Quotulatiousness

April 20, 2013

The problematic crowd-sourcing of justice

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

In the Globe and Mail, Tabatha Southey is uncomfortable with the way members of Anonymous, Reddit, 4chan, and other online quasi-organizations leaped into the fray:

The Internet is brimming with people who want to help. To help you prune an orchid, perfect the shape of your gnocchi. Shortly after the bombings this week, hundreds of Bostonians posted offers of accommodations, spare rooms and couches.

Most assistance is graciously received, yet I was surprised last week to see how many people embraced the announcement by the self-appointed public conscience Anonymous that it had investigated the unbearably sad Nova Scotia case of 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, who killed herself after she was allegedly gang-raped at a summer party, then was tormented over the incident.

[. . .]

Anonymous as an organization doesn’t really exist. It’s more of a meme — a concept, or behaviour that spreads within a community — than an agency. Anyone who says they’re Anonymous is Anonymous, which makes the groundswell of support its actions received so understandable.

I think a lot of us, upon learning of Rehtaeh’s death, wanted to go to Nova Scotia and shake those kids until something that looked closer to truth came out. Anonymous’s motivations are much like ours, and it can be difficult to remember that the presumption of innocence should be given more weight, not less, the more heinous the crime; the part that is almost the best in us screams otherwise.

Anonymous is not composed of superheroes, nor is it evil. Anonymous is just your nephew, or your neighbour, or you. We cede our pursuit of justice to that highly distractable quarter to our peril.

One only had to see that massive game of Where’s Waldo? taking place on Reddit this week to witness both the good intention, the potential and the problems inherent in crowd-sourced jurisprudence.

Boston’s security theatre performance

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:20

At Popehat, Clark explains why the security theatre response to the Marathon bombers was a lot of show, but not proportional to the actual threat posed by the two fugitives:

First, just in case it’s not utterly obvious, I’m glad that the two murderous cowards who attacked civilians in Boston recently are off the streets. One dead and one in custody is a great outcome.

That said, a large percent of the reaction in Boston has been security theater. “Four victims brutally killed” goes by other names in other cities.

In Detroit, for example, they call it “Tuesday”.

…and Detroit does not shut down every time there are a few murders.

“But Clark,” I hear you say, “this is different. This was a terrorist attack.”

Washington DC, during ongoing sniper terrorist attacks in 2002 that killed twice as many people, was not shut down.

Kileen Texas, after the Fort Hood terrorist attack in 2009 that killed three times as many people, was not shut down.

London, after the bombing terrorist attack in 2005 that killed more than ten times as many people, was not shut down.

Counting the cost of the city-wide lockdown:

First, the unprecedented shutdown of a major American city may have increased safety some small bit, but it was not without a cost: keeping somewhere between 2 and 5 million people from work, shopping, and school destroyed a nearly unimaginable amount of value. If we call it just three million people, and we peg the cost at a mere $15 per person per hour, the destroyed value runs to a significant fraction of a billion dollars.

[. . .]

Third, keeping citizens off the street meant that 99% of the eyes and brains that might solve a crime were being wasted. Eric S Raymond famously said that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow“. It was thousands of citizen photographs that helped break this case, and it was a citizen who found the second bomber. Yes, that’s right — it wasn’t until the stupid lock-down was ended that a citizen found the second murderer:

    boston.com

    The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.

    The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps.

We had thousands of police going door-to-door, searching houses…and yet not one of them saw the evidence that a citizen did just minutes after the lock-down ended.

Come for the takedown of security theatre on a city-wide level, stay for the ultimate cops-and-donuts story.

April 18, 2013

Slowing down the urge to “do something” is a feature, not a bug

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

David Harsanyi discusses the (limited) mechanisms the US constitution put in place to prevent the whims of temporary majorities being imposed on the country:

To begin with, whether Democrats like it or not, this issue concerns the Constitution — where stuff was written down for a reason. That’s not to say that expanding background checks or banning “assault rifles” would be unconstitutional (though you may believe they both should be). It’s to say that when you begin meddling with protections explicitly laid out in the founding document, a 60-vote threshold that slows down stampeding legislators is the least we deserve.

The Founding Fathers worried that “some common impulse of passion” might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It’s a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly. Obama, who understands how to utilize public passion better than most, flew some of the Newtown families to Washington for a rally, imploring Americans to put “politics” aside and stop engaging in “political stunts.”

