Speaker for the Living

Provocation does not equal defence of civil rights

I think Allahpundit got it wrong. Colin Powell is right, at least in this case, and I say that as a self-described libertarian. This is what Colin Powell said:

I would say, the first teaching point is when you’re faced with an officer trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something. This is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child. You don’t argue with a police officer. In fact, in our schools today, in order to make sure that we don’t have things escalate out of control and lead to very unfortunate situations, we tell our kids, when you’re being asked something by a police officer, being detained by a police officer, cooperate.

And this is what Allahpundit claims:

If a nationally known figure who knows his rights can’t talk back to a cop in his own home, what rights does he have, really? I’m squarely in the Hitchens and Herzog camp on this, as any libertarian should be.

Well, as a libertarian and freedom-lover, I heartily support man and women like John Gilmore who use their personal resources to fight back creeping totalitarianism. I, as an average citizen, can't personally afford to do it (I have meetings and conferences that I have to arrive on time for, so I will carry my ID and show it like an obedient little citizen, for now), but I do like and support it when those who can do.

But what this professor did wasn't for standing up for his right. If we trust the police officer's testimony, this professor was provoking the cop and wouldn't stop provoking the cop. It's like yelling "Fire!" (or "I have a bomb!") at an airport and, when the authorities arrest or detain you for disturbing the peace, getting into some absurd argument about how they are making airport a First Amendment-free zone by arresting you like this and so on. There is a line between peaceful civil disobedience, which is the most common and effective method of fighting for your civil rights as a private citizen, and deliberate and unnecessary provocation—which does and should destroy your credibility to anyone with common sense.

Here's another example that may help show that difference more clearly: strong encryption. I love encryption. I encrypt everything. My hard drive is fully encrypted once with full-drive encryption, and important documents are encrypted again within an encrypted loopback device. I wouldn't leave town without encrypting my main computing and record-keeping device. And we all know that the governments around the world wants to make strong encryption illegal. Now, in this situation, what's the best thing I can do to protect my right against self-incrimination?

Should I carry my laptop over to the customs officer, set it down, and loudly and proudly proclaim that no matter what he may try, he cannot see what's in it because the encryption is so strong no government in the world has enough computing resource to break it? Or should I be discreet and try not to show that I even have encrypted data?

I think all reasonable persons would make the same choice, given these two choices. Here is what I do: I hide my encrypted devices behind an unencrypted device. If it's an external storage device, I split it into two partitions, the first being a small, unencrypted NTFS partition, and the latter being an encrypted EXT3 partition (Windows will usually detect the first and don't even notify the user that there is a second partition). If it's a computer, I usually keep around an unencrypted partition large enough to keep a functional operating system on it (about 10 GB or so). If I am ever forced to boot up my computer and log into it, I am booted into the unencrypted decoy OS. This is not exactly steganographic encryption, but it will pass casual inspection. Perfect steganographic encryption is believed to be impossible anyway.