More On Selective Enforcement

In my last post, I elaborated a bit about selective enforcement and the consequences of it. What happens when the police force starts targeting troublesome individuals rather than troublesome criminal acts?

Everybody’s guilty. It’s pretty much that simple. Everybody’s guilty of something, from jaywalking or speeding and up. There is no such thing as a law-abiding citizen. Not the least, as I wrote in my last post, because the unwritten rules frequently contradict the rule of law.

“Show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.” — Lavrenti Beria, secret police chief under Stalin

This goes to illustrate again that the so-common attitude of “I have nothing to hide” will save people from absolutely nothing. It’s just self-deception, really. If somebody in law enforcement decides to get a particular individual, they will have a justification for jailing that individual, with all the data collected today. There are patterns if you look for them.

“Give me six lines written by the most honest man you know, and I’ll find something in them to have him hanged.” — Cardinal Richelieu

I’d like to bring up a very classic example of selective enforcement and how it’s exactly not what police should be doing, from a story I think we’ve all heard.

Al Capone.

Mr. Capone is known as the person more or less running the gangster underground scene in Chicago in the 1930s. Most of us have heard the story of how he came off absolutely clean for every crime he was accused of, “so the police busted him for tax evasion instead”.

See what happened there?

We’re taught in the story that the police were smart to find something else to jail Capone for. But that’s not moral at all. What happened was that this individual was acquitted of crimes, but police were so determined to put him behind bars, that they eventually found a charge that stuck.

This happened almost 100 years ago, in a very analog environment. It is a textbook example of selective enforcement, and it’s not the police being smart at all. It’s the police cutting corners and not treating people as equal before the law. If you still think this was right or justifiable, think about the same thing happening to you:

“Yes, sir, you have been acquitted of this accusation. However, you are not free to go; you will have to stay in this jail while we locate another charge to pin on you that has a greater chance of sticking. Don’t worry, sir, it won’t take long until we formally charge.”

Does it still sound like the police being smart? This is the situation that’s enabled by mass surveillance.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.