Quotulatiousness

October 21, 2011

Incentives matter, police edition

Filed under: Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Jonathan Blanks explains that the incentives provided to police officers clearly do influence their behaviour:

Last week, former undercover police officer Stephen Anderson told the New York State Supreme Court that planting drugs on innocent people was so common that it didn’t even register emotionally to him. The story is starting to get traction in the media as an egregious example of police corruption, but it’s notable only because of the admission to the practice in open court. Each year, there are hundreds of cases in which police officers are caught stealing, using, selling, or planting drugs or pocketing the proceeds from drug busts. Despite the obligatory PR protestations that any given instance of corruption is an isolated case, the systemic, legal, social, and economic incentives in every law enforcement agency in America combine to make police corruption virtually inevitable. And with no other category of crimes are these incentives stronger than with drug crimes.

Anderson testified that drugs would be seized from suspects at a given bust, divided, and then used again as evidence against other people on site (or at a time later) who had nothing to do with the initial arrest. This was, in part, due to established drug arrest quotas the officers needed to meet. As public servants, police departments face the same budgetary pressures as any other government entity and thus their officers are required to meet certain benchmarks set by the powers that be. Added to the normal budgetary justification, however, many police officers are in the position to confiscate cash and property that can be sold at auction thanks to civil asset forfeiture laws. Many departments across the country keep a percentage or the entirety of forfeiture proceeds, so pressure to maintain a certain level of drug arrests is something straight out of Public Choice: 101.

New study shows Tasers often misused by police

Filed under: Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:36

Robert Farago lists some of the findings from a recent New York Civil Liberties Union study on the use and mis-use of TASERs:

  • Nearly 60 percent of reported Taser incidents did not meet expert-recommended criteria that limit the weapon’s use to situations where officers can document active aggression or a risk of physical injury.
  • Fifteen percent of incident reports indicated clearly inappropriate Taser use, such as officers shocking people who were already handcuffed or restrained.
  • Only 15 percent of documented Taser incidents involved people who were armed or who were thought to be armed, belying the myth that Tasers are most frequently used as an alternative to deadly force.
  • More than one-third of Taser incidents involved multiple or prolonged shocks, which experts link to an increased risk of injury and death.
  • More than a quarter of Taser incidents involved shocks directly to subjects’ chest area, despite explicit warnings by the weapon’s manufacturer that targeting the chest can cause cardiac arrest.
  • In 75 percent of incidents, no verbal warnings were reported, despite expert recommendations that verbal warnings precede Taser firings.
  • 40 percent of the Taser incidents analyzed involved at-risk subjects, such as children, the elderly, the visibly infirm and individuals who are seriously intoxicated or mentally ill.

    October 20, 2011

    Polls indicate 50% of Americans now support legalizing marijuana

    Filed under: Health, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

    Cue all the “what are they smoking?” jokes:

    Once in office, Jimmy Carter didn’t abandon his temperate approach to cannabis. He proposed that the federal government stop treating possession of small amounts as a crime, making a sensible but novel argument: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

    Nothing came of it, of course. Carter’s logic was unassailable even 35 years ago, but it has yet to be translated into federal policy. The American experience with prohibition of alcohol proved that we are capable of learning from our mistakes. The experience with prohibition of marijuana proves that we are also capable of doing just the opposite.

    The stupidity and futility of the federal war on weed, however, has slowly permeated the mass consciousness. This week, the Gallup organization reported that fully 50 percent of Americans now think marijuana should be made legal. This is the first time since Gallup began asking in 1969 that more Americans support legalization than oppose it.

    [. . .]

    Over the past 30 years, federal spending to fight drugs has risen seven times over, after inflation. Since 1991, arrests for possession of pot have nearly tripled. But all for naught.

    As a report last year by the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy noted, more high school students and young adults get high today than 20 years ago. More than 16 million Americans smoke dope at least once a month. Pot is just as available to kids as it ever was, and cheaper than before.

    If we had gotten results like this after reducing enforcement, the new policy would be blamed. But politicians who support the drug war never consider that their remedies may be aggravating the disease. They follow the customary formula for government programs: If it works, spend more on it, and if it fails, spend more on it.

    October 19, 2011

    Selley: Milewski is right on Tories’ “tough on crime” policies

    Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

    Chris Selley can’t be accused of being a Terry Milewski fan, but he does agree with Milewski’s message:

    The CBC recently sent Terry Milewski to Texas, the blood and guts state, where he asked conservative politicians and various experts what they thought of building more prisons, and filling them up, as a means of driving down crime. “Don’t,” was the basic answer. “It doesn’t work. That’s why we’re doing the opposite.”

