All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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Police Violence: An Anti-Obscenity Proposal

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NYPD Communications Division van #4018 at Hera...
NYPD Communications Division van #4018 at Herald Square. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s not surprising when Ed Mullins leaps to the defense of police officers accused of murder or other criminal abuses. After all, he’s president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a New York City police union. Protecting cops is his job.

In a July 14 column for the New York Post, Mullins decries the city’s $5.9 million settlement with the family of Eric Garner, who died at the hands — literally, from a “chokehold” — of officer Daniel Pantaleo. The settlement, wrote Mullins, is “obscene.”

I agree with Mullins. It IS obscene. The taxpayers of New York City should never have been forced to compensate Garner’s family for his death. Those taxpayers didn’t kill Eric Garner. Daniel Pantaleo did.

Of course, Mullins wouldn’t agree with how I put that. He doesn’t call the settlement obscene because he wants Pantaleo to pay. He objects because taxpayer money paid to Pantaleo’s victims can’t be paid to members of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

Still, I have to credit Mullins with inspiring my proposal for consideration by his association, by New York City, and by police unions and city governments everywhere: Insurance.

Yes, insurance. Cities should require every police officer in their employ to carry a $10 million liability policy for torts inflicted while on duty. Prosecuting cops for crimes committed in uniform is always a dicey proposition, but there’s no reason the civil end can’t work like any other insurance situation. There’s a claim. If it’s denied, there’s a lawsuit, a verdict or a settlement, and the insurer coughs up any damages instead of sticking the taxpayers with the check.

With unionized departments, of course, the insurance requirement will have to be negotiated into the labor contract. As will a clause making uninsurable cops subject to immediate dismissal from the force and ejection from the union.

If that sounds like a bitter pill for an Ed Mullins to swallow, here’s the sugar coating: There’s no reason the unions can’t provide the insurance policies themselves: Collect the premiums as part of each member’s union dues and set them aside in trust for rainy days when claims get paid. Eventually — if the actuaries get it right — profits will flow into the union’s general fund. That prospect should warm any union president’s heart.

An insurance scheme of this kind will also incentivize the thin blue line to police its own. If insurance premiums go up, cops and union reps will know which comrades to have a “come to Jesus” talk with.

Pandemic police violence is a problem that will be solved, one way or another. This is a way for Mullins to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

Thomas L. Knapp 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.

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Comey vs. Crypto: The Last Banzai Charge

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Imperial Japanese Army soldiers give a banzai ...
Imperial Japanese Army soldiers give a banzai cheer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the end of World War II, Second Lieutenant Hiro Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army dismissed rumors of his country’s surrender, fading into the Philippine jungle to fight on.  He held out for 29 years before, still dressed in his dilapidated uniform, he surrendered his sword to his former commanding officer in 1974.

Every time an American politician or bureaucrat floats some cockamamie new scheme to ban, handicap or regulate strong encryption of computer data, I think of Onoda.

The Crypto Wars began in 1991 when Phil Zimmerman released the first version of PGP (“Pretty Good Privacy”), a tool that made strong encryption available to the masses worldwide. The wars essentially ended at the same time.  A few bitter dead-enders held out until the mid-1990s, firing off silly proposals for programs like the Clipper Chip and “key escrow,” but it quickly became apparent to most that the strong encryption genie isn’t going back into the bottle.

So here comes FBI director James Comey, waving a rusty samurai sword and screaming “banzai!” as he once again charges the enemy lines, 24 years after his side’s defeat.

Testifying before the US Senate’s intelligence committee in early July,  Comey trotted out the latest alleged threat —  Islamic State militants using strong crypto to protect their communications — and complained that “[i]n recent months … we have on a new scale seen mainstream products and services designed in a way that gives users sole control over access to their data.”

He says that like it’s a bad thing. It isn’t.

He envisions a “solution” in which software and communications providers use strong encryption that works, except when Comey wants to read your email. Even if empowering him to read your email wasn’t a very bad idea, no such solution exists.

A back door for James Comey is a back door for everyone else, too. If the encryption is broken, it’s broken.

The bad guys will always have encryption. Encryption is math and computer code. It’s free, it’s in the wild, and it will remain so. If American companies hobble their encryption, those who don’t like their encryption hobbled will get good crypto elsewhere. Shikata ga nai (“it can’t be helped”).

As for the rest of us, Comey tends toward the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” line. Oddly, I never hear that line coming from him when Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden reveal HIS organization’s secrets.

We use encryption for the same reason we put our snail mail in envelopes: We only want it to be read by the intended recipient. Dealing with that is Comey’s job. Catering to his voyeurism with “back doors” isn’t our obligation.

Thomas L. Knapp 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.

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Election 2016: Scott Walker vs. “Government Dependence”

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English: Scott Walker on February 18, 2011
Scott Walker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Announcing his presidential candidacy on July 13, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker touched on a familiar theme: “Helping adults who are able to work transition from government dependence to true independence,” he said, “will help more people live [the American Dream].”

I call the theme “familiar” because Google returns more than 5,000 results on Walker’s name and the phrase “government dependence.” He seems to have focused on it for many years. And on a quick read of his biography, I doff my cap to his stature as world-class expert on the topic.

Apart from some part-time sales work in college and a short stint at the Red Cross, Scott Walker seems to have spent his entire adult life as a “government dependent.”

He made his first run for political office in 1990 and was elected to Wisconsin’s state legislature in 1993. From there, he moved on to become chief executive of Milwaukee County, and after that (on his second try) governor of the state.

For 22 years, this political careerist has suckled continuously — not to say tenderly — at the taxpayers’ breast. When he gets up in the morning, the taxpayer buys his bacon and eggs and the hot water in his shower. When he goes to bed at night, the taxpayer pays for the pillow upon which Walker doth rest his weary head. In between, the taxpayer provides the chair which cradles his entitled posterior.

Now he’s asking  the taxpayer to move him into the big house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four (or better yet, eight) years and pay him, per Wikipedia, “a $400,000 annual salary, along with a $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment.”

After that he expects the taxpayer to provide him with, per the Former Presidents Act, a $200k+ annual pension, $20,000 per year for his spouse (if she relinquishes any political positions she holds), money for the “transition” from life as president to that of mere mortal, nearly $100k per year for personal staff, lifetime Secret Service protection, and exclusive use of a “presidential townhouse” when visiting Washington, DC.

OK, I say uncle: Scott Walker is indeed the world’s living authority on “government dependence.” Whether or not he makes the best poster boy for a platform of ending such dependence is another question entirely. I’m going to go out on a limb here and answer “probably not.”

Thomas L. Knapp 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.

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