There is a power to photography that not everyone entirely appreciates. They carry an incredible authoritative power, seemingly being “objective” records of the “truth”. Any good photographer understands just how readily images can be manipulated (even without resort to Photoshop). While it may seem from a photograph posted on an official website with descriptive text alongside that a given person if guilty as charged, there are many other factors in determining guilt and innocence (in this country anyway).

Saying there is a photograph of a person caught in a particular act (and/or showing such a photograph) is not the same thing as offering a person the opportunity to defend themselves.

I believe once a court has decided upon the guilt or innocence of a person, then such information should be posted and shared for the purpose of benefiting society, NOT as a form of punishment.

Publishing a person's address, phone number, and other personal information could result in unnecessary harm and harassment taking place.

It is one thing if an individual citizen or citizen’s group decides to pursue publication of misdemeanors as a means of deterrence. However, official government websites should not be used for such purposes until AFTER someone is found guilty and an appropriate punishment, fine, or other service has been determined.

In this era of warrant-less wiretaps, the Patriot Act, and suspension of the rights of habeas corpus, we should be very wary of giving the government explicit or implicit authority to dispense punishments (including public humiliation) without due process.

The United States Government has taken various people into custody without charge and without public awareness. Not all of these people have been guilty of anything whatsoever. One fellow, a Canadian citizen with a similar name to one on a terrorist watch list, was taken into custody, moved to a foreign country, apparently tortured, then dumped many months later in Eastern Europe without explanation. Such activities make me extremely hesitant when it comes to government (local, state, or national) essentially deciding guilt and innocence in the absence of due process.

It is very easy for government officials to get carried away if given unchecked authority. This is true in the United States as well as many other countries. We should never assume that a person is automatically guilty because a government official says so.

As an example of the kind of overstepping of government authority (in this case by the Executive Branch), I offer this excerpt from a lead article in the New York Times (7 Sep 07):

"A federal judge yesterday struck down the parts of the recently revised USA Patriot Act that authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use informal secret demands called national security letters to compel companies to provide customer records.

"The law allowed the F.B.I. not only to force communications companies, including telephone and Internet providers, to turn over the records without court authorization, but also to forbid the companies to tell the customers or anyone else what they had done. Under the law, enacted last year, the ability of the courts to review challenges to the ban on disclosures was quite limited.

"The judge, Victor Marrero of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, ruled that the measure violated the First Amendment and the separation of powers guarantee.

"Judge Marrero said he feared that the law could be the first step in a series of intrusions into the judiciary’s role that would be “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.”

"According to a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general in March, the F.B.I. issued about 143,000 requests through national security letters from 2003 to 2005. The report found that the bureau had often used the letters improperly and sometimes illegally."