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Notes -
Would you still find the fourth point bad if the resulting mask-off mandate were primarily used against your tribe - say, retroactive dragnet identification of the Jan 6th protesters from photos, or police demanding that any future garden-variety right-wing protester unmask while being fully aware that the leftists are already standing by with cameras to feed a well-oiled machine of crowdsourced doxxers ready to send form letters to his bank and employer?
This sort of thing has been a long-standing concern of lefties dating back to when they had a more credible claim that institutional power is aligned against them. The way I see it, the right wing, in its knee-jerk opposition to masks and affinity towards police powers, is interrupting the left in the midst of making a rare mistake borne of their denial that they are in charge. The train of a sympathetic police getting to use this to unmask and prosecute someone like BLM rioters has long left.
Sure, selective enforcement is a concerning aspect of any potential criminal law, but this is also a fully general complaint. I don't want to protect right-wing rioters or left-wing rioters as a matter of principle though - it's the rioting I object to, not the political positioning of the rioters.
I don't think the complaint is fully general with respect to measures that help with policing. Police are already capable of physically arresting people in the midst of rioting or other illegal acts (at the cost of public scrutiny), regardless of whether they are masked. Forcing everyone to be unmasked during protests will help police prosecuting illegal and broadly disliked acts a little, in those cases where they are too overwhelmed to catch individuals in flagranti; it will help them a bit more in situations where they want to avoid public scrutiny, so rather than visibly arresting people for political crimes they can quietly come after them later; and it helps with extrajudicial punishment such as cancellation and debanking, where the punishers have no right to perform a physical arrest, a lot.
In concrete terms, for example, I would have been quite happy to turn up to a masked protest against excessive COVID measures (not that such a deliciously ironic event was on offer anywhere I lived). I would not go to one if I were compelled to show my face, since I'm in a line of work where an easily identifiable photo in that context could be career-ending.
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