser crime than violating copyright? Is that what Witters suggests?
No, he's suggesting that a business which makes its product available to terrorists is 'providing material support to terrorists,' and it doesn't matter if that product is, itself, not physically material. He's suggesting that a company providing material support to terrorists should not be able to use copyright law to hide from the NSA.
The fundamental claim that we should all be worried about is that doing business with a terrorist, even if you don't know they're terrorists, is equivalent to actively pro