Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Tiger Woods Owes Us Nothing


It is a sad sight to see all these news reports about Tiger Woods. They keep asking "what is he hiding?" Like it's any of our business.


Guess what folks. Tiger Woods doesn't owe anybody an explanation. Not you. Not me. Not even the police. Perhaps the neighbor but that 's it. Folk could stand to learn a lot from Mr. Woods. Just because the rest of you feel obligated to talk your business does not mean that it's a requirement. I said on a discussion board many months ago in reference to Google Latitude, that there is a great danger to American privacy. In court expectations of privacy are not written in stone. They are based on what is "commonly accepted" by the public. If the public commonly accepts having their movements tracked via GPS and available to the public, then they cannot go to court and claim they were illegally tracked, because they gave up that particular "right" when they allowed themselves to be tracked via GPS. There is a great danger in the replacement of the expectation that "it's none of your business", to the expectation of "why wont you tell?" It is the assumption that the guilty hide information and the innocent spill the beans. Law enforcement loves this because it makes their jobs easier when the public is compliant. But this assumption is contrary to the founding ideas of the country. It is why there is a 4th amendment, 5th amendment and Habeus Corpus.


SO yeah. Tiger Woods has it right. The police come to your door asking questions? You tell them to talk a walk and speak to your lawyer. You don't have to say squat without representation (in most questioning situations) and more people ought to do that.


[update] Watching the state police discuss the fining of Tiger Woods, a statement jumped out at me:


There has been no testimony that warrants any criminal charges


Understand, THIS is why Woods did not give any statement. Anything he said could and WOULD have been used against him. So he said nothing and because he said nothing, there was nothing to charge him with.