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Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

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Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#581

Post by shkkmo »

neonIcon wrote: post #551
shkkmo wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of gun deaths are consentual (suicide), ~2/3 is a majority, but certainly not a vast majority. > and don't flagrantly disobey police officers, and I guarantee you'll be completely fine. Plenty of people are shot by police without flagrantly disobeying police orders. It may reduce your risk, but it does not eliminate it. > If you disagree with all this, it's probably just not the country for you. Y…

2/3 = 66% So if I ate 66% of a cake you just ordered, and handed you back the rest would that not be considered a vast majority of your cake?

Nope, 'vast' means more than very large and its closest synonyms are 'immense' or 'boundless'. I would consider a vast majority to require at LEAST an order of magnitude difference, so 90%+ as a bare minimum and I would probably not use it myself until more like 95% and I would still consider that rather hyperbolic up until 99%. You could call 66% a strong majority or a clear majority, but 'vast' is far too strong in my opinion.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#582

Post by tonfreed »

mlang23 wrote: post #399

Best thing is to just not have anything to do with the US of A. Death penalty, loaded guns everywhere, a general attitude of being the masters of the world which leads to things like suspicionless searches. No, thanks. I think the best would be if more people would actually stop dealing with the USA. Its becoming a trend. I once turned down an invitation to a conference in Hawai, and guess what, I was not alone.

Oh come on now. In Australia you can be detained without charge and all they have to do is mention the 't' word. I also had someone turn up to our tabletop session on the weekend saying trains had stopped because someone got shot outside the station, while I struggle to get a license for a muzzle loading antique flintlock rifle. Not to mention I can get fined for all matter of stupid stuff because of the nanny state.

The US isn't perfect, but of all the places in the world you could live it's undeniably one of the best. Probably second only to Germany in my favourite places to travel, tbh

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#583

Post by thedaemon »

mlang23 wrote: post #399

Best thing is to just not have anything to do with the US of A. Death penalty, loaded guns everywhere, a general attitude of being the masters of the world which leads to things like suspicionless searches. No, thanks. I think the best would be if more people would actually stop dealing with the USA. Its becoming a trend. I once turned down an invitation to a conference in Hawai, and guess what, I was not alone.

Why are you on hackernews, a USA website / company?

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#584

Post by nybble41 »

xenocyon wrote: post #523
umvi wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are far more likely to be killed by a drunk driver in the US than by a gun. Your chances of being killed by a gun are basically zero (unless you are travelling to the US specifically to commit suicide), so that's a somewhat bogus concern

I don't understand why people always discount suicides among gun deaths, as if suicides only happen to "other people". It's true that you can limit your gun risk by being white/urban/middle-class/mentally healthy, but these are not advantages available to everyone. There's a lot of victim-blaming in some of these comments, which glosses over the fact that plenty of infants and toddlers die from guns. Gun deaths in to…

> I don't understand why people always discount suicides among gun deaths, as if suicides only happen to "other people".

Probably because the interesting statistic is not "gun deaths" but rather "fatal gun-related accidents" and "homicides" (with or without a gun involved). Suicides don't just "happen"; there is no "risk of suicide" which could be affected by the presence or absence of any particular tool. If you don't want die from suicide, the solution is as simple as not attempting suicide.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#585

Post by shkkmo »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #564
shkkmo wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass shootings are an incredibly small source of gun deaths. ~2/3rd are suicide and ~1/3rd are murder. While the US does have pretty high gun related homicide rates, it is largely because proportionally more of our homicides involve guns. Our overall homicide rate is a fair bit higher than most european countries but nowhere near the top world-wide (about #90.) However, much of this is concentrated into particular lo…

> While the US does have pretty high gun related homicide rates, it is largely because proportionally more of our homicides involve guns. Our overall homicide rate is a fair bit higher than most european countries but nowhere near the top world-wide (about #90.) While not exactly wrong I would definitely argue that "a fair bit higher" is a gross mischaracterization. The US has an intentional homicide rate of 5.3 per…

> While not exactly wrong I would definitely argue that "a fair bit higher" is a gross mischaracterization.

"A fair bit" isn't particularly precise but it does means "quite alot" or "a large amount" so think it is a gross mischaracterization to call it a gross mischaracterization. If we are being pedantic, "Several times" is more accurate than "many times" since many generally means a bit more than 4 or 5.

