Follow-up to my ignorance should be a defense claim: The IRS can't even get tax law right! IRS employees at tax help centers gave correct answers to just 57 percent of tax law questions asked by Treasury Department investigators posing as taxpayers.... The IRS disputed the calculations, but agreed the agency needed to improve its record. Henry O. Lamar, commissioner for the division overseeing individual tax returns, said the accuracy rate is closer to 67 percent when the results are recalculated to exclude instances when taxpayers were referred to other publications or could not get any help.

Communication Ethics book part for Privacy Legal Machinery. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for A Social/Personal Footnote . (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for Who Needs Privacy?. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for Applying the Privacy Yardstick. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for Information Is Power. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

It is commonly said that "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." The reason why this is so is that when that precept was first formulated, common sense and the law had a lot in common. That meant that when faced with a choice of doing something, you could consult your common sense and use it to decide whether to do something, and odds are, that would tell you if it were legal.

A Patent Protest is going on, with several sites shutting down. I'd shut down in sympathy, except A: "shutting down" this site is non-trivial and B: it wouldn't really do any good anyhow, since it's not like people are using this site for anything important. Still, I sympathize. "Software Patent" is an oxymoron.

Communication Ethics book part for Privacy . (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Something interesting went by on my TiVo email newsletter: Talk about a Total Recall of a WishList™ search! Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to run for governor of California in a recall election scheduled for Oct. 7 is wreaking havoc on local TV listings. Recently the Sci Fi channel became the second cable network in two days to take his movies off air, pulling an entire night of scheduled Schwarzenegger films. The cable networks are taking the steps proactively, since under current law they are technically exempt from FCC rules requiring broadcasters to give equal air time to all candidates, free of charge, if they air entertainment content featuring a political rival.