To be fair, I entirely understand the absolute necessity for this.
The reason for its introduction is before hand the PHVs (Uber etc.) of this world would, instead of using the car parks, go up to the drop-off area and wait there.
Because there was no charge and no penalty, what they would do is drop off a passenger and then sit there waiting for their next job to ping on their screen.
This became a particular problem at Heathrow T5 where the drop off area is relatively tiny.
The result would be that at busy hours, private individuals attempting to drop off their friends and family would be unable to find space and end-up double-parking and causing safety hazards.
For a while they tried to use airport Police to enforce it, but the volume of PHVs was just far too great. Hence the cameras, charges and penalties were introduced.
It should also be noted that at Heathrow, if you do not want to pay the £7, you can instead drop people off for free at the Long Term Car park and they can get the shuttle bus back to the terminal.
Rather than charge everyone £7 or more for a drop off, wouldn't it make more sense to charge the people abusing it an absurd amount? I'd much rather see a £25 fee after 90 seconds and an additional £125 fee after 5 minutes than £7 for 30 seconds.
It seems less about making things more efficient and more about just squeezing a little bit out of money out of everyone.
> I wonder how many actual terrorists they pick up for saying "I'm here for terrorism"
Its like those stupid questions on US immigration forms, e.g.
"Do you intend to engage in the United States in Espionage ?"
or
"Did you ever order, incite or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person ?"
It's like, really ? Do they seriously think someone who should answer yes will really answer yes ?
Might as well just turn up at the immigration desk, slap your wrists down on the counter and invite them to handcuff you .... why bother with the form !
> the purpose of the form is to generate convictions for lying on the form.
Yeah but if the immigration officer has reason to question you about those sections of the form then surely they have more than enough evidence of the underlying crime anyway ?
Intent to commit espionage is not a crime (but committing or attempting to commit it is) Lying on the form is. It is probably easier to demonstrate intent to commit espionage than to catch them in the act.
Wouldn't it be easier to make those things illegal and then prosecute them instead of the lie? For prosecuting a lie you need to prove 2 things, the thing lied about and the lie itself, so it seems like a more difficult prosecution for no reason. Also how does every other country in the world manage to not have these questions?
This is what happens when a legal system and a political system is taken over by specialists with little to no other skills.
Instead of politics being about setting policy to work toward desire outcomes, politics becomes about ensuring the viability of future political processes. Instead of the legal system being about defining crime, establishing punishment and carrying out said punishments it becomes about ensnaring others in legal "gotcha" moments like lying on a form. Society is not safer because of the outlawed nature of lying on a form. Society is not better off because someone is convicted of lying on a form. The individuals who participate in the prosecution are better off because it gives them an opportunity to advance their career.
> Also how does every other country in the world manage to not have these questions?
You sure about that? Many other countries have what would be considered odd questions on their forms.
Also, saying "every other country" is a mighty wide brush. There are a whole lot of countries where the rule of law doesn't come first and they can simply do what they want if they suspect you of anything regardless if they have a law or not.
Making false statements to federal officials is itself a crime. The intent of having those sections is to be able to have legal recourse against people that lie on them, which hopefully deters people that would lie on them from attempting to immigrate in the first place.
> Now more than ever, trusting a US jurisdiction VPN provider ? No thanks !
The whole point of Obscura is you aren't trusting any single company. A Swedish company and an American company would need to collude to cause a problem. Unless you know something I don't?
> The whole point of Obscura is you aren't trusting any single company.
First, Mullvad's infrastructure has been independently audited.
Mullvad integrity has also tested as proven by a legal case where they were subject to a search warrant when someone was trying to claim copyright infringement.
As far as I can tell, Obscura has not had anywhere near the same scrutiny.
Second, obscura is the first hop is it not ?
Therefore it may well "only" relay the traffic to the exit node but it is still a relay and hence open to SIGINT analysis by the US.
I would have thought therefore using Mullvad's built-in multi-hop mode on their audited platform would be the wiser decision ?
Hence why Mullvad is being used as the exit point.
You have full e2ee between yourself and Mullvad but crucially Mullvad don't know who your IP. Five eyes are already doing SIGINT on behalf of both the US and the UK government before my connection even reaches Obscura so I lose nothing but potentially gain privacy.
How is it you think a single company (Mullvad) having access to my IP and what I am browsing is less secure than splitting it up amongst multiple providers one of which being Mullvad with that audited platform you talk about?
