Mike has an Overcriminalization Watch posting at Crime & Federalism listing a few minor ethical lapses that could (at least in theory) be charged as federal crimes under the mail and wire fraud laws. For example, this:
using your cell phone (or sending an e-mail) to call in sick for work when you’re not really sick (it doesn’t matter that everyone else does this; you’re felons, all of you!)
In my line of business, computer programming, it’s important to analyze the effects of the business rules you build into a software system. Among other things, you try to imagine all the possible situations to which the rule could be applied. If the rule leads to perverse results in some situations, it’s a bad rule. You can try to add exceptions to the rule to cover all the special cases, or you can look for another simple rule that doesn’t have perverse results.
Too bad Congress doesn’t spend more time examining laws for such perversions before passing them.
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