Interesting Definition

The duty on cigarettes has just been given its biggest ever increase.

"The aim is to encourage smokers to quit," Kosuke Kato, a health ministry official, told Associated Press. "We hope the price increase will discourage smokers from buying cigarettes and eventually help them quit smoking."

I think you mean "force them".

Law that Targets Only the Innocent

Via Longrider I read that 19 year old Oliver Drage has been sent to prison for 16 weeks for refusing to give police his 50-character password. He was found guilty under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This strikes me as a law that can ONLY target the innocent.

The aim of the law is to coerce people into allowing police to examine their files so that they can determine whether a real crime has been committed. Now, either the files contain incriminating evidence or they do not. If they do then as Longrider puts it:

maybe he weighed up the odds and decided to take the hit for non-compliance as opposed to providing the Bill with evidence of sexual misdeeds, eh?

RIPA has no coercive power over the guilty because the prison sentence for non-compliance of RIPA will always be less than for the crime he is suspected of. The innocent on the other hand can be coerced.

You might argue that without RIPA the guilty guy gets away scot-free. True, but the law fails do achieve its aim. It can, in fact, never achieve its aim. So the argument becomes akin to suggesting that we lock up all people suspected of a crime (regardless of whether we can prove they are guilty) because otherwise some guilty people will get away.

Further Thoughts on Wilders

My post about Libertarians championing Geert Wilders seems to have provoked some discussion so I will try and expand a little on it. Mr Wilders dislikes Islam. He wishes to ban their books, their clothes and them from his home country. All these goals are entirely at odds with Libertarian principles. However, he is also now being prosecuted for those views because they may have incited hatred of Muslims. This too is at odds with Libertarian principles.

To be clear, he should not be prosecuted. However, he should not be championed either. If those of us who support free speech had infinite time and resources then of course I would support any campaign against his conviction. But we don't. Therefore I think we need to focus our resources where they will do the most good. Wilders is not the best battle to fight.

One of the arguments put forward for why he should be supported is essentially that he is an enemy of our enemy. Since he is standing strongly against those who hold anti-Libertarian views he should be supported in that effort. But I believe that if your enemy's enemy is also your enemy then you are in fact facing two enemies. You do not have two friends.

Geert Wilders is no Libertarian. He is authoritarian to the extreme. That his current targets are Muslims and not "us" is not a reason to offer him support.

But there are two other reasons not to campaign for him. The first is that it is politically bad. The population is so far removed from the concept of freedom of speech that they cannot appreciate the subtleties of defending the principle not the content. Instead those campaigning against his conviction can and are easily painted as supporting what he said. Even if the battle is won, the war effort suffers.

The second reason is the big danger that we end up like the Left-wing Islamist allies. I assume that they have come to align themselves totally with Islamists because they spent so long compromising in order to defend a principle. We too could end up in the same boat. (I could be wrong here)

So let's pick our battles. Freedom of expression and speech is under attack generally and there are, unfortunately, plenty of battles to fight. Let's select those we can win more easily. Let's channel our resources into those instances that are less controversial. Slowly we will push back against those who wish to limit free speech.

Mindset of the LibDems: Prove Your Innocence

It seems like a relatively innocuous post but does it reveal a lot about the mindset of some Liberal Democrats? Over at LibDemVoice Mark Pack cites a Swedish idea that might help people keep to the speed limits. Instead of simply recording details about speeding cars, cameras should record all cars and those that are keeping to the limit are automatically entered into a prize draw. Fantastic!

Let's ignore for the moment the possibility that enforcing speed limits may not be needed (see here) and the argument that speed cameras make crashes more likely (see here). Let's also ignore the problem of recording and storing information about all drivers. Let's just ask the simple question: what does this tell us about the mindset of the LibDems?

You see, the idea is to reward those who keep to the speed limits, ie the law-abiding citizens. But how can we find out who these people are? Well, the only way, it seems, is to make them prove they are law abiding by driving past a camera at an appropriate speed. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Wouldn't it be more in accordance with our legal system to assume that all people are law-abiding and don't speed unless we can prove otherwise? In other words, have everyone in the country automatically entered into the draw and removed if they break the law. But why stop there? Why not give a prize to everyone who keeps to the law and not to those who don't? Or, to save on admin costs, don't take any money away from those keeping the law but do take it away from those who... Oh.

EDIT: For the sake of clarity, I'm only being half-serious. Half-Serious in the sense that I'm sure Mark does support the idea of innocent until proven guilty.  Serious in the sense that he didn't seem to realise it applied everywhere.