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Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales'

Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"

1 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They deserve to be outed by asdfghjklqwertyuiop · · Score: 1, Troll

    No, but the drugs do alter the way the brain works, and can induce such behavior in people who wouldn't do this otherwise.


    Irrelevant. Assuming the person who took the drug is an adult and does not have a mnetal disorder, they had a perfectly well functioning brain at the time they made the decision to take the drug. The action of taking the drug harmed noone except the person who voluntarily took that drug and knew the risks. All of the other actions involved here which actually have victims were already illegal without anti-drug laws.

    The only thing anti-drug laws accomplish is preventing consenting adults from doing as they wish with their own bodies. The crimes that might be prevented by keeping a few people from taking these drugs in the first place are probably completely offset by the criminal element of the illegal drug trade. And even if they aren't, I'll the freedom (as a general principle) over what little decrease in crime the anti-drug laws may cause.