As a person coming from a former soviet republic, I am very familiar with the saying "show me a man, and I will show you the crime he is guilty of" - which basically meant that if KGB wanted to charge you with something, they always could find a paragraph for you, because there were so many and so vaguely defined.
As an outsider, to me it seems that the USA is not a "free" country and I honestly don't see any difference between what the US and Russian governments are doing to journalists and people who disagree with them.
Edit: Oh, and we already had massive surveillance back then. If you wanted to travel out of your town - you had to register that fact with the nearest police department. Wanted to travel abroad - had to apply for a passport, which was only issued for a strict number of days and had to be returned upon return. If you were placing a phone call, it would always start with a warning "This call is being monitored. This call is being monitored". The post office would open your parcels and letters. There was book censorship on a massive scale. What the US government is doing has already happened. "Those who don't remember history are bound to live through it again".
The US government, still maintains a pretty strong protection of journalists. They will go after the leakers themselves, but rarely even attempt to make a journalist reveal a source, let alone prosecute the journalist directly for revealing secret information.
In fact, I say still, but this tendency has actually grown stronger over the last 50 years. It has, in my not-very-researched-opinion, grown stronger due to public pressures and effective civil disobedience. So, that heartens me. All governments screw-up, but some are screwed-up, I still don't think the US is one of the screwed-up - relative to the rest of the world and history - a LOT I wish they would do better.
A reporter was being investigated for having access to classified information, and the toll records (what number called or was called, and for how long the call lasted) were subpoenaed.
> As an outsider, to me it seems that the USA is not a "free" country and I honestly don't see any difference between what the US and Russian governments are doing to journalists and people who disagree with them.
You seem to describe at least five stark differences:
1. If you wanted to travel out of your town - you had to register that fact with the nearest police department.
2. Wanted to travel abroad - had to apply for a passport, which was only issued for a strict number of days and had to be returned upon return.
3. If you were placing a phone call, it would always start with a warning "This call is being monitored. This call is being monitored".
4. The post office would open your parcels and letters.
5. There was book censorship on a massive scale.
Comparing the US today to drastic Soviet republics doesn't really help the conversation - these far-off hypothetical comparisons make it easier for other people to dismiss your argument.
These are not differences, these are similarities. Think about it for a second. Soviets had you register with the police where you were going, because there was no centralised database with that information. Today, the US government achieves exactly same result, but without making you go to the police station to register. Wherever you go, they can access your location on your phone, read your licence plates with street cameras,and do automatic face recognition in many cities. Do you see how this is a similarity, rather than a difference now?
The same with passports - they don't need to hold on to your passports, because they can just block you from going out of the country using a centralised system. Also, they can block you from coming back to US by placing you on a no-fly list, without any explanation - making you take a very long and expensive ship journey.
Telephones - soviets would openly monitor your phone calls. US government does it from hiding, not telling you that you might be wiretapped. Again, different method = same result.
Letters and Parcels - only letters are protected, parcels can be opened at anytime by any postal office worker, if they have a "reasonable" reason to.
Censorship - not done openly in the US, but again - there is no need for it. They keep everything you write saved for future use, so even though you can write whatever you want on your blog, it can still be used to prosecute you. It effectively is censorship in my opinion, even if it's not censorship per se.
They aren't similarities. The fundamental goal is different.
Registering where you're going, warnings that the phone call is being recorded, those things are about FEAR. It's deliberately letting you know that the government is in the driver's seat and you shouldn't even get started with counter-revolutionary thoughts. The information gathering is secondary.
Tiananmen square has probably more than 1 video camera per square foot. That's not to get better footage, it's to send message.
There might be a day when the US is the same, and this might even be a critical moment on the way to that day, but right now the fact that the US is trying to hide it's intel capabilities as opposed to rubbing them in your face makes them categorically different.
actually, I think you are incorrect. Comparisons of today versus yesterday with a thought about where we want to be tomorrow.
Velvet glove or iron fist, both are the controlling hand; but it is good to acknowledge that we are not completely in a locked down police state- yet. However, these are the exact canaries we should look for in our own society.
I do find the need to call and notify Fraud Detection in order to have resources while traveling a bit congruous to the Soviet style travel restrictions.
This is a false equivalence. Just the fact that the US government feels compelled to hide a program like PRISM is a strong indication that there is a big difference between the Russian government and the US government (and certainly the Soviet government).
True only if chattel slavery were the only kind of slavery.
The ruling masters treat those who work "at will for pay" like livestock when the masters demand taxes, threatening violence upon those who withhold the protection money. The livestock are being milked with every paycheck.
