Years ago people warned that we had to limit the population to save the planet.
Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.
Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.
I too am skeptical of government-granted intellectual monopolies, as Richard Stallman correctly names them. Trademarks are the least offensive of them because they expire relatively quickly and are designed to prevent genuine consumer confusion. Trade dress rules help prevent consumers from unwittingly buying products from Company A while thinking it's Company B.
This video game creates zero risk that a consumer will buy furniture from the wrong store, so trade dress should be inapplicable. IKEA would likely even lose in court. But as the article points out: legal proceedings ... get really expensive.
The legal short-hand saying that "corporations are people" is terrible PR. Non-legal-experts look at that and logically and correctly conclude "no, they're not", and think it's a ridiculous statement.
The underlying legal principle is that groups of individuals banding together don't lose their fundamental rights. That applies to unions, non-profits, clubs, churches, political parties, small businesses, and yes, corporations.
Courts do allow more government control over "commercial speech" than, say, political speech. But that discriminates based on the type of speech, not the type of speaker.
The main benefit to the fiction is limited liability. Without delegating to the corporation the responsibility for corporate actions would need to be defined as belonging to the owners, or all employees or some other structure where it all points to humans. If meta owes $18bn - I don't owe it - in the strong sense as a legal debt, as a shareholder in my 401k. The value of my ownership stake might go down (or up) but I don't have a shared legal obligation.
OpenAI and Anthropic are falling over themselves to claim these "incidents" show their products are both amazingly super-powerful and also "dangerous" so they need to be regulated. In addition to these stories, these companies are sponsoring "please regulate us" ads. ( https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/19/dueling-pacs-take-center-sta... ) Like Uber, companies that had no concern for the law as they innovated their way to the top, once there, push for laws to limit competition.
> But this guy catching felony charges for giving federal border police a duress PIN to wipe his phone when they asked for an unlock PIN? Not actually overreach.
I think it's an interesting case that will get litigated in the courts. It seems they'll have to prove that the phone contained "evidence"; it could have just had embarrassing personal photos that he didn't want shared. When a house is raided and someone flushes a toilet, can courts assume they flushed drugs, or does that have to be proven?
I hope he's found not guilty, but either way this definitely is not the "sky is falling", "we're almost a police state" case that folks here are making it out to be. It's a very narrow and novel line.
> When a house is raided and someone flushes a toilet, can courts assume they flushed drugs, or does that have to be proven?
Game it out at the systems level. If the prosecution had to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that what was destroyed would have been evidence, then destruction of evidence would be functionally permissible whenever done competently.
> ...either way this definitely is not the "sky is falling", "we're almost a police state" case that folks here are making it out to be. It's a very narrow and novel line.
Agreed. And activists should generally work with lawyers in order to be familiar with areas of the law they are likely to encounter in the course of their activism. Especially activists who travel internationally.
> then destruction of evidence would be functionally permissible whenever done competently.
Well yes, but ... is that not the case? Game out the opposite. If the prosection doesn't have to demonstrate that something was valid evidence beyond a shadow of doubt that's rife for all sorts of abuse.
In general I don't believe I can catch a (legitimate) felony for locking myself in the bathroom and flushing the toilet during a police raid.
> In general I don't believe I can catch a (legitimate) felony for locking myself in the bathroom and flushing the toilet during a police raid.
Most juristictions have a duty to preserve or not to spoil evidence once you are clearly detained or a search is clearly imminent (i.e. the police are knocking on your door), or when litigation can be reasonably anticipated. Behavior like locking the door and then burning/shredding papers, wiping a phone, or even flushing a toilet can absolutely be considered destruction-of/tampering-with evidence past that point, even (and especially) if the evidence is impossible to recover.
I feel like you aren't responding to what I wrote there. My point was that there's presumably no clear evidence that I was destroying evidence in that example even if I was. The example was in regards to the point made in the preceding paragraph.
> If the prosection doesn't have to demonstrate that something was valid evidence beyond a shadow of doubt that's rife for all sorts of abuse.
Assuming that is the preceding paragraph you reference, then there is nothing to respond to because the law is clear. As zugi mentions, obstruction of a federal investigation by tampering with evidence (i.e. potentially anything in the scope of a particular search of which you are aware) in just about any sort of way is illegal under 18 USC § 1519 (and again, most states have similar laws with regard to state officials/departments and searches).
This subthread, the general thread, the linked article, and the original event it covers are all within the context of someone aware they are detained or under investigation. In that context, the prosecution doesn't need to demonstrate that what was destroyed is evidence. Just that the suspect obstructed the search by destroying, altering, or tampering with something in the search's lawful scope.
This state of affairs isn't any more or less rife for abuse than the general process for obtaining a warrant or the standards for an officer assessing probably cause.
Right fair point "evidence" versus "lawful scope". Precision and accuracy of terminology aside, surely you can see the core point I was making there that unless all details (the act of destruction, scope, intent, etc) are demonstrated beyond doubt there's huge potential for abuse.
The details you mention are all hammered out to death and back as a regular part of the legal process, before and during a trial, and by both prosecution and defense. One can only imagine a huge potential for abuse by suspending any and all familiarity with that legal process.
You can't, but you can if you flushed the cocaine. You should also be worried they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you flushed cocaine, even if you only flushed your urine.
So it turns out destroying a record to obstruct an investigation is also a crime under 18 U.S. Code § 1519. For that they wouldn't need to prove that it was "evidence" or even that it was relevant.
So as much as I sympathize with the guy a d wabt to cheer him on, he's probably screwed.
Some general advice that probably works around the world is, if you're present in a country illegally, don't go out of your way to seek out immigration enforcement officials to record them for TikTok.
Nothing in the article refutes the assertion that Carlitos Ricardo Parias has been in the country illegally for 2+ decades, so it's not surprising that he's detained by ICE pending deportation. The Intercept refers to him as a "journalist" though all I can verify is that has a large TikTok following.
The Intercept's editorial comment calling ramming ICE SUVs "a meaningless move in a small car physically pinned by multiple large SUVs" is laughable and destroys any notion one might have that they have journalistic integrity. I think in any country, when surrounded by police, if you ram police vehicles rather than stopping and raising your hands, you'll be in trouble. While him getting shot in the elbow is a great example of police ineptitude, I guess we've just gotten used to that.
There are plenty of things to complain about regarding ICE behavior, but detaining someone who's in the country illegally isn't one of them.
Voting with your wallet lets you send dozens of fine-grained messages a day. You support companies you want to support, and don't support those you don't want. Others will choose differently and that's fine for them. The mere existence of businesses you dislike is not a sign that this process has failed, you don't have the right to stop others from getting what they want to pay for.
Voting in federal elections in the US lets you send a message of less then one bit per year. It's a horribly ineffective method.
Apple exists because plenty of people vote for it with their wallets. I don't. But I don't mind that it exists.
I vote against Google when I can. I block ads and use Duck Duck Go as my default search engine. But the results are so poor compared to Google that I switch to use Google often. That's a sign to me that their product is worth my occasional, small "vote", and I'm okay with that.
Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.
Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.
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