I've been really busy lately to the point I may not even be able to reply much more on FWIS, but, I waned to address this because I missed it when it was posted.
TSC wrote:Try this engineering metaphor instead:
Imagine that you have a device that produces widgets. It is the absolute best design possible (go with me here, even if it sounds implausible - there is no way, according to the laws of physics, to make a better device), but even when it is in perfect working condition, some of the widgets that it produces are defective.
Now imagine that you have a second device that examines the widgets as they are produced by the first device. If it detects a defective widget, it will reject it.
From decades of watching how many widgets these quality control devices reject, it has become known that 5-10% of the widgets produced by the manufacturing device will be defective. This is the industry standard.
Think back to your manufacturing device and its quality control device. The manufacturing unit produces widgets, and the QC unit rejects 5-10% of them as defective. That matches the industry standard average, and so you consider the unit to be operating normally. Now imagine that your QC device breaks down and needs to be replaced. You bin it and set up the replacement. You fire up the manufacturing unit... and find that the new QC unit is only rejecting 0.01% of the widgets.
What is the reasonable conclusion? That your manufacturing unit has suddenly and for no reason begun to perform far more efficiently than any other unit ever observed? Or that there is a defect in your new QC unit?
That's the proper metaphor. Of course the manufacturing unit stands for police/intelligence agencies and the QC unit stands for the courts.
That's how the system was designed. Law enforcement and other agencies are imperfect: there is no way to make them 100% efficient. They will always catch up a significant number of innocent people. Moreover, unlike the manufacturing unit, these agencies are always pushing for more leeway, and will thus always tend to become less "efficient" over time, unless they are checked - that is, more innocent people will get caught up unless someone tells them to back off. That's why you need a QC device - a court - to oversee the operation of these agencies. The court ensures that these agencies can't push for too much leeway and ensures that when they do overstep, they are caught and innocent people go free.
Courts are antagonistic. They are necessarily and by design opposed to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They do not work with them to produce a certain outcome, as you thought. To think that is absolutely incorrect.
So if it has been observed over centuries that properly functioning courts will reject 5-10% of search warrant requests that, in essence, becomes the industry standard, because the agencies making the requests cannot be made better. There's only so good an organization made up of fallible human beings can be. Given that a 5-10% rejection rate is the accepted standard for things working properly and justly, a court that rejects only 0.03% of requests sends up a huge red flag.
I just want to point out the problem in this.
For centuries this "rate" has been empirically determined to be "correct"
Now it is assumed to be correct.
When any system is assumed correct it causes both problems and inefficiencies later.
Your example about the wigets being 5-10% faulty places a caveat on that information that says we can't make that rate better, then you use that to rebut my argument about it being inefficient because it can't be made more efficient. Logically if there is a fault rate someone will try to find out how to improve it. If its assumed that it is optimum already, no one will.
When I ask for data you say there is none.
Lets then add another inherent problem in the legal system, that fact that the richer you are the fairer the system is to you.
Or to put it another way, the poorer you are the more the system screws you.
Anyone that says that doesn't happen really needs to get their head out of the sand and take a good look around.
But that's been the "standard" for thousands of years. If I used your argument, there is no problem, it is optimum.
That is part of the "standard" rejection rate and all the rest of the "standards" in the legal field.
You also seem to be saying that the police are the corrupt ones but don't consider that it makes no difference where people are, corruption exists and the general rule is the more power you have the more corruption takes place.
My point there is that there is corruption on both sides.
With no one looking at the information we're blind.
That's no the way to improve anything. That is the way to keep the status quo and hold onto the corruption and add a little fertiliser to it as well.
Remember, the Earth was flat, that was a "standard", till someone looked at the data, we were the center of the Universe was a standard, till someone looked at the data. If no one looks at the data and everyone assumes its correct, nothing will ever change.