The Company You Keep

An absolutely facinating story from the Sunday Tribune at the weekend. A man by the name of Martin Winters claims to have been continually approached by the British Security Services with offers of 6 figure sums and a home abroad to inform on 'X', a leader of the Real IRA.

The continued approaches already amounted to harrassment before Winters found a bug and GPS tracker under his car bumper last August. Winters admits knowing X, but claims to be completely uninvolved in any Real IRA activities, indeed, completely uninterested in politics in general. He says all he wants now, is for him and his family to be left alone.

Even if this were a completely fictional story the scenario alone raises some interesting questions. At the outset there is the moral dilemma of what one ought to do faced with evidence that one's friend is involved in wrongdoing on a large scale (a main theme of my favourite film). But I think that even if you agree that one does have an obligation to turn a friend in in such circumstances, that this isn't the sort of obligation any one else could demand from you.

Another set of questions this raises relates to Winter's right to privacy here. Many would affirm the right of authorities to place a tracker or bug on X's car, given that there were evidence that he has been involved in wrongdoing. But could you justify such intrusions into the privacy of an innocent man? Should we affirm a principle that association with the wrong crowd in itself, regardless of intention, forfeits one's right to privacy?