Big Brother is Watching You...Buy Porn

Utah’s a funny place.

Actually, I feel that way about most places in the world, but recent news makes me want to put Utah in a special category: one that involves scary, too. I’m hoping my Utah friends (I think there’s one of you) will be able to help me sort through this web of crap.

Seems authorities in northern Utah want to start tracking the porn they find at crimminal sites in hopes of finding a link between types of porn and types of crime. If they can, then they can use it to help solve crimes—sort of like racial discrimination for the horny.

According to Lt. Matt Bilodeau, spokesman for the Cache County Sheriff's Department, "Like gangs, people who use pornography have associated traits, and we'll define them so we can link them to crimes and pornography."

Obviously Lt. Bilodeau never took any statistics. If you try hard enough, you can link anything with anything, even things completely unrelated, like porn and crime. I can’t even begin to fathom what their computer will spit out after they get enough data to run an analysis and how they’ll justify it. Serial murderers have an “unusual” amount of orgy porn in their homes (they like activities involving many different people). Purse thieves pick up a lot of gay porn (why else do they like stealing purses and not something manly, like a car?). Bank robbers tend to purchase “Girls Gone Wild” (probably because they feel like they’ve been cheated, not that I’m speaking from experience). I could go on for hours.

Of course, this is about where it stops becoming funny and start being scary. The entire point of the investigation isn’t to figure out what felons like to whack off to, but to try to capture criminals. Thus, Utah authorities will mess up causation (a common fallacy): people who buy certain types of porn are likely to commit certain crimes. Rent a saucy movie? That explains the cop at your door. Buy a dirty magazine? That’s why you have a police record. Purchase “The Slutty Professor” over Amazon? That’s grounds for a search warrant. Linking personal preferences with vicious crimes heralds an insidious policy of state control over our daily lives.

Laws that restrict freedom in the name of public safety always sounds innocent and reasonable (or completely unreasonable in this case) at first, but it is one of the few slippery slopes that actually exist. If porn “causes” crime, it’s not a big leap to ban porn, then to link other unpopular inclinations to crime and ban or control them, too. Personal freedom is sacrificed for security (a common theme) and the more these kinds of laws get passed, the more likely worse ones are on the way. People who commit crimes also date certain people, shop at certain stores, eat certain foods, have certain thoughts…

Utah’s a scary place.