6 ms·

I'm going to propose something crazy. Government shouldn't be allowed to do whatever isn't illegal. Government should not be allowed to do anything unless speci

I'm going to propose something crazy. Government shouldn't be allowed to do whatever isn't illegal. Government should not be allowed to do anything unless specifically authorized by law. With respect to electronic surveillance, the methods need to be clearly circumscribed. Anything outside of specific, written guidelines enacted into law should be illegal.

fsflover 4y ago
Now you need to propose how to implement that in a law.
- krapp 4y ago
  It already has been - the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
benlivengood 4y ago
That's pretty much how the U.S. constitution was written. Federalism superceded that in spirit in many ways, and states followed suit.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  That's true for the Federal government (although even that has loopholes you could drive a truck through, like exceptions for national security) but not for states. States have general police power and generally can regulate anything unless there it is forbidden.
  - therealjumbo 4y ago
    A state could be a leader and enact that type of provision into their state law or state constitution. Good leadership is hard to find.
    - vdqtp3 4y ago
      No government has willingly given up power
      - therealjumbo 4y ago
        Yes they have, just not very often and not without a long political fight and not without strong political leaders to push it forward. Say what you want about the "system" and the two parties and so on, but we the people send our senators and reps to Congress, and the same is true at the state level. This type of thing would be best done at a state level to show people, particularly those in other states that it can work well.
        pksebben 4y ago
        this view of an average Americans level of agency in our political process could most politely be described as 'simplified'. Before you even get in the weeds as to how voting actually works, that two party thing you mentioned provides, at the ideal best, two people with two sets of ideas about how to get things done. IF they don't agree on how to manage something (say we get the rare politician who's not in favor of further deregulating banks), there's no guarantee that one of those two ideas will be any good, or aligned with the political zeitgeist they're supposed to represent. Much more often, the wedge issues they differ on are a fraction of the things they'll be making decisions about, and stuff like military spending, bank deregulation, and general market deregulation are bipartisan supported. So if you don't like either of those, you're effectively excluded from the political process. Then, you have all the ways in which the voting process is gamed by those in charge of it. Gerimandering is an obvious and easy one to spot, but there are other, more pernicious methods employed - like restricting voting to a single day, not making voting a holiday, purging voter rolls prior to the primaries (we'll deal with the primaries in a second), restricting felons from voting (whilst making things like marijuana possession a felony, an easy way to shunt out the underprivileged). There's more, for good reading on this topic check out Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig. We are married to first-past-the-post voting, which is demonstrably the worst system but the easiest to game. The supreme court, which makes many of the most impactful political decisions, isn't voted in. And they have life terms. So even if you manage to make progress elsewhere, they can just decide that things should be different and change the way the law works. The Senate arbitrarily distributes the power to block legislation among the least populous states, making it easier to manipulate the population into voting for people who will do this. K Street (the lobbyists) literally get paid to 'help' draft legislation that favors only those who can afford it. Some of our laws are actually for sale. Then you have the primaries, which are effectively controlled by two fairly small cabals of (who exactly? I dare you to enumerate the people involved). Each of which has it's own set of obtuse rules that's not subject to an iota of the scrutiny that actual elections are subject to, even though you could make the argument that the primaries are the more important election, because they decide what the two options will be. Then there's the news. Rather, there's the institutions that claim to be news, but all of which behave more like winged propaganda machines, pumping their color and fueling anger at (whatever the wedge issues are for the other team today). These outlets all have things they will not talk about, like the issues with our elections or growing income inequality, because these things are precisely the things that the power structure, which all major news networks benefit from, is founded upon. One thing both parties agree on completely; there should only be two parties. This would strike one as odd if they weren't so deeply acclimated to the situation.
- mariodiana 4y ago
  Yes. I understand that. For some reason, most of my fellow Americans don't.
  - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
    Most of your fellow Americans play tribal politics and turn a blind eye whenever their preferred party does it.
dylan604 4y ago
So what happens you get a warrant that specifies electronic data collection only, yet when you arrive at the location, you find they don't use computers at all and have everything you need to convict in a handwritten ledger of some sort? Do you have to leave the ledger because the warrant specified electronic?
- jackson1442 4y ago
  yes, that's how warrants work. if you get a warrant that says you may search the kitchen and don't find anything, you don't get to go and search the bedroom.
- mariodiana 4y ago
  Yes.
- otikik 4y ago
  Of course you do. Why do you think otherwise?
  - dylan604 4y ago
    I have no idea, I'm not a lawyer, nor a criminal to be on the receiving end of a search warrant so I have no insights into their details. Why do you assume otherwise? So you're saying that an investigator looking for a specific type of evidence cannot find other evidence of the same crime? Are they then supposed to go back to a judge to say now we need to modify the warrant or get a new warrant? Do they leave people around so the new evidence isn't removed while the new/updated warrant is obtained? Are their time limits on the execution of a warrant?
    - Terretta 4y ago
      This is mostly a US thing, not really the case in UK, EU, or India for instance. “Fruit of the poisonous tree” is a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as well. The doctrine underlying the name was first described in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920). The term's first use was by Justice Felix Frankfurter in Nardone v. United States (1939). Such evidence is not generally admissible in court. For example, if a police officer conducted an unconstitutional (Fourth Amendment) search of a home and obtained a key to a train station locker, and evidence of a crime came from the locker, that evidence would most likely be excluded under the fruit of the poisonous tree legal doctrine. The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is intended to deter police from using illegal means to obtain evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree See also “exclusionary rule”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule
R0b0t1 4y ago
This is how it's supposed to work in the US.
fallingfrog 4y ago
You can write the law however you want, but it's the people holding the guns who decide how those laws are enforced that really decide what the laws are. The glorification and deification of cops and soldiers as saint-like figures of pure virtue makes it that much easier. Ultimately the only real constraint on police and military power is mass civil disobedience, and technology and weaponry and mass surveillance can nullify much of that.

