DonAthos

I'm going to leave alone re: "analogy" for the moment. There seems to be something missing from your final sentence here, so I'm not entirely certain I understand your point. Regardless, we aren't discussing "epistemic standards," we are discussing the initiation of the use of force. Whether you believe you're comparing some aspect of law enforcement to something found in science, or otherwise relating them in a... somehow non-analogous fashion, you're not addressing the matter at hand. What we're discussing does not apply to science and its "investigation of the unknown." (Unless scientists are stopping people at the border to study them; or unless the objects of scientific inquiry, say photons, have been assigned individual rights.) I acknowledge fallibility. Whatever standards we devise will be subject to fallibility. Yet it is not the case that we only use force when we believe we have determined an individual to be guilty of some crime, howsoever we might be mistaken -- rather, we employ force against those whom we acknowledge may well be innocent, and on that point we are as yet indeterminate. We recognize this informally when we say that someone is "innocent until proven guilty," but formally we have a process wherein we determine the guilt of individuals... after we have employed force against them! This is to say, we recognize that some of the people we "suspect" or charge for crimes will be found not guilty, will in fact be innocent: this is why we have a trial. That we use force against people we later determine to have been innocent is not an "error"; it is the very system itself, functioning precisely as designed. This is why I contrasted it against the notion that we could try people first, before employing force against only those found guilty. You've dismissed this and refused to consider it and strawmanned it (as it has nothing whatever to do with infallibility), but I don't see why, or why you would prefer warrants and "probable cause." Why do you prefer that? But table that for a moment. Let me bring the parenthetical from my quote to the fore: "And furthermore being 'somehow involved with a crime' does not make you criminal. There are plenty of people involved with a crime who did not themselves commit any crime -- and these people are often subject to the use of force, as in the case of a subpoena. Yet they have not initiated the use of force." Suppose a man suspected of stealing... a necklace. Let us say that, prior to his arrest, he was spotted entering a bank and leaving a short while later. An interview with the clerk turns up that the suspected thief rents a safe deposit box at the bank. Consulting with the district attorney's office, the police determine that it will be hard to prove any theft in court without being able to show that the thief wound up in possession of the necklace. So, the police would like to inspect the suspect's safe deposit box... but the bank refuses to cooperate; they do not wish to violate their customers' privacy. Would you have the police seek a warrant/use of force against the bank? If so, how would you characterize this? I do not have to look at literally every single person crossing the border to be sure that law enforcement can do their job; that is law enforcement doing their job. Gaining this information -- as for instance, whether anyone in the territorial jurisdiction of the United States has a warrant out for their arrest -- is part and parcel to law enforcement. I don't know whether this would serve to muck things up further, or cut to the chase, but imagine that we had the technology to scan the face of the planet such that law enforcement could know with precision who everyone is and where everyone is, at all times, along with all relevant, associated criminal data. (And let us stipulate that this has no other byproduct; that the scan itself is utterly harmless and unintrusive.) Given that all other law upholds and protects individual rights the world over, what would you make of such a scan? Is that a marvelous technology that would help us to better protect individual rights? Is it, in and of itself, the violation of rights? Or something else?

It boggles me a bit that I'm stopping to address this, but even if the same principles are involved, it would still be an analogy... i.e. "law enforcement is analogous to science in that they share the same epistemic standards," or what have you. As to "epistemic standards" and the best practices of "investigating the unknown" (which is such a broad and saturated phrase as to be practically useless), they must be guided by experts in the field and with great attention to specific context. I am not in the position to prescribe to professional scientists what the best manner of "investigating the unknown" would be in any given instance, and what I would have to say with respect to the philosophical underpinnings of such would be again so broad and general as to be both obvious and practically useless. Insofar as I know you, I think you're in much the same position. And I feel confident in saying that neither one of us has any standing to comment on law enforcement practice, as such -- whether a border stop is an effective use of law enforcement resource, or setting up a scanner, or etc. Regardless, the question before us is not to do with "epistemic standards," but politics, individual rights, and the use of force. What is there to rebut that I have not already done? Here's your response (from not so very long ago -- it's dated from 9/29): "Because of warrants, with some means of inferring that you have a good reason to search someone, and that the person is somehow involved with a crime or threat of a crime. In that way, nobody you search would be innocent. Of course, you might be mistaken, and it turns out the person didn't know anything. In that case, I think it would still be a violation, but not from malicious intent or disregard for rights." I've bolded the part where you acknowledge the initiation of force (for that is what a "violation" of individual rights consists of). Do you send mixed messages by claiming that "nobody you search would be innocent" in the same paragraph? Of course. And my refutation of that notion came directly: "The police absolutely search innocent people. You can be accused of a crime, or suspected of a crime -- and be 100% innocent of that crime. (And furthermore being "somehow involved with a crime" does not make you criminal. There are plenty of people involved with a crime who did not themselves commit any crime -- and these people are often subject to the use of force, as in the case of a subpoena. Yet they have not initiated the use of force.)" So yes, by defending warrants and probable cause, you are advocating the initiation of the use of force by your own accounting -- and to belabor this a bit (because by now I'm sure we all recognize it is necessary), you are advocating using force against people who have not themselves used force. Forgive me, Eiuol, but I want to see proof that you understand the text before I grant you some power to infer subtext. Speaking for myself, if you gave me an answer that truly satisfies me, I would expect to be satisfied.

