ACORN and Census Paranoia
The 2010 census is coming up, as the Constitution requires. And since counting the population of one of the geographically least dense, but largest in terms of population and area, countries isn’t exactly an easy task, the US Census Bureau typically employs a number of organizations to help them with the counting by recruiting people; according to one FOX News report, approximately 1.4 million workers are required to get an accurate census of the population; this works out to about one worker for every 300 people. So obviously some outside assistance is needed. And according to the same report, one of the organizations the Census Bureau is working with is ACORN, famed among conservatives for supposed voter fraud (more on that below) during the 2008 elections. So naturally conservatives are reacting to this with varying degrees of concern, from utterly ignoring it to the outright crazy. Of particular note here is that Representative Bachmann is advocating not completely filling out the Census form, which may be illegal according to a Bureau worker mentioned in the article; the worker says that current census law mandates that all citizens fill out the form completely, not just provide the number of people occupying the building. Rep. Bachmann doesn’t seem to realize that the Constitution isn’t the only source of law that deals with the census. According to 13 USC section 221,
Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects … to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title … shall be fined not more than $100.
So Representative Bachmann doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. The questions are authorized, and so she has to fill them out.
'Hacking' and the law
A man in Ohio was convicted under Ohio’s state anti-hacking laws and received fifteen months in jail and a $5,000 fine; his conviction was recently upheld by a court of appeals. However, his crime was not breaking into a system he was not allowed to access via a buffer overflow, or using social engineering to get the password to a root account. He simply used his work computer, which he was allowed to use, to look at porn and upload naked pictures of himself. Apparently, the court’s logic is that he was not authorized to use the computer to look at porn, and the Ohio law prohibits using a computer ” …without the consent of, or beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of, the owner of the computer….”
While I agree that the guy was a total moron for browsing porn at work, I think that the court is way out of line here. At most, he should have been fired (which he was, of course). It’s not like the law only applies to explicit conduct: under this precedent, browsing an Internet forum at work could earn you a lengthy jail sentence and a felony charge on your record.
This isn’t the first time courts have used hacking charges in cases most reasonable people wouldn’t consider hacking. Remember the case of Megan Meier, the teenager who committed suicide after a woman created a fake Myspace account and used it to tease and bully her? Lori Drew, the woman in question, was indicted on three counts of hacking. She had created Myspace profiles under a fake identity, thereby violating Myspace’s TOS, making her visits to Myspace under these accounts ‘hacking’ according to the prosecution. Fortunately, the hacking charges were ultimately downgraded to other misdemeanor charges; she was only convicted on the misdemeanor charge of gaining unauthorized access to Myspace’s servers, not the full felony hacking charges.
What we are seeing here is a new manifestation of an already-existing pattern: if state prosecutors cannot find a specific crime to indict or accuse someone of, they will stretch the law until it fits; alternately, the hacking charge might be brought up in cases like Drew’s, where there are no clear-cut legal violations, but the act itself is so shocking that we think that there just has to be a law that was violated. I don’t think we’re going to start seeing trolls arrested en masse, but I do think that the threat of felony hacking charges is going to be part of every prosecutor’s arsenal of means to get defendants to plead guilty or of finding a crime to accuse someone of in the first place.
"A black": bigotry through bad grammar
I recently read a forum post that asked about “poor Japanese”. For some reason, this struck me as both bad grammar (using an adjective, ‘Japanese’, as a noun) and offensive. I noticed that similar phrases, substituting words such as ‘gay’ or ‘black’ for ‘Japanese’, also struck me as offensive. But phrases like ‘an American’, ‘a lesbian’, or ‘a Hispanic’ don’t have the same offensive capability.
The common thread seems to be that when X can function both as an adjective and as a noun, violating grammar by referring to someone as ‘a/an X’ is offensive, whereas it isn’t if X can also function as a noun. I’m not sure why a simple grammatical error can sound so grating to the ear. Perhaps it has to do with the brain filling it in as ‘a gay man’, for example, and by omitting the word ‘man’ the speaker is subtly denying the subject’s humanity. Or maybe, by using an adjective as a noun, the speaker implies that the subject is solely identifiable by that adjective and conforms to all the associated stereotypes.
Regardless of the explanation, the phenomenon is likely rooted in the listener taking offense against prejudice and stereotype, as when a non-stereotyped adjective, such as ‘tall’ or ‘brown-eyed’, is substituted for X, the phrase ‘a/an X’ ceases to be offensive, merely ungrammatical.
Don't fly the flag
I was riding on a boat in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and I noticed something. About one in four of the houses was proudly displaying an american flag; one of them even had a pole high enough to rise above the trees; presumably, it makes them extra-patriotic. It got me thinking: what is the purpose of flying an American flag? Ostensibly, it’s to show one’s support for America. But isn’t that pretty much implied by the fact that you live here? It’s like flying a flag that says “I believe murder should be illegal,” or “I want world peace.”
I think that it’s
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