If I wanted Tor on top I'd layer it on top too but that would still be a single point of failure.
Oh I agree. China is clearly outplaying everyone. But EU surely doesn't want to replace one leash (US tech stack) with different leash (Chinese tech stack).
I keep wondering though. Is insane amount of compute really that crucial? Aren't most real computing needs served well with not so cutting edge tech? I am 5-10 years behind on most of my machines. Servers we have at work are very modest (and outdated) yet the software these servers power are still valuable. Maybe EU could run on some domestic RISC-V cheapo chips.
> AWS has more services, but a lot of those are of dubious quality.
Being cynical AWS has more services because many of those are deliberately siloed in order to create a separate billing item, i.e.:
"You want to use AWS Foo ...great, welcome to AWS ! But unless you want to re-invent the wheel re-programming the standard workflow, you should really use AWS Bar and AWS Baz alongside it. Dontcha' like all the cute names we've given them ? Here are all the price sheets, don't forget to read the small print ... good luck figuring out how much it will cost you".
> Meanwhile in Europe ? Take your time job hunting a new job, healthcare is still free.
Currently, healthcare coverage tend to be better in several European countries when you are jobless... because the system try to compensate the fact you do not have income anymore.
Don't get me wrong, their is many 'flaws' in several European healthcare systems and it is far from perfect. but it tends to be more "human" and less "for profit".
> Most EU companies, including this one, offer subpar services compared to their American counterparts
Not true.
But you know what the best thing about the EU companies is ?
Transparent pricing.
EU company: Yes, you really can accurately calculate to the nearest cent how much your compute instance will cost you and exactly what you are getting for that money. No surprises.
US company:Is that Compute Savings Plan, EC2 Savings Plan, On-Demand or Spot. What speed is my network "up to" ? And then of course the big "I DUNNO" in relation to "how many IOPS am I going to be charged for EBS disk transfer ?"
EU company: Of course we don't charge you for LIST etc. on S3. We only charge you for off-network GETs and the associated data transfer, on-network is free.
US company: What do you mean LIST etc. should be free ?
You know what else I like about the EU companies ?
At least two of them allow pay as you go from a reducing credit balance.
Yes that's right US companies. It IS possible to give your customers a way to 100% guarantee you will never have an "oops I just spent a million dollars overnight" moment.
> most police departments won't pay the slightest bit of attention to your reports
Its sort of a combination of two reasons.
First in many cities, police departments are underfunded. And so running around looking for your stolen phone or whatever minor item is low on their to-do list compared to say, stopping the local drug-gangs from shooting their brains out.
Second, for minor thefts most insurance companies just need a quick box-tick "police crime report number" before paying out. So if the police know they can get you off their backs just by quickly giving you a report number, well....
> compared to say, stopping the local drug-gangs from shoting their brains out
I'm guessing people have that impression from TV, but it doesn't seem to match reality.
> the data suggests that officers spend relatively little time responding to major violent crimes: 4%, 3.7% and 4.1% in the three locations, respectively.
Just like that excellent Yes Minister episode about hospitals - I imagine they have more then enough internal busywork so they have no time for their customers. Which the older am I the more this seems true.
Anecdotal evidence but they spend a significant amount of time at the burger joint next to my place, while blocking the bicycle lane instead of parking legally.
If they're not responding to either violent crimes or nonviolent crimes, what are they doing all day?
According to a police administrator I once knew, filling out all the endless paperwork that makes the studies possible so people can complain about what little time cops spend fighting crime.
And it's probably under your deductible anyway. And replacing various cards is your deal with your credit card etc. companies. Relatively few of us carry around a lot of cash.
To be fair, I entirely understand the absolute necessity for this.
The reason for its introduction is before hand the PHVs (Uber etc.) of this world would, instead of using the car parks, go up to the drop-off area and wait there.
Because there was no charge and no penalty, what they would do is drop off a passenger and then sit there waiting for their next job to ping on their screen.
This became a particular problem at Heathrow T5 where the drop off area is relatively tiny.
The result would be that at busy hours, private individuals attempting to drop off their friends and family would be unable to find space and end-up double-parking and causing safety hazards.
For a while they tried to use airport Police to enforce it, but the volume of PHVs was just far too great. Hence the cameras, charges and penalties were introduced.
It should also be noted that at Heathrow, if you do not want to pay the £7, you can instead drop people off for free at the Long Term Car park and they can get the shuttle bus back to the terminal.
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