Georgia Considering Law To Let Police Monitor Any Medicine You Buy

from the that's-not-how-to-stop-meth dept

There are plenty of communities that have problems with meth, but it seems that law enforcement keeps overreacting to the problem. We've already made it difficult to buy the cold medicine that works (the kind that has pseudoephedrine), leading to ridiculous situations like the grandmother arrested for buying two whole boxes of cold medicine for her grandkids. Now it seems that lawmakers in Georgia are going beyond even that. Radley Balko points us to a story about proposed legislation in Georgia that would give law enforcement full access to a list of all medication you've bought -- including over-the-counter medicines. The idea, of course, is to stop meth production by letting law enforcement see if any individual has bought enough of this or that medicines to make meth. But does anyone really believe that law enforcement officials won't abuse the ability to see what kinds of (perfectly legal) medicines lots of people are taking?

In the meantime, Balko is also discussing the impact of those laws to make over-the-counter cold medicine hard to get. The end result? Meth use has increased (by 34% in the last year) and more people have become criminals:

But an Associated Press analysis of federal data reveals that the practice has not only failed to curb the meth trade, which is growing again after a brief decline. It also created a vast and highly lucrative market for profiteers to buy over-the-counter pills and sell them to meth producers at a huge markup.

In just a few years, the lure of such easy money has drawn thousands of new people into the methamphetamine underworld.

So the answer is now to make the problem even more ridiculous by letting the police spy on every pill you buy?

Filed Under: georgia, meth, privacy

Georgia Voters Agree To Allow Human DRM: Non-Competes Made Enforceable

from the anti-innovation dept

A few years back, we explained how non-compete agreements are like human DRM. We detailed a whole series of research which actually showed the single biggest reason why Silicon Valley became "Silicon Valley," (according to multiple studies) was that unenforceability of non-compete agreements (yes, there were other factors too, but it was those factors combined with greater job mobility that created the innovation boom). You can read the details to understand why (and understand the various studies), but the short version is basically that by letting people move around from company to company, you get greater idea sharing among companies, which actually helps them all advance. While some want non-competes to avoid losing good employees, they ignore the fact that it also blocks them from getting good employees back, and from allowing an incredibly important form of information sharing to occur. One of the more recent studies in this space showed how the collapse of the Detroit auto market followed quite quickly on Michigan making non-compete agreements enforceable (yes, correlation, not causation, but combined with other studies, there's a strong relationship).

There's actually been a big effort in a few other states to make such agreements unenforceable, but apparently some states are going backwards. Benny6Toes points us to the unfortunate news that Georgia has passed a Constitutional Amendment to make non-compete's more enforceable. Before this, some non-competes were enforceable, but in a limited way.

What's really ridiculous is that those pushing for this Amendment presented it in terms that were quite clearly the opposite of what the Amendment would do:

"Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to make Georgia more economically competitive by authorizing legislation to uphold reasonable competitive agreements?"

Even though plenty of people who actually understood this issue knew that it was a ridiculously bad idea, for those who don't actually understand this issue, who's going to vote against making their state "more economically competitive"? Of course, it's rather scary that Georgia politicians would make such a claim when all of the evidence shows that such non-competes actually make states significantly less competitive. Really a tragic move for the state of Georgia.

Filed Under: georgia, innovation, non-competes

Georgia Supreme Court Says It's Okay To Put Non-Sex Offenders On The Registered Sex Offender List

from the this-is-not-good dept

The question of registered sex offenders lists is a tricky one -- because for those people who really do commit sexually-driven crimes against minors, it's hard to be even remotely sympathetic to any complaints they have about the punishment they receive. The problem is that so many things are considered sexual offenses these days that many people are put on the list, and must live with it for life, for something that most people may consider a youthful indiscretion, rather than something that automatically should brand them to neighbors as a possible child molester. Things such as kids having sex with each other after only one of the two teens has reached the "legal" limit or even urinating in public can sometimes be classified as a sexual offense.

