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.