[maeon3]

When everyone is a criminal all the time, with selective enforcement, it makes it easier to tax and control. When political winds shift, you can eliminate anybody you want, because you just make an excel spreadsheet of political enemies and then forward it by email to law enforcement for increased survallence, and whamo, felony convictions, how much you want? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?

The government is just trying to maintain its power over the people, when federal reserve realizes there is no other alternative except to default on the US treasury, there is going to be a lot of unrest, and the internet will be a focus point of governmental rebellion, it's important everyone who accesses the internet is a felon. Especially the coders, like this one, who will be making the rebellion possible.

You got to put the fear in them. We may be the ones, like our founding fathers, who have to write up a new constitution, bill of rights, and spawn a new nation to break away from the defective one. Like the good men of old time broke away from Britain. The battlefield this time around will not be on the shores of Boston, the battlefield will be software, servers, clicks, and smart phones.

As with all battlefields, the side who wins is the one who prepares the most. This is why we are cracking down on website clicking by programmers, rather than cracking down on governmental corruption.

[flexie]

And if you count everyone who has committed a misdemeanor or felony as a criminal, then everyone is a criminal.

The amount of felonies and misdemeanors is overwhelming, as is often the severity of the punishments.

[rwmj]

I guess you must live in China. Here where I live, the government is made up of ordinary people who are also subject to the law, and we can vote to change the law whenever and however we want.

[lukifer]

Sounds to me like you're manufacturing normalcy.

Reality is too complex to fit into a narrative. Our system manages to be both corrupt and democratic at the same time, with money, fame and influence all helping to distort outcomes, both on behalf of private interests and We The People.

[davidw]

There is corruption in pretty much any system without a complete and total police state. Most western democracies are highly imperfect. But they're a lot better than pretty much anything else that has been tried, and if people work hard, they can continue to improve them.

Hard work means "getting out of the building" though.

[illuminate]

"without a complete and total police state"

And ~especially~ in a complete and total police state :)

[alexjeffrey]

In the words of Churchill: it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.

[betterunix]

Where I live, the people are too apathetic and uninformed to care, and they just keep voting for the same right-wing politicians in election after election. I live in a country with an order of magnitude more prisoners than any other, where there are so many laws on the books that the government itself cannot even keep track of them all.

[rytis]

Just out of curiosity, where do you live?

[rwmj]

The UK, but my answer would equally well apply to the US or the majority of democratic nations. There's not a Big Conspiracy. There's just lots of people, often stupid and ill-informed, but nevertheless people voting for what we want.

[betterunix]

"There's just lots of people, often stupid and ill-informed, but nevertheless people voting for what we want."

How exactly do you think uninformed people are voting for what they want? The USA is a country where people are surprised by what is illegal.

[rwmj]

Firstly, it is possible to go out and inform people. Best to get off HN and out of the house, because only a tiny number of pretty intelligent people use HN and all of us have similar backgrounds and beliefs.

Secondly, although I think HN-readers would make great voters on subjects we care about, eg. how the Internet should be regulated, yet I'm sure we'd be mostly stupid and ill-informed about things that we don't know or care about, eg. farming regulations, or sickness benefits for elderly mentally-ill patients, or a thousand other specialized subjects.

[betterunix]

"yet I'm sure we'd be mostly stupid and ill-informed about things that we don't know or care about"

That is not the issue. The issue is whether or not we are expected to follow laws that we know nothing about, particularly since ignorance of the law is not considered a valid defense in this country. If you are not running a farm, you are not expected to adhere to farming regulations and you could not violate those regulations. On the other hand, if you use a computer -- and the majority of US citizens do -- you are expected to abide by computer laws.

Right now, there are a lot of laws that everyone is expected to follow but that few people are aware of. Most Virginia residents had no idea that opposite-sex cohabitation was illegal when that law was repealed -- millions of people in that state could have faced prosecution for a law they were never aware of (and in the 90s a woman was threatened with prosecution as part of an attempt to shut down her business). Typically, the police are unaware of these laws and so most people will never be arrested even if they are in violation. On the other hand, when the government wants to prosecute someone (e.g. Alexander Shulgin), all they need to do is look hard enough to find a law the person violated. Sometimes the government seeks nothing more than to set a precedent (Aaron Swartz) that would allow them to prosecute others. That is where the real danger lies: the government is limited not by the lack of criminal laws but by its own inefficiency in searching the legal code.

Most people are entirely unaware of this situation and believe that as long as they are not harming anyone they are safe. It is hard to raise awareness, because most people do not see anyone being prosecuted in this way, and even when they see it they usually have a hard time feeling sympathy for the defendant (e.g. Lori Drew). After all, who can feel sorry for someone who collects this sort of artwork:

http://www.japanator.com/man-arrested-for-manga-collection-t...

[jdkx]

It's not a conspiracy but the effect is just the same. Selective enforcement of laws that make everyone a criminal allows people in positions of power to target anyone they wish. This is made worse in countries where penalties are very severe, like the US.

[drharris]

This assumes people are intelligent enough to know what they actually want. Not being mean, just a sad truth about the state of culture right now.

[beedogs]

What magical mythical land is this?

[maeon3]

I wasn't saying certain people should not be held accountable to certain laws I'm just pointing out the major theme of the phenomenon taking place here. As programmers we are a tremendous emerging power and it feels like programmers are being discriminated against from the U.S. much more so than say an Exec at AIG. Perhaps the programmer should be prosecuted, to uphold justice, to make an example to all programmers that you better watch-out before you go making a copy of some document you find laying on the ground while taking a walk in the park. Don't copy that floppy, you could go to jail for 10 years.

[davidw]

What the fuck is "the established ruling system" besides a representative democracy, if we're talking about the US, at least?

Sounds like one of those trite propaganda-esque phrases that don't really mean anything.

Government in the US is far from perfect, but it's not some big conspiracy theory either.

If you want to see a real rebellion, look at Syria. It's people shooting each other with guns to take and hold territory, not some dipshit who finds an inept megacorp's trowsers down and grabs the data he finds and then crows about it.