Reason Writers Around the Web: Radley Balko Interviewed by the Economist

Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko recently chatted with the Economist about the criminal justice system, his investigative work for Reason, and the state of libertarianism. Excerpt:

I think technology is adding a level of transparency to government we've never seen before, from crowd-source analysis of those 1,000-page bills Congress is so fond of sneaking through, to Google's recent move to make case law available and searchable to the public, to the proliferation of cell-phone cameras and the resulting documentation of police and government abuses for the world to see—be it the Iranian government's crackdown on democracy protesters or a Bay Area cop's killing of a BART passenger.

George Orwell wrote of government power, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." He may still be right, but there's now a decent chance someone will be there with a cell-phone camera to post it on YouTube. And exposing abuse of power is half the battle.

Read the full interview here.