I'm not entirely certain how you would ask for documents without some level of "detention," though I have proposed a futuristic scanner that would eliminate the need for any kind of stop at all -- but you're not satisfied with that, either. I don't know if you want some different standard than I do. I have constantly asked you to articulate a standard -- and you have yet to provide one (though in its place you've provided an analogy to science, and you've gestured towards established law/authority, and you've drawn -- and subsequently disavowed -- distinctions between "active" and "inactive," and etc.). My standard is that we must do that which is necessary (i.e. required in reality, in context) to enforce the law, because "individual rights," whatever else that entails, requires the enforcement of law. This further requires information to be gathered (prior to the stage of "probable cause"; it is on the basis of information that one may arrive at something like probable cause) and is inclusive of both "warrant" and stops at the border. The particular nature of a border stop accounts to the particular nature of a border, and the change in jurisdiction it represents. When you're presented some clear standard, then we can see whether our standards align or where they diverge. The argument has been presented from the first. The argument that supports border stops without first requiring warrants is that border stops are necessary to enforce the law. Judges recognize this and do not require warrants for border stops. There's the water. Drink up. Because you are talking about probable cause and warrants. You think probable cause and warrants are acceptable, despite the fact that they entail the use of force against those who have not themselves initiated the use of force. And as you have left me guessing as to whatever "standard" provides the foundation of your views, I'd guess that it is just that sort of thing that you'd like to avoid with border stops. So, I'd like to know how and why you justify using force against the innocent in one case but not in the other. It isn't that 1% have committed crimes, as such; it's that 100% are coming from a separate legal jurisdiction, and so we need to stop 100% to get that information. And if we mean to be protected against "unreasonable search and seizure," then we have no disagreement, because a border stop is not an unreasonable search and seizure.

You invented an argument to refute -- that I was calling for "infallibility." You did not address my actual argument at all. I don't doubt the value of probable cause (and there is value, too, in a border stop). However, I believe that both probable cause and warrants are susceptible to the same principled critiques offered regarding border stops. As presented, they both "violate rights," yet you endorse one and reject the other. But why should we allow rights violations in the case of a warrant/probable cause? Can you defend that which you advocate? I don't. I think that a border stop does not require "suspicion." Suspicion, or "probable cause," is one good reason to stop a person. Crossing a national border is another.

But Eiuol, we do start with perception. You see the person approaching the border, you stop them: that starts with perception. You would like some individualized reason to stop a particular person -- but I still do not see why. Your standard of "probable cause" is not the strict use of retaliatory force, not in all cases and probably not in most. "Suspicion," is not a terrifically high hurdle to clear, after all, and when I suggested a higher one (e.g. trial by jury), better designed to avoid violating rights, you rejected it without reason. But the fact remains, you're willing to stop people though you understand that some of them will not have initiated the use of force. I'm willing to do that, too -- not "arbitrarily," but when they cross the border, for the purpose of gaining information (i.e. information which allows for law enforcement). That information is required specifically at a border crossing because the border crossing represents an individual crossing from one legal jurisdiction (where their records are kept, where evidence of crime is gathered, where warrants are issued, etc.) into another. Everything that supports both "probable cause" and "warrant" in terms of reasonableness and necessity also supports a border stop, though it is a different instrument with a different threshold. That you embrace one such instrument, one such threshold, while rejecting all others is clear -- but what isn't clear is whether you have any principled reason for doing so.

Because Eioul imagines that this initial "suspicion" will fall free, like manna from the heavens. He believes that wanted criminals will drive around with bloody arms sticking out of their windows. Or he needs to believe this, at any rate, to avoid the conclusion that his approach to law enforcement would utterly fail to enforce the law (against all but the egregiously stupid, perhaps). Indeed. Eiuol's imagination fails him utterly in this regard -- which is ironic, given that it is often one of his strengths. But, since psychologizing has been de rigueur in this thread, I'll again speculate that this is actually a self-defense mechanism, in that it allows him to maintain his position without seeing the flaws inherent to it. No license plates... tinted windows... private roads... I find myself wondering where the police are to find any handholds at all.

I didn't say to convict "before you have any information." I said that you could not use force before a conviction. I.e., you may not detain, arrest, search, seize, etc. You can gather information without using force, right? Isn't that what you've been saying all along? No, nothing here is suggesting infallibility. A trial conviction is not guaranteed to be infallible with respect to innocence (and there are people who are currently convicted of crimes... yet are innocent); it is only a more stringent, higher standard. But isn't a more stringent, higher standard to be preferred in the defense of our rights? Would you like to know how your position re: border stops strikes me...? But sometimes we have to discuss even things or aspects of a situation that strike us as silly, or what-have-you, in order to discuss a subject effectively. There is obviously a disconnect between our positions, and we've been talking a bit in circles, so I'm hoping that this will help us to target that disconnect more precisely. I believe that's because you're not allowing yourself truly to engage my questions. You keep deflecting with notions like "infallibility" which you are yourself supplying. Let all that go and just let yourself respond honestly to the matter I've raised. I charge that "probable cause" violates rights, and you appear to have agreed with me. If we adopted instead a standard whereby force may only be used against people convicted of crimes, we would violate fewer people's rights in that manner (and probably far fewer). Given this, how can you defend the use of "probable cause" as against the superior standard I've introduced?

Let's pursue this. Nowhere is the proposed standard demanding infallibility. I'm proposing a trial, and that someone be found guilty at said trial, before any use of force is authorized. (You may take this trial to have all of the features of our current system; trial by jury, "beyond a reasonable doubt," etc., apart from any authorized use of force.) You've said that "probable cause" violates rights where "it turns out the person didn't know anything." So we can work to reduce those violations by a more stringent (not infallible) standard. So, you on board with this? Or do you have a defense to offer for probable cause?

Is this an Abbott and Costello routine? The above is the very opposite of what you've been saying. You've been saying that you're not permitted to learn who the random person at the border is -- because he's a random person at the border. If you know he's Gus Fring and that there's a warrant out for his arrest, sure, you can stop him... to... determine that he's Gus Fring and that there's a warrant out for his arrest. But if you don't know he's Gus Fring and that there's a warrant for his arrest, you can't stop him to find out who he is, or whether there's any warrant for his arrest, or anything at all. If you don't know who he is -- and you don't, because all of that information resides in the country of his former jurisdiction -- then you have no means of finding it out. He started out a random person and he remains that way. If he's holding up a sign that reads, "I'm a criminal -- ask me how!" then you're permitted to question him. If not, then he's free and clear to Topeka (or Albuquerque). On the basis of what? People crossing the border start at zero -- they're unknown to us practically by definition, until we get particular intelligence. The information which could potentially provide a warrant exists in the country they're exiting. We only know to request/access that information after we know who they are, which we currently accomplish with a border stop/passport. If you had an argument in response which I have not yet addressed, I didn't grok it. I know you've drawn distinctions between "aided" versus "unaided," and 2046 has talked about "active," etc., but these kinds of ad hoc semantic dichotomies do not an argument make as to why there is an essential difference in kind between looking at someone with one's eyes versus the use of a mechanical device to do the same process -- with respect to individual rights or the initiation of force. You drew an analogy with science, which I criticized in the specific (observing that we do use tools to explore the unknown), but more to the point, we generally use tools to investigate something in more depth with (what is analogous to) "probable cause" because that is (usually) a more efficient use of resources. As to whether use of a scanner would be an efficient use of police resource, to gather information -- well, that's a decision that has to be made by people with expertise in that field. But that's not an argument as to moral right, vis a vis the initiation of the use of force. And you have also invoked "privacy," but I don't think you've offered anything substantive about that idea, other than that it seems to be set against information gathering... for some unspecified reason. So if I've missed something, please direct me to it, or restate it here. Otherwise, I don't yet see any real difference between a police officer looking at a person's face versus scanning that person's face -- not as respects individual rights or the initiation of force. All right, fine. I'm not going to go pulling quotes to show you where I got that idea... if you say you aren't arguing against the collecting of information, I'll take you at your word. But now tell me why the manner of collection, specifically a police officer scanning my face, violates my rights. Tell me the harm it does me -- describe the loss I suffer. Just for a little context, there is no need of a warrant for a border stop, currently. Warrants are a particular device, and they represent a judge's opinion that some police action is... well, warranted. But the same corpus of jurisprudence that has given us things like "warrant" and "probable cause" has also allowed for actions that do not require those particular devices: like a border stop. You have a good reason to stop someone at the border, too, which is why judges allow this without the need for a warrant. Heh, no, sorry, that's not how anything works. The police absolutely search innocent people. You can be accused of a crime, or suspected of a crime -- and be 100% innocent of that crime. (And furthermore being "somehow involved with a crime" does not make you criminal. There are plenty of people involved with a crime who did not themselves commit any crime -- and these people are often subject to the use of force, as in the case of a subpoena. Yet they have not initiated the use of force.) All right then, to avoid (or reduce, at least) such violations why not adopt the standard I'd suggested -- why not insist that a person be proven guilty, by trial, before any authorization of force, as in search, seizure, etc.? If you argue that a border stop is a violation of rights, then why can't I make the very same claim for warrant/probable cause? Certainly. And it is both reasonable and necessary to stop people at the border -- so much so, that judges don't even require warrants. Why wouldn't it matter what you say? Don't you have a good argument to make? But at the moment, no, I don't find it problematic that when I drive from Vancouver, BC to Washington, I have to present my passport. I find it reasonable and supportive of the rule of law. If I'm being violated in that process, I'm unaware of the nature of that violation -- and not that it's an argument in itself, but generally speaking, I'm pretty sensitive to the idea of my own rights. If you searched the forum, you'd find me fairly critical of abuse of police power -- and starkly so on this forum, where so many are dedicated to "law and order" at seemingly any cost. But knowing my name? Yes, I allow the government this much and I don't call it an abuse.

Eiuol might. His other investigative idea was to look for bloody arms hanging out of cars -- but I'm thinking that the more sophisticated criminal elements might manage to stay one step ahead of him... No, the question isn't, "can the police do just any old thing." That's one of your straw men, not the question. Rather, the question is whether the police can stop people at the border for the purpose of gathering information. My answer to that is yes, because people crossing that border are leaving one jurisdiction, where the government has information regarding them -- including, potentially, a warrant -- to another. The police cannot do "just any old thing," but they have to be able to do what is both reasonable and necessary to enforce the law.

LOL, this discussion is a nutty carousel. You can have suspicion about an individual -- let's say that your intelligence sources have told you that "Gus Fring" is the man responsible for a series of assassinations -- but without knowing which man in a group crossing the border is Gus Fring, or any ability to learn who is who, that suspicion, that evidence, that "probable cause" gets you precisely nowhere. You can't expect him to wear a name tag. Yes. Normally we streamline this process in various ways -- that is, for instance, what passports are for. Binswanger argues that we ought not have passports or border stops at all. He allows for an unexplored (and I believe ad hoc) exemption in times of war and disease outbreak, but it's completely unclear as to how he would manage such a thing. If we were at war with Paraguay, what precisely would he have us do at the Mexican border -- stop the Paraguayans and only them, without knowing who comes from where? And with no supporting infrastructure like passports, no less? The broader point is: you can't make these sorts of decisions or distinctions without information. And even if I propose some relatively non-invasive form of information-gathering, like a scanner, you balk. I disagree that asking for identification is sensibly a "search" (let alone "unreasonable" at a border), but if a facial scan is a search, then so too is looking at a person; the facial scan is only arguably more effective or powerful for being tool-assisted, but it is not different in kind. It does the very same essential thing. Now, we should be sensitive to the question of whether there is some violation of rights even in the proper enforcement of law. But parallel to the discussion you've had elsewhere about radio signals and such, I propose that any genuine violation of rights has some appreciable damage. If I use "your space" in such a way as you're unaware of my usage, and unharmed in any demonstrable fashion, I have not harmed you. And if I scan you, assuming that the procedure is benign (and the same goes for radio waves), I have not harmed you. It is arguable that the delay in a border crossing is a species of harm, albeit minor -- and I would agree -- but some of these kinds of harms are currently unavoidable in the enforcement of law. Yet your arguments show that you're not really at issue with the minor inconvenience of a stop; you think that the collection of information itself is a violation of right. That's nonsense. Police work without information (and hence, information-gathering) is impossible. Frankly, I'm not sure that you have understood me. So let's try again: you have supported the idea of "probable cause." I would like you to support that idea with respect to principles. Suppose we agree that we seek, through government, to eliminate "the initiation of the use of force." Agreed? Okay, but someone who is suspected of a crime to any degree -- yet not proven to be a criminal -- may not have initiated the use of force at all. Allowing for such a possibility is the very basis of a "trial." I can suppose at least one alternative, for comparison's sake: Why not, instead, require law enforcement to prove an individual's guilt or criminality before any stop, search or seizure may be made against him -- by trial, in absentia if necessary? So, given that probable cause will sometimes mean the initiation of force against the innocent -- which is unjust -- how can you support it? True. It isn't even clear whether you're suggesting a "standard," as such, at all. If the standard is "that which a judge/justice deems appropriate or reasonable in a given circumstance," which is what a "warrant" represents, then we're golden: judges and justices seem to concur that stops at a border are both appropriate and reasonable. Yes: this exactly describes the position of US law enforcement with respect to people outside of their jurisdiction. They completely lack any information. That's not what makes a border stop unjustified; it is what makes a border stop necessary.

I've also enjoyed Sowell. But Objectivism is an individualist philosophy: we do not treat people as units of culture, or representatives of some group, but as individuals.

Off the top of my head, The Count of Monte Cristo The Hunchback of Notre Dame Tess of the D'Urbervilles War and Peace It Ender's Game East of Eden 1984 The Princess Bride Watership Down

But Eiuol, in the case of crossing a border, the government needs to know who you are in order to know whether there is explicit suspicion that you have committed a crime. That's why we require a full stop. All right. Let's roll with this for a moment, and I'm going to ask you to stretch your imagination just a touch. We have a tradition which includes "probable cause" and "warrants," but taking these things for granted -- or imagining that they're the only possible tradition -- is itself a bias, and I don't see that it is completely justified. So let's say that "an individual has the right to be left alone, even if they might possibly somehow potentially perhaps be a criminal." And let's say that, accordingly, our legal tradition affirms that there is no such thing as "probable cause." You have evidence, like a witness testimony, that someone has maybe, possibly committed a crime? So what? That's not cause to stop the person or arrest him, or search him or seize his things -- an individual has the right to be left alone, after all, even if they might possibly somehow potentially perhaps be a criminal. Let us say, instead -- as the learned Lord Snuffbox himself opined -- that you may only arrest a fellow when he has been tried and convicted of a crime by a jury of his peers. (This may be done in absentia, or he may participate in his trial, as is his right, but none may compel his participation.) Suspicion of a thing is not proof of it, and you can suspect a person of something all you'd like -- but mere suspicion is no cause to violate the rights of a person who may, after all, very well be innocent. We therefore only use force against those proven guilty. Now, you might protest that it would be wickedly difficult to prove very much at all if the person against which we have some initial shred of evidence cannot be interviewed against his will, cannot have his effects searched, cannot be followed, etc., etc., as, absent a guilty verdict, all of these things would be violations of his rights. (And no mere judge's opinion, a so-called "warrant," can change this fact.) And sure, it might make it a little harder -- but so what? Detectives just have to do a better job, to prove a murder potentially without a murder weapon, or DNA evidence, or etc. If you'd argue that we need to make an arrest without proving guilt first, because effective law enforcement requires that we have access to those sorts of things (and as a preventative against evidence tampering/destruction, or flight, or further crime, or etc.), I would just remind you, "someone would say that [letting such a person remain free] might be threatening because the person *could* be a criminal, but that isn't individual rights." In our world, in our reality, all of the police powers we grant in such cases -- the very basis of "probable cause" itself -- is not because we know someone has initiated the use of force, or otherwise committed a crime, but because the effective enforcement of law requires the police to gather information such that we can make that eventual determination. This is also the fundamental basis for a border stop, the specific necessity of which being precipitated by the fact of jurisdiction, and how the legal entity an individual is leaving may have evidence of his guilt (and a warrant for his arrest) while the legal entity he's entering will not.