We definitely do not live in a system of chattel slavery, but that's only because chattel slavery is so much less efficient (for the masters) than farming those who are willing to repeat the mantra that we "are not being enslaved."
"Chattel slavery"...I'm sorry, but what are you on about?
This comparison doesn't reflect the current state of affairs in the United States.
Yeah, the NSA did some shitty things that circumnavigated loopholes in the Constitution.
But you still don't realize how good you have it. Being in a Western country like the United States is spectacularly better than living conditions on many other entire continents, and sometimes many countries on others.
I agree we should fight the NSA on this. No doubt about this. But you're not convincing everyone of your point by comparing journalists and citizens to "chattel slaves"...come on now.
Journalists are still afford a lot of protections, and incidents like this leak in the United States are still outliers.
The very fact that this leak is an outrage, that we are not desensitized to this news, demonstrates the state of our society. We are afraid of it devolving, but it is presently many tiers above your implied quality of life.
There is no slavery.
There is virtually no indentured slavery, named or in practice.
We still have a variety of liberties the KGB never expected themselves to have, let alone fought for.
We are not anything like chattel slavery. It weakens your argument to try to argue otherwise.
I think you are being a bit disingenuous in this response, finish the quote:
> We definitely do not live in a system of chattel slavery, but that's only because chattel slavery is so much less efficient..
This statement makes it sound like you start from the position that we would live in a system of chattel slavery if not for its lack of efficiency then you are comparing what you deem the "current form of slavery" to chattel slavery. You are, to my reading of your whole comment, specifically saying that the slavery you allege we currently labor under is as bad or worse than chattel slavery.
Money quote: "Oddo also said that workers were provided enough water, but the prisoners didn't sip it slowly enough."
Also for a sense of scope http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisoner... including this irrelevant but salacious detail: 'In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace "Made in Honduras" labels on garments with "Made in the USA."'
You know, when you guys speak in literal terms of "chattel slavery" and "masters" it becomes very hard to take any point you're making seriously. Get some perspective, or go full Godwin and compare everything to Hitler and the Holocaust.
Did npongratz ninja-edit or did you and the other reply not actually read the comment? The post you are replying to specifically says that it's not talking about "chattel slavery" when it refers to the current system as slavery.
I can't see how. Having visited several communist counties, and being married to someone that grew up in one, the previous comment doesn't resemble any of them in the slightest.
To each according to his need, from each according to his ability. That's communism and that's what the parent was talking about.
Now, the countries you visited are probably quite a bit off from the above even though they call themselves communist, but the above most certain is communism. Speaking of visiting, I lived in one for a very long time, does that make me more qualified than you to speak on the subject?
If you're going to stand for something, at the very least identify it properly.
The only form of arguably existing slavery in the entire United States is the lack of social mobility exacerbated by a lack of education in lower income classes, which becomes both a self-fulfilling prophecy and a cycle.
Other than that - and I note slavery would be a passionate, emphatic term for that, not anything close to a literal one - there is no slavery and there are no slave masters in the United States.
I'm not singling you out, because others are doing this, but it vastly weakens your point to make statements like that. Journalists are allowed to pursue stories and leads aggressively and practice freedom of speech.
Although this is off topic, I'd argue that there are indeed literal slave masters in the United States today, and they are the private prison owners that profit off convict laborers that are forced to work and earn orders of magnitude less wages than minimum wage.
While this is off topic from the NSA story, and the article I'm linking to is from 2009, the conditions for tomato pickers in Florida could be described as slavery with slave masters in the United States. I don't believe things have gotten substantially better for them.
I agree with you that the United States should not be engaging in mass surveillance, and there needs to be reform and checks on the power. And I agree with you that we'll repeat history if we're not wary.
But I don't think this is evidence of the United States "sliding" into a soviet state. I may be wrong in my interpretation of your comment, but that seems to be your overall warning.
I believe that the people of the United States are a good barometer of our democratic health. We might not vote as much as we (arguably) should, but the shock and outrage on such a nearly universal scale illustrates that the government still doesn't have absolute, corrupt power.
The fact that this was hidden and not designed as a deterrant also demonstrates to me that the United States is still, if not consciously, afraid of the power of its people. I can't say that it will last indefinitely, but at the moment, I believe the people are doing a good job of showing that this is not okay and we aren't moving towards people disappearing in the night and needing to be cleared for travel.
I wasn't trying to suggest in my comment that US is slipping into a soviet state.
However, I think it can remain democratic and anti-socialist, but still use surveillance methods against its citizens that would be a Stalin's wet dream.