And, now, it's gone even further, so that non-sex-offenders can be put on the list. A law passed a few years back says that sex-offender lists must also include those convicted of "kidnapping or falsely imprisoning minors." Again, if you've done one of those things, you certainly deserve to be punished, but should you be put on a sex offender list? A guy who was convicted of "false imprisonment" of a 17-year-old girl when he was 18, during a drug bust gone bad, was added to the sex offender listings in Georgia and he sued to be taken off the list. However, the Georgia Supreme Court has said that it's perfectly legal to put non-sex-offenders onto a sexual offender list.

Again, no one is saying folks like this shouldn't be punished for their crimes -- but this goes beyond punishment for the crime he committed. And the really bad thing is that including all of these other offenses on such a registry dilutes the power and value of any such registry. The purpose behind such a list was supposedly to alert neighbors to be aware -- but when you expand the list to include all sorts of people who are of no risk at all to children, it takes such a list away from its very purpose.

Filed Under: georgia, sex offenders

Cities Upset That Increasing Yellow Light Time Length Reduces 'Revenue'

from the safety-first? dept

With the news that Mississippi has passed a law banning traffic light cameras because it's an invasion of privacy, it's worth looking a bit to the east, where some cities in Georgia are taking down their red light cameras not because of privacy issues, but because a new law required them to increase the length of time that a light is yellow by one second -- and that's decreased red light violations so significantly, that red light cameras have become "too expensive" (thanks to Scott Cauthen for sending that story in). This is what critics of red light cameras have said from the beginning: it's always been about the revenue, rather than the safety. If you want safety, all you need to do is increase the length of yellow lights, and you have fewer people running red lights and significantly fewer accidents. But... if revenue is your goal, then you do things like decrease the yellow light timing -- which is what a few cities have been caught doing.

Filed Under: georgia, mississippi, red light cameras

Sex Offenders In Georgia Required To Hand Over Passwords... To Protect The Children

from the fighting-the-wrong-problem-again dept

It's really amazing what sort of laws are being passed in the name of "protecting the children." The latest is a law in Georgia that requires all sex offenders not only to hand over all of their online usernames and email addresses (which some other states require), but also the passwords to all of their accounts. The idea is that authorities can now log into their accounts and see what they're doing -- which seems like a massive privacy violation. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with punishing convicted sex offenders, but these sorts of laws go beyond punishment -- especially when the majority of sex offenders these days aren't the "internet predators" that everyone's so worried about, but people who already know the victim in some way. Also, this would mean that any time a convicted sex offender signed up for a new account somewhere, they'd have to hand over the info -- and even one slip-up can put them back in jail. It's hard to see how this law could possibly be constitutional, and I'm guessing that eventually we'll see a lawsuit to address just that issue, wasting plenty of taxpayer money. I'm not sure how that actually protects any children.

Filed Under: georgia, passwords, privacy, sexual offenders

Better Ways To Deal With File Sharing Sites

from the negotiating-is-just-a-step dept

There's an interesting article over at TorrentFreak about how the movie industry in Georgia (the country, not the state) has been negotiating and making deals with various file sharing sites, since there aren't really laws against such sites in the country. The studios are often able to delay movies from appearing on those sites until a few weeks after they hit the theaters by "negotiating" agreements with the sites. Of course, it's expected that the laws will eventually change in favor of the studios, and these negotiations will cease and be replaced by lawsuits. What strikes me as odd, though, is that the studios don't go beyond "negotiating" with these sites. Why not do more to actually embrace the sites? If a movie is posted for download, why not offer additional incentives to actually go to the theater, while promoting the experience of going out to the movies and seeing it on a really big screen, rather than downloading a low quality version for a computer screen. Such incentives could play into the marketing aspect of the movie, offering those who download a discounted ticket to the theater, or a discount on buying the actual DVD, which will contain extras. In other words, target those who clearly want to see the movie, and then offer them real incentives to go out to the theater.

Filed Under: file sharing, georgia, movie studios, movies, negotiating