Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

At least in the U.S., lying by itself cannot be made illegal, as a violation of the First Amendment. However, when monetary actions are involved, lies can be characterized as fraud, and serve as the predicate for crimes.

In my opinion, it's a bad idea to predicate crimes on people lying. It can be devilishly difficult to distinguish between someone who is lying and someone who is misinformed, and that task becomes exponentially more complicated when the underlying "fact" is itself uncertain. A good example of this is the securities laws. Fundamentally, they are predicated on the simple idea that it is illegal to lie in connection with the sale of securities. In practice, it invites endless litigation over whether, say, a CEO "lied" when he said in an analyst call that a company would meet certain benchmarks when in fact the company failed to do so.

These sorts of crimes are not just conceptually complicated, but suffer from difficult proof problems. The difference between a "lie" and a "mistaken statement" is simply a person's state of mind at the time a statement is made. This sort of thing is devilishly difficult to prove.

> It can be devilishly difficult to distinguish between someone who is lying and someone who is misinformed, and that task becomes exponentially more complicated when the underlying "fact" is itself uncertain.

Another good example (IMHO) is the case of academic fraud. Often, the researchers' assumptions bias the entire study, leading to a result that an unbiased researcher wouldn't get. For example, the biased researcher pools groups that shouldn't be pooled, or the biased researcher doesn't log-normalize data that should be log-normalized, leading to "wrong" results. Edit: But most of the time, the researcher doesn't even realize that (s)he is biased.

On the other hand, we have researchers who clearly have monetary interests behind their publications: Séralini comes to mind who publishes biased books on GMOs but also publishes extremely biased research, or all the "bad pharma" as described in Ben Goldacre's book of the same name.

There have been cases where "obvious" scientific fraud has been investigated by the police, for example in Italy [1] or South Korea [2], but the slope is truly slippery. Where do you draw the line between "honest mistake" and "lie"?

Furthermore, most countries already have a problem with more and more scientists dropping out of science, which will only be exacerbated if you can go to prison for a huge mistake.

[1] http://retractionwatch.com/2013/12/06/should-scientific-misc...

[2] http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091026/full/4611181a.html

At least in the U.S., lying by itself cannot be made illegal, as a violation of the First Amendment.

That is what the Constitution says. The policy of the government is very, very different. [0]

Remember, don't talk to government agents without a lawyer.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

That's not "lying by itself"

So perjury can obviously be made illegal, since it's a recognized exception to the freedom of speech that was well established at the time of the founding. Arguably 18 U.S.C. 1001 is a perjury statute. There is a very good argument that it goes far beyond how the framers would have understood the concept of perjury, specifically in that it applies to situations outside a judicial context in which no oath is administered. Certainly, there are people who think 18 U.S.C. 1001 in its full generality might be unconstitutional: http://www.volokh.com/2011/03/21/the-first-amendment-and-kno.... That said, when it has been applied, it has tended to be in cases that fit the mold of perjury or fraud anyway, thus punting on the Constitutional issue.

That is not at all what the Constitution says. The Constitution allows free speech, and consequently you are allowed to say whatever you want, even if it is a lie.

However, certain statements are also acts. While the content of the statement is protected, the act itself is punished. For example, perjury, public endangerment, etc., are acts which can take the form of speech.

>At least in the U.S., lying by itself cannot be made illegal, as a violation of the First Amendment.

This isn't true. False statements of fact are a major exception to the First Amendment [0].

Besides perjury, you can prosecute people for defamation or libel. Usually it's a civil matter, but there's also criminal defamation. Finally, as WildUtah mentions below, making false statements is a crime.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_statements_of_fact

I wouldn't say those exceptions mean that you can make "lying by itself" illegal. For example, perjury is limited by fact that it has to be in the context of a judicial proceeding under oath. Defamation on issues of public concern has an "actual malice" requirement. Fraud, of course, has the additional element of some financial transaction or gain.

> At least in the U.S., lying by itself cannot be made illegal

Try lying to a cop. Watch how fast they slap you with obstruction of justice.

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