From: bretcahill@aol.com   
      
   > Testing for 'altered in any way' will catch cosmic ray tracks,   
   temperature/pressure changes,   
   > and half a thousand other irrelevancies.   It will likely miss a bugging   
   device that is powered by   
   > beamed microwaves.      
   >    
   > What CAN work, is a standard, generic hardware base with a firmware    
   personality; a multiplicity   
   > of signatures can be applied to the firmware, and a one-time-buy of hardware   
   can be   
   > carefully scrutinized.   Even so, I've seen systems where it was ALL   
   working, but (because   
   > of a failing hard drive) some timings were WAY off; the hard drive wasn't   
   going to admit   
   > failure until it couldn't succeed-after-retry.   The problem of hidden   
   firmware (like inside that   
   > traitorous hard drive) has become endemic, in modern devices.   
      
   At least force them to go into the hard drive.  Have a way to disconnect   
   components and check the rest on the device.   
      
   > They're too smart.   
      
   A lot of people still cling to this notion of privacy which never really made   
   sense in the first place.  The 4th Amend. was never about privacy.  It's about   
   police planting evidence for a set up.  The ACLU trivializes the 4th knowing   
   lying its about    
   privacy.    
      
   Every revelation seems to be on the side of less privacy than thought.  When   
   was the last time you heard a story about users having "even more privacy than   
   they expected?"  You'd think they'd figger out privacy doesn't exist today.    
   This doesn't even    
   need to include Equifax using passwords like "admin."   
      
   The feds just arrested a neo nazi planning a race war.  Such arrests indicate   
   the lack of privacy is worth the benefits.  Demonetization, at least down to   
   some limited size cash transactions, say, $10,000, would be OK.  If your   
   hooker or drug dealer    
   wants more than $10K in cash you move to another country.  Reduce the max bill   
   size from $500 to $50 so that bribing politicians and media requires comically   
   enormous totes.   
      
   Nevertheless an honest law abiding person with highly motivated political   
   enemies might be spending some time thinking about getting set up and falsely   
   arrested.   
      
   As long as the government is forced to explain everything to a jury it may   
   work out for most people and society generally.   
      
      
   Bret Cahill   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)