A woman drives with both hands on the wheel. Her phone sits face-down on her lap. No officer pulls her over. No lights flash. Weeks later, a $1,251 ticket arrives in the mail. The evidence: a single frame from a Camera surveillance app. The charge: phone use while driving.
Automated camera companies market their devices as automated license plate readers — tools for catching stolen cars, flagging warrants, and aiding serious investigations.
Sold as a Crime Tool. Used as a Fine Machine.
If you write enough laws in a manner that makes it easy to violate them accidentally, then anyone can be prosecuted at any time and civil liberties can be removed via technicalities.
Vague / broad laws that allow anyone to be arrested or fined for anything are a distinguishing feature of police states, and solid basis for blanket opposition-to or at least skepticism-of laws in general (e.g. “illegal strike” are we slaves?).
I’m not opposed to law itself; however, I struggle to respect laws from non-democratic governments. Unfortunately, that’s all governments right now. I’m not aware of any electoral democracy at any level of government. Electoral Democracy has four required mechanism: Ranked Voting, Lottery Option, Recall Mechanism, Randomized Districting. That’s what it takes to acquire consent of the governed. That’s what it takes for legitimacy. Most governments are electoral oligarchies that function like weak police states for the lower classes.
This is a tragedy, but we can start installing the mechanisms required for electoral democracy at a local level and in private organizations to slowly entrench democracy and establish norms / standards before we slide farther into the oligachic police state we’re currently facing.