The Sensible Choice
Buried in the second-to-last paragraph of Richard Posner's recent essay in The New Republic is the first public expression of a solution I have long proposed to the controversy surrounding government wiretaps of private communications. Let the government wiretap to its heart's content with one proviso: the intelligence gathered can only be used in a terrorism case. Posner fomulates is thus:
Permit surveillance intended to detect and prevent terrorist activity but flatly forbid the use of information gleaned by such surveillance for any purpose other than to protect national security. So, if the government discovered, in the course of surveillance, that an American was not a terrorist but was evading income tax, it could not use the discovery to prosecute him for tax evasion or sue him for back taxes.Isn't this the perfect solution?
posted by anguswit @ 20:41
4 comments
4 Comments:
Can you be serious? What would be done with all the 'accidental' information the wiretapping would uncover? Are you suggesting that if the wiretapping discloses a potential homicide or some other such crime, the gov't should just sit on the info? The ethical ramifications are grave. The can of worms is huge!
--Katz
Also, that leaves it up to the govs to decide how to define 'terrorist'. Hate to be a pedant, but definitions are elastic, as are people's scruples in the advent of prosecution...
I don't know. There are a lot of problems with the exclusioinary rule--currently the only remedy pragmatically available for 4th amendment violations (that the evidence doesn't get used in court). This means we never hear about what are arguably the worst infringements--suspicionless searches that turn up no evidence but that leave a citizen's apartment in shambles, at worst, and at best, with little more than a sense of having personhood and privacy violated. So I guess it all comes down to--do you think privacy in itself is a value, even if no charges are pressed and the citizen is free to go? To me, such a consequentialist attitude towards privacy seems scary. The idea that innocent people have nothing to hide has never sat well with me.
I just don’t get it. If wiretapping will help uncover terrorist cells operating in this country and help save the lives of Americans then I’m all for it! What's wrong with listening in on suspicious parties’ conversation...unless you have something to hide? You think they are going to waste their time listening to you organize your next weed deal. We are at WAR people!
Post a Comment
<< Home