[. . .]

I’m not operating under the delusion that any of this is good national politics for Republicans — though the arguments about obstructionism’s dooming the GOP are probably overblown. No doubt, when the next disaster hits — and it will — Democrats will blame the overlords at the National Rifle Association and Republicans for the act of a madman. That’s life.

But generally speaking, it’d be nice if Congress occasionally challenged the vagaries of American majority “instinct.” Though it might seem antithetical to their very existence, politicians should be less susceptible to the temporary whims, ideological currents and fears of the majority. Theoretically, at least, elected officials’ first concern is the Constitution. And if the need for gun control is predicated chiefly on the polls taken immediately after a traumatic national event, they have a perfectly reasonable justification to slow things down. In fact, if Washington internalizes the 60-vote threshold as a matter of routine, voters should be grateful. Considering Washington’s propensity to politicize everything and its increasingly centralized power (what your health care looks like is now up for national referendums, for instance), this might be the only way left to diffuse democracy.

April 16, 2013

Andy Baio: Copyright is the new Prohibition

Filed under: Business, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:58

Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick explains:

Andy Baio has an absolutely fantastic video presentation that he did recently for Creative Mornings/Portland on what he’s calling The New Prohibition. It’s half an hour long, but absolutely worth watching.

[. . .]

This video lets him talk a bit about the aftermath — to explain the true chilling effects of the threat and the eventual settlement. Baio is a creator. It’s in his blood. It’s what he’s always done, but after this he was afraid to create. Being threatened with a lawsuit, even if you believe you’re right, is a scary and possibly life-altering moment. Lots of people who have not been in those shoes think it’s nothing and that they could handle it. You don’t know.

As he notes in the talk, copyright law is probably the most violated law in the US after speeding and jaywalking (and I’m not even sure copyright infringement is really in third place in that list). But getting rung up for one of those gives you a “bad day” situation, not a ruined life. Copyright, on the other hand, can ruin your life. And chill your speech and creativity.

And this is the worst part: so many people, especially kids, are at risk. Baio also famously highlighted the prevalence of the phrase “no copyright intended” on YouTube. Tons of kids uploading videos use clips of music and videos with a phrase like that. Or with statements about fair use. Or with copyright law quotes. All, as he notes, to try to find that magic voodoo that wards off a possible lawsuit. Most of those people aren’t being sued.

But they could be.

The anti-libertarian legacy of Margaret Thatcher

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

Sean Gabb explains why Thatcher should not be considered in any way “libertarian”:

She started the transformation of this country into a politically correct police state. Her Government behaved with an almost gloating disregard for constitutional norms. She brought in money laundering laws that have now been extended to a general supervision over our financial dealings. She relaxed the conditions for searches and seizure by the police. She increased the numbers and powers of the police. She weakened trial by jury. She weakened the due process protections of the accused. She gave executive agencies the power to fine and punish without due process. She began the first steps towards total criminalisation of gun possession.

She did not cut government spending. Instead, she allowed the conversion of local government and the lower administration into a system of sinecures for the Enemy Class. She allowed political correctness to take hold in local government. When she did oppose this, it involved giving central government powers of supervision and control useful to a future politically correct government. She extended and tightened the laws constraining free speech about race and immigration.

Her encouragement of enterprise never amounted to more than a liking for big business corporatism. Genuine enterprise was progressively heaped with taxes and regulations that made it hard to do business. Big business, on the other hand, was showered with praise and legal indulgences. Indeed, her privatisation policies were less about introducing competition and choice into public services than in turning public monopolies into corporate monsters pampered by the State with subsidies and favourable regulations — corporate monsters that were expected in return to lavish financial rewards on the political class.

April 12, 2013

Conor Friedersdorf: “Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story”

Filed under: Health, Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:34

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf explains why the Philadelphia horror story should be front-page news, but isn’t:

The grand jury report in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors,” it states. “The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels — and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”

Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Dr. Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate’s coverage includes testimony as grisly as you’d expect. “An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions,” the channel reports. “Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.’ He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, ‘it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'”

One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, “Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell’s idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania.”

