[OldDutch]

You Said:

Threads like this are frustrating. You have half the people responding with logic and half responding with emotion and straw-man.

50% logical + 50% emotional = 100% of respondents, what group am I missing here that falls into neither?

I'm not sure what argument I was presenting in a bid to 'win you over', nor do I understand exactly what point you were attempting to make here.

You presented an argument, I was assuming to convince people who did not share your viewpoint to see your view point. Therefore I said "Win me over", to mean that your attempt to do so would not work by categorizing the two arguments into either attractive (logical) and un-attractive (emotional) camps.

Demonstrate that the person who you suspect drove drunk was - in fact - drunk. Innocent until proven guilty. Proven. Proof. As in, not assumed because he looked at a Twitter feed.

I cannot demonstrate this any more than you can demonstrate they are sober. Neither of us can win that argument as it is hypothetical. However, I can say that you cannot prove that 100% of the time a person reading the twitter and acting on it is innocent. Even one person who is drunk and uses the twitter to help them avoid capture, then validates my argument that it could be used in the perpetration of a crime.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how you equate shouting "The cops are coming!" with aiding and abetting (or how you equate your argument with anything logical).

Ok, I see what you are doing here. Refer back to my first point on how you cast your opposition.

Shouting "The cops are coming!" when no police are indeed on their way may stop an assault in progress due to the fear of getting caught. You've actually done some good. Even if the perpetrator got away initially, nothing says that witness accounts and solid investigative police work cannot bring the offender in.

OK, so you are arguing that the drunk driver reads twitter, and discovers a check stop on the way home. Therefore, they decide to call a cab. If you honestly believe this will happen 100% of the time, then fine, but I believe many will just take an alternate route.

Second, how would forensics work in a drunk driver who got away? What signs are left after the drunk gets home to convict after the fact? What is done is done, crime committed, and no recourse.

Yes. I want the person who provided the information to be served justice. Justice, in this case, would be no penalties or charges laid against them. What they've done is not illegal.

I agree that nothing is illegal per letter of law in either case. However, it is morally ambiguous. Free speech to me may cover this, however, does free speech extend to aiding a criminal act that can kill others? We do not allow free speech when it is obviously possible can do harm to others in other ways (hate crime, threats of violence, inciting violence).

Therefore should we freely allow information to be available to criminals that could result in death? If you say yes, fine, but if a person dies as result, should that person who distributed the information be held liable? I say yes.

I do see where you are coming from, it is logical, but I don't agree with it. My point is the possible good that can come from this (you avoiding a traffic jam, once every few years), is outweighed by the possible bad (someone gets killed on an alternate route home).

I struggle to find an example of how I can equate this to another crime that is obviously wrong. However, I must say that I find the avoidance of traffic jams on sober drivers argument to be a sort of façade. Is the reason because people want to save 20 mins every 3 years, or something else like not trusting the system? Really, there is very little use this information brings to truly law abiding citizen. To me, if you decide to walk the line, and down more than one drink an hour when you know you are driving, should I have sympathy? Besides, if you do get caught at .06, you lose your car for a day, lesson learned, move on.

My point, If a person distrusts the police fine. If they do not like how they are treated at a Check Stop fine. However, they shouldn't put peoples lives at risk due to their general mistrust of police/gov't. There are better and more constructive ways to fight the system than flirting and aiding people who are criminals.