Seize More Territory!

While parked at school on Thursday, somebody hit my car and fled the scene without leaving a note of any kind. Fortunately for me, somebody witnessed the whole thing and left a note under my windshield wiper with the offender’s license plate number and their (the witness) personal cell phone number for use when I filed a report with the campus police.

So, I filed a report with the campus police, showed them the damage done to my car, the note left on my car, and the subsequent text messages I made back and forth between myself and the mystery person who left their number and within a matter of 3 hours the campus police had not only tracked the offender down but had received a full confession and initiated the insurance process by requesting the offender call the insurance company while she was still at the campus police HQ.

What normally would have gone unpunished and would have ended up costing me $500.00+ to get repaired is now, thanks to a still unnamed good Samaritan, isn’t going to cost me a penny. I even offered to buy this person a $25.00 iTunes giftcard as a reward, which was politely refused, and was told “I’m just glad everything worked out alright!” Since I cannot directly reward the actions of this awesome person, I will instead follow the example they have set and go out of my way to leave a note with as much info as I can the next time I witness an accident of any kind.

Parking, while sometimes difficult, is still easy enough that a monkey can perform the task. What’s your excuse?

There’s been a lot of talk in the last couple years concerning the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and how it applies to information stored in the “Cloud.” The big concern is whether the Fourth Amendment actually protects a person’s information when it resides on a server owned by a 3rd party from search and seizure without a warrant.

In layman’s terms it breaks down like this, if, for example, the police wanted to read the physical letter you keep in your dresser drawer from your mom, they would need to get a warrant to search your residence for that letter and, in most cases, only that letter. Now, if they wanted to read the e-mail your mom had written you, the police would only need to ask the company who owns the server on which the 1s and 0s that make up your email reside. No warrant needed. How is something like this allowed to happen? Allow me to explain.

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