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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • Because I would alter the structure of your atoms, and that would not be criminal, because why would it be.

    On it’s bacsic premise, no, you’re allowed to move my arms or person (to the extent that it is not assault, kidnapping, etc) but say, altering the state of my atoms in a way that ends my life or does me physical harm is criminal.

    So your point is not explicitly correct there, more detail is needed. You’ve also (either knowingly or unknowingly) built and argued against a strawman. My claim is that altering the position of a switch is not destruction of property, and that as the law as written explicitly criminalizes the destruction of property in response to a lawful search. Altering the position of a switch could be considered destruction of evidence, and by extension so would wiping the phone. I don’t know if there is a law that explicitly bans the destruction of evidence during a lawful border search though. So it could still be criminal, but there is significant reasonable doubt that any property was actually destroyed.



  • You absolutely can though. A 16x7 grid of light switches can store any 16 character password that uses the ASCII character set. Images would require many more switches (depending on the color quality and resolution) but it’s the same thing. Like I said, earlier, you are having an issue making a point to differentiate between the position of a binary switch and a single bit of data because there is no fucking difference in the first place.

    You make it sound ridiculous, but we’ve stored data as a magnetic polarity for decades at this point, we’ve stored data on rocks, laser etched as dots and dashes at a microscopic level on thin bits of foil. Whole programs have been written and stored on stacks of cards. Heck, the programs to get a spacecraft to the moon were written on paper and then literally knitted into the onboard computers. Regardless of the medium chosen, (almost) all computer memory and storage is simply the representation of an array of binary states, something that can be done, and has been done with a simple array of light switches.



  • that’s besides the point.

    It’s not besides the point. It exactly is the point. Functionally, computer storage is a stable binary state circuit, just like a light switch. When we wire billions of them together and automate the switching process, and throw in a few layers of abstraction, you get functional data. Changing the state of those switches does not destroy them, therefore changing the state of those switches is not destruction of property, unless by extension, flipping a light switch counts as destruction of property. It may be destruction of evidence, as the state of that memory or the position of the switch could be considered evidence, but it is a far cry from actual destruction of property.

    who the hack stores data on light switches, bit by bit?

    This is exactly how early computer programs were stored/written.

    you have already decided that destroying user data is a nothingburger.

    Correction: I am arguing that the alteration of computer storage is not destruction of property as written in the law that prevents you from destroying property to in response to or as the result of a lawful search.








  • Here is my problem with this interpretation…

    Is data property? Sure, ideas, concepts, photos, etc can be trademarked/copy-write protected and have some degree of ownership, but I’m talking at a much lower level here… Is the particular configuration of memory on your phone a piece of property? If no, then no property was destroyed by wiping the phone. All of the storage and memory is still intact and functional. If yes, then we must look further…is the position (not the switch itself) of a binary switch (like a light switch) a physical thing that you can own? Would you consider it destroyed if it was switched away from it’s original position?

    I don’t think you could charge him with destroying property… Destruction of evidence maybe, but the property is undamaged and functioning normally.

    Other arguments. The cop actually destroyed the data. Or, defendant claims he did not know the cops would use the pin to wipe the phone, and that they just wanted to know what the PIN was.

    I wouldn’t say there is enough evidence here to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this guy destroyed any property in response to a search. He didn’t destroy anything, what was destroyed is arguably not property, and he may not be aware that his duress pin was going to be used on the device in the first place.






  • Considering that the gen 1 ryzen 3 1200 (the lowest end model) is more than double the performance of the automotive processor in my car from 2023 (3.1ghz quad core vs 2.4ghz dual core)…

    But, the car does do some onboard image recognition to support Hands-free driving, so there is enough compute onboard to manage that. However, avoiding objects and following a line is something you can do with a Lego mindstorm from 2000, not exactly super demanding computationally.

    I reiterate, I think cars certainly have the hardware to spy on other people and drivers, but the practicality of using them for that purpose is pretty limited in regards to how much useful data you would get, how hard it is to get that data, and how much easier it is to collect better data from other sources.


  • Really depend on the safety tech. My partner’s Honda Civic is so bad, that turning off CMBS (Collision Mitigation Braking System) and LKAS (Lane Keep Assist System) is essential to operating the car safely, as accidentally leaving these systems on has almost wrecked the car on more than one occasion. Meanwhile, the same systems on my fake Mustang work great. Sometimes backing out of the driveway, it will panic and warn me that I might crash into the ground, but it doesn’t slam the brakes. The hands-free driving is actually really good, and a feature I would continue to use if it wasn’t several hundred dollars a year. In comparison to Honda, Ford’s safety tech is much more predictable and reliable.

    This is my personal experience with two cars that I drive relatively frequently, so other people may have other opinions and experiences that are completely valid.


  • It’s more “is it practical to access the cameras” than “can someone access the cameras”.

    Look at it this way… How are “they” going to access your cameras? Are they going to have a mobile broadband connection for your vehicle, and upload realtime video data from multiple cameras in real time? Maybe for one car, but to do it for every car, they would end up choking out all the cell towers in an area. What about storing your data in the car and accessing it later? Well, storage is relatively cheap, but when you add in the compute required to encode that video, and depending on how much you want to store, it could easily be a few hundred dollars to include all that, and let’s face it, manufacturers want to cut costs, so who is going to pay for it? To top it off, if this repository of compute and storage existed, computer nerds would have found it and publicized it, so it seems unlikely to me that it exists for most cars. Finally, what data would “they” hope to get from real time-video of your car that is not already documented in other ways? The GPS unit can log your position and velocity with ease, your phone is an active listening device that follows you everywhere, so there are simpler and cheaper ways to get the same useful data as a realtime camera feed of the side of the road that don’t involve some huge conspiracy.