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Identity theft is illegal. Rifling through mailboxes is illegal. Burglary is illegal. I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform an

by nkw 10y ago

Identity theft is illegal. Rifling through mailboxes is illegal. Burglary is illegal. I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. Especially for six months in federal prison.

kbenson 10y ago
So, is it okay to impersonate a police officer then? The USPS is a government institution, and how ur government often received and sends instructions and funds from its constituents. I don't want people impersonating mail carriers any more than I want them impersonating a police officer. Mail fraud is real, and abusing the mail for more nefarious means happens. [1][2] > I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. You don't generally get official correspondence from the IRS through UPS. I'm fine with protecting the mailcarrier uniform. There are government expectations associated with that uniform. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
- nkw 10y ago
  First, the statute we are discussing doesn't make it a crime to impersonate a postal carrier. It makes it a crime to "wear[] the uniform [...] prescribed by the Postal Service to be worn by letter carriers". I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier. Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal. I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
  - smhost 10y ago
    There's a sense in which simplifying laws merely passes the burden to the Executive Branch. It's far easier to prove that a person wore some federal uniform than it is to prove that they pretended to be a federal employee. Just imagine that you're the prosecutor and think about the difference in the amount of work you would have to do for this case. These are resources that can be used elsewhere, and as a citizen, I gladly and enthusiastically forfeit my right to dress as a mailman if it means that it will help reduce cases of fraud. I do like the idea of simple laws, though, and I hope that a future civilization may flourish under the Golden Rule as its only law.
    - baddox 10y ago
      The ease of the prosecution proving their cases is not a higher priority to me than the feasibility of an average citizens reading and understanding most laws.
      - smhost 10y ago
        As I see it, the government's only job is to protect its citizens, and anything that gets in the way of it doing its job is counterproductive. I agree that a best-informed populace probably must also be the best-protected, but I disagree that the solution is to limit all legislation to the eighth grade level of diction. Free legal aid as a constitutional right seems like a slightly more practical alternative to me.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier. I don't agree on any specific difference between dressing up and impersonating in general, as I'm not sure how you are defining the difference, but to my mind impersonation is likely hard to prove, and if the desire is to stop the behavior, preventing dressing up is a useful way to make sure the law is enforcable. I do agree there is a difference in importance between impersonating a police officer and impersonating a mail carrier, but in both cases I think the base reason is the same. To keep specific expectations and abilities granted to the individual as a government employee from being abused by others. > Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal. Because if something is routed through the mail system we have a record of it, and information regarding it's origin. If someone dresses up as a mail carrier and puts it in your mailbox, not only is that record lost, but likely nobody around will pay any attention. Some random person putting something in your mailbox may attract attention, if only because those around might think they are trying to steal mail. Which takes us to stealing mail It's harder to steal mail when you have no business in anyone else's mailbox because it's illegal. Neighbors seeing a stranger rifling through a mailbox may be likely to call thge person out or even call the police. Preventing people from impersonating a mail carrier is very useful here. It's worth noting that other carrier services are legally prevented from using your mailbox. Your mailbox/mail slot is considered federal property. There is thus a chain of custody when things are shipped through USPS, unless someone breaks the law. > I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects. Sure, those exist. I don't think this is a good case of that.