"The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced," well, at least according to musician and commentator Frank Zappa. Zappa's comment comes to mind when pondering the recent news that Los Angeles law enforcement officials announced, as the Los Angeles Times put it, "the largest seizure of counterfeit software in US history, a shipping container of cleverly faked copies of Microsoft's flagship Windows programs -- valued at [US]$100 million."
Frank Zappa's comment, while directed at America, is equally apropos for Taiwan. The whole case raises a number of interesting object lessons that Taiwan's criminal justice system would do well to consider.
The first lesson is that laws, whether well or poorly written, need enforcement. It is somewhat amusing that Taiwan's law enforcement projects go through periodic cycles with certain regularity. It is kind of a "flavor of the month" approach -- one month it is anti-prostitute, then we will have an anti-piracy phase, then maybe an anti-vote buying phase, then something else.
And like the moon going through its cycles, it is often easy to predict Taiwan's next law enforcement phase. For example, there is often an anti-piracy phase just before April 30 of each year. The mystical reason for this is that April 30 is when the US decides on its Special 301 list and Taiwan hopes each year it will not be on it. If Taiwan is serious about fighting crime, be it prostitution or fake software, it needs to commit to enforcing these laws year round.
The second lesson is for Taiwanese criminals to learn. Cops in Taiwan may be easy to bribe and the practice may be routine, but this is not true in the US. Let me be quick to add, I am not saying that there are no dirty cops in America. What I am saying is that they are the exception to the rule. It is an interesting but poor reflection on Taiwan's police force that Taiwanese criminals have the idea that bribing cops is routine, and effective.
That lesson came hard to two Taiwanese Americans who were arrested by Los Angeles sheriffs in connection with the case and charged with bribing a federal official and smuggling. The two men, according to a Los Angeles Times report, allegedly paid a total of US$57,500 in attempted bribes to a police undercover agent in order to try to arrange for the counterfeit software to be cleared through customs in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.
Which brings up the third lesson -- one that should be heeded by criminal justice policy- makers in Taiwan. The third lesson is the importance of undercover work in a wide variety of law enforcement settings. Undercover work in Taiwan is, by law, prohibited. This is a reflection of traditional German jurisprudence that viewed undercover work by police as "inappropriate." The prohibition on undercover work by Taiwan's law enforcement agencies must end.
Now of course I am well aware of the conflict inherent in giving undercover authority to a police force that routinely shows a grave lack of professionalism. I am advocating undercover work only under the direct supervision of the prosecutors' office that would have jurisdiction on the case.
The recent case in Los Angeles is a good example of what an undercover operation can do for law enforcement. The arrest was the end result of an 18-month long sting operation aimed at cracking what was believed to be a distribution pipeline for bringing fake software into the US.
The lessons from the seizure should be heeded by Taiwan's criminal justice system. In a sense they boil down to one point -- that is, avoiding Frank Zappa's charge of being "a nation of laws ... randomly enforced."
Brian Kennedy is an attorney who writes and teaches on criminal justice and human rights issues.
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