[Cryptography] $750k Fine for exporting crypto

[dan at geer.org]

Bear,

Your note which begins

> I think the US is drifting dangerously far from the ideal of a rule 
> of law.  You know, where the law is the same for everybody, no matter
> how much you contributed to somebody's political campaign, no matter
> whether you're sitting in an expensive government office, no matter 
> how much money you make, no matter whether you're cooperating in
> attempts to subvert the law against other citizens and no matter 
> whether you're saying something unpopular?  

opens a can of worms for a list such as this, but if the moderator
allows, may I point out that the number of Federal crimes has grown
from three in 1790 (piracy, treason, counterfeiting) to over 5,000
today, that the trend in Federal criminal law is to criminalize
action (reus actus) without regard to intent (mens rea), and that
regulations -- which have the force of law without the nicety of a
judicial finding -- are growing at stunning rates.

Starting with the Federal Register as found at

   www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2014/04/FR-Pages-published-2013.pdf

converting that to

   geer.tinho.net/federal.register.xls

and making the assumption that the page count in the Federal Register
has a linear relationship with the regulatory burden imposed by the
Federal government (more precisely, that the percentage of pages
that are actual regulations is relatively constant hence the trend
line is a fair representation, per se), we have, in turn, this

   geer.tinho.net/federal.register.tiff

Taking, then, the 4-year moving average of the number of new pages,
we can score Presidents (omitting Pres. Obama as his term is as yet
unended) by the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in regulatory
burden during their time in office, first in chronologic order

FDR   19.7%
HST   -2.2%
DDE    1.3%
JFK    5.2%
LBJ    6.1%
RMN    5.8%
GRF   17.6%
JEC    7.4%
RWR   -3.6%
GHB    2.7%
WJC    3.2%
GWB    0.9%

and then sorted highest (most regulating) to lowest (least regulating)

FDR   19.7%
GRF   17.6%
JEC    7.4%
LBJ    6.1%
RMN    5.8%
JFK    5.2%
WJC    3.2%
GHB    2.7%
DDE    1.3%
GWB    0.9%
HST   -2.2%
RWR   -3.6%

This can be further collapsed to the party level where the CAGR
under Democratic Presidencies has been 6.22% and under Republican
Presidencies has been 2.63% for an overall shared CAGR of 4.53%,
meaning that had the Democrats held the Presidency for the full 78
years there would be 46.0% more regulations than now obtain while
had the Republicans held the Presidency for the full 78 years there
would be 78.6% fewer regulations than now obtain, corresponding to
an 11.5 year doubling time for total regulatory burden under
Democratic Presidencies versus a 26.7 year doubling time under
Republican Presidencies.
			
The entirety of the above aligns with Harvard Law Professor Harvey
Silverglate's estimate that the average American commits three
felonies a day

   www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
   www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229

In sum, selective enforcement of the putative rule base is a
structural inevitability given the observed rate of growth in that
rule base.  To return to a rule of law requires that the number of
laws be reduced.

--dan