    It was a nice piece on a serious policy issue. It reminded us that the federal government seems to consider crime legislation inside a hermetically sealed chamber. But for that very reason, nothing any journalist says is likely to make any difference. If contrary evidence carried any weight in Cabinet, the omnibus tough-on-crime bill, C-10, wouldn’t be before Parliament. The fact that elites recoil at its provisions and spew champagne out of their noses is a feature, not a bug.

    And, if I may briefly adopt the voice of a partisan blogger, the mainstream media would denounce the law of gravity if it somehow helped the Liberals (or the NDP, depending what day it is). The CBC, in the memorable words of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, “lies all the time.” And Mr. Milewski, as we all know, chairs the left-wing media conspiracy.

    This is not an ideal policy-making environment. But I’m going to try to change minds on a single, narrow, easily fixable issue: Mandatory minimum sentences for non-serious crimes. I can’t see any level on which they are supportable.

    Supreme Court rules that linking to defamatory material is not libel

    Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

    The Supreme Court of Canada makes the common sense ruling:

    Hyperlinking to defamatory material on the internet does not constitute publishing the defamatory material itself, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday.

    The ruling will alleviate fears that holding someone liable for how they use hyperlinks on websites, personal ones or others, could cast a chill on internet use.

    The responsible use of the internet and how traditional defamation law applies to modern technologies were at issue in this case, which was watched closely by media organizations and civil liberties groups.

    How someone can protect their reputation in the internet age when content is passed around with the quick click of a button was also considered in the case. On social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, users often share links, and the court’s ruling could have dramatically disrupted that function had it gone the other way.

    In its unanimous decision, the court said a hyperlink, by itself, should never be considered “publication” of the content to which it refers. But that doesn’t mean internet users shouldn’t be careful about how they present links. The court says that if someone presents content from the hyperlinked material in a way that repeats the defamatory content, they can be considered publishers and are therefore at risk of being sued for defamation.

    Four year sentence for . . . posting an idiotic suggestion to Facebook

    Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

    Patrick Hayes attempts to point out that the sentence imposed on Facebook idiot Jordan Blackshaw is both disproportional and a clear and present danger to free speech rights in Britain:

    Did you know that all it took for people to trash their own neighbourhoods this summer, such was the ‘collective insanity’ then gripping the UK, was for someone to suggest they do so on Facebook? A few words saying something like ‘let’s have a riot’ and, hey presto, off people went to have a riot.

    This didn’t happen, of course. But it is a view of last August’s riots that seems to provide the rationale behind the sentencing of 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw. This was the man, lest we forget, who on 9 August set up a Facebook ‘event’ entitled ‘Smash Down in Northwich town’. This hardly inspiring suggestion involved would-be rioters meeting up for said ‘smash down’ outside a local McDonald’s.

    In explaining why Blackshaw was to receive a four-year jail sentence for doing nothing more than publishing words online, the judge claimed that ‘this happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation’. Blackshaw’s conduct, he continued, ‘was quite disgraceful and the title of the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood’. Yesterday, Blackshaw’s appeal against the harsh sentencing, alongside that of another ‘Facebook rioter’, was rejected by the Crown Court.

    So, how many people responded to Blackshaw’s online suggestion during this period of ‘collective insanity’? The answer is one: Blackshaw himself. (He was immediately arrested). In fact, only nine of his 147 Facebook friends even responded online. Yet the reason for this collective no-show, at least as far as the judge was concerned, was ‘the prompt and efficient actions of police’ who eventually took Blackshaw’s Facebook page offline.

    October 15, 2011

    The secret way Supreme Court justices are appointed

    Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

    Christie Blatchford isn’t a fan of the secret and convoluted way that our Supreme Court is staffed:

    According to the latest serious rumour, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson are poised to make two appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada.

    The two will be chosen from a secret short list of six names produced by an all-party selection committee which whittled down a bigger secret list (given to them by the Justice Minister after his officials mysteriously came up with what is believed to have been 12 names) and only after consultation with unnamed officials from provincial law societies and law schools and unnamed senior judges.

    [. . .]

    The lack of openness is a particular concern with the Supreme Court, which, as has been evident recently, and even in its current ostensibly non-activist form, is plenty activist about telling government when it is wrong.

    I refer of course to the Insite decision, which effectively told the federal government, particularly the former health minister Tony Clement, that its policy against this particular supervised injection site was arbitrary, ill-conceived and violated drug users’ rights to “life, liberty and security of the person” as defined by the Charter of Rights.

