Balko on Carruthers Arrest

Radley Balko is quoted in this ABC News story about the arrest of BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers. He points out the futility, the hypocrisy and oppressive nature of the coming crackdown on internet gambling. First, the futility and hypocrisy:

"It's wrong for about 1,000 reasons," said Balko, "but the main ones are it's not gonna work -- it'll just push it underground."

Balko argues that any attempts to curb Internet gambling are bound to fail and are hypocritical due to the legal nature of online horse and lottery betting, which benefit individual states.

And of course, he's right. Unless the government wants to do what China does and forbid people from seeing certain kinds of internet sites, there is no way to stop this. And how do you suppose the US would respond if China arrested the CEO of Google for making anti-communist websites available to Chinese web surfers? They'd scream holy hell, and rightly so. He also points out the inevitable mission creep, as has happened in Washington:

The law in Washington is so strict, he says, it has become a crime to even write about gambling.

"The Seattle Times was told it would have to discontinue its poker column because it was now illegal," Balko said.

In addition, several gambling publications have now canceled subscriptions to Washington State residents.

And I particularly like this response pointing out the absurdity of the "protect the children" mantra:

"The people who are pushing this ban in Congress ... try to argue these sites prey on children, which is totally ridiculous," he said. "If your kid has access to your checking account or credit card and is making transfers to off-shore accounts across the world, Internet gambling is the least of your worries."

I'll double down on that one.