Supreme Court Rules Unanimously: Police Need Warrants to Search Cell Phone Data

[Ideologue]

But, for what it's worth, consider that a surveillance state would not just prevent crime--it would also prevent innocent persons from being imprisoned by an imperfect justice system, a price that should never have to paid by anyone, even for peaceful law and order.  Consider that.

Wow.  I did not figure you to be so staggeringly naive.

Long experience demonstrates that the best way to protect the innocent is to put checks and restrictions on the government.  Not to broaden its powers.

Sure, send in the parade of horribles, with each and every one involving someone exceeding the authority I've supposed for them.  a bit too busy protesting that cops carry guns and writing briefs in support of your 2d Amendment right to arm yourself with anti-tank weapons to be used in the event of tyranny?  Obviously the watchers themselves must be watched.  Obviously there must be checks on the surveillance state, just as there must be checks on almost any executive function you could name--which our form of government does, in fact, provide, given that no one has decided to abrogate the relevant verbiage of the 4th Amendment yet.  (Indeed, it has so far provided such a good check on public "tyranny" that tyranny is actually increased, by pushing government as well as private spying into the nether realm of open, but hazy, secrets.)

In any event, I'd be very interested for you to provide a brief history of all the states that started out as liberal democracies, legitimized pervasive surveillance, and then, as a direct result, became a totalitarian dictatorship.  Hint: Nazi Germany does not count, because pervasive surveillance was a result of the dictatorship, not the other way around.

You're not arguing from history, you're arguing from an unexamined axiom that is itself the result of confusing correlation and causation--namely the correlation that repressive regimes have found spying on their own citizens useful.

I'll also note that when folks, including you, have advocated for far more forceful government intervention into private matters--like actively silencing users of the 1st Amendment or for more strenuous 2d Amendment violations--I have never accused them of being a Calvinist.  Which is a weird insult to make.

CC: I'll certainly concede that the law school you was better at indoctrinating you--or maybe you were just better at being indoctrinated.  Not everything you hold dear is, by necessity, correct, and even a foundational law can be inefficient or unwise.

Grumbler: your suggestion is retarded.  I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it is a silly joke, rather than treating it as serious.  (Although if I did, I'd point out that me broadcasting my private activities to the public would do little to reduce crime other than my arguably copyright infringing use of Youtube and xHamster.  Also, as a result of the latter, I'd probably get fired.)

[dps]

In any event, I'd be very interested for you to provide a brief history of all the states that started out as liberal democracies, legitimized pervasive surveillance,

There is no such history, in part because pervasive surveillance is incompatible with democratic ideals.

[The Minsky Moment]

In any event, I'd be very interested for you to provide a brief history of all the states that started out as liberal democracies, legitimized pervasive surveillance, and then, as a direct result, became a totalitarian dictatorship.  Hint: Nazi Germany does not count, because pervasive surveillance was a result of the dictatorship, not the other way around.

No liberal democracy has ever "legitimized pervasive surveillance", no liberal democracy will do so, and remain a liberal democracy.  As for Nazi Germany, its use of secret police and surveillance  were both inherent to its ideology while also furthering its control - cause and effect went in both directions, and it is natural that it will do so.  The extremely awkward nature of both these propositions just exposes one key vulnerability in your argument you are no doubt aware: the strong empirical correlation between "surveillance states" and tyranny.

You're not arguing from history, you're arguing from an unexamined axiom that is itself the result of confusing correlation and causation--namely the correlation that repressive regimes have found spying on their own citizens useful.

And bingo there it is.  The only thing unexamined here is why "repressive regimes have found spying on their own citizens useful."  It is because surveillance by a governing authority is a powerful mechanism for social control and coercion.  Liberal democracies don't need such harsh and blunt tools, they have other means of mobilizing social solidarity and support.  Does creating a vast surveillance apparatus entail tyranny as a matter of logical necessity?  Perhaps not, but as a matter of practical social reality it does.  No free society would willingly submit to the expense and intrusion entailed by such an apparatus.  It would only do so under duress or sense of emergency, and then only temporarily.  But the power such an apparatus provides a central authority does facilitate those who would extend the "emergency" indefinitely.

I'll also note that when folks, including you, have advocated for far more forceful government intervention into private matters--like actively silencing users of the 1st Amendment or for more strenuous 2d Amendment violations--I have never accused them of being a Calvinist.  Which is a weird insult to make.

No it is really quite on point.  The New England Puritan leaders wanted to design a perfect society where everyone was responsible for monitoring everyone else, so that sin could be extirpated.  It was a society of MAD by snitching and busybodiness.  If they had modern technology no doubt they would have deployed as you would like, so that the Devil could never creep in silently and unseen.

[Ideologue]

My point is that spying is only a tool that can be used for any type of government, for good or ill--like, for example, tanks--which have also been found useful by dictatorships, but are not inherently tyrannical in themselves.