The nasty phenomenon of “revenge porn” websites

Filed under: Business, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

In the Guardian, Adam Steinbaugh looks at the legal side of fighting against “revenge porn”:

A jilted ex-paramour seeks vengeance on a former lover. His trump card is a nude photo he acquired in happier times. In the dark corners of the internet, revenge porn sites are happy to help out, posting these photos alongside the subject’s full name, address and even phone number. The result for the victim can be anything from terrible embarrassment to potential job loss, and all accompanied by threats and harassment from people whose greatest contribution to society is usually surpassed by the average YouTube comment.

While ex-lovers act out of malice, the site operators act with sociopathic greed. With embarrassing photos often featuring prominently in Google results, the sites often advertise “independent” takedown services charging upwards of $300 (£195) to quickly remove photos — cheaper and faster than hiring a lawyer. Those extortionate services usually turn out to be fronts run by the site owners themselves. One even concocted a fake lawyer (“David Blade III, Esq”) to give his business a more legitimate face.

While the people who upload the photos can almost certainly risk significant civil liability, revenge porn sites are protected in the United States by the Communications Decency Act. The CDA requires that responsibility for tortious acts online (like defamation or invasion of privacy) lie with whoever created the content, not those who facilitate its dissemination.

April 11, 2013

“Elite Panic” and the media gatekeepers

Filed under: Health, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:57

There’s a pretty horrific tale unfolding in a Philadelphia court room, but most people won’t have heard about it because — while it’s bloody and otherwise eminently newsworthy — it will “send the wrong message” if it gets the traditional full-court press of media attention. At Ace of Spades H.Q., this is noted and explained by Ace:

I think this is how those who imagine themselves to be elite justify their complete embargo on the Kermit Gosnell serial-murder trial.

People who do evil generally don’t imagine they’re doing evil. In fact, some of the worst evils are perpetrated by those who’ve convinced themselves they’re doing good. One’s conscience tends to restrain one from evil; but if one can trick one’s conscience into thinking one’s doing good by doing evil, well. Then you’ve really got something.

I imagine the media believes it’s “doing good” by being so cautious about What Truths the Public Is Capable of Hearing. After all, if this Gosnell trial were publicized, people would Get Angry, and come to All the Wrong Conclusions, and put the allies of those in the media (such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood) on the defensive.

Hell, these maniacs might even get in into their skulls to hurt people!

Well, we can’t have that. We can’t let the Wrong Kind of Information — true information, but the sort of information the non-enlightened may be confused about — passing into the Wrong Kinds of Brains.

Thus, this embargo on the Gosnell story is not just partisan bias, fronting for the Democrats by refusing to mention anything that might be used as a wedge issue against them.

No, this embargo is done for the Public Good, even if the public is too stupid to understand that. If the public heard about these things … Well, that’s not gonna happen. Not on our watch.

It’s been occurring to me lately that much media behavior is explainable by this prism. They don’t want to report certain facts, not because the facts aren’t true (they’re facts by definition), but because they’re Concerned About The Capacity of Non-Journalists to Successfully Interpret These Facts.

April 10, 2013

The former players’ class-action suit against the NFL

Filed under: Football, Health, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:05

John Holler opines that the players are morally right, but that the legal system probably won’t give them the vindication they hope for:

Inaccurately known as the City of Brotherly Love – a more appropriate definition would be the City of Unholy Beat-Downs In the 600 Level – Philadelphia was the site Tuesday of the first big meeting on men in $5,000 suits and matching ties and pocket splash.

Judge Anita Brody heard arguments Tuesday from the NFL and a class-action group of more than 4,000 NFL players concerning the NFL’s culpability for not diagnosing concussions in the formative years of the NFL becoming the financial juggernaut it is today.

It’s a complicated and sometimes emotional battle. From a personal perspective, I teared up (that’s a generous description of it) after interviewing Brent Boyd at a time when he was a lone candle in the wind seeking justice for his injuries at a time when the NFL denied any connection to playing the game and post-concussion symptoms. Boyd was in an a cappella group at that time. Now he has a loud chorus of backup singers in the choir. Boyd was right when he told Congress that the NFL’s policy toward worker’s compensation claims were characterized – in his words – as, “Delay, deny and hope they die.”

On the other side of the coin is the legal question. It’s not a coincidence that Lady Justice, the sculpture of a woman holding the scales of justice, is blindfolded. The intent of that symbolism is that a jury can only render a verdict on the facts presented. A former NFL player from the 1970s once posed the question to me, “Does Boeing owe former employees more benefits now because the company became successful?” That was a hard pill to swallow considering that, even in the 1970s and 1980s, there were enough former players suffering from dementia and game-related debilitation that an impartial juror could see the connection between playing NFL football and the results that have followed in post-football life for thousands of former players. Yet, what does the current NFL owe them?

