Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder

[Trei, Peter]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-cypherpunks at minder.net
> [mailto:owner-cypherpunks at minder.net]On Behalf Of Steve Thompson
> Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:13 PM
> To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
> Subject: RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
>
>
>  --- Tyler Durden <camera_lumina at hotmail.com> wrote:
> [airport security]
> > More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a
> > hyper-intelligent super-fascist state.
>
> As if.
>
> There already is a kind of intelligent super-fascist state in place
> thoughout much of society.  My bugbears of the moment are the
> police and
> courts, so you get my take on how they are organised so as to be
> 'intelligent' without seeming so -- which further enables a
> whole lot of
> fraud to masqerade as process and incompetence.  The
> super-fascist part
> comes about because the system avoids public accountability while also
> somehow evading any sort of reasonable standard of performance.
>
> What's the error rate, that is the false arrest, prosecution, and/or
> conviction rate of a Western countries' judiciary and police
> divitions?
> If it's even ten percent, and it's probably much higher, then
> there is no
> reason to respect the operation and perpetuation of the system.

One chilling data point. Remember a few years ago the (pro death
penalty) governor of Illinois suspended all the death sentences in
has state? The reason being was that with the introduction of DNA
testing, 1/3 of the people on death row were found to be innocent.

I don't know how many other innocents the state planned to murder,
but presumably there were some cases where DNA evidence was not
available.

If, in a capital case, where the money to pay public defenders
is usually maximally available, and the appeals process, checks,
and cross-checks are the more thorough than in any non-capital
prosecution, you STILL get at least a 33% error rate, then what
is the wrongfull conviction rate in non-capital cases, where there
are far fewer appeals, and public defenders are paid a pittance?

Peter Trei