Live data from Hacker News

The entire US Code is now online in XML

uscodebeta.house.gov

151–160 of 244 posts

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#151

Caveat for for many of us overly rational thinkers: the powers that be deliberately are allowed to 'interpret' this code nondeterministically by many different means including its 'spirit,' admissibility of relevant information, manipulation of venue and participants, apparently even extrajudicial proceedings lately. In short, that allows a lawyer to answer almost any question with "it depends," and start billing.

It doesn't matter as much as you say. The fact is, at the very least we can now know better where the fenceposts are, and this will have the undeniable effect of creating a more educated citizenry. A secondary effect is that motivated people can now create tools that reveal ways in which legislators are positioned in relation to those fence posts, and why their interpretations (such as they may be rationalized in accordance with your observation regarding law enforcement) are positioned where they are.

Perhaps most importantly, this will serve to make the law shallower. Currently, many laws are passed with large parts in reference to other laws, definitions from 400 pages elsewhere in the text (themselves with referential connections to disparate locations), and providing a way to analyze the law programmatically will have inevitable analytical benefits that allow citizens to know exactly how the sausage is made, whose farm the animals are coming from, and how it's been spiced.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#152
post #113
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we should have black and white laws, and unit tests for them. So someone could write a unit test for "Will this allow the NSA to create a secret court that is outside the rule of law?" or "Does accessing a university computer that has an open access policy allow for a sentence of 130 years?" I believe we'd see a lot simpler laws.

I think that's impossible with the current English language, and the fact that human beings disagree about lots of things.

A nice example of the problem with natural language is Treason Act 1351[1] (this is still current law in the UK!), written in Anglo-Norman. This is problematic, as our understanding of the language is incomplete. Notably, in this case, there is no agreed upon meaning of "pvablement" — it means either "provably" or "probably": a rather major difference come a court of law!

[1]: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw3Stat5/25/2

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#153

Caveat for for many of us overly rational thinkers: the powers that be deliberately are allowed to 'interpret' this code nondeterministically by many different means including its 'spirit,' admissibility of relevant information, manipulation of venue and participants, apparently even extrajudicial proceedings lately. In short, that allows a lawyer to answer almost any question with "it depends," and start billing.

The US legal system is case law. of course, that makes interpretation even more non-deterministic, as you depend on your $10,000/hr legal team to dig up favorable ruleings

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#154
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is, human beings don't blindly interpret and process laws as code. Human beings can honestly differ in their interpretation of a law, and the accepted interpretation can change over time. Some one, or some body, would have to decide what the 'proper' interpretation of these laws would be, and craft the 'unit tests' such that they correspond to the status quo. Then that someone or some body would…

Not really, as part of making the law - congress needs to go through all possible interpretations and rule out the ones not in the spirit of the law one by one. Then the law is defined by its tests. Is it okay to collect all XYZ data? Is it okay to collect anonymous XYZ data? Is it okay to collect XYZ data and hold it for X days? Is it okay to store and index but not search a collection of XYZ data? The law would end…

IANAL but I don't think it's possible to parse laws with that degree of certainty, or to determine an upper bound for "all possible interpretations," as different people can disagree as to what the "spirit" of a law is, or should be, or could be for the forseeable future.

The US Constitution is pretty straightforward, and people are still waging petty wars over individual words to wrest their idea of "intent" from the Founding Fathers. You're suggesting a formal procedure for legislation which might have some merit, but I don't think it would remove politics or human bias from the process.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#155

Caveat for for many of us overly rational thinkers: the powers that be deliberately are allowed to 'interpret' this code nondeterministically by many different means including its 'spirit,' admissibility of relevant information, manipulation of venue and participants, apparently even extrajudicial proceedings lately. In short, that allows a lawyer to answer almost any question with "it depends," and start billing.

If I used a LinkedList in my code instead of an Array will it speed things up?

It depends...

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#156
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is, human beings don't blindly interpret and process laws as code. Human beings can honestly differ in their interpretation of a law, and the accepted interpretation can change over time. Some one, or some body, would have to decide what the 'proper' interpretation of these laws would be, and craft the 'unit tests' such that they correspond to the status quo. Then that someone or some body would…

Not really, as part of making the law - congress needs to go through all possible interpretations and rule out the ones not in the spirit of the law one by one. Then the law is defined by its tests. Is it okay to collect all XYZ data? Is it okay to collect anonymous XYZ data? Is it okay to collect XYZ data and hold it for X days? Is it okay to store and index but not search a collection of XYZ data? The law would end…

> Is it okay to collect anonymous XYZ data? Anonymity is not binary.

- What lower level of anonymity is acceptable? Is 1 in 30 acceptable?

- What about edge cases where it becomes much lower? Say only one person in a small county has an account to a web service because it is largely targeted at people elsewhere?

- What about academic improvements that keep decreasing anonymity by improving understanding of collected data? What time limit would NSA get to update its systems in case of such improvements? What happens if the speed of academic improvements is larger than the speed of updates in NSA systems? Is the system scrapped right away?

I agree that formal definitions seem lucrative. But these aren't simplified mathematical static models that we are talking about.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#157
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make this sound like a bad thing. Would you really prefer "black and white" laws that leave zero room for flexibility or interpretation in light of a given situation?

When that black and white law is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. I'll go with yes. Alas, interpretation then falls to the definition and grammar of every part of said law.

What constitutes "establishment" of religion? Does this mean congress can make no law about what a teacher teaches (this will abridge their free speech, at least in a temporal sense)?

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia: "When sections are repealed, their text is deleted and replaced by a note summarizing what used to be there." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code#Treatment_o...

Imagine trying to keep track of this in paper form instead of digitally.

They've been doing exactly that for about 237 years.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#159
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law can be interpreted as a set of rules matched against an action in a particular context to determine whether said action is legal. Right now lots of people do this manually. Maybe computers can do it better. If computers can do it better, maybe people could focus on writing new laws and refactoring old ones instead of repeatedly interpreting old laws for each case.

Yup, legal code isn't that different from computer code where a judge is the interpreter and evidence is fed as input. If we could invent a computer interpreter that acts as a judge, laws and contracts being its code might make it obvious to lawyers why it doesn't make sense to allow code to be patented. Every time lawyers would write laws or contracts they would have to avoid using legal ideas that have already been…

You could also add in EDGAR data that touches the laws to make estimates on the way the judiciary would interpet a certain action. It could also be used to find loopholes, conviction-free zones near boundaries in the law that could be closed.

Re: The entire US Code is now online in XML

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, as part of making the law - congress needs to go through all possible interpretations and rule out the ones not in the spirit of the law one by one. Then the law is defined by its tests. Is it okay to collect all XYZ data? Is it okay to collect anonymous XYZ data? Is it okay to collect XYZ data and hold it for X days? Is it okay to store and index but not search a collection of XYZ data? The law would end…

> Is it okay to collect anonymous XYZ data? Anonymity is not binary. - What lower level of anonymity is acceptable? Is 1 in 30 acceptable? - What about edge cases where it becomes much lower? Say only one person in a small county has an account to a web service because it is largely targeted at people elsewhere? - What about academic improvements that keep decreasing anonymity by improving understanding of collected…

Right, those are exactly the questions that need to be asked, discussed before implementation, and then included in the law if it passes.

What meta-data is truly anonymous and what is not? Is the agency permitted to built a tool to de-anonymize data based on academic research, or is the data in some ways protected against these tools?

They may get to the end of this process and in this instance find that such a government tool, even based on anonymous data is uncontainable, and should not be implemented. If you just grant blanket power and rely upon a courts interpretation of your two paragraph scribble to straighten things out, the intent of the law can be completely lost.

Post reply on HN