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Comment by panny | Hacker News Reader

There's also possible prison sentences. I just love it when someone wants to "get tough on X" when all the laws are already tough on X and just unenforced. That's how you end up with every American committing three felonies a day without knowing it.

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I'll bite: examples?

It's from a topic in a book [1] that is sometimes also discussed on forums. The gist of it is something to the effect of, there are so many laws and so much wiggle room in most of the laws that each person is committing multiple felonies per day without knowing it thus empowering agencies to arrest just about anyone at any given time. The United States of America has the highest incarceration rate of the world is just one small example of that.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

I was aware of the de facto state but not the book, thank you for sharing that.

Still, I was hoping for examples.

Oh you meant like case law examples. It's a bit of reading but search for examples of case law where a person was convicted on technicalities but not violating the spirit of the law, sometimes later being over-turned. I don't have any examples and I hate to suggest this but maybe start with whatever LLM you use.

I avoid LLMs but wasn't concerned with case law as much as a specific law on the books, whether used or not. A peer comment offered mishandling of mail not addressed to you.

Discarding misdirected mail is a felony (18 U.S. Code § 1702). For example, you receive a flyer in the mail addressed to John Smith who previously lived at your address. If it doesn't say "John Smith OR current resident" then discarding that junk mail is a felony. You are supposed to write "Return to sender" on every piece of junk mail or correspondence not addressed to you and put it in the outgoing mail. People discard junk flyers every single day without looking at the address first. Simple things like that.

To tie back into the original discussion on HIPAA, I had a collection agency sending mail addressed to a previous resident to my address once. The return address was the clinic of the patient. I was dutifully writing RTS on every letter and putting it back in the mail, but they would not take me off their nastygram list. That was until I wrote "You know, it's a felony HIPAA violation to be leaking this patient's name and clinic to me after you've been notified of the incorrect address." The collection letters immediately stopped after I did that.

Good example. I believe the correct behavior is to write "Not at this address" rather than "Return to sender" these days

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