A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

CCTV surveillance can protect the people I care about (especially women at night) from horrible violent crimes I'm actually scared of. It's surveillance of public space, so the privacy compromise seems kind of moot (though uses of the footage should be strongly regulated). It makes policing violent and petty crime extremely cheap and effective (ask anyone who's ever won or lost a fight outside a pub). CCTV makes me feel safe. It has utility.

On the Internet by contrast, the privacy trade-off (my thoughts, political opinions, contacts, location, in real-time) is extremely large, and the benefits largely hypothetical, and at least some part smoke and mirrors.

Judicial, executive, and legislative are decent abstractions. They're fairly slow to change. Executive is probably the easiest to react to public opinion--which isn't necessarily something you'd want in the other two branches. It can repurpose old laws for new problems and can focus on immediate, concerning issues--thankfully, with oversight.

Breaking a law is binary, but public opinion can move gradually (I know I just said it can move quickly, but it can also move very slowly). Anti-sodomy laws were enacted (I imagine) when there was a lot of support. There was a very long time between that and the public accepting homosexuality. Yes, in the interim we can have judicial leniency--but that clogs up the courts and we do have mandatory minimums in many laws.

There's also weird in between laws, like a Ft Lauderdale law saying horses need lights and a horn after sundown. Makes total sense because it's dangerous. At some point it likely was a huge problem and it was happening often. But it's nice to give officers leniency if I got lost on a trail or my horse got out without having to go to court.

I'm probably being naive, but I think having rules that are universally enforced would be much better than our current approach of selective enforcement. I'd expect that as soon as those with power to change the law are negatively affected by poorly written laws, those laws would soon be changed.

Should jaywalking itself always be illegal? No, it should depend on whether there is an actual danger and the degree to which it impedes traffic. A more sane law would differentiate between calmly crossing at midnight on an empty street and causing an accident by darting into busy traffic.

Should it be illegal to exceed the posted speed limit? I think so, otherwise why not just have "advisory speeds"? Rather than making it illegal to exceed a speed that drivers are expected to exceed and then enforcing selectively, a firmly enforced limit seems much saner. If the goal is fuel efficiency, then legislate that directly. If the goal is safety, then "reasonable and prudent" seems sufficient.

like stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family

I think this is better dealt with at the penalty phase than by selective prosecution. I feel the owner of the lost loaf of bread should have the right to prosecute or not prosecute entirely at their discretion, but once the police are involved I think they should be required enforce the law and leave the discretion to the judge. It it would seem terribly unfair to the property owner for the police on the scene to summarily decide that the theft was justified and the shop owner must absorb the loss.