Crimes stopped before they occur... good or bad?

Okay now this is the second time in a one week period that I heard about the U.S. government trying to track U.S. citizens' activity through a variety of ways including (but not limited to): (phone calls, police reports, credit card bills and computer and internet activity and searches) and putting them into a profile for that specific person. Now the point to all this is on this past Tuesday they were dicussing on the radio 570 a.m. (or 570 WKBN on the Ron and Casey talkshow) that the U.S. government wanted google to record all U.S. citizens' searches (that used google as the search engine) and submit the data to them and how google said "No", and that even though they said they were going to try to find porn sites that had "minors" in their videos/pictures and try to shut them down, practically everbody was happy that google didn't. And just tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on comedy central had on an author that wrote the book "Nowhere to Hide" (I believe that was the name of the book), and the author said that they already are making the profiles and they are going to try to use them to legally stop and imprison people who are possibly going to do a crime before they commit one. * I think I see a movie reference here* Anyway does anyone know if they really are going to make it legal to arrest someone for being considered to be going to commit a crime in the near future (I mean other than premeditating a murder)?

"Innocent Untill Proven Guilty"
The Judicial Branch would never prosecute on grounds of what somebody MAY do, because they have not done anything yet.There's just no basis for it, and that's the truth. All the presumptory evidence in the world means absolutely nothing without a definitave action.
Imagine a high school student on a drugs and alcohol contract. Just because the student happens to pass by a bar one day, school officials would not be able to kick him out of school and state "Welll...Well, he was GONNA GO IN! I SWEAR!"
Then again, if somebody were to be making phone calls to know terroists, purchasing supplies for explosives, and taking taxi rides to major moneuments, well, I may turn a cheek if an accident were to happen to him...

Originally posted by TheGoodDoctorFunk
"Innocent Untill Proven Guilty"
The Judicial Branch would never prosecute on grounds of what somebody MAY do, because they have not done anything yet.

That's not true. Conspiring to commit a crime is a crime.

If I plan to, say, rob a bank with a number of people and the authorities find out we can all be brought up on charges of conspiracy to commit bank robbery.

Touche. I should stop saying whatever comes to mind, maybe take a few plays out.
The system of surveillance that the poster was talking about sort of works like this. Moniter peoples phone calls, credit card purchases/transactions, membership uses, basically anything that is connected to a network would be placed into a database. Once somebody commits a crime, they would go back into the network and record their actions. Through this they hope to see if, for example, someone who is about to commit X crime would take all the money out of their bank account, repeatedly call the same number, etc.
With that information in hand, they would go back into the system and view who fits the profile they created from averaging the actions of those criminals. This may justify an increas in surveillance on the person who matched. Would it justify an immediate prosecution though, a la Minority Report?

If they have hard evidence that the crime is going to take place, fine, arrest them. If not, they can't do anything. Anyone might do anything at any time and you can't arrest someone because they might do something. Everyone would be in jail.

I understand what you mean Logan Cale, but what I mean is they will try to predict when people are going to commit a crime through actions on the phone, internet, credit card purchases, ect. ect.

Personally I don't like it, I think it's bad.

How will you know for certain if someone is going to commit a crime based on whatever statistics? The answer is you won't, there's always that wildcard.
Would this system be abused? Most certainly. The criminals would merely switch sides.

I'm not a religious person myself, but I do remember that one story about Adam, Eve and the snake.
To put it short, God tells Adam and Eve they shouldn't eat apples from a particular apple tree, but the snake tricks them into doing it and they get kicked out from paradise.
If God is all-knowing he would've known they'd do it anyway, so why didn't he kick them out right away?

This is just my opinion but it maybe is because not everything is predetermined, meaning fate may exist just not pertaining to everything sorta like the near-death experience people who aren't ready to die yet so they come back. In other words my guess is that things interfere and change things (in this case humans living in a paradise free of temptation, corruption and sin). THIS is JUST an opinion...

I guess a major complication would be changing the law enough so that as long as there is enough evidence to suggest a person is going to commit some type of crime in the near future police officers can go and arrest the person (and possibly eventually imprison depending on what crime they think he would have commited and how long that sentence normally is).

The Patriot Act(s) suspended habeas corpus. Now, criminal intent is irrelevant as no reason is required in order to arrest and detain. Filing charges is now redundant, except for show.

Originally posted by TheGoodDoctorFunk
"Innocent Untill Proven Guilty"
The Judicial Branch would never prosecute on grounds of what somebody MAY do, because they have not done anything yet.There's just no basis for it, and that's the truth. All the presumptory evidence in the world means absolutely nothing without a definitave action.

Really. You need to take a look at some of the laws being passed now. I go out for an evening, have a few beers, decide that I am unable to drive my car, get in the backseat with a blanket and go to sleep. I have broken no laws. A good friend of mine did just that on Jan. 14th. His hearing was yesterday, he was prosecuted for Drunk Driving. 12 months license suspension, 12 months probation and $1500 in fines. Police officer woke him up, gave him a breath test and hauled him off to jail on the basis that he could have drove the car. The fact that he was in the back asleep had nothing to do with it. The above quote needs to be rethought.

You know you would think that since Congress speaks for the people that at least these laws letting them prosecute before a crime is commited would get voted down. But they probally won't because they will say something like "It is in the best interests of American people".

This is a hard question, i believe that people who will commit a crime are still not guilty as they have done nothing wrong. imagine a man plans to commit fraud at his office he is walking to work on the morning he will commit his crime and gets stopped and arested for the crime, however how do we know that as he was walking in he wouldnt get run over or decide to buy a lotto scratchcard and win.

Its basically the same thing as if you could go back in time and kill hitler as a baby would you. i personally would not as i believe at that point he was an innocent child and had commited no crime. also take causality into it if you kill him you mess with time same as if you arrest someone before they commit a crime fate says there were going to god above knows what would happen if you arrested them before they did it the timeline would be wrong and our race know too little about time to start altering it just yet

Watch the Movie - Minority Report with Tom Cruise

I beleive punishing or arresting someone before they commit a crime is wrong.

Even if they have blatently and publicly stated they would commit a crime.

Until the moment they commit that crime they are innocent.

I also beleive that just because a law says something is a crime doesnt make it a actual crime.

In my opinion two things we do that are horribly wrong are, protect someone from themself, and prosecute people who have never actually hurt anyone else.

It's retarded.

Because a lot of crimes are decided seconds if not miliseconds before they occur, it's a random thing really....retarded to charge people on what they MIGHT do.

If you are a recidivist, then you shouldn't be allowed back into society. Simple as that. Sort of.

I suppose we'd have to start killing them off more, or pay more tax to keep them locked up.

I know which I'm for.

It's not like we'd be killing thousands of them everyday, forever. The numbers of criminals would taper off after a few weeks, as most crimes are commited by the same few individuals, and we can kill them quicker than they can breed and grow up.

Something to think about.

I know capital punishment doesn't work as a detterent, but death sure stops them doing anything naughty.