Police do a lot of research as part of their work of course, but most of them probably didn’t join to reseach specifically, they joined to catch bad guys. Their mindset is to find something wrong in what they’re looking at. If they can’t find anything wrong, they figure they aren’t looking hard enough. To someone who actually enjoys research, finding out a group is harmless is as big a thrill as finding out one is full of “bad guys”. The puzzle is what matters, not the outcome.

So I repeat my question from an earlier thread: is there any evidence that those few departments with dedicated researcher or analyst units have fewer mistaken raids, or do such units not help at all? I am biased to think yes, but I’d love to know one way or the other.

You start to wonder if the RIAA *looks* for people who are basically broke already, because they can’t really put up a defense. The basic premise of the RIAA actions regarding infringement have typically been “Find someone who we can threaten to make life hell for and get them to settle, then trumpet our ’success’ loudly and proudly.” So they don’t ever go after someone who could afford to fight them. They don’t go after people with ready access to publicity. They go after kids and moms and people with diseases, and say ‘well they broke the laaaaawwwwww!!!!‘. And they never really get that they look like complete ass-clowns as they do this.

Jean Valjean is one of the ultimate “scarlet” letters. His of course was his “Yellow ticket of leave” he had to show everywhere he went which branded him a convict helping to make sure he never could turn over a new leaf.

‘And driving down the availability of dangerous drugs requires all the skills of agencies such as the DEA and local law enforcement. None of these approaches can work if drugs are simply legal.’

I’ve never seen the word ’skills’ used to describe these bullshit agencies!

So, regarding the RIAA, I note that they don’t say they didn’t do it. Just that it’s “not fair”, because they don’t have a lot of money.

From the article:

“I already have severe depression,” the story has [the girl] saying. “I mean, it’s so hard to sit there and think that I have to get in trouble for something that I didn’t do. It’s not fair.”

Actually, the girl says, “I mean, it’s so hard to sit there and think that I have to get in trouble for something that I didn’t do. It’s not fair.”

So, yes, she says she didn’t do it. But even if she did, see David and Eric, above.

This kind of reminds me of the no-knock raids issue. Can’t the police investigate their target ahead of a raid to find out whether that person is a violent criminal or likely to be violent – and therefore whether a SWAT-style raid is even justified? I thought that’s the kind of thing police detectives got paid for.

And it’s not untrue. There are probably millions of people who have shared songs on the Internet, and they decide that the one who really needs suing is a broke 19-year-old transplant patient? The law’s on their side, but it’s still a dick move.

The sex offender laws are out of control. It was bad enough when the religous right called you immoral and a heathen for sexual activity, but now the liberal & conservative nanny-state coalition can lock up any teenager, becuase his or her partner will more than likely be under 18. Only a vicious sadist can rationalize treating 10 year old kids as sexual predators. Are we going to lock up kids for fraud and make them felons if they try to doctor their report cards when they get bad grades? These laws have created more criminals and more victims than there ever were before.