US Internet gambling law. Do as I say, not as I do

However, many months later, the US Congress is still quite unable to define in law exactly what constitutes "unlawful Internet gambling".

In a series of cynical actions more akin to something one might have expected from the old Soviet Russia or in some tinpot banana republic like Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe rather than a transparent and accountable democracy, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was pushed through the Congress in the middle of the night when zealot Republicans added its provisions to a Bill that was actually about the security of US seaports and had sweet Fanny Adams to do with either networking technology or gambling.

The net result of this was that almost no-one actually read the proposed legislation and the thing went through, more or less on the nod, with no scrutiny, oversight or debate. As a result this dog's dinner of a law is an ill-defined mess.

Recently, another, rather better thought-out Bill went before the House Financial Services Committee. Had it passed (which it didn't) government apparatchiks would have been forced to provide a workable definition of what online gambling actually is. What's more, had it reached the statute books, the new law would also have prevented both the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve from enforcing the swingeing provisions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

The advertised purpose and intent of the anti-Internet gambling law, that was virtually smuggled through the legislative process in the wee small hours of the morning on the back of another Bill, was the necessity to prevent any further moral decay of the US by ensuring that citizens must be protected from the temptation to gamble – unless, of course they do it in places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where the feds can get a rake-off on the transactions.

It seems that moral temptation is fine in places like Nevada and New Jersey but is unacceptable if that temptation, when translated into action, is actually conducted outside the continental United States and takes place in foreign parts such as the Bahamas or the Caribbean where even the long arm of the IRS cannot reach.

The provisions of the legislation bear heavily on on US financial institutions and banks that were made responsible for instituting controls in an effort to stop US citizens gambling online. The banks have been lobbying the US authorities ever since, claiming, with considerable justification, that it is the responsibility of federal government law enforcement agencies to police the law. However, the authorities have simply dropped the complaints into the "pending" tray and done nothing.

The US has always had a schizophrenic attitude to gambling but, in the main, the imposition of laws either to ban it or allow it were, in the past, left up to individual states.