Entries about laws and legal matters.
You know, when I see things like this, I have to ask where these guys were when e-mail was the sole domain of us geeks. Does anyone else remember Operation Sundevil? Or the raid against Steve Jackson Games (makers of one of my favorite games in my late teens, Car Wars) around the same time? …
Continue reading ‘“Email protected by Fourth Amendment, says appeals court”’ »
I’m sure some of you have been following the Wikileaks news recently… how the founder and spokesperson for the organization, Julian Assange, has been arrested in England, over an accusation in Switzerland. There are reports, which I haven’t been able to confirm, that the US is trying to criminalize Wikileaks retroactively and get him extradited, …
Continue reading ‘“Silencing Wikileaks is silencing the press”’ »
I’ve been against wide-spread spy cameras on privacy principles, ever since I heard about plans for them a few years ago. Now it seems that my concerns are unfounded… there’s no incentive to install them in any new cities, and the existing ones will probably scrap them soon, as they discover the same thing.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This isn’t a perfect society, by a long shot, so those who have authority must be held accountable for exercising that authority responsibly. And the best way to do that is to give everyone — especially their superiors and the courts — the ability to see their behavior first-hand. If they …
Sometimes I think Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) is just throwing outrageous stuff out there on his blog, to provoke reactions. I can’t tell if this article, on getting rid of cash and making all financial transactions digital, is one of those though, or if he truly believes that it’s possible. It would offer …
To go along with my last entry on weird laws, here are another fifty. Sometimes you have to wonder what universe lawmakers actually come from. Apparently many of these are misinterpretations at the very least, and probably deliberate, but they’re funny anyway. I love a bit from BB’s comments: “Michigan: a slice of the deep …
Continue reading ‘“I’m Under Arrest for What? Fifty Bizarre U.S. Laws”’ »
Wow… it’s actually illegal to have an indoor bathtub in Virginia. That could explain a lot. 😉 (Disclaimer: I’m allowed to say that because I lived in Virginia for several years, and several of my beloved — and not so beloved — relatives still do.)
This is exactly why organizations like the Pirate Party or Wikileaks need to be kept around — because even if they espouse illegal or semilegal behaviors, or provide a safe haven for whistleblowers to air the proverbial dirty laundry, they act as a check to governments and the corporations that essentially run them. If they …
Continue reading ‘“Australian seniors ask Pirate Party for help in accessing right-to-die sites”’ »
I wonder how long it’ll be before this is featured in a CSI episode? I’m betting they’ll do it next season, probably with an application somewhere between highly implausible and scientifically ridiculous.
This is just ludicrous: The [Australian group] insists that the site should follow Australian law because, although the site is hosted in the US, with free speech protection, articles which can be read and downloaded in Australia are considered to have been published in Australia. It doesn’t take a genius to follow this thinking to …