The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. – Edmund Burke
The principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is a very ancient one; traces of it appear in the Book of Deuteronomy, and some scholars have written that it can be found in both Athenian and Spartan legal codes. It is clearly stated many, many times in Roman law, and the U.S. Supreme Court decision Coffin vs. United States quotes this episode of a trial before the Emperor Julian:
Numerius, the governor of Narbonensis, was on trial [for embezzlement] before the Emperor, and, contrary to the usage in criminal cases, the trial was public. Numerius contented himself with denying his guilt, and there was not sufficient proof against him. His adversary, Delphidius, “a passionate man,” seeing that the failure of the accusation was inevitable, could not restrain himself, and exclaimed, “Oh, illustrious Caesar! If it is sufficient to deny, what hereafter will become of the guilty?” to which Julian replied, “If it suffices to accuse, what will become of the innocent?”
The Emperor Julian
The principle was first clearly codified in post-Roman law by Cardinal Lemoine in the 13th century using the Latin phrase, Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat (“the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies”) and it is one of the pillars of English common law and through it, American law; it appears in the majority of law codes in the Western world. But now this 3000-year-old principle is under assault in the United States, and for what? So that the government can force every single adult with internet access (even those without children) to prove he (or she) hasn’t been looking at dirty pictures, just in case a child should wander into his house, accidentally call up a picture of a nipple and thereby cause his brain to explode due to rapid-onset “premature sexualization”. Take a look at this July 12th article from Reason:
Have you heard about The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011? It’s the latest in a l-o-n-g line of just terrible bills proposed to calm (though never quite eliminate) the fears of middle-aged people about what that scary Internet might potentially do to Our Children…Cato’s Jim Harper…[wrote], “This isn’t a bill about child predation. It’s a bald-faced attack on privacy and limited government.”
Meanwhile, former Reasoner Julian Sanchez (also of Cato) muses that “I guess the ‘You Are All Criminals Act’ didn’t have the same ring,” and provides some context:
Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activities loses its Fourth Amendment protection when it’s held by a “third party” corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider. As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process. Step one: The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can’t easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone—anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all. No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it’s not the government gathering it! Step two: The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge. No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they’re just getting a corporation’s business records, not your private records. It makes no difference that they’re only keeping those records because the government said they had to. Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects—including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses—to ensure that evidence isn’t erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order. But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet? Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans—every one a potential criminal…
You can’t even say you weren’t warned; have you ever taken the time to read one of those “privacy notices” everyone sends out nowadays? If you had, you would’ve discovered that it would be more appropriate to call them “lack of privacy notices”. The nutshell version: “We won’t give any information about you to anyone you actually want to have it, not even your spouse, but if anyone with an official title whom you absolutely don’t want to have that information so much as hints that he wants it, we’ll stick our arses in the air faster than you can say ‘Judas’ and give him everything he wants and more.” And if the “You Are All Criminals Act” is passed, the amount of information they can turn over about you – without your knowledge, consent or a proper warrant – will be dramatically increased.
Ah, well, that whole “presumption of innocence” thing was hopelessly old-fashioned anyway; how could any of those ignorant ancients possibly understand anything about sex and pornography and children and stuff?
One Year Ago Today
The second part of “Genesis of a Harlot”, the story of how a good little Catholic girl from south Louisiana turned into a whore.
And the news gets better …
http://www.businessinsider.com/law-enforcement-police-use-retina-scans-2011-7
Retinal Scans … for Cops to identify you with.
And, apparently now, Cops can track you by placing GPS on your car …
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10237353-71.html
I know a lot of people were angry about the Casey Anthony trial but …
I believe that juries now KNOW that police have all this technology and power to watch us – so they are FORCING prosecuters to actually PROVE their cases now.
I mean – seriously – don’t come at me with only circumstantial evidence when I know you have the capabllity to produce a lot more than that – and if you don’t produce it – then I have to conclude you don’t have it.
So I think juries are operating at a higher standard of proof than they did in the past – and it’s based partially on this.
Excellent, Maggie. Technology erases borders of all kinds. This is good and bad. But I don’t think any government will forgo the ultimate goal of Total Information Awareness (to quote a British t.v. series). It’s already begun with RFID chips – soon these will be mandatory. Then, just because they can, they’ll track your toothpaste purchases, all in the name of national security.
I believe we Americans were far freer in 1800 than we are now. Right now nearly everything is illegal. It’s time for some clever partisan to dump tech poison into the whole system.
I’ve quoted this before, and it applies here, too.
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be
much easier to deal with.” (‘Atlas Shrugged’ 1957)
Of course we were freer in 1800. They are intentionally turning us all into criminals.
The first clear and obvious American example of the power of universal criminalization came just about a year after the Rodney King riots; a motorist in San Diego videotaped cops beating another motorist and offered the tape to the media. But before he could deliver it, he was arrested for an unpaid traffic ticket from Sacramento (the state capital) several years before; he was held without bail overnight, and a HELICOPTER was sent from Sacramento (820km away) to fetch him to “court”. Nothing was ever heard of the tape again; I think it’s obvious that he was taken into a room and told he would be accused of enough crimes to put him away for life unless he surrendered the video to the cops.
