How about a situation in which the police are monitoring an informant or undercover police officer who is with the criminals. They're waiting for something to happen before they enter to make arrests or search, or they're ready to go in and protect their CI or undercover officer if things go wrong. What if one officer wants to tell another that he thinks that the bad guys suspect the informant and they should prepare to move in? He may not name the CI, but if the criminals hear this, bad things will happen. Similarly, how about a hostage situation where a sniper needs to communicate that something has changed and he no longer has a shot? Situations like these call for immediate communication.

There have been criminal investigators in China for over 1,000 years. Each "county" (hsien) was governed by a magistrate, who was charged, among other things, with investigating crimes. He had staff to assist him, including officers who functioned as police officers and a local physician who served as medical examiner.

How do they communicate it? Some of these things need to be communicated rapidly - they can't rely on face-to-face communication.

A possible solution is for the encrypted signals to be automatically stored by a third party, a kind of escrow service. The public would automatically gain access to the stored material after a certain amount of time. The police would be able to flag certain communications as requiring longer term secrecy (say those containing the identities of confidential informants). Those desiring access to communications flagged as not to be released could appeal to something like a Freedom of Information panel, which would decide whether secrecy should be maintained.

Some information should not be made public, e.g. the identity of confidential informants, the existence of (legal) wiretaps, details of ongoing operations. The bill acknowledges this. How is this information going to be kept secret while most information is not? Are police to have to remember to press the "scramble" button when they want to say something secret? Are they going to have to use their phones for secrets and their official radios for public information? I'm all for careful oversight of the police, but it is far from obvious how this is to be implemented.

It sure is good to read some good news for once! And from Texas! Who expected that?

You might also note that Pakistan suffered a further split with the separation of Bangladesh. That had nothing to do with the British. It was due to the fact that the incumbent government of Pakistan was bent on imposing strong central rule and the Urdu language and refused to recognize the electoral victory of the Bengalis.

The partition of India into India and Pakistan was the result of an indigenous Muslim demand to create a Muslim state. The British acceded to it, but it wasn't their idea. Similarly, the current division of the Arabian peninsula was not due to the British but to the local politics. It was not naturally a single country. As for the partition of Palestine, again, there had never in history been a state or even an administrative unit comprising mandate Palestine so there was no reason to create one on the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. And of course a single state would not have allowed Jewish self-determination. There are some places where colonialism created unnatural boundaries, but this is a badly over-hyped meme. The fact is that people often want to be independent so as to express their national character and/or be independent of what they see as oppressors. This is especially common when empires are dissolved. The modern Middle East is due primarily to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, not to the choices of the European powers.

The US didn't want to partition Korea. It was forced to by the USSR. If it hadn't, the USSR would have imposed a Communist dictatorship on all of Korea.

The UN forces (not just the US, and including the South Korean forces) did indeed kill a lot of North Koreans. North Korea and its ally China killed an estimated 1 million South Korean civilians. It was an awful war. The great majority of North Korean casualties resulted from legal military action. The North Korean forces, on the other hand, deliberately massacred South Korean civilians, especially intellectuals and those they thought might be political opponents. Overall, the fault lies with the North since it gratuitously invaded the South and tried to impose a communist dictatorship.

I have personally met and talked with North Koreans. Among other things, they believe indisputably false things (e.g. that South Korea is impoverished and crime-ridden) due to the government policy of cutting them off from information about the outside world.

He didn't say that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem implies limits on AI. He said that just as Godel's Theorem implies limits on logic, there are fundamental limits on AI.

I said they aren't less intelligent. That's the innate part. I also said that their education system is bad. That's what you're talking about.

It's hard to take this seriously. Although Saudis are no less intelligent than anyone else, the educational system does not have a good reputation - among other things, large amounts of time are devoted to religion. Institutions have a reputation for relying heavily on nepotism and connections rather than merit. And native Saudis in universities are said to get little research done, even if they were productive while abroad, because their family obligations are so time-consuming. This could be wrong, or changing, but I'd really want to hear it from someone with demonstrable expertise and a reputation for objectivity.

I'm not sure that an assets only sale is always a scam, but it certainly can be. Perhaps we need a system kind of like the bankruptcy system in which sales that effectively shut down a company must be approved by a court, which will see to it that obligations to subscribers and creditors are satisfied.