6 ms·

Perhaps the best way to deal with these laws is to let the ones that turn a few million innocent people into felons overnight pass, vs whittle them down so it’s

by gfodor 5y ago

Perhaps the best way to deal with these laws is to let the ones that turn a few million innocent people into felons overnight pass, vs whittle them down so it’s just a few thousand (eg based on net worth or transaction size.) The former would never hold given the consequences, the latter would and eventually be ratcheted.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
I think it would be nice if we passed laws that made sense. If a law is going to turn millions of people into criminals overnight - then you probably need some kind of grandfather clause, or else it's just a bad law.
- malermeister 5y ago
  Or maybe millions of people are just doing bad things?
nickff 5y ago
>"Perhaps the best way to deal with these laws is to let the ones that turn a few million innocent people into felons overnight pass" There are already hundreds if not thousands of these; the average person commits a felony something like once a day. Nobody seems to want to tackle over-criminalization. Many books and articles have been written on the subject, and I invite you to read them.
- eindiran 5y ago
  A felony per day? That cannot possibly be true; maybe the average person commits 1+ "crimes" per day, but not felonies. The only felonies I can think of that an "average person" can plausibly have committed in their entire life: mail fraud, damaging mailboxes, election fraud, tax evasion (willful and intentional evasion of a federal tax), accidental violation of the NFA (on something like what counts as an SBR), obscenity (because who even knows what counts as obscenity anymore), selling/buying _large_ quantities of drugs, grand larceny, cyber crime, vandalism of federal property, and copyright infringement (for _significant_ profit). Most of those are seriously straining plausibility on the "average person" front. Am I missing something? I just can't see how a felony a day is even close to the correct order of magnitude.
  - dannyphantom 5y ago
    This Twitter is pretty fun to read through every few weeks: https://twitter.com/CrimeADay https://twitter.com/CrimeADay Same person wrote a book with this as the description: >Have you ever clogged a toilet in a national forest? That could get you six months in federal prison. Written a letter to a pirate? You might be looking at three years in the slammer. Leaving the country with too many nickels, drinking a beer on a bicycle in a national park, or importing a pregnant polar bear are all very real crimes, and this riotously funny, ridiculously entertaining, and fully illustrated book shows how just about anyone can become—or may already be—a federal criminal.
    - eindiran 5y ago
      None of these seem to be things an average person would do with any regularity though. Also, some of them seem pretty reasonable: https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1444874259357130753 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1444874259357130753 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1436176842470342660 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1436176842470342660 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1427072331743170563 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1427072331743170563
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Might I recommend Three Felonies a Day by Harvey A. Silverglate? The felony per day comes from two angles. One, when the magnitude of the felony is small, but still a felony nonetheless. If I find a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk and fail to report that as income, I'm technically committing tax evasion. The government would never find out and no reasonable prosecutor would come after me, but it is a crime nonetheless. The other angle comes from ambiguously worded laws or overly broad laws. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a notorious example. Breaking a ToS can count as a violation of this law. Exceeding your access or permission level is also notoriously fraught with selective enforcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
    - eindiran 5y ago
      Regarding your first claim; you don't even need to report gifts up to 15k/person/year. You do have to report gambling prizes, but that's because the casino wrote it off so the IRS wants to make sure somebody is paying taxes on it (lol). Whoever lost the 20 has paid taxes on it. Look in here and notice the complete lack of mentioning this case: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525 https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525 Regarding the second claim, I guess that might get us close to the same order of magnitude (assuming people are constantly violating enforceable sections of site and app ToSes). I just got a copy of the book, will give it a read.
Taek 5y ago
If you do that it just means the government can throw you in jail at its discretion
alyandon 5y ago
Laws like that would only be a tool of selective enforcement wielded by the politically connected and elite against what they deem to be undesirables.
- serverholic 5y ago
  This is why I find these threads so frustrating. Laws like these aren’t really to protect people. It’s to protect the current financial system where elites are given special privileges and non-elites are selectively fucked over at the whim of people in power. This is supposedly because elites are more trustworthy and responsible but that’s been shown to be a lie.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Well, that is one outcome. Another outcome is that they actually try to enforce it and the response undermines the law. Hard to say how to best predict what would happen in this specific case.
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
That works - NYC tried to crack down on “unlicensed taxis” when Uber first arrived, so the Port Authority started seizing and towing the cars of people making drop offs at Airports. It was completely arbitrary - if the PA officer didn’t think the people looked enough alike, then the assumption was that it was an illegal taxi. So interracial families, helpful neighbors, etc could all end up being ticketed and their vehicles seized and towed. The sheer idiocy of the whole situation started making the front page of the NY post and a couple weeks later the practice was dropped.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  This is the worst aspect of laws that are overly broad and turn everyone into criminals: it’s then up to the police to choose when and where to enforce the law. Do we need to wonder why interracial families were targeted?

