They've Got a Law For That

I love government.

Don't get me wrong, it's a necessary evil, and I'm sure I would last about five minutes in a glorious anarchistic-return-to-state-of-nature-cracy. But sometimes...

Actually, this is more about the spectre of terrorism reaching its ugly hand into the pot, as it were. Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about. So rather than introduce this topic to death before I even get to introduce it, let's jump straight to the game, Bob!

Behold, an article. It's about terrorism, among other things. And I'm not going to summarize it because it doesn't really matter. The relevant text is quoted below.

The 26-year-old is accused of not disclosing information that could have helped police arrest a suspected terrorist.

Wow. Okay, so that's, let's see... four possibles there. He's been accused. He didn't disclose information. It might have helped. And the thing it might have helped with is the arrest of a possible terrorist.

Let's get the big one out of the way first. Making non-disclosure a crime is dangerous. You want to accuse someone of lying to a jury, that's fine. But if you're accusing someone of not ratting another person out, then we've crossed the line. I don't know, maybe the police asked this man about the facts of the case weeks beforehand, and he lied. But that's lying to the police, or obstruction of justice, or conspiracy, or aiding and abetting, or being an accomplice. Non-disclosure, to me at any rate, implies that this man should have come forward. It makes it sound like Britain's police operate under the honor system. Again, I don't know. But they could have picked a better name for it, if it should not so be named.

Then we have accused. That's fine. We'll leave it. In fact, if it weren't for the three other possibles, I'm sure I never would have noticed it.

Back to the biggies, we have, "could have helped." In other words, not only is this man accused of withholding information vital to the police, he's being accused of withholding information which "could" be vital to the police. So if I see something relating to a robbery, the police never come around to ask me about it, I see what I believe to be the same information in the paper a week later, and then the police show up to arrest me, they can do so because it's possible that my information, "could have helped," them capture the robber? They caught the robber anyway, and they did it with information extremely similar to mine, but it's possible that if they'd heard from me immediately, that information could have been helpful to them. Not could have been vital, even, but, "could have helped."

I realize that I'm blowing this out of proportion, but I'm doing so to make a point. Because if they can arrest you for not giving them information that is vital, then they can arrest you for not giving information that might be vital, and then pretty soon they can arrest you for not giving information that might possibly have been of some small use to them. "Helped" doesn't mean single-handedly led to. If you've seen any criminal movies, television shows, or, hell, read Sherlock Holmes, you know that even minor bits of information can sometimes be important, so if I forget to tell the police that the killer was drinking hazelnut coffee, I guess I'm guilty of withholding information that could have helped. It's not likely, but it could have.

Lastly we have, "suspected terrorist." It's not a big fish, but I'll fry it anyway. Suspected? Oh, so now it's not enough to arrest people for not giving information which might have helped in some small way to arrest a known terrorist. Now we have to turn in suspected terrorists too. You know what? Who the hell isn't a suspected terrorist? And what information about them might not be important? So if I don't march down to the police station right now and tell them everything I know about everyone, omitting no detail, forgetting nothing, even honestly, I can be hunted down as a suspected non-discloser of information relating to possible suspected terrorists?

Bullshit. If you replace the word "terrorist" with the word "criminal," you'd have yourself a completely impossible-to-convict crime. No DA in the world would touch it. Some people do know about crimes before they are committed; I'm not saying those people should get off. Charge them with conspiracy, charge them with being an accomplice, charge them with obstruction of justice. But when you start charging them simply based on whether or not they might have had information which the police might or might not have found useful, then you're in terror country.

Terrorism will get you everywhere. And I'm not talking about terrorists. I'm talking about people who want to take away your rights. The bottom line, for those folks who want one, is as follows: if you know about a crime, and you know it is a crime, and you don't report it, you then become guilty of aiding the commission of that crime, should that crime come to pass. Anything else is fancy talk for thought-crime, which terror investigations these days seem to have in spades.