Compare and Contrast

First off a story I have just heard, a man arranged a German car-sharing trip with a stranger, as is common-place over there, to a ferry port. This stranger calls off the trip, car is not ready. So our man takes the train to the ferry, missing the last ferry, to catch the ferry the next day. Arrives in England and is hauled off and subjected to a strip search, a thorough search of his luggage and some five hours of interrogation, where his denials were dismissed with disbelief and hostility. What is even worse, a female passenger, he just happened to exchange a couple of polite pleasantries with, sharing the hazards of travel sort of stuff, was also given the same treatment. His crime? He had by mischance managed to exchange a couple of EMails with a suspected drug dealer! What do we have, the planned car journey manifestly did not take place, the two individuals never met and we are left with secret snooping on private EMails giving rise to a suspicion, just a possibility with no tangible supporting actual physical evidence. Just a person somewhere being suspicious.

That evening I watched a documentary about benefit fraud (Britain on the Fiddle). Of the three cases offered up for our entertainment was the case of a man with two identities, one of which was also receiving disabled benefit, all fraudulently claim benefits. The hard physical evidence was there, double passports in two names, video recording of man working easily and physically with no sign of impairment, photo records of living at different addresses to that claimed, variety of cars all in use by him yet the investigation drags on because there is not yet enough evidence to ensure a conviction and the Police are too busy to bother with such a minor contraventions! So plenty of hard evidence but whether by incompetence, sloppy documentation leading it open to challenge or just too overwhelmed with work to fit in bringing the cast to court, a man manifestly living out a fraud, is allowed to continue. Eventually yes the wheels are in motion, months down the line and he does go to jail. But just compare and contrast. The overt working of the legal systems and the covert unaccountable systems.

If you have emotional hype on your side, think drugs, terrorism or even pedophilia, then  anything can be justified, perpetrators are beyond any compassion, beyond any hope of even the most radical do gooder defending some basic civil right. No, for fear of condoning, we willingly acquiesce  to secrecy, to abandonment of all rules of proof and justice being seen to be done. In our name we will allow unknown, unaccountable individuals to trash the rules that have been crafted over centuries to give everyone a chance to protest their innocence. Not to be subjected to the whim and fancy of a Another's suspicion.

In this oh so PC world we are tripping over our feet of zealous correctness and have lost our confidence to know right from wrong. So the burden of proof has to be able to withstand so many minor technicality challenges. For fear of giving offense we lean over backwards to allow the legal counter-challenges that then grind our system down so that fraudsters can wriggle this way and that way. 

To interpose authority into someones life, to prohibit their freedom to carry on seeing a dying mother, or making that interview, or declaring their love or just travel for the joy of it, there has to be significant cause, not just an idle suspicion.