And you might not be moving towards clearing people for travel - but at the same time, you don't need to. If you have information where everyone is and what everyone is doing, it achieves exact same result, doesn't it? Communist government would keep your passport to stop you from leaving - but nowadays governments can do that even if they let you keep your passport. Boarder agents have access to a central database, and a single note there can stop you from leaving the country forever. US government can effectively exile its own citizens by placing them on the no-fly lists while they are abroad,and obviously no one will ever tell you why you ended up on one. US might not be literally using the same methods Soviets did, but if you think about it, the final results are frighteningly similar.
And yes, I am glad that the general populace is NOT happy with the government's actions and that there is an uproar against them. There is still hope. But I find it absolutely sickening how US is presenting itself as a "bastion of freedom" even though it still has places like guantanamo, or where journalists are forbidden from writing about some cases, under the threat of spending several years in prison. This is not how a free country should look like.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. [...] There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
It may help to remember here that Ayn Rand wrote that stuff as an ex-citizen of a country with a communist regime that employed exactly those tactics against their citizens, I highly doubt that she intended or foresaw those words to be used against the rulers of the country that she chose to live in.
But then, she also wrote Atlas Shrugged as a kind of warning, with the hope that we would not become the kind of regime she fled. The OP is exactly apropos.
The context you've mentioned is important. I'm not a fan of Rand's overall philosophy (sympathetic to parts of it, perhaps, but that's not terribly important), but surely one can appreciate this quote in the appropriate context, even if they reject the greater body of her work.
That's not the way it works. I'll quote whoever I want, whenever I find their articulation of ideas interesting. It's intellectually bankrupt to ignore a person's ideas just because you don't like them.
Not sure what your rant against Rand has to to with the quote in this context? Whenever someone uses "alea iacta est" to make a point, it's usually not the case to discuss Julius Caesar.
Jeez, it took you all of three sentences to get "Self-centered philosophies" in there in your hate-on for the economic portion of Rand's philosophy.
This thread and the quote to which you responded are really about the creation of criminals by those in power through the manipulation of arbitrary law.
This is not Ayn Rand quote per se. In a sense that was public secret for anyone living in Eastern Europe at the time - got a few relatives that made a few trips to the concentration camps. That if you got authorities attention there would be more than enough crimes on which to convict you.
The humor in your reply is that many non-Randians -- especially people in government -- see themselves as essential to society, and give themselves additional power and prestige on that basis.
"And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt." —Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27.
Just think, a child who gets their first smartphone today, will have their entire phone history recorded until death. Their geolocation saved. Their email saved. All their financial transactions. All their friends and family will be known. Every intercontact in society. Where they shop, eat, etc. Who they date.
I mean why would the NSA ever delete it? They can just get taxpayers to fund more and more storage.
I am also starting to wonder about the new requirement to digitize all medical records and how many contractors will have access to that as well and when all the databases will be allowed to intersect in the name of "security".
But I suspect the NSA doesn't know how many guns you own. That alone is somehow seen as a violation of your rights.
I work with a Muslim from Yemen at an investment bank. He's as American as anyone I know but be recently got a gun permit and got a visit from the FBI about a week later. They wanted to know if he felt threatened, if there were problems at his Mosque, why he wanted a gun, if there was anyone at his Mosque who used hate speech, etc.
Something tells me he government knows if you have a gun.
The ATF form 4473 (purchase record) is a paper record that gets stored at the local gun shop until they go out of business (upon which they all get sent to the ATF for scanning). It records the model, serial #, purchaser, etc. However, when you make a purchase the national instant background check (NICS) people do a national records search (to see if you're a felon, or other class of person not permitted to own a gun). The systems they query record who ask for information (security audit records, basically) so in those systems it will show that a NICS check was performed. Thus tying together the info that John Q. Public just bought a gun of some type.
At the state & local level, several states require you to get a Firearm Owners ID (FOID) or purchase permit. The background checks for these are also an indicator that John Q. Public is a (probable) gun owner.
Hmm, well "muslim" isn't a nationality, it's a religion almost as big as christianity. is he an American citizen?
Because otherwise that is profiling. They don't show up and ask others if there is any problems at their church or anyone using hate speech about the government at the church.
More likely, the guy at the gun store called the "See something, say something" number.
Or your friend (or someone with a similar name) is on a list. A friend of mine with a very common name (think John Smith) had a similar experience after getting a license from a local jurisdiction.
I can say with certainty that as of 6 years ago, 4473 checks were not retained in any way by the ATF or the federal government.
There are local copies of the paperwork retained the FFL in which the sale took place, and those are required to be kept for a period of time and, should the FFL ever close shop, those records are shipped to the ATF, possibly revealing record data to them, but at least at the point of the NICS check, the data is not retained at all.
