Quote:
|
Originally Posted by G. Kashkanun Anderson
A good place to start might be Great Britain's Official Secrets Act of 1989. Section 5 of the Act deals with penalties for disseminating secret information.
Merely mentioning something in conversation wouldn't be the same thing as publishing information about it, or actively seeking to disseminate information about a top secret Imperial organization.
|
I'm with you on that, but his original quote was "It is illegal to mention, or even hint at, their existence." I think it would make more sense to describe them as heavily classified, which avoids the issue of the authorizing legislation being unable to actually mention the organization that it is criminalizing the mention of. ("Any mention of, or hint to the identity of, Organization X is unlawful. Reading this law after publication is considered an offense, as it would necessitate mentioning the organization. Mentioning the criminal penalties for this act could be construed as hinting at the actual authorizing text, which would imply hinting at the unmentionable, and is therefore also an offense.")
Quote:
|
Unintended ramifications are the rule, rather than the exception, in most laws passed into the books. This should be an easy thing to do with IE-97, which, besides being incredibly broad in its scope, also happens to be a good 34 pages long!
|
Anyone familiar with US tax law will laugh at the childish simplicity of any edict that can be compressed into a mere 34 pages. :)