I don’t think it would. Congress could criminalize the behavior of corporate surveillance, then prosecutors could charge any individual or company that engages in that behavior. It’d only be a bill of attainder if it was selective by identity (e.g. a bill that proclaims “the CEO of Flock is guilty of criminal surveillance and should be arrested”) rather than a defined criminal standard that applies to everyone.
Not sure exactly, but international trade law is weird, and generally bills of attainder are targeted at one or more individuals rather than classes of individuals. If a law defines a class, like “anyone selling goods from China” then I don’t think it qualifies as a bill of attainder. I did find this article on Lawfare from 2019 where Huawei challenged parts of the NDAA because it specifically forbade the executive branch from buying Huawei gear. The courts ultimately did not agree with Huawei.
If a law punished a specific murderer or group of murderers it would be, but not if it punished an entire defined class of murderers equally. Lawmakers generally describe the qualifications of a crime (e.g. “anyone who knowingly and willfully causes the death of another person”) and prescribe a punishment for anyone convicted of it, and then the courts determine whether or not individuals are guilty by whether they meet the qualifications laid out in the law. Bills of attainder are laws that define individuals or specific groups as guilty by identity, not qualification, which means they don’t get a trial and the judiciary doesn’t get to act as a check on the legislature.
It’s been tried before, and abandoned because it’s generally a bad idea. What you’re describing is a bill of attainder, a law passed specifically to punish an individual or group.
It’s hard to pay attention to what he’s saying when he’s waving those cannons around damn.
There are downsides to being unemployed for sure, but not knowing that Github is down until I see it on social media is quite an upside 😌
I’ll pour out a bit of coffee for all those who still have to care about these things o7
I think it’s a combination of things. One, they are good at synthesizing huge amounts of data and detecting trends, which is useful for surveillance if you’re not that hung up on being exactly right all the time. Two, they are very energy-costly, so their use drives up the price of energy, which drives up the price of fossil fuels.
np! It was good to refresh myself on the topic as well :)