November 30, 2001
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Fewer civil liberties = lazy law enforcement
Alex Knapp has some interesting commentary about civil liberties and law enforcement on his site Heretical Ideas. It's good, provocative stuff, even though it was apparently written at 2:48AM. Go read it, but here's an excerpt:
It's not just that denying civil liberties is wrong. Denying civil liberties doesn't stop terrorism. In fact, the opposite is true. As the government adopts more oppressive policies, more people are likely to be made angry enough to want to commit acts of terrorism. Moreover, denying civil liberties makes law enforcement lazy Face it, it's a lot easier to detain someone because of their last name and an expired visa than it is to actually do the investigative work needed to infiltrate and/or monitor terrorist cells It's a lot easier to tap everyone's email than it is to sift through countless numbers of leads and evidence. It's a lot easier to conduct random searches and confiscate toenail clippers than it is to track down stolen blueprints. But when law enforcement is allowed to take the easy way out, being human, they will. And as law enforcement gets lazier, it becomes easier for criminals to commit crimes and for terrorists to cause terror.Here's the bottom line, and feel free to quote me on this: Freedom is not only moral, but practical. When law enforcement officials are prohibited from violating individual liberty, crime is lower, because resources are channeled solely towards the capture of criminals or the prevention of criminal acts. When those protections begin to disappear, law enforcement activity gets channeled into unproductive areas that do nothing to catch the real bad guys.
I am always intrigued by counterintuitive logic of incentives like the "fewer civil liberties = lazy policing" suggestion above. Many businesspeople will tell you that if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. Scarcity begets abundance. Sometimes tools are incentives, people who do more, do more and vice versa.
We have to think hard about where to draw the line on this, and Alex has given us another aspect of the debate to mull over. Vive le blog!.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at November 30, 2001 08:37 AM | Technorati inbound links