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by rayiner
4334 days ago
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At least in the U.S., you have to pretty clearly violate the law in order to be imprisoned. You may think the law is stupid, but that's a different matter. You have less margin if you're a racial or political minority, but by definition that's not something the typical person has to worry about.[1] Indeed, in the U.S., the law adjusts pretty rapidly to what the typical person thinks should be acceptable. E.g. in the last couple of years we've gone from a majority of people thinking marijuana should be illegal to a (slight) majority thinking it should be legal (http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports...), and lo, there has been a wave of legalization activity around the country in the same time frame. [1] I don't think people have the correct perception of how oppression works in a democracy. The line between the FBI trying to get MLK to commit suicide and the FBI imprisoning random middle-class white Americans is a lot bolder than people assume. I think the misunderstanding stems from a failure to appreciate the nature of oppressive government actions within a democracy. It's not like oppression of civil rights leaders in the 1950's and 1960's was the result of a self-contained entity within government, who could turn its attention to ordinary people at a whim. Instead, it was a classic case of the majority oppressing the minority, acting through government. Oppression of the majority requires an inversion of that power dynamic, and I think is harder to achieve than people assume. This is all, of course, not to justify oppression of the minority. Rather, it's to point out that your typical person is quite justified in assuming the government has little reason to oppress him. |
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My concern is that excessive surveillance leads inevitably to excessive perceptions of culpability.
One does not need to be formally found guilty for a run-in with the law to lead to "temporary" detention and legal bills; and if you can't afford the legal bills, maybe you might be forced into plea bargaining and end up with a criminal record. Even if this scenario does not happen, a genuine harm to one's reputation as a result of "helping the police with their enquiries" often occurs, especially if one is a middle class corporate employee.