Hellooooo Police State
Welcome to the United Police States of America. This scares me. A great deal. Its one thing to perform questionable searches and seizures ("Legal, illegal? I'm the guy with the gun."). Those things are up to the lawyers to decide whats constitutional and what isn't. But refusing to even show the regulation that allows the search? Holy crap. "We are going to search you. And we are not going to tell you why. Just do as we say, no questions asked." Questioning the government, questioning the laws of the land - that is one of the fundamental properties of a democracy. How do you question the laws, if they refuse to tell you what the laws are?
I'm a liberal. I readily admit that. And I have no love for the current administration. And I'm a little nervous about the Patriot Act. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the law to know beyond the shadow of a doubt whether its constitutional or not. I have my questions, but no hard answers. A huge issue I have with it though, is the way people tend to defend the Patriot Act. The logic usually goes something like, "The Patriot Act is necessary because it has helped us to arrest terrorists."
Ok, thats great. Good job. But what about people whose rights are infringed, who aren't terrorists? You could enact the Throw Everyone in Jail Act, and that would help us arrest terrorists, too. But I wouldn't recommend it.
In medical studies, there are things called false positives and false negatives. A false positive is someone who tests positive for a disease/gene/characteristic, but is actually negative; a false negative is someone who tests negative but is actually positive. Medical tests attempt to minimize these false positives and negatives. And really isn't that what a good Patriot Act should do? Arresting more terrorists decreases the number of false negatives (i.e., terrorists that are free). That's good. But what if our Patriot Act is increasing the number of false positives as well (i.e., arresting/harassing innocent citizens)? [Hint: That's bad.]
Obviously, these things need to be balanced. A law that decreases false negatives is likely to increase false positives, and vice-versa. Medical researchers understand this give-and-take and adjust as best they can. But by looking at only one side of the issue (more terrorist arrests), you ignore the other side (less rights for citizens). My fear is that this is exactly what defenders of the Patriot Act are doing.
I'm a liberal. I readily admit that. And I have no love for the current administration. And I'm a little nervous about the Patriot Act. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the law to know beyond the shadow of a doubt whether its constitutional or not. I have my questions, but no hard answers. A huge issue I have with it though, is the way people tend to defend the Patriot Act. The logic usually goes something like, "The Patriot Act is necessary because it has helped us to arrest terrorists."
Ok, thats great. Good job. But what about people whose rights are infringed, who aren't terrorists? You could enact the Throw Everyone in Jail Act, and that would help us arrest terrorists, too. But I wouldn't recommend it.
In medical studies, there are things called false positives and false negatives. A false positive is someone who tests positive for a disease/gene/characteristic, but is actually negative; a false negative is someone who tests negative but is actually positive. Medical tests attempt to minimize these false positives and negatives. And really isn't that what a good Patriot Act should do? Arresting more terrorists decreases the number of false negatives (i.e., terrorists that are free). That's good. But what if our Patriot Act is increasing the number of false positives as well (i.e., arresting/harassing innocent citizens)? [Hint: That's bad.]
Obviously, these things need to be balanced. A law that decreases false negatives is likely to increase false positives, and vice-versa. Medical researchers understand this give-and-take and adjust as best they can. But by looking at only one side of the issue (more terrorist arrests), you ignore the other side (less rights for citizens). My fear is that this is exactly what defenders of the Patriot Act are doing.
posted by Jeff at 10:17 AM
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