7 ms·

Perhaps a more balanced view is worth considering. It's a dirty business on both sides of this fence. Firstly It's pretty obvious that the UK government has a

by baz00 3y ago

Perhaps a more balanced view is worth considering. It's a dirty business on both sides of this fence. Firstly It's pretty obvious that the UK government has a number of serious national security problems at the moment. I would assume that they are arresting people who might be considered related indirectly or otherwise to the security problems to obtain data, contacts and leads. Our security services have always asked questions later and seen the rule of law as second class to their business. And they're also lazy so go for people who have already done the legwork (journos). There is also a big problem with press agencies hiring ad-hoc field reporters and photographers that turn out to actually be either terrorists or hanging around with them suspiciously often. A number of agencies have had to quickly disassociate with them loudly in the last few months. I applaud this position and it needs to be out in the open but there are no absolutes here. And yes, it sucks that it's like this.

KMag 3y ago
> And they're also lazy so go for people who have already done the legwork (journos). I don't think they should be able to strip-mine journalists for information, but "laziness" that makes things get done faster is usually called "efficiency". You could also say they're being lazy by taking cars/busses/trains instead of walking everywhere, or searching criminal databases instead of manually leafing through mountains of criminal dossiers. We shouldn't fault police officers for attempting to do their jobs as efficiently as possible. However, there's an unavoidable conflict of interest in asking those officers to also support the weaknesses we've intentionally built into the system. We need a separate group of people within the government constantly putting them in check, but that doesn't make the police officers bad people, even those who are pushing the boundaries we've established. History has shown that healthy democracy is a fragile metastable state, prone to devolving into autocracy and/or oligarchy. Also, historically, certain weaknesses in the state security apparatus are the only way we know of to create a healthy democracy from an autocracy/oligarchy. As an insurance mechanism against this once-every-few-hundred-years-millenium tail risk, we build these weaknesses into our state security apparatuses in the hopes that the autocracy/oligarchy that captures the state security apparatus won't be able to fix the weaknesses fast enough to prevent a democratic revolution. I know many people know this, but I wish we were more explicit in explaining that we're sowing the seeds of the democratic revolution that will bring down the government that topples/captures our current democracy. Yes, that does increase the crime rate and we need to be careful about that, but it seems some crime is the unavoidable cost of that long-tail insurance. It's good that some police officers are pushing to bring down the cost of that insurance, we just need to make sure there are powerful people ensuring the officers don't go too far.
RyanHamilton 3y ago
I never liked this special rules for reporters concept. Why should anyone have more rights than another? Rather than your suggestion of assigning blame to the employers, my proposal also makes it obvious that the government should have to prove some level of likelehood before searching anyone. Reporter or not.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Nobody is saying that reporters are more special and, indeed, anyone can go grab a camera or notepad to start documenting something on which they want to report. That is the heart of "freedom of the press". The context of this happening to journalists is same as the context that this could happen to anyone.
jmull 3y ago
Suspending civil rights because there are bad guys in the world is pretty much the same as saying there aren't real civil rights. They can be stripped if you do something the government doesn't like or associate with people the government doesn't like -- in other words, you lose them in the circumstances where you actually need them. Buy, hey, the law has the work "terrorism" in it, so it must be worth it.

by baz00 3y ago

KMag 3y ago

> And they're also lazy so go for people who have already done the legwork (journos). I don't think they should be able to strip-mine journalists for information, but "laziness" that makes things get done faster is usually called "efficiency". You could also say they're being lazy by taking cars/busses/trains instead of walking everywhere, or searching criminal databases instead of manually leafing through mountains of criminal dossiers. We shouldn't fault police officers for attempting to do their jobs as efficiently as possible. However, there's an unavoidable conflict of interest in asking those officers to also support the weaknesses we've intentionally built into the system. We need a separate group of people within the government constantly putting them in check, but that doesn't make the police officers bad people, even those who are pushing the boundaries we've established. History has shown that healthy democracy is a fragile metastable state, prone to devolving into autocracy and/or oligarchy. Also, historically, certain weaknesses in the state security apparatus are the only way we know of to create a healthy democracy from an autocracy/oligarchy. As an insurance mechanism against this once-every-few-hundred-years-millenium tail risk, we build these weaknesses into our state security apparatuses in the hopes that the autocracy/oligarchy that captures the state security apparatus won't be able to fix the weaknesses fast enough to prevent a democratic revolution. I know many people know this, but I wish we were more explicit in explaining that we're sowing the seeds of the democratic revolution that will bring down the government that topples/captures our current democracy. Yes, that does increase the crime rate and we need to be careful about that, but it seems some crime is the unavoidable cost of that long-tail insurance. It's good that some police officers are pushing to bring down the cost of that insurance, we just need to make sure there are powerful people ensuring the officers don't go too far.

RyanHamilton 3y ago

I never liked this special rules for reporters concept. Why should anyone have more rights than another? Rather than your suggestion of assigning blame to the employers, my proposal also makes it obvious that the government should have to prove some level of likelehood before searching anyone. Reporter or not.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
Nobody is saying that reporters are more special and, indeed, anyone can go grab a camera or notepad to start documenting something on which they want to report. That is the heart of "freedom of the press". The context of this happening to journalists is same as the context that this could happen to anyone.

jmull 3y ago

Suspending civil rights because there are bad guys in the world is pretty much the same as saying there aren't real civil rights. They can be stripped if you do something the government doesn't like or associate with people the government doesn't like -- in other words, you lose them in the circumstances where you actually need them. Buy, hey, the law has the work "terrorism" in it, so it must be worth it.