    As it happens, in the end I reluctantly concurred with the result (that Insite stays open), but there’s no getting away from the bottom line that a group of unelected judges over-ruled the elected government and effectively legislated policy, albeit in a specific case.

    [. . .]

    Canadians are comforted by the fact ours isn’t like the American system, where presidential appointments to the Supreme Court have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate (such an unseemly business, such a circus) and where, o! the horror, some lower-court judges actually run for office.

    How is it better to have kings emerge from a secretive inside-baseball process, for all we know involving a witches’ chants and eye of newt, than to vote for them?

    October 13, 2011

    The 14th Amendment, a history

    Filed under: Government, History, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

    Canadian liberty: “The entitlement to consume milk, raw or otherwise, is not a Charter-protected right”

    Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

    Karen Selick reports on a recent court decision that shows just how far Canadians’ liberties are constrained by the judiciary:

    Dairy farmer Michael Schmidt has been campaigning to legalize the sale of raw (unpasteurized) milk for 17 years. In 2010, he was acquitted on 19 charges by a justice of the peace who ruled that “cow sharing” was a legitimate way to provide raw milk to informed consumers who don’t live on farms.

    On Sept. 28, a judge reversed portions of that decision and found Schmidt guilty on 13 charges.

    But the judge ventured beyond the subject of raw milk, saying: “The entitlement to consume milk, raw or otherwise, is not a Charter-protected right.”

    The implications are far reaching. If the judge is right about this, future courts could similarly declare that you have no right to eat meat, poultry, seafood, fruit, vegetables or grains, even if government approved. In short, you may have no right to eat anything at all.

    [. . .]

    In one very technical sense, the courts’ statements are accurate: There is no specific reference to milk, or indeed, any food in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the U.S. Bill of Rights. But both documents are equally silent about any right to get out of bed in the morning, to stretch, to brush your teeth, to use the bathroom, to put on clothes. If constitutions had to enumerate every single thing that North Americans normally consider themselves free to do, they would be a zillion pages long.

    Instead, the people who drafted these constitutional documents used a simple shortcut to eliminate the zillion pages. They said that people had the right to liberty.

    The Charter was, after all, designed to rein in government, not to rein in individuals. It did not purport to grant us our rights or freedoms; rather, it recognized that those freedoms already existed. It guarantees in its very first section that the state may not infringe on our freedoms except by “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

    October 12, 2011

    “There is no off-the-shelf exam [that can] detect sociopathic killers”

    Filed under: Cancon, Law, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

    Michael Friscolanti explains how former Colonel Russell Williams managed to avoid coming to the attention of the police for so long:

    An elite officer who piloted prime ministers and the Queen—and oversaw the country’s largest air force base—was doubling as a depraved sexual predator who somehow managed to ascend the ranks without a whiff of suspicion. Grasping for an explanation, the Canadian Forces launched an “immediate review” of the way candidates are selected for senior command positions—and whether enhanced psychological testing might have revealed the real Russ Williams.

    The answer, sadly, is no. Among hundreds of pages of internal military documents, obtained by Maclean’s under the Access to Information Act, is a draft version of that review. It confirms what leading experts have long maintained: there is no off-the-shelf exam that employers, armed forces or otherwise, can use to detect sociopathic killers. “Given the recent events in CFB Trenton, it is natural for the CF to question whether or not the organization could have identified a sexual sadist or predicted that an individual would become a serial sexual murderer,” the report says. But that “would be unrealistic to expect.”

    Every recruit is subject to various levels of screening, including a criminal records check and an aptitude test. Members also undergo an annual evaluation that assesses past performance and potential for promotion. To be considered for senior command (colonels in the army and air force; captains in the navy), an officer’s file must be “thoroughly reviewed” and endorsed by a board of superiors who examine “personal characteristics, demonstrated leadership ability, education and professional development.” Nothing in Williams’s file, an impeccable 23-year career, offered the slightest hint of his alter ego.

    October 5, 2011

    The police are not subject to the rules they enforce on gun owners

    Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:52

    Lorne Gunter itemizes some of the many, many ways that legal gun owners in Canada can be tripped up by vagaries and inconsistencies in the law:

    Since Bill C-68 became the law of the land more than 15 years ago, one of the most common charges police have laid against gun owners has been for unsafe storage. The reason for this is that the federal firearms law is very unclear about what constitutes safe and unsafe storage.