> I can say with certainty that as of 6 years ago, 4473 checks were not retained in any way by the ATF or the federal government.
To clarify, are you saying that no government entity retains either the 4473 or the NICS check records, or are you only speaking about the 4473 itself?
4473 and e-4473 (which both effectively follow the same process).
That said, the NICS system is managed and run by the FBI, so I can't speak authoritatively there. In dealing with them regarding it though, the impression I got from their tech team was that it wasn't storing anything past receipt acknowledgement, and even where it stored data, the implication was that it only stored the metadata there as well, uniquely identified by the NICS transaction ID.
So, it's possible for them to hold the NICS check without holding the person data. NICS is identified by a transaction ID and, at least as I understood it (NICS is an FBI system, so we had limited insight from the ATF, and as a contractor, I had possibly less insight than an ATF agent proper), the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is purged from the NICS check upon completion of the check.
There might be, and probably is (at least) a record of the transactions that were processed and the result of the transaction. Also, as I understand it, if the check fails (hence, no gun is disbursed), then the PII may be held longer to aid potential investigations.
From the ATF's perspective though, PII definitely isn't kept, or at least wasn't as of 6 years ago. I honestly don't remember the specs on failed checks. I don't think that it did, but that isn't to say that if they are prepping for an investigation of an FFL that they couldn't requery the FBI for more thorough NICS records than what they hold in their own systems.
That's good information on the NICS records. It would seem, though, that given the information in the NICS check record and information attainable from a mandatory bound book inspection that the end result would be the personally identifying information of the transferee. It is good, at least, that this would necessarily be a manual process.
I've always thought that the most querulous position the ATF has taken was on FFL closure. If an FFL closes up shop for any reason, they must ship all their records to the ATF.
I don't have any personal insight into what happens to them after that, but it seems like at least a sparse, time-delayed registry could be built from those records... which is perhaps the best kind of registry as private sales would skew the data substantially.
I've become more bearish about the idea of electronic medical records. The ability for a bureaucracy to keep those safe seems far, far off in the future, no matter what technology advances come through.
And guns: well, if you're pro-gun-control, this mindset (justified or not) should help you understand why the NRA is so passionately against gun registration of any kind.
In terms of the NSA: I don't think they care much for your felony record -- that is, the ones you've actually been convicted for -- they're more concerned about pre-felonies, of course. For the average citizen, though, the persistence of criminal history is going to be felt in more everyday situations, such as job searches and landlord background checks.
If I ever have a child, he or she is going to have a name like "Pat Smith", regardless of my or the mother's last name.
Cars are typically much more expensive than guns and we equate car thievery today to cattle thievery of yesterday - we take it quite personally.
Registering a car is simply an excuse for the government to charge you money to use your vehicle. Really, it doesn't reduce vehicle crime, although it does make stealing cars tougher. But you wouldn't need to charge a registration fee for that.
Also, guns have serial numbers like cars. If yours is stolen, hopefully you wrote down the serial so that if the cops ever find it it will be returned to you (unless used in a violent crime, and then I think you are just SOL).
A gun registry wouldn't reduce crime because criminals don't use their guns, they are either stolen or straw purchases. Otherwise, with violent crimes of passion that utilize guns it's very clear cut where the weapon comes from.
Because a car isn't as valuable tool when it comes to protecting yourself from tyranny (in the NRA's opinion). The NRA's point is that the government should be incapable of immediately identifying which citizens would be capable of forcibly resisting it, for the protection of those citizens who can resist (so that they aren't singled out) and those who can't (so that the government doesn't just pick easy targets).
Yeah, I'm not trying to point out hypocrisy or anything silly like that. Still, it does seem at odds. Certainly, if I were running an oppressive government in the US, the list of NRA members would be top priority.
You only have to register your car if you plan to drive in on public roads. Most gun registration proposals would require registration whether or not you were using the gun on public lands. You already have to have a hunting permit to hunt on public lands (or to take publicly owned wildlife on private land) in most states. The purpose behind gun registration is very different.
If you don't think gun registries would be abused in the US- look at the State of Missouri recently leaking its CCW database to the IRS and even worse- look at what happened in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in Louisianna, where guns were stolen by armed members of the military from law-abiding citizens.
I've seen that "public roads" thing mentioned a lot. In practice, I don't see how it matters: to a very good approximation, nobody buys a car not to drive it on public roads.
Yes, that is very much true. That is why I outlined other examples to illustrate the differences- intent and effect of the two systems are very different.
What is so bad about realizing that a group you've considered a bunch of crazies -- which perhaps was an inherited or taught viewpoint -- might actually be right about something?