Of course, that was in the days before video became ubiquitous, but it goes to show how the threat of criminal prosecution can be used as a means of silencing those who cause the overlords trouble. Every one of us unknowingly commits three felonies a day, and all the government has to do is find the ones that fit. Here’s a new article from Reason on the subject; it refers to a Wall Street Journal article:
Some Americans were freer in 1800. In 1800 some people were still being born into slavery.
There are things that really disturb me, even frighten me about the modern world. But I really, really hate this sort of nostalgia. Hell, in 1800 you’d probably die before the government could take an interest.
Hello Sailor,
With me, it’s not nostalgia. I’m a primitivist in religion and culture. I don’t care if my life span was only 27; presumably I’d live in a communitarian and egalitarian society. In 1800 I could still get lost in the Louisiana Territory.
Beyond that, in 8,000 bce, no government would exist to look for me.
Kind of ignoring the slavery thing.
And you can be a primitivist today; you are a primitivist today.
Almost certainly, if you were a housewife, expected to have a baby every year. The guys generally lived longer – women tended to die quite young due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
However, I’m with Patrick Henry. “Give me liberty, or give me death.” I’d rather work hard — for myself —- and die young than deal with the government we have today.
At least in 1800 I could be a whore without (potentially) going to jail for it. *wink*
Dear Sailor B, thank you! Like you, I’d rather live as long as possible no matter what’s going on around me. Speaking of slavery, it was a SMALL part of the population that fought it. Thank God for them though. They proved the power that small groups do have and never gave up on their cause. There are 2 wonderful things about what you and I call the “good old days”: childhood wasn’t extended like it is now and kids weren’t so sheltered from death (the kids were part of the process of getting their family members ready for burial, etc.) like many are today. 1 of the worst things about the “good old days” is all kinds of abuse were just accepted (verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse) and thought of as “part of normal life”. ###*** that!
And thanks to technological progress, they were able to make freeing the slaves a popular cause. It wasn’t at first, of course. It was, as you say, a SMALL part of the population. But it got more and more popular, especially in those parts of the country where the economy was machine-based and didn’t benefit much from slavery.
From Martin Luther and the Gutenberg press to Martin Luther King, Jr. and television to the Arab Spring and Facebook, technology, especially communications, is one of the driving forces behind personal freedom.
Using moral panics (radical feminism, child rights, blacks raping our women, blacks being treated poorly, alcohol, drugs, medical treatments…)–
to restrict the rights of citizens and assault basic presumptions, like…
Innocence. Privacy. Independence.
But surprise.
I signed an online petition about this, but I think I need to do a bit more. I think I need to write a letter of my own to my two senators, my congressman, and to the President.
Dear SailorB, I love how you do so much already!
Thanks, but I’m far too often lazy; I forget; things don’t get done. The next time I’m at your place, I plan to write to Stefani Carter, John Corona, Kay Hutchinson, and Barack Obama.
Because I’m out of ink. 😛
There is a modern-day classic on youtube called, more or less, “Why you should never talk to the cops.” It came from a lawschool. Basically, it explains how everyone nowadays is vulnerable to The Law Enforcement if they get a grip on you because it is virtually impossible to avoid being guilty of multiple felonies on any given day – if the Blue Meanies want that outcome.
Here is a real conundrum for us:?
In the American Civil War guerilla bands operated on either side of the border terrorizing people who supported the wrong side. One of these was the infamous William Quadrille, responsible for the Lawrence massacre and several clever raids against Union forces. When he came to a household of Union sympathizers, he would kill all the males and burn the property but left the women and girls alone. This is according to “The Devil Knows how to Ride” his biography by Edward E. Leslie. The author combed through personal letters from women to their relatives and found not one mention of rape by either Union or Southern soldiers. Surely if there had been any evidence of it at all enemy propaganda would have been decrying it for months.
I assumed rape and war went together. How to explain this. Male bias is no explanation, since the two sides hated each other thoroughly by the end of the war.
It’s not a conundrum at all; both sides considered themselves to have the moral high ground. They were Americans in an age when that still meant something, and most had Victorian ideas of sexuality and the purity of womanhood. To most of these men, especially the officers, allowing women to be raped would have been a betrayal of all they stood for.
I figured it the same way you do. However, I was surprised at how consistent this was. It’s interesting because I’ve never heard of another war on this scale like it.
[…] The principle was not new in 4th century Rome; it is clearly stated many times in Roman law, appeared in both Athenian and Spartan legal codes, and traces of it appear in Deuteronomy. From Rome it passed into the Western legal tradition, and it is one of the pillars of English common law. Indeed, every schoolchild knows that a person on trial is presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, this is no longer true in many cases; all over the West, but especially in the United States, this powerful defense against tyranny once enjoyed by everyone from beggar to prince has been slowly eroded away in the name of expediency. Prosecutors eager to “score” convictions take advantage of the vast arsenal of overlapping laws to charge people with so many different crimes for one supposed act that conviction on even a small fraction of them would result in decades of imprisonment; the frightened (and often completely innocent) victim nearly always agrees to some lesser charge rather than face the prospect of spending most of his life in a cage where he may be repeatedly raped, tortured and denied even the respite of death. Intimidating a victim into confession circumvents the need to have any evidence at all, much less enough to secure conviction. […]