Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Symmetrical transparency: Watching the watchers
While I am not the unreconstructed fan of "criminal rights" that I was when I took Yale Kamisar's Criminal Procedure class in 1985, I do believe that we have to watch, photograph, and record the cops in public places. With regard to the cops planting GPS bugs to track people without first obtaining a warrant, turnabout does indeed seem to be fair play:
Question: If sticking a device on someone's car -- which is a trespass to chattels in tort -- is okay without a warrant, then is it okay if I stick a device on a police car so I can track where the cops are going, and index it against a list of known donut shops? Or would they find something to charge me with? And if the latter, then why doesn't the creativity go both ways?
To be fair, if your purpose in tracking the cops was to alert actual or suspected criminals to their presence, you would be obstructing justice (in spirit if not in law, and probably in law). However, if you were merely tracking and publicizing the movement of cops and alerting everybody to their presence, how is that any different from flashing your lights to warn oncoming drivers of a speed trap (which, by the way, is the bounden duty of any true American)?
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Aug 13, 10:21:00 PM:
If you move around in the same uniform every day charged with dealing with the bad people of our society, your presence and your comings and goings are already tracked by many.
The question is, should our police be allowed to do things that ordinary citizens are not allowed to do in order to combat crime?
To be fair, if your purpose in tracking the cops was to alert actual or suspected criminals to their presence, you would be obstructing justice (in spirit if not in law, and probably in law). However, if you were merely tracking and publicizing the movement of cops and alerting everybody to their presence, how is that any different from flashing your lights to warn oncoming drivers of a speed trap (which, by the way, is the bounden duty of any true American)?
That's silly. Alerting everybody to their presence is alerting actual or suspected criminals. The kidnapper appreciates your flashing lights.