April 9, 2013

Bitcoins as Tulips or viable virtual gold?

Filed under: Economics, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

In the New Yorker, Maria Bustillos reviews the history of bitcoins:

In many ways, bitcoins function essentially like any other currency, and are accepted as payment by a growing number of merchants, both online and in the real world. But they are generated at a predetermined rate by an open-source computer program, which was set in motion in January of 2009. This program produced each one of the nearly eleven million bitcoins in circulation (with a total value just over a billion dollars at the current rate of exchange), and it runs on a massive peer-to-peer network of some twenty thousand independent nodes, which are generally very powerful (and expensive) G.P.U. or ASIC computer systems optimized to compete for new bitcoins. (Standards vary, but there seems to be a consensus forming around Bitcoin, capitalized, for the system, the software, and the network it runs on, and bitcoin, lowercase, for the currency itself.)

[. . .]

There is an upper limit of twenty-one million new coins built into the software; the last one is projected to be mined in 2140. After that, it is presumed that there will be enough traffic to keep rewards flowing in the form of transaction fees rather than mining new coins. For now, the bitcoins are initially issued to the miners, but are distributed when miners buy things with them or sell them to non-miners (such as jumpy Spanish bank depositors) who desire an alternative currency. The chain of ownership of every bitcoin in circulation is verified and registered with a timestamp on all twenty thousand network nodes. This prevents double spending, since no coin can be exchanged without the authentication of some twenty thousand independent cyber-witnesses. In order to hack the network, you would have to deceive over half of these computers at the same time, a progressively more difficult task and, even today, a very formidable one.

[. . .]

A casual review of Nakamoto’s various blog posts and bulletin-board comments also confirms that, from the first, Bitcoin was devised as a system for removing the possibility of corruption from the issuance and exchange of currency. Or, to put it another way: rather than trusting in governments, central banks, or other third-party institutions to secure the value of the currency and guarantee transactions, Bitcoin would place its trust in mathematics. At the P2P Foundation, Nakamoto wrote a blog post describing the difference between bitcoin and fiat currency:

    [Bitcoin is] completely decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust. The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts… With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.

* * *

Much of what has been written so far about bitcoins has centered on the perceived dangers of their relative anonymity, the irreversibility of transactions, and on the fact that they can be used for money laundering and for criminal dealings, such as buying drugs on the encrypted Web site Silk Road. This fearmongering is a red herring, and has so far prevented the rational evaluation of the potential benefits and shortcomings of crypto-currency.

Cash is also anonymous; it is also used in money laundering and illegal transactions. Like bitcoins, stolen cash is difficult to recover, and a cash transaction can’t readily be traced back to the source. Nor is there immediate recourse for the reversal of transactions, as with credit-card chargebacks or bank refunds when one’s identity has been stolen. However, I find it difficult to believe that anyone who has written critically of the dangers of bitcoin would prefer an economy where private cash transactions are illegal.

Update: Meet the $2 Million Bitcoin Pizza.

Floridian Laszlo Hanyecz thought it would be “interesting” to be able to say he paid for a pizza in bitcoins. He worked out a deal where he transferred 10,000 of his bitcoins to a guy in England, who ordered him two pizzas from Papa Johns.

Today, one Redditor notes, those 10,000 bitcoins would be worth about $2.3 million, thanks (in part) to folks fleeing unstable and politically risky state currencies in Cyprus and elsewhere.

Some news outlets are covering this as a “doh!” story. But these pizzas were a huge publicity boon for Bitcoin, contributing to the success of the currency today. If Lazslo had been a hoarder, perhaps his bitcoins would be worth very little now. Cashing in bitcoins for pizza when they were worth a fraction of a cent each is not obviously smarter or stupider than selling now would be, with bitcoins trading at $234. It’s a bet on which way the market is headed, that’s all.

