Status Updates From Secrets: On the Ethics of C...

“If the police strive to counter the damage wrought by excessive secrecy through secretive and deceptive operations that create opportunities for crime and temptations to participate, and if governments and courts encourage this development, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish those at task to uphold the law and those who aim to violate it.”

“The deception and participation in crime that agents undertake must be limited as possible in time and scope, involve as few persons as possible, and entail a minimum of make-believe and manipulation.

“If the government legitimated the instigation If crime, it may lose the trust that is already a vulnerable public commodity.”

“Certain.m methods may simply be too disreputable to be useful to the government and its agencies. The resort to such methods may erase the difference the public sees between the police and the lawbreakers they are supposed to be combating.”

“The possibility that agents will themselves become unable to draw the line between impersonating and becoming lawbreakers is not negligible...”

“Any policy that presupposes an unnaturally clear line between the guilty and innocent persons risks unfairness to individuals and injury to the state.”

“The danger to the public and to the government itself from such conduct override any benefit it may ensure.”

“Certain forms of conduct fall below the standards for government conduct— and that one is the actual instigation of crime by the government. When the government stoops to such methods, it hardly matters whether those encouraged be break the law are unwary innocents or unwary criminals.”

“To determine whether entrapment has been established, a line must be drawn between the tray for the unwary innocent and the trap for the unwary criminal.”

“It is hard to know at all times what is needed to be law-abiding. And under the conditions of temptation, persuasion, and pressure that undercover agents can create, the distinction may blur still further.”

“Police methods are unfair to the extent that they lead someone— whether through excessive temptation, exploiting weakness, affecting judgement, or threats— to take part in crimes he would probably never have committed otherwise.”

“It has not been shown that undercover investigation does anything to reduce the level of crime.”

Undercover policing: preventive detention, infiltration, and surveillance

“By itself, the rationale for police secrecy while it justifies limited concealment, hardly suffices to justify its widespread and unregulated use in undercover work, nor the staging of elaborate deceits.”

“The latter response was motivated by class feeling— a sense that certain kinds of persons are more worthy of respect than others.”

“Media practices of secrecy, selective disclosure and probing should not be exempt from scrutiny.”

“When the government itself is at fault, or high officials in it, the justification earlier inferred from the public’s right to know comes into play again; the press’s role as intermediary must then give way to a degree of probing and suspicion ordinarily excessive.”

“The infiltrator is often seeking a shortcut for which the experienced have no need.”

“They obscure reasoning and invite bias of every kind. They exaggerate the crisis at hand and the conspiratorial nature of opponents, and they underestimate the adequacy of other methods of investigation.”