Elements of a Crime
Where in the following code fragment, does the possibility of a violation of US law lie, and what is the law possibly violated?
...
<option value="IR">
Iran (string in farsi, deleted because the perl/mysql interface is braindead)
</option>
<option value="IQ"
>
Iraq (string in arabic, delted because ... )
</option>
...
This is better than wearing crypto on a t-shirt at an airport ... answer below the jump.
Allowing a customer to indicate "Iran" as his or her location, regardless of where the provider best determines the actual location of the customer, by technical or other means, and Executive Order 13382.
Comments
Technical means keep telling the world that I'm in Winter Park, Florida. I'm on the Florida Panhandle, not even in the same time zone as Winter Park.
If I was on Bell South DSL, available about 10 miles to the west, people would think I was in Montgomery, Alabama.
I have a frequent commenter who is in Australia, but technical means say he's in LA. [He does that on purpose because of his job.]
If I switch to a satellite connection, there's no way of knowing where I am with any accuracy, and who cares?
Posted by: Bryan | May 5, 2008 11:40 PM
Bryan,
I didn't use "ip address" or "asn lookup", as the choices available for verification include other data generated in the current transaction, and correlations of current transaction data with external sources of data. When I wrote the W3C's spec for data collection policies on HTTP cookies, DoubleClick (now Google, Hi Vint!) was not happy they couldn't get away with not announcing that data collected in the present transaction wasn't being correlated (merged with) data collected previously, anywhere, including off-line data sources. They do it, so current cookie data is used to update personal profiles, which are also updated with data purchased from credit card processors and credit reporting data wharehouses.
Posted by: ebw | May 6, 2008 01:30 AM