Psychic harm

Filed under: Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:16

David Friedman comments on a controversial blog post by Steve Landsburg:

Steve Landsburg’s piece [link], responding in part to the Steubenville rape case, makes the same argument from the other side. We — at least Steve (and I) — don’t feel that the argument for banning pornography or contraception is a legitimate one. Our reason is that the “harm” in those cases is purely subjective — I haven’t actually done anything to you, so your unhappiness at my self-regarding behavior is your problem, not mine, and you have no right to use the legal system to make me conform to your wishes. And even if you argue that I have done something to you — acted in a way that resulted in your knowing what I was doing, knowledge that pained you — that doesn’t count, because “knowledge that pains you” isn’t injury in the same sense as causing you to get cancer is.

Which gets us to the part of Steve’s post that gives lots of people reason, or excuse, to attack him. Suppose an unconscious woman is raped in a way that results in no injury — in the Steubenville case, “rape” actually consisted of digital penetration. She only finds out it happened several days later, at which point the harm is purely subjective, consists of her being offended at the knowledge that it happened. Why is this different from the subjective harm suffered by the person offended at someone else reading pornography? It feels different — to me and obviously, from his post, to Steve. But is it different, and if so why?

That, it seems to me, is an interesting question, one relevant to both law and morality. It is ultimately the same question raised by Bork, although from the other side. Bork was arguing that the harm caused by the use of contraception and the harm caused by air pollution were ultimately of the same sort, that it was legitimate to ban pollution hence legitimate to ban contraception — his article was in part an attack on Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case that legalized contraception, a fact I had forgotten when I started writing this post. Landsburg is arguing that rape that does only subjective harm is of the same sort as reading pornography that does only subjective harm (unlike Bork, it isn’t clear that he is thinks his argument is right, only that he thinks it interesting), that it is not legitimate to ban the reading of pornography hence not legitimate to ban that particular sort of rape.

I agree with both Bork and Landsburg that there is a real puzzle in our response to the legal (and moral) issues they raise. Hence I disagree with the various commenters whose response to the Landsburg piece was that it showed he was crazy, evil, or both.

April 7, 2013

British police chiefs to conceal the names of arrested from the media

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

Freedom of the press is taking another battering in Britain:

Britain’s police chiefs are drawing up draconian rules under which the identities of people they arrest will be kept secret from the public.

The move, which follows a recommendation by Lord Justice Leveson in his report into press standards, has been branded an attack on open justice and has led to comparisons with police states such as North Korea and Zimbabwe.

Under current arrangements, police release basic details of a person arrested and in many cases will confirm a name to journalists. But the practice varies from force to force.

Under the new guidance, to be circulated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), forces will be banned from confirming the names of suspects, even when journalists know the identity of someone who has been arrested.

Without official police confirmation, the legal risks of incorrect identification will prevent the media from publishing the names of suspects.

The police plan for ‘secret arrests’ is being opposed by the Government’s own adviser on law reform, the Law Commission, which believes it is in the interests of justice that the police release the names of everyone who is arrested, except in very exceptional circumstances.

April 5, 2013

What to do when the law is wrong

Filed under: History, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:49

J.D. Tuccille explains why he’s teaching his son to break the law:

In 1858, hundreds of residents of Oberlin and Wellington, Ohio — many of them students and faculty at Oberlin College — surrounded Wadsworth’s Hotel, in Wellington, in which law enforcement officers and slavehunters held a fugitive slave named John Price, under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act. After a brief standoff, the armed crowd stormed the hotel and overpowered the captors. Price was freed and transported to safety in Canada [. . .] I know these details because my son recently borrowed from the library The Price of Freedom, a book about the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, as the incident is called (PDF). My wife and I used it as a starting point for telling our seven-year-old why we don’t expect him to obey the law — that laws and the governments that pass them are often evil. We expect him, instead, to stand up for his rights and those of others, and to do good, even if that means breaking the law.

Our insistence on putting right before the law isn’t a new position. I’ve always liked Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sentiment that “Good men must not obey the laws too well.” That’s a well-known quote, but it comes from a longer essay in which he wrote:

    Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting …

Rope of sand the law may be, but it can strangle unlucky people on the receiving end long before it perishes. John Price could well have ended up with not just the law, but a real rope, around his neck, just because he wanted to exercise the natural freedom to which he was entitled by birth as a sapient being.

John Price ended his life as a free man because he was willing to defy laws that said he was nothing but the property of other people, to be disposed of as they wished. He got a nice helping hand in maintaining his freedom from other people who were willing to not only defy laws that would compel them to collaborate in Price’s bondage, but to beat the hell out of government agents charged with enforcing those laws.