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  You're describing a fraudulent behavior which is already covered by criminal laws related to fraud. If the goal is to aggressively double down on every single possible fraud case, where are the laws prohibiting dressing up as a forest ranger, environmental protection agent, President of the United States and various members of Congress (via those realistic-looking masks they sell before Halloween), USDA inspector, SEC controller, four-star Army general or any other government-related position of authority?
  - uxp 10y ago
    A lot of the "Why is X illegal if doing Z, which itself is X & Y, is also illegal" argument reminds me entirely of the software developer's fallacy in code reduction. I can easily re-engineer a core business application in a couple weeks. It'll do most of what the existing solution does, will be unit tested, and easily extendable. But, it won't cover all those edge cases we've all forgotten exist and that one exception that's required for client 2 who needs red buttons instead of blue buttons and remember that time we ran into the problem where the year-end report took 3 days to run, and locked up the weekly reports because new years eve landed on a Friday which made Justin stay in the office until 2AM trying to get the database back online? I'm not a law professor, or a lawyer, or in any way involved in law, but the similarities between a 200+ year old set of rules that govern our society and a legacy application that we can't simply turn off for 6 months why we re-engineer it to be "better, but does exactly the same thing" is frightening. We've got a piss poor track record as software developers being able to take on a massive refactor and not introduce more bugs, what the hell makes us think we can consolidate hundreds of thousands of edge cases in law and not miss a bunch of actually useful things?
    - photogrammetry 10y ago
      Which is why DJT's ideas are terrifying. He wants to take a machete to the forest of legislation that is our government, and he has practically no idea why any of these laws were put in place.
    - prostoalex 10y ago
      While a good point, on a case by case basis there're at least some redundancies that have been accummulated over the decades of lawmaking http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/bug-system http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/bug-system "In the U.S., responsibility for food safety is divided among fifteen federal agencies. The most important, in addition to the F.S.I.S., is the Food and Drug Administration, in the Department of Health and Human Services. In theory, the line between these two should be simple: the F.S.I.S. inspects meat and poultry; the F.D.A. covers everything else. In practice, that line is hopelessly blurred. Fish are the province of the F.D.A.—except catfish, which falls under the F.S.I.S. Frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the F.D.A., but frozen pizza with slices of pepperoni is monitored by the F.S.I.S. Bagel dogs are F.D.A.; corn dogs, F.S.I.S. The skin of a link sausage is F.D.A., but the meat inside is F.S.I.S. “The current structure is there not because it’s what serves the consumer best,” Elisabeth Hagen*, a former head of the F.S.I.S., told me. “It’s there because it’s the way the system has grown up.” Mike Taylor, the highest-ranking food-safety official at the F.D.A., said, “Everybody would agree that if you were starting on a blank piece of paper and designing the food-safety system for the future, from scratch, you wouldn’t design it the way it’s designed right now.”

