[pxmpxm]

This line of argument is rather asinine - any information can obviously be encoded into a number, prime or otherwise. Given that there are infinite primes and any amount of proscribed information (national security information, child pornography, trade secrets etc) that can be encoded into them, essentially all prime numbers would be deemed "illegal" under that line of argument.

The authors are clearly targeting unsophisticated audience with that article; feels like the "sovereign citizen" grade of legal analysis.

[JadeNB]

> This line of argument is rather asinine - any information can obviously be encoded into a number, prime or otherwise. Given that there are infinite primes and any amount of proscribed information (national security information, child pornography, trade secrets etc) that can be encoded into them, essentially all prime numbers would be deemed "illegal" under that line of argument.

I think its asininity (or whatever) is the point. The idea that information can be illegal leads, I think ineluctably, to the 'illegal primes'; so I think that this is meant as a slightly snarky argument against the idea that information can be illegal.

[xvedejas]

Is the article making much of an argument? It's a wikipedia article and is therefore written in an encyclopedic tone. Do you disagree that illegal numbers exist?

[olavk]

It has an "encyclopedic tone" but that does not mean it is objectively correct or makes a sensible argument. It is not the number itself that is illegal. What would that even mean? Humans doing certain things with certain intentions can be illegal.

The article links to "illegal numbers", which weasely states "if communicating a specific set of information is illegal in some way, then the number may be illegal as well". Note the "may", and the only references seem to be pure speculation.

Some people argue any kind of copyright and IP rights should be abolished, but who would argue it should be completely legal to phone in a bomb threat because "it is really just a number represented as sound"?

[pxmpxm]

> Do you disagree that illegal numbers exist?

Well yes, the notion of illegal numbers is a construct of the silly argument presented. You can decompose anything proscribed into the elements that make it up and then try to claim the elements are ipso facto proscribed.

Mens rea, for example, is really referring to sequences of electrical impulses in your brain, so again by the line of argument there is a physical phenomenon that is criminial.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

Excellent point. To put it another way, all Facebook did was to share some numbers with Cambridge Analytical who did some math with those numbers and shared those further with the Trump campaign. Why is everybody upset over math?

[JoBrad]

Context is everything. The number 123456789 is not illegal.

But if associated with other information such that this value is understood to be a social security number (if it were a valid SSN), it becomes illegal to share it, or even have it, in some circumstances.

[closeparen]

SSNs are sequential; the numbers adjacent to your own are valid. Surely you cannot bypass data privacy requirements by applying a trivial and reversible transportation like +/- 1, so knowledge of your own social security number would be illegal under your logic.

It doesn’t make sense to think of SSNs as stolen identities unless the thief knows the names associated with them.

[JoBrad]

I thought my second sentence addressed this.