Again I think it’s a fair guess the vast majority of harm done to people by not exercising their rights is by people who have done something illegal. But by the same token a disproportionate percentage of people who get in trouble with the law are stupid (‘lacked educational opportunities’ might be more polite but a lot of them are in that state because they’re stupid, learning is not fun for stupid people). So discussions like this among obviously fairly intelligent people are somewhat artificial.
Otherwise smart, innocent people get framed because they violate some questionable absolute rule NEVER to talk to the police even in some apparently innocent or helpful (to the community) context: can happen, and perhaps does once every few years or so nationwide.
Stupid guilty people making obvious mistakes like ‘sure you can search’ when they know or have very good reason to suspect they or some associate has left illegal drugs in the car, house, etc. or admitting ‘yeah I hit him because he cussed me out’ etc: happens every minute of every day nationwide.
Summary: Homeland Security questioned a guy who was wearing a Google Glass unit in a movie theatre. He was initially suspected of recording the movie that was being shown, but was ultimately released without incident. If you’re wondering why he was wearing them in a movie theatre…it’s because they were fitted with prescription lenses.
Relevant details:
So the agent starts by issuing vague, nonspecific threats of “bad things” happening if the guy refuses to cooperate. The suspect ultimately was cowed into cooperating:
OK so no illegal recording of the movie that was being shown. But what if their search/questioning had revealed something else embarrassing or illegal? Emails about an illicit affair, or maybe a femdom porn collection, or maybe plans to buy a dime bag of weed from a buddy? Why would you want to subject yourself to that kind of unpleasantness?
The article continues:
In other words, if he had started out the confrontation by saying “I’m not answering your questions, and I’m not giving permission to search my glasses or phone. Am I free to go?”, it would have been over in minutes.
The flip side, of course, is that the movie theatre can kick him out and tell him never to come back - though if they were to do that to me and my wife, I’d insist they refund the tickets for us.
There is definitely more to that story than is reported. As usual. DHS agents don’t hang out at random Ohio movie theaters at 10pm. Its hard to comment on the story when you only have half of it at best.
Wearing a Google glass is tantamount to surrendering any privacy rights you have to a private company that can do what it wants and anyone else who gets access to the data. It’s kind of ironic that someone wearing a Google glass will somehow then get worried about asserting those rights against the cops.
The statement by authorities simply mentioned that a man was “briefly detained”. 4 hours.
The role of DHS was explained that they are chiefly concerned about copyright and trademark violations (“piracy” without Somali motorboats). They typically look for things like unlicensed sports trademarked merchandise, illegally produced DVDs, etc. - not just imports but apparently internal to the USA too. The MPAA has paid congress so that the government will do the work of chasing down people camcording new film releases in theatres. (I’ve seen one or two of those. Why anyone would waste their time watching them, I don’t know.)
So I imagine at this new release movie (“Jack Ryan”) they had spotters looking for cameras, someone or some tech decided this was a camera and called the local DHS office.
This is a good example the point where you can and should be wary. What you might think as prank level activity (sneaking photos in a theatre) might technically be enough to get you an arrest record and possibly as much jail time as someone convicted or manslaughter… Some laws have lost all sense of proportion and the public should exercise serious caution about feeding enthusiastic law enforcement any additional data.
(Sexting is another good example - laws that meant to stop predator adults from exploiting young children is instead turning typical teen behaviour into criminal activity with a serious jail term and a life-long sex offender label that destroys their life; and would be perfectly legal if they do it a few years later… but do the politicians want to fix the law? No.)
Indeed. If you read the blog entry, the suspect was insisting that the agent search his glasses/phone to satisfy himself that that he (the suspect) had not been recording the movie. But what if he had made a mistake? What if the glasses had accidentally been recording the movie, or taking periodic snapshots, and the user was not aware of it?
Best option is to refuse to allow a search, and refuse to answer any questions.
In California, the police (one of them at least) now giving tickets to drivers wearing Google Glass, on the assumption that they’re watching movies or something (distracted driving).
In searching just now for an article I could cite here, I found this follow-up article: The judge dismissed the case. Seems that the law puts a burden of proof on the arresting officer to prove something (imagine that!) which was absent here.
yet here’s Yale, another bastion of clever thinking
Blocks a website because it makes it easier for students to take publicly available course evaluation data (put out by Yale) and put it side by side for comparison. one uy in a day or two whips up something that does the same thing and does not violate their objections. Book smarts and thinking do not always go hand in hand.
So the question is - does plugging into an ethenet port (i.e. bypassing the need for a wi-fi connection, to the same network) constitute a felony breach of computer systems? (“See that wall socket? 35 years hard labour…”)
Technically, anyone who plugs into a wall power outlet is stealing, but somewhere a sense of proportion has to prevail.
I suspect the initial blocking had nothing to do with what he was doing, but that MIT discovered he was flooding their Wifi and link to Harvard with his traffic.
What do actual cops on this board think of this? Does it bother you that there are a lot of people out there and on this board that basically thinks you’re untrustworthy and make your job more difficult on purpose?