March 31, 2013

The question is not whether armed drones will be deployed domestically, but when

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:01

Glenn Greenwald presents a strong case that it is inevitable that armed drones will be deployed over the US:

The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU — while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable — have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it’s quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue.

I’m going to focus here most on domestic surveillance drones, but I want to say a few words about weaponized drones. The belief that weaponized drones won’t be used on US soil is patently irrational. Of course they will be. It’s not just likely but inevitable. Police departments are already speaking openly about how their drones “could be equipped to carry nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun.” The drone industry has already developed and is now aggressively marketing precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law enforcement use. It likely won’t be in the form that has received the most media attention: the type of large Predator or Reaper drones that shoot Hellfire missiles which destroy homes and cars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and multiple other countries aimed at Muslims (although US law enforcement agencies already possess Predator drones and have used them over US soil for surveillance).

March 28, 2013

Challenging Prohibition-era federal laws

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

Michael Pinkus updates us on a hopeful sign that we may soon see the end of one of Canada’s surviving Prohibition-era laws:

Almost two years ago I published in these very pages an interview I did with Ian Blue, a lawyer who had turned his focus to liquor laws, constitutional issues and even more importantly, the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (IILA). Now, many think the law was struck down but in fact there was just an amendment made to the federal law that now allows you to carry a certain amount of booze for personal use across provincial borders without fear of being charged by your provincial liquor board. So why am I bringing up this “ancient history” — well it seems the constitutional challenge that Ian was hoping for has finally got a name and a voice in the form of Vin de Garde wine club, and the challenge is going forward — before you blindly blow this off as another soon-to-be failed attempt to challenge the power and might of the LCBO I suggest we revisit the interview, the article and the issues that surround it; there seems to be more relevance here than ever before. This is going to get very interesting.

    Have you ever been out to British Columbia and brought back a couple of bottles of wine? Better yet, have you ever driven across the border to Quebec and brought back a case of beer? If you have done either of these things then you my friend are a felon, capital F-E-L-O-N. That’s all according to the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (IILA) of 1928, which is still on the books and very much in use by our liquor board (the LCBO). What it boils down to is, you can travel to Cuba and bring back 2 bottles of rum, go stateside and return with two bottles of wine, go to Mexico and carry back 4 cervesas; but you can’t cross Canadian provincial borders carrying any booze back with you. So, who’s ready to turn themselves in?

    Not so fast says lawyer Ian Blue, who has been looking into the matter for us. Ian is an energy lawyer who found himself in a conversation with fellow lawyer, Arnold Schwisberg, about the IILA and like an ear-worm (a song that won’t leave your head) Ian couldn’t stop thinking about the absurdity of the Act. “The constitutional issues around inter-provincial and international sales of energy have equipped me admirably to look at the IILA … it stuck with me until I wrote my paper on the subject ‘On the Rocks’.” Ian subsequently wrote a second article on the same topic (On the Rocks; The Gold Seal Case: A Surprising Second Look); both appear in Advocate Quarterly.

    [. . .]

    “Liquor boards would continue to exist, their power would just be diminished,” but they would definitely put up a fight, “You’re fighting entrenched interests, so if you’re diminishing their power they’re going to fight to try and keep it.”

    How big a fight? “I would be fighting 10 sets of lawyers one each from every attorney general’s department; probably 10 sets of lawyers from the provincial liquor commission; and probably lawyers from the police associations,” estimates Ian, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “What [a win] would mean is that if I wanted to have a private liquor store I could set one up and I could buy directly from the wineries in Niagara or British Columbia or foreign countries. Nova Scotia restaurants could order wines from Ontario. It would just loosen up the system. [It] doesn’t mean licentiousness; the province could still legislate standards for people who work in liquor stores, store hours, security, all safe drinking training, all that stuff; it’s just that you would not need to have liquor and wine sold through publicly funded liquor stores; being sold to you by unionized staff on defined benefit pension plans.”

    But what about those who claim a loss of provincial revenue as their argument for keeping the liquor boards as is? According to winelaw.ca, “The Provincial Governments make their money regardless of whether the sale is made in a government store or a private store. In fact, the revenue that government makes from liquor on a per capita basis for 2007/2008 was as follows: $192 for BC [a mix of private and government stores], $190 for Alberta [all private stores], and $139 for Ontario.”

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress