Here’s another unenforced and arguably unconstitutional United States federal law with potentially life-altering penalties and fines which nearly every Isaac Brock Society reader has violated:
18 USC § 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
There has never been a single prosecution under this law, the Logan Act, in its two-century history. But there didn’t need to be in order for it to scare people away from exercising their rights.
