Law Enforcement:: Limits of State Surveillance ---------------------------- Any surveillance of an individual by the state is unlawful without court authorization and the knowledge of the party under surveillance. A court can only authorize surveillance when probable cause of existing or impending criminal activity can be demonstrated. The party to be surveilled must be promptly allowed to appear in court to protest. The state must not, through collusion with private parties or foreign states, cause unauthorized surveillance. The state must not engage in surveillance for purposes other than law enforcement and defense readiness. No law can forbid a private individual, incorporated entity, or set thereof, from taking measures which impede eavesdropping and other third party surveillance, nor can any right, privilege, or penalty, be prescribed or proscribed by law on that basis. On State Law Enforcement Officers --------------------------------- Except as specified in this document, only duly appointed law enforcement agents of the state can cite, arrest, or detain people on property not privately owned. When not operating under cover for the purposes of investigation, state law enforcement officers must wear a distinctive and easily identifiable uniform, and their vehicles must bear distinctive markings. These uniforms and markings are to be specified by law, and no one is permitted to emulate the appearance of a law enforcement officer or his vehicle without the express permission of the body of state law enforcement which displays that appearance. No one who has been convicted of a serious, biological, or destructive crime can act as a law enforcement officer or as a private security guard. In enforcing law, an officer is required at all times to use the minimum and least injurious technique available to him sufficient to neutralize a situation. On Private Law Enforcement Officers ----------------------------------- One or more private property holders can jointly hire, retain, or become, one or more private LEOs. On behalf only of those parties who are contractual participants in the guarding arrangement, these private police can act to enforce law. They can operate within the constraints on a common citizen, in a people-defending, property-defending, and offender-restraining manner. Or, through approval either by the most local law enforcement investigative body, or through direct democratic approval by the most local body of voters with the number of yes's exceeding the number of no's by at least 50% of those who voted, these private guards are vested with the authority to enforce the whole of law, but only on the property they are contractually empowered to guard, and within the full set of constraints on law enforcement procedures as enumerated in this document and by law, except that he is under no circumstances required to don a distinctive or easily identifiable uniform. A vested private LEO can, with supporting evidence, seize persons for crimes committed in the past, whereas a common citizen can only seize persons for crimes in progress or just committed. Private guards cannot have been convicted of a biological or destructive crime, and cannot continue to be private guards if they are so convicted. A private guard must have a primary residence (more than 180 days of residence within any 365 day period) within the geographic boundaries corresponding to one of the voting regions most local to the area he patrols (private patrols can cross state boundaries). Private guards need not be fulltime; the duties of a private guard can be attended by any formal contractual signatory including the regular staff of a facility. Certification as a law-enforcing private guard can be predicated only upon lack of convictions for serious crimes, knowledge of law, and knowledge of the particular tactics and procedures of law enforcement. The certification procedure must be such that anyone who is eligible to be hired as a state law enforcement officer, is certified, and any specialized training available to prospective state law enforcement officers, must be available to a prospective certificant for the same fee (payable by the prospective certificant or by a sponsor) as is required of prospective officers or their sponsors. Entry into these training programs can (though need not necessarily) be predicated on lack of conviction for a destructive or biological crime. On Entrapment -------------- No one can be prosecuted or penalized for committing a non-physical crime if a state employee created a circumstance, or otherwise took action, which substantially caused or enabled said commitment. Anyone who deliberately creates a circumstance, or otherwise takes action, to cause or enable the commitment of any crime, has himself committed a crime whose seriousness is proportional to the seriousness of the caused or enabled crime. On Coercion and Torture ----------------------- In the case that it is clearly determined publicly by a court that an individual holds knowledge about the deployment of an agent directed, or a device arranged, to kill or effect serious physical injury upon one or more people, sufficient to allow the agent to be arrested or the device to be disabled before he/it causes harm, and provided that said individual is an accomplice in the deployment of said agent/device, any and all techniques of coercion and torture can be employed in an attempt to force him to reveal the information, provided no more force is used than necessary and no persisting physical injury or disfigurement is effected. Before pain-causing methods can be used, a psychoactive application enhancing honesty and compliance must be earnestly attempted. Under no other circumstances are such practices permissable or legal. In the case that torture is used, one of the state employees who advocates or approves the use of torture must undergo the same procedure, and the veracity of the given justification for use of torture must be thereby confirmed. This employee is to be chosen at random from among the advocating and approving employees. On Siege -------- An individual cannot be the subject of an armed siege unless he is wanted to stand trial for a crime for which a term of incarceration is specified, and a court has ordered the siege. On Law Enforcement Tools ------------------------ Any item that can lawfully be bought, sold, owned, in the custody of, used, or carried, by state law enforcement officers, can be lawfully bought, sold, owned, in the custody of, used, or carried, by any citizen, predicated only upon appropriate licensing when required. Mental Competence of the Law Enforcement Officer ------------------------------------------------ No one who is mentally incompetent can work as a state law enforcement officer.