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Comment by cpncrunch

6 hours ago

Should it not be available with a valid court order as well?

Why? What is the rationale? Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that anything goes as long as a court decrees it, in which case there’s nothing to debate really.

  • Court approved warrants are pretty fundamental to how our legal system works and how some level of accountability is maintained. That system isn't perfect by any stretch, but removing it unlocks Pandoras box and I'm not sure we'd be better off without it.

    As it stands, a cop has to get a warrant to enter and search your home, for example. If we remove that hurdle because we also don't trust the courts then we just have more searches.

    I get the reaction to turn on the whole system, I have very little faith in it myself. But I don't think many people are really aware of or ready for what would come without it.

  • A court order is just a hurdle that legislation (or a constitutional provision) dicatates, in the investigation of crime (or prevention of future crime...). The distinction is the rights of the individual vs the rights of other individuals in the dilute sense we call society.

    The problem is that individuals no longer have confidence in their institutions, for both good reasons (official corruption, motivated prosecutors, the dissolution of norms of executive behaviour) and bad ones (propaganda on Fox News, and the long tail of disinformation online).

    The question becomes: how can citizens have confidence their rights will be protected? What structure would protect the right to privacy?

    • The only reliable way to protect rights is to limit power, and the only reliable way to protect fundamental rights is to limit power with absolute prohibitions.

      This was well understood in the decades following WW2, and many countries implemented protections of this kind, only to roll them back again later when people had forgotten why they existed, and believed once more that everything will be fine as long as the “right” actors were in power.