Okay, so I have mixed feelings about one of the Supreme Courts latest decisions. The NYTimes has an article on the particular case I’m talking about. In a nutshell, a man was arrested due to faulty police records and his vehicle was subsequently searched. The police found drug residue and an illegal gun in his vehicle and arrested him on drug and weapons charges. Before this case it was generally thought that evidence discovered during an illegal search was not allowable in court. In this case, because the police database records were incorrect, I believe the man should have been let go.
I have mixed feelings on this because the guy had drugs and weapons in his vehicle so obviously he was up to no good. However, the power this gives police is above what I think is acceptable. It allows the court to ignore police negligence when they think it’s for the greater good. Why not put faulty records into a whole lot of databases all over the place on subjects the police want to take a closer look at? There should be an open records policy where things like this are out in the open for everyone to see and hopefully correct. The fact that now the Supreme Court has sided with the law on this over the individual’s right to privacy is a bit scary.
Again, the flip side of this fence is that if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, right? It’s the principle that the government operates for the people, by the people, that I think is being slowly but surely being taken away from us. This guy should have been released, the weapon confiscated, and the drugs destroyed. However, he’s now serving 27 months in prison because a county clerk made a mistake and a court decided to ignore the negligence on behalf of the police.
As an IT worker if I do something that accidentally exposes sensitive records I’m held accountable for the mistake. Why does our government have the right to get away with this?