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p-e-wtoday at 1:02 AM4 repliesview on HN

Why? What is the rationale? Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that anything goes as long as a court decrees it, in which case there’s nothing to debate really.


Replies

_heimdalltoday at 1:41 AM

Court approved warrants are pretty fundamental to how our legal system works and how some level of accountability is maintained. That system isn't perfect by any stretch, but removing it unlocks Pandoras box and I'm not sure we'd be better off without it.

As it stands, a cop has to get a warrant to enter and search your home, for example. If we remove that hurdle because we also don't trust the courts then we just have more searches.

I get the reaction to turn on the whole system, I have very little faith in it myself. But I don't think many people are really aware of or ready for what would come without it.

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direwolf20today at 4:19 AM

That's how courts work. They have superuser access.

angry_octettoday at 1:21 AM

A court order is just a hurdle that legislation (or a constitutional provision) dicatates, in the investigation of crime (or prevention of future crime...). The distinction is the rights of the individual vs the rights of other individuals in the dilute sense we call society.

The problem is that individuals no longer have confidence in their institutions, for both good reasons (official corruption, motivated prosecutors, the dissolution of norms of executive behaviour) and bad ones (propaganda on Fox News, and the long tail of disinformation online).

The question becomes: how can citizens have confidence their rights will be protected? What structure would protect the right to privacy?

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cpncrunchtoday at 1:08 AM

Im a little confused. Do you not believe there should be courts at all?

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