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You missed the point of me saying that which was a response to your flippant "protecting criminals is bad" suggestion. Many crimes are only crimes not because t

• vkou 5y ago
  No, I get your point. Your point is a red herring. You're arguing that "Because law is arbitrary, police powers should be restricted." That's not a valid argument. You don't get to pick and choose law. You either get the whole package, or nothing. Police powers are completely orthogonal to this question. The reason they are restricted by law is not so that law is more difficult to enforce. The barristers that have drafted all this precedent over the centuries did not do so with the goal of 'Man, wouldn't it be great if we made a copper's job difficult!" The reason police powers are restricted by law is, as said earlier, to reduce the impact on how much police work should harass the innocent. The law doesn't recognize that there are parts of it that are arbitrary and optional. It either applies in its entirely, or doesn't. As long as you focus on the harm to the criminal, you're framing your argument in an odd way. You're much better off building your argument in a way that focuses on harm to the innocent. > I noticed you didn't address my point around erring on the side of not infringing on privacy however. Does this mean that you agree? I didn't address it, because your argument lacks qualification, which makes it possible to take it to absurd conclusions. If you believe privacy is an absolute good that cannot be infringed in any situation, then you get absurdity, like the police being unable to search an apartment that the neighbors have reported hearing gunshots from. (Because, heaven forbid, the occupants thereof may not be actually guilty of any crimes.) If you don't believe that, then you're going to have to quantify your argument, with a basis for when you believe it is appropriate for the police to infringe on someone's privacy. You're then going to have to explain how its consistent with actual pre-digital legal precedent. You're then going to have to explain how your scaffolding leads to an outcome inconsistent with how policing is currently done in the digital world. You've got a lot more work to do to make a coherent argument then simply saying "I believe privacy trumps solving crime," before I can respond to it.
  • daenz 5y ago
    >You're arguing that "Because law is arbitrary, police powers should be restricted." No. I'm arguing that because laws can be arbitrary, we should err on the side of protecting criminals when difficult decisions around privacy are at play. I don't know why you insist on strawmanning absurd forms of what I am saying.
    • vkou 5y ago
      > No. I'm arguing that because laws can be arbitrary, we should err on the side of protecting criminals when difficult decisions around privacy are at play. I'm probably 'strawmanning' it because your argument is utterly incomprehensible, given that it is entirely inconsistent with the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is not to protect the guilty from the legal consequences of things that they have done. You seem to think that it should be. This is utterly baffling. If you don't want people held accountable for crime, then strike those crimes from the criminal codex.