EFF on new electronic privacy bill - government will need to get warrants
eff.org
eff.org
As it stands now, our courts are jammed up. Courts set 10-30 trials to start when there is only one courtroom available. People have to wait in line for hours to pay for traffic tickets. Yes, they have to wait to give the government money. Police officers wait in court to get warrants read and signed. They wait hours. Sometime they have to come back days later to be seen by a judge.
In short, for a warrant requirement to be workable, we need a lot more judges, courts, and police officers.
As it stands now, a warrant requirement will make it impractical to prosecute lower level offenses due to the time and resources it would take to get a warrant. For instance, stalking cases, restraining order violations (with electronic contact), criminal threats, etc. will go unprosecuted. That leaves a whole lot of crime victims with very little recourse.
For example, work towards reducing homelessness. Towards harm minimization policies for drug users.
For example, do not allow media companies or other corporate companies to abuse criminal courts to collect civil debts.
Work on fixing those problems, and then there will be less waste of the courts time.
Prosecutors can advocate for the sort of policies you describe up to a point (our AG in California inclines this way, and her Republican opponent at the last election had a variety of reformist ideas too). But it's specialized work. If the DoJ assigns an attorney to prosecute cybercrime, there's not much s/he can do about the the drug war or reforming the copyright system.
At the higher levels, prosecution is more of a political position - a district attorney, attorney general, or a US attorney does have a fair amount of flexibility and influence over policy. But there are relatively few of those jobs, and if you don't have one you don't have a great deal of freedom as a junior prosecutor to go off in a different direction. Even high level prosecutors are subject to a great deal of political pressure from legislators.
The other thing to bear in mind is the cost. The private-sector legal industry can pay very well indeed. Wages in the public sector are pretty dismal by comparison. Federal judges are paid less (~$145k) than first-year associates at a big law firm (~$160k). The Chief Justice of the United States is paid about $220k. It's a terrible deal, and all the underlying budgets are badly underfunded as well. Not just pay; last time I looked the DoJ's 2012 budget for electronic discovery (document management systems) was only $20 million. Corporations often spend more on a single case. Most of the DoJ budget goes to law enforcement and prisons; attorneys get 6-7% and the court system gets about 3%. DoJ gets about $30 billion in total; to put that in context, DHS gets closer to $60 billion. In many ways, we get what we pay for.
So you're saying the justice system needs to take shortcuts with people's civil liberties because it is too disorganized/broken to do things the right way? Yeah, that pretty much like the way the government is thinking.
If there is lots of really important spying that the police really need to do on ordinary citizens, I suggest they lobby for the repeal of a number of drug laws. That would save them a lot of spying too.
Of course doing it correctly is more difficult. Of course serving justice is more difficult. Of course upholding the liberties of individuals takes more care and effort. The more short cuts you take with these things the easier it is for prosecutors and police officers to do their job.
The purpose of the system isn't to make police officers or prosecutors jobs easy, it's to uphold the law in service to society.
Either that or fewer laws.
Or if you just want to be lazy, write them and tell them that you're encouraged by their progress on the bill, but you would like them to listen to the EFF's concerns and send them a link to the article.
Yeah, sure it will. Just like it needs to obey the constitution. Or can't pass retroactive laws.
This idea is based on the premise that the USA still has a strong rule of law. It doesn't.
I would express the underlying sentiment that I agree with as follows: the rule of law is only as strong as the belief that the legislature, executive and administration places in it.
At the end of the day laws are just words on paper. It's our belief in them that makes them real. And there is less and less belief in them every day. And unfortunately the example shown, at least by many ex-colonies, is once the rule of law starts to slide it is a steady, self-fulfilling decline into bloodshed. I sure hope things can be turned around before such things, but I am far too cynical to believe in fairy tales. But I do so want to be proven wrong.