My assumption is always that cops are trying to do a good job and catch the actual bad guy. Therefore, give them all the information they need to do that.
Thats not how it reads to me. He was there almost 4 hours but the agents were already there. Reading between the lines I would guess that there had been a problem there before and they did not show up randomly. Another article states that the MPAA were already there investigating and called in the DHS (someone with law enforcement powers would have to be there to effect an arrest if it got that far). And although it was officially under the overall control of DHS I would also guess that most if not all of those that he talked to were “agents” from the MPAA. That explains why they identified themselves in “federal service” without being specific. The MPAA acts as a quasi law enforcement agency but it doesn’t have all of the same regulations because they are not law enforcement. I have a huge problem with how they are allowed to operate in this country.
Or on the other hand, your assumptions could just be wrong. It is far from universal but more and more states are enacting laws which differentiate between adults taking pictures of juveniles and juveniles sexting. Even before the law went into effect we were diverting juveniles away from harsher penalties. With juveniles we have a lot more leeway. But your statement that politicians don’t want to fix the law is false. In many cases they do. Its just taking time for the law to catch up to the technology.
Sorry, but I take this to mean you think that false confessions just don’t happen, a proposition that is demonstrably false. Further, there is clearly a significant number of experts who think the Reid method, in particular, is coercive and unreliable.
As was noted above, an officer needs probable cause or consent in order to (lawfully) search your car. So, no, a generalized observation that you look nervous is not sufficient. And no, refusal to give consent cannot serve as a basis for a probable cause determination.
So here’s a question - if a police officer decides he has probable cause to search my car, searches it without my consent and finds evidence of a crime, I can go to court to challenge his probable cause, and if the court holds that he was just fishing, all that evidence is deemed inadmissable. But what if he searches without my consent and finds nothing - do I have any remedy? Is there anything I can do to prove his probable cause was invalid, and make the state or police department reimburse me for lost time & wages, paying daycare extra, etc?
Very unlikely. All the cop has to show is that he was acting within the scope of his job and there’s no liability. You’d have to show that he was going beyond his job, engaging in some kind of personal project to waste your time.
To my knowledge there are no such studies, though I’ve seen a lot of cites to such purported studies. What there are are studies which show that the percentage of rape allegations which end in the accused being proved to be innocent – generally by the accuser recanting the accusation, IIRC – are low. But there are quite a lot of charges which end up as he-said-she-said situations, many of which are likely false accusations but which are not counted as such in these studies. (It would be very difficult if not impossible for any study to determine how many accusations are genuinely false.)
I disagree. Prosecutors who fail to prosecute cases that the public wants prosecuted will find themselves out of a job even sooner. There is a lot of political pressure to prosecute sex crimes cases, and a prosecutor who fails to prosecute such cases runs a serious risk of finding a newspaper article or media campaign alleging that he or she refused to prosecute this heinous crime against this poor poor victim due to his or her callous and/or sexist attitude. Especially if the accused later goes on to commit further crimes. Taking the risk of losing a Valiant Fight for Justice can be the smaller risk.
And even in a weak case it’s only a risk. What you do as a prosecutor in such cases is pile on the charges and go for the max and try to get the guy to settle for some lesser charge. Then you can declare victory and move on.
There have been any number of very weak high profile cases brought up in the past few years, and while it’s probably worse in these high profile cases, when the political pressure is worse, there’s no reason to think the same dynamic is not in play in other situations, albeit on a smaller scale.
It sounds like you’re talking about what the police have to do after they begin their investigation. It’s my understanding that a lot of the testimony and evidence in such cases would come from others who were involved earlier, e.g. the kid’s psychologist or pediatrician.
It’s also apparent from the Sandusky case that “recovered memories” are still admissible in witness testimony. I would consider that an abuse of justice, as the average juror is probably not aware of how shaky these are.
How in the world do you interview a 1 year old and get any kind of meaningful information?
Sometimes I ask my questions to my very bright 2.5 year old about past events (and by past I mean like yesterday), and I get all kinds of wacky answers. If they don’t know or don’t remember, they just make stuff up.
The bottom line will always come down to this: The Cop is the only witness. His version of the conversation is presumed to be the truth, absent any other evidence to the contrary.
This is a serious problem with police procedures, where civil rights violations may occur.
Police have the physical ability to commit nearly unlimited harassment and other rights violations, and sufficient authority to do so, in real time, without much effective hindrance. Should they engage in such violations, any remedies can only happen after the fact.
And what are those after-the-fact remedies? Typically, if actual evidence of guilt is found, it becomes inadmissable. So actually-guilty perps may walk. OTOH, if the citizen-victim is actually innocent of anything, there is no case to be dismissed, and no other remedy (e.g., monetary damages). So actually-innocent citizens have little remedy. So our handling of such behaviors, as it seems to have evolved in the courts, is pathologically defective, backfiring in both scenarios.
Only in the most egregious cases does it seem that the actually-innocent citizen has any meaningful recourse in suing the police or the city/state/government, and even then it’s very spotty.