Unfortunately, if I accepted your definition of liberal democracy as a state that does not spy on its people (without, I suppose you mean, the permission of a court), it would put me at a disadvantage in this discussion.

I see the appopriateness of the Puritan comparison now.  It's not bad.  They were on the right track, though obviously they lacked the technological apparatus and functioning oversight to employ their ideas effectively.  They also had insanely repressive laws--and these are what the actual substance of a tyranny is made of, not some guy reading your email or the surveillance camera feeding into an exabyte-sized set of hard drives in an air conditioned bunker in New Mexico, ready to prove--or disprove!--that you (emphatically the rhetorical you, of course) molested your kid.

Something like that perfect society is within reach.  It's cold comfort to both of us, but I suspect I represent the political morality of the future more than you and Berk.

You say no free society would submit to it--but why not?  The fear, I take it, is that a shadowy combine will... what?  Frame you?  Blame you?  Shame you?  In the prudish, extortion-ready culture of the 1790s--a world of actual papers you kept in your house, rather than electronic documents intercepted over the Internet--this made a lot more sense.  They had just faced an enemy that used "unreasonable" searches as a tool to harass people and to violate actual human rights.  But I do not believe that mere spying is a violation of any human right in and of itself, if it does not involve any additional physical imposition.  Instead, it's a tool that could be used--subject to the appropriate judicial and legislative oversight--to eliminate all crime, and all not only the dangers we actually face from each other, but even the perception of danger from each other.

And that is an actual human right:

[DGuller]

Maybe total surveillance can work in a liberal society if all its members become a lot less prudish, a lot more tolerant, and way more understanding of the fact that no one is perfect.  Otherwise, every citizen that represents a threat of some kind to a government bureaucrat will become vulnerable to an embarrassing revelation. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Maybe total surveillance can work in a liberal society if all its members become a lot less prudish, a lot more tolerant, and way more understanding of the fact that no one is perfect. 

No.  There are always things that people will want to keep private and having things that about oneself that are not automatically broadcast to the world is essential to the sense of self and autonomy.

Ideologue's post above with the picture is just mind-boggling, to the point where it's clear he isn't on the level - he is an agent provocateur.  Total surveillance IS truly infantalizing, which is why a key point in development of children is when parents back off on monitoring and give their kids space to grow without being constantly watched.  It's true we lose that sense of security we had as small children that someone is always there to come to the rescue if needed, but that is the price of being an autonomous adult.  And in any case, the government is not a viable substitute for Mummy and Daddy. 

[Valmy]

I always thought that was a pretty old looking man to have such young kids.  The depression must have been hard on him.

[Ed Anger]

HEY NOW

[derspiess]

I always thought that was a pretty old looking man to have such young kids.  The depression must have been hard on him.

People got old fast back then.  Remember that iconic pic of that woman during the Depression?  She was like 33 or something.

[crazy canuck]

In any event, I'd be very interested for you to provide a brief history of all the states that started out as liberal democracies, legitimized pervasive surveillance...

There has been no such abomination.

What is remarkable is Ide can see fascist ideology in Wally-E but he cannot comprehend real fascism.

[grumbler]

Maybe total surveillance can work in a liberal society if all its members become a lot less prudish, a lot more tolerant, and way more understanding of the fact that no one is perfect.  Otherwise, every citizen that represents a threat of some kind to a government bureaucrat will become vulnerable to an embarrassing revelation. 

And if the government bureaucrats are the only ones holding the information, Ide's model fails anyway - plus, that's the opposite of "liberal democracy."  Everyone needs to have access to all the surveillance data, so that they can verify that their neighbors are not getting away with crimes by conniving with the government bureaucrat.  As MM points out, this is the Puritan model, only substituting "crime" for "sin."

Again, i invite Ide to be the model for this concept of abandoning all privacy and allowing 24/7 public surveillance of the individual.  He doesn't need any government participation, the technology is there right now.

[Syt]

I always thought that was a pretty old looking man to have such young kids.  The depression must have been hard on him.

People got old fast back then.  Remember that iconic pic of that woman during the Depression?  She was like 33 or something.

There was a photo series about Afghan refugee kids. Some of them looked older than me.

[dps]

I always thought that was a pretty old looking man to have such young kids.  The depression must have been hard on him.

People got old fast back then.  Remember that iconic pic of that woman during the Depression?  She was like 33 or something.

Are you talking about the woman in the painting American Gothic?  She was 31 when she modeled for that.

[grumbler]

People got old fast back then.  Remember that iconic pic of that woman during the Depression?  She was like 33 or something.

Are you talking about the woman in the painting American Gothic?  She was 31 when she modeled for that.

That wasn't a portrait, so her apparent age in the painting isn't evidence of anything.

[Razgovory]

I always thought that was a pretty old looking man to have such young kids.  The depression must have been hard on him.

People got old fast back then.  Remember that iconic pic of that woman during the Depression?  She was like 33 or something.

Are you talking about the woman in the painting American Gothic?  She was 31 when she modeled for that.

I think he means this one