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From: learn@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (William  Vajk )
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Message-ID: <1437@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
Date: 5 Apr 91 23:31:01 GMT
References: <1991Apr1.180311.5557@eff.org> <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> <14199@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Organization: Dares No Organization Like Dis Organization
Lines: 47


>>This is all very hypthetical.  Who gets to decide which are the bad crimes
>>and which are the good?  

-Bernie, (btw, I know you are speaking as the d.a.) I don't think this is
-very "hypothetical". Maybe it is in the US (though you only have to look
-back at McCarthyism to see that it is not) but if you take a hike to almost
-any foreign country, you will find governments that have kept files against
-their citizens labelling them, for example, as communists, and then denying
-them jobs, passports, whatever.

Back to the basics.

McCarthyism is far from dead in this country as a way of looking at matters,
though the commie hunts are over.

The "known associates" biz is still alive and well. If one reads the
interperetation our government has made regarding the "Legion of Doom" one 
cannot avoid noticing the great similarity between Batmanish philosophies 
and what our paid law enforcement officers have written.

I've stated before, and probably will again and again that while the
legislators write laws with clearly specified intentions as much as
possible, Law Enforcement will invariably read and prosecute to the
letter of the law, good, bad, or indifferent.

I don't know if there's a better way to state this or not, but it seems as
though Law Enforcement believes they are paid to act without thought or
conscience, and that our Judges are the only ones to whom legal thinking, and 
responsible decision making, is left. It also seems as though officers and 
SA's have one criterion, and only one..... "probable cause."

In reading Spafford's commentaries recently, an often played scene came
to mind. "Yes, Judge, I pulled him over for speeding and then remembered
his cousin was arrested last month for posession of burglary tools. So
I asked him to open the trunk, which he did. And there in plain view it
was, your Honor, a bar with a flattened end which can be used for prying
open doors and windows, so I charged him with posession and locked him up.
There it is, your Honor, over on that table.........No sir, the fact that
it might be a lug wrench and jack kandle for changing a flat tire never 
crossed my mind. He does come from a criminal family.......No sir, I didn't
recall that his cousin's case was thrown out of court because it too was
a lug wrench, all I remembered was the criminal charge.......No! Really ?
I was the arresting officer in that case too? Honestly, Judge, I didn't
remember that."

Bill Vajk