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So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same

So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better?

t-writescode 5y ago
> to ultimately arrive at the same result [citation needed] Further: Wiretapping is illegal without a warrant. I believe the spirit of the law there implied that wiretapping of [previous, historical conversations] was _always_ illegal, since a wiretap could only be tracking future conversations by its very nature. The nature of communication has changed, such that all conversations theoretically have a permanent, historical record, despite the intention of those conversations to not have that historical record. It's called "instant messaging", after all, not "perpetual letter writing". It's meant to be an analogue to talking directly with one another. The path we've gone down where everyone uses a third party to communicate with each other, and that that third party could theoretically record and retain all communications back and forth in perpetuity does not change the _intent_ of the laws as they were written. The laws were to protect everyone from unreasonable review of their historical actions. Perhaps you remember that story - I've completely forgotten the source and am having trouble finding it - about the person taken in the night and thrown in front of a judge. He asked what his crimes were, and the judge said "that's what we're here to find out", as they were going to go through everything he'd ever done to find something to charge him with. edit: another instance would be Lavrentiy Beria, a police chief under Stalin (https://www.oxfordeagle.com/2018/05/09/show-me-the-man-and-ill-show-you-the-crime/ https://www.oxfordeagle.com/2018/05/09/show-me-the-man-and-i...) "Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime." That's nothing new, either. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642).
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Ironically, under totalitarian regimes, citizens find themselves faced with the choice between either following the unwritten rules of the regime (which require them to break the laws as written) or following the written laws (which are an impediment to the regime, and thus cause one to be guilty of more nebulous crimes like "sedition"). I don't disagree that overly broad laws are a problem in non-totalitarian countries, but I think that regimes like Stalin's are a special case.
nobody9999 5y ago
>So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better? Because my privacy and that of most others who are decent, law-abiding citizens is more important than not making police do their jobs. How do you think police caught people before apps like Signal? With real police work. Perhaps if they had to spend more time doing that, they wouldn't have time to beat and kill as many unarmed civilians.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
If the alternative is a mass surveillance state (which we are sliding to) and the end of democracy, yes. Yes it's way better.

So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better?

t-writescode 5y ago

> to ultimately arrive at the same result [citation needed] Further: Wiretapping is illegal without a warrant. I believe the spirit of the law there implied that wiretapping of [previous, historical conversations] was _always_ illegal, since a wiretap could only be tracking future conversations by its very nature. The nature of communication has changed, such that all conversations theoretically have a permanent, historical record, despite the intention of those conversations to not have that historical record. It's called "instant messaging", after all, not "perpetual letter writing". It's meant to be an analogue to talking directly with one another. The path we've gone down where everyone uses a third party to communicate with each other, and that that third party could theoretically record and retain all communications back and forth in perpetuity does not change the _intent_ of the laws as they were written. The laws were to protect everyone from unreasonable review of their historical actions. Perhaps you remember that story - I've completely forgotten the source and am having trouble finding it - about the person taken in the night and thrown in front of a judge. He asked what his crimes were, and the judge said "that's what we're here to find out", as they were going to go through everything he'd ever done to find something to charge him with. edit: another instance would be Lavrentiy Beria, a police chief under Stalin (https://www.oxfordeagle.com/2018/05/09/show-me-the-man-and-ill-show-you-the-crime/ https://www.oxfordeagle.com/2018/05/09/show-me-the-man-and-i...) "Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."

nobody9999 5y ago
>"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime." That's nothing new, either. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642).
dane-pgp 5y ago
Ironically, under totalitarian regimes, citizens find themselves faced with the choice between either following the unwritten rules of the regime (which require them to break the laws as written) or following the written laws (which are an impediment to the regime, and thus cause one to be guilty of more nebulous crimes like "sedition"). I don't disagree that overly broad laws are a problem in non-totalitarian countries, but I think that regimes like Stalin's are a special case.

nobody9999 5y ago

>So you want cost the taxpayer significantly with potentially months of unneeded work and expose cops to potentially more danger to ultimately arrive at the same result? How exactly is this better? Because my privacy and that of most others who are decent, law-abiding citizens is more important than not making police do their jobs. How do you think police caught people before apps like Signal? With real police work. Perhaps if they had to spend more time doing that, they wouldn't have time to beat and kill as many unarmed civilians.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

If the alternative is a mass surveillance state (which we are sliding to) and the end of democracy, yes. Yes it's way better.