You have no obligation to buy a belt-fed machine gun in the wake of your realization. Just understand that REAL government has a little more complexity -- and lower ethical standards -- than what you were told in Civics class.
"But I suspect the NSA doesn't know how many guns you own. That alone is somehow seen as a violation of your rights"
Have you purchased a firearm in the US from a licensed dealer recently? There's paper/digital record of most firearm purchase in most cases, with a few exceptions. There's a cursory background check ran too.
(In the case of most US citizens the government doesn't care about small arms. Most are used for sporting, hunting or deterrence.)
I'm not so sure that most US firearm purchases are recorded.
In many US states, direct private gun sales are perfectly legal. For instance, a Pennsylvania resident can directly sell (most) guns to another PA resident. They don't need to run background checks, keep records, or submit forms to the government. As long as the buyer doesn't know that the seller is a prohibited person (convicted/indicted felon, etc), it's kosher.
Because these sales aren't documented or reported, it's harder to count them. There are estimates, but I can't find anything that seems reliable. I did find an interesting article that discusses this issue at length, though:
Anecdotally, I know dozens of people who've collectively purchased many, many guns through private sales. Also, take a peek at Armslist.com, GunBroker.com, GunAuction.com, GunsAmerica.com, and similar sites.
I just wanted to clarify: private sales are person-to-person and cannot include any sort of shipment.
Online sales such as all the sites you listed are required by Federal law to only ship to a licensed Federal Firearms License holder who in turn may only transfer to customers after a NICS check. So, online sales are as cumbersome as in-store purchases.
Anything with a NICS check or credit card purchase is potentially trackable.
Also, with a gun registry [proposed in various places], sufficiently smart data mining, and fast processing, it may be possible to detect an ammunition purchase [via credit card] in a caliber in which the buyer supposedly doesn't have a registered firearm.
The dealer maintains their own record but those are not handed over to the government and it is not possible to do lookups by a person's name, only by serial number. So police can trace ownership history of a specific weapon, by going from dealer to dealer - until it has entered the private market - but they cannot get a list of everyone that owns a weapon.
Not true. If the purchase is from an actual dealer with a Federal Firearms License then a 4473 (ATF form) must be filled out and an accompanying background check will be made. If the purchase is between two non-dealers then there is no requirement in many states for a background check or paperwork, so long as both are residents of the same state the transaction occurs in.
However, all new guns are (since 1968) purchased from a licensed dealer, so there is always the beginning of a paper trail. How far that goes before it gets muddled in private sales is another matter.
I believe it should be noted that federal law requires an FFL for anybody engaged in a "primary business" of selling guns. There's no bright line, here. People who regularly sell guns (at gun shows, or otherwise) but don't hold FFLs are playing with fire, if the ATF decides to take an interest in them.
> However, all new guns are (since 1968) purchased from a licensed dealer, so there is always the beginning of a paper trail.
My understanding is that there is technically an exception to this where you can manufacture your own firearms so long as you stay under the yearly limit and do not manufacture them with the intent of distributing them. Once you have done so, you can then distribute them as a private citizen.
That reads weird because the legality of distributing it depends on if you can assert that distribution was not your intent when you made it. This means this is probably not a very practical exception, as it potentially involves you arguing something rather nebulous in court.
Not true. If they are a dealer, then paperwork is required.
If they are a private individual (not in the business of selling firearms) then yes. But that's no different than buying a used deer rifle from your neighbor.
Anyone who's had their company try to get rid of them is keenly aware of this on a micro scale.
Its amazing how many weird rules and regulations you can suddenly find yourself afoul of once somebody high up enough has it in for you ... apparently this is true on a macro level (country/government) too.
I read that book when it came out. The title is sensationalist garbage -- the book shows how some people get snared by some fairly stupid federal laws and have their lives messed up by willfully malicious prosecution, which isn't good, of course, but nowhere does the author demonstrate how an average person commits three felonies in a YEAR, or in a LIFETIME, let alone in a day.
Have you ever not paid sales tax to your state, on an item you purchased tax-free online? That's felony tax evasion when the amount is high enough; varies by state.
There was a soviet saying - "Give me a person, I'll find you an article/a paragraph". Meaning - for any person, finding a law that the person breaks is just a matter of time and resources.
It's interesting to see Americans discover this...
It's not new to Americans either, despite how stupid we're considered by the rest of the world. There's been news articles noting the same issues with the complexity of the legal code since even before 9/11.
Any student of the law has undoubtedly been aware for decades prior, when they had to research volume after volume of legal decisions and statutory code to establish what precedent (if any) to use in helping decide a later case, and what laws (if any) applied.
