OPINION:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview over rising crime rates that social media companies should “step up” their monitoring of platform users — that “artificial intelligence and other methods” should be used to “identify those who are talking about violence,” he said.
That’s a temptation that should be tempered with utmost concern for the Constitution, ‘lest it leads to the road of police state surveillance.
Progressives, that is to say socialists and cultural Marxists, want to defund the police, but they don’t want to pay the consequences at the polls when people are alarmed by hikes in crime that result. So they pretend to come up with other solutions to fight crime — other solutions that a) aren’t solutions and b) strip rights from law-abiding citizens.
They do it with the Second Amendment.
They do it with as many constitutionally guaranteed liberties as they can.
In context of discussing subway shooting suspect Frank James, whom Stephanopoulos referred to as “hiding in plain site” because of his radical social media posts, Adams said, Fox News wrote: “There’s a corporate responsibility when we are watching hate brew online. We can identify using artificial intelligence and other methods to identify those who are talking about violence.”
And then what?
Arrest them for — hate speech?
Thought crime?
Those who would trade safety for liberty deserve neither, as the saying goes. But more than that, those who would trade safety for liberty should get the you-know-what out of America.
This isn’t a surveillance state.
Predictive policing, while a shiny new technology gadget making great gains in the artificial intelligence field, is somewhat shaky when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment — when it comes to the rights of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, and to be secure from the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
In America, you just can’t arrest people based on what you think they might do. They have to commit the crime before they do the time.
And monitoring social media for potential nutcases who may commit crimes is one thing. But taking action against these nutcases before they commit crime is shaky legal business. In America, after all, it’s all “alleged” until convicted by a jury of peers.
Writing isn’t the same as doing. Saying isn’t the same as taking action.
Allowing government to determine when these boundaries might be crossed is to give government way too much power.
First Amendment anyone?
The way to fight crime is not to call for more social media surveillance, but rather to hire more police.
Or, at the least, quit calling for the defunding of existing police departments.
It’s a simple solution, a winning solution: More police on the streets — fewer opportunities for criminals to commit crimes. If only Democrats could make the connection.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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