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Comment by katz | Hacker News Reader

The problem with paedophilia is that it is extremely difficult to enforce. It is not as if a 5 year old kid will walk up to a police station and file a complaint. The internet made it near impossible to enforce paedophilia laws.

If the cops have to cause a mild inconvenience to 50 people to successfully prosecute one bad guy - then so be it.

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> If the cops have to cause a mild inconvenience to 50 people to successfully prosecute one bad guy - then so be it.

"mild inconvenience"?

If it's a "mild inconvenience", surely you won't mind paying for n instances, for non-trivial n. You've used 50 above, so let's start there.

Are you personally willing to pay for the "mild inconvenience" suffered by 50 innocent people?

What? You're not willing to pay? You're only willing for other people to pay?

> If it's a "mild inconvenience", surely you won't mind paying for n instances, for non-trivial n.

For all crimes there is a false search rate. A good example is a normal drug "bust" or a stolen property bust.

And yes - with the enforcement of most laws there is an inconvenience. A good example is a traffic stop - they check your license, check if the driver is drunk, check if the car is stolen, check for outstanding warrants of arrest and they may search the car.

What is the right number of car stops by police to enforce the law?

CP is more difficult because people can do this without going outside the home. That just means that the police should occasionally check inside the home.

I'm not questioning that it's an inconvenience or that there will be false positives.

I'm pointing out that "mild" is inaccurate.

In ducking my question of how many of these "mild inconveniences" you're willing to pay for, you concede that point.

Let me suggest that the more costly the inconvenience, the lower the acceptable false positive rate. And, if the inconvenience is serious enough, the folks inconvenienced should be compensated. (And, no, you don't get to bargain away the compensation by letting them off of something else that you wouldn't have found without the false positive.)

One benefit from compensating folks who are "inconvenienced" is that forces the relevant parties to do a better job in minimizing the total cost (which is proportional to the false positive rate multiplied by the cost of the inconvenience).

It's amazing how people's priorities depend on who's paying.

In most countries, if the police performs any raid on your premises all costs (e.g. fixing doors) are paid for by the state. I also doubt that the cost of doors is that high (compared to other expenses).

From what people say, the police are remarkably unsuccessful at prosecuting CP producers and distributors. They're good at prosecuting consumers, but I think that's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. (Of course, fighting crime is always like that...)

> think that's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

The problem is this: either something is a crime and the police enforce it or something is illegal. Just because it is difficult to enforce a crime does not mean that the crime should not be enforced.

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