I'm not so convinced Nacchio is an innocent victim. And I also find it rich that a former telecom CEO guilty of numerous financial crimes is being held up as an example of targeted political persecution using frivolous laws. Insider trading is not the type of crime you commit unknowingly. Has anyone even refuted his guilt convincingly? That is a serious crime and also one with a clear paper trail. If he did it, there would have been no need to frame him for defying the NSA; the SEC would have got him soon enough anyway.
Insider trading is only a crime when people want to find you guilty of a crime. That's why congresscritters are not prosecutable for insider trading. Insider trading is the entire point of trading, you wouldn't make any money if everyone had the same information.
Perhaps those with the right type of political power/influence are able to shield their trading activity from SEC scrutiny. But trying to use this guy as an example of the "You commit three felonies a day" argument? Really?
Do we all commit three felonies a day unknowingly? Maybe. But the suggestion that tens of millions of dollars in insider trading falls into that category, is flat-out demented.
No, you're missing the point. It's not about obscuring anything from SEC scrutiny. The SEC sees everything that is going on. You don't even have to have used insider knowledge to be tagged with insider trading; the SEC says that it's enough to have had access to insider information to be guilty of insider trading. It does nothing about it because it would render Wall Street moot. Insider trading is so vaguely defined and broadly applied that it is a rule meant to be broken so they have something to blackmail you over when they decide they want to shove you around over something else.
It was only considered insider trading because the gov't cancelled all of the contracts in retribution and then claimed that he sold knowing they would cancel the contracts and tank the stock. Can't they make this claim of any company that they do business with? Wait to an insider makes a sale, and then cancel their gov't contracts and arrest for insider trading.
The first one is asking what the three felonies are. You see, when you were born your parents were sent a National Security Letter (NSL) by the government that stated you can never ask about the three felonies. Unfortunately, the NSL came with a gag order, so your parents never told you. But you definitely shouldn't ask what the three felonies are.
The second felony is owning a computer which can be used to circumvent content protection mechanisms. You can address this by purchasing a fixed-function device which cannot be used to circumvent content protection. I suggest an etch-a-sketch.
Silverglate talks about a number of cases, some of which have been addressed either before the book was written or after, but the overall problem is still out there.
For example, see the honest services fraud charges against Jeff Skilling (of Enron fame), on the idea that anything dishonest any corporate executive might do would be depriving the corporation of honest services. Now the Supreme Court reversed Skilling's conviction on the grounds that this was just too vague and that honest services fraud was limited to kickback schemes and the like.
However consider many more:
Lori Drew was prosecuted for unauthorized access to computer servers for violating the terms of service of MySpace (iirc). The subsequent directed verdict of acquittal (after the jury convicted) however did not really eliminate the possibility of ToS violations turning into federal felonies. This was not covered in the book but it is worth noting.
Many of the examples in the books are profession-related. Silverglate goes into detail on the Hurwitz narcotics case where a doctor who operated in line with emerging best practices for chronic pain management was tried and convicted of drug trafficking on the grounds that he had statistical knowledge of the likelihood that at patients might resell the drugs on the street. Hurwitz's conviction was later vacated, but they tried him and convicted him again of a smaller set of charges.
He goes also into medical billing disputes (I have family members who have been on the losing side of these regarding the government and can attest that these are still significant issues).
Another case he does not cover is the Joe Naccio case (covered in the link).
Another case he does not cover was that of my mother's uncle, who they accused of purjury for claiming never to have been a Communist, when their evidence of his lying was that he was legally representing the Communist Party USA and others as a lawyer. They lost that case but came back one tax issue after another until they found something to stick.
There are cases after cases to those of us who follow these things. It is a systemic problem.
Keep in mind that under some of these theories of law, checking Hacker News from work when you should be working is a federal felony, and if not honest services fraud, certainly something they could try you with for wire fraud (it is financial in that you are billing your employer for your time!). Moreover if you check a site for non-work purposes which has a note in the ToS which says that unlawful use is prohibited, then you have committed felony computer trespass (because you "accessed" their servers in excess of authorization provided by the ToS in pursuit of criminal or tortuous ends).
TL;DR: What felonies you commit are unimportant. If they want to, they will find something.
You're probably guilty of having violated the Lacey Act (16 USC §3370-3378) at some point in your life.
It is unlawful for any person to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire,
possess, or purchase any fish, wildlife, or plant taken, possessed, transported, or
sold in violation of any Federal, State, foreign, or Indian tribal law, treaty, or
regulation.
