Barret Brown didn't do any hacking. He's a reporter. Reporters are fucking supposed to report the news, not keep it secret. This was just an example of the fact if the Feds want to get you, they have criminal code base so large, nobody can even count crimes let alone fit all of that knowledge into a single brain. Of course, not knowing the law is no excuse (unless you are cop), and having no intent to break the is irrelevant. What this boils down to, is the Feds can fuck you up any time they want if they don't like you. It's called tyranny.
[In 1998, the ABA tried to count crimes contained in Federal statutes but gave up estimating the number to be in excess of 3000.]
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None of these studies broached the separate -- and equally complex -- question of crimes that stem from federal regulations, such as, for example, the rules written by a federal agency to enforce a given act of Congress. These rules can carry the force of federal criminal law. Estimates of the number of regulations range from 10,000 to 300,000. None of the legal groups who have studied the code have a firm number.
"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
See also, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" http://www.amazon.com/Three-Fe...