> Depends how you frame it

I don't think so. Practically speaking, all that matters is comparing absolute risks of different causes of death in a specific situatio. For a foreign tourist the risk of gun related homicide in the US is significantly smaller than the other risks of death (such as cars). The relative amount of that risk compared to other countries isn't practically relevant. The risk of drowning in a locked dry room is many times the risk of drowning in a bathtub with an inch of water, that doesn't mean that the risk of drowning in that bathtub is practically relevant (unless you are a baby or extremely drunk/drugged).

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#586

Post by thephyber »

jopsen wrote: post #572
ubermonkey wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a US citizen. Most of his points are valid. Guns fucking everywhere is a problem. Lots of Americans think so. Yes, we absolutely execute people -- and our criminal justice system is a completely sham, especially if you're not white and rich. Oh, and God save you from our health care economics. If I weren't American, I'd absolutely never come here. In fact, I am American, and I'm actively researching ways to estab…

Is it really that bad though. We like painting a negative picture, because we want the US to improve. But on the human freedom index the US is ranked 17 alongside Sweden. The US has problems, systemic and cultural problems that should be fixed. But your risk of getting shot in a mass shooting is low.

On one hand, we should always evaluate if we are suffering "the grass is greener over there" effect.

On the other hand, Aaron Sorkin explains[1] in 3 minutes how the USA is far from the best place to live and what made us great when we were better in those different ratings.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw (NSFW audio)

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#587

Post by nybble41 »

roywiggins wrote: post #138
ISL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the fourth amendment says what it says. I'm prepared to agree to disagree with the Supreme Court on the subject, but the bill of rights is, to me, clear.

The fourth amendment just says searches have to be reasonable, not that they have to be done pursuant to a warrant. What counts as "reasonable" is very much not clear unless you look beyond the text. There's no evidence, for instance, that the fourth amendment was meant to prevent customs checks at the border. Inside the US, customs checks would be unreasonable searches, but at the border they have always been legal.…

> The fourth amendment just says searches have to be reasonable, not that they have to be done pursuant to a warrant.

The only reason it doesn't say that is that it's inherent in the term "warrant". A warrant is exactly the legal authority to use force on behalf of the government contrary to the rights which the law would normally guarantee, which is a prerequisite for performing any search or seizing any property (absent the owner's consent, of course). Any law purporting to authorize searches is a warrant, though not necessarily a constitutional one. There is no such thing as a legal search or seizure without a warrant. There are only unauthorized, and thus illegal, searches and seizures, and unconstitutional warrants.

If "reasonableness" were enough on its own—in other words, if obtaining a warrant were not a necessary part of the process of conducting a search—there would never have been any reason to place further restrictions on the issuance of warrants, and the entire second half of the 4th Amendment would be void.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#588

Post by trianglem »

bluGill wrote: post #462
wonderwonder wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the points in this post are not accurate. There are more guns in civilian hands here than there are people. "The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership "Most of them are in the hands of well trained people who are harmless" I am not sure what you base this on,…

You can buy a gun easily enough. However the people who actually do that tend to be enthusiasts who are well trained. To have a loaded gun on your person you need to be well trained in most states.

That's not true. To go from a novice with absolutely no experience with guns to a person with a concealed carry license took one day of a seminar in a southern east coast state.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#589

Post by 886 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #560
bluGill wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most gun owners give their gun that level of respect. Car owners kill far more people than gun owners do not give much respect to how deadly their weapon is.

Car owners kill ~38,000 people a year. Guns kill ~15,000 a year (excluding suicides). There are roughly 20,000 suicides a year via firearm. I would argue that if you compared the number of cars driven on a daily basis in the us vs the number of guns fired, that guns cause far more deaths on a per use basis. Seems like Car owners are far more respectful of their 'weapon' on a per capita basis.

+1, on top of that

Car killing people -> mostly accidents.

Gun killing people -> mostly intentional.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#590

Post by ClumsyPilot »

youareostriches wrote: post #553
umvi wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guns fucking everywhere is a problem. Which is a bigger problem - guns everywhere or cars everywhere?

Unfortunately having cars everywhere (and a car-centric culture and urban landscape) will probably kill more people in the long run via CO2 emissions than gun domestic deaths. The collapse of the entire ecosystem and the corresponding mass extinction is undeniably the most important problem of this century.

While technically true, why is this a useful argument? Amount of guns and amount of cars are not linked in any way
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