Wireless panic

I'd write about the moral panic taking over Britain's pundits, but I don't have to, because the Economist already did, brilliantly.



What I will make a note of, however, is the disturbing notion that public disorder gives Western countries an excuse to crack down on social networks and mobile communications. British PM David Cameron called for stopping "suspected rioters spreading online messages". As Canada's CBC News put it in a very disjointed article:

When social media helped protesters organize and overthrow corrupt regimes in the Arab world earlier this year, while also providing citizen journalism when mainstream media was shut out, it was lauded as a tool of democracy.



However, when the same methods are used in a scenario like Britain, they are seen as disturbing, says Megan Boler, a media studies professor in Toronto.

More to the point, when social media are used for dissent in the West, we want to censor them, and worse. In an astonishing decision, two UK men were given four-year prison terms for inciting violence via the social media, even though it couldn't actually be proved that anything they posted had had any effect on anyone (CNN).



Social media censorship is already upon us, however. Remember a while back when I wrote about San Francisco's BART police shooting a man? They recently did it again, and when people gathered to protest, BART shut down cell phone service at their stations.



So when the Egyptian government, or the Iranians, censor Twitter to stop popular protests against the regime, we abhor it as horrible censorship and a human rights violation. When California or the UK does it, we, um.



Although to be fair, this double standard is a bit more complicated than that. After all, when Iran blocks Internet use, they're mostly doing it using technology we sold them.



Having said that, it's all still a little ironic.

The international drug war

On the one hand, Connecticut, USA:

BI: Connecticut Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession

Governor Dan Malloy of Connecticut is expected to sign a bill passed by the state House of Representatives last night decriminalizing the possession of marijuana in limited quantities.

Wrapping up what the New York Times today called the state's "most activist, liberal legislative session in memory," the House voted 90 to 57 in favor of SB 1014, which would punish possession of a half-ounce or less with fines, rather than criminal charges.

First-time offenders would be hit with a $150 ticket; repeat offenders would get at least $200 but a maximum of $500 per offense.

According to the Hartford Courant, supporters hope the bill will save taxpayers money and provide "fairer treatment of those caught with small amounts of the substance."

Connecticut's non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates the bill will save the state nearly $1 million and net upwards of $600,000 in new fines.

Connecticut joins the 13 other states in the U.S. - including two of its neighbors, New York and Massachusetts - that have already decriminalized the possession of marijuana in limited amounts.

That's not exactly legalizing it, but it seems to be about as close as they can get. And sign it the governor did, saying:

“Final approval of this legislation accepts the reality that the current law does more harm than good – both in the impact it has on people’s lives and the burden it places on police, prosecutors and probation officers of the criminal justice system. Let me make it clear - we are not legalizing the use of marijuana. In modifying this law, we are recognizing that the punishment should fit the crime, and acknowledging the effects of its application. There is no question that the state’s criminal justice resources could be more effectively utilized for convicting, incarcerating and supervising violent and more serious offenders."

What I especially like is the recognition that putting people in prison for smoking pot is ridiculous.

And on that note, the other hand: Russia.

Guardian: Russia defies growing consensus with declaration of 'total war on drugs'

Drug dealers are to be "treated like serial killers" and could be sent to forced labour camps under harsh laws being drawn up by Russia's Kremlin-controlled parliament.

Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the state duma, the lower house, said a "total war on drugs" was needed to stem a soaring abuse rate driven by the flow of Afghan heroin through central Asia to Europe.

(...)

The Global Commission on Drugs Policy said in a report last week that there needed to be a shift away from criminalising drugs and incarcerating those who use them. Gryzlov, however, claimed that "criminal responsibility for the use of narcotics is a powerful preventative measure".

Special punishments should also be considered for dealers, he added: "Sending drug traders to a katorga [forced labour camp], for example. Felling timber, laying rails and constructing mines – that's very different from sitting in a personal cell with a television and a fridge while you keep up your 'business' on the outside."

While it remains unclear how many of the measures will become law, other leading members of United Russia – which is headed by Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and which dominates the duma – said they supported the initiative.

The plans follow an admission by Medvedev in April that Russia's fight against drug addiction had failed. He called for radical measures such as mandatory drug tests in schools.

Possession of small quantities of psychotropic substances in Russia carries an administrative fine of up to 15,000 roubles (£330), but Gryzlov indicated it would now result in a jail term. The state should offer narkomany (addicts) a stark choice, he said: "Prison or forced treatment."

I mean, there's a solution to the "problem" of prison luxury: send them to the Gulag!

Here's one direct consequence of their war on drugs:

Injecting drug-use is also accelerating Russia's HIV crisis because – unlike most other European countries – methadone treatment is banned and needle exchange programmes are scarce, meaning the virus spreads quickly from addict to addict via dirty syringes. An estimated one in 100 Russians are HIV positive.

You'd really think that if they're so concerned with popular health in Russia, they might consider an AIDS epidemic to be somewhat more dangerous than people smoking pot. And because it's technically impossible to write about politics in Russia without doing the joke, here's the setup:

Some of Russia's detox clinics still use "coding", a controversial therapy in which patients are scared into thinking terrible consequences (such as their testicles falling off) will result if they mix drugs with medicines which are actually placebos.

And here's the joke:

In Russia, the pot smokes you.

Pumping iron in the prison gym

I'll let Slate.com introduce the subject for me because I'm lazy.

Slate: Do Prisoners Really Spend All Their Time Lifting Weights?

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that crowding at California prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and ordered the state to reduce the number of inmates by more than 30,000. An outraged Justice Scalia dissented, noting that many of the released prisoners "will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym." Do people really get super-buff in the slammer?