What's interesting is that, under the Lacey Act, if possession of a given substance is illegal anywhere (even in another country whose laws we do not respect), then you are guilty of it. For example, if you've ever held a piece of ivory, and ivory harvesting is illegal in Madagascar, then you have violated the Lacey Act. If you've ever eaten a small lobster that was perfectly legal where you ate it, but would have violated fishing code in Maine for being too small, you've violated the Lacey Act.
Rereading it now, I see that you are correct. For some reason or another, I originally read it to mean that only the civil forfeiture provisions were strict liability.
So do I. But the point is that these felonies are largely a product of trying to stretch other laws to cover behavior none of us would consider illegal.
However, the big one I would look at in current times for most people is violating web site terms of service.
My point is that the mentality is "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
Part of the point is you aren't supposed to know, otherwise you'll be able to stop doing them and the authorities will lose their potential future leverage.
Another way to look at it is you aren't, but should you come to the right peoples attention, they'll figure out how to bend the rules enough so that you are.
No way of really knowing until laws are rolled back, simplified, and followed both from within the confines of the letter of the law and the spirit thereof.
The CFAA is probably a good place to start, since its concept of a "protected computer" essentially covers every computer on the internet, and its definition of authorized/unauthorized access is quite vague, and so left open to interpretation through case law. And there haven't been so many cases, so the precedent on many things is unclear.
Try (a)(2)(C) on for size. If you have a jailbroken phone, its manufacturer might claim that you have unauthorized access to information on a protected computer, even if you are its owner (that's exactly what Sony argued against George Hotz, and they settled out of court, so we'll never know what the courts would have said about that argument). If you have any computer in your house that you modified in a way the manufacturer did not authorize, similar arguments may apply.
Without knowing what you do, it's impossible to say. Did you have sex before the age of 18? You've committed statutory rape. You've probably violated copyright many times. You've probably violated the computer access law many times (forget name but violate a eula/TOS and you are in violation). Ever sell anything or make any money (say a bet between friends) and not report it on your tax return?
The book's ridiculous claim is that you commit three felonies per day? So to rephrase your question, you should have asked "how many times per day do you travel back in time to commit statutory rape?"
Your examples aren't very strong anyway.
Having sex before the age of 18 is usually not statutory rape, if the person you're having sex with is also under 18.
Very few copyright violations meet the standard for criminal charges. Casual copyright violation is not a felony.
You don't have to report anything on your tax return when you sell personal items for less than you originally paid for them. And not all tax code violations are felonies anyway.
The somewhat dramatic "three felonies a day" mostly boil down to some variant of "Honest Services Fraud". Commonly cited examples include calling in sick without being sick
It's also very easy to trivially commit wire fraud.
Indeed, if you check facebook when you claim to be sick and you are not sick, you are billing your employer, so calling in sick is wire fraud and checking facebook (if their ToS bans use for unlawful purposes) is unauthroized access to a protected computer system in furtherance of another crime (and therefore a felony).
Sometimes I get a whiff of nostalgia from posts like this. As if everything was great back in the good old days, where the police weren't able to hassle you, when laws were fair and simple.
Of course that was only if you were a white anglo cis straight christian. Anyone who didn't fit that was able to be prosecuted/killed/oppressed/jailed. But if we pretend those people don't exist, then everything was great in the past.
>Sometimes I get a whiff of nostalgia from posts like this. As if everything was great back in the good old days, where the police weren't able to hassle you, when laws were fair and simple.
People keep repeating this reasoning. I can't understand why.
"Everything" doesn't have to have been "better in the old days", and nobody, except strawmen, argue that.
But SOME aspects of the old days, e.g pertaining to LESS fucking SURVEILLANCE, were. That's enough to be angry about and want to reverse course on that particular front.
>Of course that was only if you were a white anglo cis straight christian.
Which is totally beside the point.
Did somebody argue here that slavery was good? No, people just argue that modern surveillance (and legal-code-overload) is bad.
Not to mention that surveillance today is bad for everyone: "white anglo cis straight christians", homosexuals, blacks, and what have you.
> But SOME aspects of the old days, e.g pertaining to LESS fucking SURVEILLANCE, were. That's enough to be angry about and want to reverse course on that particular front.
> Did somebody argue here that slavery was good? No, people just argue that modern surveillance (and legal-code-overload) is bad.
Which is true but a little myopic. Until the Warren court decided that wiretapping required a warrant, law enforcement could surveil your communications at any time for any reason. For the individual the legal situation is much better now, in spite of the obvious erosions of protection and regressions, than they were "back in the day."
>Which is true but a little myopic. Until the Warren court decided that wiretapping required a warrant, law enforcement could surveil your communications at any time for any reason.
