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Hacking the Law
New submitter sethopia writes "Brooklyn Law School's Incubator and Policy Clinic (BLIP) hosted its first 'Legal Hackathon.' Instead of hacking computer code, attendees — mostly lawyers, law students, coders, and entrepreneurs — used the hacking ethos to devise technologically sophisticated solutions to legal problems. These included attempts to crowdsource mayoral candidacies in New York City and hacking model privacy policies for ISPs."
Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Because the question is not if legal problems will be hacked, but when, it is better to just get it over with. This way, with the results out in the open, the law can be improved.
And hopefully, this also gives lawmakers a chance to form their own opinions rather than being fed opinions from big business lobbyists... although I am not too optimistic about that.
computer programmers try to play by the rules: they read the manual and then try to follow what they've learned. Lawyers, meanwhile, are hacking the laws by default. They're always trying to get around following the manual.
Contributions to laws is called legislation, which is part of democracy that was invented about 2500 years ago.
I've read legislation and proposed changes or even proposed that the legislation be dropped altogether. I mainly got interested in the first round of cybercrime laws that proposed making me a criminal for using netcat nessus and the like.
I set up simple word processing macros that addresses a well written and respectful letter to a list of target politicians (usually all of them). Most of the time I've received some sort of response. It makes it easier for the politician too because they can go straight to the parts of the legislation that are bothersome and move those amendments. If many politicians move the amendments they look insightful to the media, co-operative to their party and hard working to their supporters. Your correspondence, on paper, may make them consider things they hadn't. Also forget email - the retention rate is to low and not portable enough for them to talk to a colleague.
There are many politicians that don't read the legislation at all and just vote on it because they have been sold an opinion or they have to tow the party line. This is why many of the non-partisan issues never get solved and no party want to give the other party the credit for solving a structural issue. So it remains an issue, if enough people write then they can say "Well I tried to do something".
If more people do this it would really make a difference to the quality of the laws we get. I hope it catches on.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Isn't hacking the law what lawyers do all the time? They study the law, find holes in it and exploit them.
The only way to make the legal system logical would be to throw it out and build another system from scratch.
Feels as though nobody cares if my case is won So I might as well begin to find a loophole on my own Hacking the law, Hacking the law...
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
One day i can finally say "I fought the law, and the law lost"
artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Here's the important part:
Heresy! No, the logic is right, but semicolons in Python?!
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Attorneys thought he was absolutely crazy. And some still do.
But it worked.
Which is why some masters of thought control are trying to undermine it.
Check out www.calguns.net for a description of a gun law hack in California.
Want to own an AR-15 series rifle in California? You can, thanks to the work of some online collaboration and combination of laws.
In a nutshell, the definition of 'detachable magazine' combined with the poorly written assault weapons law, some case law and testimony from the California Dept of Justice Firearms folks resulted in a movement for building AR series rifles legally in California with all the goodies like pistol grips, etc.
Same principles applied for importation of handguns not on the 'safe' list - import it as a single shot weapon, then repair it so it is back to a semi-auto configuration.
Self Defense - A Human Right www.a-human-right.com
Yes, the Constitution is often very clear. The literal wording doesn't make reasonable exceptions like that; if it did, the document wouldn't be so clear anymore.
Yeah, taking it too literally and making up exceptions both seem like bad ideas
Sometimes it isn't clear enough, especially when dealing with situations or technology the Founders hadn't envisioned.
Amendments to add or remove a reasonable exception wouldn't fly because of the group negatively affected.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
actually, the House and Senate can pass different versions of a bill, but then it goes to a conference committee. something could go wrong at this step as well.
abuse of riders/amendments is a problem, but what's the legalese for "one thing at a time"? That's another problem.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Favourite? I thought their opinion was that it was "from that country where everything sucks, huh huh, heh heh".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."