surveillance society

(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)

There are a lot of articles discussing the surveillance world we now live in. I would like to comment on many of them in a full post. Alas, time does not permit.

I will start putting up a list of good stuff that I’d like talk about but only have time to recommend with a quick comment. Hopefully this will be a frequent list of links.

Here’s my first list:

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(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)

That’s the idea some people are advancing to suggest the extensive data gathering conducted by the federal government is okay.

I plan to discuss this in detail. In the meantime, I want to start putting some pieces of information on the table.

Moxie Marlinspike has a superb article in Wired: Why “I Have Nothing to Hid” Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance.

You may think you haven’t broken any laws.

But are you familiar with all 27,000 pages of the United States Code?

The article quotes James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School:

Estimates of the current size of the body of federal criminal law vary. It has been reported that the Congressional Research Service cannot even count the current number of federal crimes. These laws are scattered in over 50 titles of the United States Code, encompassing roughly 27,000 pages. Worse yet, the statutory code sections often incorporate, by reference, the provisions and sanctions of administrative regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies under congressional authorization. Estimates of how many such regulations exist are even less well settled, but the ABA thinks there are ”nearly 10,000.”

Are you familiar with all 10,000 regulations that implement the 27,000 pages of the U.S.C.?

Check out this example: (more…)