At the end of August, Florida’s Department of Transportation ordered the removal of automated license plate readers from state road “rights-of-way.”

Several Florida counties and cities have since followed suit. The growing popular  movement against “Flock cameras” (the most popular ALPRs are made by Flock Safety) enjoys nationwide reach and politicians have begun running to the head of that parade.

That’s a good thing.

No, not just because ALPRs can be easily abused (more than 100 police officers have been caught using ALPR data to do things like stalk former or prospective romantic partners).

And no, not just because ALPRs can deliver inaccurate information, resulting in frightening traffic stops and sometimes false arrests.

The biggest reason to oppose use of ALPRs is that they create an ongoing, persistent, nationwide web of warrantless search and surveillance that encompasses everyone who drives, without probable cause to believe that those drivers have committed particular crimes or even that those particular crimes have actually occurred. That’s something the government isn’t supposed to be able to do.

It’s also something the government doesn’t NEED to do.

The number of privately owned and operated security cameras in America is staggering.

According to SafeHome.org, about 75 million US homes operate security cameras. While some of those cameras are positioned indoors, most of them aren’t — nearly 60 million are video doorbell cameras, most of which can see the street frontages of the homes using them.

That number doesn’t include the ubiquitous security cameras found scattered around nearly every American business establishment.

It also doesn’t include similar cameras on pretty much every government building.

When a crime is committed, police are fully empowered to request — or, if necessary, get warrants to seize — the footage from any cameras that might plausibly have recorded the crime or the perpetrators’ actions leading up to and away from the crime scene.

Would government officials and police officers LIKE to have 24/7/365 access to information on everyone’s coming and goings, everywhere? Well, of course they (or at least many of them) would.

In fact, some of them wouldn’t mind having access to “security cameras” inside your home, pointed at you, so that if you murder your spouse — or perhaps just smoke, snort, or inject an unapproved substance, or casually mention that you  broke the speed limit coming home — an alert and AI analysis pops up on the relevant detective’s computer screen and he drops by to haul you off at his convenience, with irrefutable evidence already in hand.

The rest of us, however, are entitled to a presumption of innocence and to substantial protections from the snoopy predilections of government officials and police officers. In theory, at least, THEY work for US. Most of us like our privacy, and few of us want rogue cops spying on us 24/7.

There’s no room for massive surveillance networks like those represented by ALPRs in any country where the ruling class pretends it governs a “free society.”

Congrats to Florida’s politicians on their successful sprint to the head of a worthy parade.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On September 4, Judge William Sullivan, of Massachusetts’s Plymouth County Superior Court, declared a mistrial in the case of Commonwealth v. Lindsey Clancy.

After seven days of deliberation, the jury was clearly “hung,” with one member refusing to support a verdict of “not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility” in Clancy’s killing of her three young children.

I suspect I may be the only person in America who doesn’t hold strong opinions on what verdict the jury should have reached.

Yes, I oppose murder. Yes, I’m especially appalled by the murders of children. Yes, I am skeptical of most “insanity pleas.” And yes, I’m aware that juries don’t always get things right. But I was not one of the 12 people who spent a week in that jury room, carefully considering the trial’s 21 days of testimony, its more than 1,500 evidentiary exhibits, and the details of the applicable laws. I don’t consider myself qualified to gainsay the conclusions of any of those 12 people.

I do, however, have a strong opinion on the controversy around, and the court’s handling of, one juror’s filibuster, his insistence on voting his informed opinion and personal conscience despite severe pressure to give in.

On the sixth day, the jury’s foreperson sent a note claiming that the holdout juror wasn’t following Judge Sullivan’s instructions on the meaning of “reasonable doubt.” The judge then privately lectured the jurors on the meaning of that term.

Clancy’s attorney then petitioned Sullivan to remove the recalcitrant juror, essentially claiming that a single vote to convict in the face of 11 votes to acquit constituted a violation of the law. Sullivan rejected the petition … but neither the lecture nor the petition should have happened in the first place.

American law recognizes the right of a jury to acquit a defendant “in the teeth of the facts.” We call it “jury nullification”: The jury decides that even though the defendant did X, the law forbidding X is wrong, at least in that case.

Prosecutors hate that because they prefer convictions at any cost. Judges hate it, because they like to be in charge and don’t think anyone should be free to ignore their “instructions.”

The lone juror in the Clancy case is a flip side of jury nullification. He decided, based on the evidence he’d seen and the testimony he’d heard, that she was guilty, and he wasn’t going to let himself get bullied into saying otherwise. The effect isn’t as broad as acquittal — the prosecutor is free to bring the case again — but it’s the same principle. Jurors get to vote their conclusions and their conscience. Period.

That’s important. The American “justice” system is less about actual justice these days than about padding prosecutors’ records with plea bargains and convictions to advance their careers, keeping cases flowing through judges’ courtrooms without inconvenient delays, and keeping American prisons operating at full capacity. Jurors are our only line of defense against that trend. Respect them.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Three Card Monte. Photo by ZioDave. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

“Only I can make this promise to you,” US president Donald Trump told America from the stage of his party’s weird midterm “convention” event on September 9: “If the Republicans win the House and Senate, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

Most coverage of Trump’s offer to bribe voters to vote Republican focuses on two things — that yes, it was an offer to bribe voters to vote Republican, and that actually doing it would be a $1.2 trillion+ budget-buster of a bribe, the biggest direct “universal” US government payment in history.

Those elements are obviously worth discussing, but they’re not really unusual. Every politician tries to bribe the voters in every election, even if most don’t do it QUITE so plainly. As for the size, well, Trump has always put great importance on being the first to do this, the one who does that the YUGEest, etc. The next time he just goes “normal, business as usual” will be the first.

I’m more interested in the indisputable fact that the “Trump dividend,” if it happened, wouldn’t be a “dividend” at all. In fact, it would be yet another new tax on the recipients.

A dividend is a share of earnings paid out to a company’s shareholders, generally from a profitable cycle. The United States isn’t a business, you and I aren’t shareholders, and the enterprise isn’t turning a profit — as a matter of fact, it runs continuous deficits and is drowning in accrued debt.

This “Trump dividend” is incredibly unlikely to happen — it would have to be  approved by Congress, and there’s no incentive for Congress, or Trump, to follow through on their end of the bargain once they have what they want — but if it happened, it would be paid for by taxing you at least as much, if not more than, that $5,000.

The taxation probably wouldn’t be direct, since that would be a transparently stupid “give me $5,000 … OK, here’s your $5,000!” transaction.

The taxation would take place through borrowing, which is still a tax on you, only with payment deferred and interest due on a continuing basis until the principal is repaid.

In addition to interest, that added borrowing by the federal government would drive up interest rates on your own borrowing, and the injection of the $1.2 trillion into the economy would inflate the price of everything you buy.

So: Trump is offering to pay you $5,000 and jack your cost of living up, in return for which he’s  demanding your vote and $5,000 plus interest.

If that sounds like a good deal to you, you suck at math and you’re probably a member of the rapidly shrinking “MAGA” base.

I’m not suggesting that you vote Democrat this November. There’s plenty of bribery in that party’s pitch, too, even if the delivery is less brazen. The difference is in demeanor, not content.

None of these politicians can give you anything they aren’t taking, or planning to take, from you. Politics is a scam.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY