Big Brother is helping you get clean.

I just read some of a pdf article by Mark Kleiman on what to do with drug addicts (via Yglesias). He is very convincing as usual. He argues for something in between locking addicts up and treating them as free responsible adults, basically testing them for drug use frequently with quick certain but not ruthless sanctions for failing or missing drug tests. Clearly the legal basis for this is a conviction and sentence to a kind of parole.

I had a (dumb) thought.

It is possible to enforce parole with bracelets which report the location of the parolee. I don't think this is done as much as it should be. It is possible to detect drug use with methods which aren't too invasive by measuring pulse and or skin conductivity. I wish there were bracelets which report where people are and whether they have recently used day cocaine and/or methamphetamine, that is if they are sweaty with racing hearts.

Hmm what about athletic ex addicts. Well it is easy for a non invasive big brother bracelet (bbb) to see if people are performing sports as people tend to bounce around when doing it.

So is there any way in which the bbb would amount to the worst possible invasion of privacy, any false alarm based on an activity which people generally want to keep private ? You know more than any other activity.

A yes. blush.
back to the drawing board.