I believe that I do understand about probable cause and warrants -- but as to your argument, I agree that I might not understand it very well, because I have found the argument you've presented in this thread to be confused and scattershot. Are you basing your argument in the idea that one may not initiate the use of force, and that a stop at the border is the initiation of the use of force? If so, then I'd refer you to the argument(s) I've made that any proper administration of justice will involve some use of force against those who are potentially innocent, and sometimes later proven to be (and who are factually innocent all the while, and have not initiated the use of force). The existence of a "warrant" -- that whatever action is undertaken with a judge's permission -- does not change this fact. But if a judge's permission or evaluation that some action is reasonable given a set of circumstances makes some difference for us, in the case where some individual's "lawn is bruised," then the border question is perhaps satisfied by the fact that general stops at a border are seemingly allowed by judicial opinion in both the US and UK -- and perhaps everywhere else, as well. Besides which, I have made the case, at length, that a border stop is both "reasonable" and also necessary for the effective administration of law in a world where countries maintain separate jurisdictions, separate repositories of information, and etc. As to all of the rest of it, Eiuol's "aided" versus "unaided" (do glasses count?), "active" versus "passive," etc., etc., I believe it reflects an attempt to justify those things that strike you yourself as reasonable, like examining license plates (even in an "arbitrary" manner) against those things that strike you differently for whatever reason, like facial recognition technology. Yet I don't think these proposed distinctions represent anything real or meaningful with respect to the protection of individual rights. And while I respect the existence of preexisting law and doctrine, and legal opinion, the fact of them does not really settle the question for me of what ought to be, which does rely on our actual arguments and understanding. I'm not so interested in what Lord Snuffbox thought, per se, as I am in the reasons for his position, and comparing them against reality as I understand it.

How seriously am I meant to take this? Suppose that an innocent person is suspected of some crime -- such that there is probable cause for his arrest (if you grant that such a thing might sometimes happen, even in an otherwise ideal justice system). There is search, seizure, and incarceration, though the target of all of these has not initiated the use of force. I'd say it is a lawn fairly bruised, but can we design a system without this as an unfortunate sometimes byproduct? Or there is the further question of something like subpoena power over witnesses. If we say that a stop at a border is the bruising of a lawn (and I grant that it is) in the delay of however-so-long it might take, what about the delay incurred when the police make an otherwise justified stop, and traffic snarls behind it? Having a justice system and giving it the necessary power to function as a free society requires does not come cost-free. Some lawns will inevitably be bruised in the process, even as we work to minimize whatever burden innocent citizens might suffer when empowering law enforcement to do their job. For the purpose of the creation of a just society, I think that a crucial distinction must be drawn between bearing the burdens of unjust law versus the burdens of enforcing just law. But even if we were to take "bruised lawns" as the standard, I don't see how a scan qualifies. I don't see what lawn is bruised. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg for the police to have information about my identity or whereabouts. And as for "active" versus "passive," I don't know that such a distinction does us any favors. Is entering a license plate number "active" or "passive"? How much closer does that bring us to resolving the actual issue?

