Sunday, August 14, 2011

[pjelskkp] Pleading guilty decreases transparency

You are confronted with evidence establishing strong likelihood guilt of a crime, and offered a plea deal.

In taking that deal, society does not get to know how that evidence was acquired (it won't be challenged at trial).  Even if it was by wholly legal means, do we know that the police do this?  And to what extent?  Society's best interests and the perpetrator's are not aligned: this seems a very hard problem.

Inspired by, one cannot enumerate closed circuit cameras out there by going through all the public trials where footage from a camera was used as evidence.  Although this wouldn't get all the cameras, it would get the interesting ones.

A more interesting case would be if the police confront you with information you thought was "safe" (perhaps encryption, perhaps a trusted third party).  Upon taking a plea deal, you don't get to challenge how the police acquired it (Decryption? Leak? Subpoena?)  But society wants to know if some encryption is not strong enough, some "trusted" entity shouldn't be, etc.

The obvious first attempt at a solution gets rid of pleas entirely; the justice system would have to work very differently.

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