[...] our unhinged government, with an obsession like that of Melville's Ahab, has crippled Nancy Black's scientific career, cost her more than $100,000 in legal fees and might sentence her to 20 years in prison. NOAA found no harassment - but got her indicted for editing the tape, calling this a "material false statement" to federal investigators, which is a felony under the 1863 False Claims Act intended to punish suppliers defrauding the government during the Civil War. Six years ago, NOAA agents, who evidently consider the First Amendment a dispensable nuisance, told Black's scientific colleagues not to talk to her, and to inform them if they were contacted by her or her lawyers. [...] she has not spoken with one of her best friends. Silverglate, a lawyer in Boston, chillingly demonstrates how the mad proliferation of federal criminal laws - which often are too vague to give fair notice of what behavior is proscribed or prescribed - means that "our normal daily activities expose us to potential prosecution at the whim of a government official."
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