You speak as if there is a perfect equivalence between morality and law, and that every action that can be done to increase the rate at which crimes are solved is a good thing. I think that is a bit simplistic and naive.
You speak as if there is a perfect equivalence between morality and law, and that every action that can be done to increase the rate at which crimes are solved is a good thing. I think that is a bit simplistic and naive.
My comment may come off that way, but I don't think there is a perfect equivalence, no. And if anything, every person has a different set of morality.
I come from a point of practicality and lack of chaos. It's bad enough that we all have different morality, but we have somehow through some semi-shared and semi-agreed process come up with a set of laws that we should all subscribe and be held-to. And on top of that, we have individuals that want to add more chaos to the mix by having us gimp and restrict the government from enforcing the laws we have already agreed to (for better or worse). They don't get to have that right anymore than I have the right to break any other arbitrary law, and I am tired of privacy advocates claiming some objective moral high ground and "universal" principle of privacy that they claim we all share or want.
I strongly believe that a little bit of chaos is necessary to actually make progress in civil liberty. Being able to detect any and all crime is indistinguishable from an authoritarian regime.
There are many laws today which are unjust, and which I think it is morally fine to break even though you put yourself at risk of being prosecuted. There have also been many laws in the recent past which have been repealed, and which we today will say were unjust. For example, prohibition against being homosexual was a thing in many western democracies up until just a few decades ago. Imagine if that was still illegal and we had this level of surveillance?
I also think that drug laws is a good example of unjust prohibition. I do not think all drugs should be available on a commercial market, but I think that we should have regulated sales so people can choose what they want to put in their own bodies. While I of course don't condone of the violence associated with it, I think the current situation of drugs being available on hidden dark markets to motivated buyers is a necessary evil to allow people to exercise their right to bodily autonomy in an unjust legal framework.
There has to be fudge factor for a democracy to actually make progress, or else I fear that we end up in some status quo where anyone who wants to open their mouth and protest a law will be afraid to do so because they don't know what dirt the state has collected on them.