While the latent homoeroticism of Scalia's dissenting opinion reminded me of The Onion, I thought I'd take a moment on this topic. Slate continues:

Not anymore. It's true that most state and federal prisons had extensive collections of free weights and weight machines through the 1980s, and that inmates could spend significant portions of their days bulking up. But that all changed around 20 years ago. As stories about prison gyms spread in popular culture, they became an increasing source of public concern. Some shared Scalia's worry that muscle-bound ex-cons would be even more dangerous after their release, and legislators across the country responded. In 1996, an amendment to an appropriations bill expressly prohibited the federal Bureau of Prisons from purchasing "training equipment for boxing, wrestling, judo, karate, or other martial art, or any bodybuilding or weightlifting equipment of any sort." Many states, including California, made the same decision, either by statute or policy. These days, whatever free weights you'd still find in U.S. prisons are decades old.

(...)

Despite popular approval, sociologists and many prison officials have criticized the prohibition on weights in correctional facilities. Some research suggests that weight lifting decreases aggression among inmates. Wardens have noted that idleness is the biggest threat to order in a prison, and weight lifting gives the convicts something to do.

As a former inmate myself, I have a firm, hard, well-toned opinion on this topic, even if it is still a little bulky around the midriff. It's all the sugar in my diet, I know.

Judge Scalia's dissenting opinion isn't all that surprising: the eroticization of prisons and prisoners has been with us for a long time. I'm sure there's plenty of films set in mens' prisons, but frankly, I tend to notice these ones more:

Starring, of course, the inimitable Brigitte Nielsen.

Maybe they'll do one with Lindsay Lohan, now that she's actually been inside and all? She is kinda hot.

Wait, that wasn't my point at all.

**

This notion that prisoners can't have weights is based on two distinct ideas, one somewhat scientific and the other not. Firstly, the more scientific one is a claim that weightlifting and similar pursuits increase aggressiveness. It doesn't seem to be true. A similar one is the idea that pornography leads to more violence and "a hostile environment", which isn't true in society at large, so one wouldn't expect it to be true in prison. Nonetheless, South Carolina still bans pornography from its prisoners, which the ACLU has challenged and been criticized for by Radley Balko, which I thought was damned odd.

The latter idea is perhaps best exemplified by the Zimmer Amendment, quoted in the Slate.com article. The amendment was introduced by congressman Dick Zimmer and passed by Congress in 1995 "To amend the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to prevent luxurious conditions in prisons." In Section 2, "Elimination of Luxurious Prison Conditions", the amendment demands not providing:

"(vii) any instruction (live or through broadcasts) or training equipment for boxing, wrestling, judo, karate, or other martial art, or any bodybuilding or weightlifting equipment of any sort;"

Although the amendment has since expired, it's left a legacy of Byzantine guidelines on what kind of exercise equipment is and isn't allowed in prisons. Most state and federal prisons still more or less abide by the terms of the Zimmer Amendment, and are phasing out weightlifting equipment by not replacing it as it wears out.

So one strand of the argument against weights is "prison luxury", a staple of the law and order platform. Prison, they insist, must be a punishment, and prisoners shouldn't be allowed "luxuries" because they're being punished.

The different views on the topic can pretty much be found in the New York Times article on the amendment. Here's the law-and-order plank:

Behind all these measures, supporters say, is the idea of making prison a less pleasant place for repeat offenders to come back to.

"To habitual criminals, prisons are resorts with televisions, weight-training facilities and libraries that some colleges would envy," said State Senator Gerald A. Cardinale of New Jersey, who has sponsored a no-frills measure called the People's Prison Act, which the Legislature will take up in the fall. "For a lot of them, jail time is just an extended vacation."

(...)

Mr. Zimmer said: "When you break the law of the land, you should pay the price for your crime, not be rewarded with a vacation watching premium cable on your personal television."

(...)

"Prisons have become mini-resorts and it's disgusting, and it's particularly disgusting to crime victims," said Mr. Deeds of the Law Enforcement Alliance, which enlists crime victims to campaign for harder prison conditions. "We strongly believe that prison is meant to be punishment, a deterrent and a prevention tool, not a resort experience."

So when it's a womens' prison, our society fantasizes about lesbians and Brigitte Nielsen, but when it's a mens' prison, we fantasize about fine physical specimens pumping iron and watching cable TV. Both those fantasies have one thing in common: none of the people responsible for them have ever been to prison.

For starters, the "women in prison" movies. I don't think the reality of a womens' prison sounds particularly sexy:

Wikipedia:

Sexual aggression and abuse by male prison staff is widespread. (...)

“In federal women’s correction facilities, 70% of guards are male,” reinforcing female inmates’ powerlessness. (...)

In 2005, “the Office of the Inspector General and the DOJ released a report documenting widespread sexual abuse by prison employees nationwide, noting that only 37% had faced some kind of legal action. Of those, ¾ walked away with no more than probation. It took all of this evidence for the BOP to finally criminalize sexual contact as a felony in 2006, so that guards can actually face up to five years in prison”. However, “when authorities confimed that corrections staff had sexually abused inmates in their care, only 42% of those officers had their cases referred to prosecution; only 23% were arrested, and only 3% charged, indicted, or convicted. Fifteen per cent were actually allowed to keep their jobs”.

Despite such legislative progress, women are fully dependent on the guards for basic necessities and privileges, and in many states, guards have access to inmates’ personal history files which can empower them to threaten prisoners’ children if the women retaliate. Female inmates who retaliate also face the loss of ‘good time’ for early parole in addition to prolonged periods of disciplinary segregation, and detrimental write-ups, which further deters acts of resistance. The fear incited by such threats as well as the concern that no one will believe them or that no one really cares can successfully silence women. Experience of sexual abuse in prison can greatly impede women’s capacity to reintegrate into society upon release.

That's how far the reality of womens' prisons is from the exploitation movie fantasy. Mens' prisons are about as far from being the luxury resorts these concerned citizens imagine them to be, and as Scalia's opinion shows, they're about as far removed from the reality of prisons as the people making "women in prison" porn. In general, none of the people who speak with this authority about how easy and wonderful prison life is have experienced it. I'm sure many of them have visited a prison once or twice. I remember a delegation of Finnish members of parliament visiting the prison I was in: they walked around the block for about ten minutes, had lunch in the cafeteria and left. I'm sure that gives them an excellent grasp of the day-to-day realities of prison life. It's been pointed out that Judge Scalia should, you know, actually bother to find out such minutiae as whether prisoners are actually allowed to pump iron at the prison gym or not before committing it to writing in a court decision, but really, the way he handled it is perfectly in line with most commentary on prisons.

While no-one familiar with the reality of womens' prisons would describe them as pornographic, I'm equally certain that very few people who've actually been living in correctional facilities would describe mens' prisons as "a vacation", let alone a "resort experience". Certainly, for some people, having walls and a roof as well as regular meals is a huge improvement on their living conditions, but not only are they in the minority, but they too suffer from the single biggest punishment prison inflicts. Even if it was a resort, it's one you can't leave.

The whole discussion on prisons and prison conditions has made me think that being deprived of your freedom is a punishment that most people simply don't seem to understand. Take for instance a closed ward in prison, around where I'm from, or one of those secure housing units or whatever they're called on National Geographic, where you spend 23 hours of each day inside a tiny cell. I've been locked up in one of those, and I assure you, it isn't a holiday. No sane person would willingly choose to go to prison over their everyday life unless that everyday life is truly horrible. Even in the more open wards, the constant reality of being locked inside a small space and being unable to leave is a very real punishment.

Having experienced it, it's somewhat bizarre for me to have to explain this, but the tone of law-and-order pundits everywhere makes it seem necessary.

**

By the way, here's a note of reality that crept into the NY Times proceedings:

Mr. Stout, who killed a man during a mugging in Newark in 1976, maintains that pumped-up prisoners do not stay strong for long.

"In here," he said, "you have all the time in the world, so you work out. Once they get back out, they've got other worries, and they don't stay big for long."

That's certainly true. A fitness or bodybuilding regime is fairly easy to adhere to when you're taken to the free gym regularly every week; when the gym costs money and takes personal initiative to get to, it's a whole lot harder...

And it's this interface between life in an institution and life on the outside that raises the biggest questions of all about prison as punishment. From Wikipedia:

Meta-analysis of previous studies shows that prison sentences do not reduce future offenses, when compared to non-residential sanctions. This meta-analysis of one hundred separate studies found that post-release offenses were around 7% higher after imprisonment compared with non-residential sanctions, at statistically significant levels. Another meta-analysis of 101 separate tests of the impact of prison on crime found a 3% increase in offending after imprisonment. Longer periods of time in prison make outcomes worse, not better; offending increases by around 3% as prison sentences increase in length.

This raises the question of what the point of prisons is in the first place. Do we just want to punish people? It's worth remembering that nearly all prisoners will be freed, sooner or later. The longer they're kept inside and the harsher their punishment, the more brutalized and angry they'll be when they finally get out. When one takes into account studies such as this one on how difficult it is for ex-convicts to reintegrate into normal life, it becomes pretty obvious how the prison system works: all it seems to reliably do is ensure that inmates will end up back inside.

There are alternatives to prison as punishment, mainly the much-maligned idea of rehabilitation. With such things as California's recent decision to release inmates due to overcrowding in mind, it needs to be remembered that not only is prison tremendously expensive, but the inmates aren't producing anything. Each prisoner is a twofold expense: they need to be provided for and their productivity is removed from the economy. The goal of rehabilitation is that a prisoner can return to society as a productive citizen, changing from an expense to society to a taxpayer.

Of course, there are some individuals who can't be rehabilitated, but they are the exception, not the rule. Several studies show that many prison inmates have life goals that are very similar to those of the population at large; where they fail is in realizing those goals. As the study I linked to earlier shows, our penal and judicial systems are failing to help convicts realize those goals and are in fact actively working to make it harder for them.

If what you want is punishment, it's worth reading this interview, where criminologist Peter Moskos quite seriously advocates the reintroduction of flogging as a punishment.

I’m deadly serious. Given the choice between five years and ten lashes, wouldn’t you choose the lash? What does that say about prison? And if flogging were so bad, where’s the harm in offering it as a choice?

Of course some people are too dangerous to release, but these people are kept behind bars simply because we’re afraid of them. But for most criminals, those we just want to punish, flogging is a more honest. It’s also a lot cheaper. Simply to bring our prison population down to levels we had until the 1970s, we’d have to release 85 percent of our prisoners. How are we going to do that unless we end the war on drugs or have alternative forms of punishment?

Ironically, once people hear my idea, often they say that flogging isn’t harsh enough. It’s good to move beyond the facile position that flogging is too cruel to consider, but if you think flogging isn’t harsh enough—that we need to keep people locked up for years precisely because prison is so unbelievable horrible—then you may be a truly evil person.

His point is excellent: if what you want from criminal policy is pure and simple punishment, then what's wrong with corporal punishment? Surely it'll have a deterrent effect! And given that we know prison doesn't, in fact, rehabilitate criminals, then why bother with it in the first place? As he points out:

So California now says they’re not going to release prisoners who are a danger to society. But if they’re not a danger to society, why are they behind bars in the first place? If we just want to punish people for breaking the law, there are better—and cheaper—ways to do so.

Yet somehow the idea of floggings as a punishment is repellent to us, but the idea of prison as a punishment isn't. I'll repeat myself by saying that I firmly believe that this is because everyone who is able to has most likely experienced physical pain, and so thinks they can imagine the pain of flogging; however, to those who haven't experienced prison, the simple reality of imprisonment doesn't seem to communicate itself at all. But to regard one as a cruel and inhuman punishment and the other as not smacks of hypocrisy to me.

The focus on prison as a punishment is actively hostile to prison as rehabilitation. In my mind, this is largely because of a mentality created by law-and-order politicians and Hollywood, who depict crime as the actions of a criminal class determined to exploit society's weaknesses. If one takes the view that all crime is committed by hardened professional criminals, and also adopts the strangely antithetical idea that they'll stop being professional criminals if they're punished hard enough, then it makes sense to rail against "prison luxuries" and demand tougher treatment. But this idea isn't based on any perceivable reality; instead it's part of the culture of fear our politicians maintain to frighten us into compliance.

As long as we make decisions on criminal policy based not on reality but on illusions, we're behaving irrationally. In this case, it means creating a judicial system that encourages and maintains crime. It's a worthwhile sociological question to ask whether this is, in fact, done on purpose, but that's a larger topic for another time.

**

To wrap up, I'll return to what kicked this whole thing off: prison gyms. We still have those in Finland, but rumor has it that they're considering getting rid of them. Martial arts equipment like focus gloves are banned. Focus gloves were, in fact, the subject of my only foray into jailhouse lawyering, when I trudged through the prison regulations and found that they were, in fact, prohibited.

As I said earlier, studies seem to show that instead of increasing aggression and violence, working out seems to do the opposite. What's more, simply banning exercise equipment won't stop prisoners from working out. There's always push-ups and all kinds of improvised exercises that can be done in the absence of equipment. Even martial arts training is easy; I've seen some impressive home-made focus gloves.

So the ban doesn't stop prisoners from working out, but that doesn't have the adverse effects it's said to have either. The ban on exercise equipment in prisons addresses a non-existent problem in an inefficient way, so it doesn't make any sense. It's pretty much par for the course in our criminal legislation.

Far from being a problem, I think exercise equipment in prisons is a positive thing. First and foremost, it gives inmates something to do. Prison is 99% mind-numbing boredom, and anything that you can spend energy on is basically a good thing. And fitness is a positive thing in and of itself, especially since I think the reason bodybuilding and working out in general are so popular is that the prisoner's own body is one of the only things they can control. A workout program is a long-term project, and I'd say getting involved in non-criminal long-term projects is only good for rehabilitation.

I'm beginning to think that the majority of our laws and regulations are coming about as nothing more than knee-jerk reactions to some level of moral panic, where it doesn't even matter if the problem is real or if the solution works, as long as the act of passing the regulation expresses our ethical view on the matter. This is basically the argument in favor of the war on drugs, for instance, as well as on prison conditions: it doesn't matter what the practicalities are, but we have to take a certain stance for moral reasons. It's a staggeringly irrational way to run a society.

**

I'll finish off with a reminder of how I ended up acquiring the personal experience that went into writing this blog post.


Tricky - Black Steel by Tricky

Criminal insanity, online and off

First, a piece of madness I must have missed when it hit the news and just happened to run into.

NY Daily News: Florida mom Alexandra Tobias pleads guilty to murdering baby for crying during her FarmVille game

A Florida woman admitted shaking her 3-month-old baby to death after the little boy's crying distracted her from playing a wildly popular Facebook game.

Alexandra Tobias, 22, told cops she was playing FarmVille and her baby, Dylan Lee Edmondson, wouldn't stop crying.

According to the Florida Times-Union, she confessed to shaking the baby, smoking a cigarette to calm down and then shaking the baby again. The baby may have hit his head during the January incident.

Tobias pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

She later got a 50-year sentence. And here I thought FarmVille was bad for you before I knew about this.

**

Here's another example of criminal insanity:

FOX Chicago: Teen Charged with Murder in Police-Involved Shooting, Armed Robbery Case

Ross was charged Thursday evening with murder and armed robbery with a firearm, police News Affairs Officer Robert Perez said.
The incident unfolded about 8 p.m. Wednesday when two police sergeants were stopped by a person saying two people had just committed a robbery near East 70th Street and South Cregier Avenue.

The sergeants saw two people matching the description and ordered them to stop, police said. One of the suspects, with a weapon in his hand, turned in the sergeant’s direction. The sergeant shot the suspect, identified by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office as 15-year-old Tatioun Williams.

Williams, of 1311 E. 69th St., was pronounced dead at 8:40 p.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to the medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Thursday found he died from a gunshot wound to the back and ruled the death a homicide.

A weapon and proceeds from the robbery were recovered at the scene, police said.

No one else was injured, police said.

So two guys commit an armed robbery, and as they're escaping, the police shoot one of them. Therefore, the surviving criminal is charged with murder.

This is how the felony murder rule works: if one perpetrates a felony, and as a result someone is killed, the perpetrator is charged with the murder. Here, the result even means that if the police shoot your accomplice, you are charged with his murder.

Another example of this idea in action here:

NY Times: Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers

CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hungover 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. That decision, prosecutors later said, was tantamount to murder.

The friend used the car to drive three men to the Pensacola home of a marijuana dealer, aiming to steal a safe. The burglary turned violent, and one of the men killed the dealer’s 18-year-old daughter by beating her head in with a shotgun he found in the home.

Mr. Holle was a mile and a half away, but that did not matter.

He was convicted of murder under a distinctively American legal doctrine that makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer for murders committed during felonies like burglaries, rapes and robberies.

In all seriousness, this is insane. As the New York Times article says, this law doesn't actually seem to have any deterrent effect, by comparison with jurisdictions that don't have it. Furthermore, it blurs the definition of murder; as the paper referenced by the New York Times points out, murder is defined by an intent to kill, except in this case, where you can be guilty of murder by lending your car to someone.

What makes it even more dangerous, in my opinion, is the simple precedent that a person who is in no way directly responsible for a crime, and who may even be totally unaware that it has occurred, can be charged with it. Imagine extending that idea to other crimes.

But most of all, it's completely unrealistic to postulate, even as a system of ethics, that everyone must take responsibility for all consequences of their actions. Responsibility for consequences needs to be within reason; if someone lends a homicidal friend a shotgun, I have no problem with them being held culpable, but lending someone a car doesn't seem to be strictly comparable.

Even crazier is the notion that when the police shoot your accomplice in the back, you're guilty of murder. Yes, I accept the idea that had you not been involved in the armed robbery in the first place, your friend wouldn't have been shot. But is this in any way a realistic standard of ethics? If people are going to be held criminally liable for the actions of others, where on earth do we draw the line? And doesn't this, in fact, give police a virtual blank check when pursuing a felony suspect, because any deaths that occur during the crime and subsequent pursuit will be blamed on the suspect, whether he had anything to do with them or not?

This touches on what I've been thinking about in general with regard to law lately. It seems to me that on the whole, our legislation is essentially random. I've been toying around with the idea of constructing a legal code not as a confusing jumble of separate laws but as a system of principles. Surely one of those principles should be that a person can only be held responsible for his own actions or inactions, not for the actions or inactions of others. In this case, both armed robbers should be responsible for themselves, and the cop who shot one of them responsible for the shooting. If the shooting is deemed justified, then it is, but under no stretch of the imagination should the police officer's decision to use lethal force be the other robber's responsibility.

I'll chalk this up as yet another odd aspect of an increasingly insane US justice system. Here's another example:

Wired: There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information.

The United States seems to be reaching the point where legistlation is classified to protect national security.

I'd comment, but I don't know how.

**

Here's some surveillance state news, too.

Nature: Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States

Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime.

Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

The tactic has drawn comparisons with the science-fiction concept of 'pre-crime', popularized by the film Minority Report, in which security services can detect someone's intention to commit a crime. Unlike the system in the film, FAST does not rely on a trio of human mutants who can see the future. But the programme has attracted copious criticism from researchers who question the science behind it (see Airport security: Intent to deceive?).

Do, in fact, see the linked article, which starts off with this:

In August 2009, Nicholas George, a 22-year-old student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, was going through a checkpoint at Philadelphia International Airport when he was pulled aside for questioning. As the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees searched his hand luggage, they chatted with him about innocuous subjects, such as whether he'd watched a recent game.

Inside George's bag, however, the screeners found flash cards with Arabic words — he was studying Arabic at Pomona — and a book they considered to be critical of US foreign policy. That led to more questioning, this time by a TSA supervisor, about George's views on the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Eventually, and seemingly without cause, he was handcuffed by Philadelphia police, detained for four hours, and questioned by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents before being released without charge.

George had been singled out by behaviour-detection officers: TSA screeners trained to pick out suspicious or anomalous behaviour in passengers. There are about 3,000 of these officers working at some 161 airports across the United States, all part of a four-year-old programme called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT), which is designed to identify people who could pose a threat to airline passengers.

It remains unclear what the officers found anomalous about George's behaviour, and why he was detained. The TSA's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has declined to comment on his case because it is the subject of a federal lawsuit that was filed on George's behalf in February by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Again, I'm not sure how to comment on this. It's terrifying.

**

It seems fitting that just as my copy of The Gulag Archipelago arrived in the mail, I saw this news item:

Guardian: China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work

As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.

Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

In the Soviet Union, it was gold-mining on the Kolyma: in China, it's World of Warcraft. Surreal. However, they haven't abandoned their efforts at reforming the inmates:

He was also made to memorise communist literature to pay off his debt to society.

You can't make this stuff up. It only happens in real life.

The news!

Firstly, the Obama administration was supposed to encourage and protect whistleblowers. Here's what they actually do.

Salon.com: Bradley Manning's forced nudity to occur daily

To follow-up on yesterday's observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days: brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future -- not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees. They claim that it is being done "as a 'precautionary measure' to prevent him from injuring himself."

It's become quite obvious over the past years that President Obama is fully dedicated to continuing and expanding the human rights abuses of the War on Terror. As I've said here earlier, not only has his administration guaranteed immunity for the previous one, but has also sought the right to summarily execute American citizens. Now the methods used by the Bush administration to brutalize "terrorists" are also being turned on US citizens.

This, then, is the change that we can believe in.

New president? Same as the old president.

**

In other news:

Crunchgear: Judge Allows Sony’s Request For Identifying Information For Anyone Who Visited Hacker’s Sites

This is a rather disturbing turn of events. Federal Magistrate Joseph Spero has approved a request by Sony to subpoena the hacker GeoHot’s web host, as well as YouTube, Google, and Twitter, for identifying information on anyone who has accessed, commented, or viewed information relating to the hack. At best this is lazy on Sony’s part and irresponsible on Magistrate Spero’s, and at worst it is a deliberate and malicious wholesale violation of privacy.

Read the article and think about that for a moment: Sony is subpoenaing to get the IP address of everyone who viewed a web page.

What privacy?

Finnish police seek authorization for data crime

To sum up what's happening over on my Finnish-language blog, just two months away from the next parliamentary elections, the Finnish government is seeking to give the police new powers to covertly break into citizens' computers and mobile phones.

The legistlative proposal for a new police law recently became public. In addition to existing wiretapping and covert surveillance powers, the police will be allowed to secretly install keyloggers or other technical devices, or crack telephones and computer systems remotely.

Although the new law will give the police increased powers to act covertly, it provides no real oversight or any opoprtunity for citizens to challenge the legality of covertly obtained evidence. In order to carry out a covert cracking operation, the police will need to seek permission from a court of law. Once the operation is complete, the police are required by law to inform the targets that they have been under surveillance, and the targets can then challenge the legality of the surveillance permit in court.

However, if the police fail to inform the target of the surveillance, nothing happens. As for the court challenge, there is already a decision from the Finnish Supreme Court that even if a surveillance permit was found to be unlawfully granted, evidence obtained in the unlawful investigation is still fully admissible in court. If a court is found to have granted a permit unlawfully, or if the police gave false information while appealing for a permit, no sanctions will be applied.

The law very specifically delineates what actions the police will be allowed to take under any given form of covert information gathering, and specifically what kind of information they will be allowed to extract. Permits must be sought based on the severity of the crime being investigated. However, the different forms of covert information gathering overlap and use similar methods. For example, if a suspect is being investigated for treason or a similar very serious crime, the police can obtain a wiretapping permit that allows them to listen to his telephone calls and read his e-mails. However, if a suspect is being investigated for any crime that happens on the Internet, such as a copyright violation, the police can obtain permission to crack their smartphone. According to the letter of the law, they aren't allowed to listen to his calls or read any of the "messages" stored in the phone. However, if they do, any evidence they obtain is admissible in court. If the suspect files a complaint, the maximum penalty (in practice) for the officers violating the law will be a reprimand.

In short, the bill provides the police with the authority to break into any kind of data systems covertly. The only judicial oversight consists of the police themselves reporting their actions to the parliament's ombudsman. Confusingly, this seems to be based on the idea that if the police break the law, they'll admit it in an official report.

So in practice, there is no oversight. The only recourse a citizen has is to appeal to the same ombudsman, who has few actual powers and less willingness to use them. Under Finnish law, basically any evidence, no matter how it's obtained, is admissible in court. This, combined with the lack of oversight, seems to present the police with a carte blanche to engage in covert surveillance of just about anyone they like.

Finland may not be a police state yet, but it looks like we're on our way there. Frighteningly, the parties currently in office are solidly behind this proposal, as it's being presented in the name of the entire cabinet. Their strongest challenger in the upcoming elections is running on a populist platform that includes harsher penalties for criminals. So not only are we on our way to becoming a police state, but no-one seems to care.

Independent links

Today is Finland's independence day, and to appropriately honor this country's history and its people's patriotism, I'm going to ignore it. Here's some links instead.

* Johan Norberg: GDP and its enemies

* (via The Agitator): Legalizing child pornography is linked to lower rates of child sex abuse: study

Results from the Czech Republic showed, as seen everywhere else studied (Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sweden, USA), that rape and other sex crimes have not increased following the legalization and wide availability of pornography. And most significantly, the incidence of child sex abuse has fallen considerably since 1989, when child pornography became readily accessible – a phenomenon also seen in Denmark and Japan. Their findings are published online today in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

The findings support the theory that potential sexual offenders use child pornography as a substitute for sex crimes against children. While the authors do not approve of the use of real children in the production or distribution of child pornography, they say that artificially produced materials might serve a purpose.

* Wired: Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation

The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would amend a section of the Espionage Act that already forbids publishing classified information on U.S. cryptographic secrets or overseas communications intelligence — i.e., wiretapping. The bill would extend that prohibition to information on HUMINT, human intelligence, making it a crime to publish information “concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States,” or “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” if such publication is prejudicial to U.S. interests.

Leaking such information in the first place is already a crime, so the measure is aimed squarely at publishers.

In short, videogame hater Joe Lieberman is now going after Wikileaks by trying to criminalize publishing information concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States. Free what?

Random update

First, rejoice, because the West Memphis Three are finally getting a new hearing.

Then read an excellent article in the National Post on the War on Terror: Stalin would have been proud.

Okay, the second item there is a bit depressing, but I'm cheerful; last Saturday I had the great pleasure of seeing an awesome burlesque show by Miss Indigo Blue.

She kicked ass. For some strange reason, the next act was Canada's own Bloodshot Bill, who is now officially my favorite Canadian artist ever.

Good times!

Poland approves castration of pedophiles

Reuters: Poland okays forcible castration for pedophiles

(Reuters) - Poland on Friday approved a law making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in some cases, sparking criticism from human rights groups.

Under the law, sponsored by Poland's center-right government, pedophiles convicted of raping children under the age of 15 years or a close relative would have to undergo chemical therapy on their release from prison.

"The purpose of this action is to improve the mental health of the convict, to lower his libido and thereby to reduce the risk of another crime being committed by the same person," the government said in a statement.

I bring this up mainly because several people I know support this. Also, when a Finnish tabloid broke the story over here and included an online poll, 95% of respondents supported the legistlation. I'd like to take a moment to address the ethics behind this idea. Unless otherwise noted, data is sourced from Wikipedia.

In practice, chemical castration means that the prisoners will be forcibly given drugs that reduce their sex drive. Technically, they're not being castrated in the proper wince-inducing sense of the word, as nothing is being cut off or even permanently disabled. However, their hormone production is lowered, leading to changes in both body and mind.

Several US states have passed similar laws; for example, in California a prisoner convicted for a second time of child molestation may be treated with MPA if they are on parole, regardless of their wishes. The ACLU, in opposing similar legistlation in Florida, called it a "return to the Dark Ages". Their paper can be read here.

I'm sure some people are aghast that the ACLU could oppose something like this. After all, it's for the children. It's worth looking at the core of the ACLU argument, because it puts my first point very concisely.

Sexual assault is not about sex - that is a myth. This law reinforces the stereotype that men are sex-crazed individuals and that child molesters and sexual predators need to be drugged to control sexual impulses. In reality, sexual assaults are about violence, power and the humiliation of a survivor or victim.

Eliminating sexual desire or a body part, for that matter seems like a quick fix. No more trying to squeeze extra convicts into already overcrowded jails. No more spending money to feed and clothe another felon sentenced to life. Just get rid of the testes. But this law avoids the real issues.

Firstly I should point out that pedophiles and child molesters are not the same thing. Having said that, sex crime against children does indeed happen for a variety of reasons. Most child molesters have many other psychopathological issues apart from a sexual attraction to children, and it has been argued that it's the other psychological issues they face, most especially sociopathy, that drive them to commit crimes, not their sex drive. As a matter of fact, studies have found that several convicted pedophiles already have low testosterone levels to begin with, strongly suggesting that it isn't their testosterone that makes them commit crime.

This is really the same argument as with any kind of rape. Men do not rape because of their sex drive. Men who rape do so because they have deep-seated psychological problems. Quite simply put, diminishing their sex drive does nothing to fix the underlying causes of their crimes. In a very real sense, chemical castration doesn't treat the problem at all because of this.

What I just said is highly relevant, because none of the drugs currently used for chemical castration have permanent effects. If the person being treated stops taking the drugs, their effects will subside. What this means is that the drugs will only work if the person being treated is willing to keep taking them.

In general, the best results have been gained from a combination of pharmacological and psychiatric treatment, and basically, drugs that control sex drive are no different from any other psychiatric medication. In conjunction with therapy, they can work. Without therapy, though, the medication doesn't address the underlying problems at all. In many cases, all it gets us is a former child molester who no longer has as much sex drive as before, but is still the kind of sociopath who is capable of sexually abusing children.

What's more, given that rape is not primarily an expression of sexuality but an expression of power and control, actual sexual functioning would seem to be secondary. And as I said, the drugs will need to be taken for the rest of the offender's life for them to stay effective. What if they just stop taking the drugs? You can't force anyone into therapy if they don't want it.

**

There are also some very real human rights issues involved. Sadly, "pedophiles" are such a good enemy that for a lot of people, they don't have any human rights at all. Here's how the Reuters article I started this post off with continues:

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said late last year he wanted obligatory castration for pedophiles, whom he branded 'degenerates'. Tusk said he did not believe "one can use the term 'human' for such individuals, such creatures."

"Therefore I don't think protection of human rights should refer to these kind of events," Tusk also said.

His remarks drew criticism from human rights groups but he never retracted them.

This is the kind of thing I expect from really bad novels, not actual politicians, but there you are, he said it. In Poland, pedophiles are not humans, and therefore they have no human rights.

Okay, so it's just the opinion of their prime minister. But it's a frightening one. In past times, chemical castration has been used in, for example, Britain, to treat homosexuality. Renowned computer scientist, cryptanalyst and mathematician Alan Turing agreed to undergo chemical castration to avoid being sent to prison for homosexuality. A few years later, he killed himself.

That brings me on to what I find most disturbing about this idea. The treatment will lower a patient's testosterone levels, which I pointed out are already low in some pedophiles. This means radically changing not only the person's sex drive but also their body and personality in general. If they're forced to take these drugs for a prolonged time, the "treatment" really means personality change.

Are we okay with the idea that the government can change your personality?

The treatment affects the offender's entire sex drive, at worst effectively denying them any kind of sex life. Pedophiles divide into exclusive and non-exclusive; the first kind are only sexually aroused by children, while the latter sort also have "normal" sexual impulses. Only roughly 7% of pedophiles are exclusive, so if a blanket chemical castration is applied, it means depriving 93% of the "patients" of a normal sex life. If that isn't cruel and unusual punishment, then I don't know what is.

The medical fact is that pedophiles are, by definition, mentally ill. Most child offenders are also mentally ill. What they need is treatment, not just for their sakes but for our sake as well. If people suffering from these mental disorders are going to rejoin society, they need to be treated for our safety as well as their health.

As it stands, the Polish scheme isn't going to prevent sex crime against children. Many sex offenders already undergo therapy without it being forced on them by the law. For the remainder, chemical castration won't be a treatment, it will be a punishment. And not only that, but a punishment that isn't effective at deterring the crime it's supposed to deter.

**

All in all, compulsory chemical castration is inhuman and ineffective. The only purpose it seems to have is to get politicians cheap votes from the moral panic on pedophilia. No matter how strongly we feel about any kind of crime, we can't just abandon our concepts of human rights to punish the offenders. It's even worse if we punish them in a way that doesn't even deter the crime.

Also, on a wider note, legislation like this can open doors to really scary places. As I said, are we comfortable with the idea of government-mandated personality change? In a way, that's what forcing you to take hormone-altering medication is. As psychiatric medicine advances, if we start passing laws like this, why not prescribe personality change as a punishment for other kinds of crime as well? I'm not seriously arguing that there's a direct and slippery slope from this law to a mind-control society, but it's worth thinking about. If only because the combination of moral panic, blatant disregard for human rights and enthusiasm about medical solutions sounds very scary indeed.

Pornography and sex crime

Here is a study from the University of Hawai'i, Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex Related Crime: A Review, via the good offices of Mr. Paalanen. I quote at length from the conclusion:

With these data from a wide variety of communities, cultures and countries we can better evaluate the thesis that an abundance of sexual explicit material invariably leads to an increase of illegal sexual activity and eventually rape. Similarly we can now better reconsider the conclusion of the Meese Commission and others that there exists "a causal relationship to antisocial acts of sexual violence and … unlawful acts of sexual violence" (Meese, 1986, page 326). Indeed, the data reported and reviewed suggests that the thesis is myth and, if anything, there is an inverse causal relationship between an increase in pornography and sex crimes. Further, considering the findings of studies of community standards and wide spread usage of SEM, it is obvious that in local communities as nationally and internationally, porn is available, widely used and felt appropriate for voluntary adult consumption. If there is a consensus against pornography it is in regard to any SEM that involves children or minors in its production or consumption.

Lastly we see that objections to erotic materials are often made on the basis of supposed actual, social or moral harm to women. No such cause and effect has been demonstrated with any negative consequence. It is relevant to mention here that a temporal correlation between pornography and any effect is a necessary condition before one can rationally entertain the idea that there is a positive statistical correlation between pornography and any negative effect. Nowhere has such a temporal association been found.

For those of you not up on the history of pornography, the Meese Commission produced the infamous hatchet job properly referred to as the final report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. In brief, the Meese commission heard testimony from several "experts", all of whom were rabidly anti-porn radical feminists, including the lunatic Andrea Dworkin, and Christian Conservatives of all shades. Unsurprisingly, the report came to the conclusion that pornography directly caused sex crimes and violence against women; equally unsurprisingly, it did so without any evidence or even a pretense of science.

I post this just in case anyone needs an easy reference to proving that based on everything we know, pornography has no harmful effects at all.

Rape is legal in Finland, pt II

Earlier post on the same topic here. I also posted on the same topic at greater length in my Finnish-language blag. The fact that I have multiple posts on this topic makes me think I should have a label for "rape", but I just don't want to.

Helsingin Sanomat International Edition: Suspended sentence for police officer convicted of raping a minor

A Helsinki police constable received a suspended sentence of two years' imprisonment for the rape of a minor.
The crime, which took place in November 2006, was revealed when the victim later contacted an Internet "virtual police" line.
The case was reported in the Wednesday edition of Ilta-Sanomat.

The police officer found guilty of the crime was dismissed after the investigation was completed. No other similar cases have been found in the constable's background.
According to the Deputy Chief of the Helsinki Police Department Jari Liukku, the police have also not received any other contacts from the public concerning the officer in question.

The 51-year-old constable working in the Helsinki Police Department had lured a 16-year-old girl - who had allegedly told him she was on the run from home and had nowhere to sleep - into his car and thence to his apartment by showing her his police badge.
In the apartment the girl had become intoxicated on the alcohol served to her by the officer and had fallen asleep.
After she fell asleep, the constable had raped her twice. He also took pictures of the situation, which he then placed on his personal computer.

The Helsinki District Court handed down a suspended two-year prison sentence.

The article goes on to say that Finland has been internally and internationally criticized for its "nonchalant attitude towards crimes of sexual assault", as they are in HS English.

And rightly so. I read this particular news item while I was still in prison myself, because in Finland, if a person refuses to serve in the army, they are automatically sent to prison with no possibility of a suspended sentence or parole, but if a police officer lures a 16-year old girl into his apartment and rapes her, he doesn't go to prison.

In Finland, a suspended sentence means absolutely nothing. The guy won't go to prison; he'll have a criminal record and probably be banned from working with children, and he'll have to pay some thousands of euros in damages. That's it. From a personal standpoint, the day the sentence was handed down I was in prison, and the police constable was probably in a bar somewhere, celebrating.

I can't really express the way that makes me feel, in writing or in any other medium.

The prosecutor is appealing the case, so it'll go to an appeals court. Hopefully they'll decide differently. The problem is that they can, in fact, quite easily decrease the penalty.

In my previous post, I discussed the impact of the introduction of the "lesser rape" charge, which led to a systematic decrease of sexual assault penalties. If this case, and the plethora of others like it, lead to an increase of, say, the minimum penalties for rape, this will change nothing, as the courts will simply classify more cases as "lesser rape". I dealt with the legalities of this more fully in my Finnish-language blog, so I won't get into that here. Suffice to say that Finnish criminal law, like all other Finnish law, defines everything so loosely that courts are practically free to interpret cases as they like. Even this case could easily have been tried as a "lesser rape" case, because the wording of the law is so elastic. So, in fact, the appeal by the prosecutor may very well lead to the rape conviction being overturned and replaced by a conviction for "coercive sexual contact" and a lesse penalty.

**

It's almost certain that this case will reinforce the demands made in Finland for making the penalties for sex crimes harsher. The problem is that in the current Finnish justice system, this completely fails to address the core issue. Rape sentences are theoretically severe; the problem is that courts use every excuse to hand down more lenient sentences.

A far more important problem in this particular case is the fact that according to Finnish criminal law, the decision on whether a sentence must be served in prison or as a suspended sentence (i.e. nothing) is entirely up to the court's discretion. So demanding harsher penalties won't change that, either, as even if the minimum penalty for rape is raised, courts can still pass suspended sentences, meaning that the perpetrators will still be getting away with nothing. It'll just be a theoretically longer nothing.

In short, what is needed is not simply an increase in penalties for sexual assault, but a revamp of both the Finnish criminal code and the general attitude of Finnish courts. The simple fact is that in Finland, courts are clearly predisposed to let sexual offenders off with very light penalties, and the vagueness of the law lets them do it. And despite the continued public outcry over this, no-one is willing to do anything about it.

**

Welcome to Finland, where a police officer can lure a 16-year old girl into his apartment, get her drunk, rape her twice and take pictures of her, and not go to prison.

Some more fascinating Finnish jurisprudence

A Finnish man born in 1982 crashed his stolen motorcycle into a car in Hakaniemi while fleeing the police. He had earlier been driving down the Itäväylä motorway at 240 km/h. On Tuesday, he was discharged from hospital and yesterday the prosecution moved to have him imprisoned pending a trial in the Helsinki court. The man has no driver's license of any kind, and has a history of joyriding in stolen vehicles and drunk driving.

The judge decided to release him because she was "moved" by his injuries. A repeat offender, who according to the prosecution was most likely also drunk at the time he crashed, is walking free because the judge thought he was cute or something. If anyone gets hit by a motorbike doing 200 km/h in Helsinki, well, hey, them's the breaks.

Am I making this up? The original article is at Iltalehti.

The longer I live in this country, the more convinced I am that our justice system is completely insane.

A snippet on immigration

From Johan Norberg:

Ok, the time has come to speak candidly about immigration and crime. American studies shows that there is a clear correlation: Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born. This is true for the nation as a whole, for cities with large immigrant populations and for cities along the US-Mexican border, as Radley Balko explains in Reason.

Read his blog for more. That's some immigration criticism for you.

Book review: McMafia

Misha Glenny's book McMafia has such a hideously stupid cover that it put me off buying it for an entire year despite my great interest in its topic. I mean, come on:

What the hell is that, a Chinese GTA ripoff? It's awful.

What makes the cover art even more terrible is that the GQ quote on the cover isn't that far off. Glenny's written a wonderfully informative, perceptive book on global organized crime that I think really is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the world works.

The only unfortunate aspect of the book is that sometimes Glenny starts propounding solutions. Occasionally these are obvious ones; he agrees with such hideous left-wing anarchists as the Economist magazine that drugs should be legalized, and his book is an excellent argument in favor of legalization.

On the other hand, though, because he's mainly concerned with organized crime, this leads him to take rather a strange perspective on some things. For example, he details the anarchy that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the criminal gangs, mafias and oligarchs that took control in Russia. Because he sees all of these as inherently negative, in Glenny's book Vladimir Putin assumes a heroic status as a champion of law and order! To anyone in the least bit familiar with Russia's burgeoning securocracy this is at the very least amusing, but really closer to frightening.

Sometimes Glenny calls for wider international measures to control something or the other, and several reviews of his book, like the one linked to on the Wikipedia page at salon.com, make the explicit comparison that international affairs must be regulated by a supranational entity just like the markets must be regulated. This is all so much left-wing claptrap, but luckily it very rarely distracts from the point of the book, which is to take the reader on a guided tour of the world of organized crime.

Mmm. Or-ganized crime.

**

Definitely a book worth reading, despite some of its biases. This should be essential reading to anyone who wants to talk about drugs, prostitution, human trafficking or terrorism.