This seems like an incredible attitude.
There are many laws we would contest, but the job of organizational leaders include awareness of the laws pertaining to their activities and staying on the right side of them. If those laws are bad, then campaigning to change them is reasonable—ignoring them is not.
Furthermore it’s far from clear there’s anything wrong with these laws, let alone that they’re ‘idoitic’. They exist to prevent all manner of scams, tax frauds and ways for self-serving ways for charity trustees to benefit at taxpayers’ expense. One of the lessons from FTXgate (actively promoted by MacAskill) was supposed to be that EA organisations that consider themselves above the law for the greater good are extremely dangerous.
We appreciate the reply!
We don’t ask for a defence! We think that if the laws have been broken, then it’s important that the EA community and its critics are aware of this.
Also in good faith: could you describe an example reasonable explanation? We might have misinterpreted the relevant laws, but it seems unambiguous that the first case is against the law as described unless the ‘adequate legal authority’ clause applies—and if it does, then it seems unambiguously not against the law. Similarly, if the GDPR functions as the quoted text implies (and if Cremer’s account was accurate, which isn’t a given), it seems unambiguous that this manner of storing data contravenes it.