Perhaps I haven't gotten a representative sample, but in 100% of the content I've seen from self-described "first amendment auditors", they're acting unpleasant and suspicious for absolutely no reason other than provoking a reaction. To me this seems like antisocial behavior that degrades rather than supports First Amendment protections. I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.
First Amendment auditors have usually been attention seeking individuals making click bait YouTube videos. It's been interesting seeing the transformation from that to what we're seeing with people monitoring ICE.
> Do we really, really, fully understand the implication of allowing private contracts that trump criminal law?
...it's not that at all. We don't want private contracts to enshrine the same imbalances of power; we want those imbalances rendered irrelevant.
We hope against hope that people who have strength, money, reputation, legal teams, etc., will be as steadfast in asserting basic rights as people who have none of those things.
We don't regard the FBI as a legitimate institution of the rule of law, but a criminal enterprise and decades-long experiment in concentration of power. The constitution does not suppose an FBI, but it does suppose that 'no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause... particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized' (emphasis mine). Obviously a search of the complete digital footprint and history of a person is not 'particular' in any plain meaning of that word.
...and we just don't regard the state as having an important function in the internet age. So all of its whining and tantrums and pepper spray and prison cells are just childish clinging to a power structure that is no longer desirable.
I think legally the issue was adjudicated by analogy to a closed safe: while the exact contents of the safe is unknown beforehand, it is reasonable it will contain evidence, documents, money, weapons etc. that are relevant, so if a warrant can be issued in that case compelling a locksmith to open it, then by analogy it can be issued against an encrypted device.
Without doubt, this analogy surely breaks down as society changes to become more digital - what about a Google Glass type of device that records my entire life, or the glasses of all people detected around me? what about the device where I uploaded my conscience, can law enforcement simply probe around my mind and find direct evidence of my guilt? Any written constitution is just a snapshot of a social contract at a particular historical time and technological development point, so it cannot serve as the ultimate source of truth regarding individual rights - the contract is renegotiated constantly through political means.
My question was more general: how could we draft that new social contract to the current age, how could we maintain the balance where the encrypted device of a suspected child predator and murderer is left encrypted, despite the fact that some 3rd party has the key, because we agreed that is the correct way to balance freedoms and law enforcement? It just doesn't sound stable in a democracy, where the rules of that social contract can change, it would contradict the moral intuitions of the vast majority.
> so if a warrant can be issued in that case compelling a locksmith to open it, then by analogy it can be issued against an encrypted device.
But it isn't a warrant, it's a subpoena. Also, the locksmith isn't the one compelled to open it; if the government wants someone to do that they have to pay them.
> Any written constitution is just a snapshot of a social contract at a particular historical time and technological development point, so it cannot serve as the ultimate source of truth regarding individual rights - the contract is renegotiated constantly through political means.
The Fourth Amendment was enacted in 1791. A process to change it exists, implying that the people could change it if they wanted to, but sometimes they get it pretty right to begin with. And then who are these asshats craving access to everyone's "papers and effects" without a warrant?
...the primary effect of which is that fewer than 4% of criminal cases go to trial, and our prison, parole, and probation systems are full of people who pled to crimes they did not commit, and poison trees of evidence are intentionally and ruthlessly planted without challenge or consideration by a jurist.
It unquestionably does - it turns out destroying your job prospects for life, removing a major contributor to a household for years, and destroying family relations in the process lends itself to continuing having strife in your life, or having strife when you previously had none
> The majority of cases don’t go to trial because the majority of cases are hopeless for the defendants.
...but are the lion's share of these hopeless on the basis of the evidence, combined with a fair process and a just, civically-informed legal framework?
A person who is searched pursuant to a prompted canine indication, and found to be in possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine has a "hopeless" case, but they have committed no offense to society that I can recognize, and their inclination to plea to a lesser charge means that the particulars of the search will never be heard by a jurist.
> Law-abiding citizens wouldn’t have a 50% recidivism rate.