    Is it enough to have one’s firearms locked away in a gun safe or must they also have trigger locks installed? How secure must the safe’s lock be: strong enough to keep a thief out for two minutes? Five? Fifteen?

    Is it OK to store ammunition in the same safes as guns or must bullets and shells be in separate safes from one’s firearms? Must the two safes be in separate rooms?

    There are no hard-and-fast rules, so in some provinces, unsafe storage provisions have become catchalls. In Ontario, for instance, most frontline officers have been trained to lay unsafe storage charges against any gun owner whose firearm lacks a trigger lock, even if the owner had just removed the lock so he could use his firearms to defend his home or family against intruders.

    These unwritten rules make self-defence next to impossible. You are permitted by law to use a gun to defend yourself and your home against an armed intruder, but you cannot remove the locks on your guns to defend your loved ones, yourself or your property unless you’re willing to be charged with unsafe storage.

    Perhaps the unsafe storage rules are should be called a Catch-22 rather than a catchall.

    Oddly enough, the police don’t hold themselves to the same standard that they so unevenly enforce on the citizens. According to a recent FOIA result, police forces in Canada have lost more than 400 firearms over the last three years, but no police officers have faced criminal charges or loss of their jobs over these losses. Yet another way that the police have different rules than ordinary citizens.

    Apple’s new iPhone

    Filed under: Europe, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

    I’ve been following the lead-up to yesterday’s Apple iPhone announcement, as I’m just out of contract on my original iPhone 3G (yes, Canadian carriers only offered 3-year contracts, unlike US carriers who offered 2-year deals). My iPhone 3G still works well: I’m still happy with it overall, but I’m starting to suffer from “aging hardware syndrome”. More and more of the apps I’ve been using are being updated to use the newer capabilities of more recent iPhones and no longer run on my phone. So far, it’s just been trivial stuff (games and non-critical apps) that I miss but didn’t depend on. It’s only a matter of time before one of the applications I depend on (like my time-tracking and billing software or my personal finance app) is no longer supported on the 3G. At that point, I’ll have to either jump to a newer iPhone or find equivalent apps that work on Android phones.

    Yesterday’s announcement seems to have caused a lot of wailing in certain iPhone communities — as far as I can tell, mainly because Apple chose to call the new phone the “iPhone 4S” instead of “iPhone 5”. Yes, some people are upset because of nomenclature, even if the updated features are otherwise a nice upgrade over the existing iPhone 4. I’m sure there’s a term in psychology to describe that phenomenon.

    Here’s an overview of the new iPhone and its headline software feature, Siri:

    Siri really works, and it’s quite clever
    I got some time to test it hands-on, in a booth in a fairly busy room of journalists. “What’s the weather like outside?” I asked. It came back with the weather in London (where I was). “What’s my father’s email address?” It came back with two email addresses for the person designated in the address book as “father”. Not what you’d call a comprehensive test, but it shows that it’s location-aware, context-aware, and works without training. (By contrast, I just tried “Siri app” on voice search on my Google Nexus S running Gingerbread: it took me to the web page for Syria.)

    Siri is integrated through the whole phone
    You press the home button and the interface comes up. Then ask it anything. It’s very neat. It uses Siri’s servers, so you’ll need a working connection.

    I don’t know that I’d get much use of the Siri features, but I’m sure it will move a lot of phones for the “coolness” factor.

    The iPhone 4S really does look and feel exactly like the iPhone 4
    There’s no difference at all, externally. Apparently the iPhone 4S is very slightly heavier — 139g (4.9oz) v 136g (4.8oz) — but you’d need a very sensitive hand to detect it.

    This is probably a good move on Apple’s part (aside from the well-publicized complaints about the iPhone 4’s antenna issues), as it keeps all the companies that produced accessories for the iPhone 4 happy — they don’t need to create a whole new line of things for the iPhone 4S. The push for mobile phones to standardize on mini-USB connectors is why Apple will be selling dongles to convert from the current 30-pin connector on the iPhone to mini-USB. Again, it meets the expectations of both regulators and third-party manufacturers. I suspect Apple will be pushed to provide the dongles as standard equipment for European markets.

    The camera in the iPhone 4S is now an 8MP (up from 5MP in the last model), and is claimed to be much faster:

    Taking pictures on the 4S is much quicker, and taking extra pictures is too
    I tried the camera on taking pictures, and the setup is really fast. It takes more pictures quickly too — almost like firing the motordrive on an SLR camera. Apple says it takes 1.1 second to get to the “click” part — faster than any in a list it provided — and that it’s then just 0.5 second to take another one. It’s impressive: camera setup delay is one of the niggles of modern life (especially smartphone life) that has crept up on us without anyone doing very much.

    Overall, the 4S looks to be a nice, incremental upgrade over the iPhone 4, but Siri is the most interesting new development.

    In other news, however, Apple’s recent resort to “lawfare” against Samsung in Europe may rebound badly:

    Apple’s new iPhone 4S faces the prospect of court injunctions in France and Italy from the Korean electronics firm Samsung, which says the phones breach patents it owns on wireless communications.

    It is an escalation of the struggle between Samsung and Apple, who are fighting a number of increasingly bitter court battles in various territories around the world. Samsung, which is challenging Apple for the title of the world’s biggest maker of smartphones, says it plans to file preliminary injunctions in Paris and Milan on the basis that the iPhone 4S, announced in California on Tuesday night and expected in a number of countries including the UK from 14 October, infringes its patents on WCDMA technology.

    Update: Speaking of Android phones, here’s Alun Taylor with a list of ten smartphone alternatives to the iPhone 4S:

    Yes folks, it’s that time again when across the land otherwise rational and even sensible adults feel the need to whip themselves into a frenzy over the pending arrival of the latest iPhone.

    To be honest, I find the whole charade rather entertaining and have taken to sauntering over to the Trafford Centre come launch day, grabbing a cup of coffee and a sticky bun, pulling up a chair and making fun of the twerps lined up outside the Apple Store opposite.

    Yes, I know it’s wrong, but just like laughing at Daily Mail readers or at anyone who voted Liberal Democrat in the last general election, I simply can’t help it.

    With Android devices now outselling iOS phones by two-to-one there are many, many alternatives if you want a good smartphone with access to a shed-load of apps but don’t want to take the Apple shilling.

    So here are ten of the best Android-powered alternatives. In case you’re wondering why I’ve avoided any of the recent 3D phones like HTC’s Evo 3D or LG’s Optimus 3D, that would be because it’s a stupid technology bereft of point or purpose.

    Remember, if none of these handsets put their hands up your dress, the next few months we will see the arrival of Samsung’s phenomenal 5.3in Galaxy Note; Sony Ericsson’s 1.4GHz powerhouse the Xperia S; Google’s Android 4.0-packing Nexus Prime; and LG’s LU6200 with its 4.5in, 1280 x 720 IPS screen. Choice — by gum, it’s a wonderful thing.

    Update, the second: Joey deVilla explains the prospective iPhone 4S customer dilemma:

    October 4, 2011

    New York wants to rework the First Amendment “not as a right, but as a privilege”

    Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

    Some New York senators think you’ve got too much freedom of speech, and they think the world would be a much nicer place if you didn’t have as much:

    . . . some state Senators in NY are trying a new line of attack: going directly after the First Amendment and suggesting that current interpretations are way too broad, and it’s not really meant to protect any sort of free speech right. In fact, it sounds as though they’re trying to redefine the right to free speech into a privilege that can be taken away. Seriously:

         Proponents of a more refined First Amendment argue that this freedom should be treated not as a right but as a privilege — a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated.

    Yes, that totally flips the First Amendment on its head. It is not a “more refined First Amendment.” It’s the anti-First Amendment. It suggests, by its very nature, that the government possesses the right to grant the “privilege” of free speech to citizens… and thus the right to revoke it. That’s an astonishingly dangerous path, and one that should not be taken seriously. Of course, given their right to speak freely, state senators Jeff Klein, Diane Savino, David Carlucci and David Valesky have every right to put forth that argument — but similarly, it allows others to point out their rather scary beliefs.

    October 3, 2011

    ReasonTV: Ken Burns on his new documentary, Prohibition

    Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:20

    Ban violent video games? Expect more crime as a result

    Filed under: Gaming, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:11

    Caleb Cox explains why:

    While there’s no end of detractors claiming that violent videogames cause aggressive, often criminal behaviour, some refreshing research has now insisted that the opposite is true.

    The report, entitled Understanding the Effects of Violent Video Games on Violent Crime, says while “there is evidence that violent videogames cause aggression in a laboratory setting, there is no evidence that [they] cause violence or crime [in society]”.

    Written by Benjamin Engelstätter from the Centre for European Economic Research, Scott Cunningham from Baylor University in Texas, and Michael Ward from the University of Texas, the paper essentially asserts that because gamers are too busy gaming, they’re unable to cause much trouble in the real world. No shizzle, Sherlocks.

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