3 ms·
To which law are you referring that requires people to lie?
by mpyne 13y ago
To which law are you referring that requires people to lie?
- joe_the_user 13y agoNational Security Letters require that the recipient not say that they receive them. This may only seem a "lie by omission" but it's pretty clearly authorizing a lie by commission when an entity is otherwise required to answer a question like "who have you been spying on" Q: Who have you given information about Bob to? A: No one ... except if I did given information to the NSA, I couldn't tell you. "[NSLs] contain a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Edit: And with secrets laws we also don't which laws might require even more. http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/11/111404.html http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2004/11/111404.html
- mpyne 13y ago1: Who have you been spying on? 2: I'm not allowed to tell you. A stupendously truthy answer. Likewise, I don't see how a "secret security directive TSA can't tell you about" even hints at a requirement to lie, let alone lie even more. And this is my problem with many of these discussions on HN. One would think that a "secret law" is bad enough by itself that one would not have to further mislead what it does and does not imply. So great, before I couldn't trust the government or script kiddies, now I can't trust anybody.