And that is another good benchmark of an oppressive regime. A system that makes sure there are so many laws or they are so ambiguous that anyone is always guilty of something. Then they just record it all. All the times you sped by the speed camera, all the little discrepancies in your tax record, all the times you bought out of state but didn't pay sales tax to your state, all the websites you visited, everything you possibly posted online.

One day you become dissatisfied with something and choose to exercise your freedom to protest. Then someone approaches and invites you to have a a chit chat. They show you all your files and all the laws you broke and suggest that if anyone starts looking into it, it could be years of jail time, stiff penalties, or perpetual court dates and then ask the question "are you sure you want to exercise your freedom?"

With current technologies, and current set of laws, and government disposition towards recording everything (see NSA's new data center) this becomes reality right here right now in US.

At least in my country, bad example :)

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/09/world/americas/uruguay-mar...

it's also approved for medical use in California, not prosecuted in Portugal, and legalized in the Netherlands (with some caveats).

These laws are still a hard sell, but not unthinkable as they might have been in the 70's. Lawmakers are slower than we'd like, but eventually I believe they will be redefined.

More likely, it will just not be prosecuted (much like I believe marijuana use is nowadays).

Simply because a law is violated by the majority of the population doesn't ipso facto make it a bad law (although in some cases this is certainly true). For example, many people break speeding limits, but we also accept that in some cases speed limits are justified. It's a matter of degrees.

'Sexting' laws are similar to age of consent laws. For example, a 13 year old girl (or boy) sending indecent images of themselves to someone many years older than them is clearly a problem. Two 13 year olds sending indecent pictures to each other may be morally concerning to some, but it's not going to bother the law.

Draconian enforcement might be better in the long run, since the laws would get changed.

But many believe they're not. In my case, I believe most speed limits were set for a prior age, and modern cars can safely handle more than the obsolete speed limits now.

There are endless discussions here on speed limits, and they are mostly negative about their effects:

http://www.google.com/#q=speed+limits+site:news.ycombinator....

fleitz - "Interestingly, most accidents occur below the speed limit and increasing speed limits decrease accidents"

"in Montana after a Judge invalidated their speeding laws as unconstitutional the number of accidents dropped"

http://www.hwysafety.com/hwy_montana.htm

"Speed limits on roads are almost always political decisions, not engineering ones. How else do you explain the straight as an arrow, flat as a pane of glass, brand-spanking-new, 60mph limit roads crisscrossing the american midwest"

The best speed limits I've seen were on German highways - they were variable speed limits based on road conditions (that actually made sense !!! ).

And people are still breaking them.

Not to dispute anything you are saying, this seems to be a preferred tool n some authoritarian countries. The downside is that it places a huge drain on economic activity, since one has to "keep up a good relation" with the government officials at all times. Needless to say, policy more in line with democratic ideals should be more efficient in the long run.

It's being legalised, slowly. That's what's happening.

We elected a criminal into the presidency.

This is I think the key.

Technology gives us the ability to catch everyone.

Speeding is the obvious example, but Facebook, lifeloggers, mobile GPS will help us auto-catch far wider ranges of crimes.

So if we can catch everyone, and log that data, but only prosecute, for sake of argument, those of Hispanic or Afro-Caribbean descent, will the democratic process choose:

  1. prosecute everyone
  2. decriminalise
  3. keep the status quo, deal with the rioting severely,
  send a large proportion of your populace to prison.

Interesting.

Trying to trap people who have leverage in a bind is a losing proposition. You can't trap people in a bind unless you have leverage.

I am just saying that yet another threat to functioning democracies is coming round the corner, and weirdly, speeding cameras are the canary in the mine.

Wait till the iris scanner that lets you in the office building also does blood alcohol / cannabis testing.

If some people are "above the law", not that they can afford good lawyers, but that the laws are simply not applied, rather than applied and failed, then that presents a crisis for democracy.

If it is visible that these laws are not applied (and presumably will be as everyone gets caught automatically) then society can either stop being democratic, or enforce those laws.