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This sentiment is quite common: "I don't care if 'bad people' die. Fairly or unfairly, doesn't matter - they're bad people." I would equate this to "I don't c

This sentiment is quite common: "I don't care if 'bad people' die. Fairly or unfairly, doesn't matter - they're bad people." I would equate this to "I don't care about privacy because I have nothing to hide. Only bad people have things to hide, and if their privacy is taken away, so what, they're bad people." If you can understand why privacy is a 'Good Thing', or better, a Human Right, then you should be able to comprehend why extrajudicial killings are a Bad Thing, or better, a violation of Human Rights.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
There's a limit to how presumed innocent people can be. If all 1000 people were involved in a shootout and fired on the police first, then it's not unreasonable that they were killed. If it makes you feel better, there are contexts where your right to privacy should be suspended too. If the police see you kidnap a child and put him in your underwear drawer, it seems like there should be a procedure for them to violate the privacy of your underwear drawer without needing to call a judge. And if there were 10,000 privacy violations nationwide and all of them were well-documented emergency circumstances, I'd hesitate to even call it a problem(or at least, not a problem with the police's behavior; there's clearly a childnapping problem).
- astrocat 10y ago
  It's strawmen all the way down... > If all 1000 people were involved in a shootout and fired on the police first... These are quite specifically NOT the kinds of incidents at issue. > there are contexts where your right to privacy should be suspended too. Again, we're not talking about these specific contexts where evidence and investigation are thorough. We're talking about exposing biases when evidence and due process are either minimal or nonexistent. > And if there were 10,000 privacy violations nationwide and all of them were well-documented emergency circumstances, I'd hesitate to even call it a problem. Yes, of course. This is clearly not a problem because of "well-documented emergency circumstances." The original article is about revealing trends from circumstances that are very poorly documented, and rarely or selectively reported.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

There's a limit to how presumed innocent people can be. If all 1000 people were involved in a shootout and fired on the police first, then it's not unreasonable that they were killed. If it makes you feel better, there are contexts where your right to privacy should be suspended too. If the police see you kidnap a child and put him in your underwear drawer, it seems like there should be a procedure for them to violate the privacy of your underwear drawer without needing to call a judge. And if there were 10,000 privacy violations nationwide and all of them were well-documented emergency circumstances, I'd hesitate to even call it a problem(or at least, not a problem with the police's behavior; there's clearly a childnapping problem).

astrocat 10y ago
It's strawmen all the way down... > If all 1000 people were involved in a shootout and fired on the police first... These are quite specifically NOT the kinds of incidents at issue. > there are contexts where your right to privacy should be suspended too. Again, we're not talking about these specific contexts where evidence and investigation are thorough. We're talking about exposing biases when evidence and due process are either minimal or nonexistent. > And if there were 10,000 privacy violations nationwide and all of them were well-documented emergency circumstances, I'd hesitate to even call it a problem. Yes, of course. This is clearly not a problem because of "well-documented emergency circumstances." The original article is about revealing trends from circumstances that are very poorly documented, and rarely or selectively reported.