In the Spring of 2009, Maricopa County police officers raided the home of a blogger, who was writing about information leaked by current and retired police officers. Jeff Pataky was the writer of the blog from the website “Bad Phoenix Cops,” and was out of town when the raid took place. Police seized his computers, hard drive, notes, and all of his backups her had in the apartment, while handcuffing his roommate so they would not be deterred. Pataky began disliking the legal system in the Phoenix area when he was filing for a divorce with his wife, and was eventually charged with harassment after filing too many complaints against her. From that point, he befriended several sources within the policing department that gave him insider information on the corruption of the police force. The charges against him have all been dropped, but he feels violated for expressing information given to him by sources and sharing it with his community. The article and interview were written by another man, Carlos Miller, who is in bad favor with the law for repeatedly taking photographs of law enforcement officials against their will and posting them for the community to see. He created a blog website dedicated to exposing unjust charges against civilians regarding exposing the community to police wrongdoings and has taken up a collection on this website to help fund his legal battles. The problem in this situation is that some civilians feel they have the right to expose corruption of police officials by any means necessary, and law enforcement officials disagree. The issue involves the community, the law enforcement officials, and the legal system. To combat this issue a more clear law must be established to define who is to blame and whether sharing information from a source, obtained legally, is still illegal if it jeopardizes the legal system.
The issues that are in conflict in this situation are privacy and due process issues. The police felt violated from having their mistakes exposed and felt that Pataky was infringing on their privacy. Pataky felt that the police were not upholding the law properly and violating due process. Each party involved felt the other was in the wrong, so conflict arose. Pataky spent so much time trying to file his claim and fight for his rights, but the legal system was over clustered with unnecessary steps to the point where he was not patient enough and was charged with harassment for seeking quicker results. He channeled that anger into lashing out at all law enforcement officials, and in return those officials again felt he was in violation of the law. This vicious circle is the critical issue in the situations. In the video posted about the legal system, Phillip K Howard addresses the issue that we are trained to look at every issue as a matter of individual rights, but instead need to realize there are circumstances that need to be taken into consideration. He recommends to judge law by effect on the broader society not the effect on individuals. The legal system does not currently reflect this recommendation and Pataky is a victim of the system. Alternately, the law enforcement officials privacy was violated and they should be protected as a broader unit, and they are also in that sense victims.
The four constraints the Lessig believes affect regulation of an issue are the market, architecture, laws, and norms. (2006 123) In this issue, the market would be the availability of the information provided to create the blog about law enforcement officials. The architecture involved in the issue would be the means in which the information obtained was released to the community. The information was released through a public blog, but could have been far less damaging had it just been written in a private diary, and far more damaging had it have been professionally published and distributed to every community member. The laws are the largest constraint on the issue because they directly address whether privacy was violated or not. In this case, law enforcement officials felt privacy was violated, and later the courts ruled that it was not. Phillip K Howard even explains in his speech that people are aware that what they say may be used against them legally or repeated and it is up to them to make the choice to carefully select their words or not. The law upholds this to be true. The final constraint is the norms. It is not socially acceptable to hack into databases to obtain private information, even if that information shows deviant behavior, because the hacking itself is deviant behavior. It is also not acceptable for members of an organization to leak private information to the public that would get other members in trouble. These were both problems that occurred in the issue.
Based on the information previously discussed, my recommendation would be to address the information leaks within the police department before singling out one blogger and destroying his personal property. The broader effect is the end result, and addressing the issue at the root of the problem (police immorality) is more effective in achieving the end result. The blogger should have been used as a resource to help identify issues within the police force regarding enforcement of policies. He still may be charged with any laws that he broke, but he should have been treated more as a resource than a threat, because he exposed a critical issue in the community. Clearly many officers do not trust their superiors and fear losing their job if they are giving a blogger information to give to the community instead of addressing the issues first hand. Since the information was not obtained illegally by the blogger, he is simply an outlet for complaints within the police department. Maybe an anonymous confidential tip line could be enacted for the police officers to use if they feel fellow officers are not abiding by the duties. This would regulate the broader issue much better.
The main differences between the two different approaches to the situation are really the attention focused on the boarder picture instead of the individual, and the legal/illegal break down in ownership of sharing information. In the first explanation of the issue, the focus was on the individual failing at following social norms by providing information not easily obtained, teetering on breaking privacy laws, and the means by which the information was provided. In the second explanation of the issue, the focus is on the breakdown of the systems in place for the police department to share violations of duties and the lack of structure to report issues. The norms expect that police officers are doing their job correctly and upholding the law, but the issue addressed disagrees. Lessig agrees that tradeoffs must be made between the constraints to regulate the issue (2006 130), but it is also important to note that the correct issue must be identified before the constraints should be restructured to balance.
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