In a book called Three Felonies A Day, Boston civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate says that everyone in the US commits felonies everyday and if the government takes a dislike to you for any reason, they’ll dig in and find a felony you’re guilty of.
That looks very interesting, in a pants-shitting sort of way, of course. Additionally, it looks like it might be useful as a definitive response to the “If you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” types.
June 12, 2013 @ 2:55 pm
The agents will be knocking on your door tonight, Damian. And don't think that internet anonymity will save you. We have been watching you. 🙂
June 12, 2013 @ 11:32 pm
Jabob B had a nice perspective on this:
Some of us nerds recognize it: information is still sufficiently scarce and finite to function as a kind of currency, and the spies are just taking a commission at every point of exchange, but at least when VISA does it with the old money some satisfied customer may walk away from some satisfied merchant. You might consider the NSA program, and others like it, as a kind of information tax without benefits—it’s an absolute requirement, universal and un-appealable, but it doesn’t even cold patch a pothole on the information superhighway. When Google maps your brain into a computer you might get a coupon out of it, some provision of service in exchange. In the meantime, while I believe that we should fight and protest these intrusions on our privacy and personhood, I also come down on the vaguely optimistic side; just as JP Morgan has no idea what to do with its billions other than make more billions, I don’t think the government can do much with this titanic volume of information but add to it. It is morally but not practically outrageous; it’s an exercise of mere accumulation, which isn’t a sign of malevolence so much as of a chronic and probably terminal decadence