Too many people equate "The Law" with morality and consider it a forgone conclusion that whatever "The Law" states must be adhered to, and if violated must be enforced at all costs. Unfortunately there exist just too many unjust, absurd, horrific, ridiculous, and outdated laws such as, Jim Crow, Apartheid, FATCA, the Patriot Act, FATCA, the Nuremberg Laws, .....compulsory TV licensing *even if you don't have a TV*.... Most people who are negatively affected by such laws are usually met with derision and marginalized and told to suck it up by the majority of society simply because "It's the law!". It's a shame that we all live in societies that have placed "the Law" above justice and common decency.

Imagine you're selling someone fertilizer. Now if that person is using that fertilizer to build a bomb, you should of course not be responsible. Also it's unreasonable that you should have to check what they do with this fertilizer. But if you check, find out they build bombs with it, and continue to sell them the fertilizer knowing that they use it for building bombs you are of course also responsible for the deaths those bombs cause.

A more accurate analogy would be this: Imagine that your company maintains an independent telephone directory service. A fertilizer company whose number happens to be listed in your directory (un)knowingly sells "illegal bomb-making materials" to "terrorists" who happened to your directory service to find the fertilizer company's number. After a bombing attack your telephone directory service company is then held liable because you didn't happen to scrutinise your publicly accessible database close enough to weed out any potential bad guys who might receive calls as a result of you having listed their telephone numbers.

This cannot be good.

I wonder what repercussions this may have regarding EU countries' compliance with FATCA?

Maybe you do not have a US pilot certificate but US ones do not have photographs. http://www.aopa.org/Advocacy/Regulatory-,-a-,-Certification-Policy/Regulatory-Brief-Photo-Pilot-Certificates.aspx "The terrorist acts in 2001 prompted passage of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), enacted on Nov. 19, 2001, which called for the under secretary of Transportation to consider a requirement for a photo ID pilot certificate. In order to provide a simple, inexpensive, timely means to positively identify pilots, AOPA asked the FAA to change the rules to require pilots to carry a government-issued photo ID along with their pilot certificate. As a result, the FAA changed 14 CFR 61.3(a): Requirement for Certificates, Ratings, and Authorizations, which requires all flight crewmembers of an aircraft to carry a pilot certificate and government-issued photo identification."

Effectively we do have "national ID cards" even though we don't call them that. Our state issued driver licenses (or non-driver's ID) are linked to our federally issued social security numbers which serves the same purpose. Try getting a driver license or non-driver's ID without a social security number.

It used to be that every time news like this came out I would think that things couldn't get much worse, but recently I have come to the conclusion that things can and will continue to get a lot worse. I now wonder just how much worse will it get? What's going to be next and when will the madness stop?

How long might it be before "trusted hardware" renders even [semi]-trusted operating systems such as Linux untrustworthy? Is this even an issue?

Ja, wirklich....

Unfortunately the SCOTUS would in all likelihood agree with federal appeals court decision, ripping open the already gaping hole in the Constitution even further. The concept of checks and balances cannot work as intended in the current US system where the legislative executive and judicial branches of government are all serving the same greedy corporate interests. The current system is rotten at every level all the way to the core and there is nothing that anyone can do about it until it's too late. In the meanwhile it's probably best to just sit back and enjoy the partisan bickering.

True. It doesn't matter whether one is a communist liberal leaning leftwing moonbat pro-choice Democrat or a right wing neo-con facist Tea Party gun toting pro-life Republican: Both are circling the same drain, yet neither side seems to recognise what's happening.

Three 64 bit DWORD values should be enough for anyone

State administrators must come up with an equivalent equivalency test.

It would be beneficial to force these politicians to actually use the technology, of which so many of them are so proudly ignorant. Most of them know less (and that's no exaggeration) about computers and the Internet than an average 8 year old child, yet in their hubris they feel that they are qualified to enact legislation to regulate it.

We would all benefit if they understood what the Internet is and actually used it in the course of their jobs. On Youtube I watched (or rather listened to) the entire congressional SOPA Hearing from 12/15/11 and was shocked at the general profound level ignorance of technology in general. It reminded me of a bunch of drunk blind people discussing a photograph of an elephant.

These people flat out dismiss any expert opinion regarding technology as "technical Jargon" and feel that there is no need for them to understand any of it, but they are nevertheless hell-bent on trying to control it. I think having them work virtually as well as maintain their own computers would be an excellent start.

In France such tweets are considered a criminal offence. Anything can be criminalized.