by nkw 10y ago

kbenson 10y ago

So, is it okay to impersonate a police officer then? The USPS is a government institution, and how ur government often received and sends instructions and funds from its constituents. I don't want people impersonating mail carriers any more than I want them impersonating a police officer. Mail fraud is real, and abusing the mail for more nefarious means happens. [1][2] > I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. You don't generally get official correspondence from the IRS through UPS. I'm fine with protecting the mailcarrier uniform. There are government expectations associated with that uniform. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

nkw 10y ago
First, the statute we are discussing doesn't make it a crime to impersonate a postal carrier. It makes it a crime to "wear[] the uniform [...] prescribed by the Postal Service to be worn by letter carriers". I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier. Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal. I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
- smhost 10y ago
  There's a sense in which simplifying laws merely passes the burden to the Executive Branch. It's far easier to prove that a person wore some federal uniform than it is to prove that they pretended to be a federal employee. Just imagine that you're the prosecutor and think about the difference in the amount of work you would have to do for this case. These are resources that can be used elsewhere, and as a citizen, I gladly and enthusiastically forfeit my right to dress as a mailman if it means that it will help reduce cases of fraud. I do like the idea of simple laws, though, and I hope that a future civilization may flourish under the Golden Rule as its only law.
  - baddox 10y ago
    The ease of the prosecution proving their cases is not a higher priority to me than the feasibility of an average citizens reading and understanding most laws.
    - smhost 10y ago
      As I see it, the government's only job is to protect its citizens, and anything that gets in the way of it doing its job is counterproductive. I agree that a best-informed populace probably must also be the best-protected, but I disagree that the solution is to limit all legislation to the eighth grade level of diction. Free legal aid as a constitutional right seems like a slightly more practical alternative to me.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier. I don't agree on any specific difference between dressing up and impersonating in general, as I'm not sure how you are defining the difference, but to my mind impersonation is likely hard to prove, and if the desire is to stop the behavior, preventing dressing up is a useful way to make sure the law is enforcable. I do agree there is a difference in importance between impersonating a police officer and impersonating a mail carrier, but in both cases I think the base reason is the same. To keep specific expectations and abilities granted to the individual as a government employee from being abused by others. > Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal. Because if something is routed through the mail system we have a record of it, and information regarding it's origin. If someone dresses up as a mail carrier and puts it in your mailbox, not only is that record lost, but likely nobody around will pay any attention. Some random person putting something in your mailbox may attract attention, if only because those around might think they are trying to steal mail. Which takes us to stealing mail It's harder to steal mail when you have no business in anyone else's mailbox because it's illegal. Neighbors seeing a stranger rifling through a mailbox may be likely to call thge person out or even call the police. Preventing people from impersonating a mail carrier is very useful here. It's worth noting that other carrier services are legally prevented from using your mailbox. Your mailbox/mail slot is considered federal property. There is thus a chain of custody when things are shipped through USPS, unless someone breaks the law. > I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects. Sure, those exist. I don't think this is a good case of that.
prostoalex 10y ago
You're describing a fraudulent behavior which is already covered by criminal laws related to fraud. If the goal is to aggressively double down on every single possible fraud case, where are the laws prohibiting dressing up as a forest ranger, environmental protection agent, President of the United States and various members of Congress (via those realistic-looking masks they sell before Halloween), USDA inspector, SEC controller, four-star Army general or any other government-related position of authority?
- uxp 10y ago
  A lot of the "Why is X illegal if doing Z, which itself is X & Y, is also illegal" argument reminds me entirely of the software developer's fallacy in code reduction. I can easily re-engineer a core business application in a couple weeks. It'll do most of what the existing solution does, will be unit tested, and easily extendable. But, it won't cover all those edge cases we've all forgotten exist and that one exception that's required for client 2 who needs red buttons instead of blue buttons and remember that time we ran into the problem where the year-end report took 3 days to run, and locked up the weekly reports because new years eve landed on a Friday which made Justin stay in the office until 2AM trying to get the database back online? I'm not a law professor, or a lawyer, or in any way involved in law, but the similarities between a 200+ year old set of rules that govern our society and a legacy application that we can't simply turn off for 6 months why we re-engineer it to be "better, but does exactly the same thing" is frightening. We've got a piss poor track record as software developers being able to take on a massive refactor and not introduce more bugs, what the hell makes us think we can consolidate hundreds of thousands of edge cases in law and not miss a bunch of actually useful things?
  - photogrammetry 10y ago
    Which is why DJT's ideas are terrifying. He wants to take a machete to the forest of legislation that is our government, and he has practically no idea why any of these laws were put in place.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    While a good point, on a case by case basis there're at least some redundancies that have been accummulated over the decades of lawmaking http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/bug-system http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/bug-system "In the U.S., responsibility for food safety is divided among fifteen federal agencies. The most important, in addition to the F.S.I.S., is the Food and Drug Administration, in the Department of Health and Human Services. In theory, the line between these two should be simple: the F.S.I.S. inspects meat and poultry; the F.D.A. covers everything else. In practice, that line is hopelessly blurred. Fish are the province of the F.D.A.—except catfish, which falls under the F.S.I.S. Frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the F.D.A., but frozen pizza with slices of pepperoni is monitored by the F.S.I.S. Bagel dogs are F.D.A.; corn dogs, F.S.I.S. The skin of a link sausage is F.D.A., but the meat inside is F.S.I.S. “The current structure is there not because it’s what serves the consumer best,” Elisabeth Hagen*, a former head of the F.S.I.S., told me. “It’s there because it’s the way the system has grown up.” Mike Taylor, the highest-ranking food-safety official at the F.D.A., said, “Everybody would agree that if you were starting on a blank piece of paper and designing the food-safety system for the future, from scratch, you wouldn’t design it the way it’s designed right now.”