Only they couldn't do 1/100 of what they can now. Even wiretapping a single person required a few days work, people listening, unwieldy tape machines to record and replay it, etc. No AVR with stop words, not automatic routing, no DSP etc.
Not to mention that people didn't share 1/100 of what they do now over then snail mail and telephone.
Pragmatically, logistically, and by the norms of the era, only few people were eavesdropped on. Communists, politicians, industrialists, journalists, etc. Now it's everybody.
>For the individual the legal situation is much better now, in spite of the obvious erosions of protection and regressions, than they were "back in the day."
How is it better? The individual can be crashed now under the Patriot Act, various child porn laws, and whatever they can come up with. That a few laws also pay lip service to individual privacy I wouldn't count much on.
> Only they couldn't do 1/100 of what they can now.
Again, true but rather beside the point. I want the limits on intrusive government power to be constitutional, not technological.
> How is it better?
There's a lot that can be said about this, but short answer: a lot of the things they're doing are (thanks to the Warren court era's findings regarding civil liberties which I mentioned) actually unconstitutional under the law. There's a reason why they keep these programs so secret and it's not that they don't want "the terrorists" to know that we can listen to their phone conversations. It's because they know they are, to be generous, pushing the envelope of what is legal.
I see a lot of hopelessness regarding these topics right now but there shouldn't be. If people keep shining light on these secret programs, there will be reform.
There was lots of government surveillance and invasion of privacy of (say) gay men back in the "good old days". Maybe it's just because the white anglo christians are affected by government surveillance and intrusion that's new?
My point isn't "this old thing was bad", my point was "this thing has been happening to lots of people before, now it's happening to everyone".
>There was lots of government surveillance and invasion of privacy of (say) gay men back in the "good old days". Maybe it's just because the white anglo christians are affected by government surveillance and intrusion that's new?
My point isn't "this old thing was bad", my point was "this thing has been happening to lots of people before, now it's happening to everyone".*
For one, if it happened to "lots" (in reality: far fewer) and now is happening to "everyone", this extension of reach automatically makes it far worse.
Second, even considering a single target person, the breadth of this, the automation, the easiness, and the retrieval and cross-search capabilities, make it several orders of magnitude worse than what was happening to people before.
Compared to the breadth, scope and capabilities of modern surveillance, J.E. Hoover was a total amateur.
Also "government surveillance" of "gay men"? When? For who? A few prominent figures people wanted to blackmail?
Also "government surveillance" of "gay men"? When? For who? A few prominent figures people wanted to blackmail?
Police, based on where they socialized. The modern gay rights movement started in the USA with the Stonewall riots, when LGBT people fought back & rioted after yet another police raid of where gay & trans people congreated.
Of course that was only if you were a white anglo cis straight christian.
I always find this line to be the lead-in for a false dichotomy. Either we have this big overpowering government with tentacles into all our lives or we have slavery.
We could instead maintain our sense of respect for all people of all races while also respecting the individual and the civil society enough to allow it to function without the iron fist of government.
Not new, such has been the case for most of human history.
An honest man is most able to live in the US without being harassed or condemned, more so than at any other time in history.
I'm not saying we're done, or that it can't still be bad because it's better than it was, but it's worth remembering that this isn't a solved problem that we're just "too stupid/lazy/greedy/corrupt" to fix. I'd even go so far as to argue that it's human nature to build governments where this is true, and it will never not be true.
A critical part of our justice system is the discretion of those who enforce, legislate, and interpret our laws. You can't pretend like laws exist outside of human (read: flawed) implementation, and I feel that this is more severely perpetrated by those in STEM fields because they're used to the rigor that comes with such disciplines whereas the law is a fluid and changing beast.
A state that monitors without limits is dangerous for several reasons. Mainly because those who watch may or may not alter its ethics, for example, for personal gain. Someone with access to data can fuck another. A typical example would be a company, which is surveilled and they know all their movements, communications, contracts and any possible information that a government can sell to competitors or people who pay for this information.
Amen to these problems will also be those, as noted in this article, the issue of being "possible guilty" all the time is just plainly sick.
Other than refusing to consent to letting the NSA wiretap your customers, what 'innocent' actions can be viewed as felonies? I didn't see any specific examples which applied to everyday life in the article.
Edit: Oh, and we already had massive surveillance back then. If you wanted to travel out of your town - you had to register that fact with the nearest police department. Wanted to travel abroad - had to apply for a passport, which was only issued for a strict number of days and had to be returned upon return. If you were placing a phone call, it would always start with a warning "This call is being monitored. This call is being monitored". The post office would open your parcels and letters. There was book censorship on a massive scale. What the US government is doing has already happened. "Those who don't remember history are bound to live through it again".