Unless you have authorized them to do this under the Terms and Conditions of course.....
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
The problem here is that it was done without permission.
The OP is claiming that the impersonation without permission is a crime, and that it is impossible to waive the crime-ness of it through a contract.
> If an offence is criminal it can't be magically made OK
> by a contract.
Voting by proxy is not impersonation, you give someone the right to act (vote in this case) in your name. Thus, no criminal offense.
The other cases: Assisted suicide is a criminal offense in many countries. For example (similar, but not the same), there has been some legal struggle over "Sterbehilfe" here in Germany which garnered quite some media attention.
Boxing – I might be mistaken, but perhaps "beating someone" is not a criminal offense as long as it is not against the other persons will?
All these things hinge on very subtle differences in wording. For example the terms might say: "AngelList reserves the right to send mails on your behalf" which grants them the right to send mails to third parties in your name, but I'd be surprised if law would allow them to state "AngelList reserves the right to claim your identity".
I can give my voting proxy or power of attorney to someone else, but it's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that's what's going on. If the email said "This is AngelList on behalf of J. Random Employee" that would be different than sending an email that had every appearance of being from the employee.
Even if this is allowed in their TOS, it's pretty underhanded if they buried something like that in boilerplate that they know nobody reads.
> you give someone the right to act (vote in this case) in
> your name. Thus, no criminal offense.
Assisted suicide is, yes. But my point is that we have separate legislation for it, implying that is required.
Boxing, again, that's my point.
Regarding identity specifically, what I imagine we're talking about here is an automated message much like LinkedIn's:
> Hi, I'd like to add you to my network! *
* Or whatever it is. Point being, it says "I"; not "Mr Ford".
The Gmail warning that "this message may not be from who it claims to be" never worked well, but I wish they'd make it work for cases like this.
It's too bad e-mail is so unverified and insecure. A smartphone app can be prevented from making calls or sending text messages from your number: all you have to do is deny it that permission. But there's no way to prevent a website that has your name and e-mail address from sending e-mails as you.
IANAL, but it's like having sex: it's perfectly okay if all participants are consenting adults, but without this important condition it's a felony.
From what I understand, the important part here is consent, and only lack of one makes it a criminal offense. I.e. the act of impersonating isn't a crime (on its own) - the act of doing so without consent is. Well, to be certain, I guess one should take penal code of the jurisdiction in question, find the article and check the exact wording used.
You will find that in each of your examples that there is a particular statute legalizing that activity in a particular state.
I repeat that I am not a lawyer so if this is important to you then hire a lawyer in your local jurisdiction to advise you, don't listen to random people on the internet.
1. Hi, my name is John, I am contacting you on behalf of wojt_eu to confirm that he has been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV.
2. Hi, it's me wojt_eu, I just wanted you to confirm that I've been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV.
You can legally authorize someone to act on your behalf, in basically any Western Nation - although rules as to how this work will vary, but authorizing someone to impersonate you I don't believe would be made legal anywhere because impersonation is not just something one does on your behalf but also something one does to someone else. Both the person that acts on the impersonation as being real and the person being impersonated can be harmed by an impersonation, and therefore it is not adequate that the person being impersonated gives the impersonator the right to do so.
http://semanticcompositions.typepad.com/index/2004/03/flexib...
I was also not describing linguistic usage in telephone conversation, I was describing linguistic usage in email correspondence. I don't think a correspondence would exist with a structure similar to the conversation the blog post discusses.
It can certainly be that when a conversation or correspondence moves into the realm of impersonation should be determined by the court. I think in the case under discussion here it would determined to be impersonation, the question then becomes what the harm was.
Looking through the statute referenced http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr... I don't think I can see a harm defined that matches what was done very well. I think the most relevant section is 530 and it does seem a stretch.
I think you're confused. Celebrities hire third parties to tweet for them all the time. That's essentially impersonation.
Then it's more like acting/broadcasting.
