Category Archives: legal

If a tree falls in the forest…

“If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it still make a sound?” This, in essence, is the issue of privacy. If a specific action (or information) is unobservable (even after the fact) by no one else but the actor, then that act (or information) is, by

The Blackmail Paradox

While most agree that blackmail — the act of threatening to disclose true, but damaging, (potentially secret) information about a party unless payment is made (to earn silence) — is a criminal act, it poses two interesting paradoxes in the theory of criminal justice. The paradoxes are as follows: The first paradox is that “two

US Death Penalty Sans An Intellectual Argument

On October 23rd, 2009, the American Law Institute(ALI)  resolved to withdraw Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code (MPC). The official copy of the resolution (proposed on April 15, 2009) is available here (in PDF). Why is this important? Simply because peeling back the obfuscating legalese reveals that this resolution has effectively demolished the intellectual

If your site has been compromised with phishing attack code…

I recently recevied the following email: To whom it may concern: Please be aware that Wachovia Corporation (“Wachovia”) is the owner of numerous United States and foreign trade marks and services marks used in connection with its financial services and products (the “Wachovia Marks”), including the Wachovia wordmark and Wachovia logo.  Wachovia has expended substantial