I would like to try to focus in a bit on my argument: Imagine a person wanted for murder in Paraguay. There is probable cause to stop such a man, in or out of Paraguay -- there is physical evidence implicating him, a witness, or whatever we imagine required for such a warrant. (It should be noted that this does not guarantee his guilt; he may yet be innocent, yet if he were, would we argue that it is the initiation of the use of force for the police in Paraguay to detain him?) However, accounting to the current division of government/jurisdiction, the knowledge of this man and the extant cause to stop him resides in the country of his crime, Paraguay. Should he go to another jurisdiction, for instance the United States, the authorities there will have no idea of the warrant for his arrest. No knowledge of him whatever. Ideally, then, should the man go from Paraguay to the United States, the government would transfer whatever relevant data to the US authorities, so then the US authorities would be aware of the existence of the crime, the evidence of his guilt, the probable cause to arrest him and thereafter (again, accounting to current divisions, and practical realities) transfer him back to Paraguay for trial. However, if no authority has knowledge of this man's travel from Paraguay to the United States, this information cannot be transferred. And this provides the rationale -- and the "reasonableness" -- of the stop at the border, to allow for this gathering and transfer of information, as a person moves from one jurisdiction to another. It is reasonable because it is required for the effective enforcement of law. I have thus far declined to argue whether stopping someone for information constitutes a "search," and have agreed to treat it as such, but I also find that there are people who also consider a facial recognition scan a "search," and so it's worth a moment of reflection... If the technology existed such that people traveling across the border were automatically scanned in a non-intrusive fashion (like passing through a gigantic, benign scanner, perhaps) such that their information could be transferred from one jurisdiction to another without the inconvenience of a stop, any questioning, or demonstration of identification (like a passport), then this would serve the core purpose just fine. Yet I suspect that this would still run afoul of what some here consider to be an "unreasonable search." But why? What is the case for preventing law enforcement from having information -- information that is necessary for the very enforcement of law? I have great sympathy for the idea that we must be careful to empower law enforcement when the law itself is immoral, even in part. And in Nazi Germany, one hopes that the law is generally powerless and incompetent -- or at least to the extent that it upholds that portion of the law which characterizes the regime. (Even in Nazi Germany, I suppose one would hope to prevent or redress quotidian murder, robbery, etc.). But if we are discussing the ideal system towards which we want to work, where laws are designed to prevent/redress the initiation of the use of force and thereby uphold individual rights, then I don't know why we want to limit the police in their access to information, the very information needed to do this work. Work which is foundational to the whole system. So long as I'm not a murderer, why should I care whether the authorities know if I'm crossing the border from Mexico to the US? That process of gathering information is precisely what would allow them to address the murderers who actually threaten my life. This reply just came up as I was finishing the above; so I may not respond to everything here, now, but in brief: It is selective and not arbitrary in any sense: it is predicated on the change in jurisdiction. That's a based-in-reality discriminator. Then it would be selective, and then I'm fine with it. That is, a systematic and selective way to decide who to stop is perfectly fine to me. I feel like I'm missing something about your question. Because they have Fring's name and face, but they don't know what car he is in. Because no car is stopped, no faces are looked at, no information is processed. They can't decide who to stop because they don't know who is out there, at all. But that's just it: the stop at the border is the very thing that allows for that data sharing and communication. Data sharing/communication itself has to be targeted, if it is to be effective. Otherwise it's just noise. We can't simply ask every police agency in the world to send all of their information to Topeka, in hopes that one of its officers will one day just happen to notice a Paraguayan murderer lounging in a coffee shop -- and without facial recognition technology, no less! It's like, imagine that you find a student wandering the halls of the school. You check his hall pass and now you know what classroom he comes from: you can talk to the teacher in that classroom and confab about his activities. Now imagine that he has no hall pass. Are you going to go classroom to classroom, asking every teacher? Now imagine that the student has a teleporter (and no hall pass): he may have originated from any classroom in any school on the globe, or maybe he's homeschooled. I suppose it means overtime, which is nice, but good luck in tracking him down. I don't know that it's right to call something a "failure" in law enforcement if we're asking the impossible. And why shouldn't we want to take into account things we're unable to note otherwise? Why isn't this a good thing -- the better for police to stop murderers? I well know your penchant for rabbit holes, Eiuol, so I'm leery of going too far down this one... but... with regards to science, don't we in fact create tools to measure/monitor systems in ways that we are unable to do with our bare, physiological perception? Isn't that the very basis of microscopes and telescopes and Geiger counters and so forth? If you're suggesting that we don't simply point a telescope into space without knowing precisely what we're looking for -- well, don't we? And with respect to criminology, we do have some broad idea of what we're looking for: we know that criminals exist, and we have information on specifics (albeit stored separately, according to jurisdiction; in a One World Government scenario, this discussion changes... but maybe, then, we wouldn't sensibly have "borders," either). Still, we need to look at people, "randomly," to be able to make use of that information. Police officers on the street look at people as they pass them by, "arbitrarily," I suppose, but it has to start somewhere. If there's a bloodied arm hanging out the back of a car, there's no need to suppose a border... So that's your plan to catch Fring...? Wait until we find him literally red-handed? And with the Parguayan murderer, I suppose we wait until he strikes again in Topeka...

Er... no? I mean, I'm aware of the literal difference involved -- but I'm not convinced there's a difference in kind, vis a vis "privacy." I don't know why "unaided ability" should matter at all or be considered virtuous, or make the difference between what you contend to be a violation of right. And besides, the totality of checking a license plate also requires "aided ability" -- a computer, for instance, and telecommunications, and... a car.

