Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You commit three felonies a day

kottke.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 172 posts

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#51

Post by bmelton »

300bps wrote: post #21
ck2 wrote: post #5

And the felony history never goes away now. 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 taxp…

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.

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.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#52

Post by coldtea »

rmc wrote: post #41
coldtea wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fuc…

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?

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#53

Post by fexl »

reneherse wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's right, and it was set in America.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#56

Post by bmelton »

Kiro wrote: post #20
einhverfr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

No, I want to know what felonies I commit.

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.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#57

Post by thebooktocome »

xradionut wrote: post #40
ck2 wrote: post #5

And the felony history never goes away now. 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 taxp…

"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 fo…

You can purchase firearms for cash from many dealers (at gun shows) without either a background check or a paper trail.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#59

Post by yardie »

ccera wrote: post #50

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.

3 misdemeanors gets you a felony so highly likely you've committed a felony and don't even know it.

Re: You commit three felonies a day

#60

Post by justin66 »

coldtea wrote: post #35
rmc wrote: post #23

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 p…

> 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 fuc…

> 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."

Post reply on HN