I Believe in Pi

People with “minor” disabilities who aren’t sure if they belong in disabled spaces

People who have rare disabilities and don’t see other people with the same disability, even in disabled spaces

People who’ve been told nothing is wrong with them even though is something clearly wrong that now feel like they’re just making stuff up

People who have been dismissed by doctors because they didn’t fit the image the doctor had of what a “sick” person looked like

People who tried to get help for their problem and are still waiting

People who have unaddressed health problems in general

The article: Police cracked encryption on a privacy-focused phone service provider and ran fingerprint analysis on photos posted by users.

Like I get that law enforcement does things like this, that’s literally what it exists for, I’m just really upset by the cutesy framing.

Also. Like. Don’t organize shit online or over the phone. Law enforcement has been pressuring tech companies to put backdoors into encrypted services for years, this whole crackdown happened because of a device-level attack, and you never know who’s listening.

The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the US.

How Every Part of American Life Became a Police Matter.

No Right to Rest: Police Enforcement Patterns and Quality of Life Consequences of the Criminalization of Homelessness.

The Criminalization of Poverty.

The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States.

From “brute” to “thug:” the demonization and criminalization of unarmed Black male victims in America.

“Forced into Breaking the Law”The Criminalization of Homelessness in Connecticut.

American Cities and the Creeping Criminalization of Walking.

The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth.

Mass criminalization is a root cause of racial inequality within the U.S.

Illegality of Unions.

Fucking anti cop assholes will read about a baby rapist and be like “omg they used a online post and facial recognition to catch this poor victim who raped 2 year old cops are so horrible! Justice for him!

You and the baby rapist have the same rights. An infringement on the baby rapist’s right to privacy is an infringement on your right to privacy. You should be able to use encrypted communication networks, this is true whether you are committing no crimes, whether you are a ‘fucking piece of shit drug dealer,’ or whether you are seeking an abortion in Texas. Cops compromising encrypted communication is a threat to you the same way it is a threat to drug dealers.

“DON’T FUCKING COMMIT CRIMES?!” Is not a useful or actionable admonition because “crime” is a constructed category that makes “forgetting to fill out a form 10 years ago” “assisting your child in seeking an abortion” “having the wrong tattoos” “having a blanket” all equally good reasons to unperson you.

“DON’T FUCKING COMMIT CRIMES?!” and “Just don’t break the law.” are things that are said by people who are entirely too comfortable with the idea that they are never going to be targeted by law enforcement considering that we live in a society in which so much is criminalized.

The fact that he is “a fucking piece of shit drug dealer” is why the original article is comfortable making a joke of his arrest. The contemptible nature of his crime means that it’s okay to pair his face with cheese puns, and it’s why that article was widely circulated - as opposed to this article by an investigative journalist and encrochat user whose home was raided as part of the same nationwide sting.

The reason that you (and everyone else who makes this argument) reach for “baby rapist” as your criminal of choice when making your criticisms is because it doesn’t sound as righteous when you say “she’s a piece of shit abortionist, DON’T COMMIT CRIMES” or “that fucking piece of shit was sleeping on a cardboard box, it’s not hard to keep away from the cops if you just don’t break the law.”

You are attempting to frame the conversation as though the only people subject to this kind of surveillance are people who are easy to hate - drug dealers, rapists, murderers, etc.

The rate of violent crime has been falling for decades. People are less likely to harm one another now than they were at any point since we started tracking those numbers. In spite of that, our population is more criminalized than ever.

In the four years since I made this original post we have seen these types of surveillance being used to track protesters and asylum seekers. The murder/rape case clearance rate isn’t up since these types of stings started becoming more common, but it is now illegal to fall asleep with a blanket on a bench in Oregon and to provide a D&C to a person having a miscarriage in Texas.

“Crime” has expanded in the the last four years, and none of that expansion has done anything to make you safer.

So, completely aside from the fact that I don’t think it should be illegal to sell drugs, the point of this post isn’t that this poor woobie drug dealer got caught, it is that:

We are all subject to a horrifying level of surveillance and

And the law does protect everyone the same, in the way that the average citizen is just as vulnerable to these kinds of violations as anyone else is. They can (and do) use these to harass people for being accused of breaking the law. Which anyone can be, right?

To cite H.L. Mencken:

With the caveat that he did not fucking say scoundrels, he said sons of bitches, and I hate that if you search “hl mencken fighting for human freedom” then you will get SO MANY pages and images that say scoundrels, and very very few that quote it accurately.