This seems like a testable hypothesis, albeit only after a successful completion of the abolitionist movement. I'll bet that, in a society focused on restorative justice and no dependence on a slave economy dressed up as incarceration, that nobody will have a 50% recidivism rate.
> While it’s admirable to push back against the state, not all defendants earn our sympathy in their plight.
Agreed, of course. But there's no justice in taking even the worst in society forcing them to be laborers to make Starbucks packaging. Let's remove the incentive structure first, and decide how to distribute our sympathies second.
The estimated innocent population is around 9%. A far cry from the majority. This is just populist trash.
Now if you want to make a majority claim about those incarcerated being incarcerated for something which a rich person would go free, that’s something else
...of course not. But dramatically less chargeable conduct, dramatically more robust protections against search and seizure, and the complete removal of the slave labor incentive inherent in prisons might just remove it without further ado.
This is going to be hard to sell. "dramatically" sounds like >50%, and I assume not just old laws on the books that aren't in-forced. So you want to remove >50% of chargeable offenses? What else besides drugs?
...I thought that the typical practice (I don't see it in the guidelines) is the put the year next to an article based its _date of publication_, rather than the event about which the article refers.
This article was published today, and is about the investigation that just concluded, although of course Thompson's death was in 2005.
I'm normally very reluctant to cheer most comparisons us the US political situation to nazi germany, or to fascism in general.
But events like this (and the Intel stake) seem like an exact implementation of what has come to be called The Third Position[0], which, if I understand correctly, was the etymology of the world 'fascism' itself.
Mussolini's 1913 Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria was apparently named after 'fasci', or corporate syndicates, his vision of which is basically exactly what we're seeing here: the state owning stakes in the means of technocratic production, and corporate leaders in positions of military command.
And although "The Third Position" is usually called a _neo_-fascist movement, I believe that Mussolini articulated it, more or less in its entirety, some time in the early 1920s?
I'm more of a political scientist than a historian, so it's possible I have this wrong.
I don't understand this take. There is no real way in which a private person can make law enforcement "more expensive". The government can always find means as long as it is supported by a sufficiently big fraction of its people.
Sure, they won't go out and arrest all one million, but from an individual perspective it's basically security by obscurity.
Once that's the case, otherwise legal activities (e.g. protesting, or making political statements) run the risk of making you a target. Law enforcement can then punish you for your legal activity by selectively enforcing this other law.
The resulting situation is one where everyone knows to some extent "you better shut up if you know what's good for you", and puts a chilling effect on otherwise legal forms of civic engagement.
You might point out that there are already laws on the books that let them do this, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind another.
On PickiPedia (bluegrass wiki - pickipedia.xyz), we've developed a mediawiki extension / middleware that works as an MCP server, and causes all of the contributions from the AI in question to appear as partially grayed out, with a "verify" button. A human can then verify and either confirm the provided source or supply their own.
It started as a fork of a mediawiki MCP server.
It works pretty nicely.
Of course it's only viable in situations where the operator of the LLM is willing to comply / be transparent about that use. So it doesn't address the bulk of the problem on WikiPedia.
I had a need to describe all musicians as having the nickname / stage name "rambutan", and I was surprised to find that no mediawiki extension existed for this purpose. I hope this is useful to others.
A society in which ubiquitous, diversely-owned and operated, unlicensed drones watch the every move of police and criminals - even though that means they watch the every move of the rest of us as well - is a society in which I want to live.
The outcome of who can lawfully create and deploy eyes in the sky is the ultimate decider of the matter of who watches the watchers.
We could start health insurance companies that monitor everyone's gait and how often they exercise vs eat fast food to adjust prices. Or credit monitoring companies that watch how often you attend the casino vs. work. Or boyfriend monitoring to check for cheaters.
Also I kinda like the process better; the pat-down is nothin', and you can a full table to yourself to recombobulate.
> First-Amendment-auditor thinking.
Uhhh, I like that kind of thinking. Is there something wrong with first amendment auditors now?!
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