If you had an account on twitter and said you were The Real Steve Jobs and everyone believed you were the real steve jobs and not a joke then I would say yes that would be considered impersonation - at which point the context I left out of my answer, considering it a given because I thought it was quite apparent from the top of the thread was that laws against impersonation also have to identify in some way the harm the parties affected by the impersonation suffer.
In the original post a statute was linked to http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr... ,this describes a number of ways harm can be incurred in the act of impersonation.
In principle it sounds similar. The details do matter though. Did they provide reasonable explanation of what they were doing? Did they attempt to do this in secret? Did they misrepresent anything? Are they any laws saying a person cannot sign away liability for things like this?
Most tax preparers are liable for their own mistakes, but not for omitting anything you didn't tell them.
For instance, civil forfeiture, wherein property can be taken from a person who has not been proven guilty of a crime in a fair trial, is widely rejected by the public, even when the opinion poll uses the most biased questions possible. (i.e. Should drug dealers be allowed to keep the profits from their crimes if they escape conviction and punishment on a technicality?)
Also, a jury verdict is little more than an aggregated bunch of layman opinions.
The opinion of the general public is that software should not have bugs in it. Also, it should be gratis and always keep up with the latest GUI and HID fashion trends. As a software professional, I often do additional work to meet those public expectations, even if it has no technical merit. That's because the opinion of the customer matters, when they are employing the experts to work on their behalf.
"...any person who knowingly AND WITHOUT CONSENT credibly impersonates another actual person..."
(Emphasis added.)
Terms and conditions and even contracts are often inadmissible. Just because you signed something, doesn't mean it's valid. Being handcuffed to a contract happens only in the movies,
I am not a lawyer.
The entire point of a contract is to get permission to do something that otherwise is not allowed.
We can agree in a contract to sell you my daughter's virginity, but that does not mean you can actually buy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement
To illustrate why this is the case, we can look at an extreme example: a contract to have someone murdered. Would a court enforce that? Of course not.
The point here is that you either _can_ contract your way out, or (what I suspect is the case) there re exclusions in the law were relevant.
Either way, it suggests this might not be illegal if covered by something blindly tick-boxed.
> What about boxing, martial arts sparring, fencing
Consent only works up to a point. I cannot consent to you stabbing me or beating me into a bloody pulp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_(criminal_law)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Brown
It's worth noting that bare knuckle boxing is illegal in the UK, and you can't just sign a document to do it.
> assisted suicide
Assisted suicide is illegal in the UK. It does not matter if the patient signs a contract to say it's OK, it's still illegal.
If impersonating someone is a criminal offense in a particular jurisdiction, then -- assuming that jurisdiction has a sane criminal code -- there is no way to make it legal through a contract.
Edit: there are good reasons why this is in place, the most relevant of which is that it provides protection against abuses. Otherwise, we'd have things like employers that would still be at liberty to use lashing and beating as disciplinary action against employees who don't really have a choice about signing a contract or not.
A contract can establish consent.
E.g. if I go into your house without permission and take stuff, then it is theft. If I have a contract saying that I have permission to go into your house and take stuff, then it is not.
I have not contracted my away from something illegal. The contract has established consent, which meant the criteria that otherwise would have made my actions criminal are not fulfilled.
> If impersonating someone is a criminal offense in a particular jurisdiction, then -- assuming that jurisdiction has a sane criminal code -- there is no way to make it legal through a contract.
That depends whether or not the criteria that needs to be met for it to be a crime requires lack of consent. If it requires lack of consent, then a contract can document that the consent has been given.
All jurisdictions I'm aware of (not a lawyer) have the concept of agents that may act on your behalf with consent. To what extent such agents can act using your name (with consent) vs. using their own name but on your behalf, varies greatly.
E.g. some places your agents (say a PA) will sign letters "[agents name] for and on behalf of [your name]" or similar, while other places they will use a signature stamp with your signature, or do "p.p. [their signature] [your printed name]" (the p.p. stands for "per procurationem"). Many other variations are in use, and how obvious signs there are that a document was not personally signed by the person the letter is from varies greatly.