by gfodor 5y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

I think it would be nice if we passed laws that made sense. If a law is going to turn millions of people into criminals overnight - then you probably need some kind of grandfather clause, or else it's just a bad law.

malermeister 5y ago
Or maybe millions of people are just doing bad things?

nickff 5y ago

>"Perhaps the best way to deal with these laws is to let the ones that turn a few million innocent people into felons overnight pass" There are already hundreds if not thousands of these; the average person commits a felony something like once a day. Nobody seems to want to tackle over-criminalization. Many books and articles have been written on the subject, and I invite you to read them.

eindiran 5y ago
A felony per day? That cannot possibly be true; maybe the average person commits 1+ "crimes" per day, but not felonies. The only felonies I can think of that an "average person" can plausibly have committed in their entire life: mail fraud, damaging mailboxes, election fraud, tax evasion (willful and intentional evasion of a federal tax), accidental violation of the NFA (on something like what counts as an SBR), obscenity (because who even knows what counts as obscenity anymore), selling/buying _large_ quantities of drugs, grand larceny, cyber crime, vandalism of federal property, and copyright infringement (for _significant_ profit). Most of those are seriously straining plausibility on the "average person" front. Am I missing something? I just can't see how a felony a day is even close to the correct order of magnitude.
- dannyphantom 5y ago
  This Twitter is pretty fun to read through every few weeks: https://twitter.com/CrimeADay https://twitter.com/CrimeADay Same person wrote a book with this as the description: >Have you ever clogged a toilet in a national forest? That could get you six months in federal prison. Written a letter to a pirate? You might be looking at three years in the slammer. Leaving the country with too many nickels, drinking a beer on a bicycle in a national park, or importing a pregnant polar bear are all very real crimes, and this riotously funny, ridiculously entertaining, and fully illustrated book shows how just about anyone can become—or may already be—a federal criminal.
  - eindiran 5y ago
    None of these seem to be things an average person would do with any regularity though. Also, some of them seem pretty reasonable: https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1444874259357130753 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1444874259357130753 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1436176842470342660 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1436176842470342660 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1427072331743170563 https://nitter.net/CrimeADay/status/1427072331743170563
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  Might I recommend Three Felonies a Day by Harvey A. Silverglate? The felony per day comes from two angles. One, when the magnitude of the felony is small, but still a felony nonetheless. If I find a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk and fail to report that as income, I'm technically committing tax evasion. The government would never find out and no reasonable prosecutor would come after me, but it is a crime nonetheless. The other angle comes from ambiguously worded laws or overly broad laws. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a notorious example. Breaking a ToS can count as a violation of this law. Exceeding your access or permission level is also notoriously fraught with selective enforcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
  - eindiran 5y ago
    Regarding your first claim; you don't even need to report gifts up to 15k/person/year. You do have to report gambling prizes, but that's because the casino wrote it off so the IRS wants to make sure somebody is paying taxes on it (lol). Whoever lost the 20 has paid taxes on it. Look in here and notice the complete lack of mentioning this case: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525 https://www.irs.gov/publications/p525 Regarding the second claim, I guess that might get us close to the same order of magnitude (assuming people are constantly violating enforceable sections of site and app ToSes). I just got a copy of the book, will give it a read.

Taek 5y ago

If you do that it just means the government can throw you in jail at its discretion

alyandon 5y ago

Laws like that would only be a tool of selective enforcement wielded by the politically connected and elite against what they deem to be undesirables.

serverholic 5y ago
This is why I find these threads so frustrating. Laws like these aren’t really to protect people. It’s to protect the current financial system where elites are given special privileges and non-elites are selectively fucked over at the whim of people in power. This is supposedly because elites are more trustworthy and responsible but that’s been shown to be a lie.
gfodor 5y ago
Well, that is one outcome. Another outcome is that they actually try to enforce it and the response undermines the law. Hard to say how to best predict what would happen in this specific case.

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

That works - NYC tried to crack down on “unlicensed taxis” when Uber first arrived, so the Port Authority started seizing and towing the cars of people making drop offs at Airports. It was completely arbitrary - if the PA officer didn’t think the people looked enough alike, then the assumption was that it was an illegal taxi. So interracial families, helpful neighbors, etc could all end up being ticketed and their vehicles seized and towed. The sheer idiocy of the whole situation started making the front page of the NY post and a couple weeks later the practice was dropped.

rbanffy 5y ago
This is the worst aspect of laws that are overly broad and turn everyone into criminals: it’s then up to the police to choose when and where to enforce the law. Do we need to wonder why interracial families were targeted?