I don't know where I've advocated "random searches on some individuals." I've advocated stops at the border (not random, nor even selective, but all those who cross) for the purpose of gathering information -- though it's true that 2046 describes that as a "search," and I've not argued the point. If it is a "search," it is apparently not considered "unreasonable" by current jurisprudence. The basis of the reasonableness of the stop/"search" is what I'm trying to get at with the fact of changing jurisdiction. Sure. So suppose the DEA has a list of names, or even faces, of high-powered Mexican cartel figures. What then? If Gus Fring isn't stopped at the border at any point, if he simply drives on through, what exactly is the DEA supposed to do with that information? Except that American law enforcement won't have access to all of the data that Mexico does, let alone every other country. So far as I know, there's no worldwide criminal database: all of the information is compartmentalized, primarily by national jurisdiction. So in a way, it is very much like starting from scratch; if there's a wanted murderer in, say, Paraguay, who manages to cross through to the US/Mexico border (because he's never stopped, no one checks identification, etc.), and he makes it to the United States, then suppose he is later stopped for some traffic violation in Topeka. He gives his name as "Joe Smith." He has no other identification, and his fingerprints are not in the US record. Are Topeka PD going to track down his information all the way to Paraguay? How? As far as I can tell, getting across the US border is very much a clean slate for our Paraguayan murderer, because he has managed to cross from a jurisdiction where he was wanted (where the evidence of his crime exists, and with it probable cause for further search/seizure/incarceration) to a jurisdiction where he isn't at all known. So 2046 at least agreed that reading a license plate number and entering that into a database would not count as a "search" (or if it does, not an "unreasonable" one). But would you not go so far? Or if you think that's okay, what is the difference between entering a license plate number and scanning a face, to compare either against electronic records? What about using eyes to "scan" someone's face and see if they match a database (i.e. memory)? How do we begin the trail towards "probable cause" if every step along that path is itself an "unreasonable search" needing prior justification? Zeno makes for a poor police officer, and the gathering of information must start somewhere, via some generalized and warrant-free method.

Yes. Individual rights apply to every individual on the planet (and beyond). A nation does not have particular individual rights, as such, though some nations do a better job of respecting rights than others. There is a difference between pro-actively "protecting" rights (in the sense of the administration of justice) and refraining from violation. The US Government, for instance, has no particular mandate to go into other countries to solve their crimes and redress wrongs, but the US Government has no allowance to violate the rights of other countries' citizens just because they aren't US citizens. "Being a foreigner" is a strawman, and nothing I've said or intimated in any of my posts. If you're a US citizen, cross the border to Mexico or Canada and then return. See whether you're stopped, and your information processed, or whether you qualify for an exception because you aren't a foreigner. This is because the legal agents with jurisdiction in the US do not have general access to the information possessed by the legal agents in the jurisdiction of (for instance) Mexico. So in fact there may be a specific criminal act, witness testimony and evidence that they have committed a crime, but the change in jurisdictions requires a process by which that sort of information can be transferred/accessed.

For completeness' sake, I'm going to go ahead and review Binswanger's essay and respond to it here: Granted that "freedom of entry and residency" are absolutely different from citizenship/voting rights or other means of participation in governance. Agreed, though to the point of contention I would say that a procedure by which immigration takes place does not amount to a barrier against it. Absolutely, and also agreed to Binswanger's arguments re: seeking employment, buying homes, etc., and against immigration quotas. Indeed. And it is depressing to note that I've witnessed many Objectivists on this very site make a version of this argument. Right. And speaking to the point of departure I'm anticipating, the fact of that jurisdiction requires a certain procedure at the border... Precisely. Criminals do not carry signs announcing the fact, but the government can sometimes ferret it out by contacting those other governmental bodies that have the requisite information: for instance, the Mexican government may be aware that a certain car is stolen. Whether such a stop/gathering of information is "violating the rights of the innocent immigrant" in those cases where no car is stolen is precisely the question at issue. Here's the rub. There may well be evidence that a given man is a criminal, or even actively on the run from law enforcement, but accounting to a transfer of jurisdiction, that evidence may not be immediately available (as it would otherwise be when a man goes from New York to Connecticut). When Binswanger writes that a man does not have to satisfy "the government," it elides the fact that there are two distinct governments involved. A criminal ought not have a "home base" by crossing the border, where he is thereafter safe, and must commit fresh crimes before he can bear investigating. He remains responsible for the crimes he has already committed. But law enforcement in this new jurisdiction, if it is to hold him responsible for the crimes he has committed in the other, must be able to access that sort of information. And it cannot do so instantaneously with respect to everyone who might cross the border, nor would it even know to do so if it does not know who crosses the border at all. Binswanger argues against an "indiscriminate subjection of everyone to a screening process," but a border screening process is not indiscriminate: it is alone for those who cross the border, and accounting to the fact that law enforcement agencies in different jurisdictions have different information. So when someone enters the new jurisdiction, there must be an opportunity to gain access to that information, so that criminals can be stopped and law-biding citizens can pass without further delay. Without Binswanger available to defend himself, I don't want to expand on this too much, but I do wonder why these are exceptions, "of course." War and an epidemic presumably constitute exceptions in his mind because they are dangerous, creating "emergency conditions" (which is often a kind of magic totem for some Objectivists); yet a criminal, too, can be dangerous and threaten life, liberty and property. Indeed, that's what it is to be criminal. But let it pass... Once we have eliminated those aspects of immigration policy that seek to prevent access on the basis of collectivist notions like racism, economic protectionism, etc., I do not believe that rights-respecting people would experience the remaining inspection required at the border as harassment, but rather as the protection of their own rights. This is often true, and has been true for a long time, here and elsewhere, yet it might still be possible to want people to be able to immigrate freely... and bar criminals, terrorists and plague-carriers, for the very same fundamental reason: the protection of individual rights.

