[OT] Note to new-ish subscribers: you joined a mailing list, not a "group". (fwd)

[Jim Bell]

From: Philip Shaw <wahspilihp at gmail.com>

To: J.A. Terranson <measl at mfn.org> 
Cc: cpunks <cypherpunks at cpunks.org> 
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 8:28 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] Note to new-ish subscribers: you joined a mailing list, not a "group". (fwd)
 

On 21 Jan 2014, at 12:47 , J.A. Terranson <measl at mfn.org> wrote:
>> Telecom/NSA/*retroactive immunity* ring a bell? 
>Retroactive acquittal is relatively OK - it is a good thing when applied to the people, for example people have been campaigning for a long time to get all British sodomy convictions >quashed even though everyone has now been released, so we more or less have to accept that it *can* be used to clear government agents too, even if politically we shouldn’t approve >(at least in specific cases). (For criminal matters, in many jurisdictions the government can simply refuse to prosecute cases against its agents and private prosecutions aren’t permitted >in some places, so it doesn’t create any new danger to the public.)
>Retroactive indictment is the problem, and is far more dangerous.

Au contraire!  A good argument can be made that retroactive acquittal (more precisely, in this case, retroactive civil immunity of corporations) is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says in relevant part:

  Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, 
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United 
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or 
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of 
citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;_nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws_.

If people were supposed to be protected by the law in question, and once it was found out that the corporations were violating it (worse, doing that on behalf of the government!) then to give those corporations retroactive civil immunity amounts to denying the public that protection the law ostensibly was intended to provide.
      Jim Bell
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