Saturday, April 23, 2011

Some thoughts on US Laws

I was watching a CNBC Program on Divorce Wars and some thoughts came to my mind on US Law and Enforcement system (although CNBC Reporters generally create all the undue noise and misguide people, the 'CNBC Originals' series is worth your time). 
In one divorce fight the wife made an allegation that her husband watches and stores child pornography. To prove that she took her husband's Laptop and produced in the court.  Now Storing or even viewing Child Pornography is a serious crime by US laws and the Husband was facing life-changing punishments. 
During the investigation, it was found that all the Internet Browsing history was deleted from the Laptop. 


But the Lawyers were able to restore those histories and found a suspecting pattern which indicates that the person did not visit any pornographic site except one day on which all the materials were downloaded. Also it was found that on that date the husband was far away from home but the local offers(which pops up based on your IP address) were all from his hometown. This proves the point that the person did not downloaded the materials but probably his wife did to make a powerful divorce case. The wife wanted to ruin her husband's career as well.


The program asks some serious concerns over the marriage, financial impact of divorce, divorce laws etc.but today my point of discussion is something different. I am  concerned the way laws are formulated and the way they they are enforced. I am concerned if the lawmakers really want to stop a crime or they just want to keep a law for helping lawyers and government to make a good business from the law. Let me explain the reasons for my concern:


Let's take the case of Child pornography or a more generic case of pornography. All the lawmakers and Law enforcement authorities know that pornography is a big business in US and all over the world. It is very easy and very common for everyone to access pornography in the Internet. If lawmakers and enforcement authorities are really concerned about the society and they really want to stop the curse they have easier way to stop it rather than making allegations on few people: They can just block the sites promoting pornography.
Similar is the logic for stopping cigarette . We all know cigarette kills people and no less harmful than drugs, but lawmakers have not banned cigarette. They say they are discouraging smokers by increasing taxes, adding warning etc. But not just make it illegal to produce? They won't because they make good money out of this business. Policymaking is an art - behave!


This is not really specific to US but a very generic problem all over the world. In India we have no less laws- but all laws are meant to be broken. It helps police, politicians, lawyers and journalists...and probably everyone except the unfortunate few.

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