fsflover 4y ago

Now you need to propose how to implement that in a law.

krapp 4y ago
It already has been - the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

benlivengood 4y ago

That's pretty much how the U.S. constitution was written. Federalism superceded that in spirit in many ways, and states followed suit.

advisedwang 4y ago
That's true for the Federal government (although even that has loopholes you could drive a truck through, like exceptions for national security) but not for states. States have general police power and generally can regulate anything unless there it is forbidden.
- therealjumbo 4y ago
  A state could be a leader and enact that type of provision into their state law or state constitution. Good leadership is hard to find.
  - vdqtp3 4y ago
    No government has willingly given up power
    - therealjumbo 4y ago
      Yes they have, just not very often and not without a long political fight and not without strong political leaders to push it forward. Say what you want about the "system" and the two parties and so on, but we the people send our senators and reps to Congress, and the same is true at the state level. This type of thing would be best done at a state level to show people, particularly those in other states that it can work well.
      - pksebben 4y ago
        this view of an average Americans level of agency in our political process could most politely be described as 'simplified'. Before you even get in the weeds as to how voting actually works, that two party thing you mentioned provides, at the ideal best, two people with two sets of ideas about how to get things done. IF they don't agree on how to manage something (say we get the rare politician who's not in favor of further deregulating banks), there's no guarantee that one of those two ideas will be any good, or aligned with the political zeitgeist they're supposed to represent. Much more often, the wedge issues they differ on are a fraction of the things they'll be making decisions about, and stuff like military spending, bank deregulation, and general market deregulation are bipartisan supported. So if you don't like either of those, you're effectively excluded from the political process. Then, you have all the ways in which the voting process is gamed by those in charge of it. Gerimandering is an obvious and easy one to spot, but there are other, more pernicious methods employed - like restricting voting to a single day, not making voting a holiday, purging voter rolls prior to the primaries (we'll deal with the primaries in a second), restricting felons from voting (whilst making things like marijuana possession a felony, an easy way to shunt out the underprivileged). There's more, for good reading on this topic check out Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig. We are married to first-past-the-post voting, which is demonstrably the worst system but the easiest to game. The supreme court, which makes many of the most impactful political decisions, isn't voted in. And they have life terms. So even if you manage to make progress elsewhere, they can just decide that things should be different and change the way the law works. The Senate arbitrarily distributes the power to block legislation among the least populous states, making it easier to manipulate the population into voting for people who will do this. K Street (the lobbyists) literally get paid to 'help' draft legislation that favors only those who can afford it. Some of our laws are actually for sale. Then you have the primaries, which are effectively controlled by two fairly small cabals of (who exactly? I dare you to enumerate the people involved). Each of which has it's own set of obtuse rules that's not subject to an iota of the scrutiny that actual elections are subject to, even though you could make the argument that the primaries are the more important election, because they decide what the two options will be. Then there's the news. Rather, there's the institutions that claim to be news, but all of which behave more like winged propaganda machines, pumping their color and fueling anger at (whatever the wedge issues are for the other team today). These outlets all have things they will not talk about, like the issues with our elections or growing income inequality, because these things are precisely the things that the power structure, which all major news networks benefit from, is founded upon. One thing both parties agree on completely; there should only be two parties. This would strike one as odd if they weren't so deeply acclimated to the situation.
mariodiana 4y ago
Yes. I understand that. For some reason, most of my fellow Americans don't.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
  Most of your fellow Americans play tribal politics and turn a blind eye whenever their preferred party does it.

dylan604 4y ago

So what happens you get a warrant that specifies electronic data collection only, yet when you arrive at the location, you find they don't use computers at all and have everything you need to convict in a handwritten ledger of some sort? Do you have to leave the ledger because the warrant specified electronic?

jackson1442 4y ago
yes, that's how warrants work. if you get a warrant that says you may search the kitchen and don't find anything, you don't get to go and search the bedroom.
mariodiana 4y ago
Yes.
otikik 4y ago
Of course you do. Why do you think otherwise?
- dylan604 4y ago
  I have no idea, I'm not a lawyer, nor a criminal to be on the receiving end of a search warrant so I have no insights into their details. Why do you assume otherwise? So you're saying that an investigator looking for a specific type of evidence cannot find other evidence of the same crime? Are they then supposed to go back to a judge to say now we need to modify the warrant or get a new warrant? Do they leave people around so the new evidence isn't removed while the new/updated warrant is obtained? Are their time limits on the execution of a warrant?
  - Terretta 4y ago
    This is mostly a US thing, not really the case in UK, EU, or India for instance. “Fruit of the poisonous tree” is a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as well. The doctrine underlying the name was first described in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920). The term's first use was by Justice Felix Frankfurter in Nardone v. United States (1939). Such evidence is not generally admissible in court. For example, if a police officer conducted an unconstitutional (Fourth Amendment) search of a home and obtained a key to a train station locker, and evidence of a crime came from the locker, that evidence would most likely be excluded under the fruit of the poisonous tree legal doctrine. The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is intended to deter police from using illegal means to obtain evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree See also “exclusionary rule”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule

R0b0t1 4y ago

This is how it's supposed to work in the US.

fallingfrog 4y ago

You can write the law however you want, but it's the people holding the guns who decide how those laws are enforced that really decide what the laws are. The glorification and deification of cops and soldiers as saint-like figures of pure virtue makes it that much easier. Ultimately the only real constraint on police and military power is mass civil disobedience, and technology and weaponry and mass surveillance can nullify much of that.