November 19, 2014, 11:55 am
I have become pretty immune to letting BS government pleas for more power get to me, but this almost made me barf.
The No. 2 official at the Justice Department delivered a blunt message last month to Apple Inc. executives: New encryption technology that renders locked iPhones impervious to law enforcement would lead to tragedy. A child would die, he said, because police wouldn’t be able to scour a suspect’s phone, according to people who attended the meeting.
Children will die, do you hear? CHILDREN WILL DIE!!!!
It is far more likely, based on recent history, that police will want to access your phone out of a prurient desire to see your naughty pictures than it will be to save some dying child ala in Dirty Harry. Jeez you can make the same argument that if police could just randomly charge into any house they wanted for any reason, at some point they would probably save someone.
July 13, 2011, 2:42 pm
Often we libertarians think of making common cause with liberals on social and civil rights issues while making common cause with conservatives on fiscal and regulatory issues.
But these are rules of thumb, as often those we think of as allies on a certain issue abandon us in favor of statism. Certain conservatives do when they give up capitalism for corporatism. And Ken at Popehat has a fabulous example of a situation -- protection of defendant's rights in a trial -- where expected liberal support does not materialize. He discusses the case of an accused child pornography creator
In real life, the accused has the right to review the evidence against him. But how you feel about that scenario can help to determine whether you lean liberal orlibertarian — whether you are suspicious of state power in all instances, or whether you trust the state and look to its firm hand when it comes to hot-button issues, like OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
We’ve been conditioned by the culture to expect that “liberal†and “supportive of due process and fundamental fairness to all people accused of crimes†go hand-in-hand. It’s a lie.
I think the same holds true in other circumstances, like rape trials. Rights liberals would normally fight for, say, in the case of an accused black murderer in Mississippi were totally tossed aside for white college students accused of rape at Duke.
