[ChuckMcM]

So does Dutch law actually recognize the UN's International Covenant[1] ? While a country can be a signatory to the covenant, it is just a popularity stunt until there are locally enacted laws which provide for enforcement of its provisions. It isn't like UN Peacekeepers are going to come parachuting in to your rescue.

Also the comment about Mass surveillance is incorrect. While it may not have found any terrorism suspects there is ample evidence that it has impacted drug smuggling (as implemented in the US) where the DEA was fed information that it had to lie about where it got it. While I find the whole parallel construction thing a huge violation of civil liberties (and generally should be illegal) it is pretty clear that mass surveillance did identify a number of drug operations. So in that regard it "works". It might be better to say that it hasn't been shown to be an effective tool against terrorism.

[1] http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx

[tptacek]

Parallel construction should be unlawful. The point of the exclusionary rule for evidence is to address the incentives of law enforcement. It's not a recognition that specific pieces of evidence are somehow tainted and untrustworthy. That's a broken premise parallel construction seems to rely on.

But then a follow-on question: for the big 3 EU countries, what are the exclusionary principle rules? From a little research last year, I know that the exclusionary rule in the UK is more complicated than it is in the US.

[Tomte]

Germany: none at all (barring extreme cases), and that's really the overwhelming mainstream opinion of German scholars. Only defenders lament it.

The idea is that much harm comes from letting people walk, just because the police did an honest mistake. Or even a willful, outrageous thing.

Punishing the police officer should be enough to deter such behavior.

I think that it's a reasonable stance, but I'm not invested into it much.

I tend to see it as another example where we try to find a reasoned and weighted position, whereas America usually takes a very black and white approach.

I don't mean that disparagingly, it's a valid position. Just an observation.

[pluma]

IMO this is unquestionably a good thing about German law. There have been a few rare cases of "rogue police officers" (there was a case a few years ago where a police officer tortured a suspect because he wanted to save a child, which led to a huge debate about the morality of it all over the media) but the system seems to be good at making those the very rare exception.

Of course evidence still retains its context. An admission made under torture, for example, is likely to be considered inherently invalid because it is extremely unreliable. This is actually a bit ironic (Morissettian irony, not literal irony) if you consider that the US is engaging in systematic torture to extract bullshit intel out of terrorist suspects (whereas reliable evidence provided by a police investigation could be dismissed because of mere formalities).

[hundt]

Do the police officers actually get punished in Germany?

[Tomte]

At least every prosecutor's office has a whole department dealing only with crimes committed by officials, and I guess they're not just sitting around. :-)

I believe it's just like you would expect if you knew nothing about Germany: many crimes are punished, many aren't.

For whatever reason, and yes, cronyism and a certain reluctance to prosecute does happen. But that's a null statement.

I won't claim that reality is great, I just have no reason to believe that police officers regularly get away with major infractions.

[malka]

The fact that "it works" is not a good argument imo. Slavery works to get shit done.

[ChuckMcM]

To be clear, "it works" is not an argument, it is a counter factual, basically evidence that invalidates a previous claim. The argument that author makes was a general "it does not work" and in the very broad definition of works or doesn't work, mass surveillance can be shown to have uncovered unlawful activity that would have gone undetected without it. That is a very technical definition of 'working' and does not address the moral or legality issues of the surveillance itself.

My goal is to help the author make a stronger argument for their cause. And it is stronger to claim mass surveillance has not been effective at countering or uncovering terrorist plots but it has been effective at violating peoples civil liberties and subjecting people to a violation of their right to privacy. Then you have to tie that right to privacy to locally enacted laws or constitutional claims. In the US we've been asserting that mass surveillance is a violation of the 4th amendment which says US citizens have the right to be secure in their persons against unreasonable search. And then we've gone on to argue that mass surveillance is an unreasonable search. With judicial backing like the recent ruling about putting a camera on a telephone pole across the street from a house to keep it under surveillance.

So you have to build the argument from the initial claim to the last one so that each step of the way the listener can understand and agree (or debate) the evidence you present for supporting that claim. That was the form the article takes, laying out its claims one by one to support its call to action to reject the changes proposed in Dutch law.