> All jurisdictions I'm aware of (not a lawyer) have the concept of agents that may act on your behalf with consent. To what extent such agents can act using your name (with consent) vs. using their own name but on your behalf, varies greatly.
They do, but things are not as simple as "can act on your behalf with consent". Around here, for instance (but I'm in Europe), they can only act on your behalf if:
a) You have explicitly given them consent to act on your behalf in that specific situation (i.e. you told them "you can go to the bank on this date and cash in this much in my name"), or if you have explicitly given them consent to act on your behalf with that particular party and for a specified period of time (i.e. you can go to this bank and do anything in my name for this period of time), and
b) The contract that states this has been validated by a notary and recorded by authorities, and
c) The party that they are acting on your behalf with knows about this, has been explicitly informed that they are acting on your behalf, and agrees to work with them under these conditions.
If they fail to do any of these, it's flat-out illegal. I think this is covered under civil law here, though, so it can be voided by a contract -- but the idea is that consent is not as trivial as signing a sheet of paper that says yeah, do whatever you want. It's bound by specific terms, too, the breach of which makes the whole thing illegal, even if on the whole the operation was consensual (i.e. if an agent, with my consent, goes to the bank to cash in a deposit, but does not explicitly inform the cashier that they are acting on my behalf so that they record the transaction accordingly (i.e. done by X on behalf of NotALaser), he's breaking the law).
(Edit: or, to make it clearer: he can represent me, but he cannot claim he's me. He has to explicitly inform the other party that he's acting on my behalf, declare his identity and present the proper authorization etc.)
Yes, I pointed that out.
> They do, but things are not as simple as "can act on your behalf with consent"
I believe that was exactly the point I was making.
> Around here, for instance (but I'm in Europe), they can only act on your behalf if:
While I'm sure you're right for your location, "Europe" encompasses not only ~50 distinct legal systems, but also half a dozen or so distinct legal traditions (with e.g. Common law, Germanic law, Napoleonic law and Roman law as the biggest traditions), which is one of the reasons I specifically pointed out that it varies greatly how clear one has to be about whether or not something is signed by an agent.
Worldwide it gets even more complicated.
To be very clear: I agree that some places the agent will need to specifically sign and state their own name and specify they are acting as an agent. Exactly in line with the examples I gave, a couple of which are from Europe.
In others they can stamp or use a machine to "fake" the name of the person they are acting on behalf of -- as long as they have that persons consent to do so.
In the US we have perhaps one of the most famous examples of the latter: The office of the US President frequently uses an Autopen [1] to sign documents on behalf of the president, such as autographs or letters to constituents. The purpose of it is to duplicate the signature precisely, making actual pen strokes in order to make the signature seem more authentic than e.g. the use of a stamp or seal.
But US presidents have used it for much more important things than letters and autographs, including several times that Obama has had staffers use an Autopen to sign laws on his behalf.
Of course. I mentioned I'm in Europe just to ensure that it's clear I'm not referring to any law that apply in the US, as this is what HN is most familiar with. Europe is, indeed, very diverse when it comes to law.
Normally, I can't take your stuff or enter your property, but if you make a contract granting me the right to take (specific things among) your stuff or enter your property in specific cases, that's enforceable.
Can you similarly sign away your right not to be murdered similarly? To be impersonated? Maybe not, but it depends on the circumstances, and isn't simply a matter of "that's illegal so you can't sign it away".
I'm sorry, but: no. "In most places in the civilised world" there are these guys called hairdressers and they could routinely - technically - be charged with committing assault causing bodily harm. It's a pretty clear cut (sorry) case that gets trotted out in most any first year criminal law class. The reason they aren't charged is simple: you consent to that bodily harm being inflicted upon you. There are variously defined limits to your ability to consent, especially with regard to duress or excessive harm, but your reasoning is otherwise completely incorrect.