Gathering information is necessary to enforce the law. You can't protect individual rights without the enforcement of law. So your arguments do not serve to protect individual rights. Allowing criminals to flee from Mexican authorities to the US, without so much as a stop at the border, will not better protect anyone's rights (though I imagine that it would create an incentive for Mexican car thieves to come north). If you want to call it a "search" to check identification at the border, and compare against the information Mexican authorities have, and etc., that's fine. If the US Supreme Court sees it as such, that's fine, too, though I expect that they do not consider it "unreasonable." It is not unreasonable, and is reasonable (far beyond my "considering" it to be so) because it is again required for the purpose of enforcing the law. Whatever procedures are necessary to enforce those laws required to protect individual rights are both reasonable and proper. (Which is the morality that underlies all of our methods of information gathering, including warrants, which may also apply to people who have not themselves initiated the use of force; but a stop at the border to check identification and so forth does not require a judge's personal consent, and you've demonstrated no reasonable argument that it should.)

I'm uncertain that what I'm suggesting qualifies as a "search," let alone an unreasonable one. The gathering and processing of some amount of information I think is generally necessary for law to be enforced, as such. A police officer enters a license plate number into a computer system, for instance, to determine whether a particular car has been reported stolen and must be stopped -- is this a "search" or a "seizure" of anything? The gathering and processing of information at a border is further a special case because, again, we're dealing with the reality of someone moving from one jurisdiction to another. That's a fact which has implication, again, if our goal is to enforce law generally. If we imagine a criminal crossing the border -- a car thief, perhaps, driving a stolen car -- well, the border agent ideally would detain and incarcerate that criminal (or return him to the relevant authorities). But without any information about the person in question (let us say the license plate number on the car the prospective immigrant is driving), it is impossible to even get to the stage at which we could say whether there's cause to do anything at all. And so, to continue the example, it would be necessary for the border agent to get the requisite license plate data from the emigrant's country of origin, to see whether that car has been reported stolen, to determine whether any stop must be made. But even that minimal bit of processing takes time, may require a queue, a stop, and etc. If you've ever actually traveled from California to Nevada -- and back again -- you might know that there are indeed border controls at the state border, which are irregularly staffed on the California side, complete with a stop and questions upon entry, the better to enforce California state law. Individual rights are not threatened by the enforcement of law, as such; in fact, they rely upon it. A stop, in order to gain/process information upon a change in jurisdiction (which is non-existent, as far as I'm aware, going from the Bronx to Brooklyn; minimal going from California to Nevada; total going from Mexico to the United States) seems to me to not be unreasonable in any sense.

(Caveat: I haven't read Binswanger's essay.) I think there's reason for border patrol/checkpoint/a controlled point-of-entry, and that this does not interfere with what we might call the "right of travel," but which is really just a specific application of the normal liberty/property/right-to-life stuff. Such a checkpoint represents a broad transfer of legal jurisdiction, and I believe that the proper administration of law and justice requires an opportunity for ensuring that -- you know -- someone leaving Mexico to come to the United States isn't fleeing Mexican justice, etc., because all else being equal, American authorities aren't going to be on the lookout for people who've committed crimes in Mexico (and will not have the requisite information on them). Thus, such a border checkpoint provides at least an opportunity for that information to be transferred/collected by the appropriate bodies, when relevant. It's mostly a procedural matter, then, but procedure matters. The comparison that I've used before is this: part and parcel to our rights, vis a vis the administration of justice, we have the right to a "fair and speedy trial." Fair enough. We can't simply throw people into prison indefinitely without establishing that they've committed whatever crime, and without having received an appropriate sentence; the lack of a fair and speedy trial, then, is an abrogation of liberty/individual right. But that fair and speedy trial must actually be executed, in reality, and we need real world procedures to achieve this. Someone arrested, however he might have the right to a "speedy" trial, cannot expect an immediate trial. Some actual judge must be found to hear the case, evidence must be collected, etc., etc., and this may amount to some delay, in reason, even if every actor is doing his level best to provide that speedy trial. Even an innocent man may have to spend some time in prison to accommodate the provenance of justice on his behalf. And so it is with crossing a border (whether international or, say, between states): an individual has every right to do this, yet there may be some kind of delay at a crossing reflecting the real procedural change between one legal jurisdiction and another -- to ensure, again, that the person involved isn't a wanted criminal, or a known terrorist, or etc. Edited to add: It may go without saying, but just in case... The appropriate procedural delay I discuss above has nearly nothing to do with modern or historical immigration policy, which is usually a mish-mash of xenophobia, economic protectionism and various other assorted collectivist ideas. If the border checkpoint were delimited to what I've briefly outlined, it would look far, far different than our own border today. That said, I think it's important to at least acknowledge that there's a role for such a checkpoint, if only because bad faith debaters seem to enjoy suggesting apocalyptic scenarios where actual invading armies stroll across an unguarded border, because we don't believe we have the right to stop them. But no, we're within our rights to stop invading armies and wanted criminals, just as we could stop them on our own, domestic streets. A rational border policy then is really just an inspection service meant to identify and respond to such threats as they enter our jurisdiction.

This is games playing and demonstrative of the "rationalism" I'd noted earlier.