Both of your counter-examples are not comparable, since they involve access which is codified under the particular legislation/statute. The inspectors have no legislative power that enables them access to the Uber app from any particular phone number/IMEI etc.

I used the "fifth amendment" as an example. Encryption is used in Australia also.

The reason your reductio ad absurdum does not work is because there is probably legislation that compels a driver to stop a vehicle at the direction of a police officer. The failure in your argument is that commerce between private persons is at the discretion of the individuals and there are only a few causes where contracts would be rendered void.

BTW, you seem to suffer from excessive sucking-up to authority. Have you begun your treatment for Stockholm Syndrome yet?

Let me help you fathom it.

Uber is under no obligation to accept every potential passenger. They can choose who to do business with and who not to. If they proactively deny their services to a person who happens to be a regulatory inspector - after the customer happens to be discovered as a regulatory bureaucrat - it isn't obstruction of justice, it's merely refusing to do further business with them.

Obstruction of justice is the willful interference in an ongoing investigation or prosecution; not the ongoing career of an investigator. By your logic, pleading the fifth amendment or using encryption is obstruction of justice. _That_ is something unfathomable.

It wouldn't be surprising. There's suggestion that LEO/regulatory crawl-bots make up a lot (possibly most) of child-porn TOR traffic.

And governments have much worse moral records.

How is this obstruction of justice? All this does is make the inspector's life more difficult; but it does not prevent him/her from actually doing their job; nor prevent them from prosecuting prior infringements (which would be obstruction).

I think Uber should divide their services into two separate contracts; one calling the vehicle; the other providing the ride. Then include a clause in their Ts & Cs that requesting a vehicle for the purposes of issuing a fine or any other regulatory purpose attracts a $100,000 call fee. If the inspector issues the fine prior to a fare-paying ride being witnessed, then there is no evidence with which to charge the driver. However, the call-fee still stands, since that service has been contracted; and contracted separate from the illegal activity; being the fare-paying ride.

Just because the USD was once pegged to gold or silver does not make it any less fiat; then or now. The value of the peg is defined by... ...fiat.

I think the US Constitution purports to apply to federal actors. It seems to be worded in a way to put limits on their behavior.

As Lysander Spooner wrote:

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

Personally, I think its purpose is to dupe people into believing that the racket that calls itself the United States of America is somehow a legitimate form of thuggery.

Not everything boils down to rational economics. People do lots of things voluntarily, without expectation of immediate financial gain.

The other issue with infrastructure type software (viz. OpenSSL) is that once created, they only occasionally require modification. It isn't a full time job. It'd be better managed by some interested custodians in their spare time (or rather; in time they choose to allocate to the pursuit); than for the software to be owned and managed by some organisation which assigns square pegs to round holes in order to get some half-arsed patches written and out "on time and within budget".

+1
All my ATO (~IRS) forms are signed under duress.

Somebody needs to explain why anyone would sign a "severance agreement". If you're going to fire me, then fire me. If you want my ongoing loyalty, then respect me and pay me (which really means continue to employ me).

If you force me to sign a "severance agreement", then you've not actually got any contractual agreement, since it was signed under duress. Of course, there's always the point about consideration. I might be interested in waiving the duress; for a price.

Do the communities who benefit from the secondary-use life of these batteries have the infrastructure and culture to properly recycle the materials; or will they end up in landfill/discarded into the environment?

You're thinking "enough" in the context of current fossil fuel consumption, not in terms of renewable energy load balancing, which could be a much smaller slice of the pie.

Not necessarily. In times gone by, town gas was produced to meet fluctuating demands (using coal) by storing in gasometers. Nothing to say this couldn't be also done with biomass gasification.

Is there enough material out there for a 3D JLaw reconstruction?