no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics

Category Archives: Police State

Enabling the Surveillance State

June 9th, 2009

For the record: the omniscience offered by red-light cameras, or mall security cameras networked together and available to State agents upon demand, is horribly frightening, and yes, the general apathetic reaction to the surveillance state likely means it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Case-in-point:

You feel like Big Brother’s watching. I just hope he is.

—Kim Gold, 48, Wilmington, DE resident. [Virtually Everywhere You Go… They’re Watching]

Ms. Gold, I think you need to re-read George Orwell’s 1984, or if you prefer, watch the movie. Because if you had even the faintest fucking understanding of what “Big Brother” actually is — the symbol of the omnipresent totalitarian State, where thought is crime, the end of human dignity and the death of liberty — I pray to whatever god you believe in, that you’d be singing a far different tune.

Apologetics and rationalizations, like those offered by Gold, or her fellow Wilmington resident Joann “If-you’re-not-doing-anything-wrong-you-don’t-have-anything-to-worry-about” Smagala, don’t rile me anymore. What I find most dreadful (and ironic) is not the degree to which most people apathetically accept these encroachments, but the degree to which they’ve been gone willingly with the program.

Multi-megapixel cameras tucked neatly inside cell phones and PDAs the likes of which would make Maxwell Smart go ga-ga, each containing a tracking device able to give more-or-less precise GPS location at practically any time, and each capable of keeping a more-or-less permanent record of our interpersonal communications, combined with all the transparency and openness of Teh Interweb (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) — hell…

“Big Brother” doesn’t need clandestine operatives to spy on the people, doesn’t need to install cameras on every street-corner, or televisions that watch us. We are already providing, for free and without question, far more information than we’d ever consider giving up if we thought we were really being watched.

Police Can Now Interrogate You Without Counsel

May 26th, 2009

For the past 23 years at least, any information gleaned from police interrogations after a suspect has requested counsel and without counsel’s presence has been generally inadmissible. This all changes, now.

Thanks to a recent SCOTUS ruling, however, the information/evidence from interrogations where a suspect has asked for counsel, but has not yet received counsel, will no longer be deemed inadmissible in court. Solicitor general, Elena Kagan said the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson decision “serves no real purpose” and offers only “meagre benefits”, and Justice Antonin Scalia, reading the majority opinion (overturning Michigan) said,

Because of the protections created by this court in Miranda and related cases, there is little if any chance that a defendant will be badgered into waiving his right to have counsel present during interrogation.

Awfully presumptuous, I’d say. Many people “voluntarily” relinquish their right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures, too, at the request of an armed police officer who has been trained to know just what to say in order to convince the suspect to relinquish his/her rights. Many people in these circumstances would behave differently, if they had access to counsel (or even that guy from the Don’t Talk to Cops videos). And in police custody, so would just about anyone, suspected of just about anything.

This has absolutely nothing to do with whether the suspect is guilty.

If the police badger a suspect by interrogation—especially after suspect requests counsel and before suspect receives same—it stands to reason that suspect’s request was not honored, which is to say that the continued interrogation is a violation of certain constitutional guarantees. Therefore, any information/evidence obtained as a result of this interrogatory chicanery, a thinly-veiled attempt to circumvent those basic protections, was typically deemed inadmissible.

Not anymore.

The essence of such protections as Miranda, Michigan, etc., is that they create an incentive to respect the guarantees of the Fifth and Sixth amendments, without which police officers and other state agents are effectively empowered to run roughshod over the “rights” they are supposed to protect.

Child Abusers in Uniform

May 16th, 2009

Bad: 43 children being shot with stun guns by police/penal system employees for no good reason.

A total of 43 children were blasted with stun guns as part of an “educational” program during visits at three state corrections facilities during “Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day,” a state investigation revealed Friday.

Worse: The children were not accused or suspected of any crimes.

Worser: The parents knew about it.

Worst: The parents “consented” to it, which is just slightly worse than the fact that the police/prison system employs the sort of person who is happy to shoot a stun gun at a child on a field trip for no good reason.  This wasn’t education, it was sadism. It’s child-abuse.

None of the children were seriously harmed by the stun guns, which is hard to believe considering the electric charge that is sent through the target’s body is enough to make a grown man have to change his pants.

And they’ve been known to kill grown men in the past, too. But since nobody was hurt, the officers will be “disciplined” and everything is OK.

…The officers apparently don’t get much of a chance to use the stun guns and probably had an itchy trigger finger…. [T]he guns have not been used on any of the 100,000 inmates so far this year.

A hundred thousand inmates so far this year haven’t warranted a single stun-gunning, yet somehow, the parents of 43 children decided that it would be OK to allow some sadist to zap their kids. I wonder if any of the correctional employees even questioned why they were being asked to stun-gun children? Somehow, I doubt it. This is not the behavior of normal, well-adjusted members of society. This is the behavior of drones.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate to suggest that these parents should lose their children, no questions asked. And I don’t think it’s inapproprite to suggest that every single accomplice-employee to this incident should be summarily fired: do not pass go, do not collect $200, no pension, no severance, nothing. If you’re lucky, you don’t end up in the clink yourself.

Although I’d certainly be willing to impose a much more severe form of punishment on anyone so willing to abuse a child in that manner